Based on the computer hacking from the old Shadowrun game, Decker is just about the perfect roguelike. Randomly generated systems crawling with varied IC to deal with, multiple viable strategies for taking on the system, and leveling up not only increases abstract stat numbers, it increases the complexity of the game. Sure the graphics are ass, but Decker is a fantastic free experience with all the good points of roguelikes and none of the headaches.
A post-nuclear apocalypse game that's a cross between a 4X strategy title and Magic: The Gathering. Your random hand of cards determines the units you have available to build, strategic hexes on the map produce the resources necessary to build them. The random factor fits the ragtag mad-max theme and makes for a gameplay experience that's more akin to Bridge than Chess. The AI is excellent, not just because it plays well, but also because it noticeably reacts to your actions and plays in a very convincingly "human" manner. Just do yourself a favor and don't read the background story. It would be difficult to come up with a more disappointing nuclear apocalypse story even if you tried.
The less I say about this game, the better. All I'll say is once the initial fetch quest is completed the game really picks up. I think you'll like what you see.
A fantastic game that plays like a self-contained season of Star Trek and is designed to be finished in 20-minutes or less. Plot courses to unexplored planets, uncover treasures, install new components on your ship, recruit friendly aliens and mercenaries, fight tactical battles against hostiles in pausable real-time, all with a sense of humor about the game and all its inspirations. Classic.
This is the best Tower Defense game of all time, but that's not really a fair description because it's akin to calling Half-Life the best Quake clone of all time. In terms of both gameplay and plot, Immortal Defense is head and shoulders above the bloated and simplistic tower defense subgenre. There's a huge assortment of towers to choose from without any "certain enemies are immune to tower type X" cop-outs to artificially increase variety, and there is much more to placement than maximizing the amount of path that lies within their firing ranges. I would rate this game's plot alongside "Planescape," and its themes of the foibles of immortality mixed with its minimal string soundtrack makes this the closest you'll probably ever get to a videogame adaptation of the movie "The Fountain."
Ever since I was a little kid, the one movie scene I most wanted to act out was the space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi. And here it is. You play a faceless X-Wing pilot at the Battle of Endor, specifically one who did not enter the Death Star so that it could "concentrate all firepower on that super star destroyer!" It recreates that moment when the TIE fighters swarm in and the guy says "There's... too many of them!" perfectly. The enemies are so numerous that a strategy of simply targeting and shooting down the nearest TIE won't cut it. You need to prioritize amidst the sea of fighters for tie's trailing wingmen and firing on cruisers, all while taking quick potshots at star destroyers that stray close to the fleet with your proton torpedos. Unlike its successor, Battle of Yavin, the action never lets up for dull turret-strafing levels or frustrating trench runs, it's just a nonstop dogfight against near-impossible odds.
There's an incredible and highly recommended graphics mod linked to on the same page, but the mod doesn't work unless the game is installed to the default directory in program files. I also recommend you DON'T install the music files from the mod because they're the exact same songs as the default install, only they sound like they were recorded off a shitty VHS tape. Maybe they're recorded at a higher sample rate and the mod-maker had a "MAME dev" moment?
A HUGE combination of Metroid and Ecco the Dolphin. Everything from the beautiful artwork to the music to the little details and side quests mark this game as a labor of love. Make sure to turn on Frame Buffer effects in the setup screen.
Shanghai Alice makes the best Bullet Hell games and Imperishable Night is the best Shanhai Alice game. The transforming character pairs and their ikaruga-like effects on enemy satelites is interesting and fun. The bullet swarms look gorgeous against the dark blue night backgrounds. Both main characters from the series show up as bosses in the game and EVERY boss has a "final spell" bonus round you can play if you pick up the requisite number of time tokens. There are multiple final bosses you can pick between based on a branching path. There's an english translation patch. And finally, this game has the fairest difficulty curve of the bunch. I could totally expect a beginner to be able to handle IN on easy mode. Other games in the series may do certain things better, but for overall quality Imperishable Night is the best.
The best puzzle series of all time. The concept is simple: it's a turn-based game where your character can move in 8 directions and rotate his really big sword in a grid-based room. The room is filled with nasty creatures that follow a basic AI script who try to kill you. Your job is to slay all the monsters to clear the room. The series starts with King Dugan's Dungeon, an older version of which is available as freeware (Direct Link), then Journey to Rooted Hold begins incorporating cinematic moments within the gameplay ala. Half-Life, and The City Beneath is almost a full-fledged RPG with all the puzzle elements intact. The whole hair-pulling series is highly recommended, but especially parts 2 and 3.
There was a time when flightstick-controlled space combat sims, like the X-Wing and Wing Commander series, were as big a part of computer gaming as first person shooters are today. But while Lucasarts really screwed the pooch with the disappointing "X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter" and Origin gradually turned Wing Commander's emphasis away from space combat and more towards creating Z-grade sci fi movies starring the marginally talented Mark Hamill and some malevolent puppets, the genre still died with a bang thanks to dark-horse publisher Volition's Freespace 2. Freespace 2 was the greatest space sim of all time, and in my opinion the greatest video game of all time, but tanked in sales and ended up bringing down the whole genre with it.
Years later the Freespace 2 Source Code was released and several fans decided to do something with it. And wow what they did, and are still doing. I could go on for several paragraphs describing the incredible combat, giant scary capital ships, and top notch mission design of Freespace 2. I could go on for several more paragraphs describing the fantastic changes the SCP Project made to the visuals of this 1999 game, but thanks to the wonders of modern forum technology I can just show you instead. Note that this guy's using the realistic lighting tags, so that's why everything's so dark. Also this was done with the older media VPs, a new set just came out which looks even better:
Installing the SCP mod is a real doozy, fortunately someone's created a web-based installer for those who don't want to go through the process manually. Here's the current guide to installation. And if you're sorting among the many many free missions and campaigns available to play in Freespace 2 SCP, Derelict and the Freespace 1 Port come highly recommended.
