[offtopic] And apparently, this thread has been around so long that I posted twice without remembering the previous post. Man, this one has some legs.[/offtopic]
I remember this game vividly for some reason and I honestly dont remember it being as horrible as people say. I think there’s a lot of cool kid revisionism going with all the ET hate. Not to defend it, but I remember it just being a simple adventure game just like a whole lot of Atari games. You fell into a hole and had to get out. You had to find the spaceship and elliot. You had to find phone parts. No biggie. Sure, it wasnt Pitfall, but then again, what is?
It did fail in the market of course and Im sure a lot of people have unrealistic expectations for games based on good movies. Afterall it was a good movie, so it should automatically be a good game, right?
That said, Im usually disappointed by the games I buy. I think at this stage of my life I have a hard time tolerating anything that isnt online multiplayer or LAN/in room multiplayer. The idea of trying to play a puzzle game or adventure game thats on rails and has me solving the developer’s idea of puzzles just turns me off. With the exception of excellent offline shooters like Doom3 and HL2, Im just not feeling it. That said, the biggest waste of game dollars lately have been:
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Ghostbusters. The PC version lacks multiplayer. I didnt realize it until I brought it home and installed it. I imagine the multiplayer would be fun. The offline game really isnt.
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Warhammer online. A poor WoW clone. I prefered Age of Conan and Lord of the Rings.
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare. I wanted to like this, but I keep going back to BF2.
IIRC, the problem with the hole is that it’s physically impossible for the ET sprite to get out of it.
No, it works fine. The problem is that they did the sprite collision the quick and dirty way so what happens is if you move left or right to get out of the hole then when E.T.'s head moves down it tends to collide with the hole again sending the player back into the pit. If you move up or down then when the head moves back into position there’s nothing to catch it.
For me it was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – I just really couldn’t get into it, and besides which it ran like a bloated pig on my system, which supposedly meets the “recommended” hardware.
Age of Conan, as well. The first 20 levels were pretty fun, but … mrrrrargghh it got really bad shortly thereafter. They should have released it as a single-player RPG.
It was definitely unplayable out of the box, though if you want to try it out at some point in the future there are patches that fix performance issues and some of the gameplay balance issues. If you like any exploration at all in your games then it is worth putting up with the obstacles to play that the shoddy coding introduce (they never do get the save and load AI states under control) since it’s essentially a game about exploring incredibly detailed models of run down Soviet buildings.
Black and White. It got GREAT reviews (side note, this is the game that made me realize reviewers are full of shit) and looked interesting so I picked it up.
a few hours of ‘Villagers need food! Villagers need wood! Villagers need…’ later and I’d had it. Even the creature was not really all that interesting because while it may or may not have learned from your actions and been trainable and all the other hype they attributed to it, everything it did felt so random regardless of what you did that you were pretty much forced to leash it all the time to get it to do what you wanted.
MoO3 gets an honorable mention though. It, too, was terrible but at least I spent more time with it then Black and White.
Wow. So many, in the past three decades of my gaming.
In the end, I will just list them but a few things to note. For a while there, I was buying a lot of games because I thought my wife and I would play them. However, we haven’t, and it looks like we won’t. So, these may be good games, and it’s console games, PC games and board games, but I haven’t gotten to play them.
First, my Amiga. While I loved it, I am sad I put as much money as I did into it, compared to having an IBM clone. sigh Hindsight and all that. I don’t regret my C64 though!
Spore
C&C Generals
Merc 2: World in Flames
Temple of Elemental Evil - It’s almost playable but sometimes the battles get so long that I forget wtf I am supposed to be doing
Pool of Radiance - Again, an almost. If I could have scrolled past my characters, clicked where I left off in my crawling and let them get there, this would have been played more.
SW: Rebellion
Halo for PC - I didn’t get why it was so cool and haven’t learned console controls for shooters, so I am not good at them.
Dork Tower board game
Hunter board game
Vampire table game All of these are RPG lite games, I think, in the style of their parent games. Haven’t got to try them with anyone yet.
Killer Bunnies - We spent a lot on this and did play it but then bought three more expansions and never played it again. sigh it got to complex.
CCGs and other RPG lite card games - I still have some but again, thought it would be something my wife and I could do. Nope. Buffy was the big one but we also did Spellfire and some others.
Monopoly - For a while, for some reason my wife and I thought it would be fun to collect Monopoly from where ever we go. So, we had Vegas, and Iowa, and SW, ST, etc. However, then it turns out she doesn’t like the game but can be obsessive about collecting things like this.
1502
1601
Oblivion - I got this because it was supposed to be a good Exalted like game but couldn’t get past a mission after lots of tries and so stopped playing it. Probably just not good at it.
Red Steel
Elebits
**Rampage **
Summer Games
Winter Games
Privateer - and most wing commander types
ST New Worlds - I want to like RTS games. I really want to. I have lots of them. But, for me, there ends up being something about them that I don’t like and so very rarely do I play them long. I need to remember this and get them at a discount price. This includes a lot of RTS games, Earth 2150, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft, ST Armada I & II (although I have gone far in these two),
Storm of Zehir - I really want to like NWN2 but it seems that computer RPGs = combat and that gets old to me. I want the story. Even HotU, the best expansion imo for NWN, I didn’t completely finish because of something.
Civ III As I said in another thread about Far Cry 2, sometimes it seems these games add complexity without the ability to make it better. I don’t like micromanagement and many of these have them.
Rome city builder - don’t remember the name
Medal of Honor - one of the few FPS I didn’t like and am surprised by that.
Tweeners - These are games that I really wanted to like and played them for a while but either I found out I am not good at them or they just didn’t hold my interest. I don’t know if I would do better with them now or not.
Total War - Rome, Medieval - Really wanted to like them but am not good at them.
Torment - It got old running back and forth talking to all of the NPCs. I don’t need combat but maybe a faster computer might have improved my experience of this one.
Dungeon Siege 1 & 2 - In a twist, my wife LOVES them and I enjoy it multiplayer on LAN but have never gone far in the single player campaign. Actually, I really wanted NWN2 to be like this as I LOVE LOVE LOVE the seemless scrolling and hate the loading in NWN. So, I try them again every once in a while but I don’t get far with them.
Age of Mythology I want to like it but something about it keeps me from playing it much.
In passing, I liked Outlaws. I thought the story and cut scenes were great and the action was a lot of fun. And I do play some RTS games longer, such as Civ I, Master of Magic, Rise of Nations, Grid Defense (love this tower defense game!) and some others.
Finally, I got a program to help me run my weekly RPG (Masterplan) for free and now lament some miniature purchases and am wondering if I should get more or not. I can’t believe a program is making me say that but I am also thinking about getting rid of minis. That’s a LOT of money over the years. And I like playing with them, handling them and having them on the table. Ever since my game went electronic, though, Masterplan has been great for what I need!
vislor, who wonders if this trip down memory lane was good or bad . . .