Over the coming week the PC Gamer team will be counting down to their favourite game of all time. Today, we look at 75-51.
To vote for your favourite game, check out the PC Gamer Top 100 website and the magazine will reveal the results this autumn.
75 Syndicate
You're managing a death-squad in a sci-fi city, but back then it didn't seem quite so horrific. Even when you're flame-throwering enemies and civilians alike. The appeal lives on despite the shabby visuals, in the personalities and stories you develop in your head, and the essential feeling of ownership over your customised squad.
Jim says "Flat out one of the great games ever made. Even now some of the tiny violence you're able to dish out is shocking. A masterpiece."
74 Frontier: Elite II
The most playable updated version of the space sim that started it all: Elite. Any game that offers you the freedom to pursue a freelance career in a totally open world is appealing; one which gives you a spaceship, the opportunity to upgrade it and chance to be a hero or evil pirate in a whole open universe is a sure-fire winner. Yet all most people remember is whether they were ranked 'Elite' or just plain 'Dangerous'.
Craig says "This game turned me into a vampire. I blocked out the windows, barely left my room and hissed whenever anyone came close. Frontier consumed my life for a whole summer, and currently sits on my USB stick for whenever I need a nostalgic jaunt to Barnard's Star for robots."
73 Far Cry
Crytek's original still earns our love for its sense of freedom and breathtakingly beautiful scenery. Now that we've surgically removed all our memories of the Trigens and the ending, it remains one of our favourite shooters ever, if only for the opening few hours.
Ross says "I love the binocular-tagging. It encourages you to scope out an area, register where each enemy is, then work out the most fun way to take them down. My favoured method is to pepper them from afar with a gunboat, then launch myself up the beach, leap out and mop up survivors."
72 Ground Control
Bucking the trend of the time by not including base-building or resource management, GC's future war is a mix of delicious long-range artillery and sci-fi warfare. Jim says "A wonderfully refreshing avenue of resource-free strategic combat. Ultimately unsatisfying though, even if the journey is beautiful."
71 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
At its heart it's a platform game, but the Prince's otherworldly athleticism makes even elementary movement a joy. Rewinding time when you die? Cheating has never felt so right.
Craig says "It was like a bomb going off: after this, clunky, fiddly platformers became instantly obsolete. Why squint for pixels when you could abandon the shackles of the old Tomb Raiders and run perpendicular to the wall."
70 Uplink
A hacking sim seems such an obvious idea now, but only because Introversion went and made it. Simple in concept and execution, it played to the tiny team's strengths: hacking corporate networks and evading cyber-cops is portrayed minimally yet totally convincingly.
Ross says "Former Editor Matt was so convinced that he literally pulled the network cable out of his PC in terror just as he was about to be caught mid-hack. Now that's simulation."
69 The Secret of Monkey Island
Ah, the arguments that raged over which Monkey Island to include. But the original wins again, and it's the vibrant quality of the writing that carries the day.
Guybrush is irresistible as the hapless hero, the loveable idiot, the would-be pirate. Visually hideous today, it's testament to the dialogue, puzzles and script that we rate this so highly.
Tom says "How appropriate, you fight like a cow. Though the sequel had its moments, none were as fresh or funny as Monkey Island's lampooning of the real mechanics of swashbuckling: 0% swordsmanship, 100% wit."
68 Command & Conquer 3
C&C3 at once reminds us why we loved the original and shows us why it's still got it. Lightning-speed RTS makes this a cracking multiplayer choice, and the debut of the Tiberium-causing Scrin adds a spicy new flavour.
Graham says "It's the rare game where the cutscenes improve the experience, turning exposition into gloriously campy, B-movie schlock. Games are frequently silly, but C&C3 is one of the few that turns that silliness into the reason for playing."
67 Championship Manager 2: 96/97
One winter, Graham fell in love with a game, playing it obsessively for months. Not the biggest football fan, he was nevertheless hooked by Sports Interactive's incredibly polished management game.
Graham says "In PCG 183 I wrote a Long Play to explain my love for it. My first draft was over 7,000 words. I have more stories to tell from this game than any other, and the characters in its spreadsheets mean more to me than anything Valve have created."
66 Unreal Tournament 3
The multiplayer FPS it seems everyone plays offline. For non-stop FPS action it's still the business. Best of all, we're rubbish and get shot a lot, and there's no lengthy respawn time.
Tom says "The most exotic, inventive and gloriously fun garage of vehicles in multiplayer gaming, courtesy of the Necris. The tentacled Scavenger alone has more ideas, abilities and modes of attack than BF 2142's entire fleet."
65 Tomb Raider Anniversary
After a long run of uninspired sequels, Lara was brought back to life with a stylish, atmospheric bang. Proper tomb-raiding, platforming action, not too much shooting and just enough carved-stone-puzzles.
John says "It understands what Tomb Raider is for: running and jumping and making things extinct. The cog puzzle alone is stunning level design. Even if fighting the T-Rex sucked."
64 C&C Red Alert 2
The definitive version of old-school C&C, before everything went silly and 3D. Well, apart from the fact that they went absolutely batshit with this plot offshoot, with alternate history, psychic squid and teleporting tanks.
Graham says "My friends and I started making our own maps for it. It wasn't born out of dissatisfaction with the official levels, but from how intensely we got into our battles. We wanted to construct the most elaborate scenarios as backdrops for our imagined wars."
63 TIE-Fighter
This proved how much better it is to be bad. As you progress in your missions for the Empire, you impress Darth Vader and get medals, like some laser-firing Muttley. It struggles today to impress visually, but this is still wonderfully authentic and seriously atmospheric.
Ross says "I used to wait until my parents had gone to bed, then sneak downstairs to play this. I had about three hours' sleep a night for a month, but it was worth every second just to be the Emperor's bitch."
62 Gears of War
"So! Macho! He's gotta be, so! Macho!" The inevitable chorus whenever Epic's gutsy shooter is mentioned in the PCG office. The game's super-soldiers are indeed a little over-the-top in the suppressed homosexuality stakes, but there's no denying the pacing, visuals and cover system make a great experience.
Graham says "It's a pastiche of every action movie cliché, so it makes sense that it's a more fun played with a buddy. I played it with Kieron in lieu of a racial stereotype. Our point of contention: I hadn't seen Aliens. We learned to accept our differences by saving Earth... and me watching Aliens."
61 Warcraft III
They pretty much made the perfect RTS here. Beneath the trolls, orcs and cartoon art, this is a ruthlessly balanced game with brilliantly executed mechanics. As such it remains an excellent leveller for those multiplayer face-offs.
Tim says "Blizzard get one thing right, and ensure that every game they make from then on is at least as good. For Warcraft III it was the missions: epic stories of a prince driven to madness, massacring his own subjects in an attempt to save a kingdom."
60 Day of Defeat: Source
It'll never escape its status as poor cousin to Counter-Strike, but this is a wholly different beast. In the WWII mod, damage is harsher, the maps more awkward and the matches less forgiving. Venture online, and prepare for harsh lessons.
Craig says "I know every area in dod_avalanche, and honed the skills to be top 3 in pretty much any pub server going. I was playing as a Spy before TF2 even existed, sneaking behind enemy lines and killing."
59 DEFCON
It's intercontinental nuclear warfare, and the winner is whoever loses the fewest millions of lives. Visually and conceptually simple, yet original and brilliant. As time ticks by, and you wonder where the nukes are going to hit, the tension becomes terrifying.
Tom says "Two points for every million innocents killed, minus one for every million you lose... A successful attack widens the score gap between you and your victim so vastly that you can sometimes frighten them into giving up: a perfect mirror of real nuclear war."
58 Masq
Age will never wither Masq's beauty. A Flash-based branching adventure game, the scope of things that can happen within the game's short span is quite breathtaking.
Tom says "A short story, but a broad one - as games should be. You have more options and influence on the fundamentals of the plot than in any other game I could name, and that makes it compelling to replay."
57 Outcast
A throwback to a time when it seemed a PC game could be made on a creative whim. Action, sneaking, dialogue, quests, weird aliens and that unforgettable orange shirt. It reminds us of more innocent, if unrealistic, days.
Ross says "Back then it seemed the weird games would never end. Today it would never get the sort of funding you need to make a big-budget game and might be made by a mad modder or indie dev instead. Perhaps in 2D. Sad."
56 Ultima VII
By '94, Richard Garriott had perfected his RPG vision: UVII radiated his trademark obsession with morality and inspired a generation of developers to use the phrase "good and evil isn't a case of black and white". It's still inspirational today.
Tony says "Ultima VII came from the future. It was impossibly big and colourful, and ludicrously effortless to play. You just reached into this other world and interacted, without ever feeling you were doing something so mundane as playing a computer game."
55 Diablo II
With the gift of hindsight, it's clear that Blizzard learned plenty from how willingly gamers lapped up the repetitive challenge-and-reward of this slickest of action-RPGs. After a while, playing Diablo II seems as natural as breathing.
Tom says "What Blizzard have never recaptured is the tactile satisfaction of putting sword to beast, club to zombie, or arrow to face. Blows connected in a way no MMORPG ever managed, and that made every click a pleasure."
54 Beyond Good & Evil
A highly unusual, low-violence adventure. You control Jade, a rare excellent female lead, and must overcome puzzles, dangers and challenges without the use of enormous guns. Excellently, your main weapon is a camera.
Jim says "One of the more interesting attempts at world creation: there was a political agenda here, as well as the intention to create a platform adventure without jumping."
53 Doom II
Doom II was bigger, better, faster, more... Have id ever really matched the pacing, the level design and atmosphere that made this such a gripping game? It's still fun to blast through its levels, even if they're not quite as scary these days.
Tim says "There are moments when Doom II just doesn't have a care in the world: where the level design flits between gimmick and sublime. It's for this that we chose it over the original."
52 Guild Wars
An MMO without monthly fees? Who'd want to play that? Millions of you, apparently. Beautiful worlds and characters plus a novel system of instancing - only towns are truly massively multiplayer - make this a pleasantly different MMO.
Tim says "Every time the devs put out one of their standalone expansions, they raise their own quality bar. It's a credit to their commitment that, even today, they refuse to charge a fee."
51 Audiosurf
Audiosurf is a prime example of the flip side to today's multimillion-dollar, multi-platform games development industry. The PC is the only platform where indie developers can still stand a chance against the big-budget releases, the only means they have of reaching an audience.
While the consoles restrict what developers can do, PC indie developers can do anything. So they do weird things like Audiosurf.
Load it up, and select a music track - one of your own, any audio file you have on your PC. The game makes a race-course out of it, and propels you along it, in the form of a little sci-fi vehicle.
Pick up or avoid coloured blocks for high score, with your chosen tune pumping out of your speakers and the pace and bumps in the track reflecting that tune's beats and tempo. It's the ultimate marriage of game and music, and its creator Dylan Fitterer did it all himself.
Craig says "Girls Aloud - Biology, Ninja Mono. Go on, give it a go. It's perfect. Audiosurf added colour and verve to the grey palette of PC games, flickering neon to all the beats of my favourites. Even Radiohead seem joyous when filtered through Audiosurf."
Tim says "I love how Audiosurf exploits the unique advantages of the PC, with connectivity to uber-music site Last.fm, scoreboards for every song, and the ability to import your own mp3s."
I wondered where part two was until I opened this story - might wanna look into fixing the title on the main page.
There's some top games here, really low down in the list. It's making me really curious what's going to be at the top.
Defcon is a weird one. It's one of those games I didn't have any expectations for and as a result I found myself feeling guilty when I grinned at seeing stuff like 5,000,000 killed appearing on the game map. The sound effects make it sort of creepy.
I also found Guild Wars far more fun in beta than it ever was after it went gold. If you ask me, the calculators ruined it. Needing to go and farm specific skills so that people would take you in a group ruined the who relaxed casual feel that it started out with.
Yay, syndicate was in there somewhere. Football managers ? I don't get them but I can see why they should be on this list. TIE fighter, courageous nomination and I wholeheartedly agree. However........
Craig says "Girls Aloud - Biology, Ninja Mono. Go on, give it a go. It's perfect. Audiosurf added colour and verve to the grey palette of PC games, flickering neon to all the beats of my favourites. Even Radiohead seem joyous when filtered through Audiosurf."
I have a new person on a list to hunt down and either humiliate or dismember. GIRLS ALOUD???!?!? GIRLS AF***INGLOUD?????? DOes this man possess either ears or genitals? Plus Radiohead is ALWAYS joyous! Tragically beautiful. I hate people whining about how depressing it is.
I have a new person on a list to hunt down and either humiliate or dismember. GIRLS ALOUD???!?!? GIRLS AF***INGLOUD?????? DOes this man possess either ears or genitals? Plus Radiohead is ALWAYS joyous! Tragically beautiful. I hate people whining about how depressing it is.
If it was just the music then the man needs some help, but with the video its forgiveable
Yay, syndicate was in there somewhere. Football managers ? I don't get them but I can see why they should be on this list. TIE fighter, courageous nomination and I wholeheartedly agree. However........
Craig says "Girls Aloud - Biology, Ninja Mono. Go on, give it a go. It's perfect. Audiosurf added colour and verve to the grey palette of PC games, flickering neon to all the beats of my favourites. Even Radiohead seem joyous when filtered through Audiosurf."
I have a new person on a list to hunt down and either humiliate or dismember. GIRLS ALOUD???!?!? GIRLS AF***INGLOUD?????? DOes this man possess either ears or genitals? Plus Radiohead is ALWAYS joyous! Tragically beautiful. I hate people whining about how depressing it is.
Radiohead are wonderful, by far my favourite band, but they're not joyous. They're intricate, obsessive, fearful, insightful, but hardly joyous.
And my ears and genitals are in working order. I listen to more good music than bad, but there's always room for bumpy pop music. At least give Audiosurf a go with Biology: you won't be disappointed.
Gears should be in here! It's a far better game on the PC anyway. Granted, it is shown for what it is on PC - a run of the mill shooter with superlative visuals - but it's still lots of fun.
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