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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   2031 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I mentioned this in another thread, but I finally have a gaming PC. I am far behind on gaming. The newest console I have is from 2012. I never had a gaming PC. I am open to any games of any genre from the last 30 years. I love RPGs, but open to anything. Bonus if it’s cheap.

Buddy, you are in for such a treat. If you are serious about anything from the last 30 years, you are in for a firehose of fun you can scarcely imagine.

But first, install Linux Mint, or CachyOS, or whatever your preferred form of Linux is. Microsoft Windows is over, and your computing experience will be much more pleasant (not to mention faster and more responsive) with any of the popular Linux distros. They all run windows games virtually out of the box these days.

Since everyone else is focusing on new trash from the last 10 years, let me offer a broader prespective.

  • StarCraft (1998) - I still think this might have one of the most finely honed RTS campaigns of all time. Just flawless.
  • Quake 2 (1997) - I consider this the peak of a form of shooter that died for a long time post Half-Life. It's all about rule of cool in the level design, and enemy attack patterns you can actually anticipate and dodge. Fun weapons too.
  • Might & Magic VI (1998) - Possibly the best Might & Magic ever. First one that didn't constrain movement to a grid, massive open world, tons of quests and loot, so many fun ways you can upgrade your characters, including quests for advanced classes. Might & Magic VII is better in some ways, some people liked that you got a castle. I never cared for the fact that the story put you on a deadline.
  • Half-Life (1998) - The FPS that completely redefined how FPS were made. Environmental story telling at it's best, and IMHO better than it's sequel.
  • Baldur's Gate (1998) - I replayed this a few years ago and absolutely adored it. A relatively low power AD&D powered RPG. It's a tight 10-20 hour experience with a little bit of everything you could possibly want in an RPG. See Icewind Dale if you want more of a dungeon crawl experience, and Planescape Torment if you lean more story and role play heavy.
  • Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns (2001) - My love for this game is inexplicable. Just a very unique take on an RTS. Kind of a left field pick I will admit.
  • Max Payne (2001) - The game that invented bullet time! And more or less set in stone the way Remedy Entertainment made games and told stories from this point on. If you like it, you'll probably like everything else Remedy made (Max Payne 2, Alan Wake, Control, etc)
  • Morrowind (2002) - Another possible high water mark for the Elder Scrolls games. Massive, and alien, open world. No level scaling in the world. Hits are determined by stats and not timing or player skill like later games. Probably the last pure RPG in the series before Oblivion moved it more in an action direction.
  • Arx Fatalis (2002) - A dungeon crawl RPG in the spirit of Ultima Underworld. Just you, an underground labyrinth, and whatever you can scrounge along the way. I never actually beat it now that I think about it.
  • Tron 2.0 (2003) - Probably a better sequel to the original movie than what we actually got. I remember really enjoying it, but it's been forever since I last played it. Another left field pick.
  • Painkiller (2004) - The first FPS where bunny hopping wasn't just a thing you could do, but actively required to handle the raw quantity of enemies, as well as get to certain areas. Fucking love it. Can't speak to the sequels though.
  • Darwinia (2005) - An indie game before indie games were really a thing. It changed a lot over the years. I still have an old CD-ROM copy with gesture controls and all sorts of nonsense, since that was hip at the time. I think if you get it now of GOG or something it has more traditional controls. Sort of an RTS? Sort of a god game? You'll see.
  • Titan Quest (2006) - Do you like action RPGs? Probably one of the last best ones. Then THQ went out of business and they all formed a new game studio and made Grim Dawn, which is also pretty damned good.
  • Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (2004) - I always found the campaigns for this game underwhelming, but the Dark Crusade expansion had a really fun campaign mode for all the playable factions. Something like 8 of them I think? It got a little out of control.
  • Sid Meier's Railroad (2006) - I never liked train games. Maybe this isn't even a very good train game for the people that really love train games. But it worked for me.
  • Legend of Grimrock (2012) - An old school grid based, real time dungeon crawler RPG, in the style of Dungeon Master. Strongly recommend.

That's probably enough for now. Have fun.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

If @samesies wants to catch up on recent gaming history, it's probably worth playing a couple of "modern military shooters" to get a sense of what Doom 2016 was a reaction against and return too. Maybe add a modern boomer shooter too.

There's also a bunch of good remakes out these days, which might be a good way to pick up games you missed that might not run as easily. Many of LucasArts' classic adventure games now have remastered editions that run on modern machines. I'd recommend Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, and Full Throttle from that set. I think System Shock 1 and 2 got decent remakes if you want to play through some pretty influential first-person horror.

Speculative not-necessarily-recommendations: Brutal Legend, Oni, maybe one of the Hitman games?

How well does Tron 2.0 run these days? I never could get my pirate version to launch on my machine when I was a broke student.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

SMAC is a funny game to me. Very much a direct sequel to Civilization II specifically. So much so that, IMHO, you almost need to have played Civilization II first to have gotten you feet wet with the mechanics, before SMAC turns them up to 11. It's also from that era where you really probably should read the manual. Preferably all 200 pages of it. You could probably get by with wiki articles or modern strategy guides, or even watching youtubers tell you how to play. But that just all feels suboptimal to me.

I also haven't played it in forever, so it's just not really top of mind for me.

All true. I think I just have a soft spot for the worldbuilding and the faction leaders, and how much depth there is in there if you want to chase up all the references.

Alpha Centauri's writing is fucking incredible, but the gameplay is sadly outdated, with a lot of annoying micromanagement (units are supported by their home bases rather than by the faction as a whole, air units must return to a base every other turn or crash, etc.).

I don't mind the micro, but there are a bunch of balance issues which really detract from the depth, even without the expansion.

(Standard terraforming is supposed to be stronger but more time-consuming - and polluting - than forests, but forests are too strong for this to work. Condensors' bonus to their own square is too strong, so nobody ever uses their interesting rain effect in favour of simply spamming condensors everywhere. Air power is kinda OP. And there's an ICS problem later in the game because of the Hab Dome limit and then the one-unit-per-turn limit binding excessively-hard.)

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