The Best Video Games of the Past Five Years that Just Have to Be Bought

In spite of the recent boom in the console market, the weapon of choice for most gamers continues to be the PC. So, for the prospective gamer here are what at least this author feels are the most immersive and incredible games to play on their current rigs which have been released in the past five years....

10. The Orange Box (2007) - First Person Shooter

In the history of gaming there's Before Half-Life and After-Half Life. The Orange box picks up from where Dr. Freeman and Alex left after Episode One and continues their story from there. But Half-Life with uber-cool graphics and anti-aliasing is not just the only cool thing here. Valve also packs in Team Fortress 2, a multiplayer which works on the same engine as CounterStrike and Portal, one of the best Puzzle solving games ever made with some neat twists on Newton's Second Law.

9. Crysis (2007) - First Person Shooter

2007 was a year of some major revamping in gaming software. Gone were the days of smooth textures and real world objects. They were replaced instead by sharp edges and sunrises you'd almost think were real. And at the core of it was a video game with North Koreans and Aliens with some amazingly trippy powers. Crysis, when it came out was a revolution in game technology. And its expansions keep showing us how much it still is.

8. World in Conflict (2007) - Real Time Strategy

World in Conflict was a rather brief but completely immersive real time strategy game set in a parallel universe where the Cold Was led to the USSR initiating World War III. Though the story might have seemed rather tacky and simple at first, it was the nature of the entire conflict that emerged as the real eye candy. Brilliant voice acting and a rather difficult campaign supported by some of the best looking destruction ever seen in a RTS, World in Conflict might possibly be at least the best looking Strategy game ever made. It was certainly the first which made you actually seem like a part of a global conflict, contrary to the God style preferred by most and for just the gall to create something like that and make it such an experience, this game warrants a place on this list.

7. Left for Dead (2008) - First Person Shooter

Shooting idiotic zombies with a shotgun is almost every gamers' ultimate adrenaline rush. Left for Dead then, was the speedball of all FPS games. Stuck in a city with the only way out being to crawl out through a monstrous swarm of rabid humans, Left for Dead was Anger Management Therapy at its finest. Though the single player campaign is a tad bit short, it actually is practice for the multiplayer menace that this game is. Also, the game's AI makes sure you never play the same level more than once in the same way which is just perfect because of course; we all notice the difference between 30 and 32 zombies rushing at once towards our poor old game character.

6. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) - First Person Shooter

Call of Duty is the starting place for most video game enthusiasts just looking for a nice virtual kick. Modern Warfare was the series' first move away from the World War II scene. And it was perfectly timed. In spite of having a terrific single player campaign, it was actually the multiplayer that stole the show. Here was, for the first time the ability to use modern military weapons on a computer screen. Hell, people loved it so much they even brought out a sequel in 2009.

5. Indigo Prophecy (2005) - Interactive Drama

Indigo Prophecy is a rather less-known game which unfurls more like a movie than a standard shooter. Here, guns are replaced by dialogue and the life of a person is dependent more on pressing the right sequence of buttons than shooting someone's head off. However, Indigo Prophecy sucks you in into its world with dark rooms, snowed in streets and the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. 5 years later, it's still the best game to go for if you are looking for a video game with a heart and soul.

4. Mass Effect 1 & 2 (2007) and (2010) - Role Playing Game

Chatting up people? Letting a bad guy go and still be rewarded? Falling in love with an alien? All these things seemed rather far-off until Mass Effect was released. Mass Effect is cyberpunk at its ultimate. A incredibly vast world (galaxy actually) with hundreds of characters and quests, you really needed to take some times off your real life to play this. And of course, it taught you a thing about mental puzzles and code-cracking as well. Finally a video game to now make you parents worry.

3. Dragon Age: Origins (2009) - Role Playing Game

Dragon Age: Origins was storytelling through a video game at its ultimate. Neither a single bland line nor a single badly placed pixel, it's almost unimaginable thinking of thinking of this game not being in the top three. Set in a medieval world with an impending invasion by hellish orcs, the game might draw heavily from Tolkienesque imagery but was still original in its core. It was incredibly to see lived in cities with real looking NPC's and no repeated animation (that I know of). This game is considered to even now be pretty heavy on the system, but it's worth the upgrade. Its 20-odd hours of some of the best gameplay ever designed.

2. Sins of a Solar Empire (2008) - 4X game

Here's the thing: This game has no cutscenes and has a gameplay design that looks like something most Second Year students can make. But encapsulated inside this chrysalis of apparent mediocrity was a pupating behemoth of a strategy game. Dubbed by some as Chess on a Computer, the levels were actually hard and needed us to *gasp* use our brains! Also, it gave you the sense of being in a real conflict with real power as you saw titanic battles and seismic showdowns happen in front of your eyes. And if you needed a breather, you could just zoom out and bask in the drop dead gorgeous space background with some lovely ambient music.

1 .The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) - Role Playing Game

It's never happened that in a video game I just spent 1 hour of real time just meandering about and looking at just how insanely pretty a virtual world was. You could see you refection in the water, you could see butterflies on flowers. Flowers that swayed in the breeze so lifelike you could almost smell their fragrance. Of course, some of them could kill you. Oblivion was a masterpiece from Bethesda Studios, who also gave us fallout and Bully. It lasted over 100 hours, made you trek past 600 square kilometers of land and what's most amazing is, it kept the whole act together while doing so. It took almost 4 years for this game's graphics and gameplay to look even slightly dated and to most, it won't even show. No longer the graphic card killer it was once (it cost over Rs.3000 when it came out), its highly recommended that one should take a stroll down Tamriel once in a while, just for the beauty of it.

Some who didn't make the list:::::

Assassin's Creed

Fallout 3

The Witcher

FIFA Manager

Neverwinter Nights 2

Command and Conquer 3:Tiberium Wars.