Get your game on!

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update:

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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-asian-game-of-mahjong-which-creates-order-out-of-chaos-is-trending-in-the-west-180986021/

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I’ve spent so many hours playing Mahjong in the Yakuza games and yet I still can’t figure it out beyond the basics. Don’t even get me started on shogi…

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I’ve only played mahjong solitaire, which is pretty fun

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This game looks/sounds interesting

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This only has a few hours left.

I’ve been undecided because I’m not sure if any of the games are soloable.

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There goes all my interest in the game.

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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 don’t even remember the games that did that now, just that I was seriously pissed with them and never finished the games. (“Oh, you spent 30 hours playing this game, but you ran out of time to accomplish your goal! You’ll have to start all over!” “Eh, how about you just fuck off, instead.”)

This doesn’t sound as bad as those '80s games, but it seems like they’ve made a bunch of game content that you can see (i.e. it’s 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.

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And what about the opposite? Like, say, Desert Bus?

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To be fair, Desert Bus was trying to be annoying.

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I agree. I like to take my time and enjoy games. I’ll 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, it’d 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 it’s objectively broken follower AI).

Twelve Minutes was another good one that followed the same template. You’re 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 wasn’t 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 you’re not expecting it.)

But yeah in general, I’m not a fan of time limits.

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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, etc…

Yes, but I’ll never get the opening music of Maniac Mansion out of my head.

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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.

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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.

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Speaking of older games and the tech that enabled them…