With the recent gaming-related threads, I thought about creating one
myself: Do you have any game gems which you would recommend people to try?
Maybe an older game which most people have forgotten, which is still today
as great as back then? Or a game which didn't get too much media attention
but is actually incredibly cool?

  Here are some of the games I own, which I have liked quite a lot:

- Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive, and its much later sequel,
  Desperados 2: Cooper's revenge.

  The first game is so old that it's actually 2D (well, old-style 3D
in isometric perspective). It's a bit like a real-time strategy, except
that it concentrates on puzzles rather than on resource gathering and
troops building. The problems to solve can be quite contrived, and there's
seldom one single correct solution.
  The sequel is in 3D, but continues with the same basic idea.

- Grim Fandango. Every gaming website always has this game on their top
list of best games in history, praising it for its ingenuity and writing,
yet it seems that people still don't know it. It's a very old game, but
still works well.

- The Longest Journey. Old point-and-click adventure, which is rather good,
and refreshingly different from the Lucasarts' games.
  There's also a more recent sequel (apparently intended to be the first
part of a trilogy), which was quite ok, I guess.

- Beyond Good & Evil. A very "consoleish" game (published, not surprisingly,
for game consoles but also for Windows), which is rather good, but went
mostly unnoticed due to bad timing (other contemporary titles overshadowed
it completely, and it got very little attention). Maybe not one of the
greatest games of all times, but definitely enjoyable.

- The Prince of Persia "sands of time trilogy". You should get the trilogy
box (named "Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, special edition") rather
cheap nowadays, so you should definitely check it if you haven't played
the games.

- Call of Juarez. A more conventional first-person shooter, but with a
great story.

- Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault. I actually bought a box with three MoH
games (Allied Assault and Airborne), but this is the one which I liked the
most. Conventional first-person shooter, maybe not as story-heavy as Call
of Juarez, but cool.

  On the PSP we have:

- Final Fantasy I and II. These are basically the original FF1 and FF2
for the NES, but remade for the PSP with better graphics and audio, and
some extras (such as bonus dungeons). Purely 2D tile-based graphics, but
they still succeed in being more addictive than most modern 3D games I
have played. If you like jRPGs and own a PSP, these are a must have.

- Tales of Eternia. If you like jRPGs, you'll like this one too. A more
modern jRPG.

- Patapon. The idea of the game sounds ridiculous, but the game is
surprisingly addictive.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> - The Longest Journey. Old point-and-click adventure, which is rather good,
> and refreshingly different from the Lucasarts' games.

I played this through. For a point-and-click adventure, it's really quite 
lame. I guess if you're more interested in the story and scenery than 
playing the game, it can be OK.  But it's more like clicking your way 
through a novel than it is playing an "Adventure" style game.  There's no 
choices to make, you can't do things out of order, and areas open up and 
close off without any real sense to why (like, once you've been to the 
museum, you can't go back).

For example, at one point, you wind up in the posh space-port after crawling 
thru messiness. There's a clothes store there, and if you try to go in, it 
says "I can't afford posh clothes like that."  So you go downstairs, talk to 
the ticket agent, who tells you you're too messy to get on the space 
shuttle, at which point *then* you can go upstairs and buy clothes. Very 
annoying, that. The whole game is like that - you can't pick up the tools 
you need before you run into the lock you need to open, etc.

Funny in places, tho. A decent story if it was so drawn out. You spend most 
of your time waiting to get thru conversations and such, with "next step" 
almost always being obvious.

Better than a lot of the other games in the genre, I'll grant that too.

Myst and Riven (and to a lesser extent the sequels) are the best, obviously.


I would add Thief 1 and 2, Deus Ex, and (so far as I've gone thru it) 
Bioshock as games that allow a lot of latitude in how you accomplish your 
goals, with lots of replayability.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Myst and Riven (and to a lesser extent the sequels) are the best, obviously.

  I found Riven to be a bit too difficult to be completely enjoyable.
The hints are often really obscure, and most of the time you just wander
around trying random things, to no avail. It can get expasperating. In fact,
I got stuck at some point so badly that I couldn't finish the game.

  I still own the CDs, though. Maybe I should try it again sometime.
I wonder if it will work on Windows XP.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   With the recent gaming-related threads, I thought about creating one
> myself: Do you have any game gems which you would recommend people to try?
> Maybe an older game which most people have forgotten, which is still today
> as great as back then? Or a game which didn't get too much media attention
> but is actually incredibly cool?

I don't play games very often any more, but here's a few that I've enjoyed:


Cave Story:
Freeware download.  A pixel-art side scrolling platformer in the style 
of some SNES games.  Very well made and a lot of fun.


I Wanna Be the Guy:
Freeware download from http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/
Known for being almost impossibly difficult, and it's a bit glitchy too. 
  I can't quite describe why I enjoy playing it so much, but it does 
have lots of nice references to old-school console games.


Chrono Trigger:
An RPG for the SNES, you can find a rom for an emulator pretty easily, 
or buy it used if you still own the console.


Monkey Island (series):
Old PC game.  Gameplay is ehhh, but the writing is top-notch and very funny.


Katamari Damacy:
Available on most modern consoles.  Too weird not to like.


My brother swears by Dwarf Fortress (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/) 
which is a free ASCII-graphics game in which you attempt to build, well, 
a dwarven fortress.  Apparently the depth of the interactions you can 
see in this game is almost unparalleled, to the point where it's a 
common practice to post stories about what happened in the game.  See 
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Stories for a list of short 
stories, or http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/intro.html for a 
hilarious story of a game played by a group of people (you probably 
don't need to have played the game to enjoy it).

I've also enjoyed playing World of Goo a bit recently, and it makes a 
relatively easy but still quite enjoyable puzzle game.  You can download 
it for $20 if you're interested.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Myst and Riven (and to a lesser extent the sequels) are the best, obviously.
> 
>   I found Riven to be a bit too difficult to be completely enjoyable.
> The hints are often really obscure, and most of the time you just wander
> around trying random things, to no avail. It can get expasperating. In fact,
> I got stuck at some point so badly that I couldn't finish the game.

I got stuck a couple of times, often because I couldn't figure out what in 
the scene was a button. (Like, the button to call the cable car outside the 
temple was completely non-obvious to me, or I was pushing it in the wrong 
place, or something.)

One of the things I like about those games is that you can say "Hmmm... I 
need to get over *there*... And there's steps up *here*... and a path *that* 
way... so I must need to get behind *that* rock to find the entrance." You 
can count on the 3D-ness making enough sense that you can find what you're 
looking for.

But yes, Riven definitely had more subtle clues, and more non-obvious 
places-you-had-to-click than the other games.  I think I got stuck three or 
four times and had to take a break for a few days or a couple weeks before I 
realized what I was doing wrong.

The other games were more obviously "puzzle" games - you knew which key you 
were looking for, or what parts you had to put together to make something 
go, or which map you had to find. Riven was more "real world" IIRC.

>   I still own the CDs, though. Maybe I should try it again sometime.
> I wonder if it will work on Windows XP.

It does. I don't remember if you need to install it strangely, but I played 
it more recently than I gave up on Win98.  Thief requires a command-line 
switch to install on NT-class machines, telling it to ignore that NT doesn't 
have DX.

If you pick it up again and get stuck, feel free to ask for a hint. I'll try 
to offer one that's minimally revealing. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> Katamari Damacy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT9SvWGOt24

I loved the commercial, but try to figure out what it's advertising before 
you get to the end. Hint: it's not advertising a video game. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> Katamari Damacy:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT9SvWGOt24
> 
> I loved the commercial, but try to figure out what it's advertising 
> before you get to the end. Hint: it's not advertising a video game. :-)

I have actually seen this before (so no fair on my guessing) at one of 
the siggraph animation festivals.  I loved it then and I still love the 
commercial.

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:498ca833$1@news.povray.org...
> Warp wrote:

> > - The Longest Journey. Old point-and-click adventure, which is rather
good,
> > and refreshingly different from the Lucasarts' games.

> I played this through. For a point-and-click adventure, it's really quite
> lame.

Speaking of point and click adventure games, really the only one worth
playing was DoTT, IMO.

> Myst and Riven (and to a lesser extent the sequels) are the best,
obviously.

Myst series seemed utterly boring to me. With a storyline that is sterile,
alien and convoluted, and puzzles that are artificial , I never understood
what the appeal was. Then again, I've never been a "gamer", in that most I
can play is 1/2 hr or so at a sitting, and to mentally and physically relax,
not as a second job. For similar demographics, I guess games that are more
like sitcoms than films are more appealing.

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> Myst series seemed utterly boring to me. With a storyline that is sterile,
> alien and convoluted, and puzzles that are artificial , I never understood
> what the appeal was. Then again, I've never been a "gamer", in that most I
> can play is 1/2 hr or so at a sitting, and to mentally and physically relax,
> not as a second job. For similar demographics, I guess games that are more
> like sitcoms than films are more appealing.

Did you play Myst shortly after it came out or later on?  I recall the 
the technology rather stunning when it came out, but has since been long 
surpassed by other games, so that might play into your assessment.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   With the recent gaming-related threads, I thought about creating one
> myself: Do you have any game gems which you would recommend people to try?
> Maybe an older game which most people have forgotten, which is still today
> as great as back then? Or a game which didn't get too much media attention
> but is actually incredibly cool?

I'm sure you meant relatively recent games, i.e. within the last 10 
years at least. However, I can't resist wheeling this out, probably 
utterly unheard of to anyone outside the UK (including the computer it 
ran on).

The single computer game I have most ever enjoyed playing is: "Exile" 
for the BBC Micro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_(arcade_adventure)

If you never played games on a platform this old then it will probably 
hold no interest for you, compared with modern systems. However, I know 
that many people who frequent this server have a few years behind them, 
so... maybe... someone will have heard of it, or even played it!

:)

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