Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Head Colds and Junk Food Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 31, 2017

Well, ugh.

I’m sick, and I’m still waiting on a new computer. That’s fun. NOT.

The laptop is still proving adequate for gaming and general computing.  My saves (unless “in the cloud”) are all on the dead machine’s hard drives. So I have been taking the opportunity to play some old but unfamiliar games here and there. I’ve given the Spellforce series another shot, and a couple of 4x space games.

Then there was another weekend where I said “screw it” and played another long game of the new Master of Orion. I’m still not sure where I stand on that one. It’s entertaining, but I still keep feeling disappointed by it. It feels almost too structured, and I think to really enjoy a game you must go into the advanced options and turn off the Score Victory. That is one disappointing victory. It’s kind of a surprise when it pops up, and it feels like an afterthought.

I’ve also been trying to get into the classic Ravenloft games by SSI… but man, the interface has been tough to figure out. You just can’t do what you think you ought to be able to do. I’m gonna have to spend some more time with the manual on this ones.  One forgets how critical the manuals were back then, and how non-standard the interfaces were. Of course, there’s a downside to today’s standardization… everything of a particular “style” kinda has to play alike. With the older games like this one, it takes a bit of getting used to it. But at some point, you figure it out, the interface seems to disappear, and you are just having fun.

Unfortunately, with a head cold right now, I have low patience, energy, and attention span. I want junk-food games… munch on ’em and forget about ’em.

I recently picked up Atari Vault, with a hundred different arcade and Atari 2600 games emulated for PC. When I’m really not feeling great, those are kinda my speed. I’ve already had many of them in other forms, but it’s nice to have fully legal versions nicely integrated with online leaderboards and supposedly online multiplayer for these classic games (I haven’t tried)… which is a cool addition. And there are still some of those games I haven’t played.

That fills the bill okay. Many of those games were designed to be played in 3 minutes or less (especially in the arcades, where they needed players to keep pumping in the quarters). Although it IS embarrassing to jump into a game of Asteroids feeling full of confidence, and then achieving one of the lowest scores I can remember. I guess I am a little rusty.

I really don’t know if I’ll ever really feel the need to play “Basic Math” or “Realsports Football” except  out of curiosity. But there are still some mildly entertaining games there that are good for a five-minute distraction. But then, that’s how I roll.


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