Recommended PC games, as of now?

[MegaDrive20XX]

I finally upgraded my PC with a 256MB GeForce 5200. This monday I'll have 1GB of DDR RAM.

Now I can finally experience most FPS like DOOM 3 for the very first time, I never thought I would see the day when my PC can finally do some real tricks.

I just need to know, what games would be really good to test this out? All I got is Silent Hill 4 and World of Warcraft.

I may just go to a 512MB graphics card later this year.

[njiska]

F.E.A.R. is a good one, so is Far Cry, at least in the beauty dept. Half-life 2 is king, Age of Empires 3 for the RTS fan and really there's not much else i can think of.

[Mr.FoodMonster]

Pretty PC FPS =
Far Cry, FEAR, Half Life2 (as well as Counterstrike), Battlefield 2, Doom 3, Quake 4. I'd say thats probably it for the moment.

Out of those, I'd go for Half Life 2 to start with. Great looking, and probably the best game out of those. If you're into multiplayer, Battlefield 2 would be my next game. FEAR is a good creepy game, but is pretty short at just around 10 hours. Far Cry is very pretty, and is pretty long. Quake 4 I havn't got a chance to play yet (Everything on my computer is for a gaming rig... but my 1.8 P4 :/ ) and Doom 3 is a snore.

EDIT
Oh yeah, and Call of Duty 2. Can't believe I forgot that one. A really intense game, and has great multiplayer as well.

[Joker T]

Far-Cry, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, Call of Duty 2 are all games I like alot on PC, and with new hardware they should look and play great.

[MegaDrive20XX]

F.E.A.R. I've heard nothing but good. So I think I may attempt that one.

Quake IV I'd love to see, plus my system has a 2.53Ghz Processor. So I'm hoping that it should run smoothly on my system.

[Joker T]

2.53GHz, Is the processor AMD or Intel?

[MegaDrive20XX]

2.53GHz, Is the processor AMD or Intel?

Intel Celeron D

[hezeuschrist]

I don't wanna crap on your parade or anything, but you really shouldn't be looking at anything past Doom 3 or Half Life 2. Both scale incredibly well, but stuff like FEAR and Far Cry don't, and an FX5200 really just won't cut it.

Well, as long as you're willing to sacrafice pretty much every option and play the games in 640, you could probably get by... but it'll be close and may slideshow in some places. The amount of video memory a card has is pretty much the least important aspect when looking at video cards, so if you intendo to upgrade again later definitely do your research first.

If you find the performance of your newfound hardware lacking, don't worry, we've all been there. If you want to do something in the more immediate future ask around and you'll be able to get some expert advice here or elsewhere on the web. It's certainly overwhelming and the tech numbers are really never the best way to tell the difference.

Your best bet right now is to not plunk down any cash and download demos. Doom 3, Half Life 2, FEAR, and Far Cry all have publicly available demos and you'll see what you do or don't like, and what you can or can't handle.

[MegaDrive20XX]

It's no raining down on my parade so far. It's just the the FX5200 works very well so far and I have tested the demo of FEAR just now, even with 512MB of RAM...ran very smoothly.

Did you recently have a FX5200? Since, from what I've been testing out, it's going well.

[hezeuschrist]

Nah, two years ago I had a 9700 XT and thought it blew nuts, so I returned it and got a 9800 Pro for $50 more and I still use it. I did a LOT of research after I built my system, and the 5200 was one of the current cards then. Of course, I was dealing with the folks at futuremark who are all about benchmarks. But they're great to go to if you ever have any tech question concerning gaming hardware.

And hey, the only thing better than PC gaming is cheap PC gaming which is pretty hard to do these days. If it give you acceptable performance, have at it

[MegaDrive20XX]

Good call man, sounds like a work of art by far

As for the FEAR issue, I ran it again, and yeah I started seeing some slow down finally. So you were right. Yet I get the 1GB of RAM tommorrow, so Im sure that should fix that up.

[Joker T]

A celeron isn't really made for gaming either.

[calthaer]

The best PC game of the past year is definitely Space Rangers 2...but it's not a graphics-hog, and ran just fine on my old system - so it's probably not what you're looking for.

Just about every new RTS game out there tries to throw huge amounts of polygons on the screen with dozens upon dozens of units - AoE3 is probably no exception.

[MegaDrive20XX]

A celeron isn't really made for gaming either.

That's what many have told me. Yet it's been doing an okay job for me so far.

[Iron Draggon]

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Oblivion yet

[Ed Oscuro]

To take a different tack, has anybody tried out D&D Online? Saw it at the store today, and I might look up pricing online.

[keiblerfan69]

You need to buy Tomb Raider.

[Joker T]

You need to buy Tomb Raider.

I heard about the "Next Gen" mode in the PC one, looks amazing.

[Satac]

Psychonauts is one of the best PC games of the last year. Buy it and love it

[biggzy]

Star Wars: Empire at War is a good RTS as well. Set in the original trilogy, lots of depth, decent amount of modes. The only real complaint is graphics, which don't detract from the gameplay in the least for me. Give it a try if you like strat games.