Video games

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Video games are games played with an electronic device, instead of paper, pens, dice, boards, anything traditional, and most of the time omitting your imagination too. It is also true that they do contain amusing game mechanics, can be easily played alone, provide visual and auditory representation, and don't cost hundreds of dollars for a few miniature visual representations; however, this does come at the cost of freedom, physical being, social skills, and imagination.

Many traditional or tabletop games (like WH40K and D&D) can now be played as using electronic devices to substitute for their tactile components like maps or minis, proving once again that technology continues to screw up everything that we all wished had remained as it was. A virtual tabletop simulator has been released so you may play a tabletop game with friends out of town. Also, we have an article at List of Vidya Board Games to cover various tabletop adaptions into the digital realm.

Electronic games played by strange, electronic fa/tg/uys have been accepted by /tg/, so that any game can be traditional, and this media fits right in with the old board games and Tabletop Wargames we all know and love. Some video games are accepted and enjoyed by /tg/. Many, however, are not. Generally, video game threads, especially games with no corresponding /tg/ version/interest, belong on /v/ instead.

You'll find quite a few /v/ related articles on 1d4chan because some video games have at least some relation to /tg/ and because 1d4chan tends to draw in people who are fans of WH40K universe primarily through Dawn of War, even if these people don't actually play the tabletop game. And lets be honest here, 1d4chan is as much a page for WH40K fans as it is for fa/tg/uys so these people are certainly welcome here.

Strategy Games

  • Simulation/Sandbox
    • Dwarf Fortress
    • Aurora 4X, a.k.a Dwarf Fortress in space with MUCH more complicated details
    • From The Depths
    • Kerbal Space Program
    • Medieval Engineers
      • Space Engineers
    • Minecraft, for some odd reason.
    • Terraria, for the same odd reason.
    • Mount and Blade, it's expandalone Warband, and the new Bannerlord 2. A sandbox medieval setting, you go around either being a bandit or uniting the scattered kingdoms into a grand empire or whatever. Enormous modding community means finding something thematically different if you want, including Warhammer and historical mods.
    • Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress IN SPEHSS except dumbed down for the casuals, which may or may not be a good thing.
    • Space Station 13: Dwarf Fortress except you play as the dwarves. Has been completely fucking ruined by goons leaking into every other version of the game.
    • Tabletop Simulator, a virtual tabletop for playing Card Games, Board Games, RPGs, etc. online with friends. The game has multiple built-in tools for creating custom games, and the Steam Workshop has thousands of add-ons; a popular choice for playing WH40K online thanks to ripped assets from Dawn of War.
    • VASSAL Engine
  • 4X/Grand Strategy
    • Age of Wonders
    • Civilization I-IV - Civilization actually was based on a board game and in a case of coming full circle, ended up creating it's own board game.
      • (Note: Civs V and VI have design issues that make them difficult to recommend in this list, and are thus explicitly not included--that being said, this exclusion is more on the basis of them being Skubish--some people love V and/or VI, while some people hate them.)
    • Disciples (series) - Heroes of Might and Magic made Grimdark.
    • Dominions - Civilization's and Dwarf Fortress' beautiful love child. Enjoy Lovecraft's Father Dagon square up against Ravana from India's Ramayana as they fight for the glory of their respective gods (you and whatever other neckbeards you are playing with).
    • Heroes of Might and Magic - Turn based strategy of over six main games and expansions where you control a fantasy hero and their legion of men/elves/dwarves/creatures/etc. Special mention goes to second and especially third installments.
    • Master of Magic: Only the oldest of neckbeards will remember this one. Take Sid Meier's Civilization. Add fantasy races with their own units, magic in the form of spells and summons, heroes and a very basic isometric battlefield when armies clash, and give hundreds of abilities to units according to their species, situation and metal they are armed with (Yes, the metal used can be mithril or adamantite if the building city has any). That's Master of Magic. Still great for when you need to scratch that 'wizard with no sense of right or wrong bent on conquering the world' itch.
    • Masters of Orion
    • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
    • Sengoku Rance: Hentai game spinoff that parodies the long-running Nobunaga's Ambition series. You play as Rance, Slaanesh's very own fun guy to be around, as he unifies Warring States-era Japan under his mighty "hyperweapon." Despite the utterly ludicrous premise it's a solid grand strategy game, to the point that the porn is more of a reward for playing well than an end in itself. Comparing this game to Total War was a common troll on /gsg/ when Shogun II was released.
    • Endless Space
    • Endless Legend
    • Distant Worlds
    • Paradox series: Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, or Hearts of Iron
      • Warhammer: Geheimnisnacht, a Warhammer Fantasy conversion for Crusader Kings II. Setting predates Winds of Chaos & End Times.
    • Stellaris (Paradox's attempt to fill the gap in the market between their Grand Strategy games and traditional 4x)So much depth even without mods, it deserves a separate page. You can run *any* science fiction staple idea and none would look out of place. A civilisation of individuals ranging from unique megacorporations to generic governments, hive-minded eusocial species, robots and anything in between have each unique playstyles. It also has endgame "crises" of galaxy threatening proportions which needs elaborate teamwork to stop.
    • Total War series: Rome Total War, Medieval Total War, Empire Total War, Shogun Total War
      • Rome 1 mods: Call to Arms: Warhammer and Fourth Age Total War and Medieval 2 mods: Call of Warhammer, Third Age Total War
  • Real-time Strategy
    • Age of Empires series. Classic RTS with a more Command and Conquer vibe then a 4X, which is more common for historical settings, though pretty much every unit has multiple counters so it tends to be a more complex game then normal fast pace RTSs. There's the original, which is a curiosity at best, the second game that is made of pure gold, Mythology that mixes up the formula well, the third which sadly is more just Mythology with guns and Online which is F2P game and also dead. First, Second and Mythology have really good HD remasters. Second and Mythology are worth grabbing, but if you had to choose one choose 2.
    • Battlezone, the strategy game not the arcade game. Mixture of real time strategy and hover tank combat while fighting commies on the moon. Clunky, and as balanced as a one legged hippo, but it's uniqueness, concept and immersion make it a classic. Got a second game that was tighter and better balanced but weaker plot and setting. Both got pretty decent HD remasters.
    • Command and Conquer, a franchise with more then four different series running at the time where you control varied forces trying to beat the crap out of each other.
    • Company of Heroes and Men of War series which are basically RTSs based on the idea of commanding forces as if someone was playing a classic WW2 shooter. While there are hard counters in Company of Heroes it still focuses more on holding chokepoints, piecing defensive lines and utilizing sandbags and barbed wire. Men at War focuses on realistic damage and as such is more the ARMA to Company of Heroes Call of Duty 2.
    • Cossacks series, which covers 17th and 18th century, being the closest to /tg/'s desire to have "pike and shot setting". Most notable for ability to field absolutely gigantic armies of thousands upon thousands of soldiers.
      • American Conquest is an off-shot mini-series, expanding game mechanics from Cossacks and covering the period between Cortes conquest of Aztec Empire till American Revolutionary War. An expansion is dedicated to American Civil War.
    • Cultures series, but most importantly first two games. A Viking village sim
    • Dungeon Keeper, where you play as an evil overlord defending against pesky adventurers and goodie-two-shoes trying to conquer your dungeon, and play it like Sims on crack.
    • Homeworld: THE iconic space video game of the early 00's. Basically Battlestar Galactica if the Galactica was tall instead of long. Borrows heavily from the artwork of Chris Foss.
    • Original War, most notable for its unique mix of RPG and RTS elements, with each unit representing an individual character with own backstory, personality and set of skills.
    • Patrician 3: Rise of the Hansa is pretty standard (and good) economic-transport sim, but it makes up with being related with the titular Hansa and the Baltic region during Late Medieval, which rarely show up as a setting despite being what is represented as the ISO Standard Medieval setting.
    • Railroad Tycoon 2 comes with absolutely amazing series of scenarios and an unique, fleshed out post-apo setting. No, not kidding. There are also dozens of fan-made maps further expanding on said setting.
    • Rise of Nations and especially Rise of Legends which had a steampunk faction and a "totally not the baddies from stargate" faction
    • The Settlers series
    • Starcraft and Warcraft: 40K and Fantasy rip-offs respectively, although they were so successful that from video gamers' perspective the jedi are evil GW should be paying Blizzard.
    • Supreme Commander
    • Theocracy, in which you control one of Mesoamerican tribes with a goal of unifying the region.
    • Total Annihilation
  • Turn-based Strategy
    • Advance Wars - It's like Panzer General but Anime. Except for Days of Ruin; that game is Grimdark and thus manly.
    • Fire Emblem - Advance Wars' twin brother who likes swords and magic rather than guns and tanks. Fire Emblem has heavy RPG elements, tasking you with managing a stable of characters with limited EXP to go around and the specter of permadeath hanging overhead. Awakening and later installments are not approved for being waifu delivery systems cleverly disguised as strategy games.
    • Jagged Alliance I & II, A PMC is you!
    • King of Dragon Pass
    • Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale a Japanese game about running a shop, which sells and buys items used by dungeon-crawling adventurers. Much more engaging than it sounds and full of cutting humour. Capitalism, ho!
    • Valkyria Chronicles series - JRPG fantasy world version of World War II. Quite a bit of depth and supporting cast of characters.
    • The original X-COM: UFO Defense
    • The new XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its sequel, XCOM 2.
      • XCOM and XCOM 2 mods: The Long War. Both versions add dramatically to their respective games, transforming them from comparatively quick, light experiences to fatigue-worn wars. Buckle up. Plays a lot like Valkyria Chronicles except with destructable terrain and lots of chest-high walls.

Role-Playing Games

  • Modern RPGs
    • The Banner Saga
    • Dark Souls, due to its moody Berserk-inspired atmosphere, emphasis on exploration, and merciless learning curve. Compelling story and characters are a major plus, also contains large amounts of death and RAGE. The tagline isn't 'Prepare to Die' for no reason.
      • To a lesser extent, the other "Souls" games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3, and Bloodborne).
    • Deus Ex: Human Revolution
    • Dragon Age: Origins, much better than later games.
    • Expeditions: Conquistador and Viking
    • Fallout: New Vegas
    • Legend of Grimrock
    • Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
    • Pillars of Eternity
    • Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, both games are very good.
    • The Witcher series

Adventure Games

  • Beneath a Steel Sky: Great cyberpunk themes and rich imagery. Released as freeware by the original developers.
  • Blade Runner: It's a Blade Runner game and it's one of the best things that ever happend in the genre, no need for more recommendations.
  • Broken Sword series: Templars, ancient conspiracies, interesting characters and well-written plot that is mineable even for tabletop games
  • The DIG: A bunch of astronauts stop an asteroid from hitting earth, only to find out it's really an alien starship that whisks them to a desolate planet on the other side of the galaxy whose inhabitants - who have a huge fetish for the platonic solids - are nowhere to be found. Features a lot of really complex hard-science plot points, difficult-as-fuck puzzles, and Steve Blum as an arrogant German scientist.
  • King's Quest: Heir Today Gone Tomorrow: Just read the title and ask yourself what the game can be about.
  • Monkey Island series: One of the most definitive things to ever happen to the genre, plus it's a great pirate-themed series that both spoofs and reaffirms a lot of cliches related with own content.
  • Policenauts: Early Hideo Kojima makes a game where Lethal Weapon meets cyberpunk.
  • The Prince and the Coward: A Polish game that can be best summed up as "ISO Standard Medieval Fantasy gets the Monkey Island treatment". An excellent fan-translation exists that manages to keep the original tone.
  • Pathologic (also known as Pestilence or Мор. Утопия): a truly bizzare and unique Russian game, combining adventure, survival, role-playing and lots of nightmarish vibes. Boasts a head-ache inducting lore and a persistent world, so things roll regardless if player interfeers or not. Got a HD re-release recently with proper translation, thus non-Slavs can finally enjoy the game properly too - previous English translation was a nightmare by itself.
  • Professor Layton series: A refined gentleman investigates mysteries by solving lateral-thinking puzzles. Beautiful watercolor art and solid writing, though the puzzle setups become increasingly absurd as the series goes on. A great series to mine for dungeon puzzles. Any games after the first six are not approved, due to the writing devolving into cliche anime bullshit and a distinct drop in puzzle quality after the death of designer Akira Tago.
  • Star Control series: A mess of alien races in the grand tradition of Niven et al. kill the shit out of each other. First game is turn-based strategy, second game is somewhere between an RPG and an adventure game; both have a surprisingly deep arcade combat system. The second game was released as open-source software by the developers.

Warhammer Games

Miscellaneous

  • Roguelikes
    • Curious Expedition which pokes fun at the pulp adventure genre; think Hollow Earth as a black comedy
    • Darkest Dungeon the newest love-craftian dungeon crawler with grimdark setting and overall edginess.
    • Don't Starve a pretty-looking survival and exploration game that's fun with friends, and does horror like The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.
    • Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
    • TEARDOWN, a Space-Hulk roguelike
    • Nethack
    • WarpRogue, a 40K-inspired roguelike
    • Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead a post-apocalyptic top-down survival game that looks like Dwarf Fortress with a texture pack and lets you drive cars into zombies.
    • Pixel Dungeon and it's forks coffee break roguelike optimized for phones. FOSS so there's tons of forks. Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a very good version and is on Android Play Store and F-Droid
  • Good FPS games
    • Borderlands 2, a memetic lolsrandom dumb game, but special mention goes to Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, as it is a role-playing session involving main characters, with all the crazy hijinks of Borderlands involved.
    • DOOM, Hexen, and Heretic: With a vibrant community because the games are easy to mod and has produced no shortage of mods (or WADs as they're called in the community (officially, the file extension 'WAD' means 'Where's All the Data?').) Interestingly, Doom was inspired by a D&D game run with Lead Dev John Carmack as the DM. Director John Romero's character recklessly gave a dark tome to a demon in exchange for the magic Daikatana which caused demons to overrun the material plane and the world to end. Visually, parts of the games (Hexen and Heretic especially) are reminiscent of a gothic dungeon.
    • Crysis, Three games provide a very moddable engine with a very versatile set of physics combined with a pretty absurdly large modding community that has among other things, created a perfectly workable Mech Warrior game out of Crysis Warhead. Even if you don't care for nanosuit action, the mods alone are worth checking out.
    • Escape From Butcher Bay a Riddick-licensed game that combines great stealth elements with even better combat sequences and a slight horror vibe, all in the sauce made off used future aesthetics.
    • EYE: Divine Cybermancy: A really weird FPS/RPG due to its cyberpunk fantasy aesthetics, almost an RPG. Extremely buggy due to being a Source Engine game that wasn't made by Valve. The developers absolutely love Warhammer 40,000, made the setting for EYE a lawyer-friendly clone of 40k, and were eventually hired by GW to make the 40k game they wanted to make in the first place.
    • Far Cry series, which has completely different tone depending on installment and is just one huge mine of ideas for extremely pulpy scenarios. Special mention goes to Far Cry 3, which pretty much reinvented the franchise, and its standalone expansion Blood Dragon, which is a hilarious parody of the 80s neon aesthetic. Primal and later installments are not approved for being either heavily rehashed or just completely unnecessary.
    • Guns of Icarus, a steampunk flying team deathmatch with set roles.
    • Iron Storm - it's 1964 and the World War I is still going on, with complete stalemate perpetuated by industrialists on both sides. Your mission is to infiltrate and destroy nuclear program of the "bad" side. W40k games wish they were this good in presenting endless, sensless war.
    • Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a truly generic story of "from zero to hero", involving blacksmith's son climbing the social ladder of medieval society until knighthood. But what makes the game unique is the fact it's a historical RPG, set in specific area of Bohemia during a specific period with autistic levels of research behind it, providing more data about its own setting than your typical edutainment game.
    • Penumbra series: The easiest way to describe it is to call it modern take on At the Mountains of Madness, only set in Greenland and with massive conspiracy looming over the story. Warning, very tense horror games (while avoiding jump scares) with unique control and physics system, so it might not be your cup of tea.
    • Quake: At least the early games, for similar reasons for DOOM (they were both made by the same company). Quake 1 is a good and challenging FPS that takes cues from Lovecraft in terms of environments and monster designs. Quake 2 is somewhat easier, but is deliciously grimdark sci-fi; it's about fighting cyborg aliens that make more of themselves by capturing conquered races and fitting them with cybernetics/forcing them into a hivemind against their will.
    • Team Fortress 2, a game descended from a Quake mod now over 10 years old and still going strong, is a multiplayer FPS with a 1960s theme where players pick a team, one of 9 different classes, and battle to the death. Also, hats. Two hats in this game are 40k references, allowing you to dress your Heavy up as an Ork.
    • S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series: Roadside Picnic: The Video Game. A nice combination of free roaming, excellent gunplay, tense atmosphere and really freaky lore.
    • Thief 1 & 2, the grand daddy of stealth games, with one of the most original settings ever created for games (a combination of industrial - but not steampunk - medieval and paganic elements). Strong story, good characters and makes you feel like a master thief indeed. Reboot from 2014 is unapproved and shunned.
    • Wolfenstein series: Combines sci-fi, fantasy and World War II elements amidst the Nazi-killing.
  • Good TPS games
    • Max Payne 1 & 2 Finest product of the neo-noir genre, especially the second game. Amazingly strong story in both games, with a lot of Norse references in the first one. Also, the game that introduced bullet time as game mechanics. 3rd game is unapproved for being just a bland, boring and utterly pointless sequel.
    • Prince of Persia, especially the Sands of Time trilogy. Accept no substitute for Arabian Nights game.
    • Tomb Raider series Preferably games created by original studio, Core Design, but anything up to Underworld goes. A swift balance between serious and pulp tone, providing simple plots and a more and more complex locations. Also, good source of creative traps. Reboot from 2013 and what follows are disapproved and shunned, being just generic cover shooter.
  • Mechwarrior, because /tg/ loves Battletech.
    • MechWarrior I is lauded as a classic, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior II is lauded as the best
    • MechWarrior III is lauded as the most engrossing storywise, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior IV is lauded as the latest and greatest, and thus the best
    • MechCommander II is lauded as most like the tabletop, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior: Living Legend is lauded as best for multiplayer, and thus the best
    • MechWarrior Online is the worst.
  • Classic console games
    • Jet Set/Grind Radio seems to have enthused one orky drawfag to the highest of possible levels, make of that what you will.
    • Conker's Bad Fur Day
    • Metal Gear
    • Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, and Castlevania (the four games series share so much in common they deserve to be discussed together). Why? The exploration-heavy nature of the games, the feeling of growing more powerful as you collect enough gear and relics to make an adventuring party jealous, the incredibly memorable boss battles, interesting backstories (Metroid immerses you in backstory at your pace, via scans and lore pickups, leaving much up to your imagination), and providing many ideas for scifi or fantasy RPG session.

Games that can be used to troll /tg/

  • Most other MMORPGs. World of Warcraft, as the most successful to date, is especially effective. Special points to Star Wars: The Old Republic for being a massive disappointment for a popular franchise.
  • JRPGs, for often recycling the same plots over and over and having identical structure. Along with of course cringy bad character designs in some cases.
  • Any of the modern Final Fantasy games, which somehow keep getting sequels despite being financial failures. Some fa/tg/uys have a fondness for the early ones, mostly because the first one rips off D&D pretty squarely.
  • Evony
  • Skyrim, although it is good as a pregenerated fantasy world simulator you can dive into, it isn't an RPG. Reasons include having no choice to complete quests how you want, horrible dialogue, and uninspired combat and enemies and being re-released so often that it became a meme that lasted for years.
  • As a note to the above, you can say the same for Oblivion. Heavily uninspired landscapes, dungeons, and monsters, along with wonky gameplay and terrible dialogue. That's not to mention drastically changing the setting from jungle to generic Europe to be more appealing to the mainstream.
  • Some have thrown this accusation at Fallout 4, although many anons will defend it due to not being as bad as the above. They are wrong.
  • Mentioning the attention Warhammer 40k games have gotten compared to Warhammer Fantasy is a sore spot for Fantasy fans. With the failure that is Dawn of War III and recent success of Total War: WARHAMMER and Vermintide, you could say the tables have turned. Actually DoW3 by itself is enough for trolling anyway.
  • Reminding Shadowrun fans of the terrible Shadowrun FPS is not going to earn you any goodwill.
  • Sonic The Hedgehog. The fans are everywhere, and the butthurt is unfathomable.
  • Nintendo games have ultra-dedicated fanbases, and also hardcore haters, except for series like Metroid, Zelda, Mother, or Kid Icarus which are generally respected. Mentioning Pokemon in a positive light or stating the controller of "the best" console they released is a sex toy may cause an internet fight.
  • Games with bad random number generators. Even highly approved of games like Mordheim: City Of The Damned will cause a shitstorm when someone is reminded that a supposed 95% chance to hit can result in four consecutive misses.
  • No Man's Sky - such a huge waste of potential. Bringing this game up is a good troll move on /v/ as well, but everything's a good troll move on /v/.
  • Blizzard. JUST. Blizzard. (ACTIVISION Blizzard now, fuckers! The shit train only goes downhill from here!)

The Game List That People Copypasta

Every so often, someone posts on /tg/: "Wow, you guys are so smart and cool; can you recommend some video games to play for those hours when I'm not playing tabletop?". It happens so often that people have made copypasta for the occasion, even image copypasta.

You will find a lot of those games on Good Old Games, DRM free, for 6 or 9 bucks. Or for free if you pirate, which can often be justified by the original creators leaving the development company so all the Profit goes to people who don't deserve it. Your choice.

For any video game that someone felt was good enough for a full page on this wiki, see Video Games

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