Video Games

Can I even talk about video games in the presence of intelligent people? I work night shift at a motel, and so I have literally nothing to do between 2 and 6 am or so. I'd read except it makes me too drowsy at that hour (sleeping on the job is a big no-no.) So I picked up a Game Boy Advance SP. It's pretty cool, I was just wondering if anybody else has one, and if so, what games they really like for it.So far I have Golden Sun 2, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and Super Mario Advance 2. I'll probably pick up F-Zero when I can find it and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance when it comes out. So that should give you an idea about what games I'm into.Any ideas? I'm looking at Tactics Ogre but I can't find it in stores...If you plan to reply and say "Video games are stupid, you're wasting your time", well, duh, I already know that. But hey, the games aren't going to play themselves, are they?

Hey Crash,I love video games, though I don't have a Game Boy. I have played Castlevania and FF7 on my comp. My obsession is MMORPGs massive, multi-player online role playing games. I was depressingly addicted to Everquest for over a year. I am not currently playing because I've quit my job and gone back to school. Homework takes precedence unfortunately. I can't quite bring myself to actually close my account and delete my alter-egos.I've played some Warcraft and am planning on picking up WCIII soon. I can't wait until Warcraft brings out their new MMORPG, it's in beta testing right now.Meet Asgara Sheeshalot, Druid of Tunare of 54 seasons ------------------
Asgara "An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

You know, I've been meaning to try to talk to somebody who was into MMORPGS. I've tried to get into them, but it just doesn't work. What really bugs me out is how much it sucks to be a first-level character. Around where I game we call this the "rats problem". (i.e. your character sucks so much that the only thing you can fight are rats, and they beat you half the time.)Basically I'm just not willing to put in the serious hours that it would take to have fun in Everquest, etc... I like single-player RPG's for the same reason I like books more than tv series - they stop when I'm not playing/reading so I don't get behind. What I really love is dungeoneering games, like Diabolo, etc - because I like the co-operative teamwork. Sadly I'm still waiting for a game that really could take advantage of that. (I think that the phenomenon of portable video gaming could really mean some exciting things in terms of "loosely co-operative" games, or games where a game world overlays, contexually, on the real geographical location of the player, or some combination thereof...)As a MMORPG gamer, do you have any thoughts on cross-gender gaming? I usually gravitate towards female characters in video games (I'm male myself) for reasons I can't even explain - I just do, I guess. When I play pen/paper RPG's, on the other hand, I almost never play female characters.

Hi Crash,Yeah, newbie chars do suck. But to tell you the truth, imo so do high level chars. I prefer early to mid level. I think that's because I was into the social, role-playing, aspect of the game rather than serious gaming.newbie chars = rats, rats, and more rats...death, death and more death
high lvl chars = repetative raiding in one or two zones - continuously
mid lvl chars = everything is new, you aren't as helpless, you've probably picked up some good friends by now...everything is excitingI have male friends on the game that were serious gamers...always looking for the next best piece of equipment or more dangerous mob. Some didn't even care if they were role-playing or not as long as they got something better than someone else or faster than someone else.I admit, I liked getting better equip, but I was into the role-playing and the social aspect. I think that is why it is so hard for me to let go of my chars even tho I don't play at the moment. I've invested a lot of ME into their personalities and they really do feel like alter-egos.As for cross-gender gaming, I've known several guys that play females. For the most part it is because a female char tends to be able to get more help than a guy. (don't ask me why ). One friend always played in 3rd person view and his rationale was that if he was going to spend all that time watching his char run away from his viewpoint...it was going to be something worth watching. I, personally, have four chars on the game and all are female. I've never felt the want to play a male char.If you ever feel like trying it again, my druid can power-level you past those awkward early years. LOL (tho, of course, those awkward lvls are where you learn the ropes)added by edit - What do you mean stop??? You don't stop...you play until you pass out. Then when you come to...you start again. [This message has been edited by Asgara, 07-29-2003]

Hi crash - yeah I'm also a game junkie. Call it mid-life crisis or something (my wife does). However, I was addicted to pen-and-paper RPG (the original D&D back when the came consisted of three slim pamphlets actually written by Gygax!) decades before I met her...However, I utterly lost any enthusiasm for computer RPG's in their early days (before on-line gaming), probably because of the available media and cheesy story-line, etc. I never went back. OTOH, I am totally addicted to real-time strategy games. My current fixation is Empire Earth (which is really nothing more than Age of Empires with a new face). My all-time favorite (and one I keep going back and replaying) is Starcraft and its expansions. I curse Blizzard to the outermost hells for never following up on it and concentrating on Warcraft instead - which I don't even like much. I doubt that there are too many RTS games that have come out in the last ten or more years that I haven't played or owned or both. Star Wars Rebellion, Star Trek Armada, C&C Tiberian Sun, Earth 2050, Master of Orion (I, II, and III), Master of Magic (now THERE'S a game that could be revived), etc. Even Dark Reign (bleah). Unfortunately, I don't really have the time to play on-line, so I'm like you in that respect. I can sneak an hour or two, but isn't ever possible to sit down and play on-line start to finish.

I cant wait for SW: Knights of the old republic!!!

I'm a game addict....have been since college...
A really great computer game that has consumed more of my time, particularly sleeptime, that I would have liked is Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and its two expansion packs..Tribunal and Bloodmoon. It is one of the few games where even months later I still want to see what is over the next hill and what is behind that creaking door...You are also free to do just about anything you want...don't like a main character in the storyline? Kill him, trap his soul, use it to enchant your sword and then go on a rampage...not that my character would ever do anything like that A great space RTS was Homeworld and I am eagerly awaiting its sequel that is due in the next month or so...I am surprised Quetzal liked Star Trek Armada...I thought I was the only one that liked that game ...it had a subtitle..Star Trek Armada: Crash to Desktop Corrupt Save GamesI am also a big fan of first person shooters and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell was fantastic...Thief and Thief II (first person sneakers) are great....as was Half Life..the king of FPS's....the only online experience I really had was playing Unreal Tournament for a year...I mostly got my butt kicked but it was still a lot of fun in team modes...Two great but underated space simulations were both Star Trek games..Klingon Academy and Star Trek: Bridge Commander...both had good graphics, good story lines, and pretty cool control schemes...Klingon Academy suffered because you had too much to keep track of like power management, how much energy to devote to your scanners etc..and your companion ships would often do things like fly straight into an astroid when they should be defending you.well...I think I have outed my profound geekness enough for one post...Oh yeah..Wounded King...Star Wars: KOTOR is out for Xbox already..getting fantastic reviews....

I didn't say I liked Armada. I had a brief flirtation with it - it was kind of fun tooling around in Borg Cubes assimilating everybody else's starships and then using them against your opponent. However, I'm more into the "development and build" end of the RTS continuum - hence my love of Empire Earth. Haven't tried Homeworld. Two others that I thought of that I still like are Imperium Galactica (I and II - the first played better although highly crash-worthy, but the graphics in the second were awesome), and Total Annihilation (which is fun if you just like blowing things up: the ultimate horde game).PS: Wounded King. I hadn't heard about Knights. What kind of game is it? Most of the lucasarts games are shoot-em-ups or sims. Rebellion was the exception (it remains the most complex RTS game I've ever played - graphics aren't state-of-the-art, and the tech tree bites, but the combination of "hero" diplomacy, small unit action and spying etc, revolution, complicated planetary development, and mass space fleet action is the absolute best I've ever seen. Besides, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Death Stars...)

Armada II had a crap story but the Borg were over the top...you could make a giant cube out of 8 cubes which was pretty much unstoppable...For a nice blow up everything RTS you can try Myth I and II (didnt try III)...the graphics are really dated now for the first two but the game is pretty funny.Two really over the top games that were fun but just plain weird are Giants: Citizen Kabuto...it is part RTS, part 3rd person shooter, and completely strange i.e. you spend the first part playing in a team of drunk worms in space suits..later you play a giant monster that runs around on a rampageThe second game is Messiah..not a bad one for the creationist crowd
It is a third person shooter..but you run around as small angel in diapers with no power or defense..you do have little wings and can sort of fly a bit...your only way to survive is to possess people who have power or good weapons...nobody can throw down like a possessed prostitute with a bazooka ...for the combat sim types..Operation Flashpoint was really good..but hard...

Personally, I find that most video games suck. To my mind, they have become much too complicated. When you have to spend so much time programming your keyboard for how you want to deal with things as well as the myriad ways in which you can move (the mouse normally moves you, but if you do a shift-move, it's side-stepping and if you do a control-move, it's your point of view without moving you and if you...), the game becomes more about how good you can type rather than how good you can play.Of course, I say that as a big Diablo fan. To my discredit, I found myself buying a GameVoice so that I didn't have to remember how I programmed my keyboard. I could simply say something like, "Strafe," and it would alter my Amazon's skill to that for me. And then I found myself being upset that the software for GameVoice didn't include the ability to press a mouse button. It would be really cool if I could program a sequence for my Barbarian so that when I said, "Power Up," it would execute a switch to Battle Command on the right mouse button (which, when activated, increases your skill level), actually clicks the right mouse button to activate it, switch to Battle Orders (which, when activated, increases your life, mana, and stamina and since I just activated Battle Command, is more effective), actually clicks the right mouse button to activate it, and then switches to whatever preferred warcry I wanted. Instead, I have to activate things manually and say the intermediate commands.By my regular opinion, if you have to go through all that rigamorale just to be an effective character, then the game is too complicated for its own good. It becomes about who knows the trick rather than who can play. The best games don't require much manipulation in order to have depth.And then there are the RPGs like Zork and Myst. Hated both series. Zork was all about finding the obscure item and using it in a completely unobvious method. Overlook the obscure item, often because you didn't know the trick for causing it to appear in the first place, and you'll not be able to progress. This was particularly offesnive in Return to Zork when you could lose the game on the very first move but not know it until an hour into the game: You start off on top of a hill in front of a sign with a buzzard on it. You have to know that you must scare off the buzzard in order to get close enough to pick the weed that is growing at the base of the sign. You'll need it to make a potion later in the game. Since that is the only place to get it, and you cannot go back up the hill once you go down, you've lost the game if it didn't occur to you to get the weed (not that you can see it from where you're standing, either, but only after you've gotten close enough to the sign).Myst was gorgeous...and boring. It had a variant of the Zork problem: Rather than picking things up in order to use them in obscure ways, you had to fiddle with things, the effects of which would not become apparent until much later, and usually with absolutely no indication when you find yourself blocked that the thing you needed to do was change the flow of water in that room way back when. And, of course, that usually required spending a long time walking through places to get between points of view. Yeah, yeah, yeah...what a wonderful rendering, but I saw it on the way in, thank you, and I don't want to have to spend 20 moves backtracking through it all when I know that all I need to do is get back to that frickin' control room.That's why I liked The 7th Guest. As you explore the house, the rooms you have access to (augh! Dangling preposition!) appear on the map. If you need to get out of the cellar and up to the attic, you don't have to walk through the entire house to get there...just click on the map and you're there. Too, the puzzles in The 7th Guest were cryptic in their own right rather than being based upon trickery. You didn't need to know to look under the bed while leaning on the bedstand in order to have the floorboard warp enough for you to pull it up and find the chesspiece which you will need to use two hours from now. Instead, the chess puzzle is all right there when you come across it...what makes it hard is that it is a difficult chess puzzle.What sort of game do you like?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Ah, Rrhain. A man after me own heart. That's precisely why I don't play RPGs or FPS arcade type games anymore...

I'm so glad you brought that one up... I actually did play it on the Xbox - gorgeous game, phenomenally deep gameworld - but I didn't like it. Basically I thought it got way too easy once you figure out how to twink your character with enchanted stuff. Also I thought it was kind of dumb that there's nothing that prevents your character from walking around with godlike artifacts and goosed up on potions - absolutely nothing at all. The thing is, nobody else in the gameworld does that. Every single other character posesses weapons of craptitude compared to yours. It's like being a god among ants.In your average game, that wouldn't be such a big deal, but in a game that tries to be as immersive as Morrowind, the fact that nobody else seems to ever think of exploiting the magic system sticks out like a sore thumb. (And why aren't there any kids/old people on the island? Every single inhabitant of the island is an adult of indeterminate age. Is that so that the game developers don't have to feel guilty about making a game where you could kill kids and old people?)Morrowind was the closest to a pen/paper RPG I've ever played (I haven't had a chance to play Neverwinter Nights), but if it was an RPG, then it was one of those RPG's where the GM isn't very good at imagining the world beyond the players or maintaining control over munchkin players.

Is it strictly accurate to refer to these games as "RPG"s? At the very least, they're not what people are generally referring to when they talk about RPG's.Has anybody played Final Fantasy Tactics? (For playstation?) For my money, it's the most fun game I've ever played - it has depth, story, graphics, unique gameplay (well, not totally unique), and considerable replayability.But I think Rrhain has hit on something; the steady march of computing power on consoles and PC's has not made the games significantly more fun. In fact fun seems to have nothing to do with the technical achevement of programmers. I don't understand the distinction you're making. What's the difference between knowing the "tricks" and knowing the winning strategies? Aren't they the same? To my mind, they are.I mean, one might say that knowing to avoid chasing an inside straight in poker is a "trick", gleaned from sources beyond the game rules itself (the lore of poker). And yet, it's also a gameplay technique - while not a winning strategy in and of itself, generally winning players aren't chasing inside straights.

Hi Crashfrog,
I agree with you to a point...it took me a really loooong time before my character was pumped up enough to go toe to toe with a lot of the tougher characters....I had to go find easier ways of upping my stats for month before I could get passed the first door in one criminal hideout. And in the main quest, the main baddy gave me a real run for my money...I actually only defeated him because of a game glitch were he got stuck...take the win any way I can Unfortunately for the Xbox players the developers did not make Tribunal an Xbox addon..only for the PC...they upped the stats of all the baddies really high and there were a new class of super Ordinators that were unreal hard to fight...I barely got through we a level 26 fighter with enchanted everything....the developers really seem to know what they are doing and know their audience.That there are no children in the game is one oddity...it is also strange that no matter when you go to town, day, night, rain storm whatever, the people are milling about roughly in the same place...also the economic model is terrible..I constantly find objects worth a ton of money but there are no vendors who can afford it...Somehow I still found myself addicted...ok I am still addicted to the game...maybe because I just got into the Bloodmoon expansion and look forward to becoming a werewolf Rhrain is correct, the higher production values in games have not improved the games in all cases...Unreal and Unreal II are both great looking games but I thought they were boring...a really popular game called Max Payne had excellent graphics as well...it bored me to...the original Half Life had crappy graphics by todays standards but I would sooner boot that back up again and play through some of the levels than most newer shooters...but there are occassionally some gems...and there are a current crop of games that have a lot of promise...and then there is Morrowind which looks great and is a ton of fun...

crashfrog responds to me:

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And then there are the RPGs like Zork and Myst.

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Is it strictly accurate to refer to these games as "RPG"s?

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Probably not. I couldn't think of a decent term for them, though. There probably is one, I probably will remember it when it gets mentioned, but I can't think of it right now. Zork and Myst aren't shoot-em-ups (first or third person), not board games, not arcade games...I suppose you could call them puzzle games, but I'd reserve that for games like The 7th Guest and Jewels of the Oracle. "Environmental immersion"?

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It becomes about who knows the trick rather than who can play.

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I don't understand the distinction you're making. What's the difference between knowing the "tricks" and knowing the winning strategies? Aren't they the same? To my mind, they are.

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There's a difference between knowing the strategy of the game and knowing the strategy of manipulating the game. That is, it is one thing to know that if you are playing alone in a shoot-em-up like Diablo that you would do well to adopt guerilla tactics, do what you can to isolate single monsters rather than taking on mobs or that since ranged shots often go off screen (and if they're magic, they light up areas you can't quite see), it can be good to use those shots as feelers to see what's out there. It is quite another thing to make it who can press the secret combination of letters on your keyboard the fastest.I know that there is a solid market for the twitch games, but I don't like them. Playing a game shouldn't be about playing the controls. I shouldn't even be considering buying a voice controller because there are a few dozen keyboard sequences that are of importance. I don't like the vs. games like Street Fighter because they're about secret codes in the controls. I didn't like Defender (oh, that dates me) because it had too many buttons.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!