- Sun Jun 17, 2007 8:57 pm
#4693
I apologize in advance if this is not a good place to go into depth about my favorite video games, rather than simply listing what their titles are.
Being primarily a PC gamer, unless I just have to try out some game online while there are plenty of packed servers for it, I usually wait until games are old to buy them so the bugs are already worked out and there is more content from the user community available, as well as FAQs and archived message boards to look through for answers to whatever questions I might have. Oh, yah—and so they don’t cost very much.
I tend to buy games that have a lot of replay value by way of some game mode that isn’t strictly mission oriented (such as Take a Ride mode in Driver games), mission builder type features, user community modifications that expand the game including fan missions and total conversions, and online multiplayer activity. I don’t buy a lot of games, so much as I play the same ones for ages. I guess I haven’t really been jamming vid as often for the last couple of years, in contrast to the previous five years.
I like the action games better than strategy or games in which you walk around in circles looking for crap, though the scenery and stories in those are compelling. I have played mostly Star Wars and WWII games. I like driving games as well, but not stuff like Formula 1 or NASCAR. Car combat or demolition racing are more my style. I really like combat flight and tank simulations, but not if they’re set in a period later than WWII.
My favorite Star Wars games are Rogue Squadron and Jedi Outcast. For the latter, I downloaded a model that resembled me very closely to swap for that wuss protagonist and put my face and hair color on it. Then I made some cool black jackets with obscenities plastered on the back and went to kicking major a**. Excellent game. Nice blood and dismemberment effects. No major bugs, either. I preferred the levels in which the enemies were those classic storm troopers, the kind from the first movie they made. I like that stuff, and I keep looking around for a mod that will make all dudes in Battlefront II look like the soldiers as they appeared in the opening battle of the first Star Wars movie. The most fun I’ve had playing Star Wars was jamming TDM in the Galactic Conquest total conversion for BF1942.
I enjoyed Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, but at the time I didn’t know about PC gaming, so I think I would have liked it better if I had played the PC version of that game instead of the PSOne version because it naturally had a great deal more content and better graphics.
I thought that MMORPG called Star Wars Galaxies was going to do it for me (and what a cool place that was). But the game was buggy and the combat system was BS, man. I quit before getting a good look at space, but planet-side you pretty much just stand there, trading blows with enemies to chip off points or whatever, and you couldn’t attack anything that wasn’t a designated target or collide with other players, which meant you couldn't run down crowds in your land speeder. You just drove right through them like they were ghosts, without hitting anything. WTF? That’s not Star Wars, man. Star Wars is the Wild West, where you have to be on guard constantly for anything at all.
When I first started out, I was instructed as a part of my quest or whatever to take a shuttle to some planet for further instructions. I found out that I was supposed to go back to the same planet I just came from, but was out of money already from buying the first shuttle ticket. I thought I’d just go kill some chump and take his KFC, but I wasn’t allowed to attack undesignated targets, so I had to start the game over. Hilarious. I guess that’s my favorite game to hate. Does that count, man?
When I first bought a PC and got online, I found out just how many WWII games there are for that platform. I was glad about that, and they offered more blood and guts than console games seemed to, not to mention a better picture. I saw what Half-Life looked like then, and I was very pleased to know there were games like that, but I still haven’t played it. I really want to do some COOP mode with someone on that game someday, including the SVEN COOP mod. There’s a mod that allows the original missions to be played in COOP mode.
I think I must like WWII shooters best, because that’s what I’ve played the most of. They’re so ubiquitous. And they’re all good, really, even the ones that suck. I wish I could say the same for all the Star Wars games I’ve played, but the sucky Star Wars games sucked, and so did quite a few of the good ones.
The most fun I’ve had jamming WWII has been playing the Forgotten Hope WWII total conversion for BF1942 in COOP mode with my server full of bots. I like that better than playing online with humans because online the servers use nametags, and I think it looks better without all that crap in the picture. Plus human players often each have their own little agendas (including spawn camping), and that tends to scatter them out on the map. Or they hide out and wait instead of engaging. And they do too much stupid s*** too much of the time, even though quite a lot of it is funny. Bots in that game tend to all fight over whatever single control point is pivotal, which makes for a lot better action with more soldiers in one place at the same time.
This year I subscribed to WWII Online again (3rd time) for a month to check it out once more. It looks far better than last time I played, but still presents two or three problems for me that make it impossible to get into what is otherwise a game that is perfectly suited for me (massive multiplayer, WWII, full simulation). Those problems being these: While there are hundreds of dudes online at once, they’re spread out over too much real estate instead of all fighting it out in large battles; There’s a logistics component to the game that results in a lack of available equipment, with which they are too stingy to begin with. I say screw that. Let people have all the tanks and guns and stuff they please, and let’s let it be a matter of killing the h*** out of the enemy to take over their territory rather than this attrition nonsense; Vehicle operators can’t exit trucks and tanks and artillery operators can’t get off their guns, so they’re too vulnerable; Too many jerks who think the game belongs to them, personally. What a game, though, man. It could be killer. I like a game, especially WWII, in which the operation of equipment is pure simulation rather than arcade.
I don’t usually play full realism in flight simulators, though. I like to use unlimited ammo and fuel. I also like to have external views enabled, so I can see a prettier picture and watch my plane getting shot up. My idea of a good way to play any driving or flying simulation is to play all buttoned up in first person with no external views, and then watch a recording of the action, during which you see the larger, more cinematic images of what just happened.
IL-2 combat flight simulation games are among my favorites to play. I only have three. These are WWII games that include a movie recorder with a very extensive but easy to use camera system. I think that Jane’s WWII Fighters was the first WWII combat flight sim I ever bought. Great game, especially for what year it was released. The only other one I have is Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3, which looks much more realistic than the IL-2 games, but includes no recording feature. The camera features are not as nice, either. Cool looking game, though. All of these WWII combat flight sims include a mission builder feature, which is important to me.
Sometime this year I will be purchasing the “Full Canvas Jacket†mod that upgrades the old Red Baron II (Red Baron 3D) game from 1998 to more current standards of appearance and performance. I’m sure that will become a favorite. It works pretty much like IL-2, with a mission builder and all that, but there’s no movie recorder. I don’t know, but I read that copies of Red Baron II (Red Baron 3D) are expensive and rare, and you have to have that to start with. I don’t believe in using a pirated copy of software unless a legal copy is simply unavailable for sale anywhere, but in any case, I’m glad I already have an old copy of Red Baron II.
I’ve only played three Thief games, one of which was actually a total conversion for Thief: Metal Age, but it may as well have been a stand alone game in the series, having taken a couple years to make, with new characters and a complete story, including missions and cutscenes. I haven’t played Thief III: Deadly Shadows, but the demo looked sharp and played well. I have to admit I’m not into the sneaking and stealing part so much as I am shooting people with arrows and hacking them with a sword.
I bought UT2004 to jam multiplayer with gaming buddies online, but when I found out it I was going to use up that many GBs of HD space to play a game with a limit of 32 players, I uninstalled it and that was that. These days I’m getting back into single player gaming after a few years of mostly online MP following my first subscription to broadband service. I guess the newer UT games probably have a larger player capacity. I kind of decided to just let that franchise go. I guess the main reason I became interested in UT games was to play the Thief inspired total conversions for them.
Mafia is probably my favorite game. I think games like Mafia and Crimson Skies are really cool. I haven’t played any other gangster games or games that play out like you are a character in a movie.
DRIV3R is a killer game, with the exception of the Auto Director views. I don’t have it installed right now due to hard drive space issues. I like riding the motorbikes and the boats. The motorbikes are what I think about when I feel the impulse to install DRIV3R again.
Driver (1) takes up so little HD space and works so well that I keep it on at least one of my rigs all the time. I love that game even though it has only straight roads and far too few opportunities to jump.
I still like to play Driver2. I think it’s a great game. How about that mission in Rio where you have to chase a car out of town and around one of the lakes or whatever that place is? That’s pretty tough, but you feel good when you finally ram that SOB off the road and send him to his doom. I was driving on the canyon wall and stuff trying to gain on that guy. I wish you could get over there in Take a Ride before the tape runs out. It’s nice that you can choose from different spawn points in subsequent Driver releases.
I like that corny music that plays while you’re jamming Take a Ride mode in Rio. Da da dat da dah. Yah, that’s a stupid song. I love it. How about the song at the end by Kenny Rogers? I don’t know the name, but he sings, “I just stopped in to check out what condition my condition was in.†I always wish he had sung, “…just checked in to check out…†That’s the song that plays during the music video scene while The Dude is unconscious in that film titled, The Big Lebowski, which is a very funny movie.
My favorite thing to do in Driver2 (I’m in the wrong thread) is Take a Ride out there where DPLkickASS lives.
*[Edited several times, mostly for spelling]*
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