Musings on the games on my new system

vsp · 07-29-2001, 09:45 PM

Well, I've had my Athlon 1300 for about a week now, and as most of you could have predicted, it's been getting quite a gaming workout. (Having clunked along with a P-133 for the last six years, which was a P-75 until a year ago, I've been a bit out of touch with PC gaming.)

Loaded so far:

* MAME. (Of course.) If you've heard of it, you probably have it already; if you haven't, and you've dropped a quarter into ANY arcade game in your life, go to www.mame.net (then to www.mame.dk for the ROMs) and start downloading.

The only catch is that I stopped collecting & burning ROMs at my previous job around .36 beta 16, so I have about a thousand ROM sets of varying ages to download or update to have a complete set. That's only, oh, a gig or two of 56k downloading time...

* Visual Pinball and VPinMAME. Now THIS is the bee's knees. Take a rather nifty pinball-table-editor program, add on the ability to incorporate scanned playfields and parts of real machines, then add in VPinMAME to allow these tables to use the real tables' rulesets, sounds and functions. Surprisingly realistic, and that's from someone who has a FunHouse pinball six feet from where he's typing this.

* A handful of other emulators for console game systems (Magic Engine (registered) for the TurboGrafx, NESticle for the Nintendo, ZSNES for the Super Nintendo, Genecyst for the Sega Genesis, Stella & PCAE for the Atari 2600). You know the drill.

* American McGee's Alice. The wife is actually playing this more than I am right now, but I am finding it entertaining. Alice is back in Wonderland, at least in her own warped mind; in reality, she's institutionalized and duelling the Red Queen and her minions for any hope of maintaining her sanity. End result -> think Quake 3 with VERY snazzy graphics and a great concept for a theme.

* Soldier of Fortune. This came bundled with my video card. The novelty factor comes mainly from the game's hit engine, which has 26 different "hit zones" on each enemy that can take damage or be blown to smithereens (depending on what weapon's just hit it.) When the FIRST attack I made in the game blew a skinhead thug's right arm six feet from the rest of his body, I knew I was in for quality entertainment. Decent level design, too, for when the blood fetish wears off.

* Thief: The Dark Project. Then we have the anti-Quake. This is one I'd been promising myself for a while, and I sense I'm going to be waaaaaaaaaaay too addicted to it (I got its sequel as well, but I want to beat the original before I install the second). A very intense simulation of medieval breaking-and-entering, with a witty protagonist with some nifty toys (like Water Arrows for putting out hallway torches to provide some darkness for hiding). Not for the impatient or the instant-gratification Quake crowd, but it's in my CD-drive now.

* The Sims. Found it for $19.95 preowned at EB Gameworld and grabbed it to see what all the fuss was about. I toyed around with a couple of basic creations for an hour or so, and probably will go back to it some night this week, but I have a feeling I'll have the same problem with this that I had with the Creatures series. I marvel at the complexity of the game engine, and the number of things the characters can do, but simulating living creatures and their thought patterns is so difficult that even the best simulations end up feeling simplistic after a while.

On my to-do list: Black & White (for when I find myself with, oh, a spare month or two to really get into it), Serious Sam (state-of-the-art bang-bang), and any suggestions from the peanut gallery. Like...

jeff. That would be your cue.

mbpark · 07-29-2001, 10:20 PM

Well VSP,

I'm running Cloanto's Amiga Forever here, and it kicks major butt. I can get all the old Amiga games as .ADF files, and most of them run VERY well. If you like old Psygnosis games such as Agony, get this. It takes above a P3-700 to run anyways.

Next, I'd recommend some Sims expansion packs. Diablo 2 as well, because that's a good game.

Meanwhile, I've got b&w here. Very involving game!

MBP

Undertoad · 07-29-2001, 11:32 PM

I couldn't get into B&W. Just another opinion. Too much work. If I'm God, I don't want to have to struggle with a user interface.

My current set is Unreal Tourney Age of Empires+The Conquerors, and a few league-type career-based sports simulators. Sometimes I will do a round of NHL2001, SimCity3K, or Rollercoaster Tycoon.

AoE is easily the best software title ever released under a Microsoft banner.

The league things are a very specific niche. I'm wierd that way. Some folks get into the fantasy leagues, I get into the fantasy fantasy leagues - where I'm the GM/owner.

mbpark · 07-30-2001, 12:04 AM

Tony,

I'll have to agree with you. The UI is quite nasty. I am not a big fan of it, and it was hard to use even with my Intellimouse.

However, AoE is the big game at work these days, especially with the scenario packs and AoE II.

Microsoft does put out some good games. Then again, considering who they have purchased, we would expect so.

The other big ones all are FPS shooters. Nice games, however I didn't buy the home system to do FPS. I have a GeForce2 MX with 32MB RAM, which is more than plenty for playing videogames, and I haven't found many yet that flat out will not work.

I wonder what MS will come up with next for strategy games. AoE is just massively huge with everyone I know!

jaguar · 07-30-2001, 03:49 AM

Once u get the hang of the UI in B&W its so fun to work with i swear. THe game i foudn got boring though - beautiful while it lastesd though.

shoot em up:

ONI: THE BEST 3D FIGHTER FOR YEARS - instead of the usual point and shoot you end up beating the shit out of most of the guys with a wide range of martial arts moves. - is so mcuh more fun to jsut on a guy from above, flip him over your head to knock out another guy before triple-punching the third one its SO MUCH FUN. BLoodless and the best game i've played in AGES. Interface is suprisingly easy to use too. its based ina futureistic anime-like world, you play this cop-chick (its 3rd person perspective) finding out about yourself and past while you battle the evil syndicate (storyline its actaully rather involving) 11/10

Halflife: CounterStrike and Day of Defeat - while the game itself is old these two mods are some of the best games around, the msot popular games on the net STILL. Halflife was game of the year in 1998. Think about that. The single player game is fun too, and very absorbing.
www.counterstrike.net
www.dayofdefatmod.com

For all out fragging fun play Quake 3, the gameplay is solid and the visuals at he best will dazzle you!!

RTS: (real time stratergy)

RedAlert2: Sequal to the best one in ages, alot of fun to play though - the mission kick ass.

Look out for Warcraft 3 - that gonna kickass

RPG (Role Playing Game)
Fallout 2:
Fan-fucking-tastic RTS based in a futuresits post-nuclear war California, this game is the only RPG iv'e truely loved.

Deus Ex.:
Hard to knwo whether thsi is FPS or RPG, its a bit of both and its damn fun either way. I won't give away any of the twisting detailed plot but i can tell you - its good. Its based in the future (as per usual) in one of the msot thoughly designed game-worlds i've ever come accross. Can't wait for Deus Ex 2.

that lot should keep you going.
They are making AoE 3 at the moment mbpark.

serge · 07-30-2001, 06:54 AM

Playing Project IGI atm... nice game.

I've noticed that year after year.. companies seem to hold off releasing any good games during the summer.. and only when the Fall semester starts does the distracting flood being.

Games I'm waiting on:

Europa Universalis 2 - original was great.
Commandos 2
MOO 3 - with everything more or less new in '3' I'm not sure how good it'll be compared to 1 and 2.
Patrician 2
SeaDogs 2 - if they get rid of SD1 bugs.. this game should be awesome.

The other list:

Stronghold
Rails Across America - trains.. enough said.
Trade Empires
ANNO 1503

vsp · 07-30-2001, 09:21 AM

I'm not sure I'm ready to pony up the cash for Sims add-on packs, since I'm not sold on the original yet. (It is quite the audacious concept, I'll acknowledge, but is it really that fun to play with?)

A few more non-FPS games on standby:

* Zangband. For those who don't know their ASCII-based gaming history: First, there was Rogue. All things start with Rogue.

The road forked here; one road added everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink and begat Hack, then NetHack; the other went for a more Tolkienized flavor and begat Moria. And Moria was good. As Moria infused "Fellowship of the Ring" themes into Rogue, Angband infused "Silmarillion" themes, creatures and artifacts into Moria and became an even better game in the process. Zangband takes all of that and adds in random quests, Roger Zelazny's Amber series (note: zero knowledge of Zelazny is required to play, as I've never even seen his books), Lovecraftian horrors, Cyberdemons, a huge wilderness to explore, the mysterious It and Barney the Dinosaur. Among other things.

In short, it's a random-dungeon adventure in tile graphics that's open-source (I contributed a few quests a while back, before the static quests were all removed in the last big release), always different, very balanced and extremely addictive. Big learning curve at first if you're not familiar with the series, but well worth it.

* Ultima IX: Ascension. I haven't installed this one yet, but bought it for my wife who's an Ultima nut. All the reviews circa 1999 said "GREAT concept, pity it's crammed full of bugs and it's made for a system that doesn't exist yet." After two years of patches and technology advances, mine should be that system. Besides, it was cheap.

* Dungeon Keeper. I had this already, but it's nice to play it on a system that doesn't chug. For the uninitiated, think SimDungeon, with you as the disarmingly evil bad guy fending off the heroes. Delightfully warped.

* Hitman (on a friend's system). Great concept piece (you're a cloned assassin sent out on missions involving both stealth and carnage), very clunky interface (just TRY to drag bodies efficiently), hefty system requirements for a good frame rate.

Debating about:

* Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
* Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (for my wife, who loves Resident Evil-type stalk-and-splatter-undead-and-solve puzzles gameplay).
* Figuring out why Duke Nukem 3D won't acknowledge my @#(*@%&! SB Live card AT ALL.
* No One Lives Forever looks like too much fun to pass up.

Aw, who am I kidding? I'll be playing Thief until 2003.

jaguar · 07-31-2001, 12:15 AM

HItman.......*sighs* nice idea, nicelevels, nice negine (even if it does require chunky requirements) pretty damn average game.
The interface is incredibly clunky.
Movemment controls are incredibly chunky (cna't even duck or jump!!)
Buggy, and while they went for realisim on stuff stuf - they didn't for other, it dosen't work. (you can't carry an AK-47 except in your hands - forcing you to drop other stuff like sniper rifles(which for some stupid reason you cna only used with the scope >=() but you can carry over 30 uzis at ONCE????
hmmm...

TheDollyLlama · 07-31-2001, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jaguar

RPG (Role Playing Game)
Fallout 2:
Fan-fucking-tastic RTS based in a futuresits post-nuclear war California, this game is the only RPG iv'e truely loved.

Absolutely. Fallout and Fallout 2 are some of favorite games ever. I'm still bummed that I never got to finish Fallout 1 because of that weird bug that would spawn multiple (like 50) copies of yourself on the map. Course, I kicked much righteous butt in combat, but being turn-based, each turn took like 15 minutes. Grr.

And along the lines of kicking righteous butt, don't forget Baldur's Gate! BG, and BG2 are faithful to the D&D rules, fun as hell, beautiful (try BG2 at 1280x1024 on a 20" monitor with the menus hidden).

Plus, at your next LAN party, hook everyone up for a multiplayer game. With everyone in the same room, it's a rockin good time.

alphageek31337 · 08-01-2001, 12:22 AM

The real question is here, am I the only person alive who still plays Omega? I've got that, Mechwarrior2, Netstorm(which I actually just uninstalled because there are no servers for it anymore), and various little downloaded games. I'm currently looking for a game called Evolution by Discovery Multimedia and Interplay...if anyone knows anything about where I can find it, you'd be my personal hero. Geez, I really need to hit the software store.

07-29-2001, 09:45 PM	#1
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	Musings on the games on my new system Well, I've had my Athlon 1300 for about a week now, and as most of you could have predicted, it's been getting quite a gaming workout. (Having clunked along with a P-133 for the last six years, which was a P-75 until a year ago, I've been a bit out of touch with PC gaming.) Loaded so far: * MAME. (Of course.) If you've heard of it, you probably have it already; if you haven't, and you've dropped a quarter into ANY arcade game in your life, go to www.mame.net (then to www.mame.dk for the ROMs) and start downloading. The only catch is that I stopped collecting & burning ROMs at my previous job around .36 beta 16, so I have about a thousand ROM sets of varying ages to download or update to have a complete set. That's only, oh, a gig or two of 56k downloading time... * Visual Pinball and VPinMAME. Now THIS is the bee's knees. Take a rather nifty pinball-table-editor program, add on the ability to incorporate scanned playfields and parts of real machines, then add in VPinMAME to allow these tables to use the real tables' rulesets, sounds and functions. Surprisingly realistic, and that's from someone who has a FunHouse pinball six feet from where he's typing this. * A handful of other emulators for console game systems (Magic Engine (registered) for the TurboGrafx, NESticle for the Nintendo, ZSNES for the Super Nintendo, Genecyst for the Sega Genesis, Stella & PCAE for the Atari 2600). You know the drill. * American McGee's Alice. The wife is actually playing this more than I am right now, but I am finding it entertaining. Alice is back in Wonderland, at least in her own warped mind; in reality, she's institutionalized and duelling the Red Queen and her minions for any hope of maintaining her sanity. End result -> think Quake 3 with VERY snazzy graphics and a great concept for a theme. * Soldier of Fortune. This came bundled with my video card. The novelty factor comes mainly from the game's hit engine, which has 26 different "hit zones" on each enemy that can take damage or be blown to smithereens (depending on what weapon's just hit it.) When the FIRST attack I made in the game blew a skinhead thug's right arm six feet from the rest of his body, I knew I was in for quality entertainment. Decent level design, too, for when the blood fetish wears off. * Thief: The Dark Project. Then we have the anti-Quake. This is one I'd been promising myself for a while, and I sense I'm going to be waaaaaaaaaaay too addicted to it (I got its sequel as well, but I want to beat the original before I install the second). A very intense simulation of medieval breaking-and-entering, with a witty protagonist with some nifty toys (like Water Arrows for putting out hallway torches to provide some darkness for hiding). Not for the impatient or the instant-gratification Quake crowd, but it's in my CD-drive now. * The Sims. Found it for $19.95 preowned at EB Gameworld and grabbed it to see what all the fuss was about. I toyed around with a couple of basic creations for an hour or so, and probably will go back to it some night this week, but I have a feeling I'll have the same problem with this that I had with the Creatures series. I marvel at the complexity of the game engine, and the number of things the characters can do, but simulating living creatures and their thought patterns is so difficult that even the best simulations end up feeling simplistic after a while. On my to-do list: Black & White (for when I find myself with, oh, a spare month or two to really get into it), Serious Sam (state-of-the-art bang-bang), and any suggestions from the peanut gallery. Like... jeff. That would be your cue.

07-29-2001, 10:20 PM	#2
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	PC Gaming Well VSP, I'm running Cloanto's Amiga Forever here, and it kicks major butt. I can get all the old Amiga games as .ADF files, and most of them run VERY well. If you like old Psygnosis games such as Agony, get this. It takes above a P3-700 to run anyways. Next, I'd recommend some Sims expansion packs. Diablo 2 as well, because that's a good game. Meanwhile, I've got b&w here. Very involving game! MBP

07-30-2001, 12:04 AM	#4
mbpark Lecturer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Carmel, Indiana Posts: 761	Black and White - and AoE Tony, I'll have to agree with you. The UI is quite nasty. I am not a big fan of it, and it was hard to use even with my Intellimouse. However, AoE is the big game at work these days, especially with the scenario packs and AoE II. Microsoft does put out some good games. Then again, considering who they have purchased, we would expect so. The other big ones all are FPS shooters. Nice games, however I didn't buy the home system to do FPS. I have a GeForce2 MX with 32MB RAM, which is more than plenty for playing videogames, and I haven't found many yet that flat out will not work. I wonder what MS will come up with next for strategy games. AoE is just massively huge with everyone I know!

07-30-2001, 03:49 AM	#5
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	Once u get the hang of the UI in B&W its so fun to work with i swear. THe game i foudn got boring though - beautiful while it lastesd though. shoot em up: ONI: THE BEST 3D FIGHTER FOR YEARS - instead of the usual point and shoot you end up beating the shit out of most of the guys with a wide range of martial arts moves. - is so mcuh more fun to jsut on a guy from above, flip him over your head to knock out another guy before triple-punching the third one its SO MUCH FUN. BLoodless and the best game i've played in AGES. Interface is suprisingly easy to use too. its based ina futureistic anime-like world, you play this cop-chick (its 3rd person perspective) finding out about yourself and past while you battle the evil syndicate (storyline its actaully rather involving) 11/10 Halflife: CounterStrike and Day of Defeat - while the game itself is old these two mods are some of the best games around, the msot popular games on the net STILL. Halflife was game of the year in 1998. Think about that. The single player game is fun too, and very absorbing. www.counterstrike.net www.dayofdefatmod.com For all out fragging fun play Quake 3, the gameplay is solid and the visuals at he best will dazzle you!! RTS: (real time stratergy) RedAlert2: Sequal to the best one in ages, alot of fun to play though - the mission kick ass. Look out for Warcraft 3 - that gonna kickass RPG (Role Playing Game) Fallout 2: Fan-fucking-tastic RTS based in a futuresits post-nuclear war California, this game is the only RPG iv'e truely loved. Deus Ex.: Hard to knwo whether thsi is FPS or RPG, its a bit of both and its damn fun either way. I won't give away any of the twisting detailed plot but i can tell you - its good. Its based in the future (as per usual) in one of the msot thoughly designed game-worlds i've ever come accross. Can't wait for Deus Ex 2. that lot should keep you going. They are making AoE 3 at the moment mbpark. __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

07-30-2001, 06:54 AM	#6
serge * Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 85	Playing Project IGI atm... nice game. I've noticed that year after year.. companies seem to hold off releasing any good games during the summer.. and only when the Fall semester starts does the distracting flood being. Games I'm waiting on: Europa Universalis 2 - original was great. Commandos 2 MOO 3 - with everything more or less new in '3' I'm not sure how good it'll be compared to 1 and 2. Patrician 2 SeaDogs 2 - if they get rid of SD1 bugs.. this game should be awesome. The other list: Stronghold Rails Across America - trains.. enough said. Trade Empires ANNO 1503 __________________ Patriotism is for Losers

07-29-2001, 11:32 PM	#3
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	I couldn't get into B&W. Just another opinion. Too much work. If I'm God, I don't want to have to struggle with a user interface. My current set is Unreal Tourney Age of Empires+The Conquerors, and a few league-type career-based sports simulators. Sometimes I will do a round of NHL2001, SimCity3K, or Rollercoaster Tycoon. AoE is easily the best software title ever released under a Microsoft banner. The league things are a very specific niche. I'm wierd that way. Some folks get into the fantasy leagues, I get into the fantasy fantasy leagues - where I'm the GM/owner.

07-30-2001, 09:21 AM	#7
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	I'm not sure I'm ready to pony up the cash for Sims add-on packs, since I'm not sold on the original yet. (It is quite the audacious concept, I'll acknowledge, but is it really that fun to play with?) A few more non-FPS games on standby: * Zangband. For those who don't know their ASCII-based gaming history: First, there was Rogue. All things start with Rogue. The road forked here; one road added everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink and begat Hack, then NetHack; the other went for a more Tolkienized flavor and begat Moria. And Moria was good. As Moria infused "Fellowship of the Ring" themes into Rogue, Angband infused "Silmarillion" themes, creatures and artifacts into Moria and became an even better game in the process. Zangband takes all of that and adds in random quests, Roger Zelazny's Amber series (note: zero knowledge of Zelazny is required to play, as I've never even seen his books), Lovecraftian horrors, Cyberdemons, a huge wilderness to explore, the mysterious It and Barney the Dinosaur. Among other things. In short, it's a random-dungeon adventure in tile graphics that's open-source (I contributed a few quests a while back, before the static quests were all removed in the last big release), always different, very balanced and extremely addictive. Big learning curve at first if you're not familiar with the series, but well worth it. * Ultima IX: Ascension. I haven't installed this one yet, but bought it for my wife who's an Ultima nut. All the reviews circa 1999 said "GREAT concept, pity it's crammed full of bugs and it's made for a system that doesn't exist yet." After two years of patches and technology advances, mine should be that system. Besides, it was cheap. * Dungeon Keeper. I had this already, but it's nice to play it on a system that doesn't chug. For the uninitiated, think SimDungeon, with you as the disarmingly evil bad guy fending off the heroes. Delightfully warped. * Hitman (on a friend's system). Great concept piece (you're a cloned assassin sent out on missions involving both stealth and carnage), very clunky interface (just TRY to drag bodies efficiently), hefty system requirements for a good frame rate. Debating about: * Giants: Citizen Kabuto. * Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (for my wife, who loves Resident Evil-type stalk-and-splatter-undead-and-solve puzzles gameplay). * Figuring out why Duke Nukem 3D won't acknowledge my @#(@%&! SB Live card AT ALL. No One Lives Forever looks like too much fun to pass up. Aw, who am I kidding? I'll be playing Thief until 2003.

07-31-2001, 12:15 AM	#8
jaguar whig Join Date: Apr 2001 Posts: 5,075	HItman.......sighs nice idea, nicelevels, nice negine (even if it does require chunky requirements) pretty damn average game. The interface is incredibly clunky. Movemment controls are incredibly chunky (cna't even duck or jump!!) Buggy, and while they went for realisim on stuff stuf - they didn't for other, it dosen't work. (you can't carry an AK-47 except in your hands - forcing you to drop other stuff like sniper rifles(which for some stupid reason you cna only used with the scope >=() but you can carry over 30 uzis at ONCE???? hmmm... __________________ Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. - Twain

08-01-2001, 12:22 AM	#10
alphageek31337 Enemy Combatant/Evildoer Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 263	The real question is here, am I the only person alive who still plays Omega? I've got that, Mechwarrior2, Netstorm(which I actually just uninstalled because there are no servers for it anymore), and various little downloaded games. I'm currently looking for a game called Evolution by Discovery Multimedia and Interplay...if anyone knows anything about where I can find it, you'd be my personal hero. Geez, I really need to hit the software store. __________________ The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ---Friedrich Nietzsche

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