If you say you don’t like modern video games, then you have not played WiiSports tennis. That is all.
And I’m 40.
I think hind-sight is 20/20 when it comes to gaming. When I look back I barely remember all the crap I bought and hated but remember the games I can still go back to over and over. There’s a dozen ‘old school’ titles that I struggle to keep working as my computer gets better and better. Meanwhile every time I break open a game that’s just ‘ok’ it makes me yearn to fire up a game I’ve beaten a million times over.
But once and awhile I still do stumble over a game that just does it for me. Even weirder is the number of games I fired up got bored of and put back down only to reinstall later and play the living hell out of it. Hitman: Blood Money for instance. I couldn’t wait to play it I got it and played through the rubbish tutorial level and set it aside. When I reinstalled it later I played it obsessively. Finally I can beat all the missions getting Silent Assassin (the best rating) in the least amount of time on the hardest level and I know that it’s gone into the library of games that I’ll get an urge to play again randomly years down the road.
Probably at that time I’ll be hooked up to the latest VR machine and be thinking 'damn why don’t they make games like they used to anymore?"
oh and PS I think online gaming has taken way too much focus away from the single player experience. I miss the old days where online action was an afterthought and single player was the main course instead of vice versa.
I thought the bowling was better, personally. The tennis game annoyed the crap out of me, especially against the computer.
FTR, if anyone needs to lose an SNES, send me a PM. This thread has got me thinking about it again, and now I’m itchin’ to get my hands on one. NES too, for that matter.
I’ve always dug FPSes, anyway, and I logged quite a few hypercaffeinated hours on Quake when I was 12 years old. I wouldn’t mind an FPS like that: a decent selection of different weapons with strengths and weaknesses, but if you want to you can just get right down to Point and Click. Now it seems like every weapon in every game has this intricate arcane lore that you have to familiarize yourself with.
Even better: I want games with Instagib, like in UT2K3. (BZFlag is pretty much Instagib by definition, actually, which is probably a big part of the reason why I’m so obsessed with it right now.)
Actually, I’ve had the best luck in (a) avoiding cheaters and (b) finding strongly anti-cheating environments in free games. I don’t know what it is about them–Babo Violent 2, for example, is as dominated by 12-year-old boys as any other game out there. I think it’s just that there’s a tight community, because it’s not so well-known. Almost everyone who plays the game is on one unofficial MB, and whenever someone cheats another player grabs a few screenshots as proof and pops them up on the MB, and then that guy gets banned almost immediately.
I think that’s where I am. I want to pick up a game and twitch away for an hour or so, not feel like I’m watching a weeklong movie marathon and spend hours trying to figure out obscure solutions. I don’t want to feel like I’m in Calculus class when I play videogames.
Have you seen King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters? It’s probably not in any theatres anymore, but go get it on DVD. Seriously.
I have interest in World In Conflict. Anyone have it?
I do. Lots of fun. One of the best of that genre in a long while IMO. Graphics are amazing too (I posted a link to a video of it in Post #2 and yeah…it really looks like that and you do not need a Cray Supercomputer to play it like that).
There is a demo available. Give it a try.
Here’s another link for World in Conflict. This one is from an in-game cut scene to give you an idea of the production values. I admit I am cheating here showing you what I consider the best of all the cut scenes but eh…I’m singing its praises and the other cut scenes are good too.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23744.html (note you can control the media type from Quicktime to Flash to Windows Media depending on what your PC can run just below the display in the link).
I don’t think it’s just aging. I’m still within the target age bracket (22 isn’t that old, is it?), yet a vanishingly small number of games released within the last four years or so have appealed to me.
It isn’t us, it’s the industry: graphics drive everything, but better graphics require larger textures, more detailed models, more accurate bump-maps, and so on. Every small increase in graphics quality requires a massive increase in content (see unreal tournament [original] vs. unreal tournament 2004: the original was less than 1gb, the sequel is 6gb). This increase in required content makes the games proportionally more expensive to produce: whereas in the past a single person could make a cutting-edge game, now a team of 50 is not unheard of. More expensive games require more copies to be sold to break even, which means that fewer games can be produced, and that producing a novel game is a gigantic risk.
The result is that the production of games consolidates into fewer and fewer companies, each of which produces increasingly conservative games to limit their risk. It doesn’t help that the target audience is teenage males. Compared to cinema, every game produced by a major company aims to be a summer action blockbuster, because they have to be to recoup their costs.
And so innovation quietly dies. Sure, Half Life 2 oozes atmosphere, but that’s all it has; it’s a hollow mockery of a game, a glittering abomination sewn together from tired gameplay and well-worn cliches.
That being said, if you’re looking for good games, your best bet is either the recent past or Europe, not because Europe has any sort of mystical lock on artistry, but because the games industry is far less consolidated there.
I would recommend (omitting those that have already been suggested):
Adventure
-Dreamfall [highly recommended, but it starts off slow]
-Indigo Prophecy [first half only]
FPS (primarily single-player)
-No One Lives Forever, 1 & to a lesser extent 2 [highly recommended].
-Alien vs. Predator 2 [if only for the alien campaign]
-FEAR [short, but reasonably entertaining]
-Penumbra [I’ve only played the demo, but it seemed interesting]
-Max Payne [actually 3rd person]
FPS (primarily multiplayer)
-Unreal Tournament 2004
-Tribes 2
RPG (it’s almost impossible to avoid fantasy, so I’ll only list one)
-Morrowind [the predecessor to Oblivion, and a better game to boot]
Side Scroller
-Cave Story [free!]
-Castlevania, Symphony of the Night [for Playstation, and fantasy (vampires, etc.) but it’s the pinnacle of the whole 2d sidescroller genre]
Huh, interesting that so many people hate playing against cheaters. I always love it, because of two things:
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When you stomp their faces into the ground they get all pissy and accuse you of cheating…then you get to bask in the knowledge that you can beat an aimbot.
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They provide a challenge. Much harder to kill a cheater than it is to kill a normal person.
Ever try Serious Sam? That game is about 4 to 5 years old and is about as unabashedly FPS as you can get. It’s all about killing and killing and killing. I have to admit, I thought it was pretty cool for what it is. It’s got a cool setup and loads of stuff to shoot.
Serious Sam is what Doom would have been. They don’t try to make anything too groundbreaking at all, but something about that game is kinda cool.
I’ve played Serious Sam and quite enjoyed it, even though it basically is an exercise in holding down the fire button continuously.
Serious Sam 2 is good too. As is Painkiller, it’s a little more Doom-like.
Yep. Serious Sam and Serious Sam 2 are great, but they’re played out for me. I played them for hours on end at LAN parties every couple of weeks for about a year.
Wow, here I thought I was the only one that felt this way. I love the original DOOM, QUAKE, BLOOD and UNREAL games, but HALF-LIFE was just an absolutely miserable experience for me.
I used to enjoy most strategy games that were brought out but I can’t remember the last one that gripped me (unless you call Football Manager 2008 a strategy game). IMO the best RTS game came out 8 years ago: ‘Age Of Empires II: The Age of Kings’. AOE III really disappointed me. It seems like they’ve all changed to an attacking style of play. I enjoy playing defensively, using the least amount of resources to inflict the greatest amount of damage. Most of the new games don’t even allow you to build walls. I bought Company of Heroes but the only way to win in that seems to be a continual attack/push forward. That’s not my style.
I am however looking forward to the next Starcraft game. They had better not ruin it!
I do enjoy a lot of the new RPGs though. They take up most of the space on my hard drive, it’s about evenly split between new and old games (although the new ones are much larger). I love Titan Quest and Morrowind. I’m waiting to upgrade my computer before I try out some of the newer ones (2 weeks to go!). I can’t wait to play Oblivion with all the settings maxed.
FPS games have never really interested me. I’ll play Half Life 2 but I don’t get the same enjoyment out of it that everyone else seems to. I enjoyed the story in Bioshock but the combat left me mostly wanting. I still love and replay Deus Ex. I haven’t tried any of the newer stealth-based fps games. I didn’t have much money for a long time and a hell of a lot of games passed me by. I’ll have to go back and check on them.
I disagree with the people who say PvP is becoming a problem in MMOGs. I think it’s getting increasingly easy to avoid PvP. Obviously not in games such as EVE Online but you can be fully decked out in úber epics in WOW and not enter a single battleground. D&D Online doesn’t even have PvP. Most games have a PvP ‘switch’ making it entirely consentual. On the other hand, the only fully non-consentual MMOG on the market is EVE Online AFAIK. If you’re looking for skill based PvP (as opposed to item based) you’re completely SOL. Ultima Online used to cater to that with it’s Siege Perilous shard but even that has become almost completely item based.
I did enjoy EVE Online but eventually the time needed to contribute to the alliance wars really drained me. I quit just after my alliance was defeated (Lotka Volterra). Maybe I’ll return one day and join a smaller PvP corp but I doubt it. Call me bitter, I don’t think a game with the Goons in it is a game I can enjoy.
You know, you guys can leave the house and play tennis and bowling. :rolleyes:
I was so disappointed by Oblivion. I loved Morrowind and couldn’t wait for the sequel. I even bought an XBox 360 for it. It’s too freakin’ hard and takes forever just to get anywhere. I haven’t turned that thing on in months. If the next GTA doesn’t get me playing again, I’m selling it.
Honestly I think EVE is the first game that has stalled the Goons. They are still there to be sure and while something to be reckoned with they are by no means upending the game as they would like. Oddly after their initial shenanigans they have almost become good game citizens. Almost…but after threadnaughts and DDOS attacks and such many are actually decent participants on the forums. Privateers got nerfed when CCP changed the War Dec rules so they couldn’t keep and infinite number of wars going. Pretty much they are just another alliance now doing their thing same as everyone else.
A long time ago I was a Director in what (at the time) was the largest corp in EVE and took part in the Great Northern War. But like you it wore on me and for various reasons (mostly real life) I took about a year off. When I returned I hooked with my old CEO in a small corp and we just build stuff, make gobs of money and have fun. I am considering dropping an ALT in an Alliance to satisfy an occasional PvP fix.
I still think EVE has the best online MMOG community out there. It has its idiots to be sure but not so many and the good people are easy to find. Ultimately it is the people that keep me logging in more than any other one thing.
And EVE is getting a whole new graphics update in late November along with piles of new ships to play with and other stuff. You might stick your nose in again soon and see how it is. If you do look me up.
I looked up the following from another forum before I clued in that you are using an XBox so i do not know if these work. For the PC however I have heard the game can be very good with a few mods applied. Here is what someone else suggested (and I have been meaning to try but not got around to yet):
"Essential Oblivion mods:
Oscuro’s overhaul
Retroactive health (so you don’t have to beef up endurance asap)
Quest award leveling (So you don’t get penalized for doing quests as a newbie)
I personally also like random mods which affect stealth characters. Stuff that makes it harder but more effective is best. e.g. Stealth Overhaul mod."
I have to second Oblivion as overrated. Th combat was better than Morowind, but still not nearly where it should be. Likewise, the dungeon were cool… for the first five minutes.
But whoever designed most of them was a pathetically bad level designer. I think my grandma could outdo him. Look! It’s a single guy in a hallway! Followed by another lone guy in a hyallway! Hey, there’s another guy in a hallway! Sometimes they broke it up by having two guys in a small room, or a slightly annoying trap. A few of the dungeons were really cool, and the elven ruins better than average, but overall the Morrowind dungeons were MUCH more interesting.
And the levelling system was a disaster. Why they keep refusing to fix it is beyond me. Likewise the sucky early quest rewards got to be really obnoxious. And the enemy scaling. And the grotesquely overhyped voice acting and A.I.
Look at my post just above yours (#38). You are not the only person with that complaint so the community took it upon themselves to fix it. Those mods are fairly extensive and sort much of what you are on about I am told (haven’t tried them myself).