OT: Cole's Coffee Shop: Let's talk internet in the 90s

[Ogrezilla]

I love it. It reminds me of when games were actually hard when I was younger. Games progressively got harder each level to the point where you just raged. Now it's "Buy a loot box, beat this game that you just paid $80 for with an additional $39.99 for that loot box within an hour!"...

It irks me so much, remember when games were epics? Remember pausing your nintendo and sleeping knowing if you turned it off, all progress would be gone and it took you HOURS to get there?

Now a ****ing campaign is 2hrs of game play, then it goes to online, same **** online.

Either you race against people.
You play against someone in a sports game.
You shoot people with a team or vs a cpu
Or you go online to play campaign together.


I find myself playing my SNES Classic and old Nintendo games more and more while my Xbox One & PS4 are expensive netflix machines, also the Jackbox thing on PS4 is a hell of a lot of fun.

I don't think I've ever seen a game where loot boxes make the campaign easier. Even if there are, just don't buy the? It's single player, it's not like you're competing with someone. And there are still a ton of long single player games being made. Honestly, I have a bigger issue these days with games having too much extra padding to boost their playtime than with them being too short.

There are a lot of online games, but there's also still a ton of single player games out there. There's just a ton of games these days.

I suggest cuphead and Super meat Boy if you want some hard platformers. Doom is a good single player shooter, and I hear the new Wolfenstein is too. Or obviously dark souls and bloodborne for tough single player games. Furi is good and very hard too. It's short, but it's also $20. Nier automata, hellblade, xcom 2, nioh, horizon zero dawn...there are a LOT of good games these days.

This past year or two were some of the best in a long long time for single player gaming imo.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I don't think I've ever seen a game where loot boxes make the campaign easier. Even if there are, just don't buy the? It's single player, it's not like you're competing with someone. And there are still a ton of long single player games being made. Honestly, I have a bigger issue these days with games having too much extra padding to boost their playtime than with them being too short.

There are a lot of online games, but there's also still a ton of single player games out there. There's just a ton of games these days.

I suggest cuphead and Super meat Boy if you want some hard platformers. Doom is a good single player shooter, and I hear the new Wolfenstein is too. Or obviously dark souls and bloodborne for tough single player games. Furi is good and very hard too. It's short, but it's also $20. Nier automata, hellblade, xcom 2, nioh, horizon zero dawn...there are a LOT of good games these days.

This past year or two were some of the best in a long long time for single player gaming imo.

I think it's more the difficulty levels are just a joke now.

Hard was the old Normal, the Hardest now, was slightly harder than normal from games back in the day. It's also a race to finish the campaign to unlock skins and what not to play online to earn more tokens to unlock boxes or you can speed it up. But the emphasis on campaign mode is virtually just a sprint in terms of time spent on it.

I should have been clear about that, my apologies. I did buy Cuphead, I love the art and the game. I'll check the others out.

 

[Ogrezilla]

I think it's more the difficulty levels are just a joke now.

Hard was the old Normal, the Hardest now, was slightly harder than normal from games back in the day. It's also a race to finish the campaign to unlock skins and what not to play online to earn more tokens to unlock boxes or you can speed it up. But the emphasis on campaign mode is virtually just a sprint in terms of time spent on it.

I should have been clear about that, my apologies. I did buy Cuphead, I love the art and the game. I'll check the others out.

I got you. My point is that none of the games I listed fit that description of a sprint to loot crates or multiplayer.

The ones I said are hard are also in line with old games imo.

 

[Winger for Hire]

I have no qualms about playing games on EASY.

I want to have fun and enjoy myself. I'm not looking to go pro (My 8 year old self would freak the eff out if I could go back and told him you could actually go pro in video games).

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I got you. My point is that none of the games I listed fit that description of a sprint to loot crates or multiplayer.

Yeah they definitely don't. I just remember Halo for example, the campaigns got shorter and shorter and they put more emphasis on the online portion of the game, same with Gears of War and various other games. I have Fallout 4, that game is an endless amount of time to waste on, but it's also a very crap game imo. GTAV was a campaign I finally finished a few months back, I don't know why I waited so long.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I have no qualms about playing games on EASY.

I want to have fun and enjoy myself. I'm not looking to go pro (My 8 year old self would freak the eff out if I could go back and told him you could actually go pro in video games).

So you never saw the movie The Wizard in 1989?

 

[Ogrezilla]

Yeah they definitely don't. I just remember Halo for example, the campaigns got shorter and shorter and they put more emphasis on the online portion of the game, same with Gears of War and various other games. I have Fallout 4, that game is an endless amount of time to waste on, but it's also a very crap game imo. GTAV was a campaign I finally finished a few months back, I don't know why I waited so long.

Yes some franchises have moved more to multiplayer focus for sure. And until very recently almost all shooters did.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Yes some franchises have moved more to multiplayer focus for sure. And until very recently almost all shooters did.

The first Battlefront before the 2nd got destroyed by Reddit and even Overwatch just went straight to online FPS, etc. Didn't even bother with a campaign mode.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Received a sweet piece of horror memorabilia that I ordered from Austria like 2 weeks ago in the mail yesterday.

 

[Clare2904]

Received a sweet piece of horror memorabilia that I ordered from Austria like 2 weeks ago in the mail yesterday.

Is that your baby photos album?

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Is that your baby photos album?

Same ol' joke from before huh.

And no it wasn't.

 

[Clare2904]

Same ol' joke from before huh.

And no it wasn't.

That's the one that will keep on giving

 

[Winger for Hire]

So you never saw the movie The Wizard in 1989?

Of course I did:

But that was a contest, not pro gaming.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

That's the one that will keep on giving

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Of course I did:

But that was a contest, not pro gaming.

They had to be pro-gamers man!

Just like Alex Rogan had to be a master to set the highest score of all time to be recruited by Centauri to save the universe!

 

[Honour Over Glory]

If you realize my two favorite books are Ready Player One and Armada (as well as the Odyssey and Iliad), you sort of get to know I'm a nostalgic dork.

Speaking of books, I know American Gods is a very popular one (I have it, love it, like the show too), but I picked up Good Omens a week ago, having a blast with that one too.

 

[Winger for Hire]

I was super disappointed in Armada (got a signed copy and everything).

But that was Cline trying to turn the pop culture references to 11 and skimp way down on the story.

 

[Deport Ogie]

Holy **** (no pun intended) Good Omens is amazing. I just re-read it a month ago or so because there's an adaptation coming on amazon prime, which I do not have but may have to get.

And yeah, I was let down by Armada. Not horribly so, but enough.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

Received a sweet piece of horror memorabilia that I ordered from Austria like 2 weeks ago in the mail yesterday.

I loved horror as a kid, which kind of killed it for my uncle who was trying to scare us kids as that one "Cool younger uncle" tends to do to his brother's kids as the tormentor. Instead, I sat fascinated watching Jason and Freddy movies and the Romero Creepshow movie. I'd always just sit there and wonder, why not just run away, why not do that, and my uncle would be like "Just be scared like your brother, he's going to piss his bed and he's your top bunk, haha..." He is still a dick.

I tried to watch current horror/slasher films, it just doesn't have the "soul" or the campy feel to it like the older ones did. The Saw movies are just trash to me, shock factor with a lot of over the top gore and then there's the jump scare horror flicks. My buddy and his wife love the Indsidious movies and want to see the latest one, I haven't seen any of them, I can't remember if that's the movie with the comical midget darth maul thing.

I do remember getting a little older and then watching the Jason movies, for an entirely different reason - the nudity finally started to serve a purpose in my puberty years, lol.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I was super disappointed in Armada (got a signed copy and everything).

But that was Cline trying to turn the pop culture references to 11 and skimp way down on the story.

Really? I loved it. I know a lot of people felt it was too forced with the references and what not, but once you ignore that, you get to enjoy it a lot more. I loved it a lot and I am curious who directs the movie (it's being made into a movie as well, Pixels was like a horribly bastardized mouth breather version of it, actually that's not even fair, it's an even worse version than that of Armada). My RPO is autographed btw!

The feels in that book are good, it has some similarities between RPO (mostly the way the romance arc works for the main character, etc), but I was able to enjoy it, although never as much as I loved Ready Player One. Cline is very close to my age, so the references, everything is 100% my youth as well, so it hits home for me right away.

I'm very skeptical about the new RPO, I know the new games need to be in that for the Oasis, which I am 100% with, but I don't want new characters being main characters, I also don't like the "prettying up" of the characters. There's a reason why Cline had them written that way, don't Hollywood that shit in the worst way Hollywood does that crap.

Book character - average looking, kind of out of shape.
Hollywood - What's Zac Efron up to? Let's cast him!


Because RPO and Armada are short, they are the two books I take with me when I go camping, just sit facing the lake, slight breeze, warm sun, a good book, and some booze.

 

[Deport Ogie]

I re-read RPO often just because it's short, easy, and tons of fun. I can usually knock it out over a couple days depending on schedule. I really should re-read Armada again just to confirm or disprove my initial reaction.

Good Omens doesn't take too long to get through either, again just because it's so much fun.

 

[Winger for Hire]

I have Persepolis Rising sitting in my bag waiting to be read then I think I'm going to reread Lies of Locke Lamora... again.

 

[Deport Ogie]

Oh man, and Lies. You all need to stop reminding me of awesome books I need to queue up to read again. With TLoLL I can at least make the excuse that I'm waiting for The Thorn of Emberlain to get a date.

Scott Lynch has been through some **** , it's not quite the same as with Martin or Rothfuss.

 

[Honour Over Glory]

I have been thinking about buying Neuromancer, heard good things about it. But I don't want to just stick to Sci-fi novels. That can get tiresome and repetitive. But I've heard great things about Gibson's Neuromancer.

 

[Winger for Hire]

I've never gotten into GoT and GRRM and I've also not gotten into Joe Abercrombie, but I'm willing to give him another chance. I wasn't feeling The Blade Itself after like 50 pages; the style wasn't clicking with me.

I have so many new books sitting on my table to read, but I've been meaning to reread Lies for a while now. So I made the pact, of Persepolis Rising then Lies then I have to crack open a new book (maybe The Prince of Thorns).