Top Five: PC Games

• Guild Wars: Didn't see this one coming, did you? Never before has a game so completely engulfed my life. My enthusiasm for Guild Wars has waned some in the last couple of months, but a solid year and a half of gameplay is nothing to be sneered at. And yes, I will be preordering the next game when it is announced.


• Fallout: Maybe the greatest single player role playing game ever created. Fallout was the first game where I felt that I could do just about anything I wanted and it would be considered a valid option. This is the gold standard against which every non-linear game should be measured. It's too bad that the makers of every single sequel utterly failed to understand what made the first game so great.


• Master of Orion: While many will point to the Civilization series as the pinnacle of the 4X strategy genre, this is the game that won me over. Master of Orion was the first game that ever made me lose track of time. I still remember staying up late at night, trying to finish "just one more turn", only for my bleary-eyed father to knock on my bedroom door the next morning to ask if I'd slept at all.


• Daggerfall: While it has since been overshadowed by future installments in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall was the first game that compelled me to attempt a user modification. I am emphatically not going to link the mod, though it is still out there, but I am proud that I did by bit for the mod movement. Also, on a personal note, this is the game where my character, Kira, first came to life. Poor girl has so many worlds to save.


• Master of Magic: Why, oh why (I lament), did Heroes of Might & Magic get all those sequels and not this masterpiece? So, yeah, it took a few patches to get just right. But it was so very right. *sob*