IGN's Top 25 PC Games Ever

We don't usually bother to write about tops like these, since most of the time they're either pointless or just plain wrong, but this time we'll make an exception. The reason is that the "Top 25 PC Games Ever" compiled by IGN over the past few days holds quite a few surprises, without being "wrong"; or pointless, for that matter. The first place (X-COM: UFO Defense) and third place (Star Wars TIE Fighter) in particular might come as a shock to some, but when you really think about it - given you actually played them - there's not much reason for them to be ranked any lower than that.

As a personal favorite of mine, I was thrilled to see X-COM: UFO Defense (better known as UFO: Enemy Unknown) take the top spot. As IGN puts it, "It may be old as hell and you may have to actually disable DirectDraw to get it to run these days but there's still no PC game that can compete with the mighty X-COM. Conceptually it's one of the finest strategy games to ever appear on any system."

The other 24 titles, you can see below, or read a bit about each of them on IGN:

1. X-COM: UFO Defense (1994)

2. Civilization IV (2005)

3. Star Wars TIE Fighter (1994)

4. Rome: Total War (2004)

5. Fallout (1997)

6. StarCraft (1998)

7. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000)

8. SimCity 2000 (1993)

9. Half-Life 2 (2004)

10. Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings (1999)

11. Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987)

12. Battlefield 1942 (2002)

13. System Shock 2 (1999)

14. Company of Heroes (2006)

15. Grim Fandango (1998)

16. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006)

17. World of Warcraft (2004)

18. Call of Duty (2003)

19. Warcraft 2: The Tides of Darkness (1995)

20. Deus Ex (2000)

21. MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat (1995)

22. The Sims (2000)

23. Unreal Tournament 2004 (2004)

24. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998)

25. IL-2 Sturmovik (2001)

It's interesting to note that a couple of last year's PC games have already secured a spot in IGN's hall of fame - namely Company of Heroes (ranked #14) and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (ranked #16), even though some of you may think that Oblivion is not the best choice from Bethesda's Elder Scolls series (do I hear Daggerfall?).

Overall, the most imposing PC developer seems to be Blizzard, whose games were picked three times by IGN in this Top 25: StarCraft (#6), World of Warcraft (#17) and Warcraft 2 (#19) are all there, even though IGN said it would only pick one title from each series of games (apparently they considered World of Warcraft as part of a different series than the Warcraft strategies).

I'm sure there are more oddities you could spot in the above list (as could I), but subjectivism aside, it's a pretty solid list that you can use whenever you get sick of today's run-of-the-mill games, and long for some good old quality entertainment.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)