The best and worst PC gaming franchises as voted by readers

Thats the
You could almost roll Elder Scrolls and Fallout into a single category as one game. Same game engine, same developer, same game mechanics, near identical GUI, etc.

But have to agree with the military shooters losing their interest. Battlefield 1942 came out 10 years ago. And at that time it was a phenomenal game and concept. But it's been done, re-done, re-re-done and then done some more. Toss in the problems with the multiplayer portions - the cheaters and the spawn spot campers, etc., and they're just not entertaining any longer.

I'd say that PC Gamer opinion poll is pretty reflective of franchise popularity right now.

Thats my problem with Battlefield... I have a fulltime job and a life. so I want to play a little on some down time. but you play against these tweens that cheat, that play 20 hours a day, that have no life... and its just boring. there should be servers with levels that weed out these tools...

You both hit it right square on the head ... Battlefield 3 is a classic example of cheating on steroids. How anyone could gain any feeling of accomplishment when at the end of the day they have to realize that they are nothing but a low life, scumbag cheat is beyond my comprehension. Game makers could control it but why should they? A quarter of their sales probably go to those that cheat on a regular basis. And once they are discovered cheating, aside from actually being shot, (which I would prefer), rarely do they ever get the full ban.

Yes on COD4 ! I just recently dusted off my copy and am looking to get back in action. Some good comments here...
 
Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 were bad for me. I think was happened was they spent $200 mill making SWTOR and cut down on Dragon Age 2 and ME3 production so the quality suffered but now SWTOR is going free to play. Haa !! Sell outs I wish they spent that money on DA2 and ME3
 
Diablo 1/2
Starcraft
Warcraft 2/3

Of course, current generation gamers are too young to have played them, so they only see Diablo 3, World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2. Shame, because they are the worst games in the franchises while the others are absolutely astounding.
 
One franchise that was completely omitted was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games.

Here's how I feel about gaming at it's present state:

Console ruined PC games and gaming in general. And no, not because developers create games with the consoles being primary points of focus, and then give us crappy PC ports, but because they keep dumbing down and making the games *****-friendly in order to guarantee good sales.

Tom Clancy's games being the perfect examples. Let's take a look at Ghost Recon for example. The game started out as a strictly tactical shooter. Where every move you made counted, and one mistake could lead to the demise of you and your team, or worse yet, a team member that was vital to your operations success. Which was one of the many reasons the gameplay required you to think, weigh your options, and strategize as such. You didn't have no UAV's or any other fancy gadget, video feed from other players and whatnot. It wasn't just a silly run and gun shooter where you could dodge bullets, slide and then take everyone out in a second.

Same thing happened to the Rainbow Six games. Ghost Recon branched off as a bigger scale Rainbow Six, and then both series were ruined. Sales didn't do so good on consoles as they did on PC, so they consolized both.

I am really hoping that PC gaming comes back to its roots with KickStarter, it's pretty much our only hope for non-commercialized games that us, true gamers, want to play. We will buy the game even if one shot in most situations will kill us. We will buy it even though running in like an ***** into a room and getting shot and dying in a split second because this is not Call of Duty is not the way to play the game, which requires us to plan and time our approach in order to complete the mission, and we will not rage quit because a simplistic run and gun approach is also not the way to go.

I am disappointed in game publishers and developers. They have spoiled the new generation of gamers to be thoughtless buffoons, with every new sequel requiring less thought and less difficult actions (yeah, lets simply hover our mouse over 4 different enemies from behind a corner, marking them as targets, and hit a key to insta-kill them all).
 
Shame that Battlefield didn't make the Top 5 cut! While IMO call of duty gets worse and worse, I believe that Battlefield gets better and better with each release.
 
@ElShotte, the same malady afflicting all PC gaming and computing in general: dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.

I cannot believe the TW series is in the top few... those games became all graphics and no gameplay for the under 10s back in '04 when rome was released.
 
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