Top 5 WOW Factor PC games!

Some games out there just make you say wow in disbelief when you first play them. This post is a poll for your biggest WOW factor PC games since the year 2000. THey don't have to be your favorite, instead they should be games you were amazed by or had to tell someone about when you first played them.

For me:

GTAIII: I was totally shocked be this game, I could go anywhere and do anything in a large living world. I probably played this game for 80-90 hours before I even tried to beat it. I remember trying to fly the dodo from the airport to the main island for many hours finally making it. It was the open world that made me say WOW.

ROME TOTAL WAR: I love history and it is how I make my livelyhood, so when a strategy game comes out based in one of my favorite time periods, I just have to get it. RTW's battle shocked me to the core. Large deep battles that looked fantastic put me in a state of disbelief. I was so used to controlling individual units on top down RTS games. RTW made large scale, strategic battles amazing and a reality. I have plaed the others, but this TW game gave me a WOW factor unlike the others, and is just a great game.

OBLIVION: Go figure. Large expansive world. Highly detailed living world, and terrific graphics and sound made me shocked when I first plaed this game. It set a new level for RPG immersion. Morrowind would have won this spot if it wasn't for the poor combact mechanics.

BATTLEFIELD1942: Again a favorite time period, bet this game stands out by really letting you fight large scale battles where there are so many wow moments. Planes crashing right into the ground in front of you. Tigers pulling up next to the little bunker you are in. Huge battles and great graphics for the time. So many moments that just made me say wow!

FARCRY: The game that kept HL2 off my list. Smart enemies, amazing detailed graphics, lots of room to approach, and vehicles. This game truely redefined what a FPS game should be. If you haven't played it yet its only $10 and worth 5x that still today. Not to mention the level variety and length were perfect!

RUNNERS UP: HL2 (if released before farcry would have won), C&C Generals(first 3d rts I loved), SUPCOM(something new and massive), COH(I really wanted to put this on there), MOH Allied Assault(Intense FPS set some bars), BF2 (Took BF1942 to a whole new level), and Fear(hate the level design, but combat is insane), and GTA San Andreas(allows you to do pretty much anything in the largest/varied GTA world to date).

Homeworld: huge maps, beautiful space scenery, eery music....when you return to base and find your planet on fire, and Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing...I mean, I actually felt desperate, lost, and depressed. Then the tribal drums kick in as you spot some enemy and you think its time for payback! And the great thing about it is that they maintained this feeling throughout the whole game.

Shogun: Total War: huge freaking armies, 'nuff said. The rest of the series was great, but Shogun had the initial wow factor

World of Warcraft: my first experience with an MMO, and the size of the world just boggled my mind. No load times, thousands of people online, sweet and easy gameplay. And every new instance I accessed as I progresed was just too cool. Every one was so concerned with loot, but I just liked doing instances for the sake of exploration and combat.

The first five minutes of Bioshock: one of my biggest letdowns, but frm the moment your plane crashes it was both beautiful and mysterious. As your submarine sank below and the screen folded up and you were treated to a flyby of the underwater city, it really set the tone. And then the actual gameplay kicked in and it was average....bleh.

Battlezone: a great game, it had me feeling the same way about Homeworld. You are in this epic struggle, all hope seems lost, but you the player always manage to come out on top. And the missions were just so diverse; whether you were leading APCs and rocket tanks againsta Soviet base, or scouting Europa (ice moon) on foot and sniping Soviet drivers out of their tank so you can infiltrate their base, it was all very intense.

Max Payne did have the wow factor back in the day for me. As bullet time was a completely new thing, the firefights were damn impressive at the time.

Morrowind. The first really open-ended gaming experience for me. Ah..

STALKER. Amazingly detailed, super realistic and huge open-ended world combined with unique gameplay. Could be my favorite of 07.

Crysis. Graphics. Nuff said.

COD4

World in Conflict

KOtor

Brothers in arms

half life

i can talk all day about these games but i wont this is my list.

Halflife

Homeworld

Baldures Gate

Rome: Total War

Call Of Duty

WoW : Huge world, tons of players. One of my first MMO games.

Hl2 + CSS: I still play CSS today, great game. The graphics in HL2 were amazing...today they are still considered good.

Halo 1: Great game, loved playing it with friends. Sadly, Halo 2 and Halo 3 sucked.

Half-Life 2: The graphics just blew me out of the water. The facial animations were just so amazing. The water effects, the sound, the explosions, the enviroments, the lighting, everything about that game was amazing. Then the physics, wow that was a treat. Those phsyics based puzzles are still fun after the 10th time through them.

Rome Total War: I had played Shogun Total War to death but just Rome made me drop my jaw. Thousands of beautifully rendered characters battleing it out on a massive map. It was one hell of a sight to see. Large cities being seiged with siege towers, boulders hurdleing through the air, hundreds of arrows flying into the massive ranks of soliders, nothing came close to Rome Total War.

Homeworld: This is still my 2nd favorite game of all time (next to Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies). It is the best RTS ever made in my opinion. When I first played this my jaw dropped. The beauty of the graphics for 1998 was just amazing. Even now they are pretty good. Seeing all the contrails of the fighters and intercepters as they wizzed in and out of large capital ships slugging it out is still one hell of a sight to see. Not to mention the atmostphere, aided with music that is only 2nd to the Final Fantasy series. When you return to Kharrak and see it burning with the ruins of the construction ship orbiting the planet and Barber's Adagio for Strings is being sung by a choir in the background, there are just no words to describe the feelings that overwhelm your body. Still could very well be the best game ever made.

Call of Duty: When I first played this game I was in awe. I had never played a FPS so epic. The scale of the battles was huge. You really felt like a small part of the battle. The action was so intense. Artillery falling all around you, planes flying overhead, AAA fire lighting up the night, the sound of the battle all around you. It was nearly overwhelming.

World in Conflict: This is the latest one. This game took my by awe. It was the same feelings I got with Call of Duty just on a larger scale. The graphics alone are enough to put a person in a state of awe. The detail in the enviroments, the high polygon character models, the amazing effects, and the size of the maps are just breathtaking. When actually playing, the battle rages all around you. You are once agian only a small part of the battle, but instead of just hearing the battle around you, you see the fighting going on. You see allied tanks engaging enemy units, you see the bombs falling on the entrenched soldiers, you see the shockwave of the nukes as they annihilate your enemey.

Those are my top 5. World in Conflict replaces the original Half-Life. That one put me in awe because it was just so damn good, to bad it wasn't until about 2002 did I actually play through it.

hl2 - the realistic expressions on the npc's faces.

fps: football pro - the play editor is so easy and fun to use. i must have spent days just coming up with plays, tweaking them, practicing them, and adding them to create the perfect playbook. the best game of all time.

links 386 - graphics were just amazing, for its time, and the game was so simple and brilliant.

crusader: no remorse - when i first played ultima viii, i was both impressed and disappointed; i thought the game had a lot of potential, and it was so pretty, but combat was near impossible, and i was left thinking that it had a lot of potential but ultimately was unplayable. so when crusader came out, i wasn't expecting much. but when i played it, my first reaction was 'wow, they did it; they made a great game with the ultima viii engine.'

the sims - after playing for about half a day, i reached the top of the business ladder for my character, and then the game decided for me that my character should have a different career. and i was like, 'wow, i just wasted 10 hours of my life playing this game.' and never again. well, an hour here and there. and then never again.

I don't want to seem like a party pooper but for the two or three chaps who said Homeworld, it was released a year before 2000. YOU HAVE BROKEN ALL OF THE RULES.

Anyway, my five, not in chronological order:

Shogun: Total War: The scale of this game is just utterly epic. Having only played games like C&C and AOE, playing a Total War game is just mindblowing. The battlegrounds are so huge, and the number of troops was just immense. Those visuals may look pretty funny by modern standards, but back then it was pretty awesome. And how exciting it was, as well - for a slow paced TBS/RTS hybrid, it was very exciting. Everything about the game just amazed me.

Max Payne: I'd never seen slow motion in a game before, and I'd never seen such a well told story in a game before. Visually, it was also utterly spectacular. Really, Max Payne is just an amazing game in just about every way.

Black and White:Visually, Black and White was like the Crysis of 2001 - only back then, great looking games were just far more impressive. B&W also featured some really spectacular learning AI. I'd never been as impressed by AI as I had with B&W. Teaching a giant cow to throw poop into the sea. That's really something. Too bad the game itselfwasn't as impressive as the technology behind it.

Escape from Butcher Bay: This game held to an extremely tight and well paced narrative, merged several gameplay elements from different genres, looked beautiful and was based on a film series. I don't think I've ever been as amazed by a recent game as I was with EfBB. It's a perfect example of how games should be, and also shattered the belief that game/film film/game crossovers are always bad. That's worthy of a wow, I'd say!

Team Fortress 2: For such a game to adopt such a visual style and feel in this day and age was really amazing. That it's also one of the most well balanced and all-round polished games I've ever played really just makes me stop and smile every time I fire up the game.

GTAIII: I was totally blown away by the open enviorment, I just ran around shooting people and exploring for weeks before even doing any of the missions.

Half-Life 2: The first time I played this game I couldn't believe how good this physics was. And the story with the chase scene in the begining was brilliant.

In no particular order.

1.Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn: The story and character development just made it such a long deep fun RPG.

2. Halflife: The FPS game I waited years for, a great back-story and awesome enemies.

3. Warcraft III: An RTS strategy game with one of the best stories around

4. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The open environments and taking your time to explore the world and do whatever you want.

5. Knights of the Old Republic: I couldn't believe how immersive this game was, it felt like you were in the actual Star Wars Universe