NetHack

The Good
The gameplay. It all comes down to that in Nethack. A quick description of the idea of this type of game: you descend into a randomly-generated dungeon, with an ultimate quest in mind. There is no way to save your game - once you die, you have to start the game over with a new character.

Nethack is basically just a hack-and-slash game, but there is so much to it that it never ceases to amaze. There are literally thousands of items and creatures. The important part of this is that all the items and creatures interact in just about any way imaginable.

The standard example serves well to exemplify the spirit of the game: lets say you kill a cockatrice. They're not easy to kill, seeing as how they can turn you into stone with their touch. But you've killed it. Now what do you do with corpse? Well, if you have rubber gloves on (so you don't turn to stone), you could pick up the corpse and then wield it like a weapon, so that when you hit enemies with the corpse, they themselves turn into stone. But the best part is this: lets say you leave the cockatrice corpse. Monsters could then come and use the corpse themselves to try to turn you into stone!

This is not an isolated example. This is not "one small feature" that has been added to the game. The whole game is like this!

Perhaps another small example would help. There are quite a few shops in the dungeons of the game. You don't have much gold to buy items in the shops though. Can you find a way to steal stuff in the shop? But of course! You could send you pet in and hope it picks up something you want. Having trained it well enough (training your pet is a whole other story), you can then call it back to your side, where it returns an item pilfered from the store. But perhaps your pet is dead. So you find a pickaxe, hide it in a bag so the storekeeper can't see it as you come in (they check this kind of thing), pick up an item, make a hole in the floor with the pickaxe, and drop down to the next dungeon level, safe from the storekeepers vengeance. Just don't expect to go back to the store any time soon...

Did I mention this game is free? And open-source? And available for any platform? (DOS, Windows, Linux, Amiga, Macintosh....)

The Bad
As much fun as this game is, it isn't the best game ever. It is almost certainly the best hack-and-slash game ever, but hack-and-slash has its limitations. As much depth as the game has, you are still just going around a dungeon, killing things, and doing some quests.

So, after a while playing, it can become a bit monotonous. So you leave the game for a while, but soon you return, to discover something else fascinating about the game, and then you play for a while longer.

The Bottom Line
Just try it for yourself. The ASCII graphics and keyboard interface can be a bit overwhelming at first, but it really only takes half an hour to get used to the game.

Once there, this is the kind of game you will be playing, off and on, for decades. Literally. Most people haven't beaten the game until they've played it for years - I doubt anyone playing knows everything about the game. It is a unique experience, and a great addition to a gaming library.

The Good
Everything. Control, Script (that is, if you call it a script) characters, random generation, all the monsters, all in all, it is a very well-done game. Some might argue "Oh, the graphics suck." So what? Who ever said Graphics were everything? At first, I thought it looked a bit strange, but the tiled (graphical) version attracted me towards it, and I was hooked. I even know of kids who like this game! There is so much depth to how it works, I mean, how many games are there where you can wield a cockatrice corpse and turn people to stone with it? Or, how many games are there where your pet will rob shops for you, and where you can pray? Also, how many games use 75% of the letters on the keyboard, with extended commands, in addition to the arsenal of functions already available? And how many games can send you your e-mail while you're playing?

The Bad
The difficulty can always be a pain. Explore mode is alway available, though! And it's a great way to learn the game without dying at experience level 2. I still don't see how anyone could beat it without backing up save files, as Nethack deletes the save you were working off of (that is, if you saved at all) when you die, and dying can happen fairly often. Also, there is no in-depth story to it all, which would be nearly impossible, as content is randomly generated. And yes, the graphics are inferior, but hey, There's always Falcon's Eye. Also, there is hardly any sound, as music is only played while you use instruments, and even then, I couldn't get my soundcard to work...

The Bottom Line
My personal favorite computer game. A truly edifying gaming experience. Definitely not a game that you want to play because of its superior graphics. A very fun game. If you think it looks strange, and don't play it because of that, it's your loss, as you are really missing out.

The Good
Its easy with its own complexity, fun and relaxing yet gets the heart pumping. The outcome of the game is the same but the gameplay is usually unpredictable due to the randomisation of the placement of items and monsters.

The Bad
The game only contains ONE objective: to get the gem. The animal that follows gets in your way. The animal the follows you steals the good things such as goblin or hobbit corpses.

The Bottom Line
Nethack is simplised solo game not to much unlike World of Warcraft. You stroll around a dungeon, getting stronger as you kill more monsters and are faced with even stronger monsters. HOWEVER the game has an objective; unlike World of Warcraft, to collect the Gem of some wizard and return it. The objective is simple but the journey is not.

The downside is there is only that one objective