Games you love, but can't play anymore

Planescape: Torment has to be the big winner in this category.

1st time through is a magical ride of constant originality and wonder, every plot-twist and surprise a genuine emotion of happiness.

But it's so epic. So epic that it even has an unexpected ending. So epic that, upon completion you feel thoroughly exhausted (in a good way). Then the next week you look at the box and think... could I ever play that again? If I played it again, wouldn't it just be a hollow experiment in mild choice changes, rather than an epic pile-drive of the unexpected? Something altogether min/max rather than whoa!/what!

But it stays on the shelf alongside Icewind Dale and Civilisation et all, just in case... just in case... one day, in the long and unforeseeable future, you might just suddenly get the urge to 'have another play', even though, deep down, you know that's probably never gonna happen.

MinorityReport said:

Planescape: Torment has to be the big winner in this category.

1st time through is a magical ride of constant originality and wonder, every plot-twist and surprise a genuine emotion of happiness.

But it's so epic. So epic that it even has an unexpected ending. So epic that, upon completion you feel thoroughly exhausted (in a good way). Then the next week you look at the box and think… could I ever play that again? If I played it again, wouldn't it just be a hollow experiment in mild choice changes, rather than an epic pile-drive of the unexpected? Something altogether min/max rather than whoa!/what!

But it stays on the shelf alongside Icewind Dale and Civilisation et all, just in case… just in case… one day, in the long and unforeseeable future, you might just suddenly get the urge to 'have another play', even though, deep down, you know that's probably never gonna happen.

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nice writing - kudos

I can play almost anything that I've enjoyed thru the years.

Except WoW i guess, try as i may i just cannot seem to be able to play that game anymore. Wait a minute, is this for enduring love or love lost??

I like Warcraft, it's lore, all that. I can still play WC3. WoW is just not the game it used to be, i think that's part of it.

My favorite game of all-time remains Ultima VII. But like the OP, I just can't play it from beginning to end anymore. A lot of old games that I love always seem to have some aspect to them that is a chore. With U7 it's inventory management. I just can't stand it. Interestingly, back in the 90s, I loved the inventory and being able to fiddle with things in bags. It was fun the first time as technology got good enough to manage objects in a very real-world like way. But now, it's cumbersome and a hassle.

Good point regarding movies. I just sorta sit there for an hour and half (actually, I'll likely break it up into three half hour bits) and it's all done. Books are pretty hard to re-read, too. I've read a few of them twice but not many. I think Hitchiker's Guide would be the only exception to that.

Dajjer said:

nice writing - kudos

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Thanks!

I wrote a book once

The publishers laughed at it

I self published

I sold 200 copies

I don't think anyone ever read it though

I also had had 1,000 printed

My parents recently took most of the overstock to the dump ...

I posted one of the short stories on a forum once, because someone wanted to read something truly horrible and dark... he thanked me profusely for being bang-on the mark

I can at least live with the fantasy that I will be a future Poe, derided in life, worshiped in death!

I've tried Ultima VII multiple times but not been able to get completely back into it. A lot of the time its just an issue of not being able to play for a while, then when I go back, I'm a bit lost as to where I was, but overall, even with all the Exult improvments, the interface is really difficult to stomach. I keep expecting it to be like the IE games, even though I know it isn't.

The combat is beyond terrible. But at least the exploration is fun.

Its funny, I don't remember the combat being bad when I first played it, but yeah going back now, its pretty rough

blatantninja said:

Its funny, I don't remember the combat being bad when I first played it, but yeah going back now, its pretty rough

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The combat in U7 was awful and for me the only disappointment. It was funny though when your party would spot an enemy suddenly the melee fighters would take off like the Flash. I wish it had been turn-based like in Ultima 6.

Right now it is TES: Morrowind..I dont know why (maybe played it to death) maybe it was the combat being clunky.

A year ago, I tried playing Betrayal at Krondor for the first time... the graphics were so abysmal, however, that I didn't make it very far. I need to try and persevere through it one day.

TheProduct said:

Right now it is TES: Morrowind..I dont know why (maybe played it to death) maybe it was the combat being clunky.

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I always use mods to speed things up when I replay it, otherwise it does feel like it takes forever just to get around. I also use a mod to give it a sort of off-hand casting effect, which helps quite a lot.

Drithius said:

A year ago, I tried playing Betrayal at Krondor for the first time… the graphics were so abysmal, however, that I didn't make it very far. I need to try and persevere through it one day.

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Good luck with that.

I am currently in the middle of a replay. I never finished the game before but I have reached chapter 6 (of 9), the furthest I have ever gotten. The horrible graphics are a chore but not a game breaker.

It's the lack of a game journal that is killing me. Far too many NPCs have a lot of good/important info to relate and I simply refuse to keep a manual journal. Lazy me?? perhaps. But a manual journal entry would read something like this.

NPC Jones at upper road, 3rd home from the 2nd fork after you leave city X heading East - Said Bla bla bla
(sometimes you have to go back to NPC to get your goodies)

BUT . . .Woe to thee who failed to get the NPC conversation right the first time because most NPCs do not repeat the conversation - many even leave right after your discussion.

I haven't played in about 2 months, but I still have the walkthroughs bookmarked on my IPad. But it's looking like I might have to abandon this quest.

OTOH, after 15 or so years, I finally got my lute skills up to max and was making some decent tavern bucks so that part was fun.

OTOH#2, I did not appreciate the magic stone that took away some of my stats and nothing was notated in the game (the walk through gave me the warning after I touched the damn rock)

I'm looking at the BAK walkthrough right now on my Ipad and I am not tempted to enter a BAK play session. Strangely, I am tempted to give the vastly inferior sequel a go, due to its more accessible graphics.

For me it would be dark souls 1. I tried every build that I think would be interesting and there are only 2 endings. I was hoping that Dark souls 2 would be more of the same, but from what I've read it's just not as good as the original.

To me, there's a minimum level of detail that I need to get into a game. Not really graphics necessarily as clarity.

I can still play ADOM or other Rogue-likes fine, because I can glance at it, and know exacly whats going on (usually my character's death). Wizardry 7, World of Xeen, those are fine as well.

Others, like the original Wizardry games (even 6), the UI is too rudimentary now for me to get into it. The Vogel games are kinda bad in this regard as well, for the UI. Ultima VII is horrible IMO for it. Not that they are bad games, at all, but when I have to fight the UI or graphics to figure out whats going on, I get turned away quickly.

TheProduct said:

Right now it is TES: Morrowind..I dont know why (maybe played it to death) maybe it was the combat being clunky.

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Ooh didn't think of that one. Yes indeed, the clunky combat is preventing me from replaying it. The worst part of it is the rolls + player skills combination, where you can visibly hit something, yet still end up missing.

Yeah, the combat ruined the game for me, along with the horribly stilted animations - and the cookie-cutter dungeon layouts.

Never quite understood the love for this game.

Nostalgia mostly, as well as a fantastic setting. I still think the setting is far more interesting than the one in Skyrim. Skyrim is superior in virtually every other way though.

I still think Morrowind is the best modern TES game, but I can't play it without graphics mods. The vanilla game has aged poorly imo.