ADDiCT wrote:

Maybe you should think more about the really important things in life.

Why do people who love to think and discuss about games cannot have more important things in real life? Do you really believe that a hobby should always take 100% of your time?

ADDiCT wrote:

not discussed in each and every aspect.

Why not? Many people love to discuss the aspects of their hobbies, games or otherwise, and it is an entirely harmless activity. Moreover, nobody is forced to join the discussion either.

I like to discuss those things(games/hobbies etc), heck even over a beer or two at the local pub.

Edited by MiniMax.

So what do you want from a game, folks? Dynamic campaign? Challenging puzzles? Memorable storyline? Strategic elements in action game? Pretty graphics? Ease to get started? And what are the things you don't want?

Edited by MiniMax.

As for the topic, I want from a game to be entertained and not be bored. That can be accomplished in so many ways that it's hard to write...

Edited by MiniMax.

KAN: I love quite a few of Micropose´s games, such as Master Of Orion (1 and 2) Pirates (on Amiga and C64) and quite a few others of their games. So I agree with you, and Dominus you need something to drink, since I am not really that bad, and well I have learned a lot from the past, and I know from past experience on other boards how much people can hate me. Even if I tell the truth, so I am not worried about you. Since I don´t want to bring the past up. So shall we be cool to each other Dominus ?

Here are my random thoughts...

Quality over quantity; but having said that, I dislike "high quality" games that take too long to complete. I prefer a "short and sweet" game.

Plenty of cheating options! I want to be able to "max out" my character, and crush everything in sight!

Good automap. Always makes life easier. (Descent's automap was good.)

First person RPGs - I quite like 'em!

Printed manual. Still can't get used to onscreen .pdf files!

Mission-based shooters. For instance, I preferred Star Wars Dark Forces over Doom.

I am waiting for a voice recognition (RPG) game to come out, so that I can talk to the NPCs!

How about some new DOS games? People still make ZX Sinclair Spectrum games, and games for other 8-bit platforms.

(Sorry if some of the above wasn't spot-on topic.)

I could never get into flight simulators.

I guess most of the points discussed here will be personalized and each to his own. Anyway, here are my (maybe insignificant) views :

WANTS:

1. Games which come in big boxes with real, hardcore, thick manuals which provide good information on the gameplay world and which provide an interactive experience. Remember the Adventure Journal of the Gold Box RPG series of SSI? The part which says "..this is recorded as journal entry nn...", really provides a two world interaction. You have something in your own hands to co-relate with the events that are happening in the game. Something like a bridge between our world and the game world.
I just hate those DVD cases with skimpy or non-existent manuals or playgyuides. And I detest those online or on-cd manuals. It takes away all the fun.

2. Any extras in the box related to the game, like Ultima VI's orb and the classic cloth maps, the pewter figurine in Drakkhen, the "Diary of a Mad Man" in Dreamweb, and like the goodies which came in those Infocom's boxes.

3. I always thought how it would be to make a game so that you can interact with each and everything like Ultima VII, and you can do whatever you want. I always imagined how a game like Quest for Glory I, is programmed in such a way, that you can do anything. Talk to anyone with multiple topics and choices. Do anything, like the thief breaking into other buildings, like the shopkeeper's, the tavern, and even breaking into the thief guild's treasury or even the castle. And what if the Magic user is able to somehow use his magic inside the town and wreak havoc and become the ruler of Spielburg!? What if the Fighter can call the goon for a duel? What if the sheriff can be bribed by the thief to steal in the town. And what if the fighter can actually kill his tutor at the castle grounds? What if the programmers have drawn the inside of the castle stables and you can now see and do things in it? And what about rain in Spielburg? Can you catch cold if you get drenched? And if yes, can you go to the Healer to heal? For a price? And pay with the money stolen from the beggar in the alley(heheh..how low can you get, eh 😁) .... And to fill up one whole cd with all these possibilities rather than cramming the cd with just graphics and speech alone?
Maybe Oblivion is one of the games which are nearing this possibility.

4. I want games like the oldern days, which are able to hook me with the brilliance in game design. Not just with graphics alone.

5. I'm an audio afficionado. I like games with excellent good music pieces.
King's Quest V - weeping willow, princess cassima theme, Legend of Kyrandia musics come to mind.

6. I want to see more platform and side-scrolling beat-em-up games. Those 3D versions of Beat-em-ups are not so interesting, and sometimes seem to get confusing.

7. I want more good turn-based-strategy games. I prefer to think out my moves rather than fumbling with the mouse and keyboard in real-time strategy games. And yep, I'm the one who plays M.A.X. in pure turn based mode. But I don't deny the excitement in rts games too. Warcraft II and C&C:RA bring good memories.

DON'T WANTS:

1. Me-too-First-Person-Shooters. Stop it! Enough already.

2. "Wow, that game sold well. Let's make something like it and substitute this with that and that with this" games.

3. Resource hungry,beautiful looking games. (read Crysis). Why? Why make people cry with resource hungry graphics and codes? Why can't game companies make good use of the available technology before jumping further?

And now, i'm gonna resume playing some games, instead of discussing them to death (; . I'm gonna finish Far Cry II on the 360 (even though the controls suck, but my PC is too weak for the game, and i'm hooked on getting all wapon upgrades), and start/resume playing Dead Space and Ninja Gaiden II on the same system. What i want from a game? Fun! Entertainment! Excitement! A challenge! Once you accept the fact that the quality of games varies all over the place, just as in any other medium of entertainment (music, movies, books, comics, etc.), you'll be much more relaxed towards their shortcomings, and able to enjoy them, instead of longing for that perfect game you'll probably never get. Now, was that on-topic and wise, or what?! (;

Edited by MiniMax.

ADDiCT: you are correct about there are no perfect games, there are only perfect ideas, and ideals about perfect games and so forth. And well, there is a game I would love a lot more, than I do. And that is Baldurs gate 2 with expansion (yes I have updated to the newest patch) , if it wasn´t having an insane "resting" error , which basically pisses me off. But anyway other than that, then it is a great game, and discussing games and so forth is one of the reasons why this forum is here.

Edited by MiniMax.

On topic:
@Malik's Don't Wants:

3. Resource hungry,beautiful looking games. (read Crysis). Why? Why make people cry with resource hungry graphics and codes? Why can't game companies make good use of the available technology before jumping further?

I beg you to reconsider a bit. You are mentioning Ultima 6 and Ultima 7 as some of the games you enjoyed and the features as wants. But remember back when they were released. Ultima 7 (and I also think U6, but I'm not sure) put a terrible strain on the common system when it was released. Only the high-end systems of that time could run the game in a nice way without it crashing all the time. Same is true for Ultima 8 and other Origin games like Wing Commander. It just got forgotten in time, when we all had nicer machines how frustrating these games were on release time 😀
So, yes, it bothers me a lot that these new games (Like FC2) won't run on my system but I know that one day I *could* run them without a problem 😀

Edited by MiniMax.

Bah - now you forced me to read this topic, a topic I am totally un-interested in. And so I have to choose between censoring you or locking the thread. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and do some creative editing.

ADDiCT wrote:

What i want from a game? Fun! Entertainment! Excitement! A challenge!

Of course, but different people have different things that rock their boat, as well as things that turn them off. For example, one of the things that define "fun" and "excitement" for me and Martin is Microprose-styled gameplay, while Malik loves the abilty to fully interact with the world. Retro games 100 prefers mission-based FPS to level-based ones, while rumbadumba doesn't seem to like flightsims.

ADDiCT wrote:

instead of longing for that perfect game you'll probably never get.

See above. The thread is about specific things that make the game "fun and exciting" according to each individual's POV.

retro games 100 wrote:

I am waiting for a voice recognition (RPG) game to come out, so that I can talk to the NPCs!

While we're at it, I think speech synthesizer (instead of pre-recorded speech) is a nice thing to have in RPG, because we can have more dynamic replies during conversation. I'd also love to hear the NPC pronounced my character's name instead calling me 'The Chosen One' or 'The Avatar'.

retro games 100 wrote:

Printed manual. Still can't get used to onscreen .pdf files!

Well I actually love to print my manuals and bind the pages using spiral connection. 😀

Malik wrote:

3. I always thought how it would be to make a game so that you can interact with each and everything like Ultima VII, and you can do whatever you want. I always imagined how a game like Quest for Glory I, is programmed in such a way, that you can do anything. Talk to anyone with multiple topics and choices. Do anything, like the thief breaking into other buildings, like the shopkeeper's, the tavern, and even breaking into the thief guild's treasury or even the castle. And what if the Magic user is able to somehow use his magic inside the town and wreak havoc and become the ruler of Spielburg!? What if the Fighter can call the goon for a duel? What if the sheriff can be bribed by the thief to steal in the town. And what if the fighter can actually kill his tutor at the castle grounds? What if the programmers have drawn the inside of the castle stables and you can now see and do things in it? And what about rain in Spielburg? Can you catch cold if you get drenched? And if yes, can you go to the Healer to heal? For a price? And pay with the money stolen from the beggar in the alley(heheh..how low can you get, eh 😁) .... and to fill up one whole cd with all these possibilities rather than cramming the cd with just graphics and speech alone?

Actually, that's what I was thinking too when reading about using CD-ROM for games in a 1991 issue of CGW. At that time, I was thinking about Ultima VI with much bigger but more detailed world, deeper conversation, where each individual NPC that is as interesting as Iolo or Dupre instead of being window dressing.

And while this is not directly related to storage capacity, I also thought about NPCs whose behaviour changes dynamically as the time goes, instead of following the pattern over and over again. For instance, I'd like to see Sir Geoffrey having disagreement with Lord British and being fired from his job as Captain of the Guards, as a possible result of dynamically interacting NPCs which may or may not be influenced by my actions.

Oh, I could go on and on about this. If you want to see just how in-depth I can get, perhaps my Weasel-Ideal section could be helpful.

But what do I want from a game, in general? Immersion. Kreshna above complained about the overuse of first-person perspective in games. I, on the other hand, embrace it. I've been playing first-person games since Wolfenstein, and as of late they've only gotten better in terms of making me actually feel that I am the main character. Mirror's Edge did a great job of that, and so did Far Cry 2. For older examples, the original XBox game Breakdown did an amazing job with immersion (shame about the voice acting, but that's another story entirely).

But immersion is one thing that I absolutely embrace in games. I've got memories of playing games like Riven and just getting lost in the world. Here we have a world that the developer has obviously spent lots of time tweaking and making just right, so why shouldn't I be able to stop and smell the roses, so to speak? Looking at every little painstaking detail, enjoying the scenery, experimenting with the way this game world works.

I've got memories of playing games like Riven and just getting lost in the world.

I always got lost in ultima7, mainly because i didn't understand english.
Thus it was a lot fun to explore that huge world, completely without aim.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Printed manual. Still can't get used to onscreen .pdf files!

Well I actually love to print my manuals and bind the pages using spiral connection. 😀

I'm going to "PC World" this Sunday...I'm going to pick up a couple of ink cartridges! 😉 😀

wildweasel wrote:

Oh, I could go on and on about this. If you want to see just how in-depth I can get, perhaps my Weasel-Ideal section could be helpful.

😳 ADDiCT berated me for merely having this thread and you have an entire blog dedicated for such thing? I wonder what he would say after seeing your blog. 🤣

Nonetheless, a very fine blog. 😀

wildweasel wrote:

But what do I want from a game, in general? Immersion. Kreshna above complained about the overuse of first-person perspective in games.

Actually, I don't hate first-person perspective in itself; I'm merely fed up with the amount of first-person games in the market that such thing become generic. Nonetheless, there were days where I really loved first-person perspective in non-flightsims. My first love was Ultima Underworld, and the next one was System Shock.

wildweasel wrote:

But immersion is one thing that I absolutely embrace in games.

Yup. You've mentioned that you don't like HUD. I hid the bezel in System Shock as well, while only keeping the essential displays on.

wildweasel on his blog wrote:

Oh, and I forgot to mention the real use of the right stick - pan all the way to the left or right, and you can use a handgun or SMG to shoot through the windows. Or in convertibles, you can shoot above and in front of you (at the cost of less armor on your car). Just like good ol' Quarantine.

In PC, the most ideal controller for the gun is Monster Gecko's PistolMouse IMO. Steering wheel on the left hand, and PistolMouse in the right hand.

Things I want to see in flightsims:

(1) Dynamic campaign. Nuff said.

(2) Strategic involvement. I always love the strategic elements in Total Air War, as well as the freedom to decide your target in MiG Alley's final campaign. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and Their Finest Hour are probably not much, but it is the strategy part that keeps me glued to the games.

(3) Smart friendly AI. Stupid wingmen always bothers me; if they can make smart and deadly enemies, why can't they do the same with friendlies?

(4) Comprehensive wingmen management. But it needs (3) to work well.

(5) Working in concert with friendly forces. Ground forces, naval forces, etc.

(6) Gimmicks. As long as they are nice. Origin's flightsims like Wings of Glory may be arcadish, but they have nice story and memorable characters. In Strike Commander, money is your concern too, so you may need to take the risk of using cheap Sidewinders instead of expensive AMRAAMs to save cost. And crew management in Team Apache is nice as well.

wants : Gaming goodness
Not Wants : lack of Gaming goodness