pg0p+@andrew.cmu.edu (Peter Cranston Green) (10/21/89)
Net People, Well, here are all the results I got from people 'round the world. See, I asked a week and a half ago what video games would be good to purchase for the Amiga. I wanted well-balanced games that I could put down (me being a rather compulsive sort who will stay up 36 straight hours playing a new game). The quotes come from the various mail people sent me. I hope nobody is upset that I quoted them without permission or reference. I'm not sure if it's acceptable net behavior, but I think people can benefit from the info. Anyways, thanks for all your responses. I could never have guessed I would get so much mail (17 in one day!). Makes one almost feel important! Sorry I could not reply earlier to the net, but I have this dumb Computer Graphics program due a week ago (I'm half finished and it's 45+ pages long!). One other comment. If anyone from Psygnosis reads this bboard, hear me: GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!! Your company would rock if you just knew what the term user-interface meant. Your ideas are mostly good and you have made game graphics and sound an art form. I would point out, however, that games are supposed to be fun. Not annoying, boring or impossible. Who knows, I could probably finish Blood Money, if I just wanted to spend the 1000+ hours to get a game were I didn't die and lose it all. And Terrorpods. . .yeah, right! I use the disk as a coaster! Oh well! In case you want to know, I'm getting, in the following order: Populous, Shadow of the Beast (Yeah, I know -- I'm a glutton for punishment. I just keep hoping. . .), SimCity, DataStorm, Empire and Space Harrier. Over the next months of course. Thanks again for your time and attention. Just goes to show you that addiction to mass alien doom and being friendly are not mutually exclusive. Peter C. Green - pg0p@andrew.cmu.edu A Happy Camper SimCity -- "...awesome." "You couldn't go wrong buying it." "Not really a video game, but addictive nevertheless. You can save your game (and must, since it doesn't have an "end")." "Get Sim City. I haven't played it, but my friend is totally dazzled by it. And he has played a LOT of games before." "SimCity is extremely good." "Great game! You can save the game to disk, but you can still expect to lose a lot of sleep." "SimCity has more strategy and planning and is not as fast paced as Populous. I think SimCity has kept my interest longer, but Populous can be played against another real person--I have not tried this yet." "Get Sim City. Definitely. Best game I've bought in the last year. I prefer it to Populous." "I find Sim City more challenging and time-consuming. [than Populous or DungeonMaster]" "Most of my friends rate this better than Populous, but it depends on what you want -- they are fundamentally quite different. Sim City is hardly a strategy game, there is no defined "win". It is richer than Populous, also slower. You can of course save games." Populous -- "I received this as a present a month ago, and I love it." " You can save your games, and a complete game rarely takes more than 45 minutes (they get progressively harder)." "Get Populous. It is fabulous... A game against the computer typically lasts between 20 - 90 minutes." "NOTE! It will not run on an Amiga with a 68010, 68020, or 68030 processor, however... only on a normal 68000 Amiga." "You get to play god . I like it when I want some strategy but not as much as for a chess/wargame type of game." "Populous is one of the best games I've ever played on the Amiga. A must buy." "Hmm. I haven't noticed whether saving games works. Each game seems to take only 10 to 20 minutes, so I've never needed to save. A friend and I have gotten through the first 15 or so scenarios - I guess this is still pretty basic. This one also plays via modem." "I have this one and think it's great. It is a unique game with a very enjoyable scenario. I feel it is well worth the money." "When you finish a wave, you are given the name of the next wave. You can use this name to advance to that level immediately. (But, I always just want to *look* at the next level before going to sleep... and maybe play it a little bit... oh, I think I can win so I will keep going...)" "Populous is more of a true game [than SimCity], with 500 different worlds to conquer, each getting tougher and tougher." "I'd recommend Populous if you're the kind of gamer who likes to be challenged with ever-more-difficult levels of play, and SimCity if you prefer to be challenged by the game rules themselves. With Populous it's fairly easy to anticipate how the program will respond when you perform a specific action, but SimCity has so many inter-related variables that you'll never be quite sure what will happen. Get both games if you can afford it." "Current second-favorite. You get rather indirect control of a "good" populous, trying to defeat the "evil" populous. Raise/lower land, earthquakes, swamps, knights, volcanoes, floods, armageddon. 500 levels. About 30 minutes per game, and you can save besides. Addictive. Fine user interface. Also has two-player, two-machine mode." "my first choice out of the games that you listed is definately Populous. It is much more challenging than Sim City and is also more game-orientated." Space Harrier -- "If you don't already have it, my vote for BEST ALL-TIME GAME on ANY system is Space Harrier for the Amiga. This game just kills me. It gives 10 men at the beginning (instead of 3 for the arcades), so you should be able to get pretty far pretty quick. The graphics are wonderful, and I still think the sound is pretty impressive too. I just bought the game which is supposed to be the end-all and be-all (by Psygnosis' claims) to videogames [see Shadow of the Beast] but I still think Space Harrier (Sega) is far and away the best game ever. MUCH better than the game is in the arcades! Also, the game is not TOO bad for putting aside. You stay as good as you were, as long as you leave it. I have to recommend this one." Ebonstar -- "nice concept but B O R I N G." "Same feelings as with Ballistix [see first Ballistix quote] but I know NOONE who likes it." "This is only a good game if you can get other people to play too. It really needs at least 3 players, preferably 4 (2 joysticks, 2 on keyboard). It is pretty cool and features play together or play against each other modes." "Not a very complicated game, but reasonably well done. Uses graphics and sound pretty good. With less than 3 people, the game is boring and very hard." "I tried it briefly, I found it too hard." Omega -- "I just got this one. It looks OK so far. The "AI" programming language is just a modified BASIC, so that is a slight drag. It really does not use Amiga graphics and sound very well. The graphic tank battle runs very slowly. Basic play is you get X dollars to equip you tank, where X increases as you get higher "clearance" levels. You get higher levels by defeating one of their evaluation tanks. I got to the 4th level by just designing a tank to sit-and-search-and-shoot. I think after this level, I need a more intelligent tank. One interesting thing is the ability to send tanks to other people for combat. The company is organizing a contest this way. 200 pages of manual (70 pages tutorial). I could not play this game right out of the box, I had to read a bunch of the manual first. The game does not work well on a single drive system. Lots of weird prompts and mangled screens. I finally copied everything to another disk and put my tanks there. (I guess it is not copy protected)." DataStorm -- "It is a 'Defender' type game, with awesome graphics and sound. I don't really like video games that much anymore, and never liked defender at all, but I enjoyed DataStorm anyway." "Basically an implementation of Stargate for the amiga, it's pretty cool, and has lots of arcade action, especially if you play advanced mode..." F-18 Interceptor -- "Cool figher simulation, the missions don't take all that long so you should be lost to this one, I'm not sure if falcon is better, but this is definately good." "I'd get F/A-18 Interceptor. It's awesome." Archipelagos -- "Archipelagos I'd pass on." Silkworm -- "The game I'm playing last weeks is SILKWORM. It's simple but F.U.N. The game is a horizontal scrolling shoot 'm up." "Turn on the power and 20-30 seconds later you're in the middle of hell. It's always possible to interrupt and restart the game. And you don't have to pass all those intro and dying-scene's. Two presses on the fire button and you're in..." Ballistix -- "I don't recomend this... I played this for about 20 minutes and never again since! To be fair though I know some people who love it." "Fine game, the only Psygnosis product I can stand. Basically air-hockey (on various obstacle-filled playfields) using full-automatic pea shooters." Falcon -- "Very nice simulation better grafix than f-18 but HARD to fly (land!!) Don't worry, it is not too addicting." "I have the game, but haven't played it much. I don't think I've got the latest version, and it is prone to locking up. It does let you fly against another human-controlled plane via modem or hardline, though." "Pretty good, but it takes a lot of flying to get any good at it." "Current favorite Amiga game. If you want to fly a warplane, this is it. Supports ground attacks and air-to-air. Dogfight mode is great too (but needs two computers)." "I think Falcon is great, but... It takes a lot of practice and reading of the manual to get good." "They (spectrum holobyte) have also come out with a mission disk (which has tanks, trains, and boats which actually will attack your base if you don't get rid of them.) wich comes with a falcon upgrade which makes flying and especially landing easier. It also will remember what you have destroyed on your last 5 missions (ie if you blow up a SEM or bridge it will stay destroyed for 5 more missions. Thats when the enemy rebuilds it.)" Empire -- "Empire is pretty good if you enjoy 'Risk ' type games. WARNING: It is very addictive. A typical game (for me) lasts 10 hours. Pournelle has reviewed it in Byte." "The game which I keep going back to over and over again is Empire. I am in the process of writing a 3b1 version of the Amiga Empire. This shows how much I like the game." Shadow of the Beast -- "It is supposed to be the wave of new future games to follow (as was described in the newest Amiga World). It has 2080K of graphics and 900K of music packed into two disks." "I just bought "Shadow of the Beast" - the new monster by Psygnosis. This one has spectacular graphics and an incredible T-shirt included that's almost worth the price of the game. Problem is, I don't think you want this one. It has all the wonderful addicting characteristics of a good game, with one DRASTIC failure - the game takes more than a minute to kill you off between games. It's HORRIBLE; Psygnosis should be shot. The net result is that you wind up playing the game lots, and spending double the amount of time, since you have to wait so long between games. Like I say, the game is spectacular, but unless you have OODLES of time to kill or want a Roger Dean shirt (the guy who does album covers for Yes), don't get it." Honorable Mention: Balance of Power 1990, Earl Weaver Baseball, Bubble Bobble, Rocket Ranger, Firepower, Empire Strikes Back, Major Motion, Rick Dangerous, BattleForce, Gauntlet ][, Arkanoid, Thexder, GravAttack, Mindwalker Dishonrable Mention: Titan, The Crystal Hope that helps!
filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us (Bela Lubkin) (10/27/89)
In article <UZDxrm200UidA0VUMQ@andrew.cmu.edu> Peter Cranston Green writes: > Well, here are all the results I got from people 'round the world. > I hope nobody is upset that I quoted them without permission or > reference. I'm not sure if it's acceptable net behavior, but I think > people can benefit from the info. FAR from it. Thank you for your summary. I'm replying to say that this was the best "summary" message I've ever seen on Usenet. Please, everyone, take a lesson from it. Don't quote your correspondee's entire messages. Remove redundancy. Summarize. OMIT HEADERS. Attribute text if appropriate (some of the longer sections in Peter's message could have been attributed). We certainly don't need to see how you Received: the message... Thanks again, Peter. >Bela< Bela Lubkin * * // filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us CompuServe: 73047,1112 @ * * // ....ucbvax!ucscc!gorn!filbo ^^^-VERY slow [months] R Pentomino * \X/ Filbo @ Pyrzqxgl +408-476-4633 & XBBS +408-476-4945