Good Offline PC Games

[Mike]

I might purchase a one or more offline PC games, but I don't really know what is out there for offline games as I usually only played online games (Diablo, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, etc.) I like most action and adventure games, but I like it if it has some sort of strategy and role playing to it. Can anybody recommend anything?

[lsatblu]

I currently only play Oblivion. It was made by the same people who created Morrowind. Oblivion is a fantasy role playing game. It is great because you can go anywhere and do anything you want.

One other game that is similar to Oblivion is Fable. Fable is also an offline game and it is also open ended. This means you can choose to follow the main story or not.

I really don't know any of fun offline games, but I would love to hear what other people might suggest.

[B!ll]

I don't understand why you don't want to play online? It's the best for gameplay and meeting new friends. I must say Age Of Empires is very good for offline play.

[CG Man]

X3 is my fave can never get bored with it.

[Mike]

Well, I love playing online games. The problem though is that I have younger brothers, and I would like to get them to play offline games on the computer upstairs. We only have 2 phone lines, and we aren't supposed to tie up the line until after 9 or so, and it isn't working right now. I would like to see if I can find a decent game that I might want to play, but something that they can play too, and I might pay for it. The online games I played before either got old, costed too much money, or were pointless after I lost all my items and I hate restarting a new character. Thanks for the suggestions, anything else? Anybody ever played that Western game that is for PC and console, I forget the name offhand, but it looked cool and different.

[Reuben]

Well it depends what kind of games you want to play. FPS - first person shooters -, I would recommend Half Life 2 + expansions.

If you're looking for some strategy I recommend Age of Empires 3.

It's really up to what kind of games you're looking for.

[quinda]

X3 is a great game. Actually, all of the X games were good, and I was playing X2: The Threat until very recently, so it might be worth picking them all up if you like space games.

Command and Conquer was re-released in a box set with all the games up to and including Generals - thats a great deal if you like RTS-es.

The Need For Speed games have a decent number of play-sessions worth of content in them too, if you like driving games.

[Reuben]

I think that instead of buying those games at a shop (I'm not sure if they are even available at retail stores) you have to download them via Steam. For that, you will need the internet.

[Hybrid]

Whats X3 then? Never heard of it. :?:

Dave.

[CG Man]

X3 Reunion
Is a good game for people wanting a really deep game that makes you feel like your there. It's a space trade and combat simulator played from the cockpit view. Anything you see flying around or any factory can be baught. Upgrades and weapons are built and sold in space factories every factory requires resorces from others. It's one of those sims that grows the more your on it theirs no end.

You start with a tiny fighter and a few quid and buy and sell goods to earn enough to buy a bigger cargo ship and one day your own employed pilots, cargo ships and factories. Theirs a huge area of space split into around 120 sectors to explore with a dynamic economy.

Why and how you play it is upto you I run it as a business so I can buy a huge fleet of fighters, carriers and battleships to hunt down the pirates. You could play it as a pirate hijacking other pilots ships and building drug factories and brothels.

It's got a way more learning curve than mine sweeper and requires all your time to get anywhere, a game for the unemployed some call it. One year on I'm just as interested as the first week. Don't bother playing it without the patch unless you have a 10Ghz processor and a graphics card from the future. A Geforce 6800 GT and 2 GB of ram will get you ok FPS at 1600 X 1200 Res.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X%C2%B3:_Reunion

[quinda]

I think that instead of buying those games at a shop (I'm not sure if they are even available at retail stores) you have to download them via Steam. For that, you will need the internet.

Which games were you referring to there?

All the games I've seen mentioned in this thread have boxes - some of them are old now, but they can still be found - at least in the UK. I'm not sure about elsewhere though.

Personally, I hate Steam. If a game was only available via Steam I'd avoid it even if I wanted to play it. Sure, digital distribution will inevitably become popular one day, but I'd rather the company that was considered the one to bring it to the masses be one that did it right :/

[CG Man]

Whats wrong with Steam?

[quinda]

I think Steam is too intrusive and in a lot of ways poorly implemented. Whenever I have wanted to download something, the download has always been slow, and quite flakey.

The whole 'you need to connect to play' thing really irritates me too, and why does it force you to update games to play online? EA don't do that - if you don't want to install a new patch, then sure, you can't play with anyone who has the new patch, but you can still play with people that haven't updated yet. There could be any number of reasons why you wouldn't want to update a game - its not just because you're a cheater.

I haven't used Steam in ages, so if this has changed I'd love to know, but why doesn't it just ASK YOU before doing anything. I don't have time for Steam, I want to just play, not patch, download, integrity check, crash, restart, patch, install - then play when its time to go out.

[CG Man]

I've never had a problem with it I click start on Counter Strike go make a brew when I come back I find that it has updated it self and added new content got rid of old bugs. I hate having to hunt for patches. Steam only makes you connect before you can play so that it can validate your game to stop the pirate gamers. The alternative to Steams way is the pirate protection found on newer games this means you have to have the CD in to play and the protection software has problems with alot of computers.

[Qux]

Is that western game u talked about Gun?? thats on pc and console and is a great game a bit old now tho