On Valve, me, candy coating, and why that doesn't matter:

[theweaselking]

One of the best games[1] ever made is Star Control 2.

I have an original copy, on both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy disks. I keep it in my office, next to my desk. In my COLLECTION of the classics, which includes[2] Pools Of Darkness, a first edition of The Man With The Golden Gun, Sam And Max Hit The Road, Machiavelli's "Discourses on Titus Livy", the original X-Com, Knuth's "The Art Of Computer Programming", and Sim City 1.

This game is not only still available, it's still PLAYABLE, on modern OSen and hardware, all the way up to and including *Android*[3].

This is one of the best games ever made. Most of this is because the story and dialog are clever, and timeless. The rest is because the mechanics are simple to learn, complex to master, AND ALSO TIMELESS. This is not a game like Deus Ex where the craptacular interface will make you wish for the sweet release of death so that your suffering might end - this is a game whose interface shows a LITTLE of it's age while remaining 95% seamless.

It is space opera.

It is classic video game.

It is playable even if you suck at video games.

It is one of the best games, period, ever made.

It was originally released in 1992.

It is free, and works right now on your hardware and your OS..

Right now, in 2011, you should play Star Control 2.[4]

[1]: Not "video games", games.
[2]: Among other things
[3]: The lesser, inferior, poor broken wretches who purchased iOS devices must wait JUST A BIT longer to experience the awesome, which should be a familiar experience for them by now.
[4]: Star Control 1 is interesting but not really required. There Has Not Ever Been A Star Control 3. Making an SC3 would be like making a sequel to Highlander - that would just be dumb.

Comments

[ardys-the-ghoul.livejournal.com]

I still have a soft spot for the old King's Quest games, even if they are a little clunky. Unfortunately, I can't get them for this computer. :(

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

This is not a game like Deus Ex where the craptacular interface will make you wish for the sweet release of death so that your suffering might end

Disagree. Asteroids controls were shitty in Asteroids and have been shitty ever since, including Star Control 2.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I take it you've never actually played the game.

By which I mean, "Deus Ex", not just SC2. Deus Ex is unplayably craptacular due to terrible, horrific, nonsensical interface failures - whereas SC2 is simply "old".

[iponly.livejournal.com]

Have you tried the fan-expac-patch thing that's been around? I've been wondering if it's worth another playthrough to check that out- how much content there is, where it shows up in the game, etc.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

So "No, but link me?"

Fuck

[echoeversky.livejournal.com]

Yes.

The audio.. the story of the two guys who up and left to grind out more content, the journey.

Yes.

That and Dune II.

*SALUTE!*

Re: Fuck

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Dune II was great, but doesn't stand up to the ravages of time NEARLY as well.

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

I played through Deus Ex not long ago... I found the interface a little clunky, but far from unplayable...

I disliked the mechanism for switching abilities on and off, but was there anything else particularly bad for you?


I tried star control 2 a bunch of times, but always get destroyed by the insane crystal robot things not long after escaping the solar system... I find the controls too hard to aim at the fast and erratically moving ship. Even when I've invested everything I could scrape out of the first solar system into maneuverability and speed.

Re: Fuck

[the-trav.livejournal.com]

I played more of dune2 but I enjoyed dune1 more

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Deus Ex:
I found the graphics, the "clunkiness" of the interface with regards to movement and enemy detection, and the fact that there "were multiple routes" to solve any problem that all took longer, were more annoying than, and devolved into "shoot eveything" if I screwed up to solve any problem to make the game just plain annoying.

SC2: Ah, the Sylandro! A side effect of 1992 game design: fighting those before the late game is a *losing* battle. Instead, confront them, talk to them, learn all you can about them, and then once the fight starts join combat with your flagship and *escape* - you will lose 5-6 crew members from your 100 and the Sylandro Probe will disappear from the universe map because you have resolved your combat with it.

Fighting the Sylandro is simply not a good idea. Outrun them (which you CAN do with maxed-out thrusters because they are only the second-fastest thing in space), and if they catch you coming in or out of a star system, talk to them to learn more about what they want, and then *escape* combat from them and take your losses. They'll fuck you up if you stay, but they won't do it *quickly* so your emergency hyperspace will take you out of combat before they can do much damage.

If you talk to them (or pay the Melnorme Information Merchants enough) you can learn where they come from, and stop them from attacking you further.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Does this edition have the voice acting, or is that just Ur-Quan Masters?

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I'm dumb. I thought that was a link to the original game on Steam. Your trickery has tricked me!

[iponly.livejournal.com]

Ta dah, link! (http://code.google.com/p/project6014/)

Looks like I've been thinking of it wrong, actually. Not a exapc, but still a fan sequel. Also, apparently only in demo form. I dunno.

Re: Fuck

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

I loved Dune 2 in the early/mid 90's, but that game is absolutely crippled by its obsolete interface. Having to select one unit at a time and then click on a *menu* to tell it what you want it to do? No thank you.

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed SC1 as a multiplayer game back in middle school (we just played Melee), but I've never seen what the main game looks like.

SC2 is great, but the resource-harvesting game doesn't seem like much fun (I always just exploited the bug where that lets you sell shuttles you don't have). Melee mode of that is a lot of fun too.

I actually enjoyed SC3... it's no SC2, but it's not as much of a violation of the previous games as say MOO3 or Chrono Cross.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

I tried to play it. Several times! The terrible, terrible controls mean doing so was actively unpleasant.

[dreamshade.livejournal.com]

I did not own a PC during this mythical era. I only owned an NES, and occasionally saw my cousins playing King's Quest or something when I was at their house. I will take you up on this challenge.

[falconwarrior.livejournal.com]

SC1 was a turn-based strategy. There was a starmap where your units could go from celestial object to celestial object, building fortifications, resource farms, colonies, etc to help fund the shipbuilding facilities. When ships met on the same space, melee ensued. There were a bunch of different maps with various win conditions set for each. Kind of confusing; I never bothered to figure out the nuances.

Re: Fuck

[echoeversky.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Both started epic paths in my gaming career.

I miss them both.

[chizzer.livejournal.com]

Installing on my phone now.

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Also: http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/uqm

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

You mean the cursor keys and a couple of action buttons?

Navigation is purposefully sluggish at the game's beginning. You are piloting the barely-completed shell of a 1,000-foot alien spacecraft, after all. It becomes more responsive as you upgrade.

This may seem irritating when you overshoot a planet but it takes seconds to recover, and in any case getting used to the inertia mechanic is very useful for combat.

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the resource harvesting a lot. The lovely sound effects and music probably helped a lot - the little slurping noise as you pick up a cache of minerals is still in my head today. It was definitely more exciting when risk/reward trade-off played a big part - darting in and out of highly dangerous environments in an unprotected lander in the hopes of grabbing something valuable.

[hollowpoint.livejournal.com]

Yeps. One of the best games ever. Real labour of love, too - from what I recall Accolade wanted to release it on the originally set date when the game didn't even have any dialogue. The devs refused and invested about $20,000 of their time and money into finishing the game (which I think is why they ended up sourcing all of the music via a competition among the then-burgeoning MOD scene - in retrospect a fantastic move).

I originally played this when I was quite young, so the space opera pastiche seemed fresh and exciting rather than clever and salutory.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

I mean rotational controls. Where left arrow turns you counterclockwise, right arrow turns you clockwise, and up arrow applies thrusters whichever direction you're turning. Asteroid controls. Always terrible, without exception.

It has nothing to do with navigation being sluggish or overshooting a planet by a couple seconds, and everything to do with the control scheme being counterintuitive at its core, dependent on a perspective that is not the perspective presented to the player. A game where basic movement has a steep learning curve is a game that has fundamentally failed.