I have never played Half-Life 2.
Are any of these games worth playing at this point, if I've never played them before? Do they hold up?

Yes, this is worth playing.

I kinda figured H-L2 is a no brainer. I just never had a gaming PC for it, and I didn't really care by the time the Orange Box came around.

A couple of most loved not-terribly-popular games are:

1- No One Lives Forever (1 & 2)
2- Psychonauts

I've never even heard of No One Lives Forever; I'll have to look into it.

I have a nerd/geek reading confession, I've never read the Lord of the Rings. I've read the Hobbit many times, even as a pretty young kid, but never got around to LotR.

Wow. That's crazy. I would highly recommend it, but I'm biased, as I set aside time to read through the Lord of the Rings about once a year or so. Just don't go in expecting it to read anything like The Hobbit does. I can understand why a lot of people don't like Tolkien's writing style in LotR. For some people, it's a real over-descriptive slog. For me, it's just amazing. I don't think I've ever read another book that has drawn me in so hard and so fast.

I have never played Half-Life 2.
Are any of these games worth playing at this point, if I've never played them before? Do they hold up?

Yes, this is worth playing.

P.S. I never played Pyschonauts, other than the demo (which game on the OXM demo disc, maybe?). That's been in the news recently, obviously, and made me feel a little guilty that I didn't play an apparently pretty cool game.

A couple of most loved not-terribly-popular games are:

1- No One Lives Forever (1 & 2)

Hey, I worked on those! You're welcome!

2- Psychonauts

I've never known anyone who's played them that hasn't liked them. Psychonauts was a little slow to get started (for me), but once it got going it was amazing.

And, just as a discussion starter: what are your gaming confessions? What games have you missed over the years?

I have a nerd/geek reading confession, I've never read the Lord of the Rings. I've read the Hobbit many times, even as a pretty young kid, but never got around to LotR.

LotR is legitimate literature. It's not a just a must-read for the story; it will change your understanding of the beauty of the English language.

I know I never finished Psychonauts, but I don't remember why. I might have gotten distracted playing something else, or I might have quite on purpose. No idea.

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Half Life 2 is a lot of fun, has a great story, and I think the gameplay holds up pretty well. I'd highly recommend playing it if you're cool with the game ending with a cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved.

The juxtaposition between exciting and quiet moments in that game is so good, especially at the end with you know who and the you know what and just ACK!

It's really great. Great setting, gameplay, and story.

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Half-Life 2 is a great, solid FPS but I never felt it was the greatest game ever. It has some great characters and art direction, but the story doesn't really go anywhere.

As a Marathon fan I was shocked when people raved about the story in HL1. I mean, yes, it had lots more to it than Doom, but really, where was the character development? Where were the characters? Great game, great atmosphere, it teased some lore, but really, story wise, it was kind of flat for me.

HL2 got much better.

Replayed it this year after it got it's modernization patch (it ran like shit on modern systems until this), and Steam Workshop support. I definitively recommend using the patch if you're going to check it out. It's mostly small stuff added back but it adds up to make the experience much better. Unfortunately the ending is still weak, though better, but the game itself is great.

Overall I like it better than KotOR 1, though only slightly. The rushed development hurt it a lot more than New Vegas. If Obsidian would have had the extended time to finish KotOR it would have been looked at a lot more fondly. If anything I think it's a bit more replayable than 1, since a lot of the first game's appeal is built on top of the twist.

I try about once a year to go back and do it but I am just way too effing scared.

As for your thing, HL2 you should play. The others you're fine in missing.

Yeah, I almost feel the same way about Deadspace. I played the second one in the winter time and there was just no good time to play it in the day time. So I just shit my pants every time I decided to play it at night.

Also, I thought dead space was a really good game. And I hate horror movies and stuff like that. And this game was scary. But it was also really good. The game mechanics were interesting and the plot was decently unique. And on hard mode it was REALLY hard.

I try about once a year to go back and do it but I am just way too effing scared.

As for your thing, HL2 you should play. The others you're fine in missing.

I was the playthrough guy when testing Doom 3. The whole game, start to finish, takes 3 hours and 45 minutes to complete. If you're playing on the original Xbox, every cutscene is rendered in-engine. Which means that, in order to render a cutscene, they have to despawn every enemy on the board. So the way to play is to memorize which areas trigger cutscenes when you enter them, run through the whole level spawning in as many enemies as possible, trigger the cutscene to despawn them all, and then go back and pick up all the ammo and items.

I love scary games, and I havent had a good one in awhile. The last few Silent Hills have been more comical to me than scary. I was SO upset when the announced that Silent Hills wasn't coming out. The PT Demo had me scared to death. I was playing in the middle of the day, and still was scared as hell. It takes REALLY good design to create an atmosphere of horror, and the PT demo was by far the best I had ever experienced.

I loved Doom 3, Older Silent Hills, the first Dead Orbit was good, but the ending was kind meh, the sequals got the mechanics down, but lost the horror aspect of being alone in this spacestation. Amnesia is also a good scary PC game.

Kind of went on a rant there, but more to the point, I did not expect so many people to be THAT afraid of games that they quit playing, for me I can't stop.

Easily one of the best games ever made in my opinion. I went back a couple years ago and downloaded it on PS3 and played it. Just as awesome as I remember.

VII and VIII are still my favorite games ever (right above the Halo trilogy), not to mention some of the most influential pieces of art and entertainment on me growing up. I had a highway chase storyboarded for my comic the other day and then I just realized it was the escape from Midgar, gah! The dreamlike art direction of those two games seeded something otherworldy deep in my genes, I think.

We got the PS1 going again this summer and my GF got to disc 2 for the first time recently. She's never played an RPG before so its a lot to wrap her head around.

Easily one of the best games ever made in my opinion. I went back a couple years ago and downloaded it on PS3 and played it. Just as awesome as I remember.

When I revisited it my response was less enthusiastic.

It has not aged well at all, both in terms of graphics and presentation, and in terms of game mechanics. It's a game about just attacking and healing. You can get all the way through that way, and there is very little complexity to the battle system. The materia are supposed to have tradeoffs, such as magical materia making your physical attack weaker, but this is such a small effect in practice as to not matter.

But as a game, I think it was great in terms of scale, scope, and story. Of any game ever, it's really the one that most deserves a remake to overcome the deficiencies of the original.

- I LOVE tactics games, but have never played Final Fantasy Tactics (initially out of protest since so many people acted like that game invented tactics combat. Sorry kids, Shining Force holds that crown).

Did you ever play XCOM? That series I liked a lot. It might not hold up to your standards, but it was a lot of fun.

- Classic Mac RPGs: Quarterstaff, Citadel, Wizardry 1 & 2. SO FING GOOD. The Uninvited, Shadowgate, and Deja Vu.

WHAT!? No Realmz!? come on man! I lived and breathed realmz when I was a kid... so good. I even once named my characters after my family and sacrificed them to ogres and orcs. It was a fun childhood.

Psychonauts has great art and design, a mediocre story, a few very, very cool tentpole moments/boss fights, and frustratingly unforgiving gameplay in the later levels. it is not worth it, imo, and is overhyped in the way that only an indie darling could be. There's also a clear point in the game where you realize, "oh, this is where they ran out of money, stopped doing interesting things, and forced the rest of the game to wrap up as quickly as possible." The feeling to me is like a more stylish Beyond Good and Evil (if you played that). Loads of promise and diminishing delivery as you progress.

Yes, it was a little flat for me after the Napoleon & black velvet levels, but everything after Oleander up through Napoleon was pretty good (for me).

- I LOVE tactics games, but have never played Final Fantasy Tactics (initially out of protest since so many people acted like that game invented tactics combat. Sorry kids, Shining Force holds that crown).

The grind of FFT makes Destiny look like child's play. I was really into it, until I realized I'd need dozens of hours to level up one dude for the next battle, and I needed to do that a couple of times.

So, I was listening to the most recent The Patch and the Ready Up Live podcast earlier today. The Patch talked about Half-Life, and Cruel was talking about Battlefront II on RUL. This, along with the discussion Korny and I had about not giving games enough time to sink in, led me to thinking about games I have missed out on over the years.

I have never played Half-Life 2. I have never played Battlefront II (other than a handful of matches at a friend's house when it was new). Which led to me to thinking about how I've never played Republic Commando, which everyone apparently loved. I never played Knights of the Old Republic II, despite absolutely loving the first one.

I also have never played HL2. BF2 was whatever imo. I think I played RC? Not tops on my list. Rogue Squadron is my all time favorite star wars game, followed closely by KotR 2 (hey look, you listed that one) and Dark Forces.

So, that's my confession, and now I ask a question.

Are any of these games worth playing at this point, if I've never played them before? Do they hold up? They're all cheap enough on Steam. Hell, you can probably get all of those games together for twenty bucks. Should I? What other old games hold up well and are still worth visiting today (that can be easily obtained)?

HL2 is, by all accounts, amazeballs. KotR 2 *is* amazeballs and 100% worth playing (several times over). It's worth it just for HK's dialogue. Oh man.

And, just as a discussion starter: what are your gaming confessions? What games have you missed over the years?

I'll enumerate this later

P.S. I never played Pyschonauts, other than the demo (which game on the OXM demo disc, maybe?). That's been in the news recently, obviously, and made me feel a little guilty that I didn't play an apparently pretty cool game.

Psychonauts has great art and design, a mediocre story, a few very, very cool tentpole moments/boss fights, and frustratingly unforgiving gameplay in the later levels. it is not worth it, imo, and is overhyped in the way that only an indie darling could be. There's also a clear point in the game where you realize, "oh, this is where they ran out of money, stopped doing interesting things, and forced the rest of the game to wrap up as quickly as possible." The feeling to me is like a more stylish Beyond Good and Evil (if you played that). Loads of promise and diminishing delivery as you progress.

EDIT: Also, I've never played Final Fantasy VII, so I'm actually kinda interested in the remake. I know it's not the "pure" way to play it, but I tried to play the real FFVII a few years ago, and just couldn't get past the age of it and gave up after a very short amount of time.

FF7 is great. So are 8 and 9. 8 is my favorite, and people always berate me for it, but screw you, I love it.

My gaming confessions:
- I've never played a pokemon game (other than the columns clone that was N64, and was actually legitimately good).

You're not missing much. If Pokemon Yellow hadn't hit me at the right time when I was a kid, I would have recognized it as a terrible game. But it did hit at the right time, and I fell in love, and pure nostalgia makes me love the games still. I played through Pokemon X when it came out a few years ago and loved it. But honestly, it's not a good game; none of them are. It's not a good RPG. It's just one long, forty hour grind. But I gotta catch 'em all!

- I've never played Minecraft.

Other than trying it a few times at friend's places, ditto. I understand why people love it, but it bores me to tears.

- I've never played a Far Cry game or a Just Cause game (though damn, the latest Just Cause videos I've seen make me really, really want to start playing it).

Never played Just Cause either, other than a demo of JC2 (I think it was 2). Seemed fun, in a GTA just blow shit up when you're bored kind of way, but it didn't grab me.

Other games you may have missed:
- If you never played the original Toe Jam and Earl with a friend, you missed out on one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time.

I never did. I played the Xbox Toe Jam and Earl and had a lot of fun with it, although I honestly don't remember much about it.

- I think Save the Date was the best game of last year. Claude disagrees with me, but it blew my mind thrice over.

I've never even heard of it; I'll have to check it out.

I think you'd particularly enjoy Republic Commando, given how much you like Halo 5. Halo 5 has a lot of roots in RC, thanks to Tim Longo.

I had thought about that too. RC was one of the games I really regretted missing out on about five years ago, but I just never got around to playing it at the time. I'll definitely have to check it out.

There's a big list of games in here, I'll have to see if I can track some of them down and make them work on Windows 10.

I specifically mentioned some of the Star Wars games because I know they're available and super cheap on Steam.