I wonder if the rise of the current console controller had an impact on that type of first person flying game.
I’m liking BG3 quite a bit but it took me quite a few starts. It helps if you played Divinity, which was the same company’s previous RPG. I only play probably at most 3 hours a week so at that pace I’ll be at it for the next idk 10 years?
Been gaming both table top and video since the early 80s (zork, pong). Occassionally i’ll play a video game (xcom, sunless seas/skies, darkest dungeon). Video games are like crack to me, and usually abstain. I also dont want to notice that its 3:30am and my character is fucking a mind flayer and need to be in court by 9am…
I did play a great crpg a few years ago that you may enjoy–disco elysium. It’s a detective story with a failed future aesthetic that results in a vast choose your own adventure book with great art and often excellent writing.
I play a lot more tabletop games now, both solo and multiplayer table tops. Arkham horror living card game is a current favorite. The setting is HP lovecraft’s arkham. Its a deck builder…but unlike magic the gathering; you know exactly what cards are in a specific box.
The theme is 1920s cosmic horror…and sometimes the designers stick very close to the source material (the first campaign is a sequel to “dunwich horror.”
It plays well solo or with up to 4 others. Its a cooperative game…you are working together to complete (or just survive) the scenario. Two of my sons love it…ive played through 4 separate campaigns with one if them; and we’ve played 2 of the campaigns twice (we died/went insane on the first attempt).
The designers have built a game that replays well (the campaign we just finished has @5 differnet endings (ive seen 1). Randomness is baked into the games.
If cosmic horror isn’t your thing, the same company has an lcg set in lord of the rings and a marvel super hero one too. I haven’t played them, but they both have large established fan bases and support.
Also, if you enjoy multi-player competitive games like Risk, i suggest you take a look at Arcs–its a space themed knife fight in a phone booth.
If you have a partner who isn’t into gaming…you might try wingspan. My wife’s experience was limited to a handleful of tabletops (monopoly) but almost all that are play are too complicated or have a theme that doesn’t interest her (she’s brilliant but games are supposed to be social and casual..or puzzles (sudoku, wordle). Its also lightly competitive, kind of like golf…no hard feelings afterwards.
Apologies in advance if i’m telling noah about the ark…but if not i’ve provided several more wonderful ways to waste your one wild and precious life.
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aka “John Wick in the 25th Century”.
I must admit, when you started talking about tabletop games, I initially thought of the table version of Galaga. My family used to play board games - as we called them - when we were kids. I always hated Monopoly because my brother (the oldest) would always win. Later he turned out to be a sociopath and a deadbeat dad, so his success in Monopoly absolutely tracks.
Fun Fact: Monopoly wasn’t designed to teach kids what they need to do to get on in life, it was designed to teach kids that pursuing wealth above all else will destroy everyone around you (it came out right in the midst of the Great Depression). Of course, people took the wrong lesson from the game and, lo, we had the 1980s.
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…I’m not getting good at Satisfactory.
The electronics factory I built at the weekend is a masterpiece of logistics, combining inputs via belts, pipes, trains and drones, and all hummed along with teutonic precision. Until it didn’t.
Revisiting the factory last night, I discovered that the machines making Supercomputers were barely running. WTF? What are they missing? Computers?!
Why are the computers running dry? [Checks machines making computers].
Why the fuck are there no Crystal Oscillators? [Checks machines making Crystal Oscillators]
Why the fuck is there no cable? [Checks machines making cable]
Why the fuck is there no wire? [Checks machines making wire]
Why the fuck are there no copper ingots? {Checks machines making copper ingots]
Why the fuck is there no copper ore? [Checks the miners extracting copper ore]
Why the fuck are the miners backed up and running only at 50%? [Checks the mark of the conveyor belt transporting the ore]
Fuck me.
I’d put storage boxes in the production lines feeding the main factory to act as buffers, and these had filled up initially as I’d switched on these lines before the factory was ready. So, when I threw the switch for the main factory, it was getting all the parts it needed. Eventually the stored supplies ran out and it was forced to limp along on half the required feed.
I had two lines of copper ore smelters each taking in 430 chunks/minute, but the conveyor belt feeding the machines was a Mk. 3 with a max speed of 270 parts/minute. This is what is in the blueprint design because it was the fastest belt I had available when I designed the blueprint. I forgot to check it.
A quick upgrade to Mk. 4 belts - 480 parts/minute max. - and all started to even out. It took a while though, as each of the production steps above has to fill up the manifold on the next step before that next step is producing enough to start to fill the manifold of the next step. Rinse repeat.
I let it run for a couple of hours while I had dinner and, when I came back, it was actually running properly. Yes, a series of dependent production lines like that can take an hour or more to get properly fired up.
Same here, and one of my absolute favorite arcade games of all-time was tabletop 4-player Gauntlet. The Mr. Gatti’s a few blocks from school had one, and every couple of weeks a few of us “teacher’s kids” would walk over there after school waiting for the moms to finish their post-school-work. You’d best have $10 with you because that game would hoover the quarters straight out of your pocket, but it was so much fun. If you had a few extra people, all the better, you rotated around when someone died so you got to play all the characters, and only half of you had to buy the buffet, you could just sneak a slice off of someone’s plate when you weren’t playing.
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4-player Gauntlet was amazing fun, and also taught you cooperation, servant leadership and self-sacrifice. You’d hear “Valkyrie needs food!” and everyone would start making a path for the Valkyrie to get food. Anyone low on funds was protected. The most healthy would take on Death when he showed up.
Anyone who tried to play purely looking out for themselves learned very quickly that you’ll get shunned, both in the game and out of it.
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Back in my office days, I definitely said on multiple occasions “Accountant needs food badly! Accountant is about to die!”
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There was no place for Leeeeeeroooy Jenkins in Gauntlet.
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I’m still bummed Guillermo del Toro didn’t get to make his “In the Mountains of Madness” film.
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Hah—in fact I’ve played all those games! We went through quite a tabletop phase with some friends recently. Arcs I think is my favorite of the ones you mentioned. My wife and I have been partial to Wingspan and Quacks of Quedlinburg and Cascadia for a while.
Excellent list!
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I bought my first full-on flying joystick to play Xvs.Tie and never looked back. It is by far the best controller for flying games of any sort. Sez the dude that logs <10 hours of game time per year these days.
If, some day in the future, I spring for a VR headset to play something like Squadrons, I’ll get a joystick as well to complete the setup.
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Not suprised. Lol.
Love to hear your current favorites. Another i can recommend with a theme you might enjoy is “scholars of the south tigris.” Its a historical set in the Abbasid caliphate…you score points by translating texts into arabic from various other languages. Its a mid to heavy weight game that has a novel color change mechanism. Mostly dice bag building and dice manipulation. Strong solo play and fairly competitive multiplayer play. Very much a brain burner…wouldn’t try playing it with more than two unless all players serious gamers.
A fun dark themed fast solo is “aleph null.” Inspired by the novel “black easter”, its a fucked up solitaire in which you are attempting to bring baphomet forth from the abyss and begin the festivites of apocolypse. How to play “successfully” emerges from the card interactions. Fast on the table, fast to play. Great stocking stuffer for xmas. I
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$4k for a heaping serving of nostalgia:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1829009182/restored-atari-original-gauntlet-arcade
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I want the flat tabletop one.
There are a ton of table consoles available that have Gauntlet included, just not original (like the above). For example:
They come with hundreds or thousands of games, because each game has a file size about as big a plain text email.
All I want is Gauntlet…and Galaga, and maybe some other stuff. Tabletop.
What it cost?
They typically bundle the games into packs, presumably in an effort to make you feel nostalgic for cable TV. They aren’t the driver of the cost, though.
You can pay anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 for a replica game system, depending on how fancy/custom you want it. Given that it’s basically a Raspberry Pi with a small external drive attached, a 22" flat screen TV, a couple of speakers, joysticks and buttons…and plywood…the cost is in the build quality and details (like the artwork).
DreamArcades is the brand that I have considered using. They seem to offer a more quality product. Arcade 1Up is another big name that seems to be more budget friendly.
Extreme Home Arcades, famously, makes the MegaCade:
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I have one thing to say on the subject of classic arcade games:
Prepare to qualify.
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You don’t see many cabinets for driving games. My favorite was Super Sprint, and that had to be played with a wheel (because you span it to get drifting).