For me a comfort game has to be simple in it’s gameplay yet offer varied ways and skill levels in the actual playing. So that every time you play it, it is comfortably familiar and completely different. The Sims would be an excellent comfort game except that ever since I installed the Hot Date upgrade it crashes every single time I attempt to play.
My very own very favorite comfort game is Age of Empires: The Conquerors. I like that I know I can beat it and I like that I can determine whether it’ll be a quick game (2 opponents) or a long drawn out battle for land and resources (6 or 7).
“Thief”, by the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios.
Come to think of it–almost anything made by Looking Glass Studios. Thief, Thief 2, System Shock 2, and to a lesser extent, Deus Ex. (Not made by Looking Glass, but with a lot of the same designers)
They’re first-person games, so they may not be for you if you don’t like that kind of genre. But I absolutely adore Thief because of it’s non-linear gameplay style. The main crux of the gameplay involves stealing things while not being seen–but even after you become familiar with the levels, there are so many different ways to replay it…you can vary the way you sneak about…you can try to case the place completely, or dive right into the main objectives. You can try experimenting with different ways to get around guards–I always find me asking myself, 'Will I try to get by this guard and steal that item completely unnoticed? Or will I stab him in the back and dump his body down the well before it’s found by others?
It’s a very immersive game…forever one of my favorites.
Actually occasionally I like to replay Doom. It’s nostalgia pure and simple, like visiting a place you know from childhood, roaming through environments you know by heart, greeting those surprise demons like old friends, before blowing them to pieces, that is. The first episode is the best to do this, since it’s so easy I can do it half asleep.
Have you tried Age of Mythology Biggirl? I liked it very much, and if you play against the computer and not the campaign you could choose the Norse, Egyptians or Greeks and have your game play vary on which deities you choose to worship. As your city expands, since your one shot god spells and mythical creatures vary on which gods you want.
diablo 2 and expansion. as simple as it gets (skill levels is questionable). just click everything. can be mindlessly addictive. gameplay from 20 mins to 72 hours.
An excellent way to waste a little time. Always interesting. Often frustrating and challenging, but depending on the gameplay mode it can be quite easy and mindless. It’s definitely worth paying to register, and being able to access many more playing levels and variations.
My comfort game is Creatures 2. I like putting in the various downloads to keep the norns from drowning and to encourage breeding, and watching to see what happens when they reproduce- will the babies be blue or purple? Will the baby be bright enough not to give it self a head injury by walking into the cave wall obsessively? There’s not a lot to the game, but it’s nice. It makes me look forward to The Sims 2, actually, since the new sims game is borrowing the C2 lifecycle concept.
BTW, Biggirl, have you installed the offical Hot Date patch? It’s at the sims site, and should keep your game from crashing. In theory. www.thesims.ea.com/us.index.html under “downloads” (hopefully. It’s been a couple of years since I installed it. If not google “hot date patch” and you should find it on a fan site)
My comfort games are Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden 2. I’m constantly re-playing them. But they’re both Playstation games, so they probably don’t qualify.
On the PC, it’s Diablo 2, which I’ve already beaten twice but is constantly beckoning from the hard drive, “Play me again! I’m here and you can be killing things within minutes!”
The Sims is the other one. Shame about its crashing for you, though; you should definitely try the patch. And if that works, then get the Unleashed expansion; that and Hot Date are the essential expansions for the game.
When I’m in the mood for comfort, I usually take my high level Everquest character and either:
1 - go to some area that has some good memories for me and buff up the newbies who are playing there, or help them fight by pulling hard monsters and debuffing them until the newbies can kill them
2 - go to the stinky wood elf treehugger town, charm a guard, and see how far I can get into the town before I die or get bored.
Which I do depends on what kind of “comfort” I need. Warm snugglies or Kill Everything In Sight.
It’s the opposite of every “dungeons and dragons” dungeon crawl ever made. You’re the Dungeon Keeper, and it’s your job to create lairs, treasure rooms, traps, lure in monsters to live there (and build your traps and such)… and you have the responsibility of feeding the monsters, and keeping them happy and entertained (your dominatrix-like Mistresses insist on a Torture Chamber for fun, whereas your trolls and goblins would probably prefer the Casino).
There’s a Campaign Mode where your objective is to conquer a series of petty kingdoms by burrowing under them and invading, culminating in your conquering the entire land… as well as “My Pet Dungeon” mode, in which you simply create dungeons for fun (and arrange for invasions by Goodly Heroes, to see how your defenses stand up), as well as Skirmish Mode, in which you can complete a selection of single-shot missions against the Goodly Heroes, or rival Dungeon Keepers!
I’ve been playing the thing since 1999, and I haven’t got tired of it yet.
“Riven” for me. But it’s of a genre most of you are probably unaware of. It’s called an “Adventure Game”. No cars to steal, or whores to run over, or buildings to blow up, or giant monsters whose bloody guts will splatter gloriously.
These type games are more contemplative and cerebral, if you will. More comforting to me than cutting heads off trolls with axes.
Adventure games are getting harder to find in America, where the mindless violent stuff sells best. But if you want to venture into more thought-provoking game territory (more thought-provoking than: “That blowed up real good!”) I recommend looking for games like: “Sanitarium”, “Grim Fandango”, “Syberia”, “The Longest Journey”, “Legacy of Time”, “Zork Nemesis”, “Blackstone Chronicles”, “Darkfall”, "Obsidian"and the “Myst Trilogy” which includes the above mentioned “Riven” along with “Exile” and the original “Myst” which used to be the best-selling game of all time. (Don’t know if it still is.) You’ll have to put on your thinking cap to finish these, but looking around this country, I don’t see that as a bad thing.
Also, I understand that most gamers want just the opposite of having to think when they relax with a game. So to each his own.
I’ve had this game on my hard drive since the day it came out about 3 years ago. Since that time, dozens of games have come and gone, but this one is a constant that I just can’t bring myself to uninstall.
I’ve played countless FPS’s both single player and online - I suck at every one of them. I dabbled in “realism” games like Counterstrike, but constantly come in dead last place, plus its no fun at all for me.
But UT, damn…I am almost always first place no matter what server I go on to…in fact, I’ve been banned from many places by ignorant admins with accusations of “cheating” (I do no such thing). In that game, I am a GOD. Therefore, it is my true comfort game.
And yes, I’ve tried its sequel, Unreal Tournament 2003 - it sucks (and consequently, I suck at it).
