I have just discovered that Grand Theft Auto 3 makes a great comfort game, if you’re just messing around. Instead of doing missions, I had a police chase that lasted more than five days (in game time), just going crazy with the jumps and turns. Of course, it ended spectacularly: I made a jump onto the overhead L-tracks and got rammed by a train in midair. I don’t think I could do it again if I tried.
no my connection couldn’t handle multiplayer then, i would lag bad. nevertheless, i tried to log in once, and was promptly mowed down by a group of rampaging aliens coming down the war path…
i’ll second The Longest Journey. wouldn’t recommend it normally but i do so agree with the above statement, i would have april wander around just to listen to her thoughts, the conversations with other people and even take my time to read her diary. i’d a few attempts to start a diary before but it always petered out, but after that game ended i was inspired to start another diary and have kept it up since.
OP - what about web games? i had fun with acrophobia but it’s gone now. sometimes, when i’m bored i might try win, lose or draw, and hope i can find a good room.
Ah yes. There’s nothing like playing that game at 11 PM with the lights out, looking away from the computer during a dull moment, only to be scared shitless when out of the blue you hear “Join the MANY!”
Marc
Miller, gotta say, nice comeback. Anyone that thinks adventure games are all cerebral and high class hasn’t been playing them long. While fun, can anyone really say that trying to figure out how to get past the pimp to have sex with the hooker is a better use of time than saving the universe from the evil aliens of Xen?
Archon is still one of the coolest games around. There’s an updated PC version of it out there somewhere, but I just run the old C64 classic on an emulator. It’s like arcade-style chess.
Hoyle’s Card Games Maybe doesn’t quite fit the OP’s definition of a “comfort game,” but this is what I play for hours. (Skat and Cribbage being my two faves.)
Halo, if only because I’m a frag god.
Starcraft: Broodwars, before I had to delete it and swear off RTS games. (I was ranked quite respectably on Kali in AoE) I still have a great puzzle-scenario I created for it. But the oceans of time I spent in build-order strategies became unacceptable.
Hitman 2: Nothing is as satisfying as going through a level killing everyone while being seen by noone.
Actually I think this (along with the various other Hoyle titles) fits the OP better than most of the other games mentioned in this thread.
After all, the title features multiple card games (which, I think, counts as variety 
) multiple skill levels in terms of computer-controlled oponents to play against (not to mention the variable skills of opponents you might meet online) and are a lot more laid-back and relaxing than some of the games mentioned herein.
Much as I love games like GTA3 and various FPSs, I have to wonder about people who derive comfort from them . . . 
The current one is Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons Demo. Normally against the bots. The game makes up for the bots being a bit dumb at times by making plenty of them, and making them really good shots at times. Nothing like bottling up the enemy at a bridge and slaughtering them as they try to cross it with your trusty Sherman. Boom!
Heh!
I have to cast a vote for Nethack.
This is a game that I will replay forever. Is there another game that can inspire dread at the sight of mere letters, like this: h or this: R?
Maybe it’s not extremely simple in its gameplay, though. But anyway, it’s completely free, is only 2 megs, and is better than almost any other game out there.
Harpoon.
Yeah, it’s ancient but there are about 4 billion user scenarios out there.
Plus, there’s nothing like seeing your complex attack plan coming together pefectly and suddenly having three Alfas appear inside your anti-sub screen right before you launch…
Sherlock, an old logic game. I was able to do some puzzles in under five minutes, though some of the puzzles seemed to come down to a 50/50 guess…
Diablo 2 LOD. My greatest waste of time.
Doom II: as someone mentioned earlier, it’s fun and familiar. Plus there are 10 gazillion user created levels out there, so you can still discover new environments.
CivII/Alpha Centauri: For me, the best gameplay of the genre. Have not played CivIII, but CivCTP sucked.
Snood
Yep. I should’ve remembered Doom. The best part about it is how it all works from sprites so you can walk into a room filled with 500 monsters with no slow-down. Walking out again…that’s a problem. I like using Slige to randomly generate levels–sure, they get a bit samey after a while, but it’s still sufficiently different each time to satisfy me.
Well if you like AoE conquerors Biggirl then I recommend Rise of Nations - the latest and greatest of real time strategy. BTW, do any of you play adventure games one than once? Even 10 years later I wouldn’t forget the puzzles to Grim Fandango. If you like that genre and have played GF, then I’d recommend Longest Journey and Sanitarium. Or, go old school and get Day of the Tentacle - a brilliant Lucas Arts adventure. If you have a GameCube then probably Animal Crossing is the ultimate comfort game.
Well, I went to download the Sims patch. Seems I’ve already done that. At least that’s what my 'puter tells me. Maybe it’s Vacaction that’s screwed up. I made the very, very bad mistake of not upgrading The Sims in order of the releases. Here’s some advice-- don’t do this! The Sims like their updates in the proper order, if you put them in in the wrong order Bob oozes out of The Matrix and smothers you with his greasy t-shirt.
Uh, Biggirl, that’s your problem Right There, and there’s no fix for it but unistalling and reinstalling everything. They have to be installed in order they were released, or they don’t work. It says so in all the booklets that come with the game expansions because they mean it.
The proper order is either Sims Deluxe or The Sims and Livin’ Large (since Deluxe is Sims and LL) -->House Party–> Hot Date → Vacation → Unleashed → Superstar (–> Makin Magic will be next after it comes out in Oct)
What you’re supposed to do if you want to go back and add one is go into your MAXIS/thesims folder and make copies of all your Userdata folders, your Gamedata folder and Downloads folders and paste them somewhere else. Why I couldn’t tell you, but I think a few people have had the folders over-written so the tell everyone to back them up just in case something goes wrong. (and if they do you just c&p the old folders after deleting the new ones the game installed) Then unistall the game and re-install them in proper order with regards to which ones you have, so if you have just Hot date and Unleashed, you’d install them in the right order, pretending the others in the chain were there anyway. You have to do this every time you want to install one that isn’t the latest one. There isn’t any other way to make them work.
Once you re-install them, and get the patch for the very last expansion pack you have (the older pack’s patches are included in each newer expansion, so unleashed, for example has all the patches but its own on the disk - and there’s no superstar patch and no talk of making one unfortunately) it should start working properly for you. <fingers crossed> At least until you install Super Star 
Oh, I did uninstall and reinstall. The Sims won’t let you install an older upgrade without uninstalling the newer one first.
I can play for a while. Sometimes a long while. But if I send my Sims on a date, it will eventually crash and I have to turn off my computer manually. Complete computer lockup. That’s why I don’t play it any more.
Maybe I should just uninstall it from the The Sims and start from scratch.
I love racing games and will put in one of my Need for Speed disks (High Stakes or Porsche) when I want something fun to kill time. I have lots of user-created vehicles for HS, including the Police Hunter truck.
Heck, I have a shortcut to Renegade on my desktop, a game so old, you could choose to play in CGA or (wow!) EGA.
Yeah, kind of like I said when I said in the first sentence " Uh, Biggirl, that’s your problem Right There, and there’s no fix for it but unistalling and reinstalling everything," Right? I hope after all the trouble it has caused you it works in the end!