I don’t play many older games, probably 90% are within the last 4 years. The oldest game I played in 2022 was DROD: Gunthro and the Epic Blunder, which came out in 2012. It was OK. I played it for a couple of hours.
Thanks, I may have to move to that one. Still haven’t given up on 1404 though.
Last year I replayed the original Deus Ex. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve played it over the years, probably over a dozen times by now. It’s my “comfort food” game I guess.
Man, I still cherish the memory of my first Deus Ex playthrough. Magical time.
Everyone gets their legs blown off in the tutorial right?
I feel like it gets used as a punchline a lot as a terrible game, but it’s a lot of fun with four players. Especially if you have people in the group (like older family members) who don’t game too often or at all.
I set up EA’s Archon: The Light and the Dark on an Amiga emulator to play against my son. The first version I bought was on the C64 in 1983, but this one’s from 1985.
I’m playing The Last of Us on the PS5 and revisiting Dead Space (2008) on the Series X because I’m not gonna buy it again given that I never finished any of the first three…
For me, it was Battle Academy (2010). I loved everything about it - presentation, artwork and the tactical battles themselves - and ended up sinking 60 hours into it. I have all the DLC and BA2 in my backlog now :)
I played very little from 2022 in 2022, but I can’t say I was reaching too far back into the catalog either. The game I ultimately spent the most time with was 2016’s Stardew Valley, which I was trying for the third time but this time I actually clicked. In a very stressful year it was the right game to find, so I’m glad I gave it another shot. What a lovely little thing.
I also spent a fair bit of time with 2018’s 40K Gladius - Relics of War and Northgard. Apparently it was a late-teens kind of year for me.
Or maybe I’m just steadily a few years behind, since the early contender for favorite game in 2023 is Oxygen Not Included from 2019.
Looking back, I cannot believe I finally played all the way through Horizon Zero Dawn this past year. I think it was because I was trying to finish it before the sequel came out, so I didn’t let myself get sidetracked too often with sidequests and maybe that streamlined approach helped me to steer a little clear of some of the issues with collectibles and bloat that others found in the game.
At any rate, I enjoyed that approach a great deal, and found the story (and the way it resolved) to be so moving (and to feel kind of story complete) that it ended up making it so I didn’t really play the sequel very far, at least THIS year. :)
I played through all the missions for both factions in the C&C/Red Alert Remaster: Main campaigns + Expansions + Secret missions + N64 missions + PlayStation missions. All the missions. Took 145 hours.
It is still fascinating to compare C&C with Red Alert. In C&C, each tank feels more valuable, and income trickles in much slower. In Red Alert you can actually take much less damage from several tank attacks if your unit is moving. You can quite literally dodge tank ballistics. Speaking of speed, the game’s default game speed is faster than the originals. First thing I did was slow that down. In TB: Moderate, and RA: actually slow. The default speed is too damn fast and not at all what I remember. The other major difference I noticed is in TB the AI always gets maximum funds from a single harvester load, meaning all their refineries are always filled to the max! But not in Red Alert. They will sell buildings that are under attack if they are low on funds.
Some of the bugs they fixed in Red Alert are still present in Tiberium Dawn like how infantry will spawn from a demo charged building causing unavoidable damage to the commando. Kind of annoying.
The Covert Operation missions were by far the hardest. To the point where you want to look up how the heck you are suppose to beat some of these missions as they are punitive puzzles where the intended solution is totally insane. Using the meta-knowledge silver bullet makes them much easier.
Trying to dig through the Steam Replay makes me think the oldest, not updated video game was Expeditions Conquistador, which I didn’t get much into.
For updated, I still dipped back into League of Legends. I don’t know how anyone gets started in the game, but it remains a great diversion with friends who do play.
Most enjoyed while still having age would be a remake of a remake of a remake of a remaster of a remake of the original release of Dungeons and Dragons in 1974. That’s approaching 50 years! D&D5E underpins a multi-year campaign that I play fortnightly.
Yeah, I have no special insight, but it seems like development may have been rushed? It was a launch title for the original Xbox, and may have been included in some platform packages.
Although… slightly rough around the edges, it has a reasonable mix of interesting games that are fun to play with “non-gamers” as you mention.
We used to all hoot “FUZION FRENZY” out loud when the splash came up.
Does anyone play Stars any more (multi-player)? I never tried it, but played VGA Planets for awhile back in the Dark Ages of the internet (and maybe BBS’s).
Yes there are. I typically play just single player. There is a fairly active discord here:
for all the bad it does to customer support, discord really breathes new life in a lot of agonizing multiplayer games
Uh, it’s pronounced :LaughCryEmoji:
I think my 2020 went more retro than my 2022, when I sat down to play Sid Meier’s Pirates! (itself a “modern” remake, which holds up for a few days of obsession except for the colonialist takes), the original Rollercoaster Tycoon (which holds up except for the antiquated 90s MS Office style menus), and the perennial Heroes III, which now features simultaneous turns in online multiplayer. I play the last one with my brother now & then, including during 2022, which probably makes it the oldest game I played in earnest last year.
I’m also playing through the original Phoenix Wright trilogy with my partner (their first time thru) which is still a blast from the past for me.
The only Stars for me…
Good question. Obviously there was some AoE2 at some point, but not sure with DE and new content over the past couple of years if that really is a blast from the past now. A bit of Distant Worlds Universe before Distant Worlds 2 released. Some Stardrive with the combined arms and black box (I think) mods. Stellaris at the beginning of the year as well, but I’m not sure that would qualify. Warlock 2 + renaissance mod was installed, but I didn’t get very far into it. I guess that should be a goal this year. Probably the game that wins though is the first Borderlands, which I played through in December.
The only ‘older’ games I played were The Witcher 3 (although technically it’s the ‘new’ version), Anno 1800 (still need to get into that one, but too many other things to do…) and a little bit of Civ 6. However, I cleaned up the attic last week and re-discovered a suitcase full of old games, so that may change!
How is Warlock 2 (with the Renaissance Mod) after all these years?