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Gaming was like breathing. It was the biggest part of my life as a teenager, one of my priorities as a college student, and eventually one of my most expensive “hobbies” as a young professional.
Then all of a sudden, after thousands of hours spent playing across genres and platforms, boredom hit me hard for the very first time in my early thirties. Some of my favorite games soon gave me the impression of being terribly long. I couldn’t help but notice all the repeating tropes and similarities in game design between franchises.
I figured it was just a matter of time before I found the right game to stimulate my interest again, but time continued to go by and nothing changed.
Is it that games have failed to innovate, or that real life is ultimately more engaging?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday January 07 2019, @07:47PM (27 children)
Controllers suck. Use a mouse and keyboard.
Why aren't you picking up X? Because most games made these days suck. One of the best games ever came out in 1998 and it still holds up better than many new titles.
Other time and money sinks are arguably of more benefit to you. Why not fix up your house, or make some fermented foods? Or read a book.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by gringer on Monday January 07 2019, @07:53PM (13 children)
Spyro the Dragon?
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:03PM
Baldur's Gate or Half-life.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Monday January 07 2019, @08:08PM (1 child)
For me, it the best console game was (and still is!) MechAssault version one. [wikipedia.org]
I have yet to find a shooter that's anywhere near as fun as that one. Not a lot of pixels by today's standards, but the gameplay — which I maintain is by far the most important element — was nearly perfect.
The story mode is very good, with decent replay-ability, the team-on-enemies mode is awesome to play with a friend, and the online gameplay mode was outright terrific (no longer, the servers are gone.)
Today, specifically to play MechAssault, I still keep an XBox v1 in my theater system, and still often play this game on game night with my friends. I have owned all the other XBoxen and Playstations, a few of the Nintendo boxes, and currently have the latest ones in the system, but... the XBox/MechAssault combo is still #1.
--
On the Canary Islands, there isn't even one canary.
On the Virgin Islands... still no canaries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @11:28PM
Not to mention the convenient code execution bug in the saved game loader that let you root the box!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 07 2019, @08:09PM (8 children)
Thief: The Dark Project
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @09:41PM (5 children)
I think I played this, briefly - I also think it sucked mightily... a graphic tour-de-force that forces you to keep to the shadows and when you don't you die, almost Zork style - one wrong move and you're dead, restore from save, try again.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:31PM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:53AM (3 children)
I on the other hand found it innovative and fun. It involved slowly and carefully sneaking up behind unsuspecting guards and whacking them on the head, or alternately sneaking through areas robbing everybody blind and leaving without anybody even noticing.
Oh, and there were ways of recovering from mistakes, such as flash grenades that stunned the guards for a bit while you made a dash to get away.
Thief was really a pioneer in stealth gameplay. If you don't like stealth games, fine, but don't knock it because you don't like the style of game.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:46PM (2 children)
Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, I remember playing for about an hour and not "getting anything" from it but frustration. For simple puzzles I'll go back to Riven, the whole "one wrong move and you're dead" thing just never did much for me.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:15PM (1 child)
It's not "1 wrong move and you're dead", it's "1 wrong move and you have to hotfoot it and/or use a flash grenade and/or take advantage of another of the guard's weaknesses."
The game does a fairly good job of teaching you its mechanics. If you pay attention to that, and use the knowledge you've been taught, the first mission goes pretty smoothly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:59PM
Might have been a different game, or I just really took a set against it - I do remember whatever hardware I was running it on (reasonably competent for the day) was struggling a bit, might have contributed to the poor experience.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:39PM (1 child)
oh yeah what a great game that was. all that sneaking and the bow that was great
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:53AM
Moreover, both light and sound factor into gameplay, it encourages players to avoid confrontations, it has an excellent soundtrack and ambient sounds, and the community has created hundreds of fan missions for the engine over two decades (along with modernizing the engine).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:10PM
Total Annihilation came out in 1997. Maybe it was a little late arriving your area.
I was replaying it myself just last week.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @09:32PM (8 children)
One of the things that put me off of Starcraft / Starcraft II was that my mouse hand would go cold from clenching the mouse for 20-30 minutes straight - in really good matches my neck would also get stiff from holding a screen-stare pose for unnatural lengths of time.
Something like Hearthstone you can play without devoting 99.999% of your attention, a lot lower stress.
I think there's a certain psychological value in "screwing off" - doing something that's explicitly frowned upon by respectable society - like drinking alcohol, smoking, etc. Of course, balance in all things, the serious WoW dwellers definitely have taken it too far - once you've had your Saturday night fling, you're supposed to go to confession Sunday morning, then work for your bread Monday through Friday...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mth on Monday January 07 2019, @09:57PM (7 children)
Some people scoff at the term "eSports", but StarCraft is actually a sport, including risk of physical injuries...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 07 2019, @10:42PM (5 children)
Meh, if you don't sweat, it's not a sport.
And if you while sweat playing Starcraft, then you're doing something very wrong.
Golf... maybe - but you better be making good time, and not using a cart.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @10:54PM
Unless sweaty palms count, I don't sweat in Starcraft, but the physical stress is real, and the mental focus required just isn't compatible with parenthood.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:34AM (3 children)
Are you saying that playing Starcraft in a sauna makes it a sport?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:54PM (2 children)
Ha! I almost made that joke myself.
Breaks the logic though
"If !a then !b" does not imply the inverse statement "if a then b"
It does however imply the contrapositive: "if b then a".
In this case, "if it's a sport, then you will sweat" is an equivalent statement
but
"if you sweat, then it's a sport" is logically unrelated to the original claim.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:19PM (1 child)
That's why the question.
Which didn't get answered, btw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:44AM
Fine, fine, I'll go with "No". But only because otherwise reading in the sauna should count too, and I'm not buff enough to be an athlete. :-D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @10:43PM
Yeah, no, this doesn't change our minds: we still scoff at it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mth on Monday January 07 2019, @10:01PM (3 children)
If you go back and play random games from the 80's or 90's you'll quickly notice that they sucked a lot more than modern games. I played some terrible old games when debugging an emulator. The good games from those days still hold up, but the vast majority doesn't.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday January 07 2019, @11:03PM (2 children)
>they sucked a lot more than modern games
I'm not so sure. You're dealing with a big perceptual filter there that skews your judgement: old games look bad by modern standards, and we subconsciously project "ugliness" to also possessing lots of other negative qualities.
A great game can become engrossing enough that you mostly stop noticing the visual ugliness.
A merely mediocre game on the other hand - its ugliness puts all its other faults on prominent display. Faults that aren't necessarily actually any worse than those in a modern mediocre game.
That said - there has been a consolidation, of AAA titles especially, around really "tried-and-true" gameplay formulas. In essence just various "reskinning" of the same polished game formula with different graphics, ad infinitum. That does sort of set the baseline at "highly polished pablum". But is that that actually an undisputed improvement over "promising, but infuriating"?
(Score: 2) by everdred on Thursday January 10 2019, @01:33AM (1 child)
I don't mind the visual look of a lot of old games, but I do have a particular complaint with old FPS games that makes me wonder how I managed to play hundred hours of Doom and Quake in the 90s: a lot of them control horribly by modern standards. To my knowledge it was Half-Life that introduced the "WASD" layout, enabled full-time mouse-looking, and made the default left and right keys "strafe left/right" and not "turn left/right."
Trying to go back and play an old 3D game without remapping nearly every key can be a nightmare.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:33AM
WASD + mouse was in the original System Shock four years earlier, along with jumping, multiple levels of crouching and leaning, and (key based) looking up and down, though they also used keys for turning and didn't use mouse-look, instead having an old-school FPRPG-style free cursor to interact with the world and interface. Not bad for a contemporary of Doom. (And a truly excellent game, one of the all-time classics in my book. I've played through it several times over the years, longing for mouselook more strongly every time - until eventually someone made a patch that added it. I wonder if they ever got it working properly in the fully free-rotation cyberspace...)
2-axis mouse-look by default was definitely a big advancement, and it is hard going back. But while I would definitely say a modern game without mouselook would almost certainly be bad on those grounds alone, I don't think its fair to judge games created before it was dreamed up by those standards.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @07:48PM (1 child)
I can't speak for lack of time/money, but when I do have free time to play I end up playing games that are way different than I used to in my teens/20s. I used to play lots of action, MMO, hack n slash, FPS, racing, RTs, etc but none of that really interests me anymore. Lately I've played things like KSP, Spaceflight simulator, Rovercraft, good ol' solitaire, minesweeper, and text based games.
Keep looking, you might find something. The best advice I can give is open up to new game genres, things you didn't used to play. You might find something you like, if even for a short time.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:48PM
I still play solitaire -- specifically, Seahaven Towers. Sometimes just called Seahaven.
And Sudoku. That's really not an old game yet. I get one a day in my newspaper, and in the online edition it times me. It's really hard getting a good time despite interruptions, having to listen to my wife about something important, etc. The timer doesn't stop, but I have to.
Hyperrogue gold is a new game, in which you wander a world. But the word isn't flat. It isn't round either. It's curved in the opposite way. It's a hyperbolic plane. After playing it off and on for a few days you start to feel weirds about imagining real-world travel.
And there's a lovely and delicate little formal puzzle game called Cityglitch. Some of those puzzles are hard.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @07:53PM (8 children)
Plain and simple grandpa--your reaction time is crap these days. It's a young person's game. /sarc
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday January 07 2019, @07:58PM (4 children)
Just got my ass systematically kicked by the Nephews at Smash over the Xmas break.
I could blame age and reflexes, but having a full-time job and family, which prevent me from spending as many hours practicing and learning tricks, was probably the biggest factor.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @08:33PM
My brother and I used to both play Need For Speed independently, but when we started competing with one another we both pushed to much more extreme levels of performance - stuff that would have been too boring to bother with trying to get right alone was suddenly worth the effort just to "beat" the other sibling.
Lots of (the better) games have a wide margin between casual good feeling play and ultimate high scoring. If the Nephews have been trying to outdo each other, it's no wonder that a casual newbie would get creamed by them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:18AM
Yeah, the job thing always took top billing with my time too.
I considered playing games so unproductive when I had my projects to work on, but admittedly a lot of my priorities changed when the micromanagers took over, and the investors made it quite clear they valued micromanagement more than me by making me subordinate to one.
I had a few older games, but several of the newer games just caused me grief with special requirements and limitations, and I gave up on them for the same reasons I gave up on purchased music... It wasn't the fee, rather it was compliance with business talk, enforced by my own machine against me. Especially things like time limits or requiring additional commitments from me for additional components or drivers.
I hold the least important part of the modern executive business marketing paradigm, that is, the desire to purchase. That is so less important to business as their need to control me by coding my own machine to act as their enforcement and ad delivery agent.
This
So, I am one who lost interest in it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:27AM (1 child)
I used to beat the crap out of teenagers in CS:GO even with my slow reflexes by being better at reading my enemies. Then one day some asshole started abusing me for my rather thin voice, and when he failed to provoke me, spent rest of the sulking and not contributing to the team until in the last round, when I was the only one alive, I was kicked by aforementioned teenagers. Turns out gaming is not what it used to be.
1. FPS games are all multiplayer now and if they have a single player campaign, it is bad and is likely a tutorial.
2. Strategy games don't have much innovation left. Old games are still holding on, though.
3. The monetization is so in-your-face these days that the only people not annoyed by it are those who haven't earned a dime themselves.
4. Single player games are all open-world and open world fatigue is real. Plus a lot of these open-world games are high production quality turds.
I suffered from the same problem as described in TFS around 2 years ago. Just last night I installed Witcher 3 on my Manjaro box (THANK YOU VALVE!!!) and I played it for 3 hours straight while constantly trying to quit. So it may have something to do with fatigue also.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:01AM
Hear, hear.
I really miss the atmosphere and plot of old solo FPSes, modern online multiplayer stuff is just so much shooting at things for the sake of shooting at things, with maybe some paramilitary tactical coordination if you're playing something team-based with a good team. Yeah, deathmatch is a fun way to kill some time sometimes, but it has precious little staying power. Especially when your opponents (and your team, if you have one) are usually just random people thrown together by the server algorithms. Where's the fun in glorious battle if there is no greater goal, and no celebration afterwards with your friends? It's just so much violence-porn.
Though there was co-op mode - not nearly enough games had it, but being able to play through a well developed and atmospheric single-player campaign with a real friend or three by your side (not just whatever random assholes happened to be online at the time)? Taking breaks for drinking and carrying on. That was glorious. I think I spent the better part of a year playing System Shock 2 with my best friend, 4-8 hours most every Saturday.
I've actually found a whole lot of enjoyment in Rogue-likes in recent years, and games inspired by them. Usually simple graphics (often using nothing more than standard text characters), randomly generated worlds, and a gossamer-thin plot, but often with a surprising amount of gameplay depth. And permadeath that usually ends a game within a few hours, but makes the whole experience far more engaging for the risk. POWDER is one I'd recommend as a starting point, if anyone cares (starter tip: much of the dungeon wildlife is actually non-hostile, unless you attack first. Also you can "save scum" to resurrect your fallen hero, though you'll no longer be eligible for the (offline) high score list).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:26PM
That and beginning arthritis.
Aging sucks, and it sneaks up on you sooner and quicker than you'd ever imagined.
(Score: 2) by mth on Monday January 07 2019, @09:48PM
I thought I might be getting too slow when I struggled in Hollow Knight. But then I thought back to the platform games I played when I was young and usually I either used cheat codes or took a long time to finish them. So I think I always sucked at platforming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:15AM
Reaction time is not affected much by age. I have top spots in the casual games and even some duel won against pros and I am almost 50.
What slows down a lot after 35: the time to adapt to new games.
As for the topic, the games seems slow because they are. Get into emulation of pre 1984 games, or in the FPS indie/classic ones where no hand holding or equalizing happens. Some free FPS games for linux are available too. The ideal game has no intro, and a slightly better player will beat you every time. If you don't like that, go for the special snowflake game du jour.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @08:10PM (21 children)
Probably a bit of both. Part of it I guess is that I can't get into many of the new games. I couldn't care less about Fortnite etc, I don't care about the "nostalgia" people either that want me to play, shitty, 8-bit remakes. I think the only fairly "new" game that I actually enjoyed was/is Slay the Spire.
Then as sad as it it to note I can't really play the twitch shooters anymore either, the reflexes clearly are not what they used to be, also playing for to long when the games are nothing but intense keysmashers you get "the claw" hand and that hurts.
But I really do hate the mindset of "now I'm 40+ and have to be responsible and do adult things". Fuck that! Is it better to watch football and do boring shit just cause you are old(er)? Nope. But perhaps games are like movies, I'm no longer the target audience so there are few and far between titles that I do find worthy to invest in.
That said if time permits I still really like a Civilization5 with the Vox Populi mod running game with huge maps and epic pace. It's just rare to find the time these days.
WOW on the other hand have gotten really old and boring as of the last (couple of) expansion(s). But it might have more to do with most of my friends stopping to play and I just don't fancy the game so much more after over a decade of playing it, or perhaps the other part of the player-base have gotten to annoying to have to deal with. It's probably a combo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @08:22PM
>real life is ultimately more engaging?
I tend to binge on a game for a while, but ultimately something in real life distracts me and I'll usually put the "game" down cold turkey to give more time to the new distraction. When real life lacks any adequately compelling distractions, I find another game to play.
"Games" I have played include: Seven Cities of Gold, New House, Starcraft, Modifying my car, Diablo, Writing my own algorithmic world (Conway's Life++), Developing raw forest land for recreational use, Sim City and similar (Cities Skylines), Children, 3d Printing, etc. etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Monday January 07 2019, @08:32PM (6 children)
You poor silly deluded fellow. You do realize Civ II and IV still work on modern computers?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @09:05PM (5 children)
I do, but as noted I only really like it with the Vox Populi mod and as far as I can remember it's only available for Civ5. CivII was great, CivIII was better. I never really liked Civ4, it was very weird until a few of the extra content mods arrived, also I think this was new around the time that I played a lot of WOW. Civ5 was quite bad at the start to but after, as noted, finding out about Vox Populi it became a lot better. So much so that I still can't stand a game without and I was more or less instantly turned off Civ6 -- I like some of the concepts and the graphics but I just hate the tech/social tree.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:51PM (4 children)
Please enlighten the ignorant -- what does Vox Populi do?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:39PM (3 children)
It changes a lot of the core functions of how the game works. Making it both harder and more interesting then normal. It's probably just easier to link to the wiki then to try and spell it all out, I'll probably forget or miss something. As it stands now I don't think I could even bother to play a Civ5 game without it. It really does change everything for the better.
http://civ-5-cbp.wikia.com/wiki/Civ5_CBP_Wikia [wikia.com]
https://forums.civfanatics.com/tags/vox-populi/ [civfanatics.com]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:22AM (2 children)
Does it fix the glitch that only allows you one unit per square/hex?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:03AM (1 child)
I assume you are referring to combat units, in that case no. That is still a thing. So no stacks-of-doom moving about the board as in some of the previous versions of Civ. If not that then you can have workers/diplomats/traders in stacks and with one combat unit, ships can be on top of embarked units to. I don't really recall now which was in the non modded version or not but I think it is the same. It is a bit annoying compared to previous games that you can't cover ranged units with a melee unit on top for protection -- so you have to sort of surround them etc if you want that kind of protection.
BTW somewhat unrelated. Did you use to play a lot of CIV4? I seem to recall someone, with your nickname, playing a lot of GOTM:s over at CF among other things.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday January 10 2019, @02:24AM
Was not me as far as i know but i play CivIV extensively. Before my kids were born five years ago played several hours a day.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 07 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)
At first, MMORPGs were neat. The MMO part alone was once a fantastically fun novelty. No more hotseat turn taking. I started Everquest when it was new, and while I came close a few times to ditching it when a rough edge screwed me, I kept at it. You know how it used to be. You're in the middle of a fight deep in some dungeon, and you get disconnected thanks to a technical problem with your lame ISP. When you return, you find that of course you have lost the fight, died, and been resurrected miles away on the surface. But all your equipment is still deep in that dungeon on your corpse and getting back to it could be a real problem. One of the worst game play aspects of early Everquest was the ocean voyage. You had to wait for a ship, or time your arrival. Ships came only once every 15 minutes-- of real time, not game time. Then it was another 30 minutes, real time, for the ship to cross the ocean. Perhaps they thought passengers could chat with each other during that extended down time. Nope. Sensible people went AFK. If you had a lag spike any time during that voyage, you stopped moving and could easily end up in the ocean because the ship did not stop and would just sail out from under you, and there wasn't much you could do about it.
As Everquest matured, they addressed all those issues. Nice, but the basic game play of kill monster, get experience and loot never changed, and that became unbearably boring. They did try to get a little creative with some of the quests, but the room for creativity was simply too little. In a very fundamental way, it was hardly more than multiplayer Ultima 3, published in the early 1980s and credited as the first role playing game to have a party combat system. And Ultima 3 was merely D&D, the combat and exploration part, the tedious number crunching parts, the stuff that computers excel at, on a computer. Actual role playing is still a bit beyond the so called RPG game. That only happens when the human players agree to play that way.
Games have improved tremendously in the graphics department, but game play, not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:26PM
Almost every MMO that hastry to stay away from the 'themepark' EQ model has failed. Who knows what it will take to get a MMO to succeed outside that genre. Even with WoW becoming a stale game and it's new expansion not doing so well, I don't see any real changes in the marketplace any time soon. The kickstarter games like Camelot will probably have a dedicated niche audience and no real mainstream success.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Monday January 07 2019, @10:03PM (7 children)
Fortnite sucks, because Fortnite sucks. It took me a while to realize it, but Fortnite and Call of Duty, etc. Generally attract the type of gamer I avoid. I.E. loud mouthed, obnoxious, and toxic players. Though perhaps, it's just me that's tired of 10 year old kids screaming obscenities into their headset. Though, I might still recommend Call of Duty: World at War. (The first one.)
I usually bounce around genres of game, if I get bored. Mostly, I've played multiplayer games with a friend, but that friend got a wife that's a control freak. So, not playing with him anymore. We'll just say he wen't off the deep end and leave it at that. I have a steam buddy that I play 7DTD (7 Days to Die) with.
Great games that have come out in the last few years, you may have missed.
Best if played with a friend, but still great games:
Terraria, hands down a great game. It may not be for everyone, but the sheer amount of depth to the game is staggering. People who call it a flat Minecraft clone have no idea what they're talking about. I've tried Minecraft and Minecraft is boring by comparison. Terraria can be as easy or hard as you want. I even got my wife to play many, many hours of that game with me. (1k+ Hours played.)
Sanctum, the game that got me to like Tower Defense games. The first Sanctum is much better than the second, it relies a lot more on the strategy you develop in the creation of your maze and a lot less on the FPS aspects. (10 to 30 hours worth of game play to complete.)
Dungeon Defenders, possibly the best Tower Defense game. It's a TD/FPS/RPG game. There's not that many people playing it multiplayer anymore, but it's still one of the best games of all time. (Several hundred hours played.)
7 Days to Die, a great survival game. It's in perpetual Early Access, and they recently updated the engine. So, there's still plenty of bugs, but so far it's a really fun game. (1k+ hours played)
Great Single Player Experiences:
Fallout 4 / Fallout 4 VR. It's just plain fun. I've played it both ways. I've only get 30hours or so on the normal version and switched to VR instead. I heard bad things about it at the start, so I didn't play this one anywhere near launch time. I should have ignored all the bad press about it. You can literally create your own space in the Wastelands. I wish a few things were different and probably can be fixed by the right mods, but definitely a great game.
I would say, get Fallout 4 if Scifi/Dystopian future stuff is your thing. Otherwise, if Fantasy is your thing, go for Skyrim.
Skyrim / Skyrim VR, is great as well. I've played it both ways now, and seriously there's not much more fun that can be had. VR mage is stupid fun. You can shoot Flames from one hand and lightning from the other, what's not to love? Yes, it has story, blah, blah, blah, Crispy Fried critter is where it's at. I just wish there was an Armageddon spell like in Ultima VII.
( ) Insert Roller Coaster VR game / program / sim here.
Age of Wonders 3, strategy game, like Civ. So much fun here, it's possibly the best in the series, but hampered by DRM. Also, who in their right mind makes play by email an achievement for a game . . . Other than that, it's a truly great turn based strategy game.
X-COM / X-COM 2, the new ones. I played through the first one, but haven't really gotten to the second one. It's a great addition to the X-COM universe. (There's "multiplayer" available.)
Mount and Blade: Warband, this is the best one. This is a "FPS" game with Bows, Swords, Maces, Lances, Knives, Crossbows, etc. I say FPS, but it's also a strategy game, and Kingdom Building Sim. Being a Trader is also a viable strategy to building yourself up. Eventually, you'll want to go smash some skulls, though. Warband is more balanced than Fire and Sword. It improves on the original, and doesn't have some of the shortcomings of "with Fire and Sword." Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword, suffers from instakillitus. They can instakill you 'cause firearms, which is a huge change / annoyance compared to Warband. After spending a couple hundred hours playing Warband, then going to a Fire and Sword, it's just not as fun at the start. Then, once you get sufficient armor, the game becomes a whole lot easier. Sure, the same can be said of Warband, but it's not like it went from Come get Some to Who's your Daddy? difficulty. (Here's hoping for Mount and Blade 2 to be more awesome.)
There's probably others, I'm missing, but 'meh.
You can also try out GOG, it's great for building yourself a library of games you want perpetual access to.
Titles such as these:
Terraria
Sid Meier's Civilization IV (Arguably the best.)
Sid Meier's Pirates (The newer 3D one.)
Ultima VII (The best one. Do yourself a favor and use Exult to play it.)
Master of Magic (Stupidly good Fantasy style Civilization clone. I still actively play this along with Civ IV. I hope they release a fixed/updated Civ II on GOG, but not holding my breath.)
Roller Coaster Tycoon I & II (Don't forget to go ahead and download the open source project that combines the two and adds multiplayer. I believe it's called Open RCT.)
(This is where I would have inserted Duke Nukem 3D, but the stupid publishers took it down. They did the same thing to the Steam version. I have a copy through GOG though, before they stopped selling it. They stopped selling it when they released the new "remastered" piece of junk.)
Wolfenstein 3D (The one that started it all, more or less.)
Blake Stone
X-COM (The Classics, UFO Defense and Terror From the Deep. Probably 3 also, but I never got into that one.) Still play 1 & 2 from time to time.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Kell on Monday January 07 2019, @11:39PM (1 child)
I agree with enough of your picks to say I want to try the ones that I haven't played. And you're spot on with MaB:WB. It's a hugely underrated gem of genius that most people never play deep enough to understand how addictively compelling the later stage modes can be. I've wasted as much time on it as I have on KSP (which isn't on your list, and which you really should try). I too, still fire up X-COM, the original, from time to time. I found Xenonauts to be a worthy successor in ways in which the more recent editions are not.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:34PM
I think I got KSP at some point, but haven't given it a real try. Xenonauts looked ok, but I think the other spiritual successor to the original is better. (I forget it's name, but there's a "gold version.")
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:20AM (1 child)
I quit the Ultimas after 6 proved unplayably buggy. They came out with a patch, but I didn't feel like starting over like I had to do in Ultima 5 because I entered the final dungeon without a crucial item, only to discover it couldn't be exited. Wouldn't have been a big deal, but couldn't have multiple save points either, and I saved after entering the dungeon. Oops. Heck, I didn't even solve Ultima 3 the kosher way. Got tired of the needle in the haystack problem of looking for the Mark of the Snake, and hacked the character disk to give myself the mark. Gave the Ultimas one more shot with Ultima Online, but that was a PVP killfest. 7 is the best, huh?
I played MoM, and yeah, it's mostly a clone of Civ, with a fantasy skin. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. Played the original Civ and Civ 2 as well. The same guys who made MoM also made Master of Orion, did you miss that one? MoM is good, but MoO is better. There's a MoO2 as well.
One of the great classics is M.U.L.E. Multiplayer alien colonization and economics game. 4 people could crowd around one Atari 800 or Commodore 64 to play it.
In recent years, I have had to confine myself to games that I can break away from in an instant, and not come back for several hours, so that pretty well kills off arcade games, unless they have a pause key. Totally kills the MMO stuff. I really enjoyed SpaceChem, a nice puzzle game.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:55PM
Master of Orion should be on my GOG list, but isn't. It's a great strategy game. Though, I think Master of Orion 2 is the better one, if I remember correctly.
Yes, Ultima VII is the pinnacle of the series. The interface is acceptable from a playability point of view even by today's standards. Multiple save points and Exult (Hobbyist engine recreation.) backports some of the features in pt2 to pt1, like the key ring, and things like that. It also makes it a breeze to setup and play on a Modern OS. Sure, GOG sort of does that already, since they preconfigure DOSBox for you, but Exult is still better. You are missing out, if you skipped Ultima VII. Ultima VIII was a disappointment and Ultima IX I never even gave a chance. I played on an Ultima Online PvE Shard (Unofficial Server), but that eventually died. After that I swore off anything with a monthly subscription. The shard was only monthly donation, for extra characters, but it was "worth it" if you were into it. Which I was.
I may give M.U.L.E. a look.
Give Ultima VII a try, you won't be disappointed. You can generally pick it up and put it down at a moment's notice. Yet, it has a huge and rich story, compared to 99% of the RPGs released in recent years.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pipedwho on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:33AM (1 child)
Excellent list.
Here are some of the games that captured me over the years amongst many that I played a bit and were bored before I got anywhere near to completing them:
On my C-64 back in the day:
Old school arcade style that have an actual ending: Impossible Mission, Fort Apocalypse, Lode Runner, Jump Man, and many others I've long forgotten
Old school RPG: Ultima IV, loved the music and play in that game, it was the first of those games I played.
Text: Zork, and heaps of others that I remember the plot line but not the names of. Zork wasn't even my favourite, but it's the only one I remember the name of
On my PC:
Old school with graphic adventure: King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Zork Grand Inquisitor
FPS: Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke Nukem, played others, but they were more of the same and I got bored before I finished them. I might have finished Half Life
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
Modern: ----> Portal <---- this one is awesome, a 'FPS' without shooting, look it up if you haven't heard of it. (Portal 2 lost the magic of the first one)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
IPAD/phone:
Oceanhorn (love this game - very much like a really well done version of Legend of Zelda (which I never played as I never had Nintendo)
Robot Wants Kitty - platform shooter/jumper (I know it sounds lame, but some of the levels made by players are awesomely clever - most are crap though)
A Dark Room - text adventure with some clever game dynamics
Swordigo - another platform game with puzzles and an ending.
You might notice the complete absence of online games. I never liked the idea of being tied to the computer in world that I could 'pause' for a break. And I much prefer adventure/quest type games in this genre. I love actual real life role playing (D&D, etc), but that is harder to get going as you need to plan ahead and coordinate a decent block of time with other players.
My best gaming memories have been this non computer based RPGs (AD&D, Gamma World, Traveler, and MANY non-rules based DIY adventures).
And if you missed Portal above, go look it up on Steam and give it a go. The concept of the portal gun allows a whole new class of game based problem solving that is totally different from any other FPS out there.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:01PM
Ah, yeah, Portal and Portal 2 are stupendously awesome. Though, possibly the most fun I've had on VR is the Portal Stories mod for Portal 2. It's literally more Portal 2 in VR. Slightly different mechanics, but stupid fun. Really short, but it gives me hope that Valve might possibly do something really fun with VR.
King's Quest was the one series I really played much of in that style. It was quite fun. Text wise, there was Humbug, Hugo's House of Horrors, and Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (If I remember correctly, though I think I played a shareware version.).
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Tuesday January 08 2019, @10:51AM
You should have a look at Factorio.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 07 2019, @10:44PM (2 children)
Vox Populi you say?
...googling...
...how have I never heard of this?! You have enlightened me and I thank you graciously!
May I offer in return the Perfect World mod? I always play with this map type, not because it's balanced (it isn't), but because the shape of the land is just so much more realistic.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 07 2019, @11:01PM (1 child)
You are welcome. I thought they stopped updating Perfect World and it became weird and crashy. I should look it up and try it again then. Thank you.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 07 2019, @11:10PM
Obviously I haven't tried it with Vox Populi yet, but what I have installed is "PerfectWorld3". Sometimes you insta-lose on startup because the game couldn't find a place to put your capital, but that's only sometimes. For what it's worth, it's working for me with base game + Brave New World on Mac (no Gods and Kings). Unfortunately that setup may present me with some interesting difficulty in getting Vox Populi set up...
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:13PM (19 children)
I think such a shift in your 30's in normal. Interests and tastes change as you move through life. Sometimes the most loved and intense hobbies are laid aside, much to one's own bewilderment.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @08:29PM (3 children)
AKA mid life crisis.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by NateMich on Monday January 07 2019, @10:17PM (1 child)
I would think a mid life crisis would be a desperate attempt to relive your past as a great gamer - not giving up gaming entirely.
No, this is simply maturity, as he has realized these games were never as good as he thought they were.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @11:04PM
The classic midlife crisis is abandoning that which you have built relationships with for the past 2-3 decades in favor of something new and flashy...
If you've been married to your gaming console...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @11:25PM
Only if you live to your 60s.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday January 07 2019, @08:33PM (13 children)
I had a similar experience with movies.
I look at new movie trailers and think: Boring. Rehash. Predictable plot.
There are a few movies where the plot was not immediately fully predictable from the trailer. And I liked those.
There are few movies with original ideas. I mean the overall idea may be new (Martian cellular organism brought back to ISS) but what happens once it is aboard is quite predictable. It will be carefully confined to a room. Due to some mishap it will escape into the rest of the ISS. Various scenarios will happen until the end of the movie where they must nuke the site from orbit because it's the only way to be sure. For instance people will hide in certain 'safe' areas that aren't safe, etc. Going outside EVA in a suit won't be safe either. If you try to escape in any kind of lifeboat, it will hitch a ride with you. Etc.
I'm beginning to think I may have to resort to reading old Sci Fi books that have not read yet. Ones with elaborate stories not yet spoiled by having been made into a bad movie.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 07 2019, @08:36PM (2 children)
OT: I hate google knowing so much about me . . . . um . . . hey google can you recommend a movie I might like?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @09:08PM (1 child)
>> I hate google knowing so much about me . . . . um . . . hey google can you recommend a movie I might like?
Okay DannyB . . . Based upon your past viewing history, Google recommends the newly released movie : Teen Anal Nightmare 19
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Monday January 07 2019, @10:58PM
That probably describes a lot of modern movies!
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @09:00PM
I had that experience; having already seen the good movies from the 20s through the 00s, sub-standard reboots, remakes and rehashes aren't enjoyable. Millennials are retarded, no fun and their entertainment is 100% contrived cringe.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @09:19PM (6 children)
Superpowers - especially in TV series - why does every (non-laughtrack driven) TV series have to have characters with superpowers?
And/or high school girls.
And/or ninja-violence.
And/or the undead (usually with superpowers)?!?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday January 07 2019, @10:13PM (3 children)
There's nothing wrong with high school girls in a movie. Just don't watch teenie bopper flick 9000.
Specific series of films / TV series thing that goes against all three of those is "Sherlock." The BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch.
There's also "The Good Cop," new series with the guy from "Who's the Boss?" That's a Netflix exclusive, I think.
There's definitely others, but I'm not as into TV stuff.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @10:57PM (2 children)
All too short, a regrettable side effect of not extending the Doyle books... and, for Doyle's time, Sherlock did have "deductive reasoning" superpowers.
Haven't watched "The Good Cop" - I might lump it in with the laughtrack sitcoms if it's too sappy...
If we want to play a game, I'll name 3 superpower series for every non-superpower non-sitcom series you can come up with.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 07 2019, @11:19PM (1 child)
The Sherlock series was "short", but the "episodes" were feature length films.
How about Mystery Science Theater 3000? That one count?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:43PM
Never got into MS3K, save that for the future I suppose.
Will admit: BBC has some decent ones, such as Call the Midwife. Also into Death in Paradise now, even it it is the same old unrequited romantic tension murder mystery formula (ala Remmington Steele, early Bones, Lucifer...) the scenery is different (no gritty city strip clubs, though you do get the island bikini parties...) and the stories actually tie into the setting without total contrivance every time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jasassin on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:28AM
You forgot about all the CSI/crime bullshit (Hawaii 50/Macguyver included). Half of broadcast TV is crime bullshit.
I like The Orville, but to be fair it's just a Star Trek remake (done right IMO) with comedy elements.
I've been watching old shows like the 1960s The Saint (with Roger Moore).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:02PM
Let's talk about TV series (but also movie) plots:
You mentioned:
* high school girls
* ninja violence
* undead
* super powers
I would add:
* anything involving occult or supernatural powers
* witches / warlocks
* vampires
* warewolves
* dysfunctional families seems to be a hugely growing trend
* super good guy cop (or some kind of law enforcement)
* . . . often with an implausibly large number of super violent, super psychotic, ultra serial killer raper kidnappers amongst the general population
* crime procedural good guy cops
The worst: when occasionally a good TV series comes along, it doesn't have a major story arc or an actual ending. Like a good book that you might read multiple times and that might be enjoyed by generations of viewers even 10, 20 or more years later.
As for Sci Fi especially space TV series, how about let's let Star Trek have an honored place in history and create a fresh new universe? Oh but that would require investment and commitment. (Just like having a real story arc would.)
The real underlying problem I'm dancing around: all of these TV series are driven by a short term advertising profit motive. Very different than a good book.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 07 2019, @10:20PM (1 child)
Oh! DannyB you are so right.
As far as I can tell Hollywood has decided to churn out widgets, just like any modern manufacturer does, each one just like the last, because those widgets sell really well.
I don't think that because I am a grumpy old man (although that may be true) but because of the superhero movies that play in the cinemas one after the next.
All of which I have seen before.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday January 07 2019, @10:38PM
Dumb movies make money. Smart movies may try to get Oscars, but they don't make anywhere near as much money. (exceptions are, well, exceptions)
People keep bitching that the Oscars only have obscure movies, but that's just Hollywood acknowledging that the blockbusters they make are crap movies, and higher quality stuff isn't popular.
Back to our topic: older people, tired of rehashed shit, go to see obscure movies in small-distribution theaters.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday January 07 2019, @08:35PM
I'll always love [BANDNAME] and will always be up for a four hour drive to [PLACE] and I will always want to play [GAME] until 4am.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday January 07 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
I still amuse myself with games, but one thing I learned over the decades is that there's also a TVM concept to investing in a particular game.
Back in the day I'd happily shell out $40-$50 for a game... I'd get enjoyment out of it for X period of time which seemed to range anywhere from 3 months to 1 year. Then I'd get bored with it, having done everything that I could do in it. Maybe I'd be interested in a couple at the same time. And I was interested in roleplaying and wargaming back then. Probably around $500 per year, maybe $750 tops. That was an appreciable fraction of my income. But I must have dropped at least $6000 over about ten years of both computer, board, and roleplay gaming.
As I aged, though, I found passions that I could get longer enjoyment from. I've probably not spent more than $1500 in the last ten years spread over about three different things - any purchase I make is going to have the question "how long do I think I'll enjoy this?" I'm more discriminating than looking for the hot-flash-in-the-pan that I'll be bored with in six months (or be required by the developer to pay another $X for the latest installment in the series, whatever). I've downloaded Fortnite on my iPhone. Once upon a time I'd have been totally into it. Now, meh. I might spend $10-$20 per year on iPhone games, but they're typicaly of the Gin Rummy / Chess variants. Then again, I do download a lot of free games.... so maybe it's just console/PC gaming that's gone by the wayside except for a couple of titles I've been playing for years and expect to continue to do so.
The other thing to consider is that as people age they do indeed discriminate about what in the world they want to connect with. Part of the dying process (for those actively engaged with a dying process as opposed to a sudden acute accident) is disconnection from all the things that has occupied one throughout life. While there are exceptions they are rare. Someday every person may well find themselves disconnecting from their passions. I'm grateful that I'm not there yet, though.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @09:21PM
I can break that for you in one move: buy a boat. Hours of entertainment, a lifetime of work and expense.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Bobs on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:55AM
I’ve found Sturgeon’s law to hold true for video games: “90% of everything is crap.”
So I usually wait at least a year or two before trying any games. If people still think it is excellent, after the the new and shiny phase wears off, it might be worth spending time on. Also usually cost at least 50% less.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:31PM (3 children)
It's called growing up, and it's not as bad as youngsters would like you to think.
It happens at a different age with different people. I played my last video game when I was 17. That was 40 years ago.
Computers are still a big part of my life (my entire carreer was built around them), but what I do with them today is completely different than in my teenage years. And, you know, my everyday life and hobbies have expanded since then. Marriage, kids, travel, etc. With the kids basically adults now, I started on other projects: thruhiking the appalachian trail, building my retirement cottage for my wife and I with my own two hands, etc.
The world is vast and varried. And the more you discover, the more things you do, the less and less spendings hours sitting on your ass in front of a screen seems like an interesting way of spending your time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EJ on Monday January 07 2019, @08:35PM
Nope. That's not it at all. It's just how the brain works. Boredom is a real thing that has nothing to do with the actual activity or the "age-appropriateness" of it.
Just look at chess. Chess is just as much a game as Super Mortal Smash Kombat Party 12, yet we see many geriatrics playing chess without thinking they should "grow up" and stop.
Some people can go surfing every single day of their life without ever getting tired of it. Others are constantly looking for something new and different to do.
Everything can get boring after awhile.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:29AM
Yours is a good perspective, but "The world is vast and varried. And the more you discover, the more things you do, the less and less spendings hours sitting on your ass in front of a screen seems like an interesting way of spending your time" is not quite as true as you would think.
If you have TONS of disposable income then yes, traveling the world and doing things IRL is quite entertaining. Without tons of cash your options are VERY quickly limited, traveling the world gets boring as well once you realize humans are pretty much the same everywhere, and group activities are usually a bit infrequent once you're out of school.
Local and cheap hobbies will work for some people, but not everyone has the resources to do so. Don't judge how other people spend their own time, in the end we all turn to dust and even the most grand human works break down over time.
I would say the bigger problem is a lack of public space and transportation. It simply costs too much and takes too long to go do things more than a mile from home, perhaps as we get older we get enough resources to expand our interests but I still see nothing wrong with gaming as long as it isn't causing the person unhappiness or other life problems.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:47PM
My taste in games has changed dramatically as I grew up.
For many years we had no computer or computer games in the house. Most of my exposure to such games was at friends' houses instead. There was the usual assortment of family board games in the house, but I was mainly focused on construction toys and the like. At some point a Game Boy came into the household, and later my brother and I bought a friend's SNES so we could play through that Zelda game we'd started when visiting our cousins abroad. Come high school we had a PC in the house (later several more) and my teenage years were dominated by building and upgrading PCs, and carting them to friends' houses for network gaming sessions. I kept buying second-hand consoles to play subsequent Zelda titles, but PC gaming was my focus. I got introduced to tabletop roleplaying games. There was a brief stint of online gaming too with star wars flight sims, but dial-up internet and league competitions that were geared to the USA/night owls put paid to that.
At university, I got into table-top wargaming of various flavours, and having lost my old network(!) of PC gamers, found myself playing a lot of same-room multiplayer console games in house-shares, usually Mario Kart. When I moved out and got married, the focus moved to new board games (Catan et.al) with the family, or co-operative multiplayer games with my wife. (In competitive computer games there's a strong danger that I'll win too easily and she'll lose interest.)
In recent years, the arrival of kids has been the time-suck that's taken me away from gaming. The little yappers are a bit too young to be able to join in yet. But when I do get the time, the fact that my wife and I haven't parted with any of our old consoles, coupled with backwards compatibility in PCs, means that we've got a huge back-catalog of games to re-visit, or ones we missed at the time but can pick up for cheap. (And the kids will get a good education in video game history too.) Portal, Paper Mario and Little Big Planet are three examples of games I missed the first time round but really enjoyed later. The latest to pop up on my "must take a closer look" horizon is Pikmin. It didn't interest me when the first game originally came out, but now it seems like it would suit my tastes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mobydisk on Monday January 07 2019, @08:52PM (17 children)
I suspect that what has changed is that you are no longer interested in grinding or earning virtual loot.
The Final Fantasy series is one of my favorites. But I can't play it any longer because if I fight the same monster more than 2 or 3 times I'm disinterested. I used to play games on the hardest setting I could handle, in order to get the full experience and greatest challenge. But now I play them on the easiest setting, because I want to experience the action and the storyline and I don't have time to fight the same monster 57 times to get a level up. Sometimes I even prefer to watch a video of a playthrough, so I can skip past the boring stuff. Gone are the days where I got that inkling of joy when I went from the +5 sword to the +7 sword. Now, it's just a meaningless number to me - an obstacle to keep me artificially vested. The good news is that this isn't just about getting older: There are lots of people who never liked this, and there are games that cater to that audience.
The grind has also gotten worse over the years due to the profitability of loot. The free-to-play model has really hurt the industry in this regard. I wonder if some game companies happily cater only to the hardcore addicts who will spend big bucks to get an upgraded gun, and don't care about everyone else.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday January 07 2019, @09:01PM
I've been pretty happy with the Switch so far.
(yes, that's a straight answer to your comment)
(Score: 3, Informative) by mth on Monday January 07 2019, @09:41PM
They do. They even have a word for them: "whales".
(Considering your user name, I'm wondering whether you really didn't know or this was a very carefully constructed setup ;)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Freeman on Monday January 07 2019, @10:44PM (13 children)
The problem, is that publishers found they can use gimmicks to rake in the cash, so they do it.
Just a small list of games to avoid:
Diablo 3
Overwatch
Fortnite
PUBG (Player Unknown's Battlegrounds)
() Insert Random Free-to-Play game. (Please note, you are the product.)
(Any game in the iTunes store.) I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say only 95% of the junk there is horrible.
(Any game in the Google Play store.) No pass, I've seen it, 99.99%+ of the junk is horrible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Disagree) by mobydisk on Monday January 07 2019, @11:47PM (6 children)
I completely disagree with your list. Some of those games are great games: you don't have to buy the loot boxes.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:53AM
if (game.hasLootBox() === true) garbage.put(game)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:36PM (4 children)
You can debate on how good Overwatch is or isn't, but the loot box thing is just less awful than the competition. Seriously though, what is a game that's $20 - $30 on sale doing with loot boxes in it? Oh, that's right, cash grab.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Wednesday January 09 2019, @09:44PM (1 child)
I've never played a game with these "loot box" problems. Is it really that bad?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 10 2019, @05:06PM
Some, limit the "loot boxes" to cosmetic only items, but most don't. It's like removing the classic treasure/loot boxes in games and replacing them with boxes/crates/barrels that you have to purchase instead. Some even give you the crate/loot box, but require a key to be purchased in order to open them. The free-to-play games that limit the gimmick to cosmetic only items, aren't so bad. The problem is they will always have the temptation to introduce cool stuff for the paying only customers and could very easily turn it into a pay-2-win scenario.
The worst offenders in my book are the games like Overwatch that you pay a normal price for, yet they still have microtransactions. Including microtransactions in your game, moves the focus from just great game play to how best to monetize your "customer." I say "customers," because I would argue that you're turning them into "marks" instead of customers at that point. At least when you walk into a Casino, you know they're trying to fleece you. That same mentality shouldn't be in a computer game, unless it's clearly marked as a gambling game. In which case it should be regulated as a gambling game.
Here's a listing of articles on loot boxes. Generally, a lot of places are cracking down on them and even the FTC is getting involved.
https://www.pcgamer.com/loot-boxes/ [pcgamer.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:14PM (1 child)
So long as the loot boxes are cosmetic, and they can be earned in-game, I see no problem with them also selling those loot boxes for real currency too. I just choose not to buy them. For my main in Overwatch, I have every single skin just from playing that character enough.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 15 2019, @06:29PM
The problem, is the focus is shifted towards monetizing the customer. There's a definite difference in the addition of "more grind" to entice players to spend more money on "loot" that should be free. Overwatch is one of the least offensive loot box styles, but it's even more offensive due to the fact that it's not a free to play game. There should not be real money loot boxes in a AAA title that commands a AAA price. You want mobile game style monetization, then make it mobile game monetization, at least then it will be easy to spot the cash grab games. Overwatch may not be so much of a cash grab game, but it's still tainted by the real money loot boxes.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by kazzie on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:57PM
I'd put in an appeal for Transmission [sciencemuseum.org.uk], a node-linking game made by the UK Science Museum.
No ads, no social media tie-ins, no microtransactions, no payments. Just nice puzzle solving.
(It's also in Apple's store, btw.)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Wednesday January 09 2019, @02:37AM (4 children)
If all games in Apple's App Store and Google Play Store should be avoided, then on which store should a new studio offer its first game? Is Itch.io the best way?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:36PM (3 children)
A new studio will likely be looking to make as much money as possible and should put their game up on all platforms possible. To win over those of us that don't like being treated as marks. I would suggest not including in-app purchases or advertisements. Though, that seems to be where most mobile games make their money. It's not going to be an easy thing to fix. People like getting a free game. The big issue here, is that it's not a free game they're getting. It's like a dealer offering a potential drug user the first hit for free. How do you get from using an addictive model to something different? In the case of drugs, it usually takes an intervention or a serious wake up call for the person to stop. I would say the current mobile game market is the same. In this instance though, it's the developers who are addicted to the model as they are raking in the dough for very little work.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 10 2019, @08:26PM (2 children)
Then let me rephrase: Which platforms ought to be possible for a studio's debut game?
With the demise of the PlayStation Vita, the closest replacement for iOS games and Android games is Nintendo 3DS or Nintendo Switch games. But a release on consoles, which are more tightly curated than smartphones, might prove impractical until a studio has built up enough capital. If a simultaneous debut across all platforms is not possible with the capital available to a studio, what steps would one take to determine which platforms ought to be first?
I agree with you about repeatable in-app purchases. But if even a handful of one-time in-app purchases are forbidden, that would make providing a demo less practical. I can envision three approaches to providing a demo: free app with one-time IAP upgrade to full version, free demo and paid full version as separate apps, or no demo at all. For example, Nintendo offers three levels of Super Mario Run without charge, with a one-time IAP to unlock everything. A different company like Bethesda could offer (say) a Doom app without charge containing only the "Knee Deep in the Dead" episode, with additional mission packs (Ultimate Doom, Doom II, and Final Doom) available for one-time purchase the way one might buy a movie or an album. Making each mission pack its own app would incur substantial friction related to device storage and Internet caps, as would not providing a demo at all.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:32PM (1 child)
What you've described is what I would call a pretty decent system. What Google Play and the iTunes Store have is a hive of Scum and Villainy, so to speak. With Apple's offering being slightly less scummy. I have purchased a game or two on mobile that were reasonable, 1 time purchases. Android / iOS, etc, gaming is a semi-passable affair in general. Nintendo's handheld is designed for gaming. It's not overly priced, has lots of fun games, and you won't be terribly upset when your nephew tosses it on the ground. It's also, one of the last kid friendly ecosystems. Kids don't need to be able to run up a $500 bill on a game. It's illegal for a 5 year old kid to walk into a Casino and play a game. Loot boxes, virtual money for virtual items, etc, should be treated exactly the same. Much the same addictive traits as gambling, but without the extremely tiny possibility of a pay-out. Which actually makes letting your 5 year old kid gamble, the more responsible thing to do.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Friday January 11 2019, @04:54AM
Having "lots of fun games" doesn't help when the particular indie game that a friend recommended isn't ported quite yet because the developer is prioritizing its resources, and you instead see this on the buy page.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by coolgopher on Monday January 07 2019, @10:46PM
Yeah similar story with me. I have neither the interest nor the time for the grind these days, so I'm playing almost exclusively story-driven games now. Some of the favourites would be Rumu, Oxenfree and the amazingly well made Life is Strange / Life is Strange: Before the Storm. With games like that I don't feel like I've been wasting time, which is a feeling I often end up with in grindy games these days. Like a good book I feel like a good game story enriches my experience, not merely shortens my remaining time to experience things.