Discussion Must play video games of the 2000s?

[Order 66]

I was wondering what games are considered "must play" or classics in the 2000s, since I was not alive or too young to be able to play these games when they released.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

The 2000s were my teenage years.

Some games I enjoyed..

American Conquest
Bioshock
Company of Heroes
Call of Duty Modern Warfare
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Fallout 3
GTA: San Andreas
GTA: Vice City
Medieval: Total War
Medieval 2: Total War
Rome: Total War

and probably more.

 

[TerryLaze]

On the next sale check out the valve complete pack, it usually goes down extremely low and has a bunch of the best games that run on a potato.
All of these still have multiplayer servers that are active.

Valve Complete Pack on Steam

store.steampowered.com

Also everybody was addicted to DIABLO 2 and/or heroes of might and magic 3.

 

[Order 66]

On the next sale check out the valve complete pack, it usually goes down extremely low and has a bunch of the best games that run on a potato.
All of these still have multiplayer servers that are active.

Valve Complete Pack on Steam

store.steampowered.com

Also everybody was addicted to DIABLO 2 and/or heroes of might and magic 3.

total file size for the whole bundle? I have slow internet.

 

[TerryLaze]

total file size for the whole bundle? I have slow internet.

You don't have to download them all at once, every game is it's own thing, you can download only the one(s) you want to play.

 

[Order 66]

You don't have to download them all at once, every game is it's own thing, you can download only the one(s) you want to play.

I know, but it would be more convenient to download them all at once since I have somewhat limited internet access, and I would rather download them all when I'm able to use the internet. I'm especially excited to play half life 2 at 1440p. Does the game support HDR?

 

[Order 66]

Also, are there benchmarks for Half Life 2 for the RX 6800? I've found articles discussing Half life 2 benchmarks, but they are old.

 

[Eximo]

Almost too many titles to list. I will list a few that I played in the early to mid 2000s. The late 2000s for me was mostly the emergence of MMOs with broad audience appeal.

Unreal Tournament 99 and Unreal 2K3 and 2K4, Unreal Tournament III I don't think was a big hit. (Servers are usually sparse, but there is a new Unreal Tournament you can try out for free at Epic)
Quake III Team Arena was Quake's answer to Unreal Tournament (I believe there are browsers versions of Quake II and Quake III online)

Call of Duty 2, Modern Warfare
Battlefield 1942 (free to play, but no longer any anti-cheat), Battlefield 2, and 3.

Half Life 2 / Red Faction 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Deus Ex
Fall Out series

Baldur's Gate II, (3 just came out)
Various Bethesda games set in the Elder scrolls series (Daggerfall, Oblivion)

Diablo II (Available as a remake called Diablo II Resurrected)
Starcraft (Starcraft 2 exists now of course)
Warcraft III (Reforged exists)

Mechwarrior 4
Armored Core

Sim City 3000
Sins of a Solar Empire (space based RTS)

There were tons of console game series I never touched like.

 

[Eximo]

Also, are there benchmarks for Half Life 2 for the RX 6800? I've found articles discussing Half life 2 benchmarks, but they are old.

You won't have trouble. It will run on low end integrated graphics of today and even the lowliest of dual cores can manage it, barely.

 

[Order 66]

You won't have trouble. It will run on low end integrated graphics of today and even the lowliest of dual cores can manage it, barely.

I realize that, but I just wanted to see what kind of fps I could get. I mean, I know even a 1650 can run the game decently at 4k.

 

[Eximo]

You won't have trouble. It will run on low end integrated graphics of today and even the lowliest of dual cores can manage it, barely.

As a point of comparison. My specs in 2003/2004 would have been Athlon XP 1800+ single core 512MB DDR and a Geforce FX5200 which was quite low end. Later it would have been an Athlon XP 2800+ single core, 1GB DDR and at some point I had an FX5500, and I dropped in a Geforce 6600 for some DX requirement if I recall.

 

[Eximo]

I realize that, but I just wanted to see what kind of fps I could get. I mean, I know even a 1650 can run the game decently at 4k.

Too many is the short answer. When you have FPS counts that high you might start noticing the high and low FPS counts as it swings from hundreds to thousands of FPS as you look at different things. Best to set a realistic cap in the console.

 

[Eximo]

I completely forgot Age of Empires II and the Command & Conquer series. Both have recent remakes.

Also the early days of Counterstrike before it became a discrete product. There was also Day of Defeat which was a WWII Half Life mod.

Warcraft III was modded to make the first DOTA.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Yes, definitely Command & Conquer and War craft III.

And Duke Nukem', but that was the 1990s.

 

[Order 66]

Too many is the short answer. When you have FPS counts that high you might start noticing the high and low FPS counts as it swings from hundreds to thousands of FPS as you look at different things. Best to set a realistic cap in the console.

yes. I just wish I could find benchmarks at 1080p for any GPUs so that I could have a point of reference that I could extrapolate from.

 

[Eximo]

I didn't have a 1080p monitor until 2012 or so...

800x600, 1024x768 (CRTs man) and 1280x1024 were the resolutions of the 2000s. High end users may have had 1600x1200 if they were lucky.

 

[Order 66]

So a 1650 gets roughly 180 fps at 1080p max settings. My RX 6800 is roughly 3.88x as powerful as a 1650, so roughly 699 fps at 1080p, but not sure what that would be at 1440p.

 

[Eximo]

Doesn't quite work that way. High FPS is CPU dependent, and you have a fast CPU.

Seeing what a 1650 can do isn't possible in isolation.

Quick jaunt over on youtube, not a great source, showed an average of 286 FPS with a 9th gen mobile CPU and a mobile 1650.

 

[Order 66]

Doesn't quite work that way. High FPS is CPU dependent, and you have a fast CPU.

Seeing what a 1650 can do isn't possible in isolation.

Quick jaunt over on youtube, not a great source, showed an average of 286 FPS with a 9th gen mobile CPU and a mobile 1650.

That was with a 2700x, but yeah, that's a great point.

 

[artk2219]

There are a ton of options, just statistically with the amount of games released every year, you're going to have quite a few good options even if a lot of the content released was unremarkable. I've thrown some options on a list below in alphabetical order, some may require a "console". There are tons more.

Battlefield 1942
Bioshock 1 and 2
Borderlands
Call of Duty 1, 2, and 4
Command and Conquer: Generals, Red Alert 2, Tiberian Sun
Dead Space 1 and 2
Deus Ex
Diablo 2
Fallout 3 and New Vegas
Freespace 2
Gears of war 1 - 3
GTA 3, San Andreas, Vice City
Half life 2 and episodes 1 and 2
Halo Master Chief collection
Kingdom Hearts 2
Mass Effect 1 and 2
Medal of Honor series
Metroid Prime 1, 2,3
Metal gear solid 2
Need for Speed underground
Perfect Dark
Portal 1 and 2
Prey
Red Dead Redemption
Sins of a solar empire
Sonic adventure 1 and 2
Star Wars battlefront 1 and 2
Super Mario Galaxy, Sunshine
Tokyo xtreme Racer 1 and 2
The sims
World of Warcraft

 

[Order 66]

Star Wars battlefront 1 and 2

Super Mario Galaxy

Omg, I‘ve played these games, specifically battlefront 2 for the original xbox, and Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. I was extremely sad to learn that my Xbox 360 that I used to play battlefront 2 no longer works. I never had an original xbox.

 

[artk2219]

Omg, I‘ve played these games, specifically battlefront 2 for the original xbox, and Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. I was extremely sad to learn that my Xbox 360 that I used to play battlefront 2 no longer works. I never had an original xbox.

Sorry about your 360, they we're some finicky consoles, on the plus theyre pretty cheap on the used market currently and the later models had less issues. The original Xbox was a neat console, it was basically the dreamcast 2, unfortunately it was a bit memory limited. Microsoft poached a bunch of engineers and devs from Sega of America when they were winding down their hardware side. Very few original Xbox's work currently, unless someone has worked on it to replace the capacitors. They are pretty much all plagued by capacitor issues from the capacitor plague era of the early to mid 2000's.

 

[Zerk2012]

Ultima Online
1997 I still play it. You can play for free but cost a sub to get all the features.

 

[NedSmelly]

Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth.

You can’t buy it anywhere except for used DVD copies (which fetch high prices). But you can find it if you look hard enough. 😉

 

[35below0]

AI War - Fleet Command
Fallout New Vegas
Destroy all humans 2 (and 1)
Scarface The World Is Yours
Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion
Deus Ex
Aliens vs Predator 2000 (still alive !)
Indipendence War 2 - Edge of Chaos
Startopia
X3 Reunion
Age of Mythology
Psychonauts
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
Tropico 2 Pirate Cove
Pharaoh
S2 Silent Storm
Jade Empire
Worms Armageddon
Sword of the Stars (not the sh**** sequel)
System Shock 2
Anno 1503
Lego Racers 2
UFO Aftershock
UFO Afterlight
Max Payne
Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines

If i had to pick three of the lot, it would be: Psychonauts, VTM Bloodlines and AI War.


Dusting off the very old games, from my younger years:
Another World
Colonization
Ur-Quan Masters
Pirates
Prince of Persia
The Secret of Monkey Island
F1 Grand Prix
Smash TV
Cannon Fodder
North & South
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Fallout
Xcom (openxcom recommended; XPiratez mod for an insane take)
Jagged Alliance 1&2
Fragile Allegiance
Slam Tilt pinball
Super Stardust
MUTANT LEAGUE FOOTBALL
Super Metroid and Metroid II
Seiken Densetsu III
Space Rogue
Moonstone
Starflight