Computer Games

I spend many many hours in front of a computer playing games. Some of them exercise the mind, some exercise the fingers, and some just look cool.

If you like computer games, or are looking for a good one to play, then I suggest you stop looking on the store shelves! Here are some of my favorites of all time.

Betrayal at Krondor -- awesome story line and a great combat system. The stats system is especially interesting: characters grow very slowly, so their initial personality never disappears no matter how much they are trained. This is also a great game to start with if you are curious about CRPG's: the interface is easy to learn, and the game is generally well made. Also nice: Sierra has released the game for free, so you can download it from the above link.
Ultima VII -- My favorite game in its genre. The virtual world in U7 is very well developed: if you can see things, and if something makes sense, then you can probably do it. Furthermore, there are many interesting side quests, side plots, and characters to meet. Finally, the main plotline is fun and is very relevant to today's world of propoganda and cheap spirituality.
King's Quest III. I liked all of Sierra's old "Quest" games, but this was my favorite. In this style of game, you explore around the game world gathering items and learning how things work. You spend a lot of time working on puzzles, you get to interact with a large fantasy world, and, in most of these games, you get well acquainted with the save/reload feature. :) These are even better when played with a friend/kid/parent/etc.... Sadly, this style of adventure game is no longer made. The "graphical adventure games" of today are pretty good, but because they use mouse input instead of command inputs, the requests you can make to the system are greatly simplified. The other extreme is better, in my humble opinion: forget the graphics, and go back to purely textual adventures. In fact, there is a thriving community of people writing what they call Interactive Fiction. These take more imagination to play, but maybe that's not a bad thing!
Robot Odyssey. My favorite game, period, though it's not for everyone. I give it its own page.
Starflight. This work of art is my second favorite game. Unlike most games released today, the authors rewrote this game until they were satisfied instead of releasing it as soon as possible. The authers even rewrote vast amounts of the in-game dialogue, which is especially rare with todays media-rich games. The result is worth it. Starcraft has several mini-games which are each fun and which are integrated very smoothly: exploring planets, exploring space, shopping at the spaceport, talking to aliens, and (when talking fails) fighting aliens. The resulting game is not just a senseless diversion, but a gradual depiction of a world far away. Space is a lonely place in Starflight, and the fate of the humankind rests on your unacknowledged shoulders.