Top Games to Play When You’re Bored

Boredom. It can strike even the most hardcore gamer. It happens to the best of us - sitting on the couch, staring at the consoles and gaming pc, pondering which game to play. Shooter? Racing? MMO? Strategy? Whatever the choice, it’s got to be a good one, promising hours of entertainment and replay value. Here at Gamer Discord we strive to ease the pain and suffering and list ten great standby titles to play when boredom strikes. Make sure you add your favorites in the comments and we will create a user-generated list in the coming weeks.

Left 4 Dead

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about zombies from years of gaming and watching movies, it’s that zombies really aren’t that scary. They’re painfully slow and dumb as hell, and while they look ugly, they can’t inflict any serious damage. That’s simply not the case with the zombies in Left 4 Dead.

With Left 4 Dead, Valve has taken the zombie apocalypse genre and has done something nobody saw coming. Valve created a zombie game that will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire game. Admittedly, we weren’t on the edge of our seats - we were standing 3 feet in front of the TV, shouting into the microphone, yelling at our teammates to focus their fire on the tank chasing us all over the screen. Of course, this was just in the spirit of cooperative play which is, after all, Valve’s primary objective in Left 4 Dead.

The game’s story revolves around four humans who are somehow immune to the zombie virus and are desperately trying to carve their way through the undead hordes using any weapon they can get their hands on. You and three of your friends get to take control of these humans, and try your best to keep them alive as you travel from safe room to safe room.

Bored of being the good guy all the time? In Left 4 Dead you can opt to be one of several different kinds of special zombies, such as the aforementioned tank. As a zombie, you hunt down the human heroes, whether they’re player or AI controlled, and use your special attacks to shred them to pieces. Boredom isn’t a threat while playing this intense zombie slaughterfest. Stay tuned in late April for Xbox 360 and PC DLC.

Halo 3

If you haven’t played Halo 3 yet, you’ve either been hiding under a rock for the last year and a half (maybe from the Left 4 Dead zombies?) or you’re one of the people who haven’t tried it yet under the assumption that any game selling more than 9 million copies must be a fad. Whatever your reason is, it’s time to take a step back and look upon Halo 3 with fresh eyes.

Halo 3 is an epic science fiction first-person shooter that picks up right where Halo 2 left off. Halo 3 caps-off the series, feeling much more polished than its previous instalments. With near-perfect attention to detail, a mood-perfect musical score, and a fully developed AI, Halo 3 proves again to be the preeminent shooter on the console. However, you don’t play the game just because it looks pretty, you play it to get your adrenaline pumping. Add in the satisfaction of sticking your best friend with a plasma grenade from across the map and you have a solid experience.

Whether you play games for the single-player experience or intense multiplayer action, Halo 3 won’t leave you wanting. You can play through the campaign mode with up to three other people, or you can turn to fighting each other across Halo 3’s oft-copied online matchmaking system. Halo 3 offers a solid single-player experience, but where the game really shines is in multiplayer mode. With three sets of DLC and Forge, Halo 3 offers hours upon hours of replay value.

Empire: Total War

We’ve been playing the Total War games for a long time now. When the series was first introduced in 2000, the terrains had little geometry and troops were simply animated 2D sprites. The series has come a long way since then, and Empire: Total War is currently the marquee title of Creative Assembly’s Total War franchise. The game is a combination of top-down civilization-style strategy and full-scale warfare that simply has no comparison.

The recently released Empire: Total War has already garnered significant media attention and positive reviews. The game deserves the critical acclaim it’s receiving because of its evolution into a war game that puts you in charge of thousands of men, each of whom you can zoom in on and watch fight for himself. The scale of battles match up solidly with historical events and let’s players command full armies set in the war-torn 18th century.

A new addition to the Total War franchise is the inclusion of fully playable sea battles. While nowhere near as refined as land battles, ship-to-ship combat does add a new layer to the gameplay mechanics and should excite fans of the series. If piloting 18th century frigates does not grab your attention, the option remains to auto resolve the battles.

The mechanics that govern how you maintain your empire are greatly improved from previous Total War games. Instead of micromanaging each city, Creative Assembly added a feature where you can set tax rates for your entire empire with a single click. Overall the new feature set makes the series more accessible to newcomers to both the series and the strategy genre. With multiple factions, differing victory conditions and a robust multiplayer, Empire: Total War is sure to please strategy enthusiasts for months to come.