🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 1 May 2017 19:36:23 -0700, Justisaur <just...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 5/1/2017 3:59 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> Let me just double-check; I've gotten these subject lines wrong too
>> many times recently. Is it April? Is it 2017? Yeah, that looks good;
>> let's get on with it.
>
>Well, no, it's not April.  It's May. :)
>
>But yes, we're talking about what we were playing in May.
>> * Stronghold (1993) (replay)
>
>I've heard this was good, and have it on disks from a couple years ago 
>purchase.  I don't remember why I didn't play it, or did for only a 
>couple minutes.

It's not really "good". It's adequate at best, with its major faults
being that it didn't give the player enough control or information.
It's so strategy-lite that you can almost win the game without doing
anything at all; a lot of the time you just let the sims do their own
thing without too much intervention on player's part. Today, when I
can just leave it running as a 320x200 tiny window in the corner of my
desktop, this isn't such a sin; as a game give your full focus - as
was intended when developed 20 years ago - it's something of a
failure. 

But as I said, it's charming graphics - not least it's rendering of a
3D world on a 2D plane - were enough to make the game bearable.

>> * Ultima VII The Black Gate (replay)
>> all modern
>> crafting systems owe their existence to Ultima VII
>
>Damn you!  Damn you Ultima VII!  So, I can blame you for that!

The other day I learned that the voice of the Guardian was none other
than that of Bill Johnson aka Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. I KNEW that big red muppet wasn't to be trusted! Even his
voice is evil.

>> * Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance (replay)
>
>I never did get into the Star Wars space combat.  It seemed pretty 
>lackluster for whichever it was I tried after playing Wing Commander 
>III.  I keep thinking I'll go play WCIII again, but never seem to get 
>around to it.

Oooh, statements like that used to lead to epic Usenet flamewars! 

But Wing Commander's gameplay was a sad comparison to the X-Wing
series. Even with WC3 - which added a very rudimentary power system -
it lacked the depth of X-Wing games. Wing Commander also sported
relatively tiny battles, rarely pitting you against more than a
handful of enemies at a time, whereas the X-Wing games sported battles
with dozens of fighters and multiple capital ships. The AI was far
craftier in the X-Wing series too; of course, this was helped by the
far more nimble fighters. Wing Commander also relied more on missiles
than close-in dogfighting; it was far more forgiving gameplay. 

Where Wing Commander really shone was in its story-telling and
characters; Alliance tried to its hand there but failed miserably. But
the actual gameplay? The X-Wing series wins hands down!

;-)




>I'm off to jury duty tomorrow, not sure what I'll do on my phone then 
>(if that's even allowed), and it'll probably die far too fast.  Or maybe 
>I'll be playing "Hangman R.L." edition.

Last time I got called up, they wouldn't even let me read an ebook on
my device while waiting to be selected in the jury pool. It wasn't the
reading they were opposed to, it was the fact it was on an electronic
device. So make sure to bring some sort of analog backup to help pass
the time, just in case.