Old guy wants gaming advice

The Game Room
41

Genres, not really. Unless you want to count interactive fiction as turn-based. The problem with 4X games, as much as I like them, is that they can get really micromanaging and bog down. This is especially true of the older Civ games, Master of Orion and MOO2, Master of Magic, and so on. As much as I like Civ IV, for instance, a combination of micromanaging, warfare, and stacks of doom can really bog down play.

Well, there are games in the educational sphere that generally proceed by turns. Oregon Trail and its descendants, Carmen Sandiego, things like that. And if course all board games translated to computer with an AI opponent.

42

Not Myst. I enjoy the Myst games but they can be hard to get into and frustrating at times.
So a risky choice for your very first gaming experience.

On smartphone I second the recommendation of something simple and beautiful like Monument Valley or Lumino City.
I’d also recommend something like Where’s my water: it’s a simple game but not so simple as to seem like busywork, and addictive. If you can’t find enjoyment in something like that, it’s a sign that maybe games in general are not for you.

On PC it’s a bit more complicated because how new and advanced a game you can play will depend upon the specifications of your PC. Do you know the CPU and graphics card?

43

that’s why I mentioned gog.com that way he can play some of the old simple games and move up to the modern games…

44

Gaming can be a lot of fun and keeps you mentally agile. My recommendations:

  1. A PC with a gaming video card, whatever is good for about $150. You might post your PC specs/model here so we can tell if you if it’s good for gaming.
  2. Download Steam, it’s free and is the dominant PC game distribution platform. You can shop for games, read reviews, download games, and maintain your game library with Steam.
  3. Isthereanydeal.com and https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/ You can set up alerts on IsThereAnyDeal to tell you when there are free game giveaways, the average has been about 2-3 per week for at least a year now. Some games are on Steam, some on Epic, some on Twitch Prime which you get free if you are an Amazon Prime member.
  4. To research a game, look at screenshots, read reviews on Steam, and search YouTube for gameplay videos. Trailers don’t do much for me, they are a glossy fictionalized version of the game but not usually what the game is like to play. So if you were interested in XCOM, search YouTube for: XCOM PC GAMEPLAY and skim through the video to see if it looks like something you’d enjoy.

Between frequent Steam sales and game giveaways I wouldn’t recommend paying full price $60 for any game unless it’s something you know you’ll love. I have hundreds of games that I’ve paid between $0 and $10 for, and many were $60 just a few years before. Be patient.

If you like strategy games I would definitely recommend Civilization 4, 5, or 6. Think the board game Risk but with much more depth.

45

City builders(Sim city, Citiies: Skylines) are a good into for many people,especially on god modes.

46

Skyrim.
Fallout 3.
Last of Us.

Dive right into the big hits of the past 10 years (shit, how old is Skyrim?) They’ll be cheap, your rig will almost certainly run them fine, and you won’t be jaded about graphic to mind them being a bit dated.

Yeah, a lot of games assume you know how to navigate menus or use WASD to move around or whatever, but you’ll pick it up, these things aren’t THAT complicated. You’re not playing competitive Starcraft and worried about your clicks per minute.

47

Oh yeah. I probably should’ve mentioned these, but they’re not technically “turn-based” so I sortof spaced on them. Cities: Skylines is definitely worth a look.

I kinda disagree with diving right into the deep end with something like Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is a game for people who know how to play games.

48

I agree with that…F3 is NOT a beginner’s game for most values of beginner.

SimCity or SimCity2000, DOOM, aforementioned Starcraft or Command and Conquer, maybe some of the middle era role playing games if OP has familiarity with roleplaying systems. Turn-based strategy like Panzer General. I’m trying to remember how high the learning curve is in Fallout 2.

49

Fallout 3 is not remotely the deep end, especially with VATS and a difficulty scale.

50

It’s not the deep end, but I’m not sure it’s a “This is my first video game ever” game.

51

I’m not saying a console is a wrong choice but I don’t think this is a good reason. Tv’s are typically set much further back from where you’re sitting. They often use a low field of view in games to make things visible from a distance and oversized UI elements just to be visible. This may sound like this makes them better, but no, it’s more like a necessary change just too make it usable.

Think of it this way. You can read a webpage on your 5" phone screen way easier than a 50" tv across the room, where you’ll probably have to magnify everything to read it.

PC monitors are also almost always better than tvs on every way for gaming. Higher resolution, less input delay, better reactivity, and often better in ways like color and contrast. PC games typically come with way better support for scaling your UI to fit your visual acuity. And you can almost always set your field of view in PC games, this is much rarer than console games, which favor standardization.

A 27" monitor at 2 feet gives you easy more visual information / angular resolution than even a large 60"+ tv at 10 feet.

It’s also pretty simple to plug the output of a pc into a tv if you are set on that, but I wouldn’t recommend it. PC monitors are purpose built to be better at interfacing for productivity and flexibility than televisions.

52

Oh dear god no. FTL is one of the last games I’d recommend to a new gamer. It’s a great game but it’s a frustration stimulator. And I think it also targets veteran gamers. No hand holding at all, and it asks you to constantly solve problems that benefit from familiarity with the thinking that comes from solving puzzles in video games before.

Other suggestions are good. Civ 5 or 6 is actually a really good idea. Move at your own pace, the interface is not that different from using your pc as a productivity machine, fairly intuitive, and it has that gaming hook factor that drives you.

53

One more thing. Be very cautious with mobile gaming. In theory, an iPad would be an amazing first gaming device for a new gamer. The interface can be intuitive and it’s super easy to setup. And there are mobile games that are high quality and great.

But the majority of popular mobile games are pure gaming cancer. They’re designed by psychologists to be skinner boxes more than game designers to be great games. They’re designed to hook you literally using some of the same reward systems as drugs or gambling.

And they’re designed to almost be fun. They’re designed to get you hooked on playing them and then put in roadblocks to make your experience less fun do you get so frustrated that you pay to make them go away.

You’ll see games that have 10 different timers and 5 different currencies. Oh, you’re out of tickets to play. Wait 4 hours and you get another turn. Or you can buy 100 gems for $20 and pay 3 of them to make that 4 hour timer go away.

Oh, you get a free chance to win a new piece of armor on your character, but you have to check in every 6 hours! Or you can buy 2500 gold coins for 49.99 ( best value ) and spend 500 on a gamble crate that might be a new piece of armor! Or maybe you’ll get 500 green shards from that crate, which you can use to make whatever the10 hour limit they put in the game to go away.

Seriously, most modern popular mobile games are an insanely complex web of this shit where you need a spreadsheet to figure out what the fuck is even going on.

Oh, by the way, while you were waiting 4 hours for another turn, some guy that bankrupted his family because he’s addicted destroyed your base because he spent $7500 on the game and you did not.

I’m worried that the generation of kids that grew up on this shit will have no idea what conventional game design is all about. What makes gaming fun. They’ll have grown up on weird psychology experiments designed to maximize addiction and frustration to screw with their brain.

There are perfectly good mobile games available - usually you buy them for a few bucks and there are no further microtransaction - but if you don’t understand how to navigate the mobile gaming environment or have someone to curate it for you you still develop a very distorted idea of what gaming is.

PC and console are not nearly as dumb as that, but they have been trying to incorporate elements like that for a few years. In fact, the further you go back, the more pure the gaming market is. Go back 15+ years and the only thing game designers wanted to do was give you a game that entertained you and made you happy and was the best gaming experience they could provide. There are still games like this being made every year, but fewer and fewer.

54

I’d say it is the deep end. It’s not “shark-infested ocean” like, say, Dark Souls, but it’s not a beginner game. Think of VATS and the difficulty scale as the lifeguard at the pool. :slight_smile:

55

Sorry, I was referencing Fallout 3, I didn’t see the second page before posting.

56

I don’t really agree; I don’t think FTL builds on any previous game experience at all, because there’s nothing else really like it. Yes, it may be frustrating for some people (it never frustrated me) but it’s a self contained experience. There are no expectations that you already know how it works. You’re not expected to know any genre conventions in terms of control scheme or strategy.

It’s certainly more suitable for a beginner than Fallout 3.

Reasonably functional tutorial as well, but they are large and complicated, so can be daunting for some beginners.

57

I don’t think FTL relies on deep gamer knowledge, but I’m also of the opinion that it’s not a game for beginners. Any roguelike where the expectation is that you die and don’t make any (permanent) progress towards a goal is going to be very frustrating.

58

Well, if you’re looking for a community of people to play with/against, I’d say go with an MMO. I grew tired of playing MMOs after more than a decade (they have become very formulaic), but some of my best online friends were made through MMOs. Some of them I’ve even met in real life.

If I were to go back to an MMO it would probably be World of Warcraft. It’s an old game (and likely your computer will handle it just fine) but still has an active community. Co-op is easy enough to get into, and there are player-vs-player options. It does cost $15 a month to play however (you don’t need to buy the software anymore).

59

I don’t think this is necessarily any more frustrating to a new player than an old player. Some people like roguelikes, some people don’t like roguelikes, and there is, in my experience, no real correlation between those preferences and “has been playing video games for a long time.” Some people just feel annoyed, and some people just think “I can do better the next time! Let me try again!” – fundamentally, there’s nothing different in that regard between a roguelike and an older arcade-style game, except that roguelikes are about thinking and not reflexes.

60

Start simple. Do you like chess, checkers, backgammon, risk, yahtzee, cribbage or other card games? Google the game, you will find plenty of “old school” games online, single player and multi-player. Lots of on-line gaming sites with collections of these games.