The Gaming Gamers Thread - (No Spawn Camping)

[ER_STL]

I'd need a calendar to count the number of man-months spent on this particular game in college:



I dusted off the N64 a few years ago, brought it up to work and spent a Friday afternoon putting on a clinic. Some of my colleagues were probably in diapers when this came out.

[CleverNickname]

Let's see, where to start? Well, if we go back a generation, my dad sold computers at a local mom & pop computer store for a couple years in the early 80's after getting out of active duty. I remember him typing in games from source code printed in computer magazines when I was in kindergarten, and when I was a little older, finding one of the first home Pong consoles from the mid-70's in the attic when we were going through stuff for a garage sale. He mostly gave up gaming by the time I was in Jr high, but over several years he did play all ~32,000 solvable games in the original MS Windows Freecell (apparently there's a couple that have been mathematically proven unsolvable). That said, he does have a more powerful gaming PC than I currently have now, to play flight sims, since he's also been a pilot for almost 50 years.

Personally, I started with an Apple IIc in the 80's with Lemonade Stand and Oregon Trail, but once we got a PC with a modem in the early 90's, I discovered BBSes and shareware games. We never had any console systems; it was all PCs. Out of men in my age/socio-economic background I'm probably a freak since I've never completed a Super Mario game. If you google my name, one of the things that still comes up is a readme file with a thank-you for creating some of the levels in a Spear of Destiny replacement mapset. A couple years later, dialing up a friend direct and playing multiplayer Doom for the first time was something else. I played Q1, Q2 and Q3 all through college, and even ran a moderately successful Q2/Q3 server for a couple years at the local ISP I used, with my previous-generation PC that the ISP's owner let me co-locate there. Initially I ran the Quake server to get a lower ping time, versus going to some other random server on the internet, but I also found administering the server to be enjoyable, which led to my career as a Linux sysadmin. In the 2+ decades since then I've mostly played one multiplayer PC game or another for years at a time. The last one was GTA Online for about 3 years, but that got old and I haven't really picked anything up since then. The game I'm looking forward to right now is Far Cry 6.

[MistWolf]

How could I have forgotten one of my favourite first person shooters- Lucas Arts Outlaws.

I also had a FPS called Nam that I really liked. You had missions you had to perform in Vietnam. One, you had to rescue a buddy being held by the NVA but I never could figure that one out.

Another obscure FSP was Soldier Of Fortune put out by SOF Magazine. That was fun, but tough to play.

Then there was one I think was called SEAL where you were a SEAL in the Vietnam War.

NAM, SOF and SEAL were designed to be as realistic as technology allowed.

[penates]

I have been PC gaming since before I had a computer. My grandfather was an engineer and had an IBM PC that my uncle installed The Ancient Art of War and The Ancient Art of War at Sea. I moved from there to the SSI produced D&D games like Pool of Radiance. Now I mostly play Path of Exile.

[Chance]

Looking at Steam Stats: I had no idea Team Fortress 2 was still that popular - over 100K+ daily players. And the fact that Counter-Strike is still as popular as it is kind of boggles my mind.

[Suvorov]

I was a huge flight simulator nerd up until around 2005 - yoke, rudder pedals, add on scenery, etc. Any major simulator that came out (and a handful of minor ones) I ran and it was that that drove my conversion from Apple to PC in the 1990s. Included in the sims were the X-Wing series and tank simulators like Steel Beasts which we would use as a Conduct of Fire Trainer. Dabbled with strategy games like Steel Panthers but never really got into FPS. Then all of a sudden I pretty much stopped. My computers got old and all the cool games wouldn’t work and most of my old games wouldn’t run on my newer systems.

Then this fall my 7 year old started playing World of Tanks Blitz and got me hooked. The graphics are wonderful, it plays on my iPads, and I get to be a virtual tanker again. I’ve been spending too much time playing it but have to admit it is enjoyable despite the “gamer” qualities. The only thing that really sucks is when I (who spent 8 years of my life as a tank commander) gets slaughtered by some kid. Something that happens all to regularly.

[TGS]

Then this fall my 7 year old started playing World of Tanks Blitz and got me hooked. The graphics are wonderful, it plays on my iPads, and I get to be a virtual tanker again. I’ve been spending too much time playing it but have to admit it is enjoyable despite the “gamer” qualities.

Check out War Thunder. I haven't played it, but it has much more realistic damage modelling.

[Suvorov]

Check out War Thunder. I haven't played it, but it has much more realistic damage modelling.

I’ve seen it advertised and it looks good. I don’t however have anything with the horsepower to run it.

[RoyGBiv]

I haven't played a video game since my kids were small... but.... I want one of these....

[Borderland]

I miss WWII air combat sims. They haven't been a "thing" for many years.

I got hooked on the WW2 sub game Silent Service when it first came out back when you loaded those up on floppies about 35 years ago. Duke Nukem was yuge in our office until mgm't caught on. I've played some online chess recently but don't own any games.