So... Do you game?

[Dice]

I was wondering the other day if people around here found the opportunity to play games (most inclusive sense). So why not put up sort of an informal poll?
Add comments or anecdotes, comment and discuss!

1. What game do you like best at the moment?
2. What game is your all time favorite?
3. Which game have you played the most?
4. Other comments

 

[gpsguy]

Nope. Never have been a gamer.

 

[Ericloewe]

Tricky questions.

In terms of time spent, the following stand out (in approximate chronological order of when they were played):

• Super Mario 64 (N64 and much later the DS remake)
• Star Wars Shadows of the Empire (N64)
• Mario Party 1 and 2 (N64)
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron (N64, later some frustrated attempts at emulation, much more recently the patched PC version on Steam)
• Two out of three Pokémon games in each generation until FireRed/LeafGreen (inclusive, GBC, GBA)
• Super Mario Sunshine (GC)
• Far Cry (On my severely undercooled local OEM Pentium 4 box with an Nvidia GeForce 4 MX crap GPU)
• The Sims 2 (PC)
• Sim City 4 (PC, micromanaging heaven, but filled with nasty bugs)
• Star Wars Battlefront II (Xbox)
• Crysis/Crysis Wars (On my severely undercooled Core 2 Duo HP laptop with an Nvidia GeForce 9600M)
• Final Fantasy XIII (360, and what a disappointment)
• CoD MW2 (First on the same laptop, later on my current, ship of Theseus workstation)
• Team Fortress 2 (And so begins the age of Steam)
• The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (Emulated on Wii virtual console, never had it for the N64, later got the 3DS remake)
• GTA Vice City, San Andreas and (much later) V (PC)
• Hitman Blood Money (PC)
• Half-Life 1, 2 and episodes (PC)
• Final Fantasy X-2, X and XII (All emulated on PC, the former two day-one PC HD rerelease purchases, XII will be the same).
• Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII (PC, morbid curiosity and steam sales make for dangerous companions)
• Kerbal Space Program (PC)
• Prison Architect (PC)
• Final Fantasy VI (SNES, emulated on PC)
• Tales of Phantasia (PS1, emulated on PC)

Currently playing Tales of Symphonia (PC port of PS3 HD remaster of crippled PS2 version of GameCube Original)

Some assorted fun facts:

• Super Mario 64 was my first game. I remember seeing it at Toys R' Us around the time it was released, and I distinctly remember a room which is definitely not in the game. To this date, I'm not sure what's up with that. About half of the early N64 games were actually bought by my mother for my father, who was somewhat into PC games back then.
• Factor 5, the studio behind Rogue Squadron, were wizards at pushing Nintendo consoles. The N64 had a weird architecture and, most importantly, loaded the microcode for the chip that was most similar to what we'd call a GPU from program ROM - which means that games packed the microcode they used, which means it could be altered. Besides several Nintendo revisions, based on SGI's crummy microcode (SGI had written great microcode for non-realtime rendering and crap microcode for real-time), some studios made their own. Some guys at Factor 5 had contacts in the German military, with access to equipment that would let them reverse-engineer the N64, which they did. Their microcode seriously outperformed SGI's and made it feasible to run their games at 640x480 instead of 320x240.
• Not listed is a rather obscure game, titled (in Europe) Mystical Ninja 2 Starring Goemon, from when Konami actually made good games. As a kid, it totally flew over my head just how japanese that game was and how hilarious it really is. Mostly because I never got far, because Konami cheaped out and didn't include EEPROM or battery-backed SRAM on the cartridge for saving, requiring an external memory pack (512KB battery-backed SRAM, IIRC). Mine was unreliable, the battery probably needs to be replaced.
• As a franchise, pokémon is probably the largest time waster I've had in my life.
• I never actually had a computer from the height of the capacitor plague. After the OEM crap box with the Pentium 4, my next computer was an HP desktop from shortly after Windows Vista's release.
• I started playing Final Fantasy X-2 because a friend wanted help emulating it on her PC. That's probably what kept me from viewing Final Fantasy as overrated crap forever, after XIII. XV is probably going to still be crap, though, I do not have high hopes.
• I started playing Tales of Phantasia because I was fascinated (almost wrote phascinated just now) with the fact that the SNES original had voice acting in a 6MB ROM, with samples quickly swapped in an out of the 64KB sound RAM, to allow for somewhat intelligible speech.

 

[JoshDW19]

I'm a huge fan of the Final Fantasy series. FFVIII will always be my favorite!!! I'm currently playing Civilization 6 and it's pretty awesome. I also play a bit of league of legends from time to time. I have an atari, nintendo, SNES, and PS1, 2, and 3 and I really enjoy the old games on those. Also if you haven't checked it out yet Osiris on PC is pretty good. It makes me think of what the martian would be like if it were made into a game...except with a giant space worm that wants to eat your face off.

 

[Ericloewe]

FFVIII will always be my favorite

Oh, controversial opinion. That's alright, I'm firmly in the XII is number two and VI is number one camp.

 

[JoshDW19]

Oh, controversial opinion. That's alright, I'm firmly in the XII is number two and VI is number one camp.

Very controversial in the Final Fantasy community. I remember going on a Final Fantasy forum years ago and saying 8 was the best. I'm pretty sure I was relentlessly flamed for about a week straight :p.

 

[MisterIce]

I used to be. Played for at least 15 to 20 hours a week but not so much anymore. Maybe an hour or 3 a week and if I game its either on my PC (GTX 980TI and 28 inch monitor) or the Xbox One.

1. What game do you like best at the moment?
Not really a specific game at the moment. Waiting a bit for games to come out, but if I had to choose I'd say Mafia III

2. What game is your all time favorite?
Difficult choice, maybe Super Mario or Age of Empires II

3. Which game have you played the most?
Super Mario by far

4. Other comments
Still like to fire up the old Nintendo or Super Nintendo once in a while to play one of the classics.

 

[anodos]

I'm pretty sure I was relentlessly flamed for about a week straight :p.

And deservedly so. That game was terrible.

 

[anodos]

I was wondering the other day if people around here found the opportunity to play games (most inclusive sense). So why not put up sort of an informal poll?
Add comments or anecdotes, comment and discuss!

I stopped playing video games right around 2000-2001. No time for them any more.

1. What game do you like best at the moment?

Not particularly relevant

2. What game is your all time favorite?

That'd probably be the original System Shock. Great story. Eerie. Awesome game mechanics for the time.

3. Which game have you played the most?

probably D&D rpgs. I played the heck out of those Gold Box games.

4. Other comments

Crap. I'm getting old. I probably quit playing video games before some people in these forums were born.

 

[Ericloewe]

And deservedly so. That game was terrible.

Let's just agree that XIII is worse and II was way too experimental.

 

[JoshDW19]

Let's just agree that XIII is worse and II was way too experimental.

That is something we can definitely agree on! @anodos you crack me up man.

 

[m0nkey_]

@DrKK and I play Insurgency. I have a server running on my FreeNAS box. You're welcome to come play.

 

[Jailer]

Havent gamed in quite some time. My very long in tooth 285GTX wont run much of anything 3 years old or newer. Still fun to crank up some old games and play once in a while.

Used to play a lot of the delta force games with Black Hawk Down being most of it with a gang of guys when i was on second shift. It was a lot of fun talking smack at work each day and then following it up with some friendly killing of each other in the evening. :D

 

[Dice]

ehh I forgot to share my own thoughts :)

I've spent some 15 years playing Starcraft and 2-3 years on Dota2. Back in the 90s I played SNES a lot. Favorite game was Top Gear.

1. Dota 2
Far higher complexity than Starcraft, a lot less focus on mechanical skill. A lot of focus on psychology and group dynamics to achieve success. It is the game with the highest price pools at the moment. Great for e-sports entertainment. I watch more than I play. Strange thing this is, satisfaction arising from watching other people play games.

2. Starcraft: Brood War.
The performance connected to mechanical skill was drastically reduced when SCII came out. Since I thrived on mechanical / mental prioritization of tasks rather than strategical innovation I felt Starcraft II changed the mechanics meta to simplify gaming-life in ways that old school Starcraft people would recognize to be degrading to the art of the game.

3. Starcraft: Brood War
..played Stracraft and then Brood war approximately 12 years rather continuously. From 98, until SCII came out in july 2010. A lot of lessons on how to keep calm in pressured situations and make correct prioritization have transferred from the gaming world onto my regular life. Think "getting things done" and self improvement work.

4. I don't consider myself much of a gamer since I've only really spent time with Starcraft and Dota. I enjoy the constant improvement and meta analysis of performance rather than the games themselves.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

1. Cribbage, with my wife, on a Saturday evening, gin martini, two olives.
2. Elite.
3. Elite.
4. I'm referring to the original version on the BBC Micro.

Super Mario 64 was my first game

Wow, you're so ... young.
;)