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Games That Travel Well
hipernoico writes "Wired has a summary of good portable RPG games for the end of this year. 'What better way to travel than in the company of a dragon-slaying knight? ' " I've travelled thousands of miles playing various Game Boy Pokemon titles. Although lately WarioWare Touched and Meteos have taken the place of my usual RPG travel companions. What games will you be playing while dreading arriving at your parents house?
I remember nightmare roadtrips with my parents filled with sibling fighting, incessant "Are we there yets" and parental death threats like they were yesterday. When my husband determined that a family roadtrip was a good idea I had horrid flashbacks but he would not be swayed. I prepared by buying ear plugs; he just stocked up on strategy guides, headphones and batteries. As much as it galls me to admit - he was right. We drove 1500 hundred miles without a peep - it was incredible.
Who knew that you could log hundreds of blissfully silent hours playing various Pokemon titles?
R
Homer: Facts are meaningless, you can use facts to prove anything that's remotely true!
As far as I'm concerned, the Game Boy Advance versions of the Super Mario brothers games are the perfect travel games. They don't require a large time commitment and are infinitely replayable.
But when I get bored of those I usually play a Metroid game or a Zelda game.
A massively in-depth RPG would seem to me to be a poor travel game. They require too much time and memory (your memory) to be able to jump in whenever you wanted.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
My kids will be armed with digital cameras and a handheld GPS back there. They will be encouraged to track our progress on the GPS as well as find waypoints as well as taking photos of a list of items.
Both of which keeps them somewhat quiet except for real interaction that should be welcomed by any parent. And teaches them valuable skills.
Otherwise I could simply load up on dvd's of cartoon-network recordings and let them waste their brain on the built in DVD player.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, not Magic: The Dithering or Pokemon, but good old fashioned Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades. You can play literally countless variations, skill levels range from the simple (SNAP!) to needlessly complex (have you ever tried to understand Duplicate Bridge rotations), and you can play with any number from one, to more than a dozen. Add in the rules of Texas Hold'em and some gambling chips, and you can even be a bit edgy by running the risk of being arrested (but only in the Land Of The Free).
On top of that, you'll likely be able to play some kind of game with everyone you meet, from kids to adults, and unlike role playing games, some of these may even be women.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
CHILD: The camera is full.
PARENT: No it's not. Do not lie to me. Lying hurts the Earth.
C: I've just taken my seventeenth picture of a mile marker.
P: Then you can make a collage when we get home about the mindless mind-wasting rat race to nowhere all the stupid people are stuck in.
C: Can't I play a game?
P: Games are the soul sucking demon spawn of the militaro-corporate power structure complex.
C: I'm hungry. Can we stop?
P: What, so you can poison your precious bodily fluids with a rotting flesh burger and tallow tainted death fries?
C: And I have to pee.
P: You already went yesterday. Hold it in. It will build character and make you impervious to the evil mechanations of the Illuminati controlled Cartoon Network.
C: The camera really is full.
P: Lies! I know the capacity of that camera, and I have been counting the number of shots you have taken and calculating to the byte how much space you have left by looking at your subjects and running the JPEG algorithm in my head. Silence!
Certainly the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale series should work. The single player of either of those is better than the main campaign in NWN (although the followups to NWN were quite good). Rather than RPGs on the laptop, I prefer the Civ games. Rather than using Civ to keep me awake until 4AM when I have to work the next day, I like to take it along to play in airports or on planes. You don't have the security risk of playing FPS (hint - yelling "SET THE BOMB" may be ok when you are playing Counter Strike at home, but it is frowned upon when in an airport), plus the "one more turn" addictiveness of Civ makes those layover go by quickly.
Was that night on the marge of Lake LaBarge I cremated Sam McGee...
My kids will be armed with digital cameras and a handheld GPS back there. They will be encouraged to track our progress on the GPS as well as find waypoints as well as taking photos of a list of items.
Both of which keeps them somewhat quiet...
Your tenses are inconsistent, but I'm getting the distinct feeling that your kids are hypothetical, or at least that their potential game playing days are in the future.
I'm a single father of 12-year-old boy/girl twins, having raised them alone since they were born. On long car trips -- we do a 17-plus hour drive from Minnesota to our Colorado cabin every summer -- you find a balance of things to do and think about, or to sometimes zone out over. Not everything has to fit the program. Kids will not fit your program anyway.
Concentrate on providing them with positive stuff to do -- and helping you figure out the map is a great one -- rather than laying into anything they enjoy that doesn't meet your standards for edutainment. The kids'll be much happier, they won't regard learning as a burden because you'll have lured them to it rather than cracking down and forcing it on them, and you're going to be oh so much saner.
With respect to video games in particular, I would suggest that borrowing a gameboy sort of thing for long-distance trips isn't such a bad deal.
In all seriousness, the only parent I know well who actually attempts to constantly make every experience into an educational wonderland actually is a control freak whose child is pretty miserable. Kid has a reading disorder of some sort, and the father is unreal about it. It's sad to be around.
Just my advice based on experience in the past (and present).
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Why are you dreading arriving at your parents house? Are you an adult, or a child with no control over your life or relationships?
This year my family are coming to my home. If I need some space, I will do what I would do if I were visiting my own parents: go and meet some friends in the pub. The time together will be great though: we will talk, eat, play board games, visit other family and friends, go to the movies, go skiing, go and see Body World II, etc, etc.
Don't forget: time with your family is precious and you can't get back the time you waste today. If your parents are still alive or together, maximise the time with them. Life passes too quickly and they're only getting older. You dread seeing them - how would you feel about your own children having that sentiment?
"... a QWERTY keyboard, which is a keyboard designed to slow typists to prevent typewriters from jamming."
Just FYI, that's an urban legend.
No mention of Monkey Island 1 or 2? WTH/F?!