Are Older Games More Satisfying? 300
Kwirl asks: "While the computer and console gaming industry is growing at a remarkable pace, the focus is usually on better graphics as opposed to stronger gameplay and plot development/story arc. I personally have several titles (Sims2, Half-Life2, Doom 3, MSFS2004, Unreal 2004) sitting on my shelf that were amazing games, but just couldn't hold my interest for long enough to really be considered a worthwhile investment. In the last couple of years I had thought that the answer to my gaming needs would come in the form of MMORPG's. I have purchased and played many of them, but all seem to come to a stagnant point where I recognize that only addiction would drive me deeper into the game, and not better gameplay (Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Everquest II). In truth, I have found myself spending more time playing old MUD's (TorilMud, Medievia) again, or even amusing web-based games ( KingdomofLoathing, PimpWar, NeoPets). I am curious to know how many other people here find themselves walking intentionally backwards along the technological timeline of games for your personal expenditure of free time? What games/sites do you feel give you the best return of satisfaction versus time spent playing the game over the long haul?"
One word answer for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Longer story, my favorite all time game is the old classic Chess. Whether it's getting cremated by my computer or playing and even occasionally beating humans online or offline. The depth and amount it makes me think is just great.
Favorite dedicated computer game you ask? Try Civilization 2. Civ 3 for some reason seemed more fluff and the same amount of meat as Civ 2 (hence making it slower and doing nothing really for gameplay). Though I need to try FreeCiv one day.
In general I just like games that make me think more than anything else. FPS games amongst others are interesting for about 10 minutes then I just walk away.
My List (Score:4, Interesting)
One word here to (Score:3, Interesting)
The game needs to have a clever or fun design, who cares how it looks. Try elastomania across or whatever it's name is, it's simple yet kick-ass. Same goes for lemmings and so on
"Puzzle"/skill games like those are games I like, even thought I never think about it, and also Strategy and the regular Quake FPS for relaxing.
Quake was love.
Nintendo (Score:1, Interesting)
Classic-like games (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I get a lot of replay value out of the Metal Gear Solid series. To this date, it retains a very traditional camera placement, with very contraversial or thought provocing themes and fantastic graphics. The games, while holding on to the classic roots of the original MG or MG2: Solid Snake, also blur the lines between game and movie, but in a good way.
If MGS isn't your kind of game, go for the Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) series. 1 - 4 are for NES, 5 - 6 weren't released here (SNES), but have fan translations, 7 was released on PS1 a few years ago and is one of the few games I've played to actually go over the 100 hour mark, and Dragon Quest 8 should be here by the end of the year for PS2. There's some excellent documentation and forums over at http://www.dragons-den/ [www.dragons-den].
Starflight (Score:3, Interesting)
The DOS version of Starflight is an 80808 era CGA game that has a lot of things that were way ahead of it's time. Inside of 700K there are hundreds of unique planets, several races and an involved storyline. The planetary details are generated by fractals but remember what you do on them. Almost everything is done in real time; if you stay silent on the comm channel too long, the aliens on the other side can get annoyed or take over the conversation. A lot of descriptions are done by text, so it requires a little imagination, but the atmosphere of trying to survive, alone in a cold unforgiving universe is very strong.
If you want to give Starflight a chance, I suggest using dosbox [sourceforge.net] with the speed set to 1000 cycles. Anything higher will make battles and communication impossible. Be careful, though: saving or even playing the game modifies the main game files (stara.com, starb.com, starflt.com), so make archives of them if you want to save. You can't quit without saving.
Despite a slower pace than many modern games, this game is quite addictive once you get started. I'm going back to it right now... now if I can just find some promethium so I can repair the sheilds...
Re:Nostalgia (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I only started playing Nethack within the past year, and I'm hooked. It's addictive.
The last PC game I actually bought and played with any regularity was Quake II. I played a few demos after that, and "borrowed" a few titles, but they didn't last more than a week or so.
When I need a game fix, I usually fire up GXMame and play favorite titles from my youth. So there *is* some good-ol'-days psychology there. However, my kids love those old games, so they're still very playable.
What would ruin my sleep routine these days? New versions of the old SMS "Phatasy Star" (original, the sequals sucked), and the old PC "Starflight". (I've been watching the Starflight III site for *years* but it hasn't gone anywhere.) Both very easy to immerse yourself in and get caught up in the virtual world.
Give me a large and cool world to explore. That's what all 3 of these games offer. I don't know of any contemporary counterparts to these games, though.
Re:Nostalgia (Score:4, Interesting)
To make an analogy, if your board and gamepieces are essentialy a piece of dirt, a sharp stick and a handful of pebbles, the game you come up with had better have some damned good play value if you expect anyone to play it.
Case in point: How many people can remember all the secret doors on the umpteenth map in Quake 2, vs how many people can remember to get the Babel Fish in Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? And when all is said and done, which was more satisfying to beat?
Old games ARE better (Score:2, Interesting)
This discussion reminds me of Sim City 2 VS Sim City 4. Sure, SC4 had more features, but it lacked the same soul. Pretty graphics can't make up for a sense of humour and fun gameplay. Another example: the decline of the Leisure Suit Larry franchise.
One of my other favourite games is Chopper Commando by Mark Currie. CGA Graphics, but the messages when you died were awesome.
"I'm sorry, but your husband died on his last mission."
"That's okay. He wasn't that good of a husband anyway. What are you doing tonight?"
"He didn't make it on the last mission, sir"
"Alright, you win. Here's your five bucks."
Doukutsu Monogatari (Cave Story) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Older games and commercialism (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nostalgia (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a lot truth there, although the older games that I play now are like five-star "Top Dog" classic "Best Games of All Time" titles that I simply couldn't afford buying back when they were new even if I had heard of them which I hadn't. I run them in DOSBox, compile them in Linux, or whatever and then give them a whirl. Usually I am not disappointed.
I was just playing abandonware Master of Orion in Gentoo Linux DOSBox last weekend... my wife glanced over and said "Hrrmph, that looks cheesey..." (320x240 looks kind of grainy on a 20" monitor) but I was deep in thought moving my attack fleet into position. I mumbled "Yeah this is one of those old classic type games." The fact is that my brain was highly occupied calculating attack strategies and I was deep into the Zen of war gaming, I wasn't paying much if any attention to the graphics at that point.
I had never played X-COM until about a year ago, likewise with (Elite) Frontier First Encounters, and I only got Master of Orion working last week. I'm willing to accept old graphics if the game rocks, and some of them really do. DOSBox is your ticket to play some of the highest rated classic PC games ever created. I'd suggest checking them out.
Alpha Centauri (Score:2, Interesting)
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
there are a few reasons behind that.
first reason - times change. back in the old days, the beatles were great. Don't take me wrong, they're great performers, but if they were released now, they'd be dilluted into all that's going on nowadays. there are just too many bands, too many genres, too many releases everyday just for you to be able to really focus on and enjoy a few specific bands. It's the same with games today! How many FPS are out there? How many RPGs? How many come out every week? How many are available for you to borrow from friends, rent, or simply download? One thing i've learned from dealing with kids. You give them 1 game a month and they'll enjoy them as you hand them away. But if you give them a pack of ten games, they'll stick to one or two and they won't even try out the others... Plus, they won't enjoy the games as much, because they'll be eager to play the others.
Plus... we are more trained in the subject of games. When Half Life came out, it wasn't an EASY game. You had to play it, to improve your hand-eye coordination. well, now you already have trained, so similar games seem rather easy compared to HL1 or the like. Hell, even HL2 turned out to be fairly simple to overcome and finish. People want MORE! They are more demanding, they want MORE!
There is, however, a thin line between realism/how difficult a game is and FUN. If the game's too real it might be too difficult or worse, NO FUN at all. Take an FPS for instance. You want it real, alright, but do you want it so real as if you fall from a ledge and brake your foot you'll have to be limping across the map? No instant-healing medical kits can save you! Would that be "fun"? Would it sell?
So, some people are turning to the old games, alright. Keeping it simple. Most of them are lead to those games by nostalgy. They HAD fun with that game, they might as well give it a try again. Hell, i'm doing it with Jedi Academy and i do it quite often enough with Jagged Alliance 2.
Where will this end? It's all in the software developers' hands. We can't take many games like HL2. Of course the die-hard fans love it, I DO... but it always seem like there's something missing in that game and otherrs of the like lately...
let's wait and play
Re:One word and a Roman Numeral (Score:5, Interesting)
More on topic though...you are right in a way...there don't seem to be a whole lot of women on slashdot in general (no worries...I know you're out there, but statistically, we're in the minority). Ditto with gaming - it's a rarity to find a girl really into some of these new games. They are out there, but on the whole, I've noticed my friends are MUCH more likely to fiddle around with the older games like tetris or arqanoid, or some of the less action-based games. I'm not sure why - societal thing maybe? who knows. But I personally only know 1 woman who really gets into the first-person shooter or RPG type games, but I can name off like 30 guys off the top of my head who just eat it up. Personally, I lost interest with "shooter" games with DN2 (if that even qualifies), but some of my old DOS based sharewares are still going strong.
Re:One word and a Roman Numeral (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:One word answer for me... (Score:3, Interesting)
I found Alpha Centuri a couple years back for $3 and I had to buy it. Now I make a point of uninstalling it when I'm done playing otherwise I find myself starting it up when my work gets boring.
Great game.
I'm also a Tribes fan. Good stuff.
Re:One word and a Roman Numeral (Score:1, Interesting)
Wanna have some fun for the rationalisation aspect of girls&games? Check some of the gamasutra.com articles for what some guys think are reasons for that. Seems women like the Sims best; I'd say 'cause of the 'doll house' aspect...but I'd be considered sexist if I said that in the States
All in all, I'd say that women prefer a game which is more akin to what they do in real ife: socialise, look pretty (now that is sexist, but it's my way of alluding to dressing their avatar up in different clothes...the makeover thing) and explore possibilities. Thinking though relationships also seems to fit. Run&gun games like quake and Unreal are the total opposite...whilst they can be pretty, the exploration is limited to high-speed run throughs of a level andsocialisation is limited to blowing up everything that moves.
Anyway, I wonder: as a female gamer, what games do you prefer? I'd hazard some guesses, but I'm curious if I'm at all right: I'd think Sims, Grand theft auto (if you can get past the violence, it has massive exploration and customisation-ability), MMORPG's (they're much more about the MMO than the RPG, IMO) and puzzl;e games like (as you mentioned) Tetris, Bejeweled and Civ (exploration and relationships [as in this relates to that, not neccessarily person-to-person...although I'd guess that that is where the interest derives from]).
I'd say that most of the older games strongly relate to that: the gfx sucked, so you had to either have a massive customisation going on (in a sense Elite did that) or either massive thinking material/puzzling out stuff, like civ et al...