The best game I could describe as merely an interactive movie has been The Quarry. The game itself is pretty meh (but I’m not a big fan of these personally), however the movie part is amazing. It could easily be just a kick ass horror movie. And you can even play it that way with Movie Mode, where you pick the best outcome, the worst outcome, or set up some sliders to give a mix of outcomes at every interaction and just watch shit unfold.
Detroit: Become Human is also in this vein, with an even wilder array of possible outcomes as well as some more real gameplay and puzzle solving.
The studio behind this one (Prophecy Games) is independent from them now, but still contains some developers who also worked on Ascend. I know from hanging around the forums at the height of that game that there was at least 2 headstrong devs in the company that legitimately wanted to do the game justice (and one of the best updates to the game was headed up by them), but they ultimately were at the mercy of the execs. I’m hoping without the same constraints, they might deliver a kick ass game without the bullshit.
I only have the new one, that was made for VR. It can be played in flat space, but you can tell they did very little to make it work. The text is so small on a regular screen I can’t read a god damn thing.
I never played the original, but I suspect it’s probably better in every way except for the visuals (other than having readable text I mean).
Dwarf Fortress is my favorite game of all time now, though. It’s not old, but it just uses ASCII or tilesets. And I’ve been playing since version 3, using the default ASCII because I think it looks more interesting than the tiles.
If a significant amount of people “misunderstood” you, it’s not their fault, but yours for not clearly communicating or not tailoring your communication for the target audience.
I find this ironic, because even the tutorials in the game only communicate half of the information you need. A lot of them just outright expect you to have played one of their games before. I could imagine if this was someone’s first Bethesda RPG, they’d be confused as hell. Plus there are a few things unique to Starfield that are confusing even if you’ve played every one of their games before.
RTS by age: Dune 2, C&C, Tiberium Sun, Red Alert, Red Alert 2, WarCraft 2, StarCraft, Warcraft 3
Sim by age: Conway’s Game of Life, SimCity, SimCity 2000, The Sims, The Sims 2
Strategy by age: Civilization, Civilization 2, Masters of Orion
RPG by age: Final Fantasy 2 (4), Chrono Trigger, Pools of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Fallout 2, Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind
Adventure by age: Pitfall, Indiana Jones, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, King’s Quest, Space Quest, Tomb Raider, Grim Fandango
Honorable mentions: Microsurgeon, E.T., AD&D Minotaur’s Labyrinth, Golden Axe, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Ecco the Dolphin, Eternal Champions, Android Pinball, Solar Winds, Detroit (not Become Human; it was a car making sim on DOS), Crusader: No Remorse
I said nothing of the point value on the post. One can clearly see the comments here and how most of them blatantly took the post seriously (or didn’t actually read the body).
They’re capable of supporting mouse and keyboard. For some reason most games just don’t. Like on my PS5, anything that uses a mouse style menu, I can use a mouse to operate. I can also use a keyboard to type in input boxes with anything. But the only game I can fully play with a M&KB I’ve tried so far is Call of Duty. Which is nuts because Stellaris, Civilization and City Skylines are on this system, too, and they would very much benefit from full M&KB support.
Leaving the mask on the entire time is the only way it works. If everyone is taking it off to talk, they’re gonna be spreading shit around every time they talk. What state is this court in? Texas?
I love this new narrative that undercutting the competition’s pricing is anti-competitive and not just winning at the competition because the other teams don’t want to improve.
Shadows of Doubt, maybe? It’s a first person immersive sim mystery game with procedurally generated worlds and mysteries. There are crimes you must solve and the victims, perpetrators, suspects, and evidence are all randomized. Would you count that as a puzzle game, though?