OT: Recommendations?

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by fahdiz:
Black Isle has always been a wholly owned subsidiary of Interplay, to my knowledge.

They *were*. Now Black Isle simply no longer exists. Interplay laid off the entire staff ...

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Heh. I followed that sordid mess as well. Actually "Black Isle" - as a brand - still exists...it's simply no longer populated with the people who made those great CRPGs. Interplay has said that they will continue to release games under the "Black Isle" label, when they feel it's "worthy" of the distinction.

But then again, they felt Lionheart was worthy of the name...and that was the most God-awful rushed-together mess of an RPG that I've played in many a year.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Tricon:
Mmh. Most games i like to play have already been mentioned.

If graphics aren't your main concern, I would check out the underdog site www.the-underdogs.org.
They have tons really good classics. If you like rpg's try Wasteland, which has still a very loyal following even though it's from 1987.


On a side note: I really enjoy EU II and Victoria, the community is pretty good , too. My recomendation: get'em play'em. The money is not wasted.

I played Wasteland so much on my old 8088 that I broke the arrow keys.

I guess what I'm looking for (and I suppose I should have been clearer, since I've gotten a lot of these types of responses) is not so much old classics (as I've been a computer/board/pen-and-paper gamer for a long time) but more the "relatively recently-released, unknown/unsung, unjustly ignored" types of games. I do thank you for the suggestion, though. A few years back I purchased Interplay's giant RPG collection just so I could play Wasteland again.

On another note, I tried the King of Dragon Pass tour, the Ur-Quan Masters game, and the Star Empires IV demo Last night. I LOVED KoDP (was already a Hero Wars fan, but knew nothing about KoDP) and will probably end up plunking down for it. I enjoyed Ur-Quan (great music in the remixes, too). And SEIV was just fantastic.

The jury's still out on EU2/Victoria, it seems. There's obviously a great deal of different opinion surrounding Paradox's games. Why in the world won't they release demos, so that prospective buyers like me might have an opportunity to check them out?

[ March 10, 2004, 15:05: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
Heh. I followed that sordid mess as well. Actually "Black Isle" - as a brand - still exists...it's simply no longer populated with the people who made those great CRPGs. Interplay has said that they will continue to release games under the "Black Isle" label, when they feel it's "worthy" of the distinction.

But then again, they felt Lionheart was worthy of the name...and that was the most God-awful rushed-together mess of an RPG that I've played in many a year.

It's insane that they lay off the talent that made Black Isle/Interplay famous and then try to sell the Fallout license. What good is a license without the people? Who yanks the engine out of a car (leaving the car without one) before they sell the car? Idiots!

I bought Lionheart solely on the Black Isle name. My mistake.

The only top-tier developer that's still putting out consistently good games is Bioware. Everyone else is catering to the console crowd.

[Tricon]

Originally posted by Arryn:

It's insane that they lay off the talent that made Black Isle/Interplay famous and then try to sell the Fallout license. What good is a license without the people? Who yanks the engine out of a car (leaving the car without one) before they sell the car? Idiots!

Amen. (edit: deleted rant)

[ March 10, 2004, 15:11: Message edited by: Tricon ]

[fahdiz]

I agree completely, Arryn.

They've already soiled the good name of Fallout with the "Brotherhood of Steel" console hackfest. Personally, my feeling is that Interplay is no longer a company to be trusted.

OK, all this (previous) conversation about EU2/HoI/Victoria has got me itching to try them. Maybe I'll have to bargain-bin hunt for EU2 this weekend and simply take a chance.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by fahdiz:
OK, all this (previous) conversation about EU2/HoI/Victoria has got me itching to try them. Maybe I'll have to bargain-bin hunt for EU2 this weekend and simply take a chance.

Despite my feelings about the lameness of the EU engine AI, I do recommend you get EU2 and HOI. I also recommend that you spend an extra 6 bucks and buy EU1 just for the EU1 manual which has some very interesting historical info in it.

With regards to HOI, my advice is to be sure you play it with the CORE mod. The basic game's AI files, OOBs, and other factors leave much to be desired. The CORE team has put in an enormous amount of effort into making the game more historically accurate, balanced, and tweaking the AI (as much as can be done) to provide some sort of challenge.

IMO, Victoria is still too buggy to be worth buying. It needs at least 1-2 more patches. A good friend of mine plays Vicky every night, has been doing so for months now, and he never has anything good to say about the game. I own the game myself and he keeps reminding me why I shouldn't play it. He keeps playing it because he has nothing else to distract him. I've been trying to get him interested in Dom (since my BF won't play me) but he prefers games that have an economy-management aspect to them (like EU/HOI, and Civ, etc.).

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Despite my feelings about the lameness of the EU engine AI, I do recommend you get EU2 and HOI. I also recommend that you spend an extra 6 bucks and buy EU1 just for the EU1 manual which has some very interesting historical info in it.

I'm not as interested in HoI as I am in the other two, as I tend to shy away from "modern warfare" games unless they're science-fiction. World War II is an interesting period in history, but not one which I personally find very entertaining in games. The one exception to this would be Pod9's oustanding Gear Krieg miniatures wargame/pen-and-paper RPG, as it's much more of a "what-if" scenario with steampowered mecha, etc.

IMO, Victoria is still too buggy to be worth buying. It needs at least 1-2 more patches. A good friend of mine plays Vicky every night, has been doing so for months now, and he never has anything good to say about the game. I own the game myself and he keeps reminding me why I shouldn't play it.

Duly noted; thank you.