OT: Oldies but Goodies

[Atrocities]

Do any of you old gamers remember these games and if so, when was the Last time you played them?

Wolfenstien 3d (95)
Doom (97)
Heretic (97)
Dark Forces (96)
Duke Nukem 3d (97) God I loved this game.
Rebellion (2000)

Quake (2002)
Quake II (2003)

Myst (96)

There is something to say about these games that helped to define the PC gaming world. Without them we would not have had what we have now.

I can remember most of the great games released and can even remember paying full price for all most all of them.

From SimCity II through Freespace I had a great collection of fun and addictive games. I have to say that I loved most of them and hated only a few.

Half-Life was fun and when it came out it was a great game. Tribes is and always will be my most favorite game of all time, but even games like Dark Forces and Decent are on my all time hit list.

Heretic was a lot of fun MP wise, and Doom was, well it was doom. (A whole new universe opened up when I discovered that game.)

Duke Nukem 3d was a bLast to play, as were DeusEx, Unreal, System Shock 1 & 2, Blade, and even the original Soldier of Fortune.

Games like BOTF, Rebellion, Imperium Galactica II and Homeworld were great and offered many hours of game play.

But it has been a long time since I have had a game that I truly have enjoyed playing. This year alone I have bought and played several games that just took the wind out of my sails. SimCity 4 was ok, but not as good as it could have been. Unreal II was just a plane awful game and MOO3 was by far the biggest disappointment ever released IMHO.

Last year we saw Jedi Night Outcast and SOF II, but both seemed to be lacking the energy that their predecessors had, and ultimately became boring to play.

What I would love to see are games that go back to the basics. Good inventive game play with solid MP and Co-Op play. Games that look good, have good stories and game play, and keep you coming back for more.

I can remember playing Starcraft and wondering if I could build enough troops to keep the enemy at bay. The game was a lot of fun, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. As also did Diablo, Bolders Gate, SFC, and even Tie Fighter. (Although Freespace was a by far the best space fighter sim game I have ever played.)

I can remember being blown away by the how they did Wing Commander IV and loving that game a lot. I miss that game, but I still have it.

Like I said there is something to be said about the older games. The memories they bring to life, and feelings they inspired. I really do miss going down to the local Computer shop and buying the newest games. Now all the local computer shops are closed replaced by mega stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy. They just don't have the feel of that small business computer shop that I came to love. Oh well, things are destined to change I guess.

Lets hope that in the future some game designer comes along with a new novel idea that blows us all away and gives us another memorable game.

We can hope.

[Loser]

Duke Nukem 3D was a game I came back to again and again. I can remember staying up waaay too late, Duke Matching against my roommates, listening to Straus (the waltz seemed to be perfect for death match, still is).

Duke Nukem was eventually replaced by Unreal Tournament as my favorite FPS (I never did get into Team Fortress or the 'classed' FPS spawn that followed it).

Civ kept me up all night, later Civ II and MoO II, then SMAC/X, now SE IV. But I never played them for more than a few months. The thing was, after staying away from them for a few more months, I could come back to them with the same zeal I felt for them at their best.

Diablo was followed by Diablo II and then LoD, which I still play on Bnet every now and then.

WarCraft, WC II, StarCraft, Dungeon Keeper, DK II, Shogun Total War; I still go back to SC BW, Shogun TW, and DK II. They're still great games.

Descent, Descent II, those stood by themselves for me only because I haven't the head for flight sims (can't reason/track/do much of anything in three dimensions...)

Homeworld was an incredibly beautiful game, but I was only barely good enough to beat the single player campaign. I still come back to it, though.

The AvP Marine demo scared the snot out of me, and so did the game (excellent use of darkness!).

The Sims was a great game to play games with, probably the best ever. It amazed me when it came out, but I haven't been too keen on going back to it.

You're right, though. It's been a while since a new game completely blew me away. That's a real shame, because millions of dollars are being funneled into the gaming industry.

Downright unacceptable...

Either we've been missing out on the real kickass games or the whole industry has gone downhill. If anyone knows of a truly great game that went unmentioned, or came out recently, please speak up.

[Thermodyne]

Jane's Fleet Command and TAoW are the two old games that I never gave up on. Still keep an old box just to run them on.

[Atrocities]

The AvP Marine demo scared the snot out of me, and so did the game (excellent use of darkness!).

Oh hell ya!

Would you believe me if I told you that Alien Vs Preditor for the Jagaur was the first game in my life that I can honestly say scared the living goo out of me. I have it on video tape to prove it too.

The PC Version demo for the Marine was a good scare and the sequal was one of the games that honestly impressed me. Too bad it was too short.

[General Woundwort]

Ah, you children make me laugh. Now I remember back to the days of the Commodore 64, playing games like Choplifter. Or playing the original Castle Wolfenstein (2d top-down maze Version) on primitive Apple computers (you remember, the ones with the green screens?) on the sly at the J.H.S. library. Heck, I remember playing Pong on the old Panasonic game console, the one that preceded the Atari 2600.

But the one I miss the most, is the old Star Trek simulator. You know, the one where you traveled from sector to sector blowing up Klingons and the occasional cloaked Romulan? Where the "graphics" were just colored text, if you were lucky?

Oh for the good old days...

[Suicide Junkie]

Wolfenstien was pretty good when it was fairly new, but in the Last few years it has made me physically sick when trying to turn. Five minutes is the most I can take before I have to go lie down. I don't think I have this anymore.

Doom/Doom2: Played it no more than a week ago.
A bit with the DM-ARMY mod (All the monsters look like multiplayer guys, and shoot the weapons you would expect from a multiplayer game)
Then a bunch with my own deadly mini-mod. (Blood spatters have a 30% chance of exploding like a rocket to represent critical hits. )

Duke Nukem 3D: Haven't played it since we misplaced our serial cable, but with a mod and custom map, still good fun
The mod we always use for challenge gives the basic enemies a 40% chance of spawning 2 more when they die, and a small chance of spawning one of the bigger baddies as well.
Firing rockets into a crowd of guys can actually make things worse
However, they always drop something decent when they die, and sometimes even drop powerful things too. As well, the player nearest to an enemy who dies gets +1 health.

The 4-dimensional map capability of this game is extremely cool!
You could have an open field, with a twilight-zone style door standing all alone in it. Walk through the door, and suddenly you find yourself in the same open field, but at night, and with monsters! Walk around the door instead, and its still daytime

Starcraft is pretty good. Beautiful graphics, and decent gameplay, but not terribly flexible.
I did manage a nice mod to choke off the "rushes" strategy using a custom map. The way "Small Squad Tactics" works is:
1) the minerals available on the map are slashed to a fraction of the original stashes.
2) Whenever you have more gas than minerals, they are traded at a 2:1 ratio.
Since gas vents merely get "depleted" and never run totally dry, you need to capture the vents in order to continue to expand.
With the thin minerals, you need to capture those vents and defend your base with as few units as will do the job. As well, you want to protect the lives of all your units. If you pull out when crippled instead of fighting to the death, you'll save immense amounts of money and time by either doing repairs, recharging shields or healing instead of building a whole new unit with your meager funds.

Going back to the BBS days, my favorite:
Land of Devastation!
Extremely moddable; there is even a programming language to add new stuff to the game!
I've added convenience devices that scan the ground as you walk, and automatically pick up items of value. I've put in all kinds of monsters from other games... Protoss Archons are especially sought after, often in vain attempts to steal their shields, which have the property of self-recharging over time (which I coded in myself )
In VGA mode on the local computer, it really looks good too.