Looking for an FPS, or RPG game for a 4 year old computer.

[NEScollector1982]

The computer was almost top of the line in 2003 (3.0 ghz, 512 Ram, 128 MB Radeon 9800 video card)

Need suggestions for an FPS or an RPG, or both!


I love FPS games like Duke Nukem, Doom (and II), Unreal Tournament 2004

I love RPG games like Morrowind (not interested in Oblivion though, so don't suggest it...)

Not interested in an MMORPG.

[FantasiaWHT]

Deus Ex, no question! FPS + RPG :)

The first Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate 2 for more open-ended RPG's like Morrowind.

[Lady Jaye]

We don't know what you have. However...

My suggestion won't surprise anyone, but how about Neverwinter Nights? The Platinum Edition will only cost you $20 US or so, and it includes the original game, both expansion packs and the official expansion module Kingmaker. You can also make your own modules and share them, and also play online for free via Gamespy (I just verified, there is still online game support).

[Lord_Magus]

Damn, FantasiaWHT beat me to it! :p

Truly, you're not going to find a better PC FPS/RPG than Deus Ex. One of the best games ever made, hands down.

Also, another must-play game in a similar style is System Shock II; just make sure you get the fan-made Rebirth and SHTUP mods for some nice upgraded models and textures ;)

[roushimsx]

With System Shock 2 and Deus Ex already picked, how about..

RPG:
Anachronox - Third person Sci fi/cyberpunk RPG with excellent writing, strong use of the Quake 2 engine, and surprisingly well done voice acting. The weak point of the game is the overly simplistic combat engine, but other than that the game is absolutely tits. WARNING: You will feel really depressed after you beat the game and realize that no sequel will ever be made. Tom Hall tried like hell to get it made but no one would back him :(

FPS:
Far Cry - Far and away the greatest balls-out-action FPS yet made. The game feels like an 80s action movie turned into a pipe-hitting, badass FPS. Level designs tend to be very large and open ended islands, with multiple paths and solutions through the "hot spots". Both stealth and run and gun tactics can be applied throughout the game and there's a wonderful physics engine under the hood that allows you to play like a complete asshole (finding ways to manipulate the items strewn about to crush people is ALWAYS fun). The graphics were amazing when the game came out in 2004 and they're still really damn good now. The game does get fairly difficult the further you get into it, but just remember that head shots DO have a very large, noticeable impact on the enemy vs body shots and you'll make it through OK. :)

[gepeto]

soldier of fortune
The undying

Kingpin
swat 3
alien vs predator 2
all the half life expansions
star trek elite forces 1 and 2
Star trek bridge commander
star trek Deep space nine the fallen

I loved all these games. The bridge commander was different because you took over after being trained by john luc picard. and you managed the game from the bridge gy giving instructions to your crew.

elite force fighting was great. Alien vs predator awesome.

I will update as more come to mind. I will never give these games up you got to play them to see what I mean and you can pick these up cheap.

[Cornelius]

I'll put Planescape: Torment out there for a good RPG, though I don't think you even need as good a rig as you have to play it.

You could probably run Half-life 2 on it... I don't remember for sure all my system specs, but I know I played it on a radeon 9800.

[carlcarlson]

I'm surprised nobody has metioned Diablo 2 yet. It was my favorite game until I played Morrowind, so maybe it's up your alley.

[roushimsx]

soldier of fortune
The undying
swat 3
star trek Deep space nine the fallen


Ohh, allow me to second these.

Undying is a bit unconventional for a FPS but more FPSy than say, Call of Cthulhu. Horror-themed, strong level design, solid pacing. The game isn't terribly long, but the ride is great. One of the few genuinely scary games.

SWAT 3 has been one of my favorites ever since it came out. Somehow, against all odds (the previous two games were two entirely different genres and the Police Quest series before it was yet another genre) the game wound up being incredibly innovative and awesome. It's a squad-based first person shooter along the lines of Rainbow Six, but unlike Rainbow Six, there's very little in the way of pre-mission planning. You won't be scripting elaborate plans, you'll be going into largely unknown situations with only a minimum of information (possibly some intel on the layout of the area to go with the run down of the current situation) and resolving them as quickly and peacefully as possible.

Missions change each time you play them, with certain variables in the structure of each. The placement of hostages varies, the number of criminals varies, behavior varies, etc. The first mission is a man shooting at vehicles on the highway from his house. Sometimes you'll find the wife cowering in fear and sometimes she's an accomplice and attempts to protect her husband with a handgun. You just never know. This keeps the tension sky high regardless of how many play throughs you do of the game. Multiplayer (when they finally added it in) is also extremely excellent. Fire it up at a LAN party and co op through the game...it's a fucking blast.

Deep Space Nine: The Fallen surprised me as well, though perhaps not quite as much. It's an excellent third person action game which allows you to play through with three different characters, complete with alternate routes for each one. Level designs are generally pretty damn good and the game is a great play even for those who don't know much about the show.

[Cornelius]

Somehow double posted a couple hours later.

Another kind of older game that you'll have no problem running is No One Lives Forever. Great fun.

[hezeuschrist]

Definitely Chronicles of Riddick. It's not completely FPS and there's a lot of stealth, but it's really a great game and a lot of fun. Definitely worth checking out on an older rig if you haven't already played it on Xbox.

[Trebuken]

Dungeon Siege
The Temple Of Elemental Evil
Gothic II
Arx Fatalis
Might and Magic IX
Sacred

[Promophile]

FPS:
Far Cry - Far and away the greatest balls-out-action FPS yet made. The game feels like an 80s action movie turned into a pipe-hitting, badass FPS. Level designs tend to be very large and open ended islands, with multiple paths and solutions through the "hot spots". Both stealth and run and gun tactics can be applied throughout the game and there's a wonderful physics engine under the hood that allows you to play like a complete asshole (finding ways to manipulate the items strewn about to crush people is ALWAYS fun). The graphics were amazing when the game came out in 2004 and they're still really damn good now. The game does get fairly difficult the further you get into it, but just remember that head shots DO have a very large, noticeable impact on the enemy vs body shots and you'll make it through OK. :)

Granted I'm not a huge FPS fan, but I found Far Cry to be very very overrated. The first level especailly is WAAAAY too big. You spend more time running around looking for guys to kill then you do killing them, and it gets boring. I played the X-box evolution version, so that may have had something to do with it, but again I really didn't enjoy it.

[BHvrd]

I doubt a 4 year old pc can play Far Cry, unless it was a really good one.

I second:

Deus Ex
System Shock

I'll throw in for measure:

Painkiller
Return to Castle Wolfenstein

[gepeto]

The computer was almost top of the line in 2003 (3.0 ghz, 512 Ram, 128 MB Radeon 9800 video card)

Need suggestions for an FPS or an RPG, or both!


I love FPS games like Duke Nukem, Doom (and II), Unreal Tournament 2004

I love RPG games like Morrowind (not interested in Oblivion though, so don't suggest it...)

Not interested in an MMORPG.

Those spec can play far cry, Half life 2 and doom 3. call of duty 1 and 2. I know because one of my systems has 9800 ati card 128. You can play alot more recent games than you think.

How could I have forgotten no one lives forever.
I'd like to add.
Jedi knights dark forces

[roushimsx]

I played the X-box evolution version, so that may have had something to do with it, but again I really didn't enjoy it.

Far Cry Instincts: Evolution is completely different. Actually, so is instincts. What basically happened was that they made Far Cry and it rocked harder than Homey the Clown with a sock full of quarters. When it came time to make the Xbox version, instead of doing a direct port, they rebuilt the game from the ground up and reimaged the whole damn thing. The storyline was changed greatly, almost all of the levels were completely new while those that remained were overhauled and restructured (though you'll still see a lot of the same famous landmarks, but with new paths or situations to contend with) and, most importantly, a whole new gameplay dynamic with the feral/superhuman abilities. Evolution was a direct sequel to Instincts and further distanced itself from the original Far Cry, though it did bring back the more open-ended level designs.

People generally consider Evolution the worst of the three (most deem it merely "good") and most consider the original still the best (a.k.a. fucking excellent). The bugs in Instincts irked me a lot (especially with the enemy spanwing problems), but the new abilities played out a lot like Breakdown without the insane difficulty spikes and with more traditional control. The presentation in Instincts is also excellent, never taking you out of the first person viewpoint (much like Breakdown and almost like Chronicles of Riddick, which would move to a third person viewpoint while climbing ladders).


I doubt a 4 year old pc can play Far Cry, unless it was a really good one.

I thought the same thing when I first saw the screenshots of it, but I got in on the beta and was blown away by how well it ran. I had an Athlon 2500+, Ati Radeon 9500 nonpro, and 1GB of PC2700. It played fairly well at 1024x768 on medium detail, though I typically dropped down to 800x600 to bump up the rest of the settings. His computer would handle it just fine.


Another kind of older game that you'll have no problem running is No One Lives Forever. Great fun.

Oh no doubt, No One Lives Forever is EXCELLENT. I haven't tested it out since upgrading, but I remember on my GeForce4 Ti4200 it'd actually run the cutscenes too quickly and the only fix I could find was to lock the refresh rate to 60hz. Not sure if it was an nvidia-specific bug or not, but that bugged the hell out of me until I figured a workaround. As with pretty much any lithtech-engine game, the mouse sampling might annoy initially, but stick with the game and you'll adjust while enjoying some truly excellent level designs and quirky humor.

As a bonus, the second game should be pretty easy to find on the cheap anymore. While it isn't quite up to par overall, it's still a damn good FPS, the humor level is as high as ever, and the graphics are pretty dang nice. There's a co op mode as well that allows you to play through some modified versions of a few of the levels with a friend, but it's fairly unimaginative and you probably won't bother playing it more than once.

[calthaer]

Deus Ex is my #1 game of all time, easily. It is a work of brilliance and vision that has so much to offer. It's a shame the sequel didn't capitalize on all the great stuff the original had.

System Shock 2 is probably my second.

I'll also throw in a shout-out for Thief and Thief 2.

Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 are not good for a four-year-old computer...some would even say that they're not good period.

KOTOR and KOTOR 2 also came out for PC. Have you considered Freedom Force / FF2? They are by Irrational (same people who made System Shock 2), and are strategy RPGs, but extremely worthy titles.

[NEScollector1982]

Hey Guys, Thanks for all the responses so far. Keep them coming.

I pretty much don't have ANY pc games except for the doom 2/duke nukem/morrowind.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Dude, that computer isn't so bad. You stick another 512 or maybe a gig in there, and get a cheaper 256 meg gfx card and you can probably play any of the games coming out today. They won't be pretty, but you could still run them.

But, it's always nice to have a look at these older FPS games being mentioned here, there are a lot of really awesome ones.

[Sothy]

Oregon trail

[j_factor]

For an RPG, the best suggestion is to run Ultima VII in Dosbox. Many computer RPGs really took a lot of inspiration from it.

[Cornelius]

The amazing Fallout 3 gameplay footage someone posted reminds me that I always point people to Fallout 1 & 2 for good RPGs.

And since it sounds like you haven't done a lot of PC gaming, you really should run through the original Half Life. The graphics are obviously going to be dated, but it has a lot of cool level design.

[hbkprm]

red faction

[diskoboy]

I always enjoyed Tron 2.0.

[calthaer]

Mad props as well to Tron 2.0 and Ultima VII. U7 is utterly amazing - in many ways, that game has never been surpassed in terms of the sheer vivacity of the world it created.

Check out also the Ultima V: Lazarus project, a mod for Dungeon Siege (the original) that remakes Ultima V in the game engine.

[Push Upstairs]

You are all a bunch of heathens for not mentioning "Serious Sam".

[roushimsx]

I always enjoyed Tron 2.0.

Fuck. Yes.

I'm pretty sure that if anyone else had done it that it would have sucked, but Monolith really did the game right. Light cycle sequences were enjoyable, but the meat and potatoes of the game was just wonderfully designed levels that made you feel like you were really sucked into the world. Escaping a hard drive while it's being formatted remains one of the best levels I've EVER played in a FPS.

Great weapon designs, too! I absolutely loved the claw :D

The one flaw with the game is that the ending is very abrupt. It's as if they were planning on making an expansion that never got greenlighted due to poor sales of the game (which is an absolute shame).

[diskoboy]

The one flaw with the game is that the ending is very abrupt. It's as if they were planning on making an expansion that never got greenlighted due to poor sales of the game (which is an absolute shame).


That's the one reason I kept my copy. I'm still praying for an expansion pack, too.

Of course, I know it's all in vain. :(

[shadow77110]

I don't think anybody has mentioned Half-Life 1, one of the best PC games of all time IMO. Return to Castle Wolfenstein wasn't so bad as well.

[FlufflePuff]

Id have to say try out Call of Duty for a FPS or Arcanum for a RPG.

[ghostangelofcky]

My vote is for Star Wars Jedi Outcast, great game if you like the genre, also another vote for Alien vs Predator 2

[Alison DeMeyer]

Isn't your computer a bit young to play all those violent titles?

[FantasiaWHT]

Id have to say try out Call of Duty for a FPS or Arcanum for a RPG.

Arcanum, good call. Great RPG!