Quoting: PenglingWell, since Fanatical sent my pre-ordered Steam-key early (yeah, yeah, I know, don't pre-order stuff, but this is a series where I know what I'm getting, and there was a 20% discount - I sorted this out back in May!), I'll leave you guys with a little clue about what I'm doing for the next weekend thread;

There's nothing wrong with pre-ordering when the release is soon pending. I won't preorder something far in advance (just so they'll throw you a cookie?) because things can change. I've found that often the same pre-order bonuses are available if you pre-order the day before release lol

The only way I'd pre-order early is if there's an early access game available. I've more respect for that.

Last edited by Grogan on 13 September 2023 at 7:22 pm UTC

Quoting: denyasiswriting things down

Stuff like that should at the very least be stored in quest logs once discovered. The same with door codes and the like (I prefer games that present them at the keypad once you've discovered them)

Thanks for those "spoilers" (I have no problem with spoilers, I prefer to know things. It doesn't ruin my enjoyment, it facilitates it), it helps to know that.

The original did have the ability to annotate the map markers (and see them in-game!). Very odd that they decided not to include that feature.

Not only was it very, very useful for playing the game. I even made it a kind of side quest to map out everything. Doors that needed unlocking, surgery/charging stations, stashes of weapons and utilities - what have you.

In the end I actually ran out of map markers. I suspect even the Enhanced Edition still uses an unsigned 8bit int as the upper limit for those markers.

Quoting: GroganThere's nothing wrong with pre-ordering when the release is soon pending. I won't preorder something far in advance (just so they'll throw you a cookie?) because things can change. I've found that often the same pre-order bonuses are available if you pre-order the day before release lol

The only way I'd pre-order early is if there's an early access game available. I've more respect for that.

I just wanted to make sure I secured the discount, really - nobody else offered one!

Anyhow, I had the time today to play for nine-and-a-half hours straight - nothing has sucked me in like this in many, many years, nothing.

Quoting: PenglingAnyhow, I had the time today to play for nine-and-a-half hours straight - nothing has sucked me in like this in many, many years, nothing.

Well that's good! That hasn't happened to me in a long time. If something keeps my attention for more than 90 minutes straight, it gets a medal.

Borderlands 2 comes to mind. One year (2013?) I took a "Christmas Holiday", the weekend before Christmas I set a voice mail and unplugged my phone all the way through New Years. Oh how nice, spending time with family and friends. Nope! I played Borderlands 2 the whole time. I mean, I had dinner with my family and stuff but back to gaming. I didn't even go visit anyone (I had living, breathing friends back then too lol). What a waste of skin... I ignored gigs and everything just to play video games. Ah well, I do what I want :-)

Quoting: Grogan

Quoting: denyasiswriting things down

Stuff like that should at the very least be stored in quest logs once discovered. The same with door codes and the like (I prefer games that present them at the keypad once you've discovered them)

Perhaps. I will admit, I did like how little "handholding" the game did, true to the era, but I also knew what I was getting into when I bought it. I'm also from that era... my family had a "gaming notebook" next to the computer for that stuff. So the idea of having to write things down isn't foreign to me (also why I think it's a sin for most large scale games not to include a player editable "journal").

A complete, perhaps younger, new commer to the game would likely expect more modern design (like quest markers, or a journal), and I'm not sure how a dev would properly convey the design choice to eschew those and inform the player in a way that doesn't sound too pretentious. A quick perusal of the forums, showed a lot of confusion on objectives.

The closest you get in the game is SHODAN's current program in the status screen, and even that is vague.

Truthfully, I do think the reactor code is the most BS part of the game (even when I first played the original)... if you don't know it exists in advance, that's a lot of back tracking and is just annoying and unnecessary.

Quoting: whizseThe original did have the ability to annotate the map markers (and see them in-game!). Very odd that they decided not to include that feature.

I never knew that when I played the original!! Definitely used a notebook, lol!!

Quoting: GroganI didn't even go visit anyone (I had living, breathing friends back then too lol). What a waste of skin... I ignored gigs and everything just to play video games. Ah well, I do what I want :-)

I see nothing wrong with this!! I used my gaming as a bit of "therapy". It's my alone time where I can unwind destress. I still do that to this day (just not as often)

Quoting: GroganWell that's good! That hasn't happened to me in a long time. If something keeps my attention for more than 90 minutes straight, it gets a medal.

It's been that way for me for quite a while, too. Last time I really got pulled in was back when I played some stuff competitively, but even that didn't have this strong of a hold, which genuinely surprised me given that competitive stuff demands quite a bit of a time-commitment. Still, I don't deny that I'm absolutely a Bomberman addict.

Quoting: GroganBorderlands 2 comes to mind. One year (2013?) I took a "Christmas Holiday", the weekend before Christmas I set a voice mail and unplugged my phone all the way through New Years. Oh how nice, spending time with family and friends. Nope! I played Borderlands 2 the whole time. I mean, I had dinner with my family and stuff but back to gaming. I didn't even go visit anyone (I had living, breathing friends back then too lol). What a waste of skin... I ignored gigs and everything just to play video games. Ah well, I do what I want :-)

Doing what you love is never a waste!

Also, I would totally do the same. And were this a Christmas release, I definitely would have.

Quoting: denyasisPerhaps. I will admit, I did like how little "handholding" the game did, true to the era, but I also knew what I was getting into when I bought it. I'm also from that era... my family had a "gaming notebook" next to the computer for that stuff. So the idea of having to write things down isn't foreign to me (also why I think it's a sin for most large scale games not to include a player editable "journal").

I wouldn't have imagined games like this existed in 1997. The intricacies of this would have been amazing. I wasn't much into games like that. I liked space combat games, but I always had to be able to use a joystick (what they call a flight stick now).

This was probably the first actual Windows game I ever bought. I had some DOS pinball games and Myst (16 bit Windows 3.1 game) and stuff, but this was the first "Windows 95 game" for me. It used this silly Microsoft shit I'd never heard of, called "DirectX".

The Hive (1995)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hive_(video_game)

It had different game play types. Space combat, on foot combat, mounted gun type combat. My stubbornness in using a joystick made it harder though, I think. It was really meant for keyboard and mouse.

There'd probably be no chance of translating a directx game that old but I still have the CD somewhere. That would be a good thing for a retro computer. That game did run OK on Windows 98 though (the last time I ever saw it... sniff)

I also played Microsoft Hellbender
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbender_(video_game)

and its predecessor Fury3 ( Fury<superscript>3</superscript> ) cubed... I don't know the codes here lol

Also games like Microsoft Monster Truck Madness (same game engine... Terminal Reality was the real company, it's Microsoft in name only)

I suppose I would have had to have written things down for those Myst games, if I didn't have walkthrough books (yes, dead trees back then) to look up puzzle solutions. :-)

RE: All the notetaking stuff. I just found out about this:



Notes in the Steam overlay.