Games You Want To Love But Can't

[Nalano]

Anyway, what I said was simply that people have each their own perspective and it's inane to judge someone without trying to be in their shoes and try to see their point of view.

Who said we were incapable of seeing it from their point of view? Kadayi did just that, and pointed out just how blind said view was.

We are well within our rights to judge him and, for that matter, judge you. In fact, this bullshit jive you're trying to spin is merely a defensive measure to deflect that very judgement. Every time you say we're too ill-informed to pass judgement, all you're really saying is "I don't like the result when you judge me."

[Rii]

But you know, if RPS is like a barrel of wine, we have to remember that no matter how exquisite the wine may be, it still has dregs at the bottom of the barrel.

Heh. Selling my PC provided a great opportunity to dispense with 95% of the internet and to just lean on RSS feeds. Somehow the RPS Forums escaped the Great Cleansing and I am increasingly wondering why.

[khaz]

Brilliant.

Why did the hipster burn his tongue eating pizza? He ate it before it was cool.



Satire's all in the details.


Anyway back on topic: System Shock. Seminal game, must-play, this is a shameful confession. But the controls just seemed too primitive, the li'l clever ideas (things like using audio-logs to tell the story) too cliched, the story setting too talked about and familiar...I couldn't get into it. Convince me I'm missing out I'll give it another go, but until then...

(Oh and of course, being that type of person, my exposure to 2 is pending my completion of 1. So...)

Good joke. :)

Regarding System Shock, all the little things it did when it came first out weren't so common (Or at all done before) in games ya know. Are you sure you aren't seeing it through modern eyes a bit? The sequel is simply a better game though. Not least because of Shodan. Brrrrrr!

[Nalano]

Cities in Motion

Fine premise, and there's certainly a dearth of management sims to choose from nowadays - especially those that take place in cities. Being a great fan of TTD and SimCity, I thought it was a done deal. I get to watch trains and trolleys trundle up and down the streets, and hear a satisfying cha-ching every time they pick up passengers. However, it didn't have the tools necessary to really work out. In fact, here's a few bullet points:

* In order to scale down cities to the thousands and not the hundreds of thousands, they scaled down everything, like transit capacities. So you started with buses with a capacity of ten. This makes you put more buses on the lines, but...

* ...there's no option to run them on a schedule, so what you get are very angry people on one end of a line and a convoy of buses on the other, all trailing an at-capacity bus.

* And those people are angry because game-time is at an accelerated schedule but the vehicles run in real-time, so while it may take four minutes for a bus to run a route, the commuters get angry at around the 20-second mark. In fact, the time it take a bus to make a left turn across a busy thoroughfare is enough for some commuters to get red in the face.

* Since everybody drives by default, trying to run lines through busy (and thus profitable) routes, you end up coming against a brick wall in the form of being so popular that you need to run a bunch of buses and trams, but not yet being the primary mode of transit, so all your buses and trams get stuck in traffic...

* ...which gets worse when your trams break down, since they can't change lanes, because then you've just caused a gridlock.

* And, of course, you ran all those buses and trams through the center of town because the margins are so low that you need to do this to subsidize running out to the 'burbs.

* But then the scenarios screw you by saying "spend your nickels and dimes making a tram route that connects this farmhouse in the boonies with this central railroad station and this department store across town, a route that could never in a million years be anything but a black hole where the commuters who want to go from the train station to the department store mob the stops, but all the vehicles are stuck running all the way out to the boonies, making sure your service rating AND your income drops through the floor."

* The traffic wouldn't be that much of an issue if we had right-of-ways or if subways didn't suffer from a whole new level of inability. Even when the top subway train runs at capacity 85% of the time, it doesn't pay for itself with the default fares.

* Furthermore, the subway tracks are made such that simple things like avoiding at-grade crossings on the ends of lines is impossible, leading to bottlenecks.

* Also, even with the DLC double-stations, commuters don't have the path AI to figure out express lines...

* ...which is only exacerbated by transfers anyway: Connect two subway lines and all you're doing is manufacturing a mob of commuters no number of trains, with their top capacity of 150 (!), can cope with.

* Not that it matters, because trains suffer from the same thing trolleys do: One breakdown and the entire route is crippled.

And to think, TTD has an incredibly involved and complex system of signalling and rail designs, engine combinations and train lengths (which is added to by OpenTTD) and even earlier transit sims like A-Train had simple but powerful tools like route scheduling.

[khaz]

O_o

A game to avoid then. Now go play Cities XL and give me a similar breakdown!

[Nalano]

O_o

A game to avoid then. Now go play Cities XL and give me a similar breakdown!

Cities XL: A city builder with roads that can go in all directions!

... and then limits all development to square plots. What. The fuck.

No, really, see this?



This is a prime example of what happens with a plot of land where two avenues meet at something other than a 90 degree angle. SimCity couldn't do this because SimCity could only do 90 and 45 degrees, but at least SimCity had rectangular plots, and mods could fake buildings with 45 degree angles, and that's more than Cities XL can do. In fact, not to put too fine a point on this, but there's not a single square plot in that entire picture!

In SimCity, half that picture is possible. In Cities XL, none of that picture is possible. Anything smaller than the default square plot is unusable, and that includes awkward spaces between square plots when roads meet at anything other than 90 degree angles or, god forbid, if streets bend mid-block. So if you're not going to make use of a full 3D system, like having buildings shaped such that they fit triangular or trapezoidal or parallelogrammatic or anything other than square plots, then why have it? So I can make squiggly roads out in the boonies? Fuck that! It's called Cities XL!

[khaz]

Fuck that shit. I'm going back to Settlers 2: 10th Anniversary.

[Keep]

Regarding System Shock, all the little things it did when it came first out weren't so common (Or at all done before) in games ya know. Are you sure you aren't seeing it through modern eyes a bit?

Oh totally that's it. I know consciously the audio-logs, the setting, etc. are worth admiration, came ahead of the cliches, but I still failed to get into the game.

I think I might just jump to 2 though, from what you guys are saying.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

Oh totally that's it. I know consciously the audio-logs, the setting, etc. are worth admiration, came ahead of the cliches, but I still failed to get into the game.

I think I might just jump to 2 though, from what you guys are saying.

Do. I've honestly never been able to play SS1 due to the controls, but my world is a better place for having played 2.

[Ravelle]

Cities in Motion

Fine premise, and there's certainly a dearth of management sims to choose from nowadays - especially those that take place in cities. Being a great fan of TTD and SimCity, I thought it was a done deal. I get to watch trains and trolleys trundle up and down the streets, and hear a satisfying cha-ching every time they pick up passengers. However, it didn't have the tools necessary to really work out. In fact, here's a few bullet points:

* In order to scale down cities to the thousands and not the hundreds of thousands, they scaled down everything, like transit capacities. So you started with buses with a capacity of ten. This makes you put more buses on the lines, but...

* ...there's no option to run them on a schedule, so what you get are very angry people on one end of a line and a convoy of buses on the other, all trailing an at-capacity bus.

* And those people are angry because game-time is at an accelerated schedule but the vehicles run in real-time, so while it may take four minutes for a bus to run a route, the commuters get angry at around the 20-second mark. In fact, the time it take a bus to make a left turn across a busy thoroughfare is enough for some commuters to get red in the face.

* Since everybody drives by default, trying to run lines through busy (and thus profitable) routes, you end up coming against a brick wall in the form of being so popular that you need to run a bunch of buses and trams, but not yet being the primary mode of transit, so all your buses and trams get stuck in traffic...

* ...which gets worse when your trams break down, since they can't change lanes, because then you've just caused a gridlock.

* And, of course, you ran all those buses and trams through the center of town because the margins are so low that you need to do this to subsidize running out to the 'burbs.

* But then the scenarios screw you by saying "spend your nickels and dimes making a tram route that connects this farmhouse in the boonies with this central railroad station and this department store across town, a route that could never in a million years be anything but a black hole where the commuters who want to go from the train station to the department store mob the stops, but all the vehicles are stuck running all the way out to the boonies, making sure your service rating AND your income drops through the floor."

* The traffic wouldn't be that much of an issue if we had right-of-ways or if subways didn't suffer from a whole new level of inability. Even when the top subway train runs at capacity 85% of the time, it doesn't pay for itself with the default fares.

* Furthermore, the subway tracks are made such that simple things like avoiding at-grade crossings on the ends of lines is impossible, leading to bottlenecks.

* Also, even with the DLC double-stations, commuters don't have the path AI to figure out express lines...

* ...which is only exacerbated by transfers anyway: Connect two subway lines and all you're doing is manufacturing a mob of commuters no number of trains, with their top capacity of 150 (!), can cope with.

* Not that it matters, because trains suffer from the same thing trolleys do: One breakdown and the entire route is crippled.

And to think, TTD has an incredibly involved and complex system of signalling and rail designs, engine combinations and train lengths (which is added to by OpenTTD) and even earlier transit sims like A-Train had simple but powerful tools like route scheduling.

Does it work with demands? Because I've played Simcity 4000 for a while but stopped because the people wouldn't stop demanding farms.

[Nalano]

Does it work with demands? Because I've played Simcity 4000 for a while but stopped because the people wouldn't stop demanding farms.

I don't ever remember people demanding farms in SimCity 4. (You can also adjust the tax rate so that people demand only what you want them to demand. Don't like dirty industry? You'll grow slower, but with a 12% tax rate you'll never see another paper mill again.)

[Ravelle]

I don't ever remember people demanding farms in SimCity 4. (You can also adjust the tax rate so that people demand only what you want them to demand. Don't like dirty industry? You'll grow slower, but with a 12% tax rate you'll never see another paper mill again.)

No matter how much agriculture zones I built around my city, almost leaving no room for other zones. The demand stayed crazy high for some reason. I tried raising the tax to 12 percent but then every demand sunk to the bottom and nothing was built anymore. I'm also always out of money.

[squareking]

I think Mr. Blow is generally full of hot air, but the "hipster" bashing in this thread is ridiculous.

[ZamFear]

Do. I've honestly never been able to play SS1 due to the controls, but my world is a better place for having played 2.

Assuming this mod still exists, controls are no longer an excuse.

[Kadayi]

@redspielened

You need to realise that it's entirely possible to separate the product from the person, and judge each accordingly on their relative merits. Like most people I know I think Bono is a complete cock these days, however that doesn't stop me from appreciating some of the music U2 have produced over the years. Similarly I like Jarvis Cocker, but I don't think everything he's done is golden. It is possible to enjoy a game, a song, a film or a painting and not feel obliged to drop on all fours and hail the creator as some unadulterated genius. Criticism is not a hate crime.

[Nalano]

No matter how much agriculture zones I built around my city, almost leaving no room for other zones. The demand stayed crazy high for some reason. I tried raising the tax to 12 percent but then every demand sunk to the bottom and nothing was built anymore. I'm also always out of money.

You know you don't need to build any farms at all, right? And that you're lord of your domain?

Also, you can raise the taxes by sector. I-Ag is separate from I-D and I-M and I-HT, etc.

[Althea]

You need to realise that it's entirely possible to separate the product from the person, and judge each accordingly on their relative merits.

No, it isn't. In most cases, it is. In some cases? No. Not at all.

[khaz]

This is a personality thing I think. I find it incredibly easy to seperate the person from the product (I'd say its natural even) but i'm always amazed how many people can't do this.

[Nalano]

No, it isn't. In most cases, it is. In some cases? No. Not at all.

Translated: "I have a grudge that I am not willing to let go."

[khaz]

:D

Apparently i'm not allowed messages with less than 10 characters.

:/