PC Gaming = World of Suck

[Groltz]

I downloaded that one and played to the end.

Not very good at all. The insanity effects are VERY fatiguing. It sucked having the damned screen waver all around when you're trying to walk somewhere up high (your character is terrified of heights) or when the violence gets too heavy for his meager constitution.

Joe Bob sez two thumbs down.

 

[Sol]

I played that for a while but eventually got sick of endlessly repeating sections because the scripted nature of the game meant that you had to play it in exactly the way the designers intended. Kind of Dragons Lair meets an old sierra adventure game just in first person...

Also some elements from bad horror movies, you know the ones where a character gets grabbed from the dark an shredded by some unknown assailant and your response is, "Meh they totally deserved that on pure stupidity", only in this case you can avoid the stupidity by simply not playing...

 

[Mercutio]

My best score is 117

I'm trading someone a 4 drive DVD duplicator for an Xbox360 so I can play Dead Rising. I feel unclean.

 

[Mercutio]

For what it's worth, Sol, "Call of Cthulhu" is based on a pen and paper game of the same name. A lot of the game elements, like fear and losing sanity, seem to stem from that.
The fun of the pen and paper game was in the fact that mere mortals could in no way stand with even footing with the monsters of HP Lovecraft's fiction. Literally, if you met up with anything more than the most minor of horrors, you'd be either monster chum or completely, irreversibly insane. Why is that fun?

The fun is in pushing the envelope. You start out as a sane, normal person and the more you play, the worse and more horrible things get. It's not slasher movie horror. It's "man is completely insignificant and helpless to control any portion of reality."-existential horror.

That's cool in a whole different way from playing a game like Unreal Tournament.

 

[Buck]

So, I successfully switched my video card from an ATI X1800XL to a Gigabyte nVidia 7600GS. Finally, peace and quiet. However, I can no longer play AOEIII at 1600 x 1200, I'm stuck with 1280 x 1024.

 

[Platform]

I feel unclean.

Prolly coz there's a "Li'l bit of Bill'n'Ballmer in every (x) box."

Would be kinda nice to have an Xbox running a supercharged F@H session when it wasn't serving it's... in in intendo nintendo... I mean intended purpose of entertaining the hedonistic masses.

 

[Sol]

My annoyance with Call of Cthulhu wasn't really with the insanity or fear factors but more in the complete inability of the player to even pretend to define their own destiny. Take the scene where you wake up in he middle of the night and have to escape from a gang of angry villager types. It's very much a case of, lock door A, unlock door B, push object in front of door C, open window A, jump across to window B and if you attempt to deviate from this formula even slightly then you need to try again. It doesn't matter how fast or slow (within reason) you do these steps, the villagers are scripted to be right behind you no matter what.

The same goes for the mystery plot development parts, you must find clue A before you can open trap door B, there is no alternate way to do it and if you take too long and bouncer A finds you then you need to try again.

My slasher movie reference isn't so much about the type of horror as about the weakness of the plot. There plot development gives the main character (i.e. you) nowhere near sufficient motivation to get involved with the story at all. Sure he came face to face with something that drove him kinda insane in the past but here really isn't anything substantial to connect the current situation to that except that we the player knows there must be one. His (and hence your) reactions to things are just totally artificial and your inability to do anything about that completely ruined the mood for me... Every part of my brain was saying, "Just leave it alone you moron!".

Maybe if you've read more of HP Lovecraft's books or played the pen and paper game the nostalgia factor might make up for these weaknesses, the fear and madness which I thought were actually kinda cool just didn't do enough as far as I was concerned.

Over scripting is kind of a pet hate for me, so much so that the term "cinematic" applied to a game strikes me like the term "handy man's dream" applied to real estate...

 

[P5-133XL]

Ugg Battlefield 2142 is spyware. According to the article EA (Electronic Arts) has inked a contract with advertisers to allow them to monitor their buyers computer usage so as to incorporate better in-game advertising.

I'm not sure that I could feel more raped. At least when involving a computer...

 

[Mercutio]

I still think Starforce is worse.
My default position for PC games is now "Buy the boxed copy if I really like it, but play the pirate/cracked version."

They're doing everything they can to ruin gaming on PCs. It's really just that simple.

 

[Sol]

Starforce caused my computer to blue screen whenever I tried to load an infected game when I had an ext3 driver installed. Prior to that I was only really against it in principal... It's better to let 10 pirates get away than screw one innocent customer, and I can't imagine how anyone can not feel decidedly dirty doing differently...

 

[Mercutio]

Completely off the subject, but I just saw that there are three videos on one of the more... interesting torrent sites I frequent that are titled:

"World of Whorecraft"

And judging by the screenshots, I think I found someone I can look down on even more than tentacle-loving hentai freaks.

It looks like regular porn, but the girls are wearing elf ears and leather straps and stuff.

But, OK, that's not the worst part.
The worst part: The ONE, SINGLE attractive mid-20-ish college educated young woman that I've ever had in my classes is a WoW freak. I sent her basically the same thing I posted (she sends me off-color stuff too from time to time, too) just now, and the instantaneous response I got back was...

"I have an outfit like that. I use it to get (her boyfriend's) attention when he's been raiding too much."

Despite the happy mental image, I have to say that WoW frightens me. Now in every possible way.

 

[sechs]

I don't have a problem with in-game advertising if it makes the game cheaper. It doesn't seem like a lot of companies have taken that path. Instead, they pocket the money and make the same ol' crappy games.

 

[P5-133XL]

I don't have a problem with in-game advertising if it makes the game cheaper. It doesn't seem like a lot of companies have taken that path. Instead, they pocket the money and make the same ol' crappy games.

I don't like in-game advertising, but for the most part I can tolerate it. I agree, that if it made the games cheaper, maybe there's value there, but I have observed absolutely no decreased pricing in games with advertising in them.

My complaint has nothing to do with ingame advertising. It is of the monitoring of you computer usage, to facilitate improved advertising. Basicly its spyware, at that point. To me, its like paying to have a keystroke logger installed on to my machine.

Theoretically, it can be made safe and protect privacy. But then, I can't see how they are going to report internet usage and still maintian confidentiallity because they have to associate that data with the machine and that removes any anonymity. In practice, I have absolutely no faith that anyone will be ethical about what they record, what data they transmit back to the advertisers, and what use will be made of that information. All you have to do, is look at the various attempts at getting data from users that various "reputable" companies have used in the past to know that lack of ethics is the norm.

Most of the previous uproar that has occured is when these reputable companies have done their data collection without notification of the users. Here EA is notifying their users, in advance. Well, I for one still object to spyware being installed on my machine -- Regardless of notification.

I just plain won't buy EA games in the future, now that I know what they are gonna do, because I'm not willing to give them permission. A game is not worth my privacy rights.

 

[Groltz]

According to the article EA (Electronic Arts) has inked a contract with advertisers to allow them to monitor their buyers computer usage so as to incorporate better in-game advertising.

Pissed-off geeks forge countermeasures

 

[ddrueding]

Battlefield 2142 is the essence of suck.

Not only is there in-game advertising. Not only does it retail for $70 anyway. But your CD-Key is mapped to a single account. No more having multiple accounts, or having a friend create an account for when he's at your place. $70 buys you one account and one install of the game, which you play while looking at ads.

suck.

 

[sechs]

The one serial number = one account has been in effect for some time.

 

[Mercutio]

My god! It's full of BOOBS!

Seriously? This is either some kind of game that involves CG girls running around on a beach, or it's the world's most perfect jiggle-factor simulator. If it's the latter, I'd say that it's a computing achievement at least as great as simulating weather patterns or nuclear explosions. Someone should get a Nobel prize for bouncing tits.

Either way it's hypnotic and spellbinding and probably not safe for work, if your work gets uptight about partially clothed but not nude computer animated girls in thongs and stuff.

 

[sechs]

Apparently Merc didn't see the original Dead or Alive when it came out, probably thinking that it had something to do with gun-slinging.

The fact of the matter is that breast-movement physics it lightyears behind hair-movement physics -- and hair-movement is pretty unrealistic in consumer games. The real stuff don't act like that.

 

[Gilbo]

Did someone say jiggle-factor simulator? JFS...(probably NSFW).

 

[Mercutio]

I linked to that about a year ago in the something random thread.

 

[Gilbo]

LOL. That's probably where I found it. It's lived in my 'Gems' bookmarks folder for some time now.

 

[Mercutio]

Marvel Ultimate Alliance looked cool, so I bought it.
Turned out it was one of those godawful console games that happens to have a PC port.

I can't decide if I should shoot for Activision's Money Back guarantee or if I should just microwave the install disc now.

 

[timwhit]

Try to get your money back. Can't hurt to try.

 

[Sol]

I'm enjoying Dark Messiah of Might and Magic at the moment, it's a fairly linear action RPG, plenty of decapitations and severed limbs... My biggest problem with it is that it doesn't like my wide screen laptop monitor and continually crashes at it's native resolution (and only slightly less so at other resolutions)... Oh and the patch updated the copy protection to the latest version but only increased the frequency of crashes (so much so that I can no longer play in widescreen at all).

So a fun game but not so much as to convince me to give the scum that publish it money...

 

[sechs]

Does anyone here play Civilization IV?

I picked up a copy for free from a friend switching to a Mac... and it seems to be tuned to be a lot more difficult than previous iterations.

 

[timwhit]

I tried it when it came out awhile back. I like Civ II better.

 

[Mercutio]

Civ 4 is buggy and stupid and Civ 2 or Civ 3 are just better games.
Or Alpha Centauri, best of all.

 

[timwhit]

Just go for FreeCiv, which is based on Civ 2.

 

[sechs]

I tried it when it originally came out, deemed it a buggy a piece of crap and sent it back. Since this copy was free, I figured that I would give it a shot. The game doesn't seem nearly as buggy as it once was, but the difficulty is all screwy.

I'd love for Firaxis to put out a sequel to SMAC, but between their new owners and EA, I just don't see it happening....

 

[Mercutio]

Two of my favoritest games are "Master of Magic" - which I still play pretty regularly, and "Alpha Centauri", which I play less often because it's a longer and harder game.

I really like Alpha Centauri for the sweetness of being able to design military units. I like the idea of having to prototype, build and the upgrade existing units. Civ doesn't have that particular element, and it's something I miss when I play it.

I do kind of wish there was an Alpha Centauri 2 with some additional features, but the one add-on pack they did make does well enough on its own.

I knew an Econ major at Purdue who didn't own a computer but was a TOTAL Civilization 2 freak. I sat and watched him play on one of my PCs over the course of basically two evenings. He micromanaged his production and carefully developed the land under his control (highways everywhere)... and actually used trade caravans, finally switching to Democracy from Communism only after he had completed all his construction and expansion projects. He managed to get a positively god-like score of 363% on the high difficulty setting. Was very interesting to watch, particularly since I don't think he built any military unit other than those he needed for garrisons.

 

[sechs]

SMAC had the advantages of being built on the same engine as Civ3 and an unusually long development cycle, so they had a lot of development time. That made for a much better game out of the box.

I'm not much on micromanagement, which makes the SMAC governors extremely useful.

 

[ddrueding]

I just got Alpha Centauri, based on the recommendations here. I'll see if I have time to try it out later today.

 

[ddrueding]

My CPU is not supported? WTF?

A64 4200+
Server 2003

I didn't install DirectX 6, as the new version is backwards-compatible...right?

 

[Mercutio]

I dimly recall needing a patch to install it.
Or you can just play in a VM.

I bought Interstate '76 when it came out only to find that it won't work if you have more than one CD-ROM in your PC. I only recently got around to putting it on in a VM. It plays, which is more than it did before.

 

[Sol]

Mercutio, if you liked the unit building system in Alpha Centauri have you checked out Earth 2160? It has a very similar system in a real time strategy format. With 3 or 4 (can't remember which) very different teams it actually has a fair bit of flexibility and fun in it. It can be insanely hard though, especially when fighting different enemies who require differently optimized units to defeat.

 

[sechs]

My CPU is not supported? WTF?

I've installed it before on my dual Opteron system, so I know that's not the problem. Perhaps you need to run in compatibility mode on Server.

Unfortunately, the game was put out at the very end of the Win9x era, and doesn't play well out of the box on NT OSes. Firaxis put out a 2k/XP compatibility patch, which you'll definitely want.

 

[Mercutio]

I had to dig up a patch for Magic: the Gathering (the card-game one, not the other one) when I wanted to play it yesterday, only to find out that if your screen res is higher than 1024x768, it runs in a non-windowed 1024x768 portion of your screen.

And that's a 32-bit Windows game. Not like it's some old DOS thing.

I'd be perfectly happy if someone would buy remake rights for some of my favorite games. All PC games are anymore is 3D shooters or console ports.
Implement the original Wasteland or Might and Magic or Starflight in Flash, for all I care. Those were great games and all of them are a sort of game experience that no longer exists except maybe as a cell-phone game.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm still really enjoying Rise of Nations...

 

[Chewy509]

Actually 1 game that I've picked up recently is Rainbow Six: Raven Shield. I got to play it at a LAN party I went to recently, and pretty much enjoyed it.

While it's a FPS, it's more tactics based and slow moving, nothing like Quake, Doom or Unreal. Bought a copy for AU$10 at a local EB Games, downloaded the latest patch and having heaps of fun with it. Because it's a few years old, I can ramp up the res (1680x1050), and all graphic options and still have exceptionally smooth game play.

Another is Wormux, which is a classic "Worms" type game, available on PC, Mac and Linux/*BSD. (It's GPL FOSS). Just great for wasting 10-15 minutes during lunch at work.

 

[ddrueding]

The thing I liked the most about the latest Rainbow Six was the "terrorist hunt". Everyone on the same team, everyone has one life (no respawn), try to kill all the baddies with their difficulty cranked. Everyone advances slowly ('cause if you die, you're out for the round). Teamwork and perfect timing is required to get some of the kills. It's the most exhilarating game I've ever played.