I feel optimistic about games again.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I played Xenonauts yesterday. And tonight. Now, Pinback and I might have gone a little crazy in their forum, but this is a GOOD GAME. It's filled with all the stuff I loved about X-COM. Sure, it's not finished yet. But it's amazing, so far.

And then there is Expeditions: Conquistador.

The writing blows anything else I have played in a long time that wasn't a text game out of the water. You can hit escape to get past the parts you have already seen. It seems like there are many nice options for your characters. It gives you a pool of people to hire and they all seem to have some personality. The way they did it definitely makes me think that maybe I should have adopted the "make your character, select followers that the devs made" thing for my work in progress, haha. It looks amazing, has great music and I'd call the combat that I have seen so far to be the tolerable kind of Japanese RPG combat. Meaning, it's JRPG combat that isn't in a JRPG. (I can't stand the cooldown thing or limit break or whatever from Final Fantasy. This is turn-based.)

Expeditions: Conquistador was crowd funded.



Tonight I typed "RPG" into Kickstarter and there were at least four or five games that I either wish I helped fund, or wanted to play. People are making good-looking games and providing experiences that AAA publishers won't. More to the point...

The independent gaming scene sort of became something that I had zero interest in. Lots of games getting the most coverage seemed pretentious, for lack of a better word. Winners and losers were picked arbitrarily. You had unfinished games winning awards and boot-lickers thinking there was nothing wrong with that. It wasn't a meritocracy. The scene seemed like the tedious kids from high school who were chiefly concerned in showing people how clever they were. I know there are some big generalizations in what I am saying, but that's what it seemed like to me.

I don't feel that way any more.

Say what you will about Xenonauts, but it isn't pretentious. Conquistador isn't trying to pass off a tech demo as a game, it's a game. This week has been refreshing. I always thought that "games," for me, would morph into arcade games (Space Invaders to Gauntlet II) and pinball. I thought using a computer for this sort of thing was coming to an end.

I don't feel that way any more.

There are, I am happy to say, an ever-growing number of games involving moving little dudes around the screen. I remember spending summer night after summer night in 1996 playing the first X-COM, just being blown away by a game I had not heard of, and being amazed at the things it did. In addition to Xenos and Conquistador, the Shadowrun Returns game looks great. Antharion looks great.

All right, I gotta get some sleep. But when it comes to the PC, I am happy.

[AArdvark]

I have been watching all the games I have ever had a mild interest in playing on Youtube. Mostly to erase any inclination of actually wanting to play them.

Bioshock: watched

Heavy Rain: watched

Hitman 2: Silent Assassin: in process

I guess this means gaming is truly dead for me.


THE
GAME OVER
PLAYER ONE
AARDVARK

[RetroRomper]

I played the new X-Com game several months ago and I was in the same mode "Games are fun again!" I thought, until late in the game where I encountered a new enemy and... The game froze whenever it came on screen.

Supposed work arounds were to kill them off screen with the bazooka / rocket launcher, turn off various pieces of animation & game settings (which I tried) and to whole hog remove the creators animations from the game (which I also tried).

Nothing worked! 30 hours of game time wasted because of a bug that manifested itself in the latest patch.. Argh.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have been watching all the games I have ever had a mild interest in playing on Youtube. Mostly to erase any inclination of actually wanting to play them.

Bioshock: watched

Oh no! Bioshock is really fun to experience! Well, shit.

Shit.

I think we should have an Aardvark Games Recommendation Thread.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Nothing worked! 30 hours of game time wasted because of a bug that manifested itself in the latest patch.. Argh.

Unbelievable.

I would hope that they would have an emergency patch to fix that shit?

[RetroRomper]

Nope... There are two game breaking bugs that haven't (and apparently won't be) patched even through updates via paid DLC:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/di ... 077234533/



I've encountered both of them, with the last essentially making it impossible for me to complete the last third of the missions. Word is that these issues only manifest on "Normal" play, but the solutions range from (as I said before) disabling certain animation files / effects to the technological equivalent of waving a magic wand over your computer case.

Apparently when I'm ready to enjoy a game, the game is programmed to say "Fuck you, Retro!" in giant red letters.