Yup, they are. But that does not mind some players aren't like that - when I play cooperative games, I only play with people I know (with rare exceptions of people from some forum I "knew" for quite some time) and if I were given a choice between playing with random people or alone, for as long as it was possible to play without other players' help I would choose the latter.
You definitely can get lucky in games and get stuck with people who have a vague idea of what to do (I reckon I'm half-useless, truth be told), but yeah - I prefer solo quite a lot. Last thing I want is someone appearing and ruining it for me. And it stresses me, definitely.
That means you likely are good enough. If you are auto-critical enough to notice that you are the best player, you are also auto-critical enough to know that you are not the centre of the universe and thus should play as a part of the team. Which is much more than you can get from selfish players who do a Leeroy impression, force you to spend some of your resources to save their asses "because they are the leaders obviously", and then ninja-loot everything.
Maybe, but I still come near the bottom, even in four player matches (such as ME3's MP). Sometimes in a more traditional MP FPS I can be near the top (and have been, even) but I tend to be 'average'. Just don't have the patience nor the skill to get to the top and stay there.
This is not the first thread with this same subject. Planescape Torment was mentioned heavily in the other thread. *Edit* Here you are: http://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/what-are-your-favorite-games-of-all-time.3097/
Well, it is not the best "game" of all time. It has a really good story and riddles and is really pulling, but combat (as it usually happens with D&D-based games) is somewhat lacking, so it's more of a story under the guise of a game if you want to talk about it being one of the best.
Ok here we go again: Ultima V (and Ultima IV, VI, VII Black Gate and Serpent Isle and VIII and Online) TIE Fighter Age of Wonders (and Age of Wonders II: Shadow Magic... never know which one is best) UFO: Extraterrestrials Gold (yes... I liked it more than XCOM, which might be because I was slightly too young for XCOM? I never really got into that one as much as I did the other... I guess I should play it again sometime, but I don't have it anymore) X3:TC ... I dunno can't think anymore, terrible headache, sorry!
If you like Age of Wonders, and some similar games, you should really check out Master of Magic, which is probably the primary inspiration for those games. (it's available on GOG.COM). I still boot it up every now and again. It's certainly not a well-balanced game, but for some reason, the GOG.COM version is better than the original (back in the day, it could be frustrating to play due to crashes -- that doesn't happen any more, either because I was missing patches at the time, or because I had a lousy PC lol. Though those two are probably not mutually exclusive. There's also an old favorite of mine, Warlords, but so far I've only found it on IOS, not PC. GOG has one of the later versions after it went to rts, but I generally stick with tbs games.
^ I love Master of Magic and I wish Stardock's attempt at reviving it wasn't so badly realized. Speaking of 4x type games-- Alpha Centauri. The prototyping system is my biggest annoyance, but otherwise I have tons of fun with it. Even if I suck at it and can never win a game, I love gradually unfolding the plot and listening to the quotes/soundbites from the different factions.
Yeah I bought MoM lately precisely because I always hear about it, and the youtube let's play looked great... haven't gotten around to it though :S I also played Warlords and enjoyed it, but due to a computer crash while halfway never got around to finsihing the campaign and really get into it. And I played Alpha Centauri quite a bit, really liked it. And Ascendancy (awesome music!), and Starflight is also one of the best games... And Street Fighter! Any edition And a lot more probably that just elude me at the moment (and I am anxious to finally (stupid European delay) play X-COM and I see it has finished downloading, so.. bye bye!
Elemental: War of Magic was so... disappointing. It sort of got better as time went on, but it's sort of like warm, flat soda. And Fallen Enchantress, which is in beta, while making a few steps on the right direction, seems to still have many of the same problems that War of Magic has. As far as Alpha Centauri is concerned, it is one of my favorite games of all time. The prototyping cost doesn't bother me. It's one of those features that, while it doesn't add a lot to the game, doesn't hurt it much either. It's just a (minor) strategic consideration -- you simply designate a city or 2 that has decent industry, as places to build prototypes, and then you build a skunkworks in those cities so that you have no prototype cost. I THINK that prototyping doesn't exist on the easier difficulty levels, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, it's also one of those features that if Firaxis had said that they wanted to remove it, I wouldn't have complained. I do understand if you don't care for it. If it didn't exist, upgrading units would be less of an issue. It would change the game, but I'm not sure whether that change would be good or bad. It would just be different. What bothers me more than the prototyping, though was how it auto-designs units for you based on newly developed technology. I like the CONCEPT of it, but the execution of it was not great. For example, I would retire a bunch of designs for units simply because I don't need a dozen different kinds of hover tanks. I really only need one or two. Or I'd design a garrison unit with two free defensive perks, so it would be nice and cheap, and 3 turns later it would suggest as an alternative, another garrison unit exactly the same as what I already have, except that the free perks are no longer there. It's a unit that NO one needs. And if I delete the unit, it will recreate that design several turns later. Note that you could always simply tell the game to not auto-design units, but that kind of defeats the purpose of it, It would have been nice if they'd just made the auto-design feature work more intelligently. But that's just nitpicking -- it's still (imho) one of the best civ-type 4-X game ever. The things I love about the game are the different social/political leanings of the various factions. There's the techies, the industrialists, the religious fanatics, the orderly society guys (ie. fascists), the warmongers, the peace nuts, and the tree huggers. You decide to lean towards one philosophy and you'll end up getting on the right side of one or two factions, but the wrong side of one or two others. It kind of balances the game somewhat. And each side plays totally differently and requires different strategies to win. The main issue I had with the Alien Crossfire expansion is that it kind of disrupted that balance a bit. Some of the new factions were interesting (like the 2 alien races), but I also thought that most were kind of flawed versions of the originals.
An obscure but excellent 4X is Starbound 2; it was made for Mac about 12 years ago, the company went out of business before the PC port finished, and it's not even on Wikipedia Should you somehow find a copy (and MAC OS 7, 8, or 9 to run it, as iirc those are the only ones that work), it's very fun. Very customizable; it came with 6 races but a pretty good race editor, an AI editor (!!!), you can customize your ships ingame (scouts with Orbital Bombardment? Sure!), and can toggle a lot of settings on/off between games (turn off diplomacy so you don't have to worry about spies or hippies, or turn off ground combat to make sieges go faster, turn on Wormholes to make for better ambushes, change size of the galaxy, etc). It had some issues of course. Balance was pretty good, with notable exceptions of one race being too weak and one being MUCH too strong; but the other 4 were balanced, and with the race editor you could buff/nerf as needed, or just do what I did and add so many custom races that the originals only show up in 3% of your games haha. A few pieces of equipment were bugged. The AI sometimes got stuck in infinite loops. Still I sunk a ton of hours into it at the school library There was a fan project to port it to PC a while back, but last I checked the site got hacked and was virus infested
Its kinda hard to rate the best game of all time, as there are some games that are well made (and designed), fun and enjoyable for me. While some games are well made, not that fun or enjoyable for me as well (just because I dont enjoy them doesn't mean they are bad games however). While some that are vastly more enjoyable but not as well made as some I dont like. And of course there are those that are poorly made and designed and arent fun to play because of it. Though Bastion for me is up there in that it is a well made, has a strong concept/story/imersion and great music all the while being fun to play, and only has some minor annoyances that are more about my preference of style than bad design or implementation. Though that is still my opinion too.
I am pretty sure I mentioned this in the previous favorite games thread, but-- Parasite Eve 1 and 2. They are both really excellent Square-made survival horror games with strong RPG elements. What's interesting is that the original was billed as a "cinematic rpg", with a lot of emphasis on story telling and cutscenes, but only 10-15 hours of gameplay. The story and characters made up for the length, though. The first game had a New Game+ mode, with increased difficulty and extra items and some secrets. The second game moved in this direction even further. Parasite Eve was one of the few games I had growing up which featured a strong woman as the focus. There is some annoying fan service type stuff in 2 and quite a lot in the crappy PSP sequel, The Third Birthday, but I still love the series. I really hope Square-Enix decides to remake the original one day, but since they haven't even touched Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma, Soul Blazer, Seiken Densetsu 3, etc., it's unlikely...
If I had to pick just one game it would definitely be System Shock 2. Really nailed the combination of FPS and RPG elements. The story was great and the way it was told through audio logs really made it stand out for its time. It also had a very immersive and lonely atmosphere that I really enjoyed. I've done a play through about once every two years and I love it every time.
