Freethought & Rationalism Archive

01-06-2003, 12:46 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ArvelJoffi
I'm not really much of a gamer. At least I wasn't until I bought Thief. I spent week after week locked up in my room playing tht damned gaem and then downloading the levels made by fans.

You and me both. I love that friggin' game (and its sequel). I'm drooling in anticipation for Thief 3.

Deus Ex and System Shock 2 would also get my vote.

No One Lives Forever was linear and not particularly challenging, but a lot of fun nevertheless.

jig · 01-07-2003, 08:45 AM

I'm going to take 'best game' in a completely subjective sense, and assume it means 'game I enjoyed playing the most'. But anyhow, here's my list:

Best FPS (single player): Wolfenstein 3D

Man, how I played that game for weeks on end. It was all very simple, the aiming was easy enough, because it was only pseudo-3d which meant you only had to turn left and right to aim. And you just shot and shot and shot at the bad guys. Then when they were all dead you just run around the level pushing against all the walls to try and find secret rooms so you can find bigger and better guns and whatnot. That was all there was to the gameplay, but to this day it's the only FPS that I've had enough fun with in single player to play through the whole campaign. And killing Hitler at the end was nice! Oh, and the fact that it was the first game in which I got to use these things called 'soundcards' helped with the enjoyment, too. I literally jumped out of my chair the first time a Nazi soldier jumped into my view and he shouted something. Scared the hell out of me.

Best FPS (multiplayer): Quakeworld

This was the Wolf 3D of multiplayer gaming for me. The first few times I played it all the jumping around and looking up and down and left and right and diagonally and everywhere else in such quick sudden jumps made me so dizzy I had to lie down for a few hours afterwards. I couldn't read a thing, and I couldn't even watch TV. I guess I got a bad case of motion sickness. But I kept at it, and with the introduction of new modules like Team Fortress and Clan Arena it practically became the centre of my life for at least a year or so. Even today, I still sometimes check the local quakeworld servers - the ones that are still up - to see if anybody else is feeling nostalgic, too.

Best Strategy (turn-based): X-COM and Jagged Alliance

I'm not sure if they fall under 'strategy', but they don't really belong in another category either. Maybe JA can fall under a loose sense of a RPG, but I don't really see it as an RPG. So I'll just put them in strategy.

People talk about Civilisation and its siblings being the best turn-based strategy games, but I didn't enjoy those games as much as I enjoyed the X-COM series and the Jagged Alliance series. There was much less tedious micro-management involved in these games, and they had a great sense of suspence in pretty much every second of gameplay. Even those pesky times when you were trying to finish off a mission and had to find that last alien or runaway hiding in the bushes were fun, because you never knew when they might just spring up into your view, get a few chance shots at your men and possibly kill someone, and then run off again. I always hated losing men in these games because the way things were set up it was very easy to become attached to the in-game characters. You never wanted to lose somebody whose abilities you had spent so much time training up, and whom you've depended on for the whole course of the game so far, even when you know they are effectively replaceable in the end.

Best Strategy (real-time): Command and Conquer and Starcraft

C&C because I spend so much time playing its single player missions. It was another of those rare games that I was actually interested enough in to play until I had finished and beaten the game. I even used the internet at great expense (best rates were about AUS$5 / hour in those times) to find a FAQ/Walkthrough in which all the missions were explained at great length so that I could get through missions where I had given up trying to finish on my own. And I printed it all out, all two hundred plus pages, which made my father very unhappy.

Starcraft because of battle.net. The amount of hours I spent on that thing, just playing against people from all over the world.. well, I'm sure I'll be regretting all those 'wasted' hours in years to come when it finally hits me that I did actually waste those precious hours. But damn, it was such fun. I didn't win much, but I loved running around on the map with my last surviving unit and messaging to the to-be victor things like 'You may take our liiiiiiiiiives, but you'll never take our freeeeeeeeedoooommmmm!!!!!!!' ... and then be shot to bits to end the match.

The other categories in gaming don't matter to me as much. I'm sure I'd be able to come up with a game I enjoyed the most given any category but I can say I didn't enjoy them nearly as much as I did the above. So I'll just stop here.

beco · 01-07-2003, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Barney Gumble

I would consider Payne's story, especially the dialogue, as the weakest point about the game, aside from the gameplay which never seems to deviate from enter room->engage bullet time->shoot->done (rescued to an extent by the inventive mods that have come out since its release). Payne's ham-fisted meanderings on the unfolding of the clich�d plot usually made me wince so much that during the game, my face resembled the unwavering expression of constipation that Payne held throughout.

It read like�well, a juvenile geek hack trying to write film noir dialogue after seeing a few Mike Hammer/Dragnet episodes. The fact that the developer cast himself in the lead role, and in an attempt to look hard-boiled, fused his face into a pained expression only added to the unintentional levity.

If it was attempting to be a parody of film noire, then I�d give it some slack. But aside from the amusing scene where Max ponders his videogame existence, I see little to indicate that. If it�s satire, I find it to be poorly done.

From the game:

�He was dead. I could tell by the accusing stare in his eyes�.

Of the love of jeebus�

Excellent textures, yes � that�s a significant graphical feature which I�m glad a developer targeted from the outset instead of trying to shoe-horn the textures to fit inside some guy�s onboard Intel video. But that's it - very blocky polygon models, no lip movement for speech (which looked very unprofessional even at the time of release), acceptable but hardly revolutionary animation, no bump mapping or other advanced effects, etc.

It looked, and still looks quite nice - but to say the "graphics were well ahead of its time" is somewhat of a stretch IMO. I find that Unreal fit that category, and with the second CD textures Unreal Tournament as well. But not Max Payne. If it came out a year earlier like it was supposed to, perhaps.

And btw � the �revolutionary� bullet-time was already done in Requiem: Avenging Angel well before Payne hit the streets.

The dialogue was satire, remember the dream/overdose scenes, particularly the telephone. They even make references to it being a video game. Nothing in the game was groundbreaking technically but the whole game is very well produced. One a the few shooters I have played from beginning to end several times, in my 20 out of 32 years of playing games.
Half-Life for those that remember was not groundbreaking technically, a modified Quake 2 engine. The game is considering one of the best of the last 10 years because of how well everything is integrated. Hell, it's still for sell and not in the bargain bin.

beco · 01-07-2003, 09:36 AM

FPS: Doom, the first time I heard the demons growl it made me jump. Still does. Half Life - second
Strategy: Sun Tzu - Art of War or Masters of Orion
Adventure: Wizardry - I wouldn't play it now, but I wasted a whole summer of that game.

Barney Gumble · 01-07-2003, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by beco
[B]The dialogue was satire, remember the dream/overdose scenes, particularly the telephone. They even make references to it being a video game

Which I referenced, in fact in the quote you included. One amusing moment does not make for a satirical piece.

beco · 01-08-2003, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Barney Gumble
Which I referenced, in fact in the quote you included. One amusing moment does not make for a satirical piece.

Opps missed that, my bad. I was amused by the dialogue it was a campy movie of a movie. I don't think it will have the lifespan of Half Life, not multiplayer.

Shadownought · 01-08-2003, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by beco
Adventure: Wizardry - I wouldn't play it now, but I wasted a whole summer of that game.

Although I had played other Wizardry-style RPGs before (Might & Magic for example, and those awful AD&D games) and never liked them much, I was always looking for a good example of the genre.

Early this week I decided to try "Wizardry..."

What an awesome game.

beco · 01-08-2003, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Shadownought
Although I had played other Wizardry-style RPGs before (Might & Magic for example, and those awful AD&D games) and never liked them much, I was always looking for a good example of the genre.

Early this week I decided to try "Wizardry..."

What an awesome game.

Hehe, warms my heart to hear that. I kept playing even after I finished it. Got all my characters to level 50, I think, and went back a created a bishop, and I think that's the class name, char to level in the group.

Pseudonymph · 01-08-2003, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Barney Gumble
Which I referenced, in fact in the quote you included. One amusing moment does not make for a satirical piece.

It's been pretty obvious to everyone who I've talked to, who has payed close attention to the game that they are being sarcastic with the cheesy metaphorical lines.

"like diamonds on black velvet"?? I mean come on, it's pretty obvious were they were headed with that.

What is your idea of a good story in a computer game?

Shadownought · 01-08-2003, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by beco
Hehe, warms my heart to hear that. I kept playing even after I finished it. Got all my characters to level 50, I think, and went back a created a bishop, and I think that's the class name, char to level in the group.

It's pretty challenging game, too. I've gotten my butt kicked plenty of times. Yay!

I'm a youngun, and the earliest games I played were 8-bit NES games like Mario and Final Fantasy. That probably sounds lame to people who were gaming back in the EARLY early days, but I still have an appreciation for classics of all ages. I even enjoy mapping out the maze on graph paper

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01-07-2003, 08:45 AM	#62
jig Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia Posts: 448	I'm going to take 'best game' in a completely subjective sense, and assume it means 'game I enjoyed playing the most'. But anyhow, here's my list: Best FPS (single player): Wolfenstein 3D Man, how I played that game for weeks on end. It was all very simple, the aiming was easy enough, because it was only pseudo-3d which meant you only had to turn left and right to aim. And you just shot and shot and shot at the bad guys. Then when they were all dead you just run around the level pushing against all the walls to try and find secret rooms so you can find bigger and better guns and whatnot. That was all there was to the gameplay, but to this day it's the only FPS that I've had enough fun with in single player to play through the whole campaign. And killing Hitler at the end was nice! Oh, and the fact that it was the first game in which I got to use these things called 'soundcards' helped with the enjoyment, too. I literally jumped out of my chair the first time a Nazi soldier jumped into my view and he shouted something. Scared the hell out of me. Best FPS (multiplayer): Quakeworld This was the Wolf 3D of multiplayer gaming for me. The first few times I played it all the jumping around and looking up and down and left and right and diagonally and everywhere else in such quick sudden jumps made me so dizzy I had to lie down for a few hours afterwards. I couldn't read a thing, and I couldn't even watch TV. I guess I got a bad case of motion sickness. But I kept at it, and with the introduction of new modules like Team Fortress and Clan Arena it practically became the centre of my life for at least a year or so. Even today, I still sometimes check the local quakeworld servers - the ones that are still up - to see if anybody else is feeling nostalgic, too. Best Strategy (turn-based): X-COM and Jagged Alliance I'm not sure if they fall under 'strategy', but they don't really belong in another category either. Maybe JA can fall under a loose sense of a RPG, but I don't really see it as an RPG. So I'll just put them in strategy. People talk about Civilisation and its siblings being the best turn-based strategy games, but I didn't enjoy those games as much as I enjoyed the X-COM series and the Jagged Alliance series. There was much less tedious micro-management involved in these games, and they had a great sense of suspence in pretty much every second of gameplay. Even those pesky times when you were trying to finish off a mission and had to find that last alien or runaway hiding in the bushes were fun, because you never knew when they might just spring up into your view, get a few chance shots at your men and possibly kill someone, and then run off again. I always hated losing men in these games because the way things were set up it was very easy to become attached to the in-game characters. You never wanted to lose somebody whose abilities you had spent so much time training up, and whom you've depended on for the whole course of the game so far, even when you know they are effectively replaceable in the end. Best Strategy (real-time): Command and Conquer and Starcraft C&C because I spend so much time playing its single player missions. It was another of those rare games that I was actually interested enough in to play until I had finished and beaten the game. I even used the internet at great expense (best rates were about AUS$5 / hour in those times) to find a FAQ/Walkthrough in which all the missions were explained at great length so that I could get through missions where I had given up trying to finish on my own. And I printed it all out, all two hundred plus pages, which made my father very unhappy. Starcraft because of battle.net. The amount of hours I spent on that thing, just playing against people from all over the world.. well, I'm sure I'll be regretting all those 'wasted' hours in years to come when it finally hits me that I did actually waste those precious hours. But damn, it was such fun. I didn't win much, but I loved running around on the map with my last surviving unit and messaging to the to-be victor things like 'You may take our liiiiiiiiiives, but you'll never take our freeeeeeeeedoooommmmm!!!!!!!' ... and then be shot to bits to end the match. The other categories in gaming don't matter to me as much. I'm sure I'd be able to come up with a game I enjoyed the most given any category but I can say I didn't enjoy them nearly as much as I did the above. So I'll just stop here.

01-07-2003, 09:36 AM	#64
beco Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Reston, VA Posts: 123	FPS: Doom, the first time I heard the demons growl it made me jump. Still does. Half Life - second Strategy: Sun Tzu - Art of War or Masters of Orion Adventure: Wizardry - I wouldn't play it now, but I wasted a whole summer of that game.

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