Here’s something I do that helps with “feeling old” when people point out things that happened 20 or so years ago.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion came out 20 years ago, but what was I actually doing 20 years ago? I was like 10 or 11 years old in middle school and my brother’s friend let him borrow the game over the weekend. It was my first open world RPG and I was so excited to play it and could barely even comprehend how big it was. I’ve basically lived two thirds of my life since then. My first job, moving out of my parents, my first apartment, getting my drivers license, my first car, my first real girlfriend, all of my neices and nephews being born, going to an amusement park for the first time, going to a movie theater for the first time, and basically everything else I can think of because I sure as shit don’t remember much from before I was 10 years old. So pretty much everything important that has ever happened in my entire life was between the time of Oblivion coming out and now.
So yeah, we are definitely getting older. But that doesn’t mean the time in between was just nothing. It feels like 2006 was yesterday because we often gloss over everything in between and don’t really focus on what was actually going on in our lives at the time.
Talk about feeling old I played almost all the games until 2006, but fewer of the list after and hardly from the 2016 one. Not trying to one up but figured good place to comment.
It’s been a fun time seeing progression over the years, haven’t stopped playing since my first Gemini (Atari 2600 knockoff that played the same games) system. Going from 2d squares to a proper video representation has been awesome. I always enjoyed the graphic improvements the gameplay has had its ups and downs but the remembered ones did that part right.
Sail the high seas. That way you don’t support them and get to play it. I haven’t pirated a game for many years but some game houses deserves what comes to them
You’re pretty young. Enjoy it. Soon you’ll get one grey hair, and then another. And another. Soon you’ll have back problems, and be regularly aware that you need to eat more fiber.
We all should take the time we have been given for granted, it's one of the values we really have. Because one day, we won't ever again get to enjoy what we could now. I try not thinking too hard about mortality and how eventually, I'm going to be too old to play nearly anything.
There are a host of open source remakes of old game engines that fix bugs and update them for modern systems as well as add support for higher resolutions and widescreen aspect ratios. Here’s a few off the top of my head:
OpenMW for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This is probably the most famous one.
OpenRA for Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn, Dune 2000, and (in pre-alpha form) Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 (the latter requiring extra fiddling with Github repositories).
OpenJKDF2 for Dark Forces 2 and its standalone Mysteries of the Sith expansion.
Arx Libertatis for Arx Fatalis, though IIRC the version sold now integrates an older build of it; one without the fixes for glyph drawing - it’s worth upgrading for that alone as spellcasting is a nightmare without the fix.
Tfix, T2Fix, and the Sneaky Upgrade for Thief 1/2/3 respectively. These are mods, not wholesale engine replacements, but serve the same purpose.
These are just the ones I know of. There are probably loads more.
Edit:the Ur-Quan Masters for Star Control II. I can’t believe I forgot about this! Star Control II is one of the best and most influential games that most people have never heard about.
OpenRCT2 is 100% the definitive way to play Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 & 2.
But I would never recommend a new player try OpenRA. The game has stellar multiplayer support but they just can’t figure out the campaign scripting at all. Go with the remaster collection instead.
Still? I haven’t played OpenRA in several years and assumed they would have fixed it by now.
Then again Red Alert 2 is even less supported than it was the last time I checked, so I’m guessing their focus is mostly on the multiplayer side of things.
I could argue that experiencing the Groundhog Day bug builds character but… no. Nobody should have to deal with that.
Admittedly, a few tactics like filling your base with laser rifles to make attacking aliens spawn unarmed no longer work. But honestly, an experienced player treats base attacks like bonus levels anyway so it’s not like much of value was lost. Besides, you also now get all the loot from big missions and not just the first 128 items.
Also, UFO now actually remembers your difficulty setting and doesn’t revert you to Beginner after the first mission. That’s different but better. I probably should’ve mentioned that separately in my first comment.
If so, beware:
I haven’t bothered verifying this (because I try to keep “persistent” game data in my home dir and backed up), but as far as I know, deleting games that run through Proton also removes their data in the steamapps/compatdata directory - which almost always includes the data people usually say Steam doesn’t delete.
I forgot about that. I lost that too. Thankfully anything I wanted was backed up to Steam Cloud (So game saves mostly). I mean, I lost some ScreenShots from Alan Wake 2 I would have liked to keep, along with Silent Hill f. But I’m not attached enough that it’s a major loss.
It looks so good, and the music is great, and story is apparently fantastic, but I just can not get the hang of the counter/block mechanic in combats, and without it the battles are pretty much impossible.
I came to depend less on the visual cues which are often deceptive and more on the audio ones or counting in my head for dodges/parries. Also invest heavily (basically all your points) into defense/vitality which makes Dodge/Parry misses much more forgiving.
Eventually, even if you only do a smattering of side quests/areas, you’ll get powerful enough to basically ignore the timing mechanics altogether.
Also set it on story mode + auto QTEs. I did that on my first playthrough and had absolutely no regrets. The mechanics of the game are definitely secondary to the experience of the story.
Clair Obscur for me too, but because of the AI art controversy. I can’t stand AI, even if temporary, even if just store banners, I just can’t trust the company from then on not to sneak it into other areas.
They didn’t sneak anything and they never will. Looked into it deeply. They used AI assets as placeholders during development. But everything in the shipped game is human-made. No further use of generative AI is expected, since the game awards controversy the company’s management published a statement of banning AI use entirely in their company.
The whole controversy around indie game awards was also blown beyond proportions. A company used a new technology at a time when the tech was new and the debate around it’s use was still inmature. Then dismissed it for it was not good enough. They failed at quality assurance and a couple of textures weren’t deleted. They replaced them as soon at they found out. By all intents and purposes, this controversy does not qualify sandfall as an AI using company, and to affirm so is ignorant of the context of all that went down in reality.
I understand their reasoning, but still, it soured me on the game. GenAI models being built from non-consensually mass-scraped art was known from the very start, and yet the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game… They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
But anyway, we are free to just not agree and draw the line in different places on what we consider ethical conduct 🤷
the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game
That’s the point. They didn’t thought it was OK and didn’t.
They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
That is exactly what they did, any texture left in the first version of the game was a mistake that was promptly fixed as soon as they noticed it. We have the advantage of judging four years later with new info something they did back then and have since corrected. Ethical considerations must include intent and context, and here there was definitely no intent to harm.
You said a whole lot of words, but the fact remains that they did use AI during development, released a game with AI textures, and told the award organization they never used AI at all.
They, and you, can make excuses all you want, but for some of us they simply have lost some of their good reputation. We will see what they do next though, and I’m hopeful.
I found it rough near the start, but it gets a lot easier as you go on, once you get more of a feel for when attacks are coming. Eventually you’ll be dodging things you’ve never seen before just on instinct.
Dodges are a lot easier than parries, even if you don’t get the extra AP from it. Fights last a bit longer, but you can definitely plough through most of it even with bad timing. Explore thoroughly in act 1, otherwise you’ll probably be underlevelled for the last boss there. Not really any need to grind mindlessly, but you can if you really need the extra levels.
I haven’t played since I beat it. But I did look into this after I did…
In general, every time the screen zooms in, you need to act. What type is something you learn, but that cuts down on the timing aspect There are also audio queues, like a sort of woosh effect. I don’t play a lot of fast response games like this, so I never noticed until it was pointed out.
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