Drakan was one of the games supplied for free when I bought a 500Mhz P3 some time ago, and it helped shape my future.

User Rating: 9.1 | Drakan: Order of the Flame PC
Drakan came out mid way through 1999, and I received a free copy when buying a new PC. Although I didn't really play it then, I later got into the single player mode, and found it extremely enjoyable, if a little hard However for the time it was released i don't believe there were any better graphics in this type of game. The first half life had come out the October before, and Drakan blew it out of the water with it's graphics. After playing it through, and getting my first internet connection, I downloaded gamespy, and connected to the Drakan lounge. The online community was at this time about thirty people for the entire world, a very tightly knit community that welcomed me. Multiplayer was a hard step up from single player, with a lot of good players to compete against.

The modding community of Drakan was extremely interwoven with the gaming community, as it is for many community's with such a tight community, everyone would know the progress of each others levels, and many excellent Single and Multiplayer levels were produced in the time I was playing it. Despite having such a small community, someone somewhere was always up for playing against you.

Drakan was the first game that I ever played on the internet, from then I've always been more involved with on-line games, and I'll be hard pushed to buy a game with "an OK single player mode" unless it kicks out some brilliant multiplayer action. Without Drakan I don't believe I'd have chosen my degree in computer games development, and I owe it so much.