Computer Games

[Flutterby]

I gave this a lot of careful thought so I'm guessing this belongs in IMHO.

I was just wondering if any of you people have been crazy about a game that you've either waited expectantly to come out or found and enjoyed and why you liked them.

This was brought on by my own interest and mania (I pre-ordered the game) in Vampire: the Masquerade Redemption.

So what games have you been unable to tear yourself away from or wait till they came out?

[SPOOFE]

Unable to be torn away from: Half-Life, and its expansion pack. Man alive, that game is SOOOOO nerve-wracking...

Can't wait 'til it comes out: Diablo II. We just got our hands on the Battle.Net Stress Test, and lemme tell ya, if the rest of the game is this good, it was WELL worth the wait.

I was also breathlessly awaiting Ultima: Ascension, but that was quite a disappointment. Descent 3, however, was not. Quake 3 ain't as amazing a game as I thought, but at least it displays a huge step up in graphics.

Sorry for all the off-topic crap, but computer games are my subject of expertise. So if anyone's looking for a good game... come to me.

[DougC]

- - - I'm reluctant to buy games but I have Half-Life + exansions (OpFor, DarkStar, They Hunger) and I like them all too. I only bought Half-Life after several different people said it was particularly fun, and it is - if you want to do the action-game guy-running-around-shooting-stuff thing. I think Half-Life has too many weapons though: they all do different stuff but they don't really add much to the game overall. Many, many, many game publishers substitute game complexity for an original, entertaining concept. I don't get the attraction of RPGs at all.
- Rainbow Six is another that I bought and is supposed to be great but I gave up on it some months back - too many damn controls, a typing lesson with eye-candy. - MC

[Fanny May]

I was with my son and had a coupon for a free game (for buying a printer) and talked him into MYST Masterpiece Edition because it looked like one I might be able to play with him. Bored us both to giving up games for 3 months now.

[SilentKnight]

Hey, Myst is awesome! But I do have to admit, it is pretty difficult and may get boring if you get stuck. I think I'll play that now, it's been awhile.

[Czarcasm]

For me, it's always been the Might and Magic series.

[Lynn Bodoni]

I'm just wild about the Final Fantasy series. In fact, I bought my Playstation only because I knew that SquareSoft was going to make FFVII for that console. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have bothered with this generation of game consoles.

My husband knows that I expect each new Final Fantasy as they become available, and that he'd darn well better GET it for me, or live will become unbearable around here.

The world is Square!

As for actual computer games, I used to really enjoy the Zork series. I drooled over Return to Zork, and was in ecstasy when I finally got it. It's fantastic, I still play it. I also eagerly anticipated Zork: Nemesis, but I was rather disappointed in that one. I haven't bothered with Zork: Grand Inquisitor.

[Joe_Cool]

As for actual computer games, I used to really enjoy the Zork series. I drooled over Return to Zork, and was in ecstasy when I finally got it. It's fantastic, I still play it. I also eagerly anticipated Zork: Nemesis, but I was rather disappointed in that one. I haven't bothered with Zork: Grand Inquisitor.


Grand Inquisitor is better than Nemesis, as a Zork game, anyway. It went back to the humorous atmosphere of the other Zork games (who is the boss of you? ME! I am the boss of you!).

The ones I got seriously addicted to were Myst (played nonstop for a day and a half until I finished it) and Starcraft.

[Minxsmom]

Myst was always one of my favorites - I need to dig that out and give it another go.

SimCity 2000 kept me awake for most of an entire week. First, because I was trying to get the hang of it, then, because I got the hang of it. I had cities growing out of my ears :). Now, I'm all SimCitied out.

I've always had a weakness for the Infocom word adventures. Once I start, I can't stop. They are just so well done. I've played other word adventures, but most just don't compare. I still have all my old Infocom packages and disks from my old Commodore 64 (can you say "pack rat"?) - that's how long I've been playing those games (you'd think I would have solved them all by now, right? :)

[saucy potato]

I absolutely love 'Age of Empires', and was really excited when the second one came out. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play it due to having a slow computer. :(

When I was little, I couldn't tear myself away from playing 'Dung Beetles' and 'Swashbuckler' on the 'ol Apple. Just thought I'd throw that in for kicks...

[SilentKnight]

I'm waiting to play Starseige Tribes.

That looks awesome!

[Revtim]

No game has ever made me wanting to spend every hour playing it like Doom did when it first came out. It was unlike anything I had seen before, and I would spend the day at work looking forward to going home to play it. I liked Wolfenstein 3D, but it didn't "prepare" me for what was to come with Doom. I still like first-person-shooters (fps), but the advances have been evolutionary, not revolutionary like in the advances from Wolf3d to Doom.

I hear Id has sold permission for a 3rd party company to develop an updated Wolf3d with Quake 3 technology, and Id's next project will be an update of Doom with post-Quake3 technology.

Civilization and Civ 2 had the "just one more turn" effect that kept me up later than I should have been. Civ Call To Power seemed good, but for some reason didn't capture my attention. I think I just got burned out on that tyoe of game.

[Max Torque]

Two games I'm currently eagerly awaiting, both from Bungie, the company that brought us Myth and Marathon:

Oni (http://oni.bungie.com)
Halo (http://halo.bungie.com)

Download the demo movies for both. They're big, but worth the download time.

[Greyson3]

Well, I'm a fan of the Maniac Mansion games myself. I would, however, rather hammer a rusty icepick into my skull and call it candy than play Myst or its horrible, horrible sequel.

[brachyrhynchos]

Adventure - Colossal Cave. In the mid 70's I played this text-based game obsessively on the Cyber 7000 series at Cal State Fullerton. I mapped out the cave and was able to get all points excepts for one - I always had to buy batteries for my lamp. Even went on TALK to get hints (bad girl). I still play on occasion. I liked it because I could imagine what sort of space I was in, and I'm sure it was very different from the guy sitting next to me, playing the same game.

I also played Doom and other Doom-style games but found that I couldn't play these by myself...late at night...in the dark. The noises creeped me out too much. I loved Heretic, Heretic2 and the 7th Guest. My old boss and I would connect together via modems and play Heretic (I loved it when I could zap him into becoming a chicken). Great fun!

But Advent will always have a special place in my heart (sort of like a "first kiss" thing).

[Johnny Angel]

Lands of Lore III -- I had to upgrade my computer to play the game, and it still sucked.

Planescape: Torment -- I waited for it, and by glory it came and it was good.

Fallout 3 -- still waiting.

[Goose]

I totally understand, Topaz. I ordered the special edition like two weeks ago and am counting the days until Tuesday. We'll have to play over the Internet, K? I also couldn't wait for Ruins of Kunurk, but a couple weeks after I got it I got sick of Everquest, great game but you have to devote your life to it. Also Planescape Torment had me wating and was great. After Vampire the only game I will be waiting for is Team Fortress 2.. although I dont even have Team Fortress Classic.

[vandal]

I was addicted to Rainbox Six, then became fixated on the expansion for it, Rogue Spear, and now I can't stop playing the add-on, Urban Operations. I just love that series.

[Asmodeus]

It's not me..it's my wife..you try taking the puter when she's playing The Sims

I know better.

[Argeable]

Currently/Have played too much: Fallout I and II, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcrat and 2 (Blizzard rules), Age of Empires 2 (I haven't played the original),Civilization I and II, as well as call to power and Alpha Centauri (I've mastered all except for call to power) and, for about a week, Sim City 2000. Then I figured out the right way to mix Industrial, Residential, and Commercial, and suddenly I gained huge amounts of money. And, of course, Half Life and Opposing Force. Awesome games. Oh yea, and whenever I hang out at my Mac friend's house, it's networked Marathon for hours.
Will play too much: Diablo 2!!!!!!!! Also looks good: SiN, Fallout 3 (It'll come out, I swear...) and (should it ever come out) Halflife 2.
I play way, way way too much of these games :p

[Danielinthewolvesden]

I loved Diablo, so I am waiting for Diablo II.
I also loved the "Might & Magic", but they are not getting better. Rehash, but still an old reliable.

[Flutterby]

Goose That sounds like a plan. It might be interesting. I'll have to figure it out a bit first though.

The Sims has looked to be an interesting game I just never got around to buying it yet. (I have limited cash I had to do a fair amount of babysitting to pay for V:tM R)

Why do some of you dislike Myst? I'll admit it was pretty tough to beat. Actually I lasted two weeks with just getting into the next two levels before I printed out all the hints and tips to beat it. *smiles sheepishly* Ah well. And maybe I'll get Riven sometime.

Another game that I particularily enjoyed was Legacy of Time 3. It took me a little while but I managed to beat it on my own. (And someone on the website said that it was the hardest they had made.. hmm ah well)

Sim City 2000 I sorta gave up on. I couldn't seem to figure it out. (Plus I just like building the cities to watch them be destroyed..)

[SPOOFE]

Lynn, you want to talk about video games, eh? Well, for me, the old ones are the best ones... the original Final Fantasy for the 8-bit NES system is legendary (and I finally beat it just two months ago!! Woohoo!!). And then games like Blaster Master, Metroid... ::sigh::... how I long for those again... Most games nowadays don't even come close to those old ones in terms of funability.

Myst/Riven: Sucked because they were nothing but glorified slide shows.

Hey, has anyone heard of Daggerfall? Man, that game was just insane... it had a virtual world supposedly the size of the ancient Roman Empire. Jeez, just playing that game was nuts... you go insane just by the sheer size of what's going on. Graphics were cheap, and it easily got boring (and it was easy to get lost), but it was an impressive game.

Daniel, if you're waiting for Diablo II... trust me, man, it's WELL worth it... ::swoon::... three cheers for Blizzard!

StarCraft was kind of nuts, as well. I built my own series of ten levels for it (but then my idiot dad deleted it!! Arrgh!!). I still go on Battle.Net occasionally and rack up a few wins.

I'm also a huge fan of the Ultima series (though 8 and 9 were disappointing). However, Ultima 7 and the expansion, Serpent Isle, were really insane games to play. Incredibly immersive environments, and huge plots, huge worlds to explore...

And I've recently gotten back into Roller Coaster Tycoon. THAT's a fun game.

And Worms: Armageddon, Mechwarrior 3, Aliens vs. Predator, Fallout 2, Might & Magic 6 (man, I remember the FIRST M&M)... the list goes on...

I'm a sick SOB.

[DRY]

I liked the original "Castle Wolfenstein", despite it's campiness.

I was a real addict of that really old game on my school's network computer: Hack. I was seriously addicted to Hack--to the point where my attendance in classes suffered a bit :eek:

I even managed to "temporarily disable" a half dozen or so computers :p to keep the "load" down (if the network's load was too high, they'd kick people off the games).

I liked Hack's predecessor, Rogue, but not nearly as much. Also found out you could cheat by wielding food.

I also liked Ultima, probably my favorite of the D&D type computer games.

There's another game I really liked, but I can't remember it offhand. It was a starship type of game which didn't have a lot of combat--you did a lot of exploring and would occasionally fight battles, but had to save the universe.
I would play this game for...well, even longer than I spend on this damned board! I think it was called "Star" something, had one of those anti-piracy decoder wheels. Anyone know the name of the game?

[Goose]

I forgot about Worms: Armageddon. That is a genius of a game. Me and my friends are all about the same skill level so we can play forever until suddendeath. But it sucks trying to explain the game to people who dont know.
"Worms? You're Worms? Worms with guns? Sure..."

[TheNerd]

I played Quake quite a bit in it's day, and now play Quake3. (I skipped Quake2, it was too cartoony). I've been known by many names: The Tick, Hollowman, and now 0xdeadbeef. I think it's about time to switch names again, but nothing's really jumping out at me except for maybe "noophage" which I already use for my AIM screenname.
Sometimes I play mp3s in the background while playing. Nothing gives the John Woo effect like Sarah MacLachlan or Vivaldi in the background as you blow up everybody in sight.
The Matrix soundtrack also works quite well for a more expected fit.

[yojimbo]

Nothing gives the John Woo effect like Sarah MacLachlan or Vivaldi in the background as you blow up everybody in sight.
The Matrix soundtrack also works quite well for a more expected fit.


Prodigy's Music for a Jilted Generation gets my carnage mode going .

[Johnny Angel]

On the subject of music for video games, I must report that The Best of the Guess Who seems to go terrific with Turrican II.

[chief]

the games that i've anticipated the most are:

Quest for Glory 5
Monkey Island 3

they were great!

[Lynn Bodoni]

Myst/Riven: Sucked because they were nothing but glorified slide shows.

That's about my feeling regarding Myst. I never even TRIED Riven. I also have some hearing problems, so it was hard for me to solve some of Myst's puzzles. One puzzle in particular required you to turn microphones to pick up sounds...but there were no hints in the game (that I could tell) of HOW to turn the microphones! A really good game would have given you hints.

Contrast this with Return to Zork. The game gives you subtle hints as to how to solve puzzles. I'll give specific details if anyone wants them.

And I might pick up Z: Grand Inquisitor. Do I need to be able to hear the audio clues, or can I rely on my vision?

[Cabbage]

And I might pick up Z: Grand Inquisitor. Do I need to be able to hear the audio clues, or can I rely on my vision?

As far as I remember, you can just rely on your vision. I liked GI a lot better than Nemesis, and I don't remember anything in GI as blatantly audio as, say, having to play a certain tune on piano keys or anything.

I loved the old Infocom games, I played a bunch of them back in the 80's. If you liked those games, check out the Spellcasting 101 and 202 (or something like that) games that Legend (I think) Software put out around 1990. They were written by one of the Infocom guys (Steve Meretzky, I think).

And in case you missed it, as a promotional thing, another Zork text game (by one of the original authors!) was released when GI first came out--Zork: The Undiscovered Underground. It's freeware, and you can download it here (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/download.html).

[SPOOFE]

Maybe we should all arrange a big SD-Gamefest sometime in the future... like, meet on Battle.Net for a good ol' game of StarCraft or somethin'...

[barton]

Thief & Thief II, which I will probably be still playing years from now. There isn't a first-person game out there that matches their atmopshere.

With the recent demise of Looking Glass Studios, maybe there never will be one that does.

[Coldfire]

I am eagerly awaiting the release of Geoff Crammonds Grand Prix III (http://www.grandprixgames.com/grandprix3/english/index.html). GPII was awesome (still is, 5 years after its release!) and this promises to surpass it by miles and miles...

Also, I am a huge Tomb Raider fan.

[Kvallulf]

Starcraft? Ha!!! Total Annihilation beats that any day of the week. Age2 is cool, and I also play alot of everquest. Quake is dull, Half-life was much better.

[SPOOFE]

Total who? Please... StarCraft has a unit that hums "Ride of the Valkyries", guaranteeing it's place in the annuls of Game Godhood. Total Annihilation is... well... a cheap knock-off. And the story sucks.

I had Thief, but then my brother lost it. And I had been really excited about it, too... grr.... siblings suck.

[panamajack]

Agree with you Barton, on Thief. Best atmosphere for first-person and really intriguing idea rather than just kill kill kill.

The game I had to have, begged and pleaded, couldn't wait for was Pacman for the Atari. (Okay, I was real young.)
Also loved Kaboom! from that era as the really simple type game.

Zork series of course are classics. most other Infocom games, too.

The best wargames I spent much time on was a series from Sid Meier and Ed Devers(?) on WWII N. Africa and Europe. You set orders, the units moved in accelerated real-time; you didn't always have perfect intelligence. Both numbers and effectiveness of units was important (something almost never seen in larger scale games. Most games a unit down to 1 point still attacks/defends with the same force). On the C-64. I still run it on my emulator sometimes.

The game that came closest to an interesting interactive (or guided at least) movie was The Last Express. Beautiful storyline, and nice historical feel.

Escape Velocity and Override had me stuck in my chair for days at a time. Nearly caused medical problems.

Best game I ever played ever was Red Storm Rising (modern ('80s modern anyway) sub sim.) Incredible detail yet still playable. All the detail made sense, but didn't have to be managed at every moment; a vague awareness and brief glances were enough. It moved at a perfect pace, and even had a storyline where not every mission was critical. Seven years after it came out, I checked some reviews of sub simulations and it still was not considered to have been surpassed. I doubt it has (and it ran on a 64k machine! BTW if anyone knows where a C64 disk image can be found, please let me know.)

panama jack

_________________

bash skeleton with raft
>That doesn't seem to work.

[SPOOFE]

Oooh... I just remembered Full Throttle... now THAT game was SOOO much fun. There was one section where you send robot bunnies across a mine field in order to clear a path, and "Ride Of The Valkyries" plays as all these bunnies are blowing up all over the place... "Let me go, or else... I'll bleed all over your driveway!"

And remembering Full Throttle made me remember Day Of The Tentacle... I've never found a game with so much cartoony humor anywhere... boy, Lucasarts sure can make a game (except Rebellion).

[Kilgore Trout]

i will be taking a week off work when metal gear solid 2 comes out in 2001.

oh boy.

[Kvallulf]

Cheap Knock off? Show's what you know. TA was out loooong before Starcrap. YOu haven't played TA have you? True 3-d terrain and units, intelligent(as far as computers go) units, land, air, and sea units, much better looking maps than starcrap, and the soundtrack to TA spanks starcrap hands down. Yes, the story is weak, but hey, the game kicks ass.

I had Daggerfall, awesome game for the time, I really liked being able to design your own spells.

I just found out that I have been chosen to be a Diablo II beta world stress tester. Oh joy.

[SPOOFE]

Yeah, I've played Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. Both bite. And I didn't mean they were knockoffs of StarCraft, I meant they were more victims of Command & Copy syndrome.

3D units? Nothin' but freakin' boxes, man. Worst 3D rendering I've seen for game characters since Descent. And the AI isn't worth two shucks of a zergling's hide. And the music... ugh.

You want a good game, with "true 3D" and whatnot, great music, AMAZING 3D characters, AND a REAL story? Get "Force Commander", bro... hardly as great as they said it'd be, but much better than TA.

I still say that everyone reading this thread should go out and buy Half-Life. Best game I've ever played.

[Edwardina]

My first computer game, about fifteen years ago, was one of the King's Quests, which I loved. Then, I was seriously addicted to Warcraft for awhile. Net-Warcraft with six players . . . *makes Tim Allen grunting noises* The individual scenarios are fun, too. And, of course, for sheer mindlessness, I loved Diablo. I lived in a great house for computer games when it came out, and we had so much fun.



As for actual computer games, I used to really enjoy the Zork series. I drooled over Return to Zork, and was in ecstasy when I finally got it. It's fantastic, I still play it. I also eagerly anticipated Zork: Nemesis, but I was rather disappointed in that one. I haven't bothered with Zork: Grand Inquisitor.


Grand Inquisitor is better than Nemesis, as a Zork game, anyway. It went back to the humorous atmosphere of the other Zork games (who is the boss of you? ME! I am the boss of you!).



Grand Inquisitor was my first non-text Zork game. I didn't know there were others. A quest begins!

Has anyone played Starship Titanic?

[jayron 32]

I've always been a bit of a StarWars adict, even if most of the LucasArts games are just StarWars ripoffs of earlier games, I tend to like them quite a bit.

When I got Jedi Knight, I actually played it, without break for sleep, and only stopped often enough to put food in the microwave and get said food from the microwave. Then I got to the last boss (Jarek) and was so pissed that i couldn't beat him (especially after over 48 hours of contiunuous gameplay) that I almost dropkicked my PC.

Oh, and any strategy game that requires no actual hand-eye coordination and features levels of minutae that boggle the mind tend to keep me enraptured. I had to delete CivII from my machine and throw out the disks for almost failing out of college. I've been known to drop 10 hours at my computer without taking a break for eating, drinking, or restroom. Most recently, Caesar III has done this for me, and I am resisiting purchasing the new Pharoh, the Egyptian version of the series, for fear of what it will do to my life.

[ReservoirDog]

You're all a bunch of dorks.

Having said that, there have been some video games that have made me play them until I was done.

Sega had a cheesy little fantasy game called Shining Force that I just couldn't stop playing until I was done. Man, my ex-girlfriend really hated that game.

There was a really old fighter simulator called F-19, based on the F-117A Stealth Bomber. My greatest glory was flying that thing all the way across Europe into Russia under Cold War conditions, evading radar and enemy patrols, taking photographs of military installations, and flying back without once being detected. My score (increasing for every minute spent in the air without being detected in this scenario) was so high that I earned the Congressional Medal of Honor! Well, alright, I earned a piss-poor cartoony screen shot of a Medal of Honor, but I was only fourteen and thought it was pretty exciting at the time.

[Mr. Cynical]

Zork (http://www.thetechpage.com/fun/zork/)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html)

Play them, remember them, wax nostalgic over the good old days. Just don't try to save or restore the game, cause it don't work.

[Barney111]

System Shock 2 was the last game I've played. Awesome,awesome,awesome game - maybe the best I've ever played.

Other great games: Half Life, Alpha Centauri, Unreal, Age of Empires II.

[Jophiel]

There's another game I really liked, but I can't remember it offhand. It was a starship type of game which didn't have a lot of combat--you did a lot of exploring and would occasionally fight battles, but had to save the universe. I would play this game for...well, even longer than I spend on this damned board! I think it was called "Star" something, had one of those anti-piracy decoder wheels. Anyone know the name of the game?
Dry, was it Starflight? It had you choose a crew from several races, including the human, android, some reptile race, some plant race and someone else. I remember that the reptile race hated the plant race and vice versa. You flew around a lot, looking for planets with minerals to mine, drove around, collected artifacts.. etc all leading to some grand plot to save the universe or whatever.

Anyway, Doom and Civ II kept me glued to the screen and before that there were games on the Commodore 64 that did it for me. Pirates! was one -- a very addictive game considering that all you did was sail around lotting ships, going into port to collect more men, take bigger ships, get more men, take a few towns, divide the gold and start all over. But I never met anyone who played it and hated it. Another was a game called Paradroid where you were some little robot type thingie that cruised around a spaceship taking over larger and more powerful robots. It was a really simple game to play, but almost impossible to win. I remember *never* winning it on the Commodore and it wasn't until about a year ago that I played it on an emulator and finally won. You started all over. Oh well, still a fun, fun time for hours on end.

[Monster104]

Ahhh, computer games. I love computer games...lets see if I can remember all my favorites. In no particular order (I know most of these have been mentioned already): Warcraft II, C&C: Red Alert, Wing Commander Series, Ultima Series including The Worlds of Ultima games (And SPOOFE, Ultima 8 & 9 aren't that bad), Starcraft (Which totally kicks TA's ass), Diablo series, Full Throttle ("Let me go, or else...I'll call you names!"), Descent Series, Mechwarrior series (Including Mech Commander), Fallout II (Never played I, but god II was cool), Maniac Mansion series, Worms series, SimCity 3000, Rainbow Six (I played that game beginning to end nonstop at my friend's house).

I'm sure there're more games but I can't remember them right now. I'm disappointed in Tiberian Sun and Force Commander. Right now I'm looking forward to Diablo II and Warcraft III...and is it true they're making a Fallout III?

[DRY]

There's another game I really liked, but I can't remember it offhand. It was a starship type of game which didn't have a lot of combat--you did a lot of exploring and would occasionally fight battles, but had to save the universe. I would play this game for...well, even longer than I spend on this damned board! I think it was called "Star" something, had one of those anti-piracy decoder wheels. Anyone know the name of the game?
Dry, was it Starflight? It had you choose a crew from several races, including the human, android, some reptile race, some plant race and someone else. I remember that the reptile race hated the plant race and vice versa. You flew around a lot, looking for planets with minerals to mine, drove around, collected artifacts.. etc all leading to some grand plot to save the universe or whatever.


Yes!! God, I loved this game! Despite how it tortured me.
I swear that I must have had about 10-15 tries at this game before I finally won. And this DESPITE the fact that I'd "back up" my game at "logical intervals".

A hint that none of you needs--don't EVER play a game so late that you are seriously sleep deprived and can't back up your disks correctly. Four or five times, I screwed up, backing up the same disk twice or otherwise botching it. (You had to back up two disks to save your game, if I remember correctly)

One time I played the game really late at night, knew I was going to try something dangerous, saved the game, backed it up, and did the dangerous thing. I "died".

The next time I loaded the game up, planning to resume it, I found that I'd backed up the same disk twice, or something else equally stupid. Result: I'm screwed. I nearly wept (literally) and put the game away for about 6 months.

When I finally won the game, it was just as well. My obsession was reaching Captain Ahab proportions. :eek:

[sewalk]

In my 22 years of computer gaming, one really stands out as the greatest time-sponge for me:

Frontier/Elite2 (and Elite is a very close second).

These games are simply incredible in scope for the time they were made. Frontier seems to have more on one floppy diskette that most current game publishers get on a CD-ROM. If you've ever played either one, you know how long it takes to become ELITE (made it in both!). When I finally bored of Frontier, I had also become an Imerial Duke AND a Federation Admiral.

Other favs:
M.U.L.E.
Beach-Head I & II
Raid on Bungling Bay
Pirates!
MicoroProse's F-19
Falcon (Amiga Version)
Lemmings 5,4,3,2,1,Oh No! POP!POP!POP!POP!POP!POP!POP!POP!
Falcon 3.0/4.0 (hey! a title published AFTER 1990!)
Ridge Racer (The reason I got a PlayStation and a wheel for it)
Diablo (OK in single-player, AWESOME on Battle.Net)

My roommate now has me hooked on Half-Life, even though I dislike First-Person Shooters as a rule. I even bought a MadCatz PantherXL joystick - the best for FPS's IMHO - just to get more enjoyment out of it. I hate to say it but I am starting to like this stick better than my old Thrustmaster FLCS/TQS/RCS combination for everything except Falcon.

[Fyodor]

I'm a little tired of Age of Empires II after eight months of playing, I exhausted CivII a long time ago, I've been through all the Starcrafts twice. Alpha Centauri was a disappointment. I don't have the youthful reflexes a shooter requires so I have to stick to the stategy type games.
I'm waiting patiently for Diablo II which should be good for a few months play.
In the meantime I think I'll have a quick go through Diablo I again. I have the Hellfire extension which gives me a monk character.

Question: How should I build up the monk? Is he a magic specialist or should I emphasize agility and strength?

[hardcore]

This is quite likely the only thing that has sucked more of my life into it's gaping black hole than the SDMB. If I would have poured those endless hours into something productive, I might have cured cancer.

The first computer game to lay waste to great portions of my existence must have been The Bard's Tale. I literally would race home from work, play the game until I practically fell asleep at the keyboard, then nap for a couple of hours until time for work again. What a dweeb!!

Many subsequent games, most notably Pirates!, vied for significant portions of my attention, but at that time in my life most of them could not compete with my unbridled enthusiasm for anything female. That is, until that demonspawn, straight from the maws of hell, id creation Doom. Looking back, I believe I may have sacrificed a promising relationship at the altar of the Cyberdemon.

Once I had destroyed nearly every user-created level, my obsession began to wane as I searched frantically for my next fix. This is when Satan himself posing as my brother gave me an innocent looking game entitled Civilization. This game's successor, Civ II, still resides on my hard drive to this very day, just in case of a gaming emergency.

But by far the worst of them all is my current compulsion, Heroes of Might and Magic III. If the previous addictions could be likened to marijuana, this game is definitely heroin or crack. I can pull the needle out temporarily to play a game like the Might and Magic series, or Age of Empires, but eventually the monkey on my back becomes a 500 lb. gorilla, as I gleefully return the CD to it's proper place in my computer and start a new game.

I suspect my next fixation will be with some type of online game such as EverQuest or Ultima Online. This should neatly encapsulate my minimum daily requirements of SDMB-type community with my computer gaming needs.

[SilentKnight]

Monkey Island 4

And, what genre of game is Starcraft? I've never played it before but I've heard it's really good.

[rowrrbazzle]

I agree about Zork: Grand Inquisitor. It's definitely worth buying and playing.

Here are two interesting "hidden" elements.


You, the adventurer, are wandering with a wizard imprisoned in a lamp, who gives you information and comments on the action. At one point, you listen to another wizard's voice mail. After one of them, the wizard in the lamp comments, "Isn't that the fellow who did those Encyclopedia Frobozzica commercials?" The voice on the message was done by Donavan Freberg, the blonde kid who did the Encyclopedia Britannica commercials a few years ago.

The picture of Belboz, a wizard of the past, is a picture of Stan Freberg, the great satirist who created the genre of funny commercials, and Donavan's real-life father (Stan's name is not in the game's credits).

[Kvallulf]

Hardcore, Get Everquest, much more newbie friendly (as far as the game world), and much more fun! I currently have and Enchanter that I have been playing for 3days 15hrs and 6minutes. The whole 3d world is great, and you get to meet some excellent people along with the jerks.

[hardcore]

Thanks for the recommendation. I just got DSL last week, so I am anxious to start one of the online games. I might wait for Ultima Online 2. I recently read an in-depth article about it and this game just might hit the sweet spot. The only problem is the predicted release date of Spring 2001.

Does anyone out there play Ultima Online or Asheron's Call?

[DRY]

Monkey Island 4

And, what genre of game is Starcraft? I've never played it before but I've heard it's really good.


Silent Knight,

Since my repetoire in the types of computer games I play is pretty limited, I can't really answer the question as to what genre it belongs to. All I can tell you is that I REALLY, REALLY enjoyed it.

But then, I have weird tastes.

[DRY]

Monkey Island 4

And, what genre of game is Starcraft? I've never played it before but I've heard it's really good.


Silent Knight,

Since my repetoire in the types of computer games I play is pretty limited, I can't really answer the question as to what genre it belongs to. All I can tell you is that I REALLY, REALLY enjoyed it.

But then, I have weird tastes.


I'm an idiot and am tired. I thought you were asking about
"Starflight". I've never heard of "Starcraft", much less played it.

[Brunetter]

I haven't seen anyone mention the games I love. The first was NEVERHOOD by Dreamworks, the very first time that I understood why my husband spent so much damn time at his computer. Thank goodness, we had a computer each by that time!

The next was PHANTASMAGORIA, which I could not play when I was alone in the house ... too scary!

I also really enjoyed Shivers and Shivers II ... due to a glitch in Shivers II I got stuck somewhere about 2/3 of the way through and am waiting till the memory of the game subsides before giving it another shot.

Another brilliant, innovative if not full of plot game was Pandora's Box.

So, any other recommendations for games that fit into this non-genre? I am pretty hard to please aren't I ... and please don't recommend Myst, I'm with the Myst-haters!!

[kinoons]

games I currently play:
Silent Hunter: old wwII sub game, runs in DOS -- Great fun

Roller Coster Tycoon: Oh my lord I didnt think I could have so much fun building roller costers -- where did the night go?

Evercrack -- Thats where the night went....

Asherons Call -- for the nights that evercrack just dosent work

[chief]

Monkey Island 4

And, what genre of game is Starcraft? I've never played it before but I've heard it's really good.




right on, monkey island 4!
thats going to be sweet! i can't wait!

btw, i read that Diablo II went gold and is coming out soon!

[SPOOFE]

Silentknight, StarCraft is a strategy-ish game. One of the best ones I've ever played, too.

DRY... never heard of StarCraft?!? You poor deprived soul! Go buy it... NOW!

Personally, my favorite genre is first-person shooter. I've been looking everywhere for a good one, but can't find it. Oh well... I can survive on Half-Life for a while longer... maybe I'll cave in and go get Unreal. Or Thief II, but I can wait 'til the price drops a little. I'm saving my money for a new coat, you see...

[capacitor]

Of all the games I have played, I keep on coming back to NetHack/Rogue. That's right, the dungeon crawl game that uses letters as graphics. It never crashed my computer, the play is lightning quick, and the author claims that nobody hs ever finished it. What other computer game can say that?

I am playing this and Heroes of Might and Magic, while waiting for the son of NetHack, known as Diablo II, to come out.

[DRY]

Of all the games I have played, I keep on coming back to NetHack/Rogue. That's right, the dungeon crawl game that uses letters as graphics. It never crashed my computer, the play is lightning quick, and the author claims that nobody hs ever finished it. What other computer game can say that?


I loved Hack/Rogue (especially Hack--in Rogue you could wield food and kill anything in a single blow--unless you had to eat your "ultimate weapon").

I am absolutely certain that Hack in particular hurt my grades one quarter--we're talking serious addiction and blowing off major study time.

When I finally beat Hack it was all I could do not to jump up and down, let out a primal scream, pump my fist in the air several times, and start playing air guitar.

Which would have looked VERY strange in a Unix computer lab.

Though anyone who beat Hack would have understood.

[SilentKnight]

Right now I'm hooked on playing Starsiege Tribes multiplayer on the net. It's an AWESOME game!

Does anyone else play it online?

[HeadlessCow]

A couple of games I've played and loved are:
Hidden and Dangerous - a squad based WW2 sim. Not one of those crappy overhead view types but a fully 3D game that at points became a FPS. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without a fast comp and decent graphic card though, some of the levels are large(hundreds of units, many of them shooting at you) and very graphically impressive which can bring your system to it's knees.
Worms: Armageddon - this almost cost me a test because I stayed up so late playing it the night before (morning of) my test.
Age of Empires 2 - All I really need to say is It's kicks Ass!

[HomeSlice]

Here are some that stick out in my mind...
Quake I&II
Doom~all of them
Sim City 2000 (years of my life wasted :D)
Red Baron
Diablo(battle.net)