OT - your fav games

[tinkthank]

1. What does 4X mean? Never heard of that

2. My favs:

a. Thief II
b. Planescape: Torment
c. Deux Ex 1
d. Baldur's Gate 2
e. Fallout I/II
f. Arcanum


3. What did you people like about Morrowind or NWN?? God I hated those

[Cheezeninja]

hmmm... in no particular order

Dune 2
MoM
Civilization
Total Annihilation
The Starcraft Map Editor (the player made games were better than the original IMO)
Ultima Online (when it first came out it was the shiznit, has since been ruined)
Populous
Diablo

[Taqwus]

Traditional map-based 4X:
Dominions II, although the second Master of Orion game deserves a very strong honorable mention.

TBS/RPG:
Jagged Alliance 2, love/hate. Love the detail, hate the assorted lack of realism (short ranges, incredible body armor/damage tolerance, etc) and inventory management pains, plus the need to search every room, and the inane endgame. Hated the "Deidranna Lives" mod.

Other TBS:
King of Dragon Pass; love/hate. Love the detail, hate the perverse randomness where you can be very badly hurt through unavoidable bad luck in an HQ or very early bad harvests.

RTS:
Ancient Art of War, the original one. Loved utterly. Would be great to see a modern Version with configurable squad limits, modability, multiplayer, ability to run on modern-speed CPUs without requiring a circulatory system filled with caffeine and meth.
Netrek, for multiplayer.

RPG:
Fallout/Fallout 2; loved the rich stories and nOnlinearity, hated the NPC 'ally' tactical stupidities and the poor FO2 endgame.

Wasteland; very fun, although combat was very basic and the endgame was cliched and annoying.

BBS DOOR:
Hack and Slash, Usurper: very fun, brutal and competitive RPG games.
BRE/SRE: empire resource management games, essentially multiplayer updates of Hammurabi/King. Very fun.

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
1. What does 4X mean? Never heard of that

"eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate"

From Home of the Underdogs:

Divided into two factions: those 4x games happening in space and those played on earth, Master of Orion and Sid Meier's Civilization given as examples.
"Fog of war, research, and city/colony management are integral elements of this subgenre [of strategy]."

[Arryn]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
1. What does 4X mean? Never heard of that

eXplore
eXpand
eXploit
eXterminate

3. What did you people like about Morrowind or NWN?? God I hated those

What's wrong with either one? Especially such a great game as Morrowind, arguably one the finest fantasy RPGs ever made.

Morrowind has (not in any special order of importance):

* great graphics
* well-developed, and huge, world
* great backstory
* tons of quests
* the most flexible and detailed character creation system I've seen in a fantasy RPG
* awesome modding ability
* a developer that supports their game

There's not much more that you can ask of a game. What flaws I've seen have typically been modded away, if not fixed by the devs themselves.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Morrowind has (not in any special order of importance):

* great graphics

I'd have to say that the graphics are so-so at best, and crawl like dog doody on all but the most powerful machines - something which totally does not mesh with the actual level of graphical quality.

* well-developed, and huge, world

In the sense that somebody obviously lavishly and laboriously placed each and every one of those plates that you are obligated to clean out, yes.

* great backstory
* tons of quests
* the most flexible and detailed character creation system I've seen in a fantasy RPG
* awesome modding ability

No argument here.

* a developer that supports their game

This can be considered to be both a good and a bad thing in some cases, although for Morrowind, it seems to be good.

There's not much more that you can ask of a game. What flaws I've seen have typically been modded away, if not fixed by the devs themselves.

Nonetheless, I still remain distinctly uneasy about hearing that the Morrowind folks have acquired the rights to Fallout 3. There are certain humorous and amusing artifacts and behaviors I don't want to see.

[ July 18, 2004, 20:32: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Ygorl]

Legends of the Lost Realm. Took me 10 or 12 years to be that thing, finally did a couple years ago. What a great game.
Also, for those of you who like(d) Marathon, resurrection.bungie.org is nearly done with an excellent total conVersion of Unreal Tournament that recreates the classic using the somewhat more modern engine. Spectacular.

[Arryn]

I also forgot to give honorable mentions to:

* Vampire:Redemption (FRPG; biggest flaw was linear plot, same problem Return to Krondor had; first decently-done conVersion of a pen&paper FRPG into a CRPG, and with GM capabilities)

* Anachronox (SFRPG; buggy as hell, annoying minigames, but the game was funny as hell to play through and had highly memorable and unique characters)

* Sword of Aragon (ancient DOS game that was a forerunner to today's games like Dom 2, distiction of being the first of the genre and well done for its day)

* Populous (RTS god vs. god game, not unlike Dom in various ways)

[Boron]

oh i actually forgot gothic 2 in rpg section .
i have to agree with norfleet i bought morrowind in the game of the year edition but i shortly before got gothic 2 .
the graphics in gothic 2 are much better than morrowind . in gothic you really get the feeling that you live in this world.
unfortunately the story is a bit boring and once you finished it the 2 other characterclasses aren't enough motivation to play it again .

in strategy games i forgot master of orion 2 . it was really great .
only the ai sucked . i played on impossible then but that was a bit boring :
i had 10 doomstars which had to fight 250 battleships / titans but they still won .
but the combat Lasted extremely long .

[Arryn]

Morrowind is *older* than Gothic 2 (and perhaps Gothic). It's graphics were cutting-edge when the game came out, and are not shabby even by today's standards, almost 3 years later. Stop to consider that Diablo 2 had woefully-obsolete graphics when *it* was released, and huge numbers of players still play the game today. Ditto JA2.