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What is Your Desert Island Game?
1up has a feature today asking games industry heavyweights what their 'desert island game' would be. Games from the Civilization series are backed by the likes of Sony's Phil Harrison, David Jaffe, and Bethesda's Todd Howard, while Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has waiting-for-rescue fans among a number of the list respondents. Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka has an interesting answer to the question while talking about his pick: StarCraft. " It's an unusual choice for me in that I'd normally pick a role-playing game. But StarCraft has a strong campaign editor to make new content (including making either combat-oriented or story-based campaigns), plus you can play both the solid single-player campaign and against the A.I., and -- here's the trick -- you can play on a LAN or WAN (you said no Internet, but didn't mention local or wide area networks...my goal would be to build a WAN -- I'd explain how, but that would be telling -- connecting other folks similarly dropped onto nearby desert islands by other videogame online sites, who are equally eager to play some competitive multiplayer RTS or try out the campaigns I've created to kill time on the long days where there's nothing else to do but collect coconuts and build rafts." So, assuming that you have everything you need to play, what game would you want to take with you into seclusion?
Tetris DS, lots of modes and never gets old.
I like muppets.
I might even be able to beat it without saving eventually ...
Does Visual Studio count as a game?
No? Fine: Chess.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
All day. I've been playing the game for 20 years (on my original system that surprisingly still works) and I plan to play till I die. There are countless versions for countless platforms but nothing beats the music, the controls or the plain feel of the single greatest game of all time.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Yeah, it's from 1995, but it's one of the most fun and addictive strategy games I've ever played.
You don't need uber graphics to make a good game.
34486853790
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No, the correct answer is any non-FPS networked game, so you could ask the other players for help. The reason an FPS would not work is because no one would believe you...they would just assume you're using the excuse "I'm stranded on a desert island, ping times suck!" for why you have -3 kills and 58 deaths.
The nethack source is the real game.
Given that you will find no AC outlets or battery chargers on a desert island, eventually you'll be playing "bang on coconuts with sticks."
I've been playing the Civ games for over a decade now and they have yet to get old. Definitely my pick for a deserted island game.
If you want to talk about infinite replayability, gcc is the way to go. You would be able to create as may games as you want! After all, you're on a desert island, so you'll have lots of time on your hands to make these games. You could create any genre/style you needed.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Two words: "Skirmish Mode". You can set up an off-the-cuff battle between any combination of races, using any of numerous maps, pick from several races, set different game rules... It's infinitely configurable. You would never run out of weird situations to try.
I'd personally try to get the point where I could own Chaos as Tao under the hardest difficulty level. Of course this is nearly impossible; Chaos is TOUGH. I think it's like this:
The Eldar are the "cool kids" who take Theater and think they're better than everyone else.
The Tao are the nerds. Everyone picks on them, but they've got better technology and can strategize.
The Space Marines are the football team.
The Orcs are the delinquents, smoking cigs out back instead of going to Biology class.
The Imperial Guard are the Young Republicans.
And the Chaos Marines are the psycho satanists smoking cloves and playing Ozzy at top volume in the courtyard; they're planning to sacrifice the dean's cat to Nurgle after Saturday's rave.
It's College, writ large in outer space!
How can you not dig that...
NO CARRIER
...
Sorry, but this just makes me think of what I did in morrowind once.
I took this dinosaur like creature, made it 3x it's normal hight... Made it ultra-powerful, and stuck it in the middle of the starter villiage. (over 2k HP, I think all the stat/skills were in the hundreds, etc. I can't remember though, it's been a couple years)
This villiagers ran away but not fast enough.
The guards ran towards the villiage, and didn't survive long.
It was fun to watch.
34486853790
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Typical Empire session ... I'll just finish this turn, then save and quit ... ....I'll just finish this turn, than save and quit ...
4 hours later:
If so...
1) An open source WoW server emulator. I could do a number of things with that; tweak the AI and make bots for WSG/partying, migrate it to postgresql if that's never been done, (I don't think WoW does run on postgres) and maybe make some new material if I had 3d studio max. Someone else said the Diablo Battle Chest; I'd *maybe* go with D1, but WoW is everything D2 is and more.
2) UT 99 with level editor, and offline copies of this, this, and this site.
3) GTA: San Andreas.
4) Another interesting game-related project if I could learn enough would be a truly decent 3D front end for Nethack. This could possibly serve as a base, but I'd make a lot of graphical alterations.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
It was the first thing that came to mind by reading the article title, and not reading the summary.
Sadly, this would probably be followed by
/g "No, my hearthstone is not set for Virginia"
/g "No, I *don't* have my flying mount with me. This is real life. Please send a rescue party ASAP (and some beer)"
/g "Damnit, no, I can't cast Underwater Breathing on me and swim out. I'm not a warlock in real life guys."
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
If I had mod points.
For people that don't understand, Tetris DS is quite a different game than Tetris for old school gameboy. The reason being due to several small changes:
1. Shadow block - A shadow of where the block will fall is always shown. Sounds cheesy, but helps a lot given some of the other changes...
2. Hard drop - The block will instantly drop to the shadow if you press the up button.
3. Limited / Infinite spin - In certain modes (Wifi) there is limited spin which allows you to rotate the block for a short amount of time to keep it from sticking in place even though it touches other blocks. In other modes (non-multiplayer) there's infinite spin which has no time limit.
4. Hold block - You can place the current block into the hold queue by pushing the L or R buttons, the block that was previously in the queue will be swapped out--you can't swap out a block from the hold queue if you just placed it there. This is highly useful and allows you to do some pretty nasty things.
5. Shows next 6 blocks - You can see the next 6 blocks (in order) that you will receive.
6. T-spins - The game recognizes t-block spinning which can be used to put garbage blocks on your opponent similar or worse than a tetris.
7. Back-to-back tetris or t-spin - A bonus garbage row is sent to your opponent if you perform multiple tetris or t-spins with no other line clears in between.
Because of this, Tetris DS plays nothing like the original. The concept is the same - stack blocks and when a line completes it clears, but because of all the changes, the game is much more flexible and has a greater depth to it that doesn't involve just blocks falling faster and faster. For example, try mastering setups to perform double and triple T-spins, it's pretty tough and forces you to read your 6-piece queue ahead of time to determine how to construct the setup.
Plus surviving on a deserted island would be that much more challenging while blind.