Iâve spent so many hours playing Mahjong in the Yakuza games and yet I still canât figure it out beyond the basics. Donât even get me started on shogiâŚ
Iâve only played mahjong solitaire, which is pretty fun
This game looks/sounds interesting
This only has a few hours left.
Iâve been undecided because Iâm not sure if any of the games are soloable.
There goes all my interest in the game.
Ooof, yeah. Games that try to force players to finish the game in a set amount of time to create a sense of urgency really annoy me. I was so over that mechanic back in the '80s. I donât even remember the games that did that now, just that I was seriously pissed with them and never finished the games. (âOh, you spent 30 hours playing this game, but you ran out of time to accomplish your goal! Youâll have to start all over!â âEh, how about you just fuck off, instead.â)
This doesnât sound as bad as those '80s games, but it seems like theyâve made a bunch of game content that you can see (i.e. itâs not hidden behind other choices in decision trees), but can never experience without playing the whole game all over. Which is still pretty damn annoying.
And what about the opposite? Like, say, Desert Bus?
To be fair, Desert Bus was trying to be annoying.
I agree. I like to take my time and enjoy games. Iâll often spend time reading every bit of lore, exploring every nook and cranny, looking at every item I can, and so on.
Vampyr had an interesting take where you could only level up when you advance time another day which would have side effects on the world (some quests may be permanently gone, the balance of power across the game zones changes, and so on). It was a neat way to make you weigh the various risks and rewards of leveling up while making time pass and all that entails. It was well done.
One game that thought did really well with the time mechanic was Dead Rising. It had a punishing time limit, but because your XP and skills would carry over, itâd get easier each time and you could play through it any number of ways. As you played (and failed) more, more paths would permanently unlock as that would make future progress less arduous. On the one hand it was a cheap way to make the game last longer if you wanted to finish it, on the other hand it was a clever implementation although it could be frustrating at times (though not as frustrating as itâs objectively broken follower AI).
Twelve Minutes was another good one that followed the same template. Youâre stuck in a time loop that ends in 12 minutes (at best), although things can change in subtle ways as you learn and fail along the way. The time limit was part of the point of the story, but it never got super stressful because the loop was so short it wasnât a big deal to just try again. (TW: Twelve Minutes has some pretty intense depictions of domestic violence, and other potentially triggering things. I enjoyed it, but it can be very disturbing if youâre not expecting it.)
But yeah in general, Iâm not a fan of time limits.
Fun fact: Sierra games were some of the very few that consistently worked on x86/DOS emulation. And so definitely hold a place in my heart⌠Police Quest, Conquests of Camelot, etcâŚ
Yes, but Iâll never get the opening music of Maniac Mansion out of my head.
The cool thing about most Sierra games is they were interpreted languages, so as long as you had an interpreter for your platform you could play them.
ScummVM is a great way to play LucasArts and Sierra games on modern HW.
Oof. Mechanically interesting, but a tremendous letdown as a story. The twist utterly ruins any goodwill that was built up over the course of the plot.
Speaking of older games and the tech that enabled themâŚ