A save-scumming wizard could be a great main character.

I don’t play many free games, they’re too expense.

Nice! I’m playing mostly enhanced vanilla, I’ll dig into OpenMW at some point though. I had no idea there was a decent multiplayer mod!

Still going on UFO50. There’s still a couple games I haven’t even tried yet.

Also, doing a modded playthrough of Morrowind, which is a TES game that I missed when it came out due to having an underspec PC. Its magic creation system is ridiculous and a lot of fun to play with. I wish they’d put something like that in TES6, but I’m not gonna hold my breath (without making a spell for it, anyway).

Didn’t catch any grenades, but I imagine so?

I played last night and showed those young’uns how to use the gravity gun.

Hadn’t played regularly in about 15 years, but the reflexes are still there.

The Monkey Island game that came out a year or two ago was pretty great too if you want a modern take on the genre.

I imagine you’ve played some of the others, but if not you should do 1 & 2 immediately.

If you like point-and-click adventure games, there are a bunch in spooky territory:

The Colonel’s Bequest

Grim Fandango

Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle

There are more, but these are the ones I’d start with if you haven’t played them.

Fate of Atlantis is a cannon story to me. I never saw the two new movies, so that’s the end of the franchise for me, unless the new game is any good.

That’s crazy, thanks for sharing.

I like that hardware, too.

Oh, that’s very interesting!

I do have a 4 that I use as an emulation machine. I should try some older DOS games, I guess. Thanks!

Can you emulate x86 on the pi? I thought that was really inefficient.

Really looking forward to this one. Arena hero-shooters are my favorite games, going all the way back to QWTF.

But my point is that the long jump reduces the hitbox. They’re both crouch-jumps, just different forms.

You had to long-jump into little spaces that would be too big to fit in normally.

I mean, you use the long jump to reach some crouch-jump spots. It’s a type of crouch-jump.

HL1 had the long-jump upgrade where you had to do a crouch jump to use it.

Doing full co-op with a randomizer is a blast.

Sword of the Samurai and Covert Action fans have long since given up.

It really is a great game.

The combat reminds me most of Half-life 1 when the soldiers are chasing you through Black Mesa.

“Duck Game is safe!!” added Podbielski. “[It’s] being returned to Corptron along with its store pages on all platforms, it’s not going anywhere. thank you everyone…hoping everyone else got the same email.”

I’d love another Duck Game, it’s my favorite arena brawler. Crazy that WB did the right thing here, these IP issues usually go the other way.

I think it was VRML.

Yeah, can’t wait for this one.

I think so, it’s pretty easy to pick up. I play against my kids who aren’t big action gamers (although they do love some arena brawlers), and I don’t feel like I have to go easy on them for everyone to have a great time.

It does have a pretty high skill ceiling, so it could get that way, but it’s worth a shot in my opinion; it’s a ton of fun.

Duck Game is one of the best 2D arena brawlers. Everyone who plays local multiplayer should have it.

Here’s a transcript to make it readable:

Two Roads to Jedi-hood

Can KOTOR be a better game than Galaxies, but not a better RPG?

We’ve waited decades for a Star Wars roleplaying game. We sat patiently while space-sim fans hunted TIE Fighters and shooter fans blasted Stormtroopers. We even idly watched pen-and-paper Star Wars RPGs be released, sulking as our tabletop- playing kin commenced aping Han Solo’s best lines. But now, finally, PC gamers. have been given the chance to roleplay characters in the Star Wars universe.

Well, actually, we have two opportunities, but the experiences offered by Star Wars: Galaxies and Knights of the Old Republic are radically dissimilar. Which one is the better RPG? Most of you will likely feel that KOTOR is the better game, since it’s far more polished and features a great story and extremely entertaining Jedi combat. But since you’re read- ing this column, chances are you like RPGs-and KOTOR is absolutely not a better RPG than Galaxies.

How can this be, you ask? Let’s first get a few things straight.

Roleplaying games are about meaningfully roleplaying personalized characters in a non-linear fashion. The first tabletop RPGs were designed with malleable rules systems that accommodated even the most imaginative player-actions. Those games were designed to allow you to create an alter-ego from among near-countless variations within the framework of the game world. The best computer RPGs (CRPGs) still strive to provide that sort of experience. although the medium naturally imposes. limitations on story and character.

RPGs are not primarily about “leveling up,” tweaking abilities, or acquiring swag. Those aren’t even RPG prerequisites, although they’re usually featured as a means of allowing gameplay to evolve. If you’re not given the opportunity to make consequential decisions, and to internalize the experience, then you’re not being given a meaningful opportunity to role-play. The more freedom you’re given to do whatever you want to do, the richer the roleplaying environmentalmost by definition. That’s what makes Morrowind, Fallout, and Gothic “true” RPGs in the classic sense.

This point brings us to KOTOR, and its superficial roleplaying. KOTOR’s environments are restrictive and linear in design, and there’s only one occasion when the player’s decision can significantly alter the direction of the story. Galaxies, on the other hand, is a more open-ended gaming world that lets you hunt Rancors, take bounty- hunter missions, craft hundreds of items. build factories, landscape cities, and par- ticipate in a player-run economy. Even if tending flora farms and building sofas aren’t emblematic Star Wars activities, they’re representative of the tremendous freedom you’re given to roleplay a virtual lifestyle of your own choosing. KOTOR’S largely non-interactive settings are just so much eye candy while you’re walking to the next action set-piece or predetermined NPC conversation.

Again, just because a game offers a richer environment for roleplaying doesn’t mean it’s more entertaining. Ultimately, KOTOR has it all over Galaxies for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that its battles are more tactically and viscerally satisfying. It’s chock-full of amazing. displays of Force powers and combat feats, and its story is genuinely compelling. There’s also a lot of reason to question. Galaxies design decision to limit Jedi abilities to the hardcore players willing to endure the extremely unintuitive and cryp tic process needed to reach Jedi status. Of the two Star Wars “RPGs” for PC, KOTOR is the one that delivers the quintessential “Jedi experience,” despite the fact that its strengths have little to do with roleplaying.

The CRPG genre has been steadily broadened to encompass games that offer few real chances to actually roleplay. It’s as if “story-driven game with adjustable stats” has become the new definition of “RPG.”

But the best RPG is still the one that allows you the greatest freedom to meaningfully roleplay- not the one with the best combat system or the coolest plot twists. If you accept that premise, Galaxies is a better RPG than KOTOR, and rarely have two RPGs better highlighted the evolving genre’s competing, almost schizophrenic, design philosophies.

I’m most of the way through 1 right now, and I love how much this remaster is showing how far ahead of their time these games were.

The redone controls aren’t perfect, but make the game a less daunting prospect than ever before. I prefer the old-school graphic settings, but it’s nice to hotswap to the new camera when I need the flexibility.

It’s an 8/10 remaster in my opinion; well worth a playthrough.

The site on my phone:

Abandon hope, all ye who enter.

You’d probably find Pentiment interesting.

Also, maybe the Ace Attorney games.

And also seconding Disco Elysium; it has some of the best writing I’ve seen in a game.

Nice!

I’d love a “Deadly Games” mod for PVP.

That game was janky, but also so much fun.

Very cool! I played this when it first came out, and I’ve long wanted another B-17 game. Hopefully they’ll make some modern QoL updates, too.

Cookie Clicker is a popular example.

Those are some good points, I think we agree more than not. I was a bit sloppy with my language, too so thanks for the check.

This is a word game that cryptofascists play; they’re quite open about using it to recruit people.

They love the plausible deniability, because it makes people who don’t know about the word game think the people who do are being ridiculous.

Was this a false positive? Perhaps. Is the game worse off for changing the name away from a fascist dog-whistle? I don’t know, it looks pretty terrible in any case.

Regardless, there are ways for a company to make it clear that they are not fascists even if they want to stick to their name. Maybe you’re right and we should just ignore the cryptofascist messaging game, but that just presents more problems in my opinion.

So would it change your mind if Holocaust victims were calling MAGA a fascist movement?

Well, that was back when Windows was handcrafted by artisans in the silicon valley and packed lovingly onto organic floppy disks.

They just don’t make 'em like they used to, with excellence in every byte.

Oh, cool!

It always felt like one, or at least I remember it that way.

Outlaws was the better game, IMO.

Is it the only Build engine game that did this? I don’t remember seeing any significant performance/grapical differences back when they were new.

Only semi-related, but I’m playing through modded-out Daggerfall Unity on my Steam deck and it feels so fresh. It’s the best kind of remaster: it feels like how you remember the game playing, not how it actually did.

I’ve been hooked on Moonring.

It makes me look back at really old cRPGs and remember what made them so compelling, and it has all of the QoL upgrades and game systems of the past 40 or so years to inform the design.

Also it’s free. So, so good.