What games do you always leave installed?

[runtheplacered]

There are two types of games in this scenario. Games that you install, play, and delete upon completion. Then there's games that you install, play, and leave installed because you either can't get yourself to uninstall it, or it's something you know you'll want to play sporadically at any possible point in time.

For instance, although I may format my harddrive and reinstall Windows, I will still automatically install Civilization IV and Counter-strike:Source. Although Left 4 Dead is still fairly new, I can see that game falling under that criteria as well, but that yet remains to be seen. Those are games I know I'll want to play time and time again, until their inevitable sequels comes out. I may love to death games like GTA IV and Fallout 3, but they aren't games that I may want to play on a whim.

Anyone else have games that they do this with? Console gamers, feel free to jump in with whatever games you leave installed on your harddrives, too.

 

[Dechef]

Warcraft 3, I always come back to it to play some tower defense.

 

[Skilen]

Always keep Stronghold: Crusader and LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth installed. Age of Empires 2 is another long-time favorite.

 

[countrysteaksauce]

Heroes of Might and Magic 3, I can always pick up a game and play it with its extremely low requirements.

 

[Avatar Roku]

I'm a console gamer, so a similar question for me would be what games I keep coming back to. For me, Mass Effect.

 

[Jursa]

Quake 3, sometimes nothing beats going to kick Xaero's ass on high difficulty.

 

[Signa]

Morrowind and Puzzle quest.

I also HAVE to leave Mass Effect installed because I don't know whether or not I'll be able to reinstall it.

 

[Avida]

Quake 3, Worms world party, Good RTS's

 

[Antiparticle]

DOOM & DOOM II, Quake 2, StarCraft, Uplink, Red Alert 2 and C&C: Renegade. I always play those games again sooner or later.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Day of Defeat Source, Unreal tournament (for Lans), SWAT 4 and TF2


Good old run'n'gun never gets old.

 

[samsprinkle]

Diablo II. come back to it about once a year...

 

[Aardvark]

Armageddon Empires. As I always have a laptop with me, this game is a fun little timewaster on the many many public transport trips I have to take.

 

[vesavius]

Civ 2...

Love that gane so much still

 

[Varchld]

Rome: Total war,
Black and White 2, C&C3 (only because i mean to finish it, but really can't be bothered),
CoD4 for multiplayer, WiC for multiplayer,
Dawn of War and Expansions becuase reinstalling all of them takes too much time,
one or two Hitman games,
my MMO installs despite not being subscribed to any (i "might" pick one up again and don't want 50 patches to download ><),
Sims2 and all the expansions (same reason as DoW), Operation Flashpoint until recently.
And Steam games, I have the dvd for most but easier to leave them all there then sort that out.
That's about it.

 

[geldonyetich]

City of Heroes, though not currently installed, is a game I might come back to and so I'm hesistant to uninstall it. (It only is right now because I swapped a hard drive since my last play.) After 1,400 hours of play, I'm beyond sick of it, but you never know I might come back if Champions Online isn't released in time (or disappoints).

Warhammer Online will probably join it there for awhile. It's my current if-I-were-to-subscribe-to-a-MMORPG-what-would-I-subscribe-to go-to game. Mythic knows how to make a good MMORPG, and if you think its' "dumbed down World of Warcraft whose popularity is overrated" then you've got it the wrong way around.

Neverwinter Nights 2 seems to be a stubborn resident of my hard drive, despite the fact I'm largely sick of AD&D 3rd ed. I think I keep it installed on the grounds that I suspect that one of these fine days I'll miraculously start liking it long enough to finish the campaign, develop awesome modules, and become a +3 vorpal sword wielding porn star.

Similarly, Oblivion remains installed as does Fallout 3 despite the fact I bored of the games but I'm thinking "one of these days" I might develop a plugin to solve everything I hate about them now. (Fully knowing that the hard coded bits of the game is where that hatred originates.)

GameTap [www.gametap.com], if you can count this, if only because it's an incredibly cheap way to play all those games I couldn't afford or make time for when they were new. It's really less of a game and more of a distribution engine. I might as well include Steam [www.steampowered.com] while I'm at it.

Since I got involved with it, BYOND [http://www.byond.com/], which is basically a free-to-play online game development kit that's a whole lot more open-ended than anything else you'll find on the market. (Well, other than Flash or Java, but it's cheaper than the former and easier to use than the later.)

BYOND's population could probably be described as 80% 12-year-old Anime fiends who have evaded copyright infringement on the grounds that nobody's ever heard of this. However, the other 20% is aspiring game designers, and I have to say it's probably the quickest and easiest way to get started making online games. In fact, this isn't Malware, so go tell all your friends and family about this noble Richard Bartle-endorsed endeavor to provide a free cool development kit to the masses, won't you?

Besides that, meh, games come and go. BYOND and GameTap are probably the only real permanent residents on my hard drive. The other games' days are numbered: City of Heroes will probably be replaced with Champions online. Neverwinter Nights 2 with (eventually) Neverwinter Nights 3 or some clone that does NWN better (Knights of the Old Republic online perhaps). And so on.

 

[kanyatta]

C&C Red Alert 2

Arguably the best RTS ever made never gets old. I can get tired of Starcraft after a while (yes, I know, sacrilege) but I could play RA2 forever.

 

[vesavius]

Neverwinter Nights 2 seems to be a stubborn resident of my hard drive, despite the fact I'm largely sick of AD&D 3rd ed. I think I keep it installed on the grounds that I suspect that one of these fine days I'll miraculously start liking it long enough to finish the campaign, develop awesome modules, and become a +3 vorpal sword wielding porn star.

lol, I can relate to this one so much

 

[videot76]

I have to say Baldur's Gate II, and lots of the really old Sierra games for nostalgia. (The LucasArt adventures are better, but plays better off the CD's as well...)

 

[LCP]

2TB of disk-space. No need for me to uninstall any games, and since all of mine are from steam I install everything

 

[Dubiousduke]

Tribes 2, construction mod.

I never know when the urge will hit me.