Single-player Video Games Thread

Regarding your new definition:

It’s worse than before because you’re defining an object from the point of view of its creation rather than from the point of view of its use. This is a sloppy abstraction work – you need to learn how to abstract properly. In order to make my post more effective, it would be desirable to explain the concept of abstraction and why we can only ever deal with abstractions (i.e. that nothing in reality is concrete in the strict sense of the word) but that’s a lot of work for now, so I’ll skip it.

When defining an object you want to define it from the point of view of its use, meaning that, you want to ignore all information that is irrelevant to its use (i.e. information that could take any form and would have absolutely no impact on how we use it.) The same object can be created and implemented in a billion of different ways. For example, a Mona Lisa would remain Mona Lisa no matter whether it was created by pure chance, by a man who wanted to have a photo of his girlfriend, a man who wanted to earn money, a man who wanted his paintings to be used as an educational tool, or by a brute-force algorithm that outputs every possible variation of a 1920x1080 bitmap. It also does not matter whether it was implemented as a painting on a canvas, a painting on a wall, a bitmap on a computer monitor, as a pill that makes you hallucinate standing in front of Mona Lisa, or as a chip that you insert inside your brain to process various digital data. The only thing that matters is THE WAY IT IS USED AND FOR WHAT PURPOSES IT IS USED. And as I’ve explained elsewhere, a work of art is a simulated world the purpose of which is to relax. Nothing else.

So we’re back to your earlier definition which is “art is what is aesthetically appealing” which literally includes everything that is aesthetically appealing, including girls right?

Anyone know of other games like skyrim?

Apparently the witcher 3 [or is it 4] is going to have a larger open world than skyrim.

TES IV Oblivion obviously. But IMO, Oblivion is like a shitty version of Skyrim.

The other 2 I can think of are Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and Gothic 3. Kingdoms of Amalur is like Dragon Age with less interesting story but a better combat system and Gothic 3 features a large open world that you are free to explore. I enjoyed both games so I can provide further information and help you decide if you specify what exactly you’re looking for.

Magnus Anderson,

I’ll grant you that some art more than other art helps you to relax. But that’s not all that art is about. Art inspires and opens our minds to other worlds.
It’s also healing which goes beyond the bounds of simply relaxing.
It gives a sense of great qualia and allows the spirit to [size=200]SOAR.[/size] Have you ever seen a work of art, Magnus Anderson, that gave you such a rush and made your spirit SOAR, or the moment you looked at it, your spine tingled? :evilfun:
Art can be contemplative. It can put you in a place which is out of time and space - there are no boundaries - there is only BEING. Or it can make you want to go to that place and if your imagination has wings, it will fly you there.

Atheris

I have played TES since morrowind came out, and yea oblivion doesn’t do it after playing skyrim. I suppose I am looking for more skyrim’s.

Ps, have made an eye mod [photo-cloned eyes] for skyrim…

nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/51998/?

Some funky/punky hair colours

nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56207/?

Yeah, I get what you mean, Oblivion’s entire world seems generic and bland compared to Skyrim.

Gothic 3 is the closest thing to Skyrim after Oblivion. Thing is, it’s also very different from the first 2 games and if you’re like me, you won’t be able to play the 3rd without playing the first 2 and the first 2 aren’t that similar to Skyrim, although they’re still great games. Admittedly, those are my favorite RPGs so I’m probably a little biased :smiley: . Still, I’ll at least try to be objective in my short summations.

The simpler choice would be to just go with Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, I doubt you can go wrong with it honestly. The main story is meh but the sidequests can be sort-of-interesting, nothing special. What the game truly is about is incredibly good-looking and dynamic combat and a sweet armor and weapons forging and enchanting system. Aside from combat but directly related to it, the best part of the game is that you can, at any time and a little cost in gold, change your character class. Yes, you heard me. You can play until f.e. level 10 as a warrior and then go to a fate-weaver (IIRC) and they’ll make you a blank slate again and you’ll be allowed to reassign all your points however you want them to and become a mage or an assassin. And yeah, another great thing, there are also mixed classes between the 3 main ones so you have warrior assassins, warrior mages and mage assassins. I wish more games implemented that, choosing a class is the hardest thing in every game for me and this way I got to try all classes in one playthrough for a tiny fee. Also what keeps the game from being monotonous is that every region is visually different and has some region specific enemies. All in all definitely a game I consider worth playing.

Now for Gothic 3. First of all, it’s more like Skyrim in the sense that you’re free to explore the world in whichever order you want without having to follow the main quest. The world in KoAR is a little generic, in Gothic 3 every inch of its beautiful detailed world is handcrafted. Second, even though it came out in the Oblivion era its graphics are on par with vanilla Skyrim, that coupled with a previously mentioned handcrafted world and a beautiful soundtrack makes the atmosphere and therefore the gaming experience extremely enjoyable. But honestly, I can’t see anybody truly enjoying the 3rd game without knowing the story behind it from the previous 2 games.

If you look for the reviews of the game, you’ll notice 2 things mentioned to ruin the game and the reason it scored mediocre: 1) bugs, 2) combat. I’ll be honest - vanilla Gothic 3 is out of question. You’ll only end up frustrating yourself cause of crashes and probably be unable to pass the game due to bugs. HOWEVER, the game has a fanbase which worked for years to fix the game, and they did an EXCELLENT job at it with an almost 2 gig large patch that fixes everything AND improves certain things without changing the original game.

What wasn’t fixed though was the kind of lame melee combat, but I got used to it. The game is otherwise too immersive and interesting to be thrown away because of mediocre melee combat. Ranged combat is very decent though.

In conclusion, I suggest you to look at videos on YouTube and decide for yourself. I don’t think you can go wrong either way.

Thanks mate, that’s very interesting and i think i would definitely try the game out and get the patch. I prefer ranged fighting anyhow.

No problem, have fun!

And if you have any questions about the game, you can ask me, I may still remember a thing or two :smiley:

Playing Prototype 1. The main protagonist here is the guy I have as my avatar, this awesome sexy motherfucker.

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Come to think of it, this game is better than Prototype 2 actually. More interesting story and main character, more powers and faster movement. If combat wasn’t so freaking retarded sometimes it would be perfect. And by retarded I mean that you’re attacked by shitloads of army and infected and that Strike Teams are called every couple of seconds. Whatever, the game still rules, too lazy to write more ATM.

Dragon Age Inquisition is incredibly similar to Skyrim in a lot of good ways: the scale and detail of its open world, the quest system, hours of lore to read and listen to, dragon fights, weapon/armor/equipment crafting, ability trees, etc. Basically, being new to the Dragon Age series, I am surprised how much DAI has followed the direction of Skyrim without becoming a clone and by shining brighter than the Elder Scrolls series in a few areas of its own. I have been noticing common elements between DAI, The Witcher, and even Dark Souls that all seem to be working fairly well in DAI. So far, I’ll make this one simple judgment: Skyrim set a stronger atmosphere - though DAI’s is pretty good - while DAI’s combat mechanics make it the more compelling strategy game. Definitely check it out if you like Skyrim or any of the other games I mentioned.

youtube.com/watch?v=mfgY9By_zt4

Finished Prototype 1, enjoyed it. Recommend to anybody who likes gore and is seeking to vent some anger as a superhumanly powerful character :evilfun:

Speaking of which, I feel like playing a similar game again so I picked up Saints Row IV. So far I’m liking it, they more or less copied Prototype when it comes to how the character moves (sprinting, gliding, wall running), but there’s also a lot of new stuff they introduced, like blasts, telekinesis, frost and fire, though of course there are some stuff you can do in Prototype that you can’t do in Saints Row too, such as morphing your arms into various melee weapons, have multiple types of seeing at your disposal (thermal, infected vision), disguise yourself as others etc.

I won’t spoil the story, I’ll just say it’s lulzy as fuck, if you’re looking for a serious story don’t play this game, it’s one of those games you just play for lulz. The best thing about this game is that you can play it however you want to, it offers more options than many other games blended together would. You can customize your looks and even gender and race whenever you want for a small price, you can use weapons to take down enemies, from melee weapons to shotguns to assault rifles and even alien weaponry or you can also choose to take down enemies in melee combat. You can move around by sprinting or you can upgrade cars and drive around, both are about equally fast. You can also buy clothes and make your character look however you want. The sheer amount of customization and freedom make this game very enjoyable as you can basically play it as a super hero game, a fps, a racing game, whatever you choose. Humor isn’t terrible either, overall, I’m really enjoying it though I only played it for a few hours, but I assume it’ll only get better and not worse.

fuse, my PC couldn’t handle DAI, and even if it could that game requires me to dedicate much more time to it than I am capable. I loved the original DA Origins, it’s my top 5 RPGs ever. If you have the time and the gaming rig to play DAI you should also check out Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, especially if you’re a LOTR fan. From what I’ve seen, it’s the first well made LOTR RPG.

My condolences :stuck_out_tongue:
The game is really fun and it looks awesome on PC. If you find the time, it’s also out on every major console fyi.

I checked out Shadow of Mordor and it does look well-made, but I didn’t care for the premise. You just get dropped into Mordor, which is a pretty bland place, and you hunt orcs.

Tip: if you’ve never played the Witcher series and you have an Xbox 360 and Live subscription, you might be interested to know that they’re giving away The Witcher 2 as a free download in the latter half of January to anyone who wants it (vg247.com/2014/12/22/the-wit … with-gold/). The Witcher 2 is an awesome singleplayer rpg and it’s not nearly as bad a time sink as DAI or Skyrim.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__hStdzoYVk[/youtube]

I really appreciate the bard tavern music thing that all these medieval fantasy games are paying homage to.

I recently finished The Punisher. It’s quite a short game, but fun. It’s also 10 years old, but graphics and animations are still decent. Recommended to anybody familiar with the comics/movies. Essentially, he’s a marvel equivalent of Batman in DC, except that he isn’t a pussy-whipped idiot who refuses to kill his foes and consequently gets innocent people killed like batman, no, no. The Punisher is an absolute badass and relishes in punishing criminals, usually killing them by any means necessary, without mercy or pity. The torture/interrogation scenes in the game are quite decently done, the atmosphere and story are alright and the environment in which you fight in changes constantly, so no monotony on that part. Gameplay itself is a little repetitive, but since the game is short it doesn’t matter much. Main menu is also interestingly done. I’d give it 7/10. Recommended to anybody feeling like a righteous vigilante ready to inflict some pain on the wrongdoers. Also to anybody into sick stuff like throwing people onto elephant tusks and interrogating them by threatening to blow their head off, choking them, feeding them to the piranhas, suffocating them by pushing their head in the toilet et cetera :evilfun:

fuse, I’ve been interested in The Witcher ever since I first saw the game. Thanks for the tip, but I haven’t even played the first part yet, so the second one was out of question. I’ll play both during summer, definitely, read some reviews and I’m attracted to the game even more.

No problem. I played The Witcher 2 without playing the first one and I thought it was great. The sequel is fairly self-contained and I didn’t really feel like I was missing any context.

I’m excited about W3 coming out in April. The question is do I want the ultimate PC gaming experience bad enough to buy a newer top-tier video card?

The single gtx 660ti I have has lasted me a solid 2+ years – it even let me play Dragon Age: Inquisition on near max settings with smooth frames – but as anticipated The Witcher 3’s sys reqs are intense.

I’m sort of a perfectionist, so to play the 2nd part before the 1st would be like blasphemy :smiley:

I think it’s worth it, if you have the money. I consider my rig to be mediocre, with 4 gig RAM, Radeon 6670 and 3.6 GHz processor. I guess it was mediocre like 2 years ago, cause now it can’t even run some of the newer games. I’m annoyed by how I’m supposed to buy an above-average PC every 2 years just to be able to even run newer games, it’s BS. I bet they can, right now, make 16 core processors with 8gb graphic cards, they just don’t do it for the same reason diamond mongrels withheld large amounts of diamonds and pretended its quantity is low - to keep the prices high.

Are you playing any games at the moment?

This is my list of games to play when I have enough time, in that order: [tab]South Park The Stick of Truth
Gothic 1, 2 NotR and 3 (re-play)
The Witcher 1 and 2
State of Decay
Bioshock Infinite[/tab]

LOTR was there somewhere too but I ruled it out due to sick requirements. I don’t mind playing games on second best resolution (1600x900) and low settings, but one thing I can’t stand is inconsistent frame rate (lagging).

Not playing anything right now. I really want to start a new minecraft server and play with some people, build a town, explore, fight stuff, each other, etc. Good times. I’m not really looking to get into any more serious games for a few months. Bloodborne and Witcher 3 are on my radar, but I’ll be short on time and money for a little while.

My PC specs are good enough to last another 2 years (so that’ll be at least a 4+ yr lifespan), it’s just that my graphics card won’t be able to breeze through all the newest games. I should be able to play 'em, but I’ll have to start tuning things down a lot. That and a larger SSD are the only things I would really want for awhile. I’ll just wait and nab them after prices come down and during some fire sale.

Try building your next PC. Best purchase I ever made. You’ll easily save hundreds of dollars and appreciate it a lot more. All these fancy gaming laptops and ultrabooks going for ~$2000 dollars look cool, but anyone can build a desktop for $1000 that has better specs. Just takes a little bit of research on the market and timing (sales, price cuts).

Oh yeah, and play Bioshock Infinite. It’s good.

Most newer games look beautiful on low-mid detail configurations too.

I did build my PC, it cost $700 about a year ago. It’s just that I live in a poor country where that is a lot of money to most people. TBH though, if I get 4 more gigs of RAM and a new video card, I should be fine too, but decent video cards are the most expensive. I’m just waiting for a really good one to get a little older and drop in price.

Haha, $700 IS a lot of money, and $1000 even moreso (I ain’t rich), I was just making the point that you don’t have to buy a new computer every couple of years if you plan your desktop build well. The graphics card is the part that is becoming obsolete the quickest right now if you’re into graphically intense gaming, but even a GPU can last you a good number of years if you get a good one and take care of your PC. It’s basically just a heavy initial investment.

Right now, I personally would aim for the ~$1000 price point for a new gaming etc. PC, even if I had to save for longer. It’s a price point where you can keep up with all the new high spec games on their highest settings. And you’ll have a productive PC for pretty much anything else you want to do on it professionally for a long time. Of course more expensive builds will be able to run games on quad monitor setups at 4K res with ubersampling and additional post proc, but that’s overkill if you just like to play games at ultra quality.

What country are you from?
I live in the U.S. (surprise!).