OT: What video games are you playing today?

[RABid]

I know a lot of gamers are on this forum.

 

I've been feeling nostalgic. Played some SSX 3 while wishing I had access to SSX Tricky on XBox One. Then purchased Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. Supposedly a much better remake than the very disappointing Tony Hawk One that was re-released a few years ago. Now the waiting. I'm on rural DSL and it is estimating just over 7 hours to go on the download. 26.57 GB and I am at 2.2%.

[cp-the-nerd]

Hyper Light Drifter on PS4. It's a retro-inspired 2D dungeon crawler about a devastated world with trippy visuals and an outstanding ambient synth soundtrack. I love picking up indy games when they go on playstation network's monthly sales.

[El Lobo]

Oh. I thought this was about what music you're playing today. I'm playing along to some reference recordings of some rock and country tunes in order to prepare for a gig.

[RABid]

Weeeeelllllll..... Getting old is the pits. My family does not want me on a real skateboard. I downloaded enough of the Tony Hawke game to play the tutorial. When I finished the tutorial I realized that I was car sick. This never happened 20 years ago when I used to play it.

[Tom Williams]

Don't feel bad RABid -- I've never been able to play FPS games since the (original?) Apple II Castle Wolfenstein, due to my brain going to carsick mode whenever my inner ear and eyes go out of sync. That also keeps me from enjoying IMAX 3D nature films, and even some plain old 2D theatrical stuff like Anakin Skywalker races or Harry Potter Quidditch sequences. I often have had to sit near the back in theaters (do they still make theaters?) so I could enjoy the movie and the popcorn at the same time.

[Groove On]

- DOTA player with occasional bouts of Left 4 Dead, those are my stress relievers (or drug hits depending on how you look at it). Have a group that plays together as a team.

 

- I'm a bit scared to jump into the alternate universe that is League of Legends, looks like a big jump into a black hole.

 

- SSX Tricky is a classic game, I really need to find an emulator to run that again. Great for a quick jump in/out.

 

- Steam just released all the Command & Conquer games, one of my favorites, but Windows only and I'm on a Mac, but have been looking seriously at getting a dedicated Windows just for games.

 

- One thing I love nowadays, with a powerful computer, you can run emulators of all the old arcade games. Definitely a time suck, but it's calling my name. At the very least, I want to get Tekken up and running (plus SSX Tricky).

 

- Those classic arcade kits with the big buttons/joysticks are also very enticing. I have a spot in the house all picked out!

[RABid]

...

- I'm a bit scared to jump into the alternate universe that is League of Legends, looks like a big jump into a black hole.

 

...

 

I tried League of Legends years ago and had a bad experience. Kept ending up on teams with absolutely no tolerance for new players. I had never experienced a gaming community so fanatical about playing perfect strategies and not tolerating those who are learning the game.

[ElmerJFudd]

...

- I'm a bit scared to jump into the alternate universe that is League of Legends, looks like a big jump into a black hole.

 

...

 

I tried League of Legends years ago and had a bad experience. Kept ending up on teams with absolutely no tolerance for new players. I had never experienced a gaming community so fanatical about playing perfect strategies and not tolerating those who are learning the game.

 

Ha ha, LOL interests me. But I haven't given it a try.

 

Never used to be an issue, but some immersive games can give me a little vertigo nowadays.

I picked up Star Wars Battlegrounds II to play with my kid on the XBox One. Holy heck, a lot of content in that game.

[johnchop]

I think my Steam library exceeds my VST library.

 

Currently I'm enjoying anything co-op with my kids, as my reaction times have slowed too much to keep up in anything competitive.

 

"Sea of Thieves" has damn near perfect mechanics to encourage co-op and is too much fun.

 

"Vermintide 2" is goofy brainless hack 'n slash.

 

Can't wait to try "Baldur's Gate 3" given how fun the Divinity games were.

[KeyboardEric]

I'm a few years late to the party, but just picked up the latest Zelda game and a Nintendo Switch. So far so good.

[eric]

I have a vintage Galaxian cocktail arcade cabinet that is retrofitted with a multi-cade chip that gives me about 60 vintage arcade games from the late '70s into '80s. Great stuff like Space Invaders, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Dig Dug, Xevious, lots of different versions of each of those, plus some other random things like Pinball and Gunsmoke etc. I play my cocktail arcade game several times during the week and when I have friends or family visit, it is so fun to sit across from one another and play a two player game like being in a pizza restaurant in the '80s.

[RABid]

I think my Steam library exceeds my VST library.

....

 

Same for me. Also have a few old games from GOG. Masters of Magic is one of my favorite.

 

I have a vintage Galaxian cocktail arcade cabinet that is retrofitted with a multi-cade chip that gives me about 60 vintage arcade games from the late '70s into '80s. Great stuff like Space Invaders, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Dig Dug, Xevious, lots of different versions of each of those, plus some other random things like Pinball and Gunsmoke etc. I play my cocktail arcade game several times during the week and when I have friends or family visit, it is so fun to sit across from one another and play a two player game like being in a pizza restaurant in the '80s.

 

Very cool!

[Baggypants]

I"ve stuck with my DSi because it is exactly the right size for my jacket pocket. I"ve been playing a tangrams game called Neves on it recently.

[Biggles]

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

 

One issue is I need to spend £2,000 to update my old PC to run the simulator at its highest level.

 

Plus high end graphics cards are few and far between.

[Docbop]

None.

 

Even though I spent over 30+ years in computers (a couple music sabbatical away) I never got into computer games. A lot of people I worked with did and one place I worked they let the gamer setup a game server as long as it did get turn up until after work hours. I would always check them out the technology always intrigued me, but I just couldn't get into those games that take weeks or months to play. I would play the arcade type games for a diversion because I could play an hour and just leave it.

 

Showing my age the one that amazed me was people playing Zork all text into a command line and could take six months to solve the game. You'd check out gamers apartments and their walls would be covered in hand drawn maps of the underground world. Once games got past the pixelated things and more human I could understand people getting drawn in.

[RABid]

I remember mapping out Bards Tale. Would never even think about doing that now.

[Theo Verelst]

In the 80s I found it funny to think about what a text interface could be programmed to do but I dreaded the games I hears about, so never did much with that. Since the TRS80 games were on sale I looked at some of the mainstream games at times, but I never bought a software game program in my life IIRC.

 

I graduated in design of computer graphics hardware and software at various level of complexity including chip design, so since long before OpenGL and such I was into graphics demos of all kinds, and usually the quality of games remained very much behind most of the top presentations, like e.g. SIGGRAPH proceedings. Recently there's things like parallel ray tracing acceleration on NVidia graphics cards, and I enjoy looking at YT demos of that.

 

T

[CEB]

Fritz 17, Komodo 14, Hiracs 14. High level chess programs. I use Chessbass 16 a lot for post mortem analysis.

[Stokely]

I love the Civ games (up through V at least), and used to love Masters of Magic (fantasy civ, with the extra feature of a 2nd map under the main one). I wish someone would re-do Alpha Centauri, that was a fantastic strategy game.

 

 

These days, I'm hooked on Total War: Warhammer 2 and am excited for 3. Take the campaign turn-based aspect of Civ, add some Warlords (an old Amiga and later dos game), toss in Heroes of Might and Magic and THEN add real-time army battles (something none of those others have). I play the big Mortal Empires map, which is 120 factions and 300 settlements, it's insane! What's really crazy is that you can zoom way, way out to see most of the map, then go WAY in and see tons of little details everywhere. That's the campaign map, when you do the battles you have many different battle maps.

 

Here's a teaching overview to get a feel for it.

 

Other great games I've played in the past year or two were Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Zelda: breath of the wild. I LOVE open-world games and these were 3 of the best.

[MAJUSCULE]

Tap Sports Baseball '21 on my iPad. My roommate plays a fair amount of Chel on his PS4.

[Groove On]

I remember mapping out Bards Tale. Would never even think about doing that now.

Oh man, yeah. My brother and I spent a whole month mapping out Bard's Tale. It was a lot of geeky fun, but today, it sounds asylum crazy, literally one wall at a time.

 

FWIW - they released the updated version of Bard's Tale on Steam, I've been meaning to check it out, once I get my Windows computer built. But I have a feeling it won't be the same when you can actually "see" the dungeon, instead of having to imagine it.

[ElmerJFudd]

' Sealed Super Mario Bros. sells for $660,000, shattering record for most expensive game ever'

 

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/2/22364245/super-mario-bros-most-expensive-game-ever-record-sealed-auction

[RABid]

...

FWIW - they released the updated version of Bard's Tale on Steam, I've been meaning to check it out, once I get my Windows computer built. But I have a feeling it won't be the same when you can actually "see" the dungeon, instead of having to imagine it.

 

Looking for this now.

[Stokely]

I remember trying to map out bard's tale...a similar and maybe a bit more advanced (for the time) game was on the Amiga, Dungeon Master. That game gave me absolute nightmares, I played it on the computer our studio used to render really old-school 3-d ad spots (it would take all night to do one ad). I think it was an Amiga 500. I had maps that I copied from some magazine or other.

 

I've seen versions that run in the browser now! It had a pretty cool magic system I remember that.

[RABid]

I remember Dungeon Master bringing something new to games. A more open, interactive universe. You could push a switch on the wall, throw a dagger at it, or pick up a rock and throw it. There was always more than one way to do things.

[TommyBoy]

Still love video games dating back 40 years.

 

I run an hour a day.

 

I play accordion an hour a day.

 

And I play the latest Call of Duty an hour a day. Currently Black Ops.

 

I'm mediocre at all three, but they all serve the same purpose. They clear my mind and allow me to relax.

[Dave Weiser]

Wasteland 3...and it is freaking awesome.

 

Gameplay and world-building are insanely good. It's an updated tribute to the old Infinity engine games like Fallout, Fallout2, Baldur's Gate, etc.

 

It's got some deep cut and delicious references to pop culture, from '80s pop songs re-worked as Johnny Cash ballads to the Red Rider BB Gun, to straight up references to C.H.U.D.

 

And who can forget the Frozen Ferret Launcher?!!

 

 

[Donhughesmusic]

Fire Pro Wrestling World... yeah, I'm a wrestling nerd.

[KeyboardEric]

I remember Dungeon Master bringing something new to games. A more open, interactive universe. You could push a switch on the wall, throw a dagger at it, or pick up a rock and throw it. There was always more than one way to do things.

 

 

I'm pretty sure as a 10 y/o I rented this game at a video store sometime around 1990 and was immediately disappointed... not to say it wasn't a good game.

[Mike Warren]

I've just finished the Far Cry 5 add-on Lost On Mars. I find the only games I can get into are first person shooters. Started with the original Wolfenstein in (I think) 1993.