What to play after you've played everything?

Freelancer is a great game, after finishing the story ,then start the real game in infinite galaxy. Still keep my saves. Recommend.
 
Per said:
I have a small reserve backlog of games I like to call "everything released after 2003".
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This is true for me, but maybe more like 2008.

As far as games that have huge replayability such that they never get boring I have more than a few.

>Morrowind (have you really tried all the classes?)
>Touhou (it takes incredible dedication to clear the game just on normal and keep in mind you have to to see the endings which I mostly haven't)
>Realm of the Mad God (Gameplay that is never boring and an endgame that never ends)
>Planetside 2 (Makes sense since it's a conflict that CAN'T end so players are always busy)

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 



I've occassionally found myself in the same situation of uncertainty as the OP. My gaming interests are fairly limited, and for years I've mostly replayed a small selection of favorites over and over again-- Panzer General/Pacific General, Fallout/Fallout 2/Fallout Tactics, Jagged Alliance 2/UB, X-Com/TFTD, and Arcanum. I don't have much interest in the direction of commercial gaming since the turn of the century, to the point where I'm certain I don't even want to try any of the latest and greatest stuff because I know I won't like it. Yet this leaves a problem-- some time interval must pass between yet another playthrough of old favorites to allow my interests to rekindle, and sometimes the larger cycle of intervals aligns in such a way that I find I have nothing to play at the moment and therefore I search for alternatives.

My suggestion for readers of this forum is: learn to mod your favorite games. By rolling your own variants, you'll never run out of new material to explore as long as your imagination holds out. Sure, a lot of these old games have obscure and minimal modding tools that require a steep learning curve, but in the end you'll likely find the effort worth your time as the odds are high that you'll enjoy something if you create it yourself-- who knows better than you exactly what you want to see in a game? Laying aside the hopeful and interesting recent developments of the Kickstarter phenomenon, the simple truth is: no one makes the kind of games we like anymore, and no one is going to regularly make them going forward. Therefore one must make them oneself, and modding an existing game one already enjoys is within the grasp of many players (as opposed to starting from scratch and learning to be a computer programmer). I'm certainly not naturally inclined to software engineering, but with some studying and modest learning I've been able to make my own mods of varying complexity for all the games I mentioned above except X-COM.

Sincerely gave modding a try but couldn't figure it out? Though it may be so intuitive as to not merit mention, I'll state the obvious anyway-- explore mods made by others for your favorite games. It's like anything else-- you'll like some mods and dislike others, but even in the latter case this may serve to sharpen your appreciation for the things you really do enjoy about your favorites. Fallout and Fallout 2 of course have a lot of great stuff done by NMA folks-- killap's RP and MIB's Megamod for FO2, Sduibek's work on FO1, and so forth. If you like Arcanum, there are a number of smaller adventures to enjoy unrelated to the main campaign-- for example the Troika-made addons Vormantown, Time, Hellgate, and Lost Dungeon of Souls are pretty good, as well as some modder-material such as Tomb of Tol Guldur and Dungeon of Quests (if in the latter case one makes a generous provision for an author who is clearly not an accomplished English speaker). With only a modest bit of exploring the easy to use Arcanum world editor, one can even combine these stand-alone modules into a larger continuing yet personalized adventure that offers a substantial amount of Steamworks and Magic Obscura play-time. The main 'big' Arcanum mod is called AWIP; I have mixed feelings on it because its main purpose seems to make an already easy game even easier with numerous silly exploits and cheats, but some of the material (particularly new adventuring areas in the Vendigroth Wastes and in the mountains northeast of Tarant) is very good. My interest in military games may not be shared by everyone, but for JA2/UB some good mods are Urban Chaos, Sierra Gordo, Tracona Unlimited, and Bear's Pit Campaign. Though truly obscure, if anyone still enjoys Pacific General some good custom campaigns are East Wind Rain, USSR Under the Rising Sun, Forgotten Campaign-Liberation of Italy, and Z-Plan.

On the other hand, this discussion caught my attention because over time I've found a great source of unexpected fun in exploring freeware games. There is a vast treasure trove of high quality entertainment available on the internet, but uncovering the uncommon gems requires an ample supply of time. For those who are bored/looking for something different but don't want to risk paying for something that may not satisfy, free games are a great alternative. Below are some suggestions on games others here might enjoy.


1) AGS

Woah-- there are hundreds of free graphical adventure games made with Adventure Game Studio. Scores of these games are a lot of fun and well-made. If you enjoy adventure games, there's enough free entertainment available through the AGS website to literally keep you occuppied for months or even years. Some favorites of mine are Infinity String, Prodigal, Conspiracy of Songo, Jessica Plunkerstein and the Dusseldorf Conspiracy, and Visitor. The pitfall is that because there are so many AGS games, sorting the wheat from the chaff can be time-consuming; furthermore, I found I didn't really care for most of the 'top-rated' or 'classic' games people in that community seem to consider their best stuff. The 'Ben Jordan-- Paranormal Investigator' series (sort of like the X-Files) is beloved there, but the games don't start getting good in quality until the fourth or fifth installment of the long-running series so if you check that out just be patient while looking at the first few episodes. Also good is Trilby's series of survival horror (5 Days a Stranger, 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby's Notes, and 6 Days a Sacrifice), but they are rather hard unless you're accustomed to graphical adventure game traditional customs.


2) Interactive Fiction

Old-fashioned text games, yet these days only the medium remains antiquarian-- the content itself is impressive and those who remember the frustrating anti-player conventions (guess the verb, instant death, etc) of the old Infocom games will likely be pleasantly surprised at what's going on in this contemporary freeware community. There are literally thousands of free text adventure games of recent vintage available to while away months of gaming time, and many are high-quality entertainment by authors with something interesting to say. Yet rather like I mentioned regarding AGS, this community has its own peculiar tastes and I found I really didn't like most of the titles lauded as 'the best stuff' by the community itself. Some games I enjoyed with themes or subject matter likely of interest to NMA readers are: Scavenger, Duel that Spanned the Ages, Orion 3, The Rocket Man from the Sea, Rogue of the Multiverse, Babel, and King of Shreds and Patches. One problem with these games is that figuring out how to run them can be difficult (almost as hard as installing the Fallout 2 Mapper), as there are many different/incompatible formats in use. For the most part, however, a single program called Gargoyle is a sort of master interpreter that will run almost anything you come across among these types of games. For those who fondly recall the Infocom games of yore, I think almost anyone here would also enjoy a horror-themed game called Leadlight (the author was so nostalgic that one has to use an included Apple IIe emulator to run it even though the game was made only three years ago). Though many of the best games are rather hard, as I said the good news is that the difficulty these days is usually a genuine integral component of gameplay rather than artificial difficulty from fighting with the text-only interface. Most games strive to be user-friendly and will suggest proper phrasing if you seem to be having trouble figuring out how to tell the game what you want to do, and though an important principle of modern text-games is that puzzles should be sensible with solutions clearly deducible from the information presented to the player most titles worth playing at all also feature in-game hints and help using a subtle system to give 'just the right amount' of help for each individual player to mostly figure things out on his own. Seriously, these folks are doing some pretty advanced stuff in recent years and have made some first-rate games.


3) This, That, Other

I've played a lot of freeware games over the years. Naturally, there's a lot of junk floating around-- poor quality, poor gameplay, and all-around bad ideas. However, this just makes the good stuff even more exciting to find. Furthermore, the same is true of commercial games-- but in that genre, you have to pay to be disappointed. Before wasting your own time to find out what's worth playing in free stuff, benefit from the results of my own investigations and start right away with some quality free entertainment I have already played. Several fun and well-made free games you may not have heard of (just use a search-engine to find them) are:


--Puzzle style:

-Hex a Hop (a cute lil' Japanese girl hops around strategically breaking different kinds of tile-blocks while trying to avoid falling in the water-- may not sound like much, but a very fun and engaging game nonetheless that proceeds at a relaxed pace. I highly recommend this game to everyone, and with about a hundred unique levels it will keep you occupied for some time)

-Blackshift (dozens of combination logic/switch-based and dexterity-based puzzles, sort of like the old game 'Fire and Ice' on NES if anyone but me still remembers such ancient history)


--Graphic Adventure style:

-Dirty Split (a private detective game with neat/unique 'swinging sixties jet-set' themes and artwork)

-Ib (a girl looks for her parents in a twisted art gallery; an excellent and fun spooky game with 8-12 hours of play time)


--Action style yet still intelligent and not a vapid twitch-fest:

-Ao Oni (about a group of teens trapped in a haunted house; interesting because the main strategy is to avoid freaky monsters by hiding rather than fighting them reminiscent of the old PS1 Clock Tower game; also has unique replay options like 'Use South Park Characters')

-Arc-22 (an expansive Legend of Zelda style rpg about some coffee-loving astronauts who crash land on a hostile ice planet; very difficult in the final chapters of the game, so do yourself a favor and find youtube video walkthrough to have on hand when the time comes)

-Au Sable (a creepy side-scrolling horror game, filled with copious amounts of bloody violence and weird evil cult stuff)

-Eversion (a fun but hard to describe side-scrolling game, sort of like Mario Brothers on LSD. However it's an honest game, and not a joke at the player's expense like Cat-Mario and those sorts of nonsense)

-Slender (probably many have already heard about this popular horror game, but if not-- it's pretty good and surprisingly tense/scary. I especially liked the sequel set in an old sanitarium)

-Survival Crisis Z (okay, it's undeniably a twitch-gamer arcade game, but it does have a decent storyline and it's a lot of fun. The player-character roams the streets of a zombie-infested town gathering resources, building coalitions of allies, and pursuing missions/quests while expending zillions of rounds of ammunition blasting undead hordes. I recommend playing as the redneck hunter-dude, as he's got the best skills to stay alive. Also the very first step after starting the game should be to reconfigure the controls, as the game is nearly unplayable with the default keyboard/mouse interface unless you happen to have at least three hands; reconfiguring is happily a simple process done in-game).


Surely there's at least one item in the above mentioned freeware cornucopia to satisfy anyone's tastes, no matter how obscure one's interests, or at least pass a few hours until one comes up with a better idea.


 
Older PC games: Neverhood, Beneath the steel sky, Day of the tentacle, Doom wads(Like scythe and plutonia experiment with brutal doom mod), Blood, Strife and Abuse. Some of these titles require setting up DOSbox. Doom engine games run nicely with Zdoom these days.

Bit newer PC games that might have slipped under your radar: Tropico, Painkiller, Mirrors Edge, Star wars republic commando and Clive barkers undying. Lara Croft and the guardian of light was lot of fun in co op. It plays well enough with a controller if you have friend to play with locally. Cant say anything about how it is playing alone.

Gamecube: Eternal darkness and Resident evil remake

PSX: Castlevania SOtN, Armored core and Silent hill.

Snes: FF6, Shadowrun and Earthbound.
 
Europa 1400: The guild and The guild 2: Reneissance with fanpatches. These two don't have the biggest fanbases but still they are totally awesome. I wasted so many hours on them. Very good time.
 
Recently played Anno 1404 again, that's always a bit of fun, especially if you have hours to burn through with one or more mates.

Started a new campaign in Medieval 2 with the Stainless Steel mod too. I'm Poland. Got lots of rebels to burn to the stake whilst taking their towns, castles and cities.
 
SmartCheetah said:
Europa 1400: The guild and The guild 2: Reneissance with fanpatches. These two don't have the biggest fanbases but still they are totally awesome. I wasted so many hours on them. Very good time.
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Played The guild 2 + Reneissance a lot. One of the most promising ideas I've ever seen that could become such a gem if developed by some big company. They kind of stopped everything because the lack of funds. I've been waiting 2 years I think for another patch :|..

PS: Check out Sang-Froid Tales of Werewolves, Game Dev Tycoon, Capitalism Lab
 
Haven't read the whole thread but here are some fun/hard things to do...


Play:

*A fully modded New Vegas playthrough.

*Fallout 2 with Killap's Restoration Patch

*Earthbound and Mother 3 with fan translation

*I agree with another poster, Resident Evil Remake and Eternal Darkness. MUST PLAY GAMES! If you dig survival horror.

*Zombies Ate My Neighbors with a friend.

*Castlevania Symphony of the Night as Alucard then Richter.

*Legend of Zelda: Windwaker and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

*Resident Evil 2 as Hunk then Tofu.

*Hitman Absolution on Purist.

*Dead Island: Riptide with four friends.

*Monaco..wish I had money to get it :(

*Retro City Rampage
 
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