I still pull out X-Wing and Tie Fighter every now and then.  Never did get all the way through either of those.  Those are great games (especially Tie Fighter), but can get a tad frustrating when you get stuck on a mission.

It's likely an issue with the nVidia driver.

I recently reloaded WarChest onto my new PC.  I was able to get Allied Assault running.  But I couldn't get either of the expansions to run (Spearhead or Breakthrough).  Hunting around some message boards, I know some people mentioned that it was a conflict with the nVidia driver.  Supposedly there is some kind of workaround, but I haven't played around with it lately.

Republic Commando

Max Payne 3

A new Jedi Knight game.

And a PC version of the new Indiana Jones game they're producing for the next gen consoles.

Tomb Raider : Angel of Darkness.

Bad story.  Abysmal controls.  A playable new character that handled even worse than Lara.  Pointless "new" features.  Some senseless puzzles.

TR series had been struggling for some time heading into that game, and that one just about buried it.  Kudos to Eidos for turning the franchise over to Crystal Dynamics and getting the game back to its roots.  TR Legend was very promising, and TR Anniversary looks great.

Like most, I start out on medium / normal the first time through.  That usually provides a decent amount of challenge without getting frustrating.

If it's an expansion pack or sequel to a game at which I was pretty good, I might crank it up a bit.

I haven't played COD1 much since I got my Dual Core processor, but I have had issues with a number of other games (both SW Battlefront games, the Prince of Persia series, and misc others). 

My problems have all been related to game freezes and lockups (I also have a Pentium, and you mention you have an AMD).

All that being said, someone on another forum gave me a good tip that has always worked like a charm for me.  After you boot up the game, do a ctr-al-delete and go into the task manager.  Find your game running under "Processes", right-click, and select "Set Affinity".  This should list all the processors running the game.  De-select one of them, and it might help.

The original Tomb Raider.

And hey, what do you know, they're making it, and it's due in May.  Looking forward to Tomb Raider Anniversary.  Sounds like they're keeping a lot of the best elements from the original, while adding some original twists so that it's not a total retread.

Take some of those vast environments from the original TR and apply TR - Legend's visusals, and I think it's going to be a heckuva game.

The original Myst. 

It didn't really have an ending.  I had to go online to read a walkthrough to see if there was something more I had to do or if that was it.  Sort of strange for a story-driven game.