Quake is my all time favorite first person shooter. It’s gothic atmoshpere, creepy monsters, dark ambient music, fast action is still unmatched in the genre. Quake was the first game where I saw polygon creatures, and their horrifying appeareances and voices can still make me nervous, be it a bloody black knight, an ogre with chainsaw and grenade launcher, or some lovecraftian shoggoth feces. The game offers several devices to murder them. They were not balanced with multiplayer in mind, thus rocket launcher and thunderhold are superior, but getting them and having enough ammo is not always possible. Resource management is important, be it health, ammo, or power ups. The levels are mostly non-linear and worth exploring, with brilliant vertical level design, large amount of secret places, and goddamn traps that can skullf*ck you like no other. The game has four episodes that can be played in whatever order you want, plus a final level. There are also secret levels for each episode. Along with Diablo and WarCraft II, Quake was the other game that moved the multiplayer revolution greatly forward with it’s well designed maps and fast paced deathmatch. DM3 and DM6 are still among the best multiplayer maps I’ve ever played on. The online presence gave birth to an online community, that created a huge number of maps and mods, and which is alive even today. The Capture the Frag mode, Team Fortress all started here. Quake is a must-have for all old-school FPS fans. The game aged pretty well, it’s gameplay is still exciting, the mood is still there, and the rough models and obscure textures fits the style id aimed for very well. If you are used to modern games and can’t stand the old graphics you can still download graphic engines like ezQuake and DarkPlaces, that not only improve visuals a lot, but they also make creating and finding multiplayer matches and handling mods easier. And kids, don’t forget to fire the thunderbolt underwater. It keeps the water clean.
Finally! Wizardry 6 and 7 are two of the best crpgs ever made. Complex character generation system, huge world, challenging gameplay, entertaining story, the mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements make these games memorable. Bane of the Cosmic forge is a great beginning for the Dark Savant saga with innovative ideas that remain in the sequels. Crusaders of the Dark Savant is probably the deepest, toughest, meanest crpg ever made. If you want to spend hundreds of hours and you're not afraid of some challenge, then start with Bane, continue with Crusaders, and then buy Wizardry 8. The best part? You can finish the trilogy with the same party you started with. Need a good advice? Fairy ninjas are awesome and being female can be a huge boon.
Yesterday I downloaded and installed Legend of Grimrock. I could only play a couple of hours (more than I planned), but so far I'm impressed. The game puts four naked prisoners in a dungeon, who want to escape the place. There are four races (human, minotaur, lizardman, insectoid), three classes (fighter, mage, rogue), and a couple of skills and traits that you can use to build your character. You have to take care of your resources (equipment, food, light sources), solve puzzles, find secret doors, fight vicious enemies and gather experience to survive. The dungeon walls can get monotonous (and you're going to check them out often, looking for secret doors), but I always found something, that made the dungeon interesting enough, to continue your exploration. Fighting is a bit hard at first, since you can only strafe and turn in 90 degrees, but so does your enemies. Spell casting requires power and entering the correct combination of runes. The developers told us, that the game is a spiritual successor of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master games - and they're right, it captures the feeling of old-school first person dungeon crawler games very well. But even if you put your nostalgia away, Grimrock is an entertaining and beautiful game.
