List analytics aside, let’s look at the next five games.

30 – Dungeon Keeper (Bullfrog Productions, Windows, 1997)
Despite being more than a decade old, Dungeon Keeper is still a lot of fun. The graphics are horribly dated, but the mechanic of digging out an area for your dungeon – creating your own space – is a lot of fun. I’ve never realized it before just now, but Dungeon Keeper really has a lot in common with Desktop Tower Defense. In both, you build a maze to channel creeps through so that you can kill them. In Dungeon Keeper, you’re just building traps and placing creatures instead of building towers and cannons. You’ve also got to mine gold and keep it away from those pesky adventurers. Ah, there’s nothing like laying waste to the kingdom…

29 – Fallout Tactics (Micro Forte, Windows, 2001)
The consensus about Fallout Tactics was that it was a pale shadow of the two main Fallout titles, and I’ll admit that the story and the RPG options present in the original were missing. Fallout Tactics is just a series of missions. But it lets you form a full party and control each of them in combat, which is something I’d wanted badly in the main games. It allows for quite a lot of strategy, and that’s where the game shines.

So you can create a party that consists of a ghoul with a high driving skill behind the wheel of your APC, a sniper who sits up on a fire escape, a sneaky guy who gets close, plants land mines, then waits nearby with a shotgun, and a deathclaw who sneaks in close before attacking. Then, BOOM! Your shotgun guy pops-up at point blank range and cuts two slavers in half with a shotgun blast just as your deathclaw charges in. The other slavers go after the deathclaw but hit landmines. And the ghoul driver comes in and runs down some others with the APC. Meanwhile, your sniper picks off strays. I love it.

28 – Wasteland (Interplay, Commodore 64, 1988)

Wasteland had a release on both the Commodore 64 and DOS platforms, and as such there’s still a version floating around that’s playable on modern computers. Wasteland was a hugely influential game – it ended up inspiring a little title you may have heard of: Fallout.

Wasteland is Fallout, only more so. It’s less tame. Sure, the Fallout games have plenty of blood, but in Wasteland you could do a lot of things that you just don’t see in more modern video games. In Wasteland, you’re attacked by a ten-year-old boy after you kill his dog, and you’re forced to kill the lad. And this is in the first 20 minutes of the game. One of Wasteland’s climactic battles has you battling nuns with assault rifles. And you can sleep with a prostitute and contract wasteland herpes. Good times.

27 – Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance (FASA Interactive, Windows, 2000)

Another reason I loved the old Mechwarrior games was because they were so unlike other mech games. Armored Core and Chromehounds are twitch games. Mechwarrior is not. Even when you’re in battle using jump jets to dodge gunfire, locking on with your missiles, and aiming your PPC shots, it isn’t frantic. The timing feels so much more relaxed – like a real time strategy than a shooter.

26 – Typing of the Dead (Smilebit, Windows, 2000)

Before the Sega Dreamcast version of Typing of the Dead was released in 2001, this was a PC title. It’s now very rare and difficult to obtain, but it’s very much worth it. It’s so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking it up.

Typing of the Dead is a game about which I may never tire of ranting and raving. It’s got a lot of camp value, and to fully enjoy it you need to enjoy the humor of the terrible voice acting and outdated graphics as much as the humor of the ridiculous things you’re typing. I keep Typing of the Dead installed on my PC and play it from time to time when I don’t have any other games lined up. It’s always fun, and since it’s already so old, it never gets old… er.

The most recent example is Trine. The game immediately interested me, since the puzzle/platforming multiplayer co-op sounded like exactly the type of game my wife and I would enjoy playing together. Downloading the Steam demo sealed the deal. While I may have bought the game without having tried the demo, the demo removed all doubt. I now plan to play the game when (and if) it’s ever released on PSN.

Trine PC Demo

A game that I likely would never have bought without trying the demo is Pixeljunk Monsters. Like many other PSN demos, I downloaded it on a whim and it probably sat on my Playstation’s hard drive for a week before I even installed it. When I started playing it, my initial take was that the music was a little annoying and the graphics were too cartoony. But as I do with most demos, I decided to play through to the end before making any kind of decision. The game got addictive. The music was actually catchy. And I wanted more levels. I’ve now grown to love Pixeljunk Monsters, and it’s without doubt the game I’ve put the most time into on my Playstation 3.

Plants versus Zombies was a similar story. While it sounded cute, I expected it to be very much like the Peggle and Bookworm Adventures demos I’d tried: fun, but not worth buying.

After completing the demo levels, I had to play the full game. And it turned out to be the only game I’ve ever played on which I’ve completed every single achievement.

Plants vs Zombies Demo

The last demo that’s floated its way into my mind – I nearly forgot about this one – is the demo for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It was a lot of fun. I got caught up in the stealth upgrades and in kicking orcs and goblins off of cliffs. The game was rated horribly, so I didn’t buy it immediately, but when I saw it in a Target for $12.50, I snatched it up with no hesitation. And it’s a keeper. You can get it on Steam now for even less than that.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Demo

Now I’ll grant you – not all demos are representative of the actual game. The Playstation 3 demo for Resident Evil 5 was terrible, but the game was actually pretty good. The Playstation 3 demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was excellent, but the game itself was horrible and frustrating.

In closing, I can’t write about demos without mentioning the venerable but hilarious demo for Typing of the Dead, which is still available here, especially after having read such a well-written article about the game last week.

For those of you like myself who never had the chance to try out Typing of the Dead on a Dreamcast, you’ve missed out on one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. Granted, it’s no Psychonauts, but when you’re being rushed by zombies with decade-old graphics and you have to type “NEED MY PANTS” or “ANCHOVY MILKSHAKE” in order to kill them, you’ll be laughing.

The great thing about this is that in porting “House of the Dead” to “Typing of the Dead”, they’ve also gotten rid of the protagonists’ guns and replaced them with keyboards hanging around their necks. You can actually see them typing to kill zombies.

When things are thrown at you, you generally need to type single letters to shoot thrown axes and knives, whereas bosses might require you to type “EXTENSIVE COLLECTION OF HAIRNETS” or “I’M VOTING WITH MY FEET”. When I had to type “UNISEX CODPIECE”, I found myself laughing too hard to type. Other things I’ve typed while attacking zombies include “LOSE A RIB”, “MURALS OF GUINEA PIGS”, “TRASHDANCE”, and “ENDLESS MEETING”. And apparently one of the game developers has seen my favorite movie, because once I had to type “I AM YOUR FATHER”.

It’s really tough to find an affordable copy, but EBay is your best shot. The PC demo is all over the place. You can get it from Gamespot, Fileplanet, Gamezone, GWN, and many other places.