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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: 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.
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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
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(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.