Oblivion is often looked past today, and it's a shame. Not as popular or "dumbed-down" as Skyrim, not as praised and "old-school" as Morrowind. Oblivion sits in the middle, the perfect balance that has been sorely overlooked by many series newcomers. I played this on Xbox 360 in 2009. It was the disc GotY Edition, complete with Knights of the Nine/Shivering Isles. Every repurchase since then was worth it. Oblivion starts you with an obligatory prison scene, quickly escalating as you witness the Emperor's escape. Patrick Septim Stewart VII himself makes a brief appearance, telling you about a vision of the chosen one and shoehorning in character creation stuff before cultists teach him a thing or two about hidden paths. His real sons have been assassinated, but there's still one... um... "loose end" who can be heir to the throne. The acting performances for these main quests are superb, the main storyline is a journey of daedric bad-dudes and blades, and the expansion packs are insane[ly good]. The world itself may not be hand-crafted, but it is hand-smoothed. While TES III and V's maps have a LOT of empty space, TESIV has an abundance of sidequests, lore, and random events to witness. You can wander off to a town and find an entire subworld inside a painter's canvas, or buy a cheap house with a VERY steep hidden "fee." Cyrodil isn't a map, but an entire world, and you never know what's coming up next. Worldbuilding at its finest, without a doubt. TESIV has aged well, but Windows 10 is a pain to deal with. Download the Purge Cell Buffer and Unofficial Patch on NexusMods to clean up new issues and Bethesda's... Bethesdaness. After that, Oblivion is just an experience that you owe yourself to try. I've invested over 600 hours, and never finished the main quest-- it's no feather hunt, but an actual open adventure of subdetails, city politics, and schemes. If you really had to pick between between this and Fallout 3, though... nah, just kidding. Get Oblivion!
SC3000 is a defining piece of software, part of a landmark franchise and the crown jewel of the late Maxis' legacy. Let me just address why I'd take SC3000 over the other games before moving on... == SimCity is beloved by many, SC2000 even more so... but I tend to disagree. I find the interface of 2000 to be a bit too close to a Macintosh and unintuitive, and the original a bit uninteresting without the amazing isometric visuals (though I've never played the actual, only its open-source remake "Micropolis"). They haven't aged quite well. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the 3D SimCities, which... aren't so beloved. SC4 and its expansion, Rush Hour, had performance problems, lost the isometric visuals in favor of full 3D, and got a bit too complex for its own good. It was still a pretty great game, though, most will agree, and I have my box copy to this day. Then, we have the elephant in the room-- SimCity 5. SimCity (2013), DRM aside, was a flawed game. They brought back the failed concepts of SimCity 2000 Network Edition as an answer to the rising trend of online games, and... well, it failed all over again. They essentially took SimCity 4, put RCT-style agents of each citizen as a real person, and had multiple players doing each square of the SC4 map. Maps were small as a result, it was always-online for a while... look, you know what I'm going to say. It was flawed, it was gimmicky, it just didn't work in the end. == That's why I always turn to SimCity 3000 as the best in the series. It was still isometric, similar yet different. As the first EA-published SimCity game, it was a huge success with timeless isometric visuals, large map sizes, expanded gameplay, and much more intuitive and streamlined interface. This game is still the masterpiece it was 17 years ago, and I can't recommend it enough. It's perhaps the greatest city-builder of all time, a complete peak in Sims franchise as a whole and the last of the true SimCity games.
As one of two "heretical X-Coms", as Julian Gollop (X-Com creator) less-than-fondly puts it, Interceptor is actually a good attempt at spinning off from X-Com while paying homage to what the series did right. Jumping on the 3D-accelerated space-sim bandwagon that X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Wing Commander created, Interceptor is a game that outright replaces the "Tactical" view with space sim combat and moves X-Com into a space exploration scenario where you have to expand mining facilities looking for resources around the universe, and simultaneously stand your ground and make a defense against alien invaders. It's a clever little idea, and if it had a little more polish then dropped the X-Com name, it might have worked well. Why only three stars? Well, I said "good attempt" earlier for a reason. Execution of this spinoff was mostly solid, but like Terror from the Deep, there are many gamebreaking bugs that keep the game from shining too brightly. There are issues that completely break game progression, effectively ruining your save. These issues were never fixed, not even by fans (as this game was generally hated for stepping out of line and preceding the absolutely disgusting Enforcer that put a nail in X-Com's coffin).
