Carmen's Revenge
Active Member
New games are all pomp and glam, but IMO, if I really wanted a "thinking man's" gaming experience, I prefer the old games where everything resembled a labour of love, not a half-assed "sequel" thrown together so fast, it didn't have a singleplayer campaign, or even a manual.
Here's a few examples across the gaming genre:
1. Driving/Road Racing
My favourite has to be Need for Speed : Porsche Unleashed, because vehicle handling 'felt' quasi realistic unlike newer titles which had magical traction control and exaggerated sense of speed just for the sake of inflating everyone's "go-fast" egos.
2. First Person
Deus Ex - because it's awesome in gameplay and it didn't try too hard with the "futuristic world" image unlike the new one next year. We will not have megacities in the sky in 17 years, but some suburbs around here remind me of the game world of Deus Ex the Original : I'm the futuristic one but everything around me looks 50 years outdated
3. Giant Robots
Mechwarrior 3 felt like a simulation game where you were piloting something that weighed as much as a small house, and maneuvered as slowly as one. It took effort to aim weapons, especially the autocannons on arm mounts. It took talent to drive the mech, attack on the move and fire accurately, three separate in-brain processes at once, so you can if you wish write a Battletech novel between gaming sessions. It was immersive.
Contrast this with Mechwarrior 4 which had far more simplified vehicle and fire control, so even the largest, most powerful of battlemechs felt no more difficult to handle than a Honda Civic in Need for Speed Underground 2.
4. Strategy
Steel Panthers World at War remains to date an excellent 2D sandbox style World War 2 tactical simulation due to painstakingly researched weapon and vehicle performance, while you could learn a thing or two about historical grand strategy from Gary Grigsby's Pacific War (SPWAW and an enhanced version of PacWar can be acquired free from www.matrixgames.com)
The original Mechcommander also played far, far better than its Microsoft successor, Mechcommander 2. We had discussions about BattleTech tactics and strategy in elementary school thanks to Mechcommander, while MC2 has all the complexity of a kindergarten curriculum.
Plus, the voice and video acting was so much better in the old one (much corporate sarcasm in the intro movie!)
So, who still plays these classics? They are even more fun because the $100 netbooks of today can run these games. Lets you blow away any PSP-wielding kiddo in the subway because they're playing elementary school games while everyone's watching you take on the Soviet Navy using authentic period tactics in Jane's Fleet Command NWS v15.x. How epic is that!?
Warning: Clarksonism:
The old games were educational, and yielded great dividends in raising today's generation of managers because we roleplayed senior military officers. Todays simplified flashy crap means that tomorrow's world will be only interested in fragging everyone in sight for personal gain.... or at least, it does resemble that part of the world where I live, where no one can type in proper sentences on MSN, much less actually work together to solve today's problems. As such, the children suffer!
Here's a few examples across the gaming genre:
1. Driving/Road Racing
My favourite has to be Need for Speed : Porsche Unleashed, because vehicle handling 'felt' quasi realistic unlike newer titles which had magical traction control and exaggerated sense of speed just for the sake of inflating everyone's "go-fast" egos.
2. First Person
Deus Ex - because it's awesome in gameplay and it didn't try too hard with the "futuristic world" image unlike the new one next year. We will not have megacities in the sky in 17 years, but some suburbs around here remind me of the game world of Deus Ex the Original : I'm the futuristic one but everything around me looks 50 years outdated
3. Giant Robots
Mechwarrior 3 felt like a simulation game where you were piloting something that weighed as much as a small house, and maneuvered as slowly as one. It took effort to aim weapons, especially the autocannons on arm mounts. It took talent to drive the mech, attack on the move and fire accurately, three separate in-brain processes at once, so you can if you wish write a Battletech novel between gaming sessions. It was immersive.
Contrast this with Mechwarrior 4 which had far more simplified vehicle and fire control, so even the largest, most powerful of battlemechs felt no more difficult to handle than a Honda Civic in Need for Speed Underground 2.
4. Strategy
Steel Panthers World at War remains to date an excellent 2D sandbox style World War 2 tactical simulation due to painstakingly researched weapon and vehicle performance, while you could learn a thing or two about historical grand strategy from Gary Grigsby's Pacific War (SPWAW and an enhanced version of PacWar can be acquired free from www.matrixgames.com)
The original Mechcommander also played far, far better than its Microsoft successor, Mechcommander 2. We had discussions about BattleTech tactics and strategy in elementary school thanks to Mechcommander, while MC2 has all the complexity of a kindergarten curriculum.
Plus, the voice and video acting was so much better in the old one (much corporate sarcasm in the intro movie!
)So, who still plays these classics? They are even more fun because the $100 netbooks of today can run these games. Lets you blow away any PSP-wielding kiddo in the subway because they're playing elementary school games while everyone's watching you take on the Soviet Navy using authentic period tactics in Jane's Fleet Command NWS v15.x. How epic is that!?
Warning: Clarksonism:
The old games were educational, and yielded great dividends in raising today's generation of managers because we roleplayed senior military officers. Todays simplified flashy crap means that tomorrow's world will be only interested in fragging everyone in sight for personal gain.... or at least, it does resemble that part of the world where I live, where no one can type in proper sentences on MSN, much less actually work together to solve today's problems. As such, the children suffer!
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