Recommended older games available cheaply

Man of Honour
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I've seen a couple of threads recently in which someone mentions an older game that they can get for a few quid and asks if it's worth it. Generally speaking, I think a game for a few quid is probably worth a try anyway, but what are yesterday's diamonds that still shine?

I'm not sure about posting links for buying them, as I'm not sure what OcUK counts as a competitor. So any clarification about that would be helpful.

Here's a few I recommend:

Freelancer. I got this for £4 last week and just found it selling online for as low as £2.50! It's a fun space combat/trading game with a single-player campaign that I'm finding an interesting story and it's amazingly well supported by fans, with servers still active and a multitude of mods. It's not as complex as X3 (or X2) - it's more like a newer version of Elite with a campaign and a couple of dozen factions. Far simpler to get into than you might initially think, it's plenty of fun. There's scope for strategy in the "space FPS" combat. For example, I'm near the start of the game, flying a heavy fighter loaded up to the max with heavy weapons. 6 energy weapons, with lovely names like "Vengeance Mk 1" and "Justice MkIII". All well and good, but I drain the weapons power with about 7 seconds of continuous fire and drop to two low-power guns or wait for weapons power to recharge - would I be better with lower-power weapons that wouldn't drain the batteries so quickly?

GUN. I got it for £2, bargain. "Wild west" FPS with a good single-player story.

Call of Juarez. I got it for £4, the guy in the shop described it as the most under-rated shooter of recent years, and I agree with him. Another "Wild West" FPS with a good single-player story.

Anachronox. Ancient and with one quest unplayable on a PC with a CPU runnig faster than about 166MHz. Who knows why they tied the quest timer into the CPU clock, but they did. You have to download a savegame from just after than quest (which is close to the beginning). It looks its age, but I like the story. You wouldn't pay good money for it, but it's worth a couple of quid. It's a Sci-fi RPG, single-player party type, in which combat is a combination of turn-based and realtime (each move takes a certain amount of time). I paid £2 for it, and it's worth that.

Port Royale 2. Another excellent £4 purchase. Naval trading game in early 17th century Caribbean. Buy building licenses on various islands, build various things (housing, farms for various crops, buildings for processing crops into other goods, like rum, etc), create trade routes, buy additional boats and train captains for them to be more flexible in trading, buy warships, form fleets, fight pirates, be a pirate, curry favour with one or more of the European powers squabbling over the Caribbean, build your own navy, be a privateer, wage war, create your own towns...many hours of play in this game.
 
Associate
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Everyone should definitely own Deus Ex. Also Starcraft is amazing!

For £7.50 I got Mount and Blade, which is truly awesome.
 
Soldato
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Call of Juarez is awesome, looking forward to the next one!

Everyone should own UT2004, the best of the series and should be dead cheap by now.
 
Soldato
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Glasgow
I've been doing this a bit over the past few months, finding older games that are dirt cheap. So far I've played through Hitman Contracts, Tomb Raider Legend & Anniversary, one of the FEAR expansions (unfortunately it has odd performance issues so I can't complete it). All excellent games and they all cost me under £5 each. Gamestracker is a great website for finding them cheap.
 
Soldato
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Enfield
For example, I'm near the start of the game, flying a heavy fighter loaded up to the max with heavy weapons. 6 energy weapons, with lovely names like "Vengeance Mk 1" and "Justice MkIII". All well and good, but I drain the weapons power with about 7 seconds of continuous fire and drop to two low-power guns or wait for weapons power to recharge - would I be better with lower-power weapons that wouldn't drain the batteries so quickly?

Yeah, definitely. From what I recall, you probably want a few lower power, higher fire rate cannons and then one or two big nasty ones.

There is also a set of superweapons hidden about the galaxy in asteroids etc. that do incredible amounts of damage. When I finished the game, I bought the heaviest fighter I could and mounted 'em all on.....one hit kills :D :)
 
Associate
Joined
28 Dec 2005
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183
I'd say Red Alert 2. Bought it on release, and I still play the ocassional game - it's been out for like 10 years or something ridiculous.

Someone earlier mentioned Deus Ex - I've never played this myself, but heard good things about it...
 
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