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Ask Slashdot: What Are the Best Games To Have In Your Collection?
SternisheFan writes: I am not a "gamer," per se. I grew up on "old school" arcade/Atari-type games. My question is: What are the very best games to own? Let's assume platform is irrelevant — any console, any computer, any operating system, any mobile device. I'd just like to know what you think are the most indispensable games to have in your collection.
Let's expand this to include board games and other tabletop games as well. What games do you make sure to always have on hand for get-togethers?
River Raid
Neverwinter Nights
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
For get-togethers the easiest thing to use is just plain old cards. The number of games that can be had from just a couple decks is great.
Common games for us -
Blackjack, Hearts, Pinochle, Poker, etc
for more entertainment you could always Check out Cards again Humanity for those with a twisted sense of humor.
If people aren't too uptight, cards against humanity is great.
Mario kart (any version)
trivial pursuit
subjective lists are awesome! If you don't know your friends well enough to know what they like, you have other questions you should be delving into first :)
NetHack, preferrably on a public server
Years of time can be wasted
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
MOO2
Civ2 - Call to power
Descent
NeverWinterNights 2
Tribes (I & II)
Seawolf
MechWarrior
Dark Reign
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
That's like asking what's the best food to have in your fridge. What is the best color is along the same lines...
Bacon and green. Next!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
The best games are the ones I have played between the ages of 10-18.
The ones before that are too primitive, the ones after that are just full of eye candy and attempts to just harness a bunch of money.
Oddly enough a lot of my favorite movies and TV shows were during that time too.
I guess things were just better during the time where you didn't have any responsibilities.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I like to play a game called "Troll the Internet"
You pick some category (music, books, movies, etc) and then ask a question along the lines of "Which is better?". You can even do it with entire categories (e.g. "What are the best songs to have in my music collection?" "What are the best books to read?")
It's hilarious watching the infighting and attempts to justify responses to a subjective question.
The game has gotten a bit out of hand though. I've even seen it being played on popular tech forums like "Slashdot".
Baldur's gate II is the best of the infinity engine games, all of which are already great. Dark Souls and Dark Souls II have the best method of story delivery in any RPG I've ever seen, as well as easily the most engaging and immersive combat. To illustrate, when I was fighting one of DSII's new DLC bosses recently I did something I hadn't done since I first picked up a controller: I moved my physical body to dodge an incoming blow, instead of pressing the relevant button. The last time I did that I was 7 years old and jumping on goombas. It's that good.
Give up already and switch to sdlmame.
The Orange Box bundled:
-Portal
-Half Life 2
-Team Fortress 2
Seven years later, all three are still among the best games to have and play.
This also got me thinking of another party game, Pandemic. This is a new addition and what's really sweet about it is that it promotes teamwork as you're not in competition so there's a different vibe, nice for a mix up. Settlers of Catan is worthy of a mention too.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
for taking years of my life (Fallout and Elder Scrolls Series). My love will only return as soon as you publish something else
'2. All of Infocom's text adventures.'
Text adventures are still being produced. The Interactive Fiction Archive has many old and new games. Many are very good.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I don't understand how you kids can play Nethack on a phone.
This old nerd needs all the keys.
What we need more of is science!
Blue... no, wait .. Gree- AHhhhhhhhhh
This signature is false.
The FOSS remake (The Ur-Quan Masters) lacks one "feature" from the original Star Control 2 released by Accolade: in the original, it was possible to sell your last planet lander, and then to sell one more (?!), which would leave you with (practically) infinitely many more. This gives you limitless RU right from the start of the game (well, at least once you clear the moon, kill the Ilwrath scout, and gain full access to the human starbase), which makes it much easier to trigger the Yehat schizm in time to save the Pkunk.
For those that have never experienced this masterpiece, here's one of my favorite bits of dialogue. The protagonist asks the Zoq-Fot-Pik (an alien race, or really three alien races that originated on one common world) "what was your history like?"
Our past? Quite a broad topic for this short conversation
...Or should we just go back into the forest
...that they decided the Zoq hadn't really died when the wheel flattened him
but we'll share a key piece of our history with you.
After we killed off the last Zebranky
we faced an interesting dilemma.
Should we proceed, and establish a culture
which would advance in art, technology and social sophistication?...
and kick back and enjoy ourselves
knowing that a Zebranky wasn't gonna jump out of a bush and eat us!
Well, we DID go back into the forest.
We stayed there for about five thousand years and had a great time
Then, one stormy day, a Zoq, a Fot, and a Pik were walking up a steep path
looking for something good to eat, when a bolt of lightning struck nearby.
With a huge flash of light, the bolt of energy
carved a strangely-shaped chunk of granite out of a cliff.
It was a disk, with a hole in the middle!
As the rock began to roll down the hill, toward the three terrified beings
some dry grass got caught in its hole, and since the rock was still hot
the grass caught on fire.
When the rock finally got to the Zoq, the Fot, and the Pik
they simultaneously discovered the Wheel, Fire, and Religion
thus catapulting them on to the road of progress.
Which has led us to this day, Captain.
Oh! How did the flaming wheel give religion to our Culture, you ask?
I will explain.
You see, when it got to the threesome, the flaming wheel was going at a pretty good clip
and it ran smack into the Zoq, killing him.
The Fot and the Pik felt so bad
they really liked that Zoq!...
he had just gone to `a better place.'
Presumably one without lethal flaming wheels.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Oh, good example. Y'all probably know that already, but Star Control 2 is now available freely under an open source license, just under the different name of Ur-Quan Masters due to trademark issues.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I MUST OWN THEM ALL HRRRGRRBLLL DIGITAL HOARDING
*ahem*
Sorry about that. I tend to get a little foamy when I digitally hoard. Anyways, counter to your point it's fun (for me, YMMV of course) to have as many as you can get. Sometimes I'll fire up MAME and simply pick out old games at random. Some I remember, some I never have seen before. It's like being an archaeologist in your own past. I'll do the same thing with C64 archives and Amiga archives (look for Amiga Tosec). Scores of Atari 2600 games. All the video discs for Daphne (the videodisc game emulator). Dragon's Lair, anyone?
It's a wish come true for younger-me. I used to mow lawns just to save up and get an Atari cartridge. Now I can download Stella and inside of ten minutes have ALL of them. Fun! And yes, someday I will make a MAME cabinet. Oh yes. It will be glorious.
So basically TL;DR it's really fun to poke around with. And really, with the price of storage these days you can store the entire library of an entire genre on a few blu ray discs. A 3 Tb hard drive is about $100 at NewEgg. Why not have them?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.