Computer Games

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noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

i know next to nothing about nintendo stuff except that its notorious for not having many games beyond its couple of big franchises.

http://www.gamerankings.com is the place i usually go when im dealing with buying a game in ignorance, their may be better places.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

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Re: Computer Games

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Internet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games online

Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing.

The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision.

The games do not have sound, but will soon, the Internet Archive said.

"In coming months, the playable software collection will expand greatly," archivist Jason Scott wrote.

"Making these vintage games available to the world, instantly, allows for commentary, education, enjoyment and memory for the history they are a part of."

The other machines included are the Atari 7800, the Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe) and the Astrocade.

Well-recognised titles such as Pacman, Space Invaders and Frogger are all in the archive - with more consoles and games expected soon.

Nostalgic urges

Unlike today's titles, which are stored on disks or even simply downloaded directly to a console, many older machines would use bespoke cartridges to store games.

As the consoles fell into disrepair and became ever more scarce, playing these games has become difficult.

For many years, communities of gamers have created ROMs - read-only memory - images of games. These files can be played on a normal PC by using an emulator.

However, in many cases, gaming in this way can be illegal - particularly when the games involved are made by the likes of Nintendo and Sega, which clamp down on such activity, deeming it a form of counterfeiting.

But older games such as the ones found on the Internet Archive fall into something of a legal grey area.

Publishers and developers often turn a blind eye as, with the games no longer available to buy, the ROMs mean the titles are still able to be played by many.

Yet with smartphone gaming on the rise, publishers are now in a position where these old titles can be revived, cashing in on the timeless quality of the games, as well as fans' nostalgic urges.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

YMix wrote:
Internet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games online

Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing.

The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision.

The games do not have sound, but will soon, the Internet Archive said.

"In coming months, the playable software collection will expand greatly," archivist Jason Scott wrote.

"Making these vintage games available to the world, instantly, allows for commentary, education, enjoyment and memory for the history they are a part of."

The other machines included are the Atari 7800, the Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe) and the Astrocade.

Well-recognised titles such as Pacman, Space Invaders and Frogger are all in the archive - with more consoles and games expected soon.

Nostalgic urges

Unlike today's titles, which are stored on disks or even simply downloaded directly to a console, many older machines would use bespoke cartridges to store games.

As the consoles fell into disrepair and became ever more scarce, playing these games has become difficult.

For many years, communities of gamers have created ROMs - read-only memory - images of games. These files can be played on a normal PC by using an emulator.

However, in many cases, gaming in this way can be illegal - particularly when the games involved are made by the likes of Nintendo and Sega, which clamp down on such activity, deeming it a form of counterfeiting.

But older games such as the ones found on the Internet Archive fall into something of a legal grey area.

Publishers and developers often turn a blind eye as, with the games no longer available to buy, the ROMs mean the titles are still able to be played by many.

Yet with smartphone gaming on the rise, publishers are now in a position where these old titles can be revived, cashing in on the timeless quality of the games, as well as fans' nostalgic urges.
Interesting, but it isn't much of a grey area. Whether the companies turn a blind eye or not, someone owns those copyrights. Even if I thought the copyright laws were poor and maladaptive to the digital age, which I do, it doesn't change these rights.

The game companies really vacillate between what they enforce and what they don't. It gives the impression that many of the decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, further depending on who is at the desk and what their mood is when a decision is needed.

Of course, I think the whole thing is a benefit merely for archival purposes. These companies have, if rumors are true, very little archived well. You have some major games from major companies, less than twenty years old, which cannot be reproduced because of how poorly they cared for and cataloged their stuff. So someone has to figure out a way to preserve it.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

Playing Gunpoint now. Addictive little puzzle game.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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YMix
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

Remember when SimCity ABSOLUTELY HAD to be online? Not any more – fancy that!
Offline mode returns to historically offline game
By Jack Clark, 13th January 2014

Gamers will soon be able to play Maxis's SimCity offline – despite the company's earlier insistence that the game absolutely had to be connected to the internet to work.

The turnaround was announced by Maxis studio manager Patrick Buechner in a blogpost on Sunday. He said Update 10 for the latest installment of the long-running urban modeling game series will include an exciting feature known as "Offline Play." This revolutionary technology lets a game work without a connection to the cloud!

Careful observers may remember that when the always-online, always-connected SimCity launched early last year, the cloud servers it relied on flaked out, rendering it unplayable. In response, Amazon temporarily yanked the game from its store after receiving more than 800 one-star reviews for the lobotomized game.

Maxis, meanwhile, insisted that the online components were fundamental to the game, and claimed at first that it simply wouldn't be possible to run the game offline.

Soon after that an enterprising bod ginned up a hack that let the game run offline. The next day Maxis published a blog on the topic: "Always-Connected and why SimCity is not offline experience."

In that blog post Maxis argued that the always-online component was not "a clandestine strategy to control players" (though it did serve as a form of digital rights management to combat piracy), and that the game "made innovative use of servers to move aspects of the simulation into the cloud to support region play and social features."

As many pointed out at the time, it was hard to see why Maxis didn't simply lop off the "region play" and "social features" for a less complex, local-only variant. Maxis did not respond to queries from The Register on this subject.

Now, about 10 months later, Maxis has brought the game offline.

"All of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection," the Maxis manager wrote. "Keep an eye out for more information on Offline shortly. We'll be releasing more information on how it all works."
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

YMix wrote:Playing Gunpoint now. Addictive little puzzle game.
I'll have to check this out
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YMix
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
YMix wrote:Playing Gunpoint now. Addictive little puzzle game.
I'll have to check this out
Well, the game is fairly short. You can go through all the missions in a couple of hours and, once you've figured out how things work, the puzzles are not that hard. But it was fun.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
Hoosiernorm
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Hoosiernorm »

Anyone playing Minecraft?
Been busy doing stuff
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

Hoosiernorm wrote:Anyone playing Minecraft?
My 12 year old. Took her to the international convention last year. Great group of people and a fine game, but it bores me to death.
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YMix
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

Welcome to the Darkest Dungeon.

Uncompromising, unforgiving, and unconventional, we present a fresh take on the dungeon crawler that elevates the importance of sound tactics and a character's mental state over their gear.

You will recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes through twisted forests, forgotten warrens, ruined crypts and beyond. You'll battle not only unimaginable foes, but stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Uncover strange mysteries, and pit the heroes against an array of fearsome monsters with an innovative strategic turn-based combat system.

You will have to tend to characters’ spirits as much as you do to their Hit Points. But in these grim situations, you'll find opportunities for true heroism!

Darkest Dungeon is not a game where every hero wins the day with shiny armor and a smile. It is a game about hard trade-offs, nearly certain demise, and heroic reversals.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14 ... ok-studios

Sounds interesting. I'm curious if they can pull this off.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
Hoosiernorm
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Hoosiernorm »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:
Hoosiernorm wrote:Anyone playing Minecraft?
My 12 year old. Took her to the international convention last year. Great group of people and a fine game, but it bores me to death.
My 8 year old is severely addicted to it. It's amazing how many social contacts she has made at school because of that game though.
Been busy doing stuff
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Miss_Faucie_Fishtits
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Miss_Faucie_Fishtits »

She irons her jeans, she's evil.........
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YMix
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

Also the right to be a drama queen.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

So I popped in Arkham Origins, the most current open world-ish Batman game, into my Wii U.

It is the first time I've actually played an Arkham series game, though I did fool around a couple of times with the original and I watched my brother go through portions of the previous two installments.

It is...okay...I'm at that point where I don't know if I should just give up because it isn't blowing me away, or if I should continue so I could at least say I got my money's worth.

That makes it sound worse than it is; I get this game is the lowest rated one of the series, but nothing about it seems particularly terrible. The open world is neat, the story and environment has a lot of detail, and the fighting system is just as good as the standard the whole series has set for these brawling adventure games.

What I don't particularly care for is the aggro-grit. Yeah, I get that it's Batman and it's supposed to be "dark" and violent. I'm sayin' the game just might not be for me. It is very much jam on the Y button to win. The "puzzles" are nothing unless you have trouble with going from Room A to Room C to push the one interactive button (or use a Bat device) to open up Room B.

It's Assassin's Creed with a better combat system, more aggressive posturing and an extra helping of "dark".
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

On the flip side, I have not enough good things to say about the tactical/strategy rpg Fire Emblem:Awakening.

I've never played a Fire Emblem game before and I almost skipped this one when I heard that it had "marriage" and children characters; but I am glad I didn't.

Storywise, it is a potboiler of classic fantasy tropes- which get strained by the very end- but some of the character interactions are clever or pleasant. With around 50 characters in all, the game does a pretty good job giving each of them a personality and their interactions are pretty unique.

And there interactions and "marriages" are most useful when it comes to battle tactics by giving each other invaluable stat boosts and the chance of dual strikes.

Which is where this game shines, I love tactical rpgs, and this one pulls it off almost perfectly. Infinite class changes, tough levels, finite amount of uses from weapons, a whole array of stats to keep track of...it has every stupid thing that suckers me into these types of game.

Best of all though is the permanent death of characters. Nothing else adds this sense of tension to these games like this. I've lost several characters of my first time through the campaign, and each one stung a bit. Twice, I lost my top rated player and had to change course for my whole roster going forward. It never felt cheap, and it gives me an incentive to replay the game to do better.

I'm very tempted to buy some of the dlc for this game.
noddy
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

1 pixel, 1 button, 1 noise - the most minimal game possible.

quite fun aswell - i got 398 clicks to finish it.

http://www.leveldone.com/game/momiga
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

What is everyone playing lately?
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Nonc Hilaire
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Re: Computer Games

Post by Nonc Hilaire »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:What is everyone playing lately?
XCOM. I like turn based strategy games.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Nonc Hilaire wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:What is everyone playing lately?
XCOM. I like turn based strategy games.
The original or the remake?

I've been fooling around in this Shining Force game:

Image

which is, obviously, a pretty primitive turn based strategy

I've been taking it with me on the current commute, but can't seem to get around to finishing it. It's not aged particularly well, and I don't see the point when there isn't much of a challenge.

Playing Ready to Rumble 2 (Dreamcast version) with friends:

Image

and my brother purchased a copy of the new Super Smash Brothers for me so we can't continue our two decade battle of beating each other up with Nintendo characters.

oh, and I played this a few times:

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It was a free download for the Xbox One this month, and it was more pleasant than I imagined, though I approached it with low expectations.

The game is built for 2 player though. The person who downloaded it explained to me that you don't really get the full experience in single player, and you can't play two player over the internet. And though I prefer co-op mode when done on a coach- if two players are needed for the full experience, I don't see how you skip an online 2 players option for people who cannot have guests come over all the time to play it.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by noddy »

played some xcom thing recently from the bargain bin, it was a odd blend of shooter and strategy but i lost interest in the first few hours and doubt ill pick it up again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bureau ... classified
i did enjoy the orginal, pure strategy version back when it came out but my time for playing games is very minimal so i doubt id be able to get back into it.

the new australian borderlands is about all ive played of late, its not very good but it suits my "2 hours a week" gaming, i have a few beers and mindlessy blast things on a friday evening till i get bored and go to bed.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

So this week saw the release of three 'big name' games which were rushed or unfinished, and absolutely bug-ridden. This is really starting to become an embarrassment. Though one can appreciate that complex coding is going to have problems, there should be no excuse for major features of these games should hit the market as such a broken mess. And this attitude of, "we'll fix it later" (when they actually do get to it, which is no longer a guarantee) must be hurting sales in a market that has seen downward trends for several years now. There are very very few publishers out there that have accrued a reasonable consumer trust to buy their product within a few months of the launch. That's kind of crazy, and exactly the kind of attitude that brought the video game industry crashing in the 80s.

I know it's popular to doom&gloom the video game industry but, how much longer will consumers actually put up with this? If this doesn't shake up the industry soon, I don't know what will.
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Computer Games

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

noddy wrote:i know next to nothing about nintendo stuff except that its notorious for not having many games beyond its couple of big franchises.
Well, they are in a precarious position where they've painted themselves into a corner with diminishing returns. The loss the 3rd party companies- specifically the non-Japanese 3rd party companies- is what really gives them that notoriety.

But I'd imagine for a video game company not in the cell phone business, they actually publish quite a lot. One problem, in the last 10 years, have been their inability to make 'new' big game IPs. But they always have little titles that they drop along with the big ones. To the point where they've published around 50 new IPs in the last 15 years, and about 15 to 20 of them were 'major' big budget titles that didn't include a reference to some other property (namely Mario spinoffs.)

They've got this one coming out within the next year, and they actually seem invested in advertising:

8L54s2m1dPs

and some gameplay:

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I think it looks like its shaping up brilliantly (if a little too cutesy- but that's post-2000s Nintendo.) It hits a lot of notes of things I believe makes a fun console game. Simple, intuitive controls, able to accommodate a wide array of skilled players, quick in-and-out gameplay, different from most console shooters on the market, colorful and fun....it almost looks like an old Sega game.

The best console games are still those that hit the niche home consoles first filled- as a crossroads between arcade and personal computer games. The industry has been killing itself by ignoring this market.
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Re: Computer Games

Post by YMix »

NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:I know it's popular to doom&gloom the video game industry but, how much longer will consumers actually put up with this? If this doesn't shake up the industry soon, I don't know what will.
The bulk of consumers for those games are probably kids. They'll put up with a lot worse in order to tell their friends that they played the latest 10/10 games. And every game with a good advertising budget is 10/10.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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