New Posts
  • Hi there guest! Welcome to PoliticalJack.com. Register for free to join our community?

Games

Arkady

President
I never played "Silent Hunters." Years ago I had the sub operations game called "Harpoon" that Tom Clancy said inspired the book "Hunt for Red October." Unfortunately, I could never get "Harpoon" to run correctly. Subs would get half-way to an engagement point and then simply stop moving, etc. But if you like that I recommend reading certain passages in the book "Cryptonomicon" by Neil Stephenson. One of the main characters is a WWII German U-boat commander and he deals with many of those undersea operational issues.

I need to get back into Fallout IV. I'm trying to do several of the side quests before completing the main quest. I think I've now located everything important on the map, but I'm still learning some of the subtle signals -- the game design is complex (but you've played it and you know it). I have Skyrim for X-box 360, and it locked up my game trying to defeat the big dragon in the final quest. I'm no longer using that console and haven't bought the game for X-box one.

And I have to admit that the X-Box one console has been a bit of a disappointment in the area of "game library." Most of its games are designed to be played on-line and have the on-line problems we discussed. There are too few intricate, broadly scoped games designed for one play that are offered on the platform. I own about 20 X-Box 360 games, and only two, so far for the X-Box One.
There's one game I can't recommend highly enough for X-Box One. It used to be a free download, but now it's maybe five bucks. It's called "Chariot." It's a co-op platformer, which doesn't sound very promising, but the game design is just so well done. And it's great because of the ability to choose multiple routes through the levels. So, if I play with my brother, we can go after the nearly impossible coins that are basically puzzle games to reach, whereas if I play with my six year old daughter, we grab the low-hanging fruit and just try to make it to the next level. It's fantastic as a party game that you can play with gamers and non-gamers alike, because it take about sixty seconds to learn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_(video_game)
 

Arkady

President
I've seen about half this list, and College Humor and Screen Junkies are frequent favorites of mine. I'm also a bit addicted to "Jay Leno's Garage." But you've alos given me a few to look up.
Primitive Technology is an odd one, because literally the guy never says a word. He's just out in the wilderness building a hut or a drill or a bow and arrow or a forge using stone-aged tools. It's weirdly soothing. This one, has 28 million views, which is crazy considering the content:


Well, I'm mid-50s and chubby, but if I were in my 20s I'm confident I'd be LARPing as that was always what I really wanted
It sounds weird to say, but I have a lot of respect for LARPers. Those are people who are secure with themselves. I just couldn't get past the embarrassment factor, I think. It would trigger something similar to stage-fright for me.

Check out the Lindybeige channel -- I think you'd like it. His videos are all over the place, from LARPing, to WWII military history, to ancient weapons techniques, to game design (e.g., criticizing some of conventions for role playing game mechanics and suggesting how they can be improved on). He has worked as an historical consultant on movies and TV series, and so he has some great observations on that.... some of which you'd never think of. For example, often in old movies set before the time of the automobile, they'll show a path where there are two lines of dirt from the cart wheels, with grass growing up between them. But, as he points out, that's not what such paths actually looked like -- the animals that are pulling the carts walk in the middle, so that's the most worn part of the road, and there's no grass there. It's only on dirt roads taken by cars that you get that pattern, because there's nothing touching that center strip to kill the grass.

the reason his voice was so familiar is that as he aged, he and his wife founded a production company for documentaries
I get so annoyed when I'm watching a documentary and I recognize the voice and I can't pin it down.

Ever read the book "World War Z"? It's nothing like the Brad Pitt movie they made from it. Instead, it reads as if it were an oral history of an actual zombie war, written a decade after the fact, with each chapter being someone else's story of the part they played in the war, or how they survived it. Anyway, I listened to it as an audiobook, and the way it's done is that every chapter is a different voice, since they're all first-hand accounts from different people. There are about 40 or 50 voices, total. A lot of the voices are really familiar but hard to nail down, so it drove me nuts as I was listening. A partial list of the voices used:

Nathan Fillion, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, Denise Crosby, Bruce Boxleitner, Jeri Ryan, Mark Hamill, David Ogden Stiers, Kal Penn, Alan Alda, Rob Reiner, Alfred Molina, and F. Murray Abraham.

He's narrated half the shows on the History Channel, including "Great Ships" and most of the A&E Biography series (sorry for the digression -- I thought it was interesting that I recognized him not from his face, even though I'd seen him in movies before, but from his voice).
My wife's that way. She has a real ear for voices.
 

Corruptbuddha

Governor
I really enjoyed a couple Elder Scrolls games, but for whatever reason, Skyrim hasn't done it for me. I've finished two Fallout games, which are among the only games I've ever played through the main storyline before getting bored and moving on. Knights of the Old Republic I and II are a couple others. Most of the time I do what I did with Skyrim and play for a while then get a sense it's just going to be "more of the same" and quit.

Ever play "Silent Hunters" -- the WWII sub simulator? I've played a couple of the more recent versions of those. They work well for my methodical mind. I like tracking a fleet's position, moving ahead and lying in wait, then aiming each torpedo for maximum effect, before escaping. Even on high difficulty levels, I can absolutely school the AI cruisers that are meant to protect the fleets, by picking just the right moment to strike. I like the mental geometry of it -- there are lots of ships moving at once in various ways, and if you can picture it all, you can anticipate a moment when the cruisers will on the far side with obscured views, and your torpedoes can arrive just as the tacking convoy is perpendicular to you, so you won't miss any of your shots.
Silent Hunter was one of my favorite games of all time. As is Red Storm Rising. Have you ever played Aces of the Deep? Great game. I love the stealth element more than anything.
 

Arkady

President
I've used them to gain access to the various story lines, but I really do tend to see them as more of an encumbrance than an aid.
Another quick observation: they need to kill the repetitive dialogue at some point. After about the tenth time you've handed your junk to a companion and heard the same stock line, it starts to get old. The game design should come with a counter where, after a certain number of iterations of a particular line from a particular companion, it stops happening. I get that they can't have infinite lines, but I'd prefer no lines at all to such repetition.
 

Arkady

President
Silent Hunter was one of my favorite games of all time. As is Red Storm Rising. Have you ever played Aces of the Deep? Great game. I love the stealth element more than anything.
I haven't played that one. I'm always on the lookup for something similar, though.

One of my favorite Silent Hunter moves is to get ahead of the fleet at night, head perpendicularly towards where it will be at high speed, then cut engines and submerge to periscope depth, while I still have plenty of momentum, just as the cruisers are on the other side, let loose with my torpedoes, and dive. It's really hard to get it right, because of all the moving parts (cut engines too late and the fleet spots you, cut them too early and you don't have momentum), but if you play it just right, you can slip right under the fleet in complete silence, and then pop up on the other side with the cruisers sitting on the opposite side where you used to be, then fire your rear torpedoes and still get away, with the disabled ships serving as obstacles to pursuit.
 

Jen

Senator
I never played WoW (other than the old offline version from the 90s), because there are so many lifers that I didn't particularly want to be a noob asking all the dumb questions. I've preferred a couple newer MMOs where I wasn't a particularly late arriver, so everyone was asking the same dumb questions.
I never ask questions.
I just figure it out.
I know what you mean about being the noob asking questions. It doesn't sit right.
In a way it was good my sons played in WoW Beta...... but ......I didn't ask questions. I just listened to them talk and learned things. Plus, I always bought those guide books and WoW has forums to find things that aren't easy to discover.

I'm a loner. I started out playing WoW in groups (of my real life friends) but for a long time now I have preferred to play alone and rarely talk to anyone in the game.
 

Jen

Senator
When it comes to video gaming, I'm pretty much console based right now, on the X-Box One platform. I'm addicted to the various games in the Skyrim universe, and to the Fallout series, but I haven't had a lot of time to play this year.
Hubs and sons played Skyrim for a while. They don't have much time these days either.
 

trapdoor

Governor
Primitive Technology is an odd one, because literally the guy never says a word. He's just out in the wilderness building a hut or a drill or a bow and arrow or a forge using stone-aged tools. It's weirdly soothing. This one, has 28 million views, which is crazy considering the content:
I've seen the hut-building video before. I didn't realize it was part of a series. I'll check that out -- I took a blacksmithing seminar and I've spent a lot of my life in the woods. I think the hut building is interesting, but it would take weeks in real life. Of course, you'd have weeks -- it's not like you have anything else to be doing except finding something to eat
It sounds weird to say, but I have a lot of respect for LARPers. Those are people who are secure with themselves. I just couldn't get past the embarrassment factor, I think. It would trigger something similar to stage-fright for me.
I wouldn't have that problem back in my 20s, but I'd be self-concious being old and fat out there today.

Check out the Lindybeige channel -- I think you'd like it. His videos are all over the place, from LARPing, to WWII military history, to ancient weapons techniques, to game design (e.g., criticizing some of conventions for role playing game mechanics and suggesting how they can be improved on). He has worked as an historical consultant on movies and TV series, and so he has some great observations on that.... some of which you'd never think of. For example, often in old movies set before the time of the automobile, they'll show a path where there are two lines of dirt from the cart wheels, with grass growing up between them. But, as he points out, that's not what such paths actually looked like -- the animals that are pulling the carts walk in the middle, so that's the most worn part of the road, and there's no grass there. It's only on dirt roads taken by cars that you get that pattern, because there's nothing touching that center strip to kill the grass.
I think I've seen one of those, too.

I get so annoyed when I'm watching a documentary and I recognize the voice and I can't pin it down.

Ever read the book "World War Z"? It's nothing like the Brad Pitt movie they made from it. Instead, it reads as if it were an oral history of an actual zombie war, written a decade after the fact, with each chapter being someone else's story of the part they played in the war, or how they survived it. Anyway, I listened to it as an audiobook, and the way it's done is that every chapter is a different voice, since they're all first-hand accounts from different people. There are about 40 or 50 voices, total. A lot of the voices are really familiar but hard to nail down, so it drove me nuts as I was listening. A partial list of the voices used:

Nathan Fillion, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, Denise Crosby, Bruce Boxleitner, Jeri Ryan, Mark Hamill, David Ogden Stiers, Kal Penn, Alan Alda, Rob Reiner, Alfred Molina, and F. Murray Abraham.
To visit family about once every two months I have to drive six hours one way, and to pass the time I load audiobooks into my car's CD changer and zone out. I haven't read the book, but I am now pretty certain that listening to it is in the not-very-distant future.
 

Arkady

President
I wouldn't have that problem back in my 20s, but I'd be self-concious being old and fat out there today.
From what I've seen, old might stick out, but fat definitely wouldn't, among LARPers.

I haven't read the book, but I am now pretty certain that listening to it is in the not-very-distant future.
I strongly recommend it. It's one of the 20 most enjoyable reads I've had in the last decade or so, and definitely the one I think benefits the most from the audiobook treatment, because of the huge voice cast.
 

Arkady

President
I never ask questions.
I just figure it out.
I know what you mean about being the noob asking questions. It doesn't sit right.
In a way it was good my sons played in WoW Beta...... but ......I didn't ask questions. I just listened to them talk and learned things. Plus, I always bought those guide books and WoW has forums to find things that aren't easy to discover.

I'm a loner. I started out playing WoW in groups (of my real life friends) but for a long time now I have preferred to play alone and rarely talk to anyone in the game.
Speaking of WoW and (in my exchange with Trapdoor) Youtube, ever watched "The Guild"? It's a great web series based around a guild of players of a game that's clearly just a disguised WoW:


It's super low-budget, but very funny, and was written (and starred in) by a woman who was a huge WoW fan, so it's got some great insights into that world.
 

Jen

Senator
Speaking of WoW and (in my exchange with Trapdoor) Youtube, ever watched "The Guild"? It's a great web series based around a guild of players of a game that's clearly just a disguised WoW:


It's super low-budget, but very funny, and was written (and starred in) by a woman who was a huge WoW fan, so it's got some great insights into that world.
"I have to drop some kids off at the pool"?
Eek.
This is funny.
It would be rare for gamers to live close enough to meet each other in person.
That aside........
It easily acts as a metaphor for our relationships here on PJ.
 

Arkady

President
"I have to drop some kids off at the pool"?
Eek.
This is funny.
It would be rare for gamers to live close enough to meet each other in person.
That aside........
It easily acts as a metaphor for our relationships here on PJ.
Glad you like it.
 

trapdoor

Governor
Primitive Technology is an odd one, because literally the guy never says a word. He's just out in the wilderness building a hut or a drill or a bow and arrow or a forge using stone-aged tools. It's weirdly soothing. This one, has 28 million views, which is crazy considering the content:




It sounds weird to say, but I have a lot of respect for LARPers. Those are people who are secure with themselves. I just couldn't get past the embarrassment factor, I think. It would trigger something similar to stage-fright for me.

Check out the Lindybeige channel -- I think you'd like it. His videos are all over the place, from LARPing, to WWII military history, to ancient weapons techniques, to game design (e.g., criticizing some of conventions for role playing game mechanics and suggesting how they can be improved on). He has worked as an historical consultant on movies and TV series, and so he has some great observations on that.... some of which you'd never think of. For example, often in old movies set before the time of the automobile, they'll show a path where there are two lines of dirt from the cart wheels, with grass growing up between them. But, as he points out, that's not what such paths actually looked like -- the animals that are pulling the carts walk in the middle, so that's the most worn part of the road, and there's no grass there. It's only on dirt roads taken by cars that you get that pattern, because there's nothing touching that center strip to kill the grass.



I get so annoyed when I'm watching a documentary and I recognize the voice and I can't pin it down.

Ever read the book "World War Z"? It's nothing like the Brad Pitt movie they made from it. Instead, it reads as if it were an oral history of an actual zombie war, written a decade after the fact, with each chapter being someone else's story of the part they played in the war, or how they survived it. Anyway, I listened to it as an audiobook, and the way it's done is that every chapter is a different voice, since they're all first-hand accounts from different people. There are about 40 or 50 voices, total. A lot of the voices are really familiar but hard to nail down, so it drove me nuts as I was listening. A partial list of the voices used:

Nathan Fillion, Martin Scorsese, Simon Pegg, Denise Crosby, Bruce Boxleitner, Jeri Ryan, Mark Hamill, David Ogden Stiers, Kal Penn, Alan Alda, Rob Reiner, Alfred Molina, and F. Murray Abraham.



My wife's that way. She has a real ear for voices.
Re-watched that hut-building video. I'd love to see what that guy could build if he just had one steel bowie knife and a hand-driven auger-style drill.

Of course, he has some advantages in that wherever he's building the hut has rich soil, decent vegetation, water and clay.
 

SW48

Administrator
Staff member
Supporting Member
A nice war game was called Empire Deluxe.

The best online game is Iracing.com You can race live against up to 30 other people in almost any type of racing series (F1, Indy, Nascar, Dirt Tracks, Late Models and more). On over 100 tracks. Its more of a simulation than a game.
 

Arkady

President
Re-watched that hut-building video. I'd love to see what that guy could build if he just had one steel bowie knife and a hand-driven auger-style drill.

Of course, he has some advantages in that wherever he's building the hut has rich soil, decent vegetation, water and clay.
Did you see his video with the pump drill? The stuff he manages to put together with nothing but stone-age materials is really amazing.
 

trapdoor

Governor
Did you see his video with the pump drill? The stuff he manages to put together with nothing but stone-age materials is really amazing.
I hadn't seen it, but I just took the time to watch it just now. I'd read about that sort of thing before, so to me the impressive part was drilling the hole through the rock with his flint "drill bit" held in his hand. I was wondering why he hadn't made the weight out of fired clay, when he started making weights out of fired clay, and I realized he'd done the rock one just to show how it could be done.
 

trapdoor

Governor
Arkady, I tried to send you a game-related private message, but you're not accepting private messages -- please contact me.
 
Top