Archaic video games

[My AIDS, Your Arse]

Let's compare with your own analysis: the brain's thirst for knowledge is due to an opium craving - does that mean learning is bad for you?

No, of course not.

But is learning bad for you in the context of a glowing box? What if the glowing box itself is the source of the 'addiction', and not what the glowing box is showing itself? Those questions I attempted to answer in my previous post.

One of the main points:

-Reading text on television, the brain is drawn down into hypnotic alpha-wave mode because of the glowing box.
-Reading text in a book, the brain must kick it into beta wavelengths.

Games themselves aren't bad.

[Aesir]

I think one of the best games i have ever played was one called Unreal World.

"Unreal is a unique graphical roguelike RPG taking place in ancient Finland during the late Iron Age.
It brings you a realistic game world rich with historical atmosphere in which northern folklore, knowledge and way of life play an important part."
You can hunt, trade and dont hve to do anything else. Its a good game to sit back and relax with.

Another great old game is a ASCII game called ADOM(Ancient Domains of Mystry) A dungons and dragons style of game that is massive and hard.
Other games that i value would be Shadow of the Collosus, the Metal Gear Solid series and The Elder Scrolls series.

Most games are bad, i agree with that, but some games are telling a great story.

The rest are just trying to make lots of money.

[-H418ov21.C]

For the PC, I still can appreciate and estimate Sim City 2000 / 4, Age of Empires, Caesar III, and Zeus - Master of the Olympus. Don't know if that's really archaic, but it's great. When I'll finally quit Windows, I'll bring those with me and make them work under Wine or something, even if I touch them only once every six months.

Outside of the PC, I still have consideration for some SNES and N64 generation games, almost anything after being rubbish for me. Ocarina of Time and GoldenEye 007 will always be unrivaled and incomparable video game summits and achievements.

[Flame]

Problem with games that are trying to tell a good story is that the game itself become an obstacle to tell the said story.
Most of the time you have to kill/jump/crap for hours just to know where the hell the item/person to continue the story is.

[Conservationist]

If you want to tell a story, write a book.

Movies are too caught up in appearance, no structure.

Video games require so much to play the game, there's little room for story.

You could also do an epic concept album, but then people get caught up in tapping their feet to the music and forget the meaning behind it, and then misinterpret the meaning it conveys.

[Nimbostratus]

If you want to tell a story, write a book.

Movies are too caught up in appearance, no structure.

Video games require so much to play the game, there's little room for story.

You could also do an epic concept album, but then people get caught up in tapping their feet to the music and forget the meaning behind it, and then misinterpret the meaning it conveys.

This applies for comics too. You have to sacrifice text for the graphics.

Music? It has the conciseness of poetry.

[Eleison]

If you want to tell a story, write a book.

Movies are too caught up in appearance, no structure.

I've been doing a film studies course at uni recently, it's actually interesting to note how early directors who were essentially children of romanticism tended to think of developing film technique (which was non-existent at the time) by looking to how music functions.  A lot of really early films are actually fairly interesting, even if only to see the difficulties of working with a totally new art form.

[esoteric]

In many ways, appearance (or the audio-visual medium) is a harder language to work with than sound. There's a strong temptation to get lazy and misunderstand that you're working with a communicative medium and not just showing cool/entertaining things (hi Quentin Tarantino!). There are only a few directors who made films where the full potential of the film medium is used - almost none were from the U.S.

[Perennial_Man]

Yo! I'll just drop some excellent gamage here. All these games are fairly intelligent considering the programming.

I noticed Rome: Total War, but Sir Umbrage did not mention the fantastic Europa Barbarorum mod which totally fucking kicks ass and can be played online through ip.

The only other games I'll mention are more online real-time strategy created by the brilliant Paradox Interactive.

First up is Hearts of Iron 3. You can play out all of your zaniest Nazi fantasies if you can stop the world from destroying you.

Probably the most in-depth strategy game created, Europa Universallis 3, covers nearly the entire world from 1399 to 1820!

The final game I will share is [v2.1]]Victoria 2: Revolutions. Be the Supreme Dictator of the Confederate States of America and annex the entire Union establishment, then establish slave states through the Caribbean as you rise in status as a global power, then kick France's ass for succumbing to liberalism!

_
I tried adding a good torrent for Vicky 2, but the syntax causes the link to break. http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7004463/Victoria_II_A_House_Divided_[full_setup][v2.1] (and there again, just copypasta this whole line including "[full_setup][v2.1]" -- plus serch in piratebay for the House Divided 2.3 patch)

[scourge]

Every time video games get brought up on this forum, a pile of assholes spills out of the woodwork to defend them as transcending merely sitting down and passing time in front of a glowing screen.

Truth. Just to echo the above, the act of kicking back after a long day of actual accomplishments isn't in dispute. But, attempting to equate playing video games with what one can achieve in life away from the screen in the same time spent just tells the rest of us the asshole in question has little in way of actual accomplishments. The rest of us are not going to be fooled even as you successfully delude yourselves.

If you like games and want to relax, try a non-video game one from the design side and not the play side. Create a system for working out the mechanics, for player progression and development, a world history and geography, problematic scenarios and believable personalities to challenge would be players. Even that is better than clicking through three dialogue options beneath a cartoony graphics face to embark on some smash it or fetch it "quest", designed for consumers ages 12 and up.

[Iron]

I agree with the above sentiment.

There are worse things than video-games, but I'm uneasy about their celebration. I think they're pretty toxic in the long run. They are designed to satisfy our desire for adventure and world-building without allowing us to actually engage in it 'for real'. The distinction between pornography and actual (good) sex comes to mind. Pornography should piss you off and leave you dissatisfied. So should video-gaming. If you have self-respect, you should expect more from life than such a cheap simulacrum...

Look. Every time the sun sets, the opportunity for adventure begins. I had a spontaneous adventure earlier this evening. Take a walk, take a drive. Soak up the night air, find/invent a mystery to appreciate. If you can do this with other people, even better.

[aquarius]

Consumer is the key word. Unlike other members of generation x y z dumbfuck, I actually grew out of this stuff way back, but briefly returned to it years later as some sort of 'trip down memory lane' only to find it had about the same depth as the different design used on milk cartons back then. It is a waste of childhood and I now put an altogether different value into memories as a result. But I seriously couldn't imagine the devestating effects of carrying this into adulthood, for one thing I barely even have enough time to listen to cds any more.