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Video Game Word Vomit Thread
Hey! Despite the seemingly negative name, I want to make this thread so anyone can say pretty much whatever you want about the games you've been playing! Whether it's a review, a brief paragraph or two of thoughts, recommendations, or frustrations, let's try to commiserate or proliferate discussion about what we've been playing!
I got into the early access trial for Google Project Stream, so I've been playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey for a month and a half or so, for free. Really enjoying the game. I have a decent fiber connection here but my wifi router is crap so the picture quality is constantly alternating between gorgeous and 240p YouTube video. For the most part it's playable but when it dips it completely takes you out of it. This seemed like a good place to complain about it, since I'm pretty sure the problem is on my end and not Google's.
My free trial ends later this month, but it's been one heck of a good freebie, all things considered.
I got into Project Stream as well! My experience is that wifi is borderline unplayable, but ethernet has been pretty consistently good.
As for the game, I really enjoyed it. I managed to complete the 3 major questlines, and although none of them had a particularly satisfying ending, they were all quite fun. I really liked when missions didn't just tell you where to go and especially enjoyed the process of finding the Cultists.
I just got into that as well, but I will have very little time to play the game with all the other games I'm currently playing. I guess I ought to set aside the other shit since this is time gated.
/incoming rant
Why does Simcity 4 have to be so damn picky about what it runs on? Currently trying to get the game to run in Steam Play, but it sections off and restricts the mouse to only a small rectangle in the center of the screen, and when you move the mouse in any direction for longer than a second, the cursor goes left, regardless of where it's moving. I swear to god, the Mac version always had tiles floating off the ground, VirtualBox can't accelerate the game fast enough, it freaks out in Windows 10 with dual screens, Wine just dies and crashes. I've tried to run it over the years with an Nvidia Quadro FX 1400, a GT 630, and GTX 750 Ti, numerous Intel chipsets, and now an R9 Nano, and with only one exception, it's never been totally stable, all of these have had crashes or freak outs at some point while playing, the 630 in particular made every building look yellow and the 750 Ti didn't show the outlines for vehicles behind buildings. And that one exception was a particular silver Dell Latitude from 2005 that has long since been recycled, and it was too damn slow to play the game at max settings. How on earth did the developers manage to create a game that can be run on nearly 20 years worth of tech, and not work right on any of it?
...Luckily, it's a really damn good game that still holds up well today, decades after release. If EA could introduce the packet model from 2013, update the graphics, and actually allow the game to run properly, while preserving all of Simcity 4's mechanics, I'd insta-buy it in a heartbeat. They could even call it Simcity 4K, both a pun on modern screens and on Simcity 3000 being the last of the thousand series.
Man, I had Simcity 2000 on my DS and that was the best thing ever. I never bought 4 because people have been complaining about how unstable it was since release. I never bought the one everyone was mad about because of the DRM. I tried the android one and it was an atrocious microtransactions or wait forever cash grab (because everyone's favorite game mechanic is waiting).
I miss Simcity 2000. It was so fresh on a touch screen, the interface was just perfect.
I have something called Pocket City on my wishlist, been fixing to try it when I get around to it. I hear it's like the Simcity of old.
My husband got me the PlayStation Classic as a Christmas gift, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it. I had played almost every title/series included on the Classic back in the 90s, so it's been great getting to revisit them.
I will say that it's amazing to me how far games have come since these came out. I played through the original Grand Theft Auto, and I remember loving the game because I could drive anywhere. The racing games I'd played up to that point limited me to a single track, bordered by either real or invisible walls. Grand Theft Auto was my first taste of an open-world driving game. I didn't really care about the missions, I just liked driving around the city, trying out the different cars, and seeing if it was possible to make the bridge jump in a bus/tanker.
Playing it now, the game feels like it wears two hats. It definitely feels dated--a product of a bygone era. Other games have done open-worlds so, SO much better than the original GTA. But it also feels weirdly current. With some quality of life tweaks, it could easily fit into the lineup of today's smaller games. If you knew nothing about it and bought it in 2018, you wouldn't be remiss for thinking that it was a robust indie title.
Maybe you’d like Retro City Rampage? I never played the original GTA, but RCR seems pretty clearly inspired by early GTA games.
It’s not the longest game in the world, but it looks great, has a nice little story, and is super fun.
It’s also available on an absurd amount of platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Playstation, Xbox, 3DS (what I played it on), Wii, Switch, iOS, Android, and even a (stripped down) version for MS DOS.