What Video Game Are You Playing?

[xybert]

I'm not much of a gamer these days but i still maintain an interest.

Recently while looking for something to kill my brain with at night other than reading/watching TV/surfing the net i fired up my old Nintendo DS and started playing Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I've had it for years but have never finished it. Always get to a certain point and abandon it.

Zelda games are something that i've always loved the idea of but have never really been able to get in to. I think part of it is due to the fact that i just don't really enjoy the Dungeon side of things: in the past have just found them kind of tediously solvable rather than enjoyably challenging. I've just gotten to the point where i've rescued the first princess in the Dark World and it's now marked 7 or so other dungeons on the map with princesses to rescue, and it just induces fatigue rather than "yay! 7 more dungeons!". I think this is the point where i usually give up, but i really want to complete this game once and for all. However much i have a love/hate relationship with this game the music still induces massive nostalgia.

[JSngry]

If you just want to finish it, there's all sorts of player's guide/cheat sheets anywhere you wanna look. I used to castigate my kids to no end back in the day for using them when they hit a tough spot, but hell, you're an adult, you've had the real-time gamefun, this is just business now, no need or time to think about character and/or intellectual development now, not from an old Zelda game, this is a task to cross of the list once and for all, so by all means, tools available, use them.

IMHO, of course.

[Joe]

To give myself a break, I'll often fire up Stella (an Atari 2600 emulator), MAME (multiple arcade machines) or Nestopia (NES) and vintage it. I still take some mindless pleasure in blasting "space dice" in MEGAMANIA, or drawing QIX boxes.

[xybert]

If you just want to finish it, there's all sorts of player's guide/cheat sheets anywhere you wanna look. I used to castigate my kids to no end back in the day for using them when they hit a tough spot, but hell, you're an adult, you've had the real-time gamefun, this is just business now, no need or time to think about character and/or intellectual development now, not from an old Zelda game, this is a task to cross of the list once and for all, so by all means, tools available, use them.

IMHO, of course.

It's funny, i actually have been referring to a guide just to get me through those early stages that i've played so many times so i can get through them as quickly as possible without missing any helpful items. I think it slightly reduced my enjoyment, as rather than hunting around and enjoying the ambiance i've just been making a beeline for what i need to get/do etc. Now that i've reached a point in the game where it's less travelled territory i'm going to try and smell the roses a bit more but i'll still google it if i get completely stuck.

To give myself a break, I'll often fire up Stella (an Atari 2600 emulator), MAME (multiple arcade machines) or Nestopia (NES) and vintage it. I still take some mindless pleasure in blasting "space dice" in MEGAMANIA, or drawing QIX boxes.

I so need to suss out some emulators for old school games. Totally on my to do list. At one point i acquired a modded xbox that had every NES and SNES game on it. I bought it off a friend that was going overseas; i had coveted it for so long and finally had it in my grasp, but i bricked it somehow after like one day. With a lot of the games after 5 minutes the nostalgia faded and it was on to the next game but i think that was partly a symptom of having such a massive library of games, whereas when you're a kid you have that small selection of games that you're stuck with and play to death before moving on to the next one. If you rented a game and it sucked, that was still your game for the weekend and you made the most of it.

[JSngry]

For sheer fun gameplay...I like Vegas Stakes (strictly for the poker, although that's enough), and Warrio's Woods. You can beat Vegas Stakes, although if you're honest(ish) it takes a while, a good while, but Warrio's Woods, that thing goes on forever. I think I had got up to lever 138 or 168 (can't recall) before my daughter accidentally cleared the save out, I think it would go up to Level 999 if you could get it to. But in both games, the "tasks" involved aren't so much chore-specific as they are decision/outcome, if that makes any sense.

I don't game any more, but my daughter showed up with a SNES cart that had everything on it, and next thing you know, she had me revisiting those two, which cshe apparently has great childhood memories of watching me play. Tell you what, the graphics and everything else might have improved in the decades since, but for the way I'm wired, I don't think you can improve on the game-play itself of those two.

My son still games, and from what I can see...I don't need that much of all of that.

But THIS guy, yeah!

[Scott Dolan]

My son and I have game night every Friday in our dedicated game room. Some of our recent favorites have included Uncharted 1/2/3, Bioshock Infinite, The Last Of Us.

It's weird to look back on video games from the mid 70's, when I first started playing them, and seeing what they've evolved into these days. We gone from blips and bloops to some of the finest voice acting, motion capture, and writing ever seen.

These days the best video games are better than most movies.

One of my favorite cutscenes from The Last Of Us:

[Jim Alfredson]

I've been addicted to Guild Wars 2 lately. Before that it was Wasteland 2, which was a lot of fun.

[xybert]

These days the best video games are better than most movies.

This came up between a friend and me. We basically came to the conclusion that games are an artform and are easily up there with movies. There are so many creative people working in games as their chosen artform. It's like, "you don't need to adapt this game to a movie, just play the game! It is the definitive way to experience the material."

[Scott Dolan]

And people actually string together the cutscenes from some of the best games these days and turn them into movies. And they work quite well. So I agree with you and your friend.

It's been really fun having lived through the entire evolution. And witnessing all the game changers. Those games that came along and had everyone saying "this changes everything". Games like Final Fantasy VII and Grand Theft Auto III.

Biggest problem I see now is that I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go. Games like Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite took shooters in a new direction by created incredibly deep and complex storylines dealing with everything from politics and religion, to quantum mechanics, racism, and the compexity of the parent/child dynamic. But, at the end of the day it was still basically just a first person shooter under the hood. Just one that left you trying to piece together the story long after you finished, but...

Same can be said of The Last Of Us. Much more straight forward story, but with a script and voice acting that puts most movies to shame. And by far the most emotionally engaging game I've ever experienced. It makes The Walking Dead tv show look almost vapid in comparison. But again, still just a third person shooter under the hood.

So I don't know that we'll ever see something like a GTA III ever again. But even the smaller advances since then have been fun to experience.

[xybert]

And people actually string together the cutscenes from some of the best games these days and turn them into movies. And they work quite well. So I agree with you and your friend.

It's been really fun having lived through the entire evolution. And witnessing all the game changers. Those games that came along and had everyone saying "this changes everything". Games like Final Fantasy VII and Grand Theft Auto III.

Biggest problem I see now is that I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go. Games like Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite took shooters in a new direction by created incredibly deep and complex storylines dealing with everything from politics and religion, to quantum mechanics, racism, and the compexity of the parent/child dynamic. But, at the end of the day it was still basically just a first person shooter under the hood. Just one that left you trying to piece together the story long after you finished, but...

Same can be said of The Last Of Us. Much more straight forward story, but with a script and voice acting that puts most movies to shame. And by far the most emotionally engaging game I've ever experienced. It makes The Walking Dead tv show look almost vapid in comparison. But again, still just a third person shooter under the hood.

So I don't know that we'll ever see something like a GTA III ever again. But even the smaller advances since then have been fun to experience.

I think VR is the next big thing.

Goddamn GTA lll was a dream come true when it came out. I bought a PS2 specifically to play it and it was glorious.

But gameplay/playability will always be a thing. I couldn't care less about realism. Realism has nothing to do with playability (although a game can be realistic and playable). This is something that a lot of people don't get. Playability is like the mythical 'swing' in a lot of respects.

[aparxa]

The games I have played the most (1990-2010): Super Mario Bros. 3, Quackshot, Warcraft 3, Valkyrie Profile. I had great pleasure revisiting most of them recently on an emulator, but I barely game anymore. For a blitz game online, I usually play Ticket to Ride US.

[Chuck Nessa]

Last one I played was Pong, and I "killed".