What are your gaming LIKES and DISLIKES?

[Foebane]

As I turn into an old fart, I find that my former gaming choices are distilled down into a few all-time favourites, and disregarding whole areas of games as things that don't interest me.

For me, as a child growing up, playing any game on the Atari 8-bit I could find was my experience in my formative years, but I noticed that I was more into the technical side of things. Then, I was on the Atari ST playing 3D games like Carrier Command and Damocles, which is what really interested me, as I'd never seen anything like them before (except maybe Mercenary on A8). Then I went to the Amiga, discovered the vibrant Demoscene there, and lost interest in most games, especially the 2D shooters and platformers, although 3D was still fascinating to me (loved Stunt Car Racer, thought it was the best budget purchase I ever made). Then, when Commodore went bust, switched to PC and got busy with the Golden Age of FPS games in the 1990s, all starting with Doom.

The PC alone has been over the last 26 years, but now my gaming likes and dislikes are:

LIKES: A few games on PC, namely Team Fortress Classic (for the gameplay) Quake 3 Arena (bot gameplay and technical aspects) and Doom 3 (yes, I've been obsessing over that game on a technical level since it was released) and on Amiga, things like Super Twintris and Scrabble, but because they require you to think a lot.

DISLIKES: 99% of the rest of gaming on all platforms, new and retro. I think it's my age, but I just am bored by the games I've seen lately, they hold no interest for me.

I think the time may come soon that I ditch ALL of my games, but for now, this is how things stand.

How about you?

[Gilbert]

Great thread dude

LIKES I'm massively into old (retro) games. I really got into 80s arcade games the last few years. Games like Prehistoric Isle, Ghouls N Ghosts, Rush n Crash etc On top of that I'm a big fan of CD32. This is where happiness lies for me - nostalgia and great fast gameplay. Also have my Dreamcast - a quick blast of Crazy Taxi or Daytona (with the steering wheel - it sucks without!) never gets old

I do like a few 'modern' games - like Resident Evil 4 and 5, GTA San Andreas, Outrun HD. But even these might be considered Retro soon!

DISLIKE: Those games where you wander around pressing X and then have to stop to listen to cut scenes and then do the same again. I'm not saying they are all bad - but who has the time for that? Basically any game with a tutorial these days - I am usually bored before I finish the tutorial.

I also want to mention a great game on Facebook called Word Blitz which is the business. Everyone should play that against random strangers.

[-Acid-]

Likes: 2D racers into the screen and top down, 2D shoot em ups, run n guns, 2D platformers and Mario games.... oh and Tetris 99 and Unreal Tournament


Dislikes: Sandbox/open world games... don't know why never liked them GTA etc too time consuming. I bought Breath of the Wild with my Switch on release day... most overrated game of all time imo put about 40 hours into it and couldn't be arsed with it again, sat on shelf since (almost 4 years now).

[mcgeezer]

@Foebane, Your history of gaming is similar to mine I suppose.

I started with a ZX Spectrum with games like Cavalon, TransAm, Jetpac and Atic Atac. I then got an Atari 800XL and had favourite games like Miner 0249er, Screaming Wings, Spellbound, Encounter and Behind Jaggi Lines to name a few. But At that time I spent a lot of time in the arcades and loved the likes of Bomb Jack, Sidearms, Nemesis, Rygar, Hyper Sports, Gorf, Gauntlet.

Then on to the ST got bang into programming assembler, but I still loved great games like Buggy Boy, Pipe Dreams, Turrican, Operation Wolf and pretty much all of the Thalion catalog.

I had to get an Amiga though for two reasons, the first was Hybris (and Blood Money) and the second was the demo scene. While I liked the ST demos the Amiga demos were just better. In the ST Cuddle demos there is a screen done by TCB where there's a screen with lots of scrolling text.... basically an attempt to do the classic spread point demo on Amiga.

My favourite games of all times (Robotron - Arcade and Nex Machina - PS4, Hybris - Amiga, Battle Squadron -Amiga , Transplant - Amiga and Side Arms - Arcade).

You'll notice I don't play beat em up's... I simply don't like the genre, never rated it, never will and I'd take a game of Behind Jaggi Lines over Doom any day of the week. I also don't play much RPG either... never seem to have the time for them, although I do like Resident Evil.

Cuddle Demos - TCB Scroller (you need to go to 49.30)

[ Show youtube player ]


The Amiga Spread Point demo

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btw... the Spreadpoint demo was in full overscan, the ST demo wasn't.

Geezer

[gimbal]

Yeah I mostly play games that keep me busy while they're still qualified as games. I'd rather play one game I can stick hundreds of hours in than 20 games that are over in a handful of hours.

It would be good to break free from the spell though, there is more to life than computers. I wouldn't know it myself because I haven't seen it yet but I hear other people speak highly about it.

[kremiso]

currently i'm playing games that i would have touched only with a stick in past
growing, a little change of tastes + zero interest in online/competitive gaming
jap rpg devourer during ps1 era, waned both with the imo decline of the releases quality, in later years
spent the latest 5 years mainly on pc, with a lot of indiescene games and atm with a deep retroemulation
all genres are ok now (surely NOT in past ), apart real-time strategy maybe
but i love Megalomania ie, and a few others

i remember that at time i had considered both Strider and Forgotten Worlds as two good arcade to Amiga ports

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by kremiso

i remember that at time i had considered both Strider and Forgotten Worlds as two good arcade to Amiga ports

I didn't know that Strider was a port, but even as a kid I already classified that game as garbage

Didn't stop me from playing it anyway though, to this day I actually like the melancholic tone that the Amiga version sets. Its part of a pretty long list of games I can name for the Amiga where the gameplay is subjectively bad/uninteresting but I played the games on a weekly basis anyway just because they had sort of an adult theme to them which made them very appealing to me as a kid/teenager.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I didn't know that Strider was a port, but even as a kid I already classified that game as garbage

The arcade version is awesome!!! Try it via MAME

Strider

The 2nd in the series went 3D, and isn't great IMHO: Strider 2

Another cool arcade game that's sort of a copy of Strider is:

... Osman
... Osman - SShots

[gimbal]

I think there is miscommunication here, I didn't know it was a port... when I was a kid. The whole range of ports have been discussed numerous times already on this very forum, it'd be pretty dumb if I still didn't know it was a port or had played it myself It's bloody hard, the collision detection on that game is brutal deluxe, a trait not changed in the console ports.

[Foebane]

Forgot to mention that I also have Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom, from Steam. Doom goodness!

[PortuguesePilot]

Well, compared to most of you I was an avid gamer. Played anything and everything I could put my hands on. I started with the Spectrum scene, which was huge in Portugal. First on the 48K 'rubber keys' of a couple of neighbours, then with my own 128K +2B. Played mainly games like Target Renegade, Double Dragon, Chuckie Egg, Bumpy, etc. Played lots of games, since everyone in class had a Spectrum and we borrowed each others games. During all this time I had the occasional stint on my dad's off-limits, overpriced and underpowered i8088 CGA MS-DOS PC (first games like Dig Dug, the original Tetris, Paratrooper and Alley Cat and later games like Rick Dangerous, Prince of Persia, Super Off Road, Maniac Mansion, etc). Just as a passing mention, before I got my 128K +2 I was gifted an Atari 2600 clone full of games, but they looked too blocky and primitive compared to what I had already played and I was never a fan of it.

During all this time I frequented arcade parlours (watched more than I played because I had scarce funds) and witnessed what some people call the "arcade Golden Age", the passage from the mid-80's to the mid-90's. Played games like Out Run, Insector-X, Pang, Toki, Double Dragon, Operation Wolf, Hang-On, Super Hang-On, Rad Mobile, Street fighter 2, Final fight, Captain Commando, etc.

From this I went right through to the Amiga 500 and it was such a step-up from the Spectrum and the CGA PC-speaker experiences that it felt like a revolution. It was almost like having an arcade machine on my room. I played all sort of games on my Amiga (piracy galore, since in Portugal there were no anti-piracy laws at the time). I just enjoyed playing but arcade games were always my favourite (games like Stunt Car Racer, Rod-Land, Rainbow Islands, Pang, Toki, B.C. Kid, Switchbalde 2, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, SWIV, SWOS, etc...) I had an interest in open-world 3D games like Hunter and Damocles but they didn't captivate me too much because - though I felt the potential for greatness - I felt that the technology wasn't there just yet.

During this time I also got my hand on anything I could, like the GameBoy and NES stands that were available on the malls and such. I always enjoyed the MegaDrive and SNES stands as well, I always seem to consider them better than my beloved Amiga in playing action and arcade games. I remember play-testing a TurboGrafx 16 in a Makro store too and feeling impressed by the shoot-em ups.

I was one of the Amiga early adopters in my region, which made me a star of sorts and brought many guys to my house to play Amiga games. During the first half of the 1990's several of my mates got Amigas (500, 600 and 1200) while others migrated straight to the PC (386 and 486). I also had a NES and a MasterSystem but they never impressed me much. The Amiga was just better.

I ended up migrating to the PC with the demise of Commodore, after a period of strong pro-Amiga quasi-radicalism and ending up just feeling betrayed. My first PC was a i80486DX2@66MHz with 2MB RAM, a VGA board and a 120MB Hard Disk. It did felt like a step-up from the Amiga in some aspects (3D became much better) but it was still not quite up to my Amiga standard in many others (like most arcade games or early 90's games that I got). From 1995-on, the PC finally out-did the Amiga in every aspect, and I had upgraded to i80485DX4@120MHz, 8MB RAM, a SVGA VESA, a SoundBlaster 16 and a 460MB Hard Disk. Played games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Screamer, The Need for Speed, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Toonstruck, Colin McRae Rally 1 & 2, WarCraft 2 & 3, etc). My tastes diversified as I went from being a little kid into being an adolescent and I started to appreciate thinking games over fast action games. Started to play more adventure, strategy and puzzle games rather than arcade, action or platform ones. My always-present love for racing games also developed further, now on a much more immersive 3D form.

I also got hold of a Sony Playstation by this time and it also felt like a sort of revolution at the time, though not as much as the Amiga did back then. Played games like Ridge Racer, Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider 1 & 2, Tekken 2 & 3, Gran Turismo 1 & 2, etc. The last Playstation I owned (and enjoyed) was the Playstation 2, with games like GTA San Andreas, Gran Turismo 3 & 4, Tourist Trophy, Pro Evolution Soccer and Enthusia. After that, with the growing dependency on online gaming and micro-transactions, my interest on the Playstation line of consoles waned.

As for the PC part - I've always had them ever since the mid-90's. I skipped the 3Dfx period of PC gaming and went to a Pentium III @ 450MHz with an ATi Rage Fury 128, 640MB RAM, 1.3GB HDD and a Sound Blaster LIVE!. I consider that my modern gaming iteration started here and lasts up until now. I had several PCs since then, always playing on them.

In the last few years I find myself liking old classic games rather than the new, cutting-edge stuff. The newest game that I play with gusto is Assetto Corsa. Aside from that the last modern game I remember enjoying was Assassins Creed Rogue. I used emulators to play the games of my youth and I still enjoy the indie games on PC (I was the first person I know to play Cave Story, for instance, which I still consider to be the most fantastic neo-retro experience I had, but I also had extreme enjoyment playing games like Gemini Rue, Resonance, Primordia and Undertale).

Back in 2005 or so, and in spite of all the great emulators available for PC, I also started collecting old hardware, like consoles that I didn't own back in the day (MegaDrive, SNES, TurboGrafx 16, etc) and retro-computers that I never owned (MSX, Atari ST, Macintosh, etc) all while cleaning and getting prep-ready all my old stuff (my Amigas, my old PCs, my Specrums, etc). With this I started to re-discover games that passed me by at the time and that I just wasn't mature enough to enjoy, like most RPGs, including the Mother trilogy which I have enjoyed tremendously. Even though I have very few free time, I spend some of it playing either Assetto Corsa on my modern laptop PC or some old classic game on some old classic hardware. There's just something about using the original hardware with a CRT display that just appeases my heart and mind...

And that's basically a quick glance over my gaming history.

[Nobby_UK]

Dislikes:
Platform games generally,
especially those with killer bits you don't see until it is too late !
They become a memory test and if you have limited lives
and no save points = a pain in the ass.

Likes:
FPS and some TPS
On SSD at the moment Wolfenstein(s), DooM(s), Duke 3D, Quake(s),
BioShock 1+2, Crysis, Prey (2017), Deus Ex Mankind Divided,
Spec Ops: The Line, Sniper Ghost Warrior
+ others like Half Life 2, X-Com etc...

Bethesda Games:
Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 + 4 and Dishonored

Also the Mass Effect Trilogy, Andromeda - not so much.

Have the Witcher 3 but have not gotten into it.

[chip]

I like puzzle games like Lemmings, Benefactor, Fury Of The Furries

I totally dislikes FPS, flight simulators, soccer player managers

[nobody]

Likes: Open world aka Breath of the Wild style, Witcher 3 / Dungeon crawlers, lands of lore- eob / arpg Diablo, Grimdawn etc / platformers that require reflects aka GNG, Maldita Castilla etc / Metroidvania / single screen platformers/ Strategy like Civilization, Medieval 2 total war. Adventures in Lucasarts style.
Horizontal shoot em ups like Nemesis.

Dislikes: FPS, absolutely. All those jrpg that you hit, wait, the enemy hits you, wait and go on. Dumb. 3D platformers. Flight simulators. Retro Games that look like passed xBR filters. Vettical shoot em ups for some reason (probably hate the 3:4 aspect). Beat em ups, not so much but i find them not interesting. Probably ok if 2 player mode.

[kremiso]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I didn't know that Strider was a port, but even as a kid I already classified that game as garbage

Didn't stop me from playing it anyway though, to this day I actually like the melancholic tone that the Amiga version sets. Its part of a pretty long list of games I can name for the Amiga where the gameplay is subjectively bad/uninteresting but I played the games on a weekly basis anyway just because they had sort of an adult theme to them which made them very appealing to me as a kid/teenager.

many crappy games (gameplay talking) were in part 'saved' from the good soundtrack too, main example Shadow of the Beast
in my case, also Strider and Forgotten Worlds gained some points due the music at time

that's the only reason i'm playing Zone Warrior Atari ST atm :
[ Show youtube player ]

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

@Foebane, Your history of gaming is similar to mine I suppose.
My favourite games of all times (Robotron - Arcade and Nex Machina - PS4, Hybris - Amiga, Battle Squadron -Amiga , Transplant - Amiga and Side Arms - Arcade).

We actually agree on something here mcgeezer - Robotron is my fav arcade game of all time

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

We actually agree on something here mcgeezer - Robotron is my fav arcade game of all time

Indeed it would seem so.

Be sure to play Nex Machina which is Robotron on steroids, simply the best game ever made.

[ Show youtube player ]

[Gilbert]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Indeed it would seem so.

Be sure to play Nex Machina which is Robotron on steroids, simply the best game ever made.

[ Show youtube player ]

I have looked at Nex Machina vids before and agree it looks good but not sure if will prefer it to Robotron. My most recent machine is a 360 and I have both the Geometry Wars (twin stick shooter) games and although I think they are very good I still prefer Robotron. Something about the simplicity of it. I like the very basic gfx too.

[mcgeezer]

Originally Posted by Gilbert

I have looked at Nex Machina vids before and agree it looks good but not sure if will prefer it to Robotron. My most recent machine is a 360 and I have both the Geometry Wars (twin stick shooter) games and although I think they are very good I still prefer Robotron. Something about the simplicity of it. I like the very basic gfx too.

To be fair I play both games. I have a dual arcade tank stick for Robotron which is perfect. Both games are good for rage management.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

Indeed it would seem so.

Be sure to play Nex Machina which is Robotron on steroids, simply the best game ever made.

[ Show youtube player ]

Sort of reminds me of a beefed up Out Zone