Top 10 Must-Have PC Games
#4: Doom (1993) Did anyone ever pause to ask what a Space Marine was doing with a chainsaw? Any Top 10 lists for the PC may as well be a Top Nine list, as one game is all but assured a spot in any such ranking: id software's Doom, the 1993 release which gave relevance to a new genre and proved that PC gaming could expand beyond flight simulators, strategy games and fantasy adventures. In one of my favorite "walked-uphill-five-miles-each-way-through-foot-deep-snow" stories, I spent an entire night connected to a BBS across the country downloading the shareware version of Doom. The resulting phone bill was jaw-dropping, but the expense seemed worth it at the time. It wasn't the first FPS, but it was the most exciting, and it was the first game to offer workable networked co-op and deathmatch play. Gameplay doesn't get much simpler; "monster closet" is a literal reference to enemies that would jump from behind closed doors. Technically, the 2.5D software renderer was a commendable achievement, and it's here that lead programmer John Carmack began to earn his reputation as a coding ninja. From engine licensing to game design, the influence of Doom is still felt in the game development industry. It's also the game that launched a thousand careers, with community-developed mod tools which sparked the creative minds of many would-be game designers and developers. It's impossible to squeeze the importance of the game into a brief summary (entire books have been written on the subject), but one thing's for sure: the legacy of Doom is unrivaled by any other PC game.
#3: Half-Life (1998) Half-Life's story got a little... weird at times For a few years after the release of Doom, PC gamers were treated to a number of half-hearted (though mostly entertaining) Doom clones, and it wasn't until the 1998 release of Valve Software's first game, Half-Life, when the idea of a scripted, continuous story made its way to a best-selling title. To be fair, games such as System Shock and Marathon (a Mac-only title) broke new ground in storytelling, but Half-Life's inclusion of cinema-inspired cut scenes and well-paced plot exposition brought the novel idea of "story" to a mainstream shooter. Half-Life ran away with nearly every accolade in 1998, the year of its release, and changed the barrier of entry for all future FPS titles. After Valve's opening shot, it was impossible to ship a critically acclaimed pure-shooter FPS, and other developers were forced to shoehorn stories into nearly completed games. Once the dust had settled, however, it was clear that shooters had graduated into a new territory - one defined by the existence of plot and cinematic sequences. It was an inevitable transition, but one that we have Half-Life for which to thank. It took Gordon Freeman and the bumbling Barney Calhoun to push the FPS genre to a new rung on the evolutionary ladder, and Half-Life's overwhelming success gave way to the best-selling franchise in PC gaming.
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