Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wing Commander III

filfre.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 166 posts

Re: Wing Commander III

#31

Post by reaperducer »

elorant wrote: post #18
cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason

I think part of this was because games used to be about the gameplay, and not about the special effects.

A few weeks ago I got an old Pong cart in the mail. By the time I looked up from playing it, I'd lost half a day.

No special effects. Minimal sound. Irritating controllers. But almost entirely about the gameplay, and not about the game.

Re: Wing Commander III

#32

Post by taeric »

elorant wrote: post #18
cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

I challenge this. Most games were really short. They were just very quick to kick you back to the title screen. :)

Re: Wing Commander III

#34

Post by ASalazarMX »

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

There was a time when I loved playing JRPGs, which can become a mindless grind if you're trying to maximize a character for fun.

I still like them, but on an emulator, with cheats for easy experience or money. I enjoy the story without the grind, and although I lost the perseverance and endurance I had then, I don't think I'll ever have the time (or the patience) to play them properly again.

You lost something to gain something else.

Re: Wing Commander III

#36

Post by afavour »

allenu wrote: post #22
cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I think there's a lot going on here. Some of it is just general maturity and experience. Things that were novel when you were a child wear off when you're older. Those achievements that you aimed for as a child (having 'perfect' gameplay) may seem less meaningful when you're an adult, especially in the context of other real world achievements. The loss of "novelty", to me, one of the most challenging things about agi…

Seconding this. I think the game that most set my world alight as a kid was Star Control II. It was a wonderfully realised world of spaceships, alien races, battles and a sprawling story line. It blew my mind. But if I was presented with a game of similar magnitude today I'd have a pretty muted reaction. (I also probably wouldn't have time to play it!).

I feel the same way about many things, like (to keep on the space theme) all the recent iterations of Star Wars and Star Trek. People love to complain that the new SW trilogy (or the prequel trilogy) or Star Trek Discovery is a load of rubbish but the reality is that we're just older. Things aren't going to spark in the way they did when we first watched. And that's fine.

Re: Wing Commander III

#37

Post by OnionBlender »

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

I still prefer to play a few games many many times instead of a lot of games a little. I've replayed the Dark Souls games so many times I have to backup my save file because I reached the save slot limit. Each time I replay I tend to have a theme or challenge. I also play factory style games for hundreds of hours. (Was up to 4am playing Factorio)

If I've lost anything as an adult it's that I'm less tolerant of games that don't capture my interest. As a kid I replayed certain games because I simply had fewer games to play. Now there are so many free or cheap games available but I find I quit new games quickly unless they capture my interest.

Re: Wing Commander III

#38

Post by silicon2401 »

cgriswald wrote: post #6

I've lost something. When I was a kid, buying a new game was nearly impossible; If I was lucky, I'd get one for a birthday present or a Christmas gift. Occasionally a cool friend would lend me a copy of something. For a very short time, I lived about a mile away from a video game rental store and I'd sometimes be able to convince an adult I was responsible enough to return the game and spend my own money renting a ga…

> readily available game reviews tell me basically exactly what to expect.

this is why I actively avoid reviews for any media I might be interested in watching. I don't want any influence on my experience at all. I don't even let my friends tell me why they like a movie: if they recommend it, that's the most I want to know. It's awesome! I can pick something up like Nier or the first Avengers movie, and it's a completely immersive experience. I don't think it's difficult; it's not like reviews are some core part of life that can't be lived without. And I can't speak for you, but for me, not having reviews is part of the magic of gaming that I experienced as a kid: blindly choosing games to try based on cover art, the name, the studio, the console, etc. Building up my own idea of what the game will be like, making sense of the game as I experience it with no expectations, and finally forming my own opinion of it makes gaming feel like it did when I was a kid.

The exception is for games that I just never would have heard of. There are literally thousands of games out there, and if it's not modern, it's probably not going to be talked about. So I'll watch stuff like Ross's Game Dungeon or Civvie 11 to get a taste of older things that would be harder for me to stumble upon, and just keep a distant finger on the pulse of what's hot today, like Among Us or Fall Guys.

There's also minor stuff that I think people underestimate. When I play games, I don't have a second monitor with discord/netflix/youtube, I don't constantly text people. I just play and if I get bored, I take that as a sign that I need to work harder to figure the game out or just play a different game, like kids do. If you get stuck, try to find a PDF of the strategy guide instead of looking up youtube walkthroughs.

In my experience, gaming has always, continuously changed. There's some magic that older games have that new ones just don't, but there's also magic to newer games that older ones just don't. And there's also the player's ability to immerse themselves into the games. I try to be mindful and actively fine-tune the way I game and it's had great results for me whether I'm playing my childhood classics, experiencing old games for the first time, or jumping on the bandwagon of what's shiny and new.

Re: Wing Commander III

#39

Post by lou1306 »

reaperducer wrote: post #31
elorant wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason I think part of this was because games used to be about the gameplay, and not about the special effects. A few weeks ago I got an old Pong cart in the mail. By the time I looked up from playing it, I'd lost half a day. No special effects. Minimal sound. Irritating controllers. But almost entirely about the gameplay, and not abo…

However, some old games' gameplay, unlike Pong's, was awful. Sometimes, terrible gameplay was actually a legit "strategy" by the devs to artificially make a game last longer, so people wouldn't feel ripped off. Good gameplay was appreciated, sure, but bad gameplay was often swept under the "challenging/hard-to-beat" rug.

Re: Wing Commander III

#40

Post by lovegoblin »

sandworm101 wrote: post #28
elorant wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Games lasted longer twenty years ago. It was easier to immerse in the game for this reason. Nowadays, blockbuster action games give you twenty hours of gameplay give or take. Even RPG games are shorter these days. Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. I can't remember the last time I played a contemporary game that lasted that long.

>> Baldur's Gate took me weeks to finish. The great games have no "finish". Where is the finish line in SimCity? Factorio never really stops, just getting bigger each time you play. I don't like SeaOfThieves but I appreciate that it is about playing rather than winning. And I cannot be the only one who has never bothered to kill the ender dragon.

> The great games have no "finish".

Hah well this is obviously highly subjective.

Post reply on HN