Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com> writes:

> On 4/4/2024 11:53 AM, Anssi Saari wrote:
>> Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> What Have You Been Playing... IN MARCH 2024?
>> Only Horizon Forbidden West. Streaming the Playstation version with
>> PS
>> Plus.
>
> I assume it's pretty much just more HZD which is essentially an
> AC/Farcry clone with enough difference/innovation to barely keep me
> interested to finish.

More HZD I agree with. Some new weapons and elementals and other combat
options but mostly much the same. New machines too. As for the rest I've
never played any AC and only the first Farcry so I have no idea. Spalls
mentioned Tomb Raider but same thing, I think I have only played the
original TR almost three decades ago. I also read somewhere something
along the lines of "Zelda is just way better" but again, no idea. The
exploration feels more Fallout this time in that there's stuff to find
on the map. Too much climbing and jumping puzzles for my taste but
that's mostly side missions.

> I looked a bit into that previously, and found info that they claim
> they're using the highest listed version, so it should be the PS5
> version.

Ah, good to know. I spotted some talk about the DLC likely being too
heavy for a PS4 so PS5 only and so I thought it might mean I'm playing
the PS4 version. Now looks like I'll be playing the DLC on the PC if at
all.

> I'm still not sure how much of my difficulties with Bloodborne and God
> of War (2022) were from any input lag, vs. my old reflexes. They have
> some sort of predictive input, but I'm not sure how good that is, nor
> if that means I'm really playing, or their logarithm is playing the
> game for me, or maybe it's just failing on those games.

Hmm, if they have prediction for streaming play, maybe it's there for
local play too? I think with analog inputs you can predict (or guess)
the intended input at least a little. Must've been a lot easier to
handle controls with an 8-direction digital joystick and a few digital
buttons.

JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.

I don't know if I'm still the same person that wants to play a game with a
big manual. Games don't come with manuals anymore, big or small. What I
do know is I don't like it when you have to search the web for critical
information about a game that you used to be able to find in the manual.

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca:11068/
db //

Ant wrote:
> candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:
>> JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote at 10:23 this Thursday (GMT):
>>> On 02/04/2024 18:20, candycanearter07 wrote:
>>>>> I find the games pretty varied, and extremely rewarding, but at times
>>>>> they can definitely get a bit much. Breaking controllers throwing them
>>>>> out of frustration is a common meme of people playing these games.
>>>>
>>>> I absolutely can't stand super difficult games. Thanks, though.
>>>
>>> I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>>> was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>>> reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>>> the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>>> pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>
>> Yeah, exactly.
>
> Ditto. And not grinding.
>
I never was into those at all. If I am playing a space sim and there is
a 40 turn tutorial, I toss it out. I prefer Master of Orion, Space
Empires, Ascendancy. I think the word for it is self-explanatory.

rms wrote:
>> Magic the Gathering: Arena
>
>   Do you buy physical cards for this?  I've watched streams where they
> just unwrap cards and comment on how they look or hoping for rare ones :)
>
> rms

Yes, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) Arena codes can be redeemed in the
in-game store for physical packs of MTG cards. To redeem a code, select
Redeem a Code in the top-right corner of the page. You'll need to
register and you can't redeem codes on the mobile version of the app.
The products that come with codes are related to the formats available
on Arena. For example, you can get a free copy of the Planeswalker or
Starter Decks for your Arena account.

On 05/04/2024 15:31, Ross Ridge wrote:
> JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>> I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>> was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>> reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>> the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>> pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>
> I don't know if I'm still the same person that wants to play a game with a
> big manual. Games don't come with manuals anymore, big or small. What I
> do know is I don't like it when you have to search the web for critical
> information about a game that you used to be able to find in the manual.
>

I did go through some of my Steam library and the only ones that
generally have a manual are the more traditional style wargames. Looking
at some of my older physical games the trend seems to be even those that
have what you could call a manual they don't really tell you much that
you won't pick up in-game.

candycanearter07 wrote:
> JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote at 10:23 this Thursday (GMT):
>> On 02/04/2024 18:20, candycanearter07 wrote:
>>>> I find the games pretty varied, and extremely rewarding, but at times
>>>> they can definitely get a bit much. Breaking controllers throwing them
>>>> out of frustration is a common meme of people playing these games.
>>>
>>> I absolutely can't stand super difficult games. Thanks, though.
>>
>> I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>> was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>> reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>> the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>> pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>
>
> Yeah, exactly.
>
I like difficult games, but not difficult-to-learn ones. Like chess,
for example. There's a handful of rules and practically infinite number
of possibilities. Steep learning curve is not too important to me.
Maybe only Civilization of the games that I play has a learning curve
like this. Why put all that time into learning some esoteric game when
chess is already strange enough. I ask myself sometimes if learning
those moves like of the knight has any practical benefit. Then you come
in with a 200 page manual and tell me to play Hearts of Iron III.

On 4/6/2024 8:01 AM, Lane Larson wrote:
> candycanearter07 wrote:
>> JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote at 10:23 this Thursday (GMT):
>>> On 02/04/2024 18:20, candycanearter07 wrote:
>>>>> I find the games pretty varied, and extremely rewarding, but at times
>>>>> they can definitely get a bit much.  Breaking controllers throwing
>>>>> them
>>>>> out of frustration is a common meme of people playing these games.
>>>>
>>>> I absolutely can't stand super difficult games. Thanks, though.
>>>
>>> I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>>> was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>>> reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>>> the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>>> pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>>
>>
>> Yeah, exactly.
>>
> I like difficult games, but not difficult-to-learn ones.  Like chess,
> for example.  There's a handful of rules and practically infinite number
> of possibilities.  Steep learning curve is not too important to me.
> Maybe only Civilization of the games that I play has a learning curve
> like this.  Why put all that time into learning some esoteric game when
> chess is already strange enough.  I ask myself sometimes if learning
> those moves like of the knight has any practical benefit.  Then you come
> in with a 200 page manual and tell me to play Hearts of Iron III.

Well, Hearts of Iron III is a smidge more realistic than chess. :D

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

Lane Larson <lnlarson@stoat.inhoin.edu> wrote at 15:01 this Saturday (GMT):
> candycanearter07 wrote:
>> JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote at 10:23 this Thursday (GMT):
>>> On 02/04/2024 18:20, candycanearter07 wrote:
>>>>> I find the games pretty varied, and extremely rewarding, but at times
>>>>> they can definitely get a bit much. Breaking controllers throwing them
>>>>> out of frustration is a common meme of people playing these games.
>>>>
>>>> I absolutely can't stand super difficult games. Thanks, though.
>>>
>>> I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>>> was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>>> reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>>> the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>>> pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>>
>>
>> Yeah, exactly.
>>
> I like difficult games, but not difficult-to-learn ones. Like chess,
> for example. There's a handful of rules and practically infinite number
> of possibilities. Steep learning curve is not too important to me.
> Maybe only Civilization of the games that I play has a learning curve
> like this. Why put all that time into learning some esoteric game when
> chess is already strange enough. I ask myself sometimes if learning
> those moves like of the knight has any practical benefit. Then you come
> in with a 200 page manual and tell me to play Hearts of Iron III.

I hate chess, always feels like everyone is smarter and that sucks
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 20:42:35 -0500, Lane Larson
<lnlarson@stoat.inhoin.edu> wrote:

>>
>I never was into those at all. If I am playing a space sim and there is
>a 40 turn tutorial, I toss it out. I prefer Master of Orion, Space
>Empires, Ascendancy. I think the word for it is self-explanatory.

Ascendancy... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.

It's one of those games I tried ever-so-hard to enjoy, but never quite
managed it. It's hard for me - especially now - to remember why,
although I recall that its aesthetics were a big turn-off. It wasn't
just the visuals, but how uninformative those visuals were. Take the
aliens: in MOO, it was fairly easy to glean - simply by appearance -
what each species was about. The big-headed psilons were techies; the
always-cloaked darloks were spies. You could quickly read the most
important aspects of each species simply by looking at them. Not so
with Ascendancy, where you'd have to carefully read the details of
each species to get the same info. And this sort of thing was rampant
in Ascendancy, from its tech tree to its planets. And this added
abstraction rarely added anything new to the 4X genre; it just made
things slower and weirder.

It's a game I played, quit, returned to, quit, returned to again, and
quit repeatedly, ultimately just going off to play "Master of Orion"
or something similar. It's probably a great game, but we never saw eye
to eye.

On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 14:31:29 -0000 (UTC), rridge@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
(Ross Ridge) wrote:

>JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>>I used to enjoy games with big manuals and a steep learning curve when I
>>was younger - the type of game where you have to spend at least an hour
>>reading the manual and several hours playing just to get the basics of
>>the game. Nowadays, totally different and I really want to be able to
>>pick the basics in at most an hour and preferable far less than that.
>
>I don't know if I'm still the same person that wants to play a game with a
>big manual. Games don't come with manuals anymore, big or small. What I
>do know is I don't like it when you have to search the web for critical
>information about a game that you used to be able to find in the manual.

Back in the day, manuals served two purposes. One was, obviously, to
tell you how to install, start, and play the game. But equally
important, manuals also helped fill out the world; they added depth
and complexity through the text, telling the player about that world's
inhabitants and how the various systems worked together. And the
manuals were absolutely necessary for this. In an era when games had
to fit on a handful of floppy disks, it was the only way to do it.
Even simple dialogue took up an obscene amount of space, much less
graphics which could tell the story visually.

But as technology improved, the necessity of manuals lessened.
Installation and startup were simple mouseclicks. Games had built-in
tutorials (and, as important, sophisticated graphic user interfaces)
that made it easy for players to understand the basics of game-play.
Even the most unimportant character was allowed tens of megabytes of
disk-space to express their life stories. Modern graphics could
show-not-tell you more about the world than a thousand books. Manuals
became an expensive luxury.

The best manuals, for me, were the ones that combined gameplay
explanations and world-building all in one. Origin Systems was a
master of this (with their best work being the "Book of Lore" in
Ultima 5). But I've fond memories of many other manuals of that era
too; "Kings Quest 6", or anything by Infocom. Flight sims of the era
always had very impressive manuals; "Falcon 3.0" weighed in at 350
pages, and not only detailed all its various game-modes and facts
about its planes, but also gave detailed lectures on everything from
how planes worked to advanced fighter tactics. Later games also are
memorable (I loved the manual for "Independence War" from '99, for
instance).

Still, I'm not sure I feel any desire for new games to come with
manuals. Sure, it was great to curl up with the manual and delve into
the intricacies of its world as described in the manual, but I think
I'd much prefer just to dive head-first into the world itself. These
days, if I really want wallow in a game's lore, I'm more likely to
head to the game's wikia page, even if the game does come with a
for-real printed codex manual. It's just easier and usually has more
detail to boot.

On 4/6/2024 5:12 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Apr 2024 20:42:35 -0500, Lane Larson
> <lnlarson@stoat.inhoin.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>> I never was into those at all. If I am playing a space sim and there is
>> a 40 turn tutorial, I toss it out. I prefer Master of Orion, Space
>> Empires, Ascendancy. I think the word for it is self-explanatory.
>
> Ascendancy... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
>
> It's one of those games I tried ever-so-hard to enjoy, but never quite
> managed it. It's hard for me - especially now - to remember why,
> although I recall that its aesthetics were a big turn-off. It wasn't
> just the visuals, but how uninformative those visuals were. Take the
> aliens: in MOO, it was fairly easy to glean - simply by appearance -
> what each species was about. The big-headed psilons were techies; the
> always-cloaked darloks were spies. You could quickly read the most
> important aspects of each species simply by looking at them. Not so
> with Ascendancy, where you'd have to carefully read the details of
> each species to get the same info. And this sort of thing was rampant
> in Ascendancy, from its tech tree to its planets. And this added
> abstraction rarely added anything new to the 4X genre; it just made
> things slower and weirder.
>
> It's a game I played, quit, returned to, quit, returned to again, and
> quit repeatedly, ultimately just going off to play "Master of Orion"
> or something similar. It's probably a great game, but we never saw eye
> to eye.
>
Or eye to eyestalk either.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

On Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:12:23 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>Ascendancy... now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.
>
>It's one of those games I tried ever-so-hard to enjoy, but never quite
>managed it. It's hard for me - especially now - to remember why,
>although I recall that its aesthetics were a big turn-off.

Was this the game that had really bad AI so it ended up getting
terrible reviews? If so, maybe the reason you did not like it is
because it was too easy.

On Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:26:23 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>The best manuals, for me, were the ones that combined gameplay
>explanations and world-building all in one. Origin Systems was a
>master of this (with their best work being the "Book of Lore" in
>Ultima 5). But I've fond memories of many other manuals of that era
>too; "Kings Quest 6", or anything by Infocom. Flight sims of the era
>always had very impressive manuals; "Falcon 3.0" weighed in at 350
>pages, and not only detailed all its various game-modes and facts
>about its planes, but also gave detailed lectures on everything from
>how planes worked to advanced fighter tactics. Later games also are
>memorable (I loved the manual for "Independence War" from '99, for
>instance).

I used to love reading game manuals for exactly the reasons you state
here. However, I have not read one for a long time now and I do not
think I want to anymore.

On 07/04/2024 14:45, Mike S. wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Apr 2024 20:26:23 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
> <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The best manuals, for me, were the ones that combined gameplay
>> explanations and world-building all in one. Origin Systems was a
>> master of this (with their best work being the "Book of Lore" in
>> Ultima 5). But I've fond memories of many other manuals of that era
>> too; "Kings Quest 6", or anything by Infocom. Flight sims of the era
>> always had very impressive manuals; "Falcon 3.0" weighed in at 350
>> pages, and not only detailed all its various game-modes and facts
>> about its planes, but also gave detailed lectures on everything from
>> how planes worked to advanced fighter tactics. Later games also are
>> memorable (I loved the manual for "Independence War" from '99, for
>> instance).
>
> I used to love reading game manuals for exactly the reasons you state
> here. However, I have not read one for a long time now and I do not
> think I want to anymore.

Yeh I get that, for me in the good old days part of the 'experience' was
reading the game manual generally starting it when on the train or bus
home to ramp up the anticipation of inserting that floppy disk*. Now I
do read them but only if I think I have to so I look at it as more of a
chore than anything else.

*I would have said tape but in the days of the Speccy 48k manuals where
generally non-existence beyond some made-up blurb about the game
pretending to be a plot and these are the keys to use.

On 4/8/2024 11:01 AM, JAB wrote:

>
> Yeh I get that, for me in the good old days part of the 'experience' was
> reading the game manual generally starting it when on the train or bus
> home to ramp up the anticipation of inserting that floppy disk*. Now I
> do read them but only if I think I have to so I look at it as more of a
> chore than anything else.
>
> *I would have said tape but in the days of the Speccy 48k manuals where
> generally non-existence beyond some made-up blurb about the game
> pretending to be a plot and these are the keys to use.

Sometimes the game manual really was the best part of the game.