I wasn't playing much games nor was old enough to really understand them at that times, but I remember playing Mafia on some older guys PC. It was nice (´ー`)

>I wasn't playing much games nor was old enough to really understand them at that times
Ah, you missed out... it was amazing to see the technology rapidly evolve every year from about 1996 to 2006/2007 - seeing the limits constantly being pushed, and many things in games being done for the first time ヽ(´ー｀)ノ

>I remember playing Mafia on some older guys PC. It was nice (´ー`)
It's an excellent mix of cinematic story-telling, great humor, rock-solid TPS action, simulation-like driving, and open(ish) world chaos! Some of the best grafix at the time too - I remember being really impressed when I first played it ヽ(´∇`)ノ

>Ah, you missed out... it was amazing to see the technology rapidly evolve every year from about 1996 to 2006/2007 - seeing the limits constantly being pushed, and many things in games being done for the first time ヽ(´ー｀)ノ
Don't you say... (;´Д`)
I was born JUST at the time I knew great things were happening, but was trapped inside a body of a young kid who would understand that days' value 10+ years later (;´Д`)
>It's an excellent mix of cinematic story-telling, great humor, rock-solid TPS action, simulation-like driving, and open(ish) world chaos! Some of the best grafix at the time too - I remember being really impressed when I first played it ヽ(´∇`)ノ
I also now remember playing GTA San Andreas. It was quite a thing ( ´ω`)
...but again, I was too young to enjoy it other than driving carz and shooting randoms (;´Д`)

>GTA San Andreas
I preordered it for PS2 and got it the day of release ヽ(´∇`)ノ. Before it came out, me and my friends at school used to discuss all the things we would do in the game based on the information from magazines, like going to the gym and modding cars... good memories ( ´ω`)

When the PC version came out a several months later, I got it immediately as modding the PC version of Vice City had been my life before SA came out, but... my PC at the time was too shitty to run it (;´Д`) (and that's even considering that my standard for "playable" back then was 15 FPS! Also the game was liek 5GB, which at the time was freaking HUEG)

Eventually I got a hand-me-down graphics card that could run it adequately, and I started making skins and simple texture mods. I uploaded a couple of them to a GTA modding site I no longer remember the name of - maybe they're still out there somewhere...

I miss the old thematic UT99 multiplayer maps... dudes were building large scale bedrooms for us to shoot eachother with instaGibs

>Before it came out, me and my friends at school used to discuss all the things we would do in the game based on the information from magazines
Did they mention sxy stuff too? I personally somehow didn't learn GTA had them until some years later (;＾Д^)

>PC version of Vice City
Ahh now I have something to tell ( ´ω`)
I was still fairly young (though this was in early 2010s.. yes, I am not old but things were coming to 3rd world countries like mine few years later!) but all computers in my school's PC lab had Vice City installed in them, probably thx to our preceding senpais (´人｀)
All the boys would quickly eat their lunches in the shortest break, and rush to the PC lab when the long lunch break came to take a seat to play. It wasn't really mattering if they couldn't get a seat, there were like 30 computers and 150+ boys in the room, so every computer would have more than few pairs of eyes focused on it while the lucky one was playing Vice City and others were commenting.

I fucking LOL'd at an easter egg in the "A Man of Influence, Scene 2" level of No One Lives Forever

There's this part where you can cross a small train track with a slow moving freight train going across. Naturally, I wanted to see what happens if you get on the train and keep riding it - expecting to hit some kind of force field or instadeath once you reach the tunnel

Instead, it cuts to a little cutscene with a world map and a red line showing you travelling to France, Poland, Kenya, and Thailand, before the train shows up back at the level and you can just carry on playing, LOL. This game is officially awesome (´∇`)

Whenever I see an Easter Egg in a game, I wonder how many else I've missed (;´Д`)

I completed NOLF - it was pretty good overall, especially around the middle of the game where the humor picks up and the levels are more interesting, but some of the earlier and later levels were a bit of a drag

I wanted to play The Longest Journey (2000) next, but something about this game makes my vaguely 2006-ish machine's shitty CPU cooler constantly scream out in pain, so I don't feel comftorable playing it (;´Д`)

Instead I've been playing Oni (2001), which is a game with anime-like visuals and is very obviously inspired by Ghost in the Shell. It runs well, and the controls and combat feel pretty fluid for the time, but... the levels are all extremely bare and repetitive, making it seem more like an alpha version than what you would expect from a finished game

I'll play it a little more, but if I try to complete it I might end up in a mental institution (;´Д`)

I uninstalled Oni, it's too boring (;´Д`)

Now I'm playing Syberia, a point & click adventure game from 2002 - I'm not far into it, but it's pretty awesome so far ヽ(´∇`)ノ

>>1516
If you don't want to pirate, Mafia is now free on Steam until September 5 ( ´ω`)

>Mafia is now free on Steam until September 5 ( ´ω`)
Awesome, thanks for the heads up. I'm a native installer kinda guy, but this is good news for steamfags ( ´ω`)

On the topic of WinXP/2k era PC games, lately I've been playing through Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force. It's an FPS from 2000 and it's surprisingly good, albeit quite linear and a little on the easy side

And the skintight outfits... this is a good game (´￢`)

I hope everyone got Mafia at the time, now I just finished it (excluding the last mission because it was too hard to be fun and i am tired, so I simply watched it) ( ´ω`)

Apart from all the bugs... it was a good game ヽ(´∇`)ノ

After playing through Shadow Man Remastered recently (not WinXP/2K but an AWESOEM game nonetheless - highly recommended!), I started playing Freelancer. It's a "space trading and combat" game from 2003 - not a genre I'm familiar with, but it seemed to have good reviews and I was down for sum space flyin n shootan so I thought I'd check it out

Teh story and world was pretty kewl, but teh gameplay was incredibly monotonous and limited - all the areas are basically the same cept the background color, and there's pretty much only 1 type of mission in the whole game: "go here, kill baddies, go there, kill moar baddies, return home"

Travelling around in ur spaceship isn't even fun cuz it's basically all automated, plus it takes way too long to get anywhere and u spend half the game just sitting there waiting to arrive -_-

After completan all teh missions, there's no real purpose to keep playing (at least in unmodded single player) - you can either do that 1 mission over and over sum moar, or slowly go around trading stuff to make money so you can buy... nuthin cuz u already have all teh best stuff by the end of teh story -_-

Final verdict: story & grafix = pretty good, gameplay = repetitive, Juni = SEX. I rate it "needs moar Juni, Juni SEX"/10

Played and completed NOLF 2 - it was OK, but the story wasn't as interesting as the first game, and the stealth sections seemed like not much thought was put into them (;´Д`)

Cate Archer is way sexier in this game though, and the female ninja enemies are teh cute ( ´ω`)

I just completed BloodRayne, which I've been wanting to play ever since seeing it gaming mags years ago (for two very obvious reasons!)

It's a very corny-but-fun vampire action game with tons of gore, AWESOEM bewbs, and state-of-the-art jiggle physix. It's definitely no masterpiece, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It always kept things from getting too boring or repetitive by suddenly surprising you with new things - liek the section where you're suddenly piloting a freaking nazi mech and battling against other nazi mechs (;ﾟ∇ﾟ)

Seriously though, bewb lovers must play this game. The blonde nazi boss chick's rack in particular was MAGNIFICENT, and you can totally catch a glimpse of her nipples when she's at certain angles (´￢｀)

Im suprised nobody talked about Quake III on this thread, Q3A still has a living community these days. This game in particular has a really addicting gameplay both in singleplayer and multiplayer.

If you want to play online nowadays, there is a certain server where players from all kind of skill levels play on a server called quake 3 retro or something like that, I'd suggest anyone to go on that server because most servers have fake numbers in them ヽ(`Д´)ノ and it's kinda deceiving.

>Im suprised nobody talked about Quake III on this thread
That's cuz this thread has mostly been me posting to myself and I, and other than MoH:AA I was never that into online games (^^;

Other than Quake II on PS1 (which a friend lent to me for a few days), I never played a Quake game until Quake Live around 2010/2011 (which as far as I'm aware was basically Quake III in a web browser). Besides the marvel of playing a freaking FPS in a web browser, it didn't entertain me for very long (;´Д`)

I ended up playing and completing BloodRayne 2...

It's a very mediocre game that could have been great, but is massively held back by poorly-thought out combat (that isn't even as fun as the first game's), bizarre PC controls that were obviously meant for a controller, way too many "the only way to win is to cheese" boss battles, and a very buggy implementation of Prince of Persia-style acrobatics that flings you off in the wrong direction 50% of the time (;´Д`)

Teh grafix are definitely a big upgrade on the first game, but even though there were moar hawt chicks this time around, I didn't obtain as much b0ner (´～`)

Overall there were a few moments of greatness, but it was mostly a slog to get through - at times it was just plain painful, and made you want to shoot the developers (;´Д`)