While video game consoles are updated every few years or so, computers are constant, evolving through a steady stream of hardware upgrades. As such, the PC is home to some of the best games of all time.
Note: it was hard enough cutting this list down to ten, so the games are featured in no particular order. There's no way they can be rated against each other, so you should just play all of them.
Half-Life
Back when shooter games were mostly style with little substance, Valve's debut title showed gamers that there was still room for characters and narrative in the genre.
Players stepped into the silent shoes of Gordon Freeman, a scientist caught in the middle of an experiment gone horribly wrong. When the facility is overrun with strange creatures, Gordon must fight his way to the surface, facing more than a few surprises along the way.
Myst
Players arrive, via a mysterious book, to the island of Myst, and are not given any specific goals at first. They must simply explore the environment, and will slowly discover what the island is hiding.
Myst is a story-driven puzzle game, as interesting a departure from the standard video game fare in the early 90s as it is today. Players move from one still scene to another to traverse the island, and can move between “Ages”, which change the scenery and the items within it. The absence of any kind of violence or threat of death to the player is a welcome feature.
Diablo II
Blizzard have earned a special kind of fandom in the games industry. They aren't the most prolific studio, but gamers know that the wait will be worth it, and the game will be enjoyed for years afterwards.
Amongst their critically and commercially successful back catalogue, Diablo II seems to conjure some of the most passionate fans. The game still garners a lot of play time on Blizzard's Battle.net service, and continues to sell hard copies in stores a full twelve years after release.
Diablo II continues the original's hack-and-slash gameplay through a dark fantasy world, with players creating a character within one of five classes, who vary in offensive and defensive skills, hit points and types of abilities.
Portal
Also from Valve, Portal took the S out of FPS. It's a first-person puzzler, where, miraculously for a video game, you never shoot a single enemy.
Instead, your gun fires portals into surfaces. After you fire two, stepping into one will teleport you to the other. It's an interesting, unique way to traverse the levels, and the puzzles built around this mechanic can get quite ingenious.
MineCraft
This fairly recent game has effortlessly joined the annals of video game (and particularly PC game) history.
The premise is simple: build things out of blocks. That's the crux of it, and it has captured the imagination of millions of people, including those who don't normally play games.
Players are given an open world to explore, and (in most game modes) no set goals. You want to explore? Explore. You want to build a 1:1 scale replica of the Starship Enterprise? Go for it (someone did). How about a working calculator, or a music box that plays the Pink Panther theme? All possible.
Doom
It may not have been the first shooter game, but Doom is arguably the title that launched the genre's popularity.
It's not hard to see why. It's all fast-paced action, with a healthy dose of horror. After all, you are slaying demons on Mars.
Doom's legacy is still felt pretty strongly on today's FPS games.
The Sims
The Sims is one of those games that pretty much everyone has played, or at least tried. This is probably due to the open nature of the game, which allows players to create a virtual human (called a “Sim”) and then guide them through the major and minor aspects of their life. You'll micro-manage their eating habits, force them to go to work, act as Cupid in their relationships, and watch over them creepily while they sleep. With the money they earn, you can build them a house, and buy furniture and appliances to fill it.
Deus Ex
Widely regarded as one of the best games of all time, on any platform, Deus Ex is a first-person shooter game with role-playing elements and a cyperpunk setting.
We use the term “shooter” game with care though, because one of the best elements of the game was how it provided multiple options for completing a given task. Sure, you could go in and shoot everybody, but maybe it would be easier to pick a lock and sneak through vents. Or try to talk your way out of trouble.
The consequences of player choices were also key. The characters and story could change, depending on what the player chose to do. These are design methods that have often been adopted since, and the video game medium is better off for their addition.
The Secret of Monkey Island
This game refined the graphic adventure structure, avoiding several problems the creators saw with other games in the genre – including their own previous works.
As such, Monkey Island came to be seen as the pinnacle of the adventure genre, receiving almost universal praise from critics for the quality of it puzzles, narrative, characters, presentation and in particular, its sense of humour. It was that quirky tone that helped it stand out from its peers, and similar themes became standard for the developers' future games.
World of WarCraft
Wow. This is one of those games whose impact expands beyond the game itself and becomes a cultural phenomenon.
World of Warcraft is the jewel in the already-impressive Blizzard crown, still going strong after almost ten years in action.
It was by no means the first MMO – Massively Multiplayer Online game – but it has come to define the genre, even among people who don't play games.
Players create an ongoing character, join factions and jump into a world populated by characters controlled by other players. There are quests to complete, battles to fight and experience to be gained.
To keep players interested (not like they need much help), several expansion packs have been released over the years, adding extra quests and storylines.
WoW's legacy is sure to be felt for a very long time.
Linda Campbell is a freelance writer who divides the time spent on her Flexi-rented computer between playing games and writing about them.
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