Best current WinXP game?

[new2amga]

Dead Space is indeed Jaw dropping, and looks better on a monitor I think basically because you sit closer.  I played in in XP and it looks great, but, unfortunately, it has some minor problems with VSync, causing the mouse to go crazy on a lot of PC's.  Fallout 3 is nice, if you like browns and greys.  It's basically Oblivion with Guns, really.  :-) Mass Effect will tax your system a lot, and will look good doing it.  Either of the Crysis games will attempt to bring your computer to tears and beat it with it's own keboard cord.  From what I understand, they aren't coded the best.  I've only played warhead in Vista, and it ran kinda like a pig.  However, I don't have the greatest system known to man.  My Vista score is only a 5.6.  Basically any of the newest games that are out that strike your fancy, check a review to make sure you don't get something you will hate, pick up a copy and play to your hearts content.

Nathan

[RRunner]

If you like strategy games, consider trying Sins of a Solar Empire. Or... if you like roll playing dungeon crawls try Dungeon Runners (free online MMO) which reminds me a lot of Diablo.

[JuvUK]

Crysis 1 great game, crysis warhead is poorly coded (bloatware) farcry 2 is a far better game and looks better IMPO, call of duty worlds at war is cool, c&c3 red alert is also finda fun (acting is v funny) dead space looks great but it is a console game and so plays badly in the 3rd person, camera goes in all kinds of wierd ways.
  hope this helps, JuvUK

[Crisisdog]

Well, not too current, but I liked Gears of War for the PC.  I still can't get familiar with using a handheld controller for FPS games, so I found it to be a very good game, despite what others may say about its port from the Xbox.  It's a resource hog, I finally got it running smooth at 1920 x 1200 resolution with an overclocked Core2 @ 3.4GHz.

Call of Duty 4 has a good story line too for a FPS, along with nice visuals.

GRID racing has some nice eye candy for car racing, but I find it to be very unforgiving if you make the slightest mistake.

Crysis is a PC killer for benchmarking and has great visuals, but the story is short and ho-hum, and it requires some ingenuity in using your special abilities to get through the game.  Some have found it difficult / boring.

If you've got a PhysX capable system, get Unreal Tournament 3 and download the PhysX specific map pack from nVidia.  The redo of the "Heat Ray" level in the middle of a hail storm is unbelievable.  Explosions and the use of the gravity wave gun throw the hundreds of hail balls all over the place.  Never seen anything like it.

 :-o

[ferrellsl]

Far Cry 2

[Allanon]

I'm playing Fallout 3 right now, and IMO it's a must.
Oblivion is another great game with tons of add ons that shape the game like you want.

[darule]

I'd like to add Eve Online

Dead Space sounds interesting. I'm gonna take a look at that.

[_Steve_]

GRID racing has some nice eye candy for car racing, but I find it to be very unforgiving if you make the slightest mistake.

GRID isn't that unforgiving. It just has a steep learning curve when you first play it. Once you have a few races behind you on the lower difficulty level, you can ramp it up and play for a much more challenging drive. The ability to flash rewind and play before an error also helps, but this is a restricted feature and I have found that more often than not, after restarting the car has a habit of veering left or right at the second you restart, meaning you have to be really careful.

That said GRID is a cracking little racer.

Crysis is a PC killer for benchmarking and has great visuals, but the story is short and ho-hum, and it requires some ingenuity in using your special abilities to get through the game.  Some have found it difficult / boring.

Crysis wasn't that hard to be honest, aside from the final level where it got a little more tedious than anything to kill the final boss. Far Cry 2 is a much much much more tedious game (albeit a great looking one).

Dead Space has been reported to be a very nice game - just not on the PC because of the control system which is better suited to the consoles.

Fallout 3 has been reported to bo th be quite buggy, and installs a lot of hidden drivers/drm on your system, which can end up making it very unstable. This is one of those times where the game is best bought via Steam (which has none of the DVD DRM related issues), or for a console.