Games of Yester-Year
RodneyEberly
Inspired by the Star Wars Fan Favorites Prize…. I am primarily a PC gamer, and mostly play RTS (real-time strategy) games.
Another classic RTS is Age of Empires 2. You control a civilization, such as the British, and take them from the stone ages up to the gun powder age. Unlike Starcraft, AoE has more of a focus on building a base, rather than battles. It has four resources (food, wood, gold, and stone), and much of your time will be spent controlling your economy. I have never played AoE3, so I have no reference for that, but there is actually a new game coming out this August, ‘Age of Empires Online’. I’m not sure what to think about the direction of the new game, it seems to be turning into more of a social networking game with micro-transactions. However, they will have portions of it that are free-to-play, so I will definitely check it out.
On a Star Wars note, has anyone played Galactic Battlegrounds or the Jedi Knight series? Galactic Battlegrounds was a SW RTS using the Age of Empires 2 engine. It was a lot of fun, but was ridiculously unbalanced. The Jedi Knight series is a FPS (first person shooter). It has your typical deathmatch, capture the flag, etc, but with lightsabers and Jedi powers!
Going even further back in time, how about Sierra’s old school adventure games, King’s Quest, and Space Quest? I’m talking about the very early ones, before mice, KQ1-4, SQ1-3. I haven’t played them in years, but they are amazing adventure games. Adventure games seem to be a dying genre. Sierra had tried to update their adventure games, and make them work with mice. However, the new games never really grabbed me.
Or even further back, how text-adventures like Zork? Or ZZT (adventure game in ASCII characters)? I haven’t touched either of those in long-long time, but was curious if anyone else had played them?
What are some of your favorite games from the past? Are there some games that you still dust off and play from time to time?
