chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-02-06, 20:23:

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 and it's really fun. I'm still in the human starting area but I'm really enjoying the game. I've wanted to start playing WOW again but this is scratching that itch without the monthly payment.

if you ever get too deep in, try getting complete world exploration. It was a lot more fun for me than doing the base-game story.

Sounds good. Me and my wife were playing yesterday and the boys were having fun watching us as well.

After 100%'in Pillars of eternity, I got started on Tyranny. It's not the instant love affair I thought it would be, but that is partly duet o playing a character that I did not turn out to enjoy much thematically. I will reserve my judgement until after restarting with a new character..

Primarily these days I'm playing Endless Sky as a modern game, but for retro stuff I'm playing Everquest and WoW, and always Kyodai Mahjongg (still runs on Windows 7...).
I have the Elder Scrolls up through Oblivion I keep wanting to start (nope, never played them), and I've briefly started playing Betrayal at Krondor again.

So I was slowly getting through Command & Conquer (it's way harder than I remember), and Doom 3 (the jump scares are much harder on me in my middle age), but I've since been majorly distracted by Dyson Sphere Program. It's a visually stunning galactic Factorio. It's sucked up something like 60 hours of my time since I got it day 1.

I probably should try to pry myself away to actually finish Doom 3 though. It's just so mesmerizing seeing my under construction Dyson Sphere rise over the horizon with the sunrise. All the logistics shuttles twinkling in the sky. The streaks of the railguns blasting solar sails into orbit. The larger structural ships slowly docking with the fragments of the sphere.

I have such ideas for this game.

Eschalon: Book III
I'm 24 hours into this gem and have hit that stage where I feel like the end is near, but my character is nowhere near powerful enough yet. So there's more world to explore, more monsters to kill for XP, more side quests to level my character up. I chose a Ranger whose primary weapon is the bow and secondary is unarmed combat. Maybe not the most powerful, but it's gotten me this far. I have not spent any skill points in the magic arts, but I am getting better at Alchemy, which lets me brew potions with reagents that I find or buy. That will come in handy with potions that let me see at night, harden my armor, heal injuries, cure poisons and greater ailments, increase my speed (haste), and increase my strength. I'm trained enough in Foraging to mostly feed myself, Lore to identify unknown items, Mercantile to negotiate better prices in shops, Repair to avoid paying to get my weapons and armor fixed, Cartography to fill out my auto-map, and Pick Locks, to obviously pick locks. 😉 The story is engaging and enjoyable.

I am looking forward to my next game, Kingdom Come Deliverance. From the little I've played with it since I got it on sale on GOG, it really looks like it will be an entertaining 60+ hours of 1400's European RPG simulation. I hope it doesn't disappoint. I did nail down the detail settings that my system will be able to play it at mostly 60 fps. My modest i7-4770/GTX 1650 Super should be able to play it with details set to High (there's a Very High and Ultra that don't look much different but really tank the framerate).

clueless1 wrote on 2021-02-08, 23:34:

I am looking forward to my next game, Kingdom Come Deliverance. From the little I've played with it since I got it on sale on GOG, it really looks like it will be an entertaining 60+ hours of 1400's European RPG simulation. I hope it doesn't disappoint. I did nail down the detail settings that my system will be able to play it at mostly 60 fps. My modest i7-4770/GTX 1650 Super should be able to play it with details set to High (there's a Very High and Ultra that don't look much different but really tank the framerate).

Great game this - the world alone is worth the price of entry but the quests are good too. Likable protagonist, great voice acting, etc etc. I got so into it at one point that I started drinking a European wheat beer while playing and made some medieval thatch borders in my garden 😂

I found the performance on my i5, which had lasted me 10 years, was terrible - particularly in towns. So this was the game that finally forced a CPU / motherboard upgrade, but I regret nothing.

I don't really play new games that much but Valheim caught my eye recently. It has slightly retro aesthetic, like Rune (2000), without looking too hip/edgy, and ticks many other boxes for me. It even sounds a little like Black & White (2002). So if you are an old cat and completely missed out on this genre of modern survival games, then I suggest you give this one a go. Seems really easy to pick up and still have that comfort blanket of escapism, a mark that most of these derivatives miss. It's PVE only but up to 10 people can be on one server, public or private. And if you only build computers and not play on them, rest assured you can build in this game too.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mHRJ1KFe20

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-02-01, 15:53:

If that isn't a beautiful picture of a fun family moment I don't know what is. I got my old Compaq presarrio 4402 back from my in-laws basement and I'd really like to get it fixed up as a dos/wfw 3.11 system for some of the games that don't run fantastic on the socket A XP pro system and have them both setup in my son's room.

Bruninho wrote on 2021-02-01, 19:08:

Beautiful picture of a retro gaming family moment!! Congratulations! […]
Show full quote

Beautiful picture of a retro gaming family moment!! Congratulations!

I'm still single, so no kids at the moment. Maybe one day I can have one of these moments, when the pandemic hopefully goes away. One of my friends have two kids, and asked me for help, so I helped him to set up an retro nintendo gaming system for him and his kids. They love it. Even his wife is playing it - Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart. The other day he was showing them the Cobra Kai episodes on Netflix, and then the Karate Kid trilogy. I simply love the idea of showing to our kids how good our childhood times were. My dad (and my grandpa as well) did the same with me when I was a kid. I remember writing with his orientation at times, a Quick Basic program when I was about 8 yrs old, a small funny program that simulated a "cash machine". It just didn't had the money... HA!

But I've been revisiting old games with my dad so it's kinda the same thing but the other way around. One day he wanted to do an Apple IIe replica with his raspberry pi 3, it was just a thought for him, but I do want to work with him on this project, so I might have some talk to convince him... he had started his professional career in one of these Apple IIe replicas that were available in Brazil back in the late 70's/ early 80's.

Please keep rolling on more of these great moments with your kids! For sure, it's awesome to see some retro stuff love being kept alive and "transferred" to your kids, and there is no better thing than enjoying the time with your family, in a moment like this, while the world is locked down due a terrible virus.

@Kreshna: I had the same Microsoft Sidewinder steering wheel for a while, came with Microsoft CART Precision Racing game. One day it broke on me so I bought a Logitech MOMO. The best steering wheel I ever had in my simracing competitions. Much better than the so called Logitech G2x's, in terms of ergonomics.

Thanks, folks. 😀 Pardon the very late reply, I've been very busy lately.

In any case, could anyone guess what I've just played?

Spotting a threat.

Fired a TOW missile at the threat.

Steering the TOW using joystick. (Yes, literally.)

In the next second the target would be history. (Too bad I wasn't fast enough to screen-capture the explosion.)

Anyway, I was using a joystick on my right hand, but I also used this on my left hand. The throttle wheel came in handy.

The good old Belkin Nostromo N50. Yes, it works on Windows 7.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2021-02-13, 16:11:

In any case, could anyone guess what I've just played?

I'm not much of a flight sim player, but I did buy LHX Attack Chopper when it was new and liked it. Must play it through again some day.

Recently I finished off Far Cry. I enjoyed it mostly except for the last 10 minutes of gameplay that took me about 50 attempts to get through, so left a bad impression.

Also finished off Tales of Monkey Island today. Also good, just the right level of difficulty for me as I can struggle with adventure games sometimes.

Next game is Dune as I read the book last year so I feel I'm prepared to play it through now 😀

GoblinUpTheRoad wrote on 2021-02-14, 04:27:

Next game is Dune as I read the book last year so I feel I'm prepared to play it through now 😀

I re-read it recently too; there's a new movie adaptation on the way apparently. What an excellent story!

I'm interested to hear what you think of the game - I've only played Dune 2 which is unrelated from what I understand.

badmojo wrote on 2021-02-14, 05:49:

I'm interested to hear what you think of the game

Had one session on it so far. I bet it would have been a very pretty game when it was released in 1992 with it's full screen animation/video, but it feels a bit thin in gameplay. It's genre is classed as Adventure/Strategy which is accurate but it seems like half an adventure game and half of a strategy game combined together, but it works well actually and I'm enjoying it.
So far the goal has been to start and expand spice production, but the quotas keep increasing and production is getting more difficult, so swiftly being pushed towards war I would think. We'll see how that goes.

Dune surely is a rare blend of RTS and adventure, but I really enjoy it. Must have finished that game a dozen times by now. It's also the most advanced game a 8088 can still run (with very reasonable speed!l) so I love to set up my old turbo XT for it.

Getting the CD version with better graphics and voices is a must for me. Once you get used to that you don't go back to the floppy version.

* spoiler *
Dune is also a relaxing game because the enemy is largely scripted, so you're never really in danger of them taking all of your zones. The real enemy is the emperor asking for spice, but if you focus heavily on mining in the first half of the game then you'll be fine. You also don't even have to bother with agriculture to win the game, but it's in interesting strategy in the long run.

So Phantasmagoria goes from pretty easy to batshit insane hard in the final act. And it deletes your saves WTF!

It doesn't delete your savefile.
The last "day" is easy, all you have to do is figure out where to click to not die (instead of wandering around for hours trying to figure out what item you're meant to be rubbing on which part of the scenery) and there's multiple ways to succeed rather than a strict path.

Just started playing Anachronox.

It's a really nice RPG using the Quake 2 engine. Love the combat and the weird and funny quests.

Started a new play through of Warcraft 3. Original release, not Reforged. Also, still working my way through Doom 2 on nightmare. Just finished map 28, so only a couple more to go. Oh and I'm using the Brutal Doom mod which is just awesome!

The first (not actually first, as they were developed at the same time) Dune by EIDOS is a fantastic and very faithful adaptation of the book, I absolutely love it. Dune II was one of my first PC gaming darlings, and I got around to playing the first game not until a few years later, but once I finished it I was in love.

The first DUNE game is by Cryo, not EIDOS. 😀
I love it and it's the most faithful indeed.
But Chani is a badass warrior in the book. In the game, she does not wage war at all and needs to be rescued.
I really love this game, but Chani could not be more removed from the source material here.

(In fact I love it so much I play it every year and I'm trying to port it to modern operating systems right now)

Just finished Quake 4 on my 6800 Ultra ! I was having so much fun. After work today I will start a new playthrough of Doom 3 can't get enough of id Tech 4