what other games do you play?

[Sanguinius]

well, I'm kind of a video game nerd(unoffically) soI own alot of video games besides dow: ss. ive got:

LOTR:battle for middle earth 2(and rise of witch king expansion)
ALL age of empires games
civilization 4 and related expansions(warlords, sword, so-on)
unreal tournament 3
pathways into darkness

for those who dont know about pathways, its an OLD game(released in 1993) for mac(i found an old mac last year in my closet). its just a bad graphic, but fun game where you go through a maze killing monsters to find something bigger than what you expected.

ive also got fate, a diablo-like video game(pretty fun, kinda boring after a while, but thats what t.v's are for)

this isnt really a poll, im just asking if anyone plays anything other than dow.

edit:changed 1st sentence

[IBBoard]

We've got a reasonable number of games between me and the wife (she's got some RPGs that I'd play if I had time), but I've never been much of a gamer. I always like the idea of playing DoW or something but I never have the time and always feel that the time I do have isn't getting my productive projects sufficiently far along!

Old games are great, though. I've recently played through Grim Fandango with my wife and we've got the Broken Sword games around as well that we've played on of. I've also started playing Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat again recently (the first Games Workshop RTS and the second computer game after Space Hulk in about 1993) and that's from about 1995. The graphics aren't great, but I still like it

[stfas]

for some reason im thinking that older games are better than newer games... for example, Dungeon Siege was great (LOA was pretty good but the first one was best, have just made it to alam'to or something in DS 2) atleast to people that like fighting games <.< which is most people.

[Sanguinius]

i still play good ol' space hulk(the original version). i play it on my crummy computer that i store in my basement. even though its old, its still fun.

people think that just because its new means its great. today, designers cram in TONS of graphics and so-on, but forget to right an in-depth storyline. for instance, that new game 'haze' might be a good game if they had a better storyline. the old game designers didnt put to much into graphics(they really couldnt) so they had more time to make the game longer and more in-depth. back then, games took hours, mabye days, to complete. now, they take less than half an hour.

[stfas]

err, not really it takes longer than one hour to make games, new or old.

i agree with everything else. (i meant after the "even though its old its still fun" part)

[IBBoard]

Sanguinius wasn't commenting on build time, he was commenting on play time. Older games did seem to have much better and more complex plots, while I often see people saying "yeah, it was a great game, I finished it in about eight hours". To me that's a waste of £30+ (£40+ if you look at most console games).

I think it does relate to the available media. Older games had older machines to run on that just couldn't handle complex graphics. If you can't keep people playing with good graphics (which is superficial, but seems to work for a lot of people) then you have to get a good plot. Now-a-days graphics are so much easier that they seem to churn out a shallow version of an older game with flashy graphics and hope that the graphics make people overlook the flaws.

And to think, they say that games are getting to be like an interactive movie. I want better plot lines in my movies, thank you very much!

[stfas]

well games like final fantasy 7 was very long, but they was great (final fantasy 7 required a day to complete the first cd and it had three cd's!)

[Sanguinius]

yea, there are some exceptions, but today, people are in it for the money and the money alone. lets take an original game, marathon. marathon takes DAYS to complete because of its good storyline and complex puzzles. its kinda like a less futuristic doom. the graphics stunk back then, but the designers spent lots of time making it all the more challanging, as well as fun. they even took people off the streets(not literally of course) and had them test the game to make sure it wasnt to hard, but fun at the same time. today, the people churn out games like non-sense, 'cause they want the dough. spending around 30+ pounds on a game that take a newbie 5 hours to complete on hard is nothing, but they dont care. if to many people complain, they'll send out an expansion pack and say its MUCH better than the original. they put to much eye-candy in there games, or as some famous guy said: all flash; no substance.

[IBBoard]

I read a blog post recently about similar things called Puzzles are for geezers. It's a brief few thoughts on the fact that games like Monkey Island could be so obtuse and difficult at times with their puzzles, but they were fun and played well.

A lot of modern gamers wouldn't have the patience with older point-and-clicks and more complex games (and I admit to being 24, having played Grim Fandango and had several times where I didn't have a clue and couldn't see what the heck the next step could possibly be) but they're definitely the more worthy games.

At some point I should get round to playing Monkey Island and finishing Broken Sword!

[stfas]

i wish the people would put more work into storyline than into graphic's.

for example, i think that games like FF 7 or FF 8 and DS was really great, really good storyline, now its more graphic's than storyline, and they just don't get that graphic's aren't fun...

edit: well FF 7 does have kind of good graphics for a game from 1997, but it still has a great storyline.

[Bap]

I totally agree that the heart isn't in many of the games made nowadays. But there are stil the little raritys i.e Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Mass Effect and Sam & Max. These are a couple of gems that show that with a little love with the story and the fun-ability of a game you don't need majorly great graphics.

[IBBoard]

Dreamfall had a bit of a so-so ending - they left it hanging too much after going a bit too surreal (unless me and my wife just missed something!). That and they had some terrible "Starforce" copy protection on there that's known to cause problems on some machines. I've not played the other too games, though.

I think some of the best examples of story/fun are some indie games. I can't remember the name of it, but one independent game recently sold a comparative shed-load by having quality and not using DRM.

[Sanguinius]

yea i like mass effect to, bap. but, as i said before, there are some exceptions. unfortunatly, most do not break the mold set by modern designers. halo, for example, had a good plotline and storyline, but even on legendary, it took me(2nd time playing the game to) around 4-6 hours(i didn't time myself so i don't know the exact time) to complete it. the best thing is that i rented it for like 2£ a day, so i didn't have to churn out 30£+ to get it.

in all, people just take a book or an older game, get the copyrights for it, and churn out 3-5 games based on the storyline(or better yet, make a movie!). they make millions or more, and get to overconfident with themselves. they keep releasing games until the public gets to tired to play final fantasy 23 of doom 18.

[IBBoard]

Doom 18? They only got to 3, and that was a while after the others! The Elder Scrolls is up to four already, but the wife likes Oblivion for the plot line.

It depends, though. Some games can get away with having a lot of releases in a franchise without a problem, but others get a bit stale and over-used by the second one.

[Sanguinius]

well, i was actually being sarcastic there. they've only gotten to doom 3 and i think around final fantasy 10 around....but doom 4 is in production as we speak.