Tonight we bring you the latest episode in our weekly Guest Post series: Medium Cool with BGinCHI
In case you missed the introduction to the series:
Culture as a Hedge Against this Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In
Tonight’s Topic: Let’s Talk Gaming!
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BG is away on vacation, but we did some planning in advance! ~WaterGirl
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Here’s a note from BG, explaining what we have in store for you:
I’m out of town for this week’s Medium Cool, but I think you’ll do just fine without me.
I was surprised at how many of you have gaming experience in the last thread we did, so I hope this appeals. The subject is gaming, and to start you off, eddie blake outlines the evolution of his life with games.
How about the rest of you? When did you first get involved in gaming, what are you playing these days, and what keeps you in the game?
Many thanks to Eddie for his work on this.
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Gaming Adventures by eddie blake
Let’s talk gaming again. As we discussed, video games have grown steadily from their birth as novelty entertainment for drunks and stoners in the 1970’s. Now developers put in millions of dollars and employ hundreds of people to create cutting edge games as high-end entertainment…for drunks and stoners (games are ALSO made for more family-friendly audiences in mind).
I enjoy good storytelling. I love comic books, graphic novels, book-books, films, cartoons, anime and video games. I always have. As a kid, when one of my neighbors got an Atari 2600, it was like a revelation. You could have that in your HOUSE?
I wanted an upgrade to the Sega Genesis. The machine sang to you when you turned it on. “sAAY-Gaaa!” Suddenly, you could have games that practically matched the arcades when it came to graphic fidelity.
Phenomenal games like Valve’s Half Life or Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic drastically changed my opinion of what games could be, and what they could do. Half Life is a game with a seamless and engaging story. It was topped by the sequel, Half Life 2 and the subsequent DLC that allowed you to play as Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who has to save the world from an extra-dimensional incursion or three. ‘Knights of the Old Republic’ was the first time I played something that felt like an old school, IRL role-playing game. The game allowed for an extensive player-creation setup, where you could craft your character’s gender, disposition and body-type. It was a deep and astounding experience with a thunderous plot twist.
I had a friend in the aughts who had a brush with fame and a bit of money. His apartment had twelve foot ceilings with a projector TV and an XBOX plugged into it. We’d get wasted and play HALO: Combat Evolved, or Crimson Skies: The High Road to Revenge, or Dead or Alive,splashed across his walls in vivid color. He would beat me a lot. When my girlfriend at the time asked me what I was doing all those hours, I told her. I was surprised to hear her answer. “I like video games too,” she said. The next thing I knew, she was taking him to school on pretty much every game he owned.
Clearly, my next move was to get an XBOX.
I got a lot of mileage out of that machine and didn’t hesitate to get the next console, the XBOX 360. I was truly unprepared for games like Bethesda’s Skyrim or Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. They broke my perception of how big games could get.
There was no place you couldn’t walk to, no place you couldn’t climb within the map of Skyrim. In AC: Black Flag, that map was the Caribbean Sea. You could sail from Jamaica to South Florida and stop at any of the myriad islands in the nearby waters, commanding your two-masted gunship, Jackdaw. Then you could leap into the water and swim to shore, without a cut-scene. The scale of the playable area was stupefying.
Assassin’s Creed is a game series from Ubisoft Studios. The first came out in 2007 and there’ve been over a dozen on a variety of platforms. AC games are known for dual, dueling plotlines, mixing the present and the past. There is a complicated lore and backstory, involving a long-running battle between two factions, “Assassins” and ”Templars”. That’s the least appealing part for me. Black Flag immersed you in the rich plot and stunning, color-saturated visuals of the eighteenth century Caribbean Sea with very few interruptions.
To get the 360 to work after ten years, I’d be forced to pound on the casing. One afternoon, my girlfriend came upon me beating on the roof of the 360 like it owed me money. “It’s time to let it go, honey,” she said to me. “It’s time.”
So I got an XBOX One. It had new AC games. The conceit of the last few was that each of the newer games took place BEFORE the previous ones. They had an AC: Origins and AC: Odyssey.
Origins, taking place in ancient Egypt, was (obviously) the origins of the Assassin Order and the Templar-Assassin war. 2018’s Odyssey, set in Greece of antiquity, was supposed to have NOTHING to do with any of that.
This intrigued me. That it had a version of the great sailing mechanic from Black Flag also piqued my interest. Odyssey puts you smack down in the middle of the Peloponnesian War with ALL of the islands and lands of Greece at your disposal to adventure through, from Macedonia to Crete.
While the character creation system in Odyssey isn’t as robust as that of KotOR, you DO get to choose your gender. You are given the option to play as Kassandra or her brother Alexios. The voice actress Melissanthi Mahout, who plays Kassandra, is more emotive and subtle in her characterization. Alexios sounds like Cookie Monster. The game is festooned with historical accuracy, locations and characters. There is some bending of the geography and that history, most blatantly in that they give Sparta a functional navy and fleets comparable to Athens, but other than that, you really feel like you’re walking the islands of the Mediterranean, thousands of years ago.
And what islands! The grass and flowers blow in the wind. Goats and chickens scamper past as you wander from town to town. Monumental works of architecture surround you, as well as the ruins of the civilizations that have come before. Whales breach out of the sea as you sail past, while your crew sings into the wind. Dynamic weather comes upon you. Storms rage and pass, and you can see the Milky Way stretch from horizon to horizon as day turns to night.
I put 363 hours into that game. It was an addictive experience. My girlfriend would often sit next to me on the sofa and watch with glee as Kassandra stomped across the Greek world like a giant. No spoilers, but you discover early on that there is far more to the PC than meets the eye. The main game covers the story of Kassandra learning her personal history and trying to pull together her family, torn apart by the gyre of war.
There are two available DLC expansions: The Legacy of the First Blade and The Fate of Atlantis. The former rather clumsily tries to connect the mythological world you’re striding through and the more grounded games that have come before in the series.
The second DLC, The Fate of Atlantis, explains why you have demigod-like powers as well as all of the supernatural events that have happened throughout, in a satisfactory manner. It made for a wonderful coda to the gaming experience, providing a deep dive into aspects of both Greek mythology and the game’s mythos.
I’m going in a different direction now. I’ve started ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’. So far it’s pretty engaging. What are you guys playing? Any thoughts on Open World gaming?
I hope you enjoyed this diversion from the regularly-scheduled awfulness that makes up the news.
eb
eddie blake
hey guys. let’s make this as open ended as possible. as long as it’s video-game related, and it piques your interest, let’s talk about it!
SiubhanDuinne
I’m not a “gamer” in any accepted sense of the term, but I do devote about an hour a day (early morning, to get my brain in gear) to playing a number of solitaire games — and, being somewhat OCD about these things, I play them in a specific sequence.
First, I play seven word games. Next, a daily trivia challenge. Then, three visual logic problems, followed by nine different solitaire card games. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s part of the ritual.
What should I call myself, if not a “gamer”? (Be kind.)
eddie blake
@SiubhanDuinne:
i mean, are you doing them with your computer or phone?
but yeah, in the larger sense. fans of RPG’s are gamers. i dunno what the dedicated chess or cards players call themselves, but those ARE games.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: I am intrigued. Is there a site that feeds you all of these every day?
dmsilev
I haven’t spent too much time with RPGs; I think the last one I sunk much effort into was Dragon Age: Inquisition, and that was several years ago. Strategy games, though, yeah hundreds and hundreds of hours on those. The Civilization series has been a favorite time waster since Civ 1 came out when I was in high school. Building games like SimCity back in the day and Cities:Skylines more recently. Factorio is a near-infinite timesink. Kerbal Space Program has been a good friend for many years now, and while it’s still a year or so away, I’m looking forward to seeing what the sequel has to offer.
Phishwu
Like you, I loved KotOR and pretty much everything Star Wars related. I have not played any of the AC games, but after your description, I am going to definitely check them out.
I recently got an Xbox One after my 360 gave me the red ring of death. The only thing I wanted to play when I got it was Fallen Order. I am currently playing through it for the second time. I did also love the Force Unleased games on the 360, similar in gameplay to Fallen Order, and fun to play as Sith.
I would also recommend the two Ori games on the Xbox One. They are visually stunning and I was totally engaged in the story. I will even admit that I got choked up at a point in the second one. Really, just a fantastic pair of games with unique gameplay and beautiful visuals.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I thought a RPG was a weapon. ??
Penty
I’m more of a PC gamer and Steam sales are my bane. I’ve recently picked up Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, how’s that for a mouthful? You can tell it is an older game because of the graphics and game mechanics; however the story line is interesting even if it starts out slow.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/367500/Dragons_Dogma_Dark_Arisen/
eddie blake
@dmsilev:
the overhead god-perspective of those types of games never appealed to me that much, but i can understand how that can be a very fun experience. personally i like games that are much more immersive, fps’s, driving and flight sims, and the occasional 3rd person adventure type exploration game, but even there, i’d rather be in the head than over the shoulder.
eddie blake
@WaterGirl:
Role Playing Game.
started with tabletop gaming in the seventies, D&D, that sort of thing, and is now a genre of video game as well.
frosty
Sad to say, the closest I’ve gotten to being a gamer was Battlezone in the Mt Royal Tavern and Need for Speed on a PC circa early 90s. I sucked at both.
My millennial kids though, are on it!
piratedan
sorry, I have to go play some MOO3 or CIV, bbl
eddie blake
@Phishwu:
EDITED.
i totally dodged the ring of death on the 360. got a very nice tour of duty from my machine.
as to fallen order, i’m having conflicts. feelings. very much a love-hate relationship with that game.
Wapiti
I played D&D in high school and college, and then I went into the service. Being overseas a lot, computer games filled that part of my life. I started with role playing games, then strategy. I have so many old favorites that are no longer playable because they were coded for a 286 or 386 computer, so now I buy almost all my games on Steam.
I did get AC Odyssey when it was on sale, but I haven’t gotten very far. I have a metric ton of hours on similar games, including Skyrim and a full-game mod called Enderal. I do like open world games. Right now I’m playing a game called Starbound (with the Frackin Universe mod), which is a side scrolling building and exploration game. I don’t have to think too much, so it’s a fine escape.
eddie blake
@Wapiti:
skyrim’s skybox had me staring at auroras for more time than i wanna admit.
Martin
I generally prefer open-world, and prefer building games, so any combination of the two is almost always a must-buy.
My daughter prefers strong story-driven games, and isn’t particularly enamored with most modern games. It’s my view that the peak for story driven games was prior to the 3D era, after which so much development effort went into making more and more realistic 3D and so much money got diverted from storytelling into asset creation.
I’m of the view that open world games are going to have to become either increasingly procedural (No Mans Sky) in terms of assets and level design, or are going to have to draw from existing assets and spaces. So much of NYC has been recreated for Spider Man and The Division and countless others, that there’s really no reason why anyone should have to model Grand Central Station for the 9th time. Watching Unreal Engine being used for filmmaking suggest to me that we’re approaching a point where film and video game assets can be pulled from a common library, with procedural elements added in various ways.
One of the more interesting directions to me is procedural storytelling which starts to step vaguely in the direction of how general AI needs to work. This is where Dwarf Fortress is trying to go, very slowly and imperfectly, but very interestingly. A world is created that has to adhere to certain real-world rules. A procedural mayor tasks you with killing the procedural dragon, but has no way of knowing if the task has been done unless rumors spread among the various procedural characters that constantly interact in the background or some specific evidence is offered up. It start to dispense with the notion that the whole world and story pauses while you the protagonist head off to dick around with building a settlement or performing a fetch quest or whatever, because in DF, you might reach the dragon’s lair only to find it was killed last week by some other procedural event. It’s difficult to create tension in a story if time is not a variable. You can leave Vault 111 in a quest for your son and do jack shit about it for the entire game, and nothing will progress. And that’s true in virtually every game.
How you put players into an immersive story while still giving them enough agency to head off and do something unrelated to the story is a bit of an unsolved problem. And it’s why I feel that video games are a bit of unique art form in that the way you storytell is in partnership with the audience, and that’s a dynamic we’re not very well practiced at or have mechanisms to facilitate.
aliasofwestgate
I’m pretty much definition of a ‘casual’. I like to play WoW mostly for frustration venting and being an admitted lore geek, exploring my way through things i haven’t seen before or completed on other toons. My roomie is the gamer and has several titles on her PS4, which i have added Skyrim out of curiosity, and the DC’s Injustice brawling game. Skyrim is taking time for me to get the hang of because i am not used to the controllers anymore for consoles (last time i played a console with any regularity was Sega Genesis era), and the whole first person POV game play. The lore and open world of it definitely appeals, though. :D
My next purchase looks to be Jump Force because i’m an anime nut and brawling with all my fave shounen heroes is just appealing good fun. ^^;; It’s rather cheap for PS4 right now too.
Roomie has been mainlining Animal Crossing New Horizons and just added Pokemon Shield to her set on her Switch. So yeah. Both of us being introverts and geeks, this is how we relax. Otherwise, i’m reading a lot or watching stuff on Netflix and trying to get her into watching new things besides our usual tokusatsu weekly roster too. She also loves the Monster Hunter games on PS4 and a few older titles she has on it.
NotMax
Running around primarily to shoot at stuff is a turn-off to me, so that tends to move a number of popular games off the table. There are a few third-person shooters I have successfully, if grudgingly, managed to deal with (story, story, story being the key); viewing first-person shooters for any more than a scant few minutes brings on whatever the video-based equivalent of being carsick is (much the same thing happens in IMAX theaters – I get physically ill).
Did quite enjoy Life Is Strange, and (IMHO) Life Is Strange 2* is even better.
*If you’re tempted to try Life Is Strange 2, play the short – and free – The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit first, as the character you create in that game shows up in LIS 2.
dmsilev
@Martin:
Microsoft, in their upcoming rerelease of Flight Simulator, built basically a high-res gaming-oriented version of Google Earth to stream scenery and topography data (covering the whole planet) as needed. I have to imagine that they’ve at least thought of licensing that infrastructure as a service for other set-in-real-world games.
Walker
I much prefer the older AC games to the faux Witcher games they have become.
The big game I am waiting for is Baldurs Gate 3. Fan of the original and really enjoyed Larians Divinity Original Sin series so excited about this.
Also, Horizon Zero Dawn hits PC on Friday
Martin
@dmsilev: Currently working on a new design for a Factorio 5K SPM megabase that addresses many of the logistic problems that my previous builds have suffered from.
Rail based. Not quite city blocks – but basically designed to have a linear flow – raw resources flow in one direction, picked up by a different logistic system that handles secondary items, all the way to the rockets. You get a roughly pyramid shape that you can make infinitely wide but would have fixed strata for different resource production and therefore a fixed height, apart from mining. Part of the idea is to introduce some additional structure to help with expansion for a deathworld game, but without everything just getting jumbled and crossing overtop of each other as a typical city block design would be.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
A gameist.
;)
eddie blake
@Martin:
yeah. it’s weird that story-element gigs and interactions will wait for you to trigger them in many games, and it’s definitely odd at the third quarter of skyrim when you realize that you’re pretty much the only person with agency in the entire realm.
that being said, ac: odyssey DOES take a stab at having there be all sorts of background events, people going about their business, bandit raids, beast and highwayman encounters on the roads, major kingdom-altering battles, that have nothing to do with you.
while there are definitely parts of the story that let you take your time to get to, some of the story comes to you, and some is happening in the background
but yeah. it’s a game, and the in-game meta explanation for things like that is that all of the past-character sequences are recovered ‘memories’.
raven
not
a
clue
PaulWartenberg
City of Heroes is back (underground) and I’m already playing with 42 or more alts between Blaster to Widow (no Stalkers, I have standards).
Find me on Homecoming Excelsior as @Witty Librarian and maybe you can hire… the TankHQ.
syphonblue
If you have any interest in open-world games with an interesting sci-fi story, and missed it on PS4, Horizon Zero Dawn is out on PC on Friday. It is easily my favorite game of this generation, so much that though I already have it on PS4, I am seriously struggling to NOT buy it again on Friday.
pinacacci
@SiubhanDuinne:
You’re a gamer! You don’t have to name-check anything to be one =].
I started when dad brought home Pong when I was a wee one and while not always immersed, never really have been able to stay away. Atari 2600. Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Rogue. Bard’s Tale. Leisure Suit Larry! sKing’s Quest games.
Then Sega, Populous and Sonic. Nintendo, Super Mario brothers.
Myst. Full Throttle, The Dig, the Monkey Island games, anything from Lucasarts. Grim Fandango! What a great game.
Baldur’s Gate. The Dragon Age series. Oh gosh I left Diablo and Starcraft out.
WoW occupied half a decade of my time. Now I’m loving Shadow Tactics and Stardew Valley. I have put more time into Fallout 4 than I care to remember.
I guess I haven’t much interesting to add but couldn’t resist the opportunity to mention the ones that commanded my attention. You might think I never leave the house. That’s mostly true!
…and I still have a few games on my phone. I think my brain is wired to be occupied with input all the time and gaming made me that way. It’s not always a good thing.
Cracked did a video on the most popular games, I can link it if you’re interested. (Spoiler: Minecraft is the best seller of all time). It’s a pretty good discussion. (Unfortunately Cracked is not what it used to be and I can’t immediately find the video)
Crap I left out alllllllll the hours I spent on Heroes of the Storm. *sigh
eddie blake
@aliasofwestgate:
you can toggle skyrim’s view to third person as well. check the control map. (i don’t have a playstation)
Martin
@dmsilev: Google is working on a similar service.
NotMax
@dmsilev
Friends who are rabidly into gaming and have begun playing it have mentioned that unless one shells out the 90 simoleons for the premium package, Microsoft’s flight simulator ain’t worth the spit it’s polished with.
As always, YMMV.
BruceFromOhio
Mario Kart and Excite Truck on an original Nintendo Wii. Yes, I’m an ‘aughts kind of guy.
(It’s kind of sad when it boots up and goes to look for Wii resources on the internet, that shit’s been gone for a decade or more.)
Phishwu
@eddie blake:
What are your (potential) misgivings of Fallen Order?
Personally, I like the combat play with the lightsaber and admittedly, some days I just need to go home and shred some Stormtroops. ?
eddie blake
@Walker:
i didn’t like witcher 2 too much, and consequently never bought the third one. have heard very good things about it, of course.
i’ve played a few of the other AC games up to rogue, before i picked up odyssey. the one thing i really DID like about the newer game was the minimizing of the modern-era. you spend SO much more time in the past and have SO fewer interruptions of the gameplay in odyssey.
JustRuss
Last console I owned was a Sega Genesis, been playing on PCs ever since. Last year I discovered the Fallout series, started with New Vegas, then FO4, now I’m playing 3.
Only played one Assassins Creed game, the one set in colonial Boston. Amazing world, but didn’t care for the controls and gameplay. I bought Black Flag on sale, will fire it up one of these days.
syphonblue
@eddie blake: the modem day plot is the worst part about the AC franchise. They really should just jettison it and make it a wholly historical series (but I DO want a game that takes place during the precursor era). I am glad that the new games have seriously diminished that aspect of the series.
That said, Syndicate is my favorite game of the series, and though it’s an old-style AC game, it is thankfully extremely light on modern day stuff.
NotMax
Received an invite to join our gaming group for RPGing on Zoom. First time I peeked in was this past weekend.
Nice to see a number of folks with whom hadn’t touched base with for a while but as far as gaming experience goes I’d describe it as like lite beer – close, but no cigar.
@pinacacci
Sam & Max?
@raven
Heh. Same way I feel on sports threads.
;)
aliasofwestgate
@eddie blake: Thanks! I”ll fiddle with it to get that changed over later.
I did start gaming as a kidlet when my parents got an Atari in the early 80s. Mom was continually the best player in the house all the way up to the Genesis because she’d play for hours and was stubborn af about it. She had to stop after the first PlayStations showed up because of the epilepsy factor ramped up with the 3D graphics. She mostly does PC games for variations of Bingo nowadays and a few puzzle games. I have a few for my phone and tablet just for winding down as well. Match 3 type of stuff that doesn’t require a lot of brainpower to use.
dmsilev
@Martin: I’ve gone as high as 1K SPM, both belt and bot based designs (outposts tied together by trains in both cases). That’s about the limit of what I want to spend planning for, though with the official release coming up in a week or so, maybe I should crack it open again and make a run at something bigger.
Translation for people unfamiliar with Factorio: It’s a game of production, which really means logistics, getting raw materials in and finished products out, and then on to the next step in the chain. At the beginning, you’re crafting objects by hand, but you soon build machine to craft things for you, robot arms to move things in and out of machines, conveyor belts to move things around, etc. You ‘win’ the game by building a very expensive object that requires a lot of infrastructure and intermediate products. With the infrastructure you’ve built up in a typical game, building it might take half an hour to an hour. The scale I’m talking about is ‘build one a minute, plus a bunch of other stuff’, and Martin is 5x bigger than that.
aliasofwestgate
Go to Quarantine frustration venting for me: Kick up WoW, put on whatever playlist i’ve decided and just wander through the world questing on whatever alt i’m working on and whatnot. Music always makes everything more fun! XD
eddie blake
@Phishwu:
the combat is a delight. that was a very pleasant surprise. there are a couple of things though, that just drive me crazy. i’ve played respawn games before. they know what they’re doing. titanfall 2 is one of my favorite games of all time.
BUT. the controls are clumsy and a little imprecise when it comes to grabbing things. so the platforming is annoying me to no end, when as you say, i just wanna bust up some stormtroopers.
and the other thing that i can’t get my head around- they cut through doors and obstructions with ease on every day that ends with a ‘y’ in the star wars movies, but this dude is thwarted by doors left and right.
the story IS a very good one, reminiscent of the planet-hopping from KotOR, and the combat is exceptional, but the REST seems very un-star wars.
Martin
@eddie blake: I chalk it up to two problems:
eddie blake
@JustRuss:
i REALLY enjoyed black flag. it’s a hoot. the sailing mechanic is incredible. and depending on what system you’re playing it on, or what resources your pc is running, it’s stunningly beautiful.
eddie blake
@NotMax:
i’ve had some fun with the ace combat series. they’re flight ‘sims’ mashed up with arcade-style control forgiveness and a ridiculous story. 6 and 7 are definitely entertaining.
Martin
@dmsilev: The shame is the most efficient designs are bot based, which are also pretty trivial to build. I prefer building train-based because it’s fun and has its own challenges. And trains are cool. My mall/supply area is bot based, but the rest of the bot network is for maintenance/repairs, building, and filling my logistic requests.
pinacacci
I found it! Cracked website which I haven’t been to in years is a freakin’ horrible place now so I found it on youtube. I promise, it’s an interesting, apropros, and funny discussion worth 5 minutes: What Your Favorite Video Game Says About You.
eddie blake
@Martin:
that’s a very good point. the good open world games try to hide it better, but still, it’s something they have to hide.
NotMax
@eddie blake
Am a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to PC gaming. Am content using the mouse and, if needed, the space bar. Otherwise, diminishing nimbleness with advancing age makes using a keyboard to play an exercise in frustration and annoyance. Don’t own a controller; keeping one hand free to hold a cigar or to sip a refreshing beverage of choice or web surf on the second monitor at the same time is more in my lane.
Martin
@dmsilev: Yep. Building a factory that can launch a rocket after a few hours can be largely stumbled through. Building one that can launch one every minute requires real planning (or just building someone else’s plans).
As you get up to 1-5 rockets per minute, you start running into a new problem which is can the game do it with the computing resources you offer. So, your designs adapt to an additional kind of efficiency, and you have to go after new kinds of cleverness and problem solving. I like problem solving, and I like building, so it really hits a sweet spot for me.
If you have a beefy enough computer, going from 1K to 5K is just a matter of copy/pasting your design. My goal is to create a design that can do 5K with 1K worth of computing power, and also is flexible enough to implement while also dealing with hostiles.
No idea if it’ll work, but I’m having fun.
eddie blake
@pinacacci:
that was…unexpected. but interesting.
Ivan X
Funny this should come up now. I’m not any kind of modern gamer. But there’s an epic text+graphics adventure game for the Apple II (a primitive 8-bit computer that predates the Mac), called Time Zone, that I have been trying to solve, without hints, for the last 38 years. It was 12 times as large as contemporaneous games (12 disk sides), and cost $99.95 when it came out in 1982, about 3-4 times as much as other titles.
It was intended to be the adventure game to end all adventure games, with a world saving theme that require you travel the globe across time and space, and a scope that would require a year to finish. It was a failure commercially, but I made I made a life commitment to one day beat it.
It took a pandemic, but this was the year I finally did it. (I also turned 50, and moved to back California from NYC, and bought my first house, and also my first car in 25 years, but all that seems like small potatoes.)
Momentary
RimWorld is really impressively well done. All the reviews play up the grimdark angles but they are entirely optional, especially with mods — I’ve been playing it as entirely a peaceful building sim — crashland my handcrafted crew in a likely spot and then enjoy having them build up a nice base with all the comforts, domesticated animals, advanced medicine to cure whatever ails them, etc etc. It runs great and looks nice on low end machines and I don’t think I’ve encountered a single bug in a shocking amount of quarantine playtime.
SmallAxe
I’m with you on the AC games incredible visuals and history. I’ve been a gamer since Pong and have played in a competitive adult Madden league on Xbone for several years (3 games a week there and it’s a blast). Also a big fan of the Battlefield games
eddie blake
@Ivan X: wow. just…wow.
Gravenstone
I go in cycles, sometimes focusing on console games (PS4), then wandering back to the PC (where I’m currently spending my entertainment time). The only really “current” PC game I’m playing is Classic WoW. Most everything else is a year or three older, Slay the Spire (card based fighting game), Dungeons of Dredmor (roguelike), Battletech (third person perspective mech combat, very reminiscent of the classic table top version). Basically I’ll toss some music on in the background and hunker down for an hour or twelve (on the occasional weekend) of escapist entertainment. I’ll play one of the above until I get tired of it, then move onto the next for a few days. Lather, rinse, repeat.
eddie blake
@Gravenstone: i’ve played some of the battletech games. last one was one of the mercenaries titles. good shit. best mech game on the market right now IMO is titanfall 2. VAST improvement over the first.
Martin
@eddie blake: I’m really interested in video games as a storytelling medium. Not where the developer hands the player a story, but one where they hand the player a framework and assets and the player creates the story. That can be with very little contribution from a game story – like Minecraft, or it can be with much more. For instance, like Rimworld noted above where you’re creating a setting and personalities for your community and setting the decisions for the story actors but against a set of challenges that are introduced by the game.
I think that might be the stronger future for open-world storytelling. And if you think about it, that’s really what D&D is – it’s cooperative storytelling between the DM and the players where the DM creates the larger world, the players contribute their interaction with that world, and the DM pushes and pulls either the players or the world to form a coherent story. Normal games try to play the role of the DM, which they aren’t capable of really pulling off, so they push and pull in a very coarse and somewhat unsatisfying way. A different approach might be to flip that – to make the player the DM, and to have the actors in the game a bit more like the players in terms of fine interactions, but then married to something like Twitch to share that story with others.
A while back I spent about a year telling a Dwarf Fortress story. It was pretty fun to do.
Ivan X
@eddie blake: ha. Yeah. The funny part was that all those disk sides meant constant annoying disk swapping, and so I hacked the game to support a machine outfitted with 14 drives, and then played in an emulator that could support that theoretical but unlikely real-world configuration. Have a gander: http://appleii.ivanx.com/timezone
Try not to have your mind blown by the graphics.
eddie blake
@Martin:
ac odyssey has something resembling what you’re talking about, albeit in a limited fashion.
https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-updates/351257/assassins-creed-odyssey-story-creator-mode
Leto
I’ve played since the Atari 2600, but the game that’s pretty much captured me is World of Warcraft. I’ve played it for most of its fifteen year run, occasionally dropping off to play other things (Gran Turismo, Ace Combat, Borderlands, etc) but always coming back to WoW. Combination of classes, content, random things to do that has me hooked. I didn’t play WoW: Classic as it was kind of a “been there/have all the achievements for that” mentality, but I’m fairly certain once they release WoW Classic: Pandaria that I’ll disappear back into the Jade Forest, never to be seen again.
eddie blake
@Ivan X:
nice. yeah, that’s a lot of disks. and i imagine, for its day, some sweet graphics.
Ivan X
@eddie blake: they weren’t bad, but was insane is that there are 1,200 other such screens. I’ve spent like the last three months making maps.
Malovich
Finished The Last Jedi and I kinda like it a lot. I have a bad itch for something like KotoR:tSL, but I don’t see that kind of single-player story-driven experience on the horizon anytime soon that delves into the underpinnings of a loved property the way The Sith Lords have done.
Currently invested in catching up on some titles I missed on the way, like Arkham Knight and Blood Bowl.
Really looking forward to Baldur’s Gate 3.
Gravenstone
@eddie blake: If your style is the combat sims like Titanfall, you should check out Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries. Came out late last year and is currently an Epic exclusive (if that matters to you). I have it, but when it first launched it had shitty peripheral support and I couldn’t get into the keyboard and mouse control scheme. It supposedly will now support most joysticks and HOTAS, so I really should dip a toe back in. But I’m enjoying B-tech (500+ hours) and WoW Classic too much.
eddie blake
@Malovich:
yeah, the next star wars ip is gonna be a space-fighter sim. star wars: squadrons. EA will probably get back to an RPG type game afterwards.
looks pretty good from what they’ve released so far.
eddie blake
@Gravenstone:
i saw clips of that. it looks pretty impressive. frankly lacks the mobility of the titans or the range of motion of the pilots, but then, it’s not supposed to.
pinacacci
@NotMax:
oh lord I forgot Sam & Max! loved that twisted game!
khead
@Ivan X:
I love this comment. I mentioned in a previous gaming thread that I played a game called Starflight for years (not 38!) before I actually finished it. Congrats!
Edit: Right now my time killer is playing a rerun of all the countries in Empire: Total War.
Emma
Sometime between the last gaming thread and now, I finished Divinity: Original Sin 2, and if the ending hadn’t already, well, ended, I would have rage-quit. It was the Definitive Edition, too, so it wasn’t even like the horrible epilogue was a bug or writer error. Basically, everything sucks unless you go with the Sourceror genocide that you were fighting against the whole time. Wasn’t quite as terrible as the original ME3 ending, but certainly the closest thing I’ve felt in all these years.
Right now, I’m obsessed with The Banner of the Maid, which is a Chinese game from last year that got so popular that they translated it into English this year and put it on Steam. At its heart, it’s a visual novel where you’re Napoleon’s sister, Pauline. But instead of marrying a general… what if she was in fact a general herself? A MAGICAL GIRL general??? Mind blown. Anyway, the art is predictably over the top, and I hesitate to call the setting the French Revolution because of the sheer bonkery, but the battles are satisfyingly difficult on the normal setting, and the game has turned me into a Murat fangirl. He’s delightfully OP in the early missions, while also having the best costume and hair by far.
Martin
@Ivan X: Ok, serious respect for this. I’m a completionist and while I’m also very patient, I’m not decades patient.
SiubhanDuinne
@eddie blake:
Yes, on my phone. I should have said.
BethanyAnne
So looking forward to Horizon Zero Dawn on Friday. I’ve been switching between Fallout New Vegas and No Man’s Sky for a few months now.
NobodySpecial
I was an early adopter of the vidja games. My local theater that I went to weekly with my brother as a kid had Space Invaders and Asteroids. We got kicked out of a Sears for spending too long at the Intellivision display. My sister and her husband were among the first people in our town to own an Atari 2600. A few years after that came my first computer: A Commodore 64. Spent many a lunch hour on the school computers playing Telenguard.
In my current iteration, it’s all PC gaming; haven’t physically owned a console since the PS3. In heavy rotation are Overwatch for nostalgia of my shoot em up days, Stellaris (I’m a sucker for Paradox grand strategy games), and Path of Exile, which is like Diablo on a speedball with automatic weapons. I’d do more gaming if I hadn’t had to work a month plus with no days off.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
They are all apps, and I have them all nicely arranged, in the order I like to play them, on my phone’s home screen. Most have “daily challenges,” and I always do those — then sometimes go back and do random draws later.
Splitting Image
@PaulWartenberg:
I got back into City of Heroes myself a few months back. I haven’t logged into one of the public servers though. I set up my own private server and recreated the hundred or so characters I had on the live servers back in the day.
I limited myself to making one new character for each of the zones and am currently levelling them up through the content I missed the first time around.
I’ve also been playing Bard’s Tale 3, which was the only one of the original trilogy I didn’t play back in the Amiga days. I learned that the Amiga version had some awful bugs in it which made me glad I missed out on it. I’m instead playing the PC version with the terrible graphics and tinny sound. Still haven’t made it out of Skara Brae though.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
A pretty distinction. I like it. Thanks!
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Intriguing. If you’re ever inspired to share information about which apps, etc, drop me a line.
Martin
@BethanyAnne: Horizon is one of my favorite games from the last decade. I like the story, I think Aloy is a wonderful protagonist, and the combat/stealth feels very gratifying.
Ivan X
@Martin: why thank you. To be fair, it’s not like I spent 38 continuous years on it. But I guess I never gave it up, either.
Ivan X
@khead: congrats on finishing Starflight! It’s a good feeling, innit.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: Yer a gamer, m’lady. Hell I only have two games on my phone, no console, and a barely functioning laptop (replacement was in the cards until I owed four digits on my taxes) and once I get my bingo game back I’ll be even more of a gamer. The point is if you play you’re in the club.
My very first game was the Atari 2600 my grandparents owned. We were poor Navy trash and no way could something like that get bought. Not with four kids and two minimal incomes. We did finally get a Nintendo and I was hooked on Mario from the beginning. But keeping up on the console wars wasn’t in the cards through college. But maybe once I get a decent laptop things might be different.
mapaghimagsik
I’m not that much of a gamer, but I’ve played Champions online doggedly for years. I keep wishing for an RPG to play, tabletop mostly, but so far no luck.
eddie blake
@mapaghimagsik:
why not try the champions table-top RPG?
Cjcat
I call myself a granny gamer. Started with Pong and the last serious game I enjoyed was Witcher 3. So that is about 45 years of gaming. I have the motion sickness thing so no first person shooters. I have mostly played fantasy rpgs on Xbox. AC was my favorite series for a long time but Origins fell flat for me. I might give Odyssey a try after reading this post. I also join in highly recommending Black Flag.
I tried WOW but got lost, and keep running into groups that were just too excited by a girl avatar and since I was fifty at the time, felt a little uncomfortable.
Okay, don’t laugh but my present game is Sims 4. Hey, I said don’t sneer at me! My leveled out spellcaster just had his mermaid girlfriend move in and they woohooed so hard I had to reset to wake them up. ( That all sounds cooler than it is in gameplay.)
Its a fun little game and soothing with its bright colors, pop music and no stress in this bad time. A real money grab though, so beware.
Mad respect to you Ivan X. Really, dude, that is an accomplishment.
SadOldGuy
Unfortunately the real world sucks, so the company Ubisoft that makes the AC games is a not very good employer https://www.businessinsider.com/ubisoft-faces-new-allegations-of-sexual-harassment-and-toxic-culture-2020-7?r=US&IR=T
Emma
@Cjcat: I hear you about not wanting to play multiplayer games as an obvious girl, my usernames in Steam and multiplayer games therein have always been gender-neutral, leaning toward masculine, and I would never dream of actually using a headset. Although, funnily enough, there was one day when I was a naive 10-year-old or something when I decided to make my brother’s Team Fortress username something REALLY “girly.” I wish I could remember what exactly it was, but I know a lamb and maybe stars figured in it somehow. I just really wanted to try out a girly name, because I was tired of playing in his account as Avenger_005, haha. Incredibly, I don’t think anyone actually remarked on the username, but I was also often #1 on the match scoreboard in the old days, so I like to think that I was so badass that day that they were afraid to give me grief over the name muahahaha. By the way, I like Sims too! Although I stopped at Sims 2, but I still think about trying to reinstall it from time to time. Everyone was either a criminal or doctor in my game XD
mapaghimagsik
@eddie blake:
I’ve played Champions tabletop before I played online. When I had a lot more time, it was one of my favorite games. I still enjoy going through many of the source books, even when I have to look up “What the hell is the Cosmic Advantage Again?”
With less time, I like lighter, faster, more narrative systems. Not that Champions can’t be, just when I’m using it, I get too far into the crunch.
Cjcat
@Emma: When my grandsons would visit and play my console in multiplayer, they couldn’t figure out why guys were coming up to them and giving them free stuff. I had to break it to them that they thought they were a girl when they used my avatar.
I hadn’t played Sims in years but I’ve played everything in the Xbox One that appeals to me. I am waiting for next year’s games and really excited about Fable, ES6 and Avowed. I am hoping for Elden Ring soon and hoping it has an easy mode.
eddie blake
@SadOldGuy:
yeah, it’s been a problem for them. between that and the story about ashraf ismail, it DOES look like they KNOW they have a problem, which is the first step towards solving it.
The Oracle of Solace
Long time reader (long time—almost from when Mr.Cole turned away from the Dark Side), first time poster. I’m a gamer grrl going back a ways. I started off with platformers, but found my true calling with strategy games such as Sid Meier’s Civilization. While I do play others—I’ve been teaching myself Twitch streaming with Half-Life 2 and now Alien: Isolation (as jssollace, if anyone wants to drop in and hear my frightened whispers)—it’s historical games from Paradox Interactive I most enjoy. Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron 4, and Stellaris; these are my jam.
@PaulWartenberg: I may take you up on your invitation!
WaterGirl
@The Oracle of Solace: Welcome to commenting! :-)
First comments have to be manually approved. I saw it just now and approved it. Future comments with this nym and email will go through automatically.
Don’t be a stranger.