What old games have you dredged up recently and why?

jrralls wrote:

What old strategy game do you think would hold up best in 2019?

I still dust off panzer general 2 from time to time. I know there’s a new Panzercorps out that is a solid remake too, but if you’ve played neither, going with the first one never hurts

jrralls wrote:

What old strategy game do you think would hold up best in 2019?

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It pioneered a lot of stuff that showed up in later editions of Civ and has an actual story. And it's actually not too bad! There are bits of writing from it that will stick with me forever (and granted -- I play a game of it every handful of years, but I think that'd be true regardless).

I think I'll install it right now.

jrralls wrote:

What old strategy game do you think would hold up best in 2019?

Since Alpha Centauri was mentioned, I'm gonna mention Fantasy General. Amazing variety of units, fantastic campaign, challenging AI and wonderful soundtrack.

fledermaus wrote:

Oh what a perfect thread! I hauled out my old ps3 a month ago when I learned I could use my ps4 controllers with it. Why, you ask? Fight Night Champion, EA's boxing game. It remains the best boxing game and maybe the best sports games of all time. There is no way to remaster due to having to license each individual boxer.

What?! I can?

jrralls wrote:

What old strategy game do you think would hold up best in 2019?

SMAC is also my go to older strategy game, although it’s got some rough parts. The unit customization is pretty bad. Another one to think about is Rise of Nations, which I’ve never played myself but apparently is still very solid. Not coincidentally, it’s also a Brian Reynolds game.

3 Moves Ahead did a bunch of retrospective looks at certain years that might give you some ideas too.

johnmurphy01 wrote:

I've owned Baldur's Gate since its initial release. I've probably started that game at least 15 times and failed to get past Chapter 3.

You and me both. Hardware failure got me twice. Save corruption once. Glitch once. And becoming distracted at least twice. Yet I never tire of starting over. The desire remains now still.

fledermaus wrote:

Oh what a perfect thread! I hauled out my old ps3 a month ago when I learned I could use my ps4 controllers with it. Why, you ask? Fight Night Champion, EA's boxing game. It remains the best boxing game and maybe the best sports games of all time. There is no way to remaster due to having to license each individual boxer.

Fight Night Champion you say. *makes note* I was reliving boxing games from the Mega Drive, GameCube, and XBOX recently. Fun times. Darn if I couldn't win a bout in Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing. I got really into Rocky Legends. It's so good! I played one Knockout Kings or another but it fizzled fast.

jrralls wrote:

What old strategy game do you think would hold up best in 2019?

Advance Wars.

Which it turns out is 18 freaking years old!!!

Warbits is a shamless modern iOS clone of it which is well worth checking out too.

Replayed Portal last weekend, because it was free on XBL for the 360 and because it's Portal. What a gem.

I'm playing Tomb Raider (1996). Again. I played it last year. I still think it's a good game, despite its many issues. To be fair though, removing the combat would make it a better game. Less combat, more puzzles and tricky platforming.

I was trying to think of a game that replicates the formula to a certain point, a "spiritual successor" if you will, but I could not think of any. The new TR games don't really feel the same. I like them (although I have yet to play Shadow), but they are just not the same thing, they don't require the same degree of careful planning of movement. The closest thing I can think of were the Tomb sections in Assassin's Creed II (which I played earlier this year).

Maybe someday I will have to write my own old-school Tomb Raider game... Or just experiment with the level editor.

I played 2007s Tarr Chronicles yesterday. What a weird, weird Russian thing. The voice acting is hilarious. Like, as bad as Star Wolves if not worse.

I've played through all of the Gears of War Campaigns this summer with my son on gamepass.

I tore the cellophane off of Mirror's Edge this weekend.

Having played through the tutorial, the prologue and chapter 1, I believe the game is about not knowing where to go and regularly falling to one's death. Because that's what I've spent most of my time doing.

It's telling that one button has been assigned to giving the player 'hints'. Or to be more precise, moving the reticle to exactly where the player is meant to go.

I have 8 more chapters to go. But I don't they'll be fun. Way too much trial and error for my liking.

Played Orcs Must Die 2 recently, because life was super stressful, and I just needed to mindlessly kill thousands of orcs

Cross-posting from the July pile pledge thread:

Started and finally finished Curse of Monkey Island for the first time ever during the past week. First played it upon its release and made it most of the way through. There have been a few aborted attempts since. This time I was determined to persevere, and the credits rolled on July 1st.

It holds up. Mostly. "Try every inventory item with every other inventory item" and "find the small usable object in the scene" gameplay was something we accepted back then because we didn't have anything better. Time has been understandably harsh to that.

Everything else was mostly pretty fantastic when seen as a unified whole, though. Also, I didn't realize this until the credits rolled, but Gary Coleman did some VO work on this game.

The other day I was kinda getting the itch to fire up Dwarf Fortress, crazy I know. Im trying to hold off for the Steam release.

The thing that helped was remembering I have a negative amount of free time for video games at the moment and thinking about playing on my drive to and from work is just about as good. IMAGINATION!

I completed Medal of Honour (2010) over the weekend. As I said on the 'Finished Any Games Lately?' thread, it's a very, very average game spoiled by a couple of poorly designed, poorly executed missions.

What it did make me realise is just how good Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is. The story, the gameplay and the missions still stood up when I played the remaster earlier this year, and I'd argue that they've never been bettered - even by other Call of Dutys.

I'm now strangely curious about the sequel, Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Any recommendations from GwJers?

I dredged up Saints Row 3 and 4. They were on sale for 2-3 dollars and I needed some mindless fun and goofiness. Got that in spades for sure.

I’ve been hitting up Pokémon Black 2. It is exactly what I want lately. Little RPG and no angst to be found.

Warcraft III. I've been reading through John Staats' The WoW Diary in preparation for the release of WoW Classic, and I thought I'd dig into the lore a bit, since I largely ignored it the first time around.

Apologies if I've already said this, but I'm nearly done with Bioshock Infinite. I petered out halfway through on my original playthrough on 360. Enjoying it a lot more second time around with M&K, even if the story still doesn't make a lick of sense.

Jonman wrote:

Apologies if I've already said this, but I'm nearly done with Bioshock Infinite. I petered out halfway through on my original playthrough on 360. Enjoying it a lot more second time around with M&K, even if the story still doesn't make a lick of sense.

It was always atmosphere selling shady plot points, but it was really good atmosphere, so it’s easy to overlook the nonsense.

bobbywatson wrote:

I was trying to think of a game that replicates the formula to a certain point, a "spiritual successor" if you will, but I could not think of any. The new TR games don't really feel the same. I like them (although I have yet to play Shadow), but they are just not the same thing, they don't require the same degree of careful planning of movement. The closest thing I can think of were the Tomb sections in Assassin's Creed II (which I played earlier this year).

Yeah, there was always a unique pleasure in entering a room and figuring out how to platform somewhere as part of the puzzle, because you knew she could climb across or shimmy across nearly every surface. As opposed to nowadays where there is an Uncharted style of doing it where not only is the path telegraphed for you, but there's actually a limitation to where you are even allowed to platform. Sometimes I would complete an area in an early Tomb Raider game and not even be certain that's what the developers intended. And yes, some of the challenge rooms in the earlier AC games gave me that same vibe.

You might enjoy Shadow of the Tomb Raider more than the other 2 when you get to it. Not only are there way more of those tombs, but the Exploration, Combat and Puzzles all have their own difficulty settings (something I haven't seen since the Silent Hill games), so you can play them without hints or the indicators of where to climb.

BlackSheep wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Apologies if I've already said this, but I'm nearly done with Bioshock Infinite. I petered out halfway through on my original playthrough on 360. Enjoying it a lot more second time around with M&K, even if the story still doesn't make a lick of sense.

It was always atmosphere selling shady plot points, but it was really good atmosphere, so it’s easy to overlook the nonsense.

You're not wrong.

I'm honestly kind of surprised I'm enjoying it as much as I am. Looking at it clearly, it's 40% highly competent shooter, 50% walking simulator, and 10% corpse-rummager.

Columbia is pretty and all, but it's a fly in amber - but there's no life to it. The entire game thrives on a kind of magical realism that thumbs it's nose at reality entirely (which given the plot turns, is somewhat meta), not just the floating city that's justified by a throwaway use of the word "quantum", but Elizabeth's Neo-like ability to dodge bullets while simultaneously continuing the corpse-rummaging, and Booker's entire lack of surprise at the batsh*t situation he finds himself in (which again, the plot kind of gives an out for).

Jonman wrote:

50% walking simulator,

BioShock: Infinite really shines if you think of Elizabeth as the main character, and Booker as her sidekick.

I've been itching to get back into Shadowrun(2007). Lack of player base has really deterred that though, thank goodness for bot matches.

I've just returned to Final Fantasy 14 - I tried it previously but it was a bit too flat for me

I was lured into returning by the new expansion. Forgot I have about 150 hours until I can play the darn thing but I'm enjoying it much more this time.

As for old games (not one I'm returning to), I'm playing the Last of Us for the first time whenever I can get near the PC (not often)

Dragon Quest V because of Dragon Quest XI's release on Switch in September. I bought but didn't play DQV on Nintendo DS in 2009 when we finally got it in North America 17 years after it should have. When I decided to play a week or two ago, I dug up my DS and fired up the game, then compared the visuals to my iPhone, for which I also had got DQV at some time during some sale. Not surprisingly, a new iPhone screen is way better than a 12-year-old NDS display, so despite that I hate virtual joysticks, I've been loving playing it on my phone. It is often people's favorite Dragon Quest and I'm about 2/3 through and definitely understand why--Pokémon was inspired by it, for one thing, but also the story is very good. The music is surprisingly good, too, with the ability to stir emotions at a level I didn’t expect from a SNES-era title. You can check out the symphonic suite on YT.

Once I'm done with DQ V, I'll go back through Dragon Quest III which I haven't played since its original U.S. NES release in 1992. DQ III is the first great game in the series. Apparently the phone version is quite good but still leaves out a few things from the Japan-only SNES remake.

If I still have time before DQ XI drops, I'll follow up having enjoyed the Switch demo for Dragon Quest Builders by starting that.

Don't know if it counts, but I have been playing through the original Bards Tale trilogy (Remakes) on my surface tablet. Lots of childhood memories around playing through these games on my c64 and having to keep the code wheel handy. I have tried to get into the new one, but I just haven't been able to get into it. Going to try again when the big update drops at the end of August.

Mindcloud wrote:

Don't know if it counts, but I have been playing through the original Bards Tale trilogy (Remakes) on my surface tablet. Lots of childhood memories around playing through these games on my c64 and having to keep the code wheel handy. I have tried to get into the new one, but I just haven't been able to get into it. Going to try again when the big update drops at the end of August.

I’m pretty sure that counts

I replayed two of the old D&D gold box games that had been remastered by GoG and the workaround for the piracy protections was looking it up in their online book; however I managed to find the original books and made all of that much easier. They were a lot shorter than I rememeber for sure. I guess I never realized how long those load times used to be.

Does anyone use a handheld emulation device they would recommend?