h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I dunno if this will get a response or not but since video (computer)games
have become so popular I wonder what games other people are playing?
There are some good games out there, as well as some clunkers so
a couple of comments could be a guide to others.

I've just finished Jason and the Argonauts which I almost took back
when I first started playing it.
Very linear and dated graphics but it turned out to be an enjoyable
game, and the boss battles weren't too hard either.

I'm still sulking because Fallout 3 was so good everything else recently has seemed pants!

Gonna get all the DL content for it mind and start a new game.

Also playing the colonisation mod for Civ 4. I really *loved* the orginal colonisation back in the day so I shall see if this lives up.

FB

Jet Set Willy.

That might not, strictly speaking, be true.

"Praetorians", an old-ish RTS game set during the Roman wars in Gaul (Julius Caesar and all that). It's quite good, not least because it eschews the usual RTS thing of resource gathering and base building and has a much greater focus on combat. It's also not possible to build troop-spawning buildings all over the place so you have to use the forces on the battlefield carefully and bringing fresh ones into play takes some time both to train and to transport.

Also "Bangai-O Spirits" on the Nintendo DS which is one of the best, most gloriously old-fashioned games I've played in ages. It has a great custom level design feature too, meaning enormous replay value (although I'm a long way from beating all the levels that come with it).

In addition, I found myself playing "Driver 2" on the PSOne for the first time in years again today and managed to beat a level that stumped me for ages on my first try this time (the level just before the move to Havana, for those who have played it). Looks-wise it's dated horribly but the gameplay is still pretty good although it was arguably one of the first games to place a huge emphasis on storyline and cutscenes outwith actual gameplay which has become a bit of a bette noire in gaming for me.

Links 2003 is STILL the best golf simulation available. It's $6.99 downloadable at last count and still has people designing brand new, up-to-date courses using modern techniques. My desert-island game of choice.

I also play a fair bit of International Cricket Captain, Virtual Pool 3 and Championship/Football manager. Anything that's not a sports sim tends to be relegated to the bottom drawer fairly rapidly in my house.

B

At the moment...

Eve Online (Internet spaceships!)
Medieval Total War II
hattrick (Simple-ish online football management game - A10451332)

Hey Zagreb, I loved that Praetorians game. So much fun hiding your troops in the trees only to have them ambush the enemy unexpectedly. That and sending your hawk to scout out the terrain (it was never entirely clear how he could tell you what he'd seen ).

Sadly I've not had the chance to play any computer games recently, but the two I'd like to spend some time on are "Dwarf Fortress" (look up "Boatmurdered" if you want to know why) and "Sins of a Solar Empire" (which looks to be an interesting space-based RTS game).

Oh, and the one game I did get a chance to play a bit recently was "Street Fighter Alpha 2" on the SNES emulator... Honestly, I preferred the original SF2 probably for nostalgia reasons, but was kind of fun.

I thought Fallout 3 was a bit pants at first but once I was out in the world
it really took off. Definitely the game of the year for me.
I made the mistake of going to the purifying plant too soon so I was
really p*ssed when it ended.and no free roaming afterwards.
Luckily I had saved just before going in so I spent many hours just
wandering round and discovering stuff.

I've just bought FEAR 2 which had a good review so no prizes for guessing
what I'll be doing tonight.

Chrono Trigger had a good review for the DS, sounds ideal for those
who like their games a bit retro.

At the moment playing "Edna Bricht Aus", a German point'n'click adventure sort of in the style of Monkey Island and the other old-style LucasArts ones. Sam and Max will be next after that.

Still haven't finished Morrowind (not had a chance to play for, oh, two years or so) and also still doing Age of Mythology.

Stopped playing Beyond Good and Evil, because the interface was annoying (and so was the soundtrack...) but should probably finish that at some point, too.

I own two games, both on the PS2:

Star Wars Battlefront II and Star Wars Lego II.

I have played neither recently but do like 'em when I fire 'em up.

I needs me a Wipout stylee racing game for the aforementioned PS23. Possibly even a Wipeout derivative.

>Hey Zagreb, I loved that Praetorians game. So much fun hiding your troops in the trees only to have them ambush the enemy unexpectedly. That and sending your hawk to scout out the terrain (it was never entirely clear how he could tell you what he'd seen.

Yeah, the whole use of forests as cover thing really appealed to me too, not the sort of thing most RTS's bother with. I was playing it the other day and attacked a bunch of Gauls on the edge of a forest and suddenly all these re-enforcements poured out of the trees and my legionnaries ended up being overwhelmed and slaughtered.

Another game I've been playing is 'Darwinia' an RTS game that feels like 'Cannon Fodder' or 'Syndicate' (if you can remember them) but set in a world not unlike that in the film 'Tron'. Great stuff!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinia_(video_game)

My trouble with that kind of simulations is that I always insist on all my troops surviving. That means it takes a loooong time to play, especially in games where they don't heal!

There's a squad-based strategy game called "Full Spectrum Warrior" where the purpose is to not let any members of your four-man team die whilst completing your missions; many of which I seem to recall are about getting from A to B without getting an RPG up your catflap.

>I needs me a Wipout stylee racing game for the aforementioned PS23. Possibly even a Wipeout derivative.

The original 'Wipeout' should run on a PS2, since Sony made the PS2 backward-compatible (something I gathered they've not bothered with so much with the PS3).

CoD4, CoD:WaW, Guitar Hero World Tour.

Mass Effect is mouldering in its box, as is GTAIV.

Hmmmm.... now Mass Effect is IMHO worth playing. But was terribly disappointing. It was a game of wasted potential I reckon. I guess I just could not help comparing it to KOTOR, and the truth is the comparison just isn't very flattering.

In a sense I kinda had this with GTA IV. The game was brilliant, technically. I really was gripped.

But.....

It just couldn't quite reach the heights of San Andreas, and consequently felt vaguely disappointing.... ho hum!

FB

I've only played a couple of hours worth of GTA4 but I was a bit disappointed. The improved graphics and physics engine is wonderful but they've sucked a lot of the humourous/parody elements from the game and made it too much of a po-faced gangster sim with just the occasional bit of humour. I also didn't like how they removed a lot of the "video game" aspects like the cash bonuses for pulling off stunts and the unrealistic-but-fun car handling. It's all representative of programmers thinking gamers want less and less fun and more and more "realism" and 'king "story". Fortunately, much of the feedback I've seen for the game has the same issues so hopefully Rockstar will take heed when they write the next installment.

Looking forward to 'Chinatown Wars' on the DS, though. It looks like a halfway house between the original top-down GTA games and the true-3D entries; it also looks more like a proper video game and less like an interactive B-movie.

I agree about the humour...

In San Andres (and to a lesser extent Vice City) I regularly laughed myself silly.

Mike Torino (played by James Woods) was a hoot!

I remeber the first time I ever played GTA back on the PSone, getting a bonus for running over a whole troupe of Hare Krishnas, and thinking "I am gonna have fun with this game!".

FB

I'm on Wipeout Fusion at the moment. Since I like to play games right through in a very completist way, most games a play last around 100 hours of game time, which will take me a good 6 months. I think I'm approaching the end of this one though, so I'm looking at replaying Final Fantasy X afterwards. I never got too far with it, but got quite into watching my bro and sis. The battle and level-up systems are still the best in the series, in my opinion (which most disagree with).