Single-player Video Games Thread

COD is garbage. Modern degradation in aesthetics.

Degraded from what?

Dungeon Keeper…so fun to be bad!

Back when FPS games were pleasing to the eye.

WCR4 was pretty great: getting it for the Vita impelled me to get it for the 360, too. I never thought I could be into rally games–i.e., no real-time opponents–, but actually this is better in many ways. In the meantime, however, I got a PS4. The PS4 still won’t have a Gran Turismo for quite some time, and I always liked the Forza series better, anyway; it even tempted me to get an Xbone instead and, later, as well as a PS4… I didn’t give in to the temptation, though.

Project CARS is great in many ways, but still not good enough for me. WRC5 was pretty bad (different developer than 4). DIRT Rally is now the best racing sim in my opinion. And, despite its flaws, I like Assetto Corsa better than Project CARS. Maybe I should do a short review on these games. Anyway, in most genres I mentioned in my previous post, there have not been any great new additions I have played yet–though Fallout 4 and the new Deus Ex are really great (Far Cry Primal seriously lacks guns).

Oops, almost forgot A Link Between Worlds! That may actually be the best top-down Zelda yet in my opinion. I also still want to get Rise of the Tomb Raider (on PS4 or 360) and Arkham Knight, and have preordered The Last Guardian. Far Cry 4 was only slightly less great than 3. Dishonored was great, too. Magrunner is a nice Portal-esque game, but Portal Stories: Mel is much better. Finally, Inside is a worthy sequel to Limbo–which means awesome.

The random game generator in Heroes Of Might & Magic III Complete with it’s selection options make this a long lasting challenge as far as strategy games are concerned. IV on up sucks.

My recommendation was for the original Dungeon Keeper, not the newfangled mobile app.

Since it’s considered a classic fps with rpg elements and forerunner to the Bioshock series, I gave System Shock 2 a spin. It did not disappoint. Great atmosphere and soundtrack, good, basic skill system, and excellent gunplay and mechanics. Tense, fast, survival horror fps in space. What’s not to like?

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

Also, Divinity: Original Sin is just about the perfect isometric rpg. Well realized and doesn’t hold your hand. Has a fantastic soundtrack, too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiR4g0A-83s[/youtube]

Got RotTR, and it’s rotten. I just don’t really enjoy most of it. Too much Raider and too little Tomb: I like my Tomb Raider with as little combat as possible. It’s strange though, because I really liked the 2013 reboot whose sequel it is. Dunno if it’s me or the game. I have the same problem with Arkham Knight: I loved Asylum and City, but soon lost my interest in Knight. I had the same thing with Assassin’s Creed: I loved the first and especially the second game, but after that the series has never been able to get its hooks in me again. With Arkham Knight, the problem may be that the situations now feel contrived; with Assassin’s Creed, it was (among other things) that the first game had few combat mechanics and the second only gradually unfolded the many it had, but from the third game on, you immediately had all of them and I’d forgotten most of them; there was no tutorial. But there seems to be a pattern of me losing interest in third-person 3D action adventure games. I also canceled my order for The Last Guardian, even though I loved Shadow of the Colossus–because I don’t have too many moneys at the moment, and I didn’t want the same experience as with RotTR, for which I paid full price. Also, I still have Fallout 4 DLC, the finale of RotTR, much (most?) of Arkham Knight, and almost all of Dishonored 2 to play. Yes, I got Dishonored 2, including the digital remaster of 1, at a significant Black Friday discount. Anyway, I don’t think The Last Guardian will disappoint me, but it doesn’t hurt to postpone it. Unless I die before I get it. Then my life will have been seriously flawed. But at least I have a cat!

Metroid prime 1 and 2 is the best game ever made.

Its got a perfect blend of combat and puzzles.

I played a tomb raider demo once, wasnt as good as metroid prime, Tomb Raider’s atmosphere reminded me too much of a cheap B movie. James Bond and Indiana Jones were made as a deliberate mockery of B movies, and that is why they have a better atmosphere than actual B movies. The only B movies that are any good are movies with an urban setting.

The second reason the tomb raider franchise isn’t that good is because it doesn’t actually make you feel like a female. In Metroid prime you actually feel like a female. Tomb Raider is rather bland.

I played a top-down version of Tomb Raider but it was rather bland. The intro cutscene wasn’t even animated, just cardboard cutouts saying generic scripts. It somehow got a 4/5 rating but I don’t know why. The maps were bland and procedural looking, and the game had no substance felt like a chore. You could easily exploit AI by finding a ledge and jumping on it, then the enemies could not hurt you.

James Bond goldeneye was a good game but I were to make a remake I would add a trap system, because in the movies there are a lot of traps and not non-stop gun shooting like in the games. The James Bond goldeneye remake for the XBOX 360 was very bad, it was actually worse than the goldeneye remake for the Wii, which was more good than it was bad. The XBOX 360 goldeneye was bad because I played the demo and it had no puzzles, just repetitive call of duty style point A to Point B gameplay.

I agree that those two are some of the very best games ever made, and thereby deserve the hyperbolic/metaphorical title of “best game ever made”. (I never played 3 because I don’t like motion controls.) Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze are by the same developer, by the way. Especially the first of these is also the best game ever made in my opinion.

I like the setting of TR 1, which got a great remake as Tomb Raider Anniversary. That game and Underworld are actually the only old-school Tomb Raiders I really like (by “old-school” I mean “from before the 2013 reboot” here).

Well, Metroid Prime is first-person, maybe that has something to do with it. I wouldn’t know either way, as I’m “cis-gendered”, but I suppose on some gut level there seems to be something to what you say. Doesn’t impact the actual gameplay for me, though.

Yeah, I never played that spin-off. And in any case, to me Tomb Raider is about being alone (after all the enemies are dead) in a tomb or temple or the like and especially wall-scaling through it (I also loved this in Assassin’s Creed 2 and Prince of Persia Sands of Time, 2008, and The Forgotten Sands). Anniversary and Underworld even made shimmying fun by allowing you to go faster by tapping a button (meaning both interactivity and speeding up of what’s otherwise just lamely holding a direction). For some reason they took that out with the reboot…

I liked Goldeneye back in the day, especially the first level, but after Deus Ex I cannot go back to such unstealthy FPSes.

The top-down tomb raider didn’t have any wall climbing, or maybe it did I can’t remember. In any case it was lame.
The tomb raider demo I played was 3rd person and much better, still wasn’t that good though. The gunplay of it was very basic and plasticy. The atmosphere didn’t seem diverse, just jungle temples basically the whole game. If I can recall, the background music was very generic and subpar, like a generic B kiddie action movie like Incompetech music. (I wonder why they call it Incompetech?)

Goldeneye is a very stealthy game, not that realistic though. It takes 2 shots to alert outside enemies, not one. And the AI line of sight cannot see through windows or gates. Perfect Dark has better AI and stealth.
I played one of the older Dues Ex demos a while ago, I think I liked it but I never bought it. I don’t remember being amazed by it, just enjoying it a bit. Animations of it were md2-ey, didn’t have the depth of animations like Perfect Dark did. Non-interpolated animations work best in frantic games like Quake where you can’t really focus.

Mahjong and solitaire…

Glad to see SS2 get some love. Strife is also good if you want to go back to see what the Doom Engine can do. Deus Ex is still probably one of the best games ever made. Fallout 1.5 Ressurection was recently released in English and if you like Fallout it is an absolute must play. Morrowind is, of course, timeless.

Lately I’ve been really enjoying Crusader Kings 2. It taps into my love of history and my love of fucking shit up. It’s a great “story generator”.

Speaking of “story generators” I think 2D Dwarf Fortress is best Dwarf Fortress from a game perspective but I fucking love every new thing Toady does so 3D DF is also “fun” but it’s more fun to think about than actually play.

Speaking of “great games I no longer play” EVE isn’t the same since Vilerat died. I haven’t been able to get back into it since.

Amorphos,

Might & Magic VI-VIII, inspired the Elder Scrolls series indubitably, (PC-Windows 2000, ME, or earlier required) unless you download from GOG, but the old discs play much smoother on old systems. Old games are why I still have an old, gaming-only PC and Win.95. If only I’d kept my Atari package, that would be a blast about now.

Phantasmagoria, old PC point and click adventure similar to Myst but way easier. Twisted surprise ending, good luck staying alive without cheating. :evilfun: :laughing:

Mummy:Tomb of the Pharaoh
Frankenstein:Through the Eyes of the Monster

Moonlight Mahjong! :mrgreen:

I loved playing nvChess, they had really cool graphics, but they don’t have an app for it. :confused:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn92pg3m_uc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukxVaKGx1p4[/youtube]

Not played in a week or so… will check out nvChess when i next do.

One thing - I found a handkerchief in the water. Monogrammed “d.l.C.” Mean anything to you?

De la Croix? It cannot be. Was it he the Beast slew?!

Seems so. Knew him well?

Long past. We were close friends, once, but our paths diverged. He was a man of extremes, standing by his companions no matter the odds, fighting his foes to the bitter end.