Stargate Resistance & Other Games: Anyone else fed up of 'online only' games?

[iamdragonrider]

The games I used to play years ago were the Kings Quest series. they were single player games, the first was "state of the art" back with PC's still had a 4 or 16 color monitor, I can't remember which, and an internal speaker, (nobody had sound cards yet) and mice hadn't been invented, so it was all keyboard interface. Prior to this game, most games were usually up to one's imagination, and were text on a screen, and a series of questions, "you are at an intersection, do you want to go right or left?", or had very simple graphics of basically unmoving pictures.

Kings Quest "revolutionized" the gaming world, by using all the colors, and having a "3 diminsional" world, where the character walked around, in front of, behind objects. The goal was to solve a series of puzzles and riddles throughout the kingdom, that eventually led to the defeat of a dragon that had stolen something in the beginning of the game. To solve the puzzles, you had to find objects and such, and interacted with various characters, trading the objects, finding new puzzles and riddles.

There were more games over the years. Many of the games were firsts. The first game with digital music, the first on CDROM, the first game with real voice actors.

But in time, all things change, and though the last game they realised they tried to appeal to the first person shooter popularity of the 90's, they just couldn't do it, and that was the last one, and the company was eventually bought out by another.

Which I think is a shame, because it wasn't so much the game, as the humor that was in the game too. there was a wholesomeness to those games, that I remember playing those first ones as a kid, and my parents never worrying about what we'd accidently stumble accross.

I dont know if they make anything like those games anymore. They were nice, single player games, and you could stop whereever you wanted, and save your progress. I gave up looking for anything like it a long time ago though.

[JanineGrant2]

I thought that the servers were permanently down for Stargate Resistance

[loserinc]

I do miss the days of the single player games. I miss the old Final Fantasy, Fantasy Star, Lufia...all that Nintendo and Sega Genesis stuff.

That being said, there are some good games out there, they just aren't marketed well. Divinity II was a blast. It was a good dungeon crawler type game, evenly paced, lots of stuff to find and modify. I've played it through twice now.

A fun short game that I have been playing is Audiosurf. It's a little spaceship, and you collect blocks on a twisty rollercoaster of a track, all to your own mp3s. It actually loads the track based on your music. Quite fun and addicting, and hey, only takes as long as your songs are (they only load one at a time)

Some MMORPGS are fun. I do like DDO, it's free, and most of the quests are actually quite doable by one person. Some of the dungeons however, take hours, so not for a quick play. Guild Wars is another fun one. You buy the game, but play on the servers is free. If you start with the Nightfall rather than the first one, you don't need to play with anyone, as you get premade characters to go with you. They level up, you set their skills, arm them, and just play.

Diablo III should be out sometime within the next 50 years (so fed up with Blizzard and their work on crap like WOW when all I want is the next Diablo), and it looks to be pretty darn good. It will be playable either on servers or as a single person.

[DigiFluid]

Stargate: We Need Cash was kind of a unique case. It was never intended to even exist, just be a quick cash generator.

SGW was an MMO from Day 1. There's plenty of off-line RPGs (and every other genre) out there, so what's the problem?

[Womble]

Are we witnissing the death of the single player adventure?

No, but we are witnessing a reduction of its market share due to the gaming industry's adoption of new economic models.

The gaming industry has figured out that they can get more bang for the buck if the customers stay around. And by staying around, I mean they keep on sending money. There are two ways to keep the customers paying more money over time: making the game subscription-based or selling the main body of the game first and then selling the rest of it in parts, piece by little piece, with each peace altering the gameplay experience enough to keep the audience re-playing the adventure. The former route is the one World of Warcraft, Runescape and other MMORPGs have taken: subscription-based gameplay which emphasises interactivity and interaction with other players. It's very profitable because you can create whole economies around games like that; Second Life has gone as far as making their in-game currency exchangeable for real-world dollars and selling in-game "real estate"". In simpler games, I've seen high-level characters and rare items for sale on ebay for real money. It also builds a loyal long-term customer base. Old-fashioned single player adventures can't offer that.

On the other hand, there's the Fallout franchise games- 100% single-player adventures with high replayability followed up by selling DLCs- and no multiplayer option whatsoever. Fallout games have always gone the niche-oriented route so they're not afraid to go against the fashions of the day. They're trying to make up for lack of interactivity with the sheer quality of the product... with mixed success.

[Womble]

Diablo III should be out sometime within the next 50 years (so fed up with Blizzard and their work on crap like WOW when all I want is the next Diablo), and it looks to be pretty darn good. It will be playable either on servers or as a single person.

Diablo III will have a rather limited single-player experience to offer, I'm afraid. They're going to go out of their way to encourage online team play and trading at the expense of single-player mode. You could see it already in Dablo II which replaced the save/load with waypoints and restricted the most powerful, game-changing runewords like Infinity, Dream, Faith etc. to battle.net website play.

[Pharaoh Atem]

I agree. I don't feel like buying something that can only be played online with strangers...or even half strangers from this place. I miss the good ol' days of single player...

i just wouldn't want to sit at my computer to play anything

[VengefulSpud]

Wouldn't mind if Bungie made a Stargate game. Halo always kinda felt Stargatey anyways. And if it was just a carbon copy of Halo just with an original Stargate story, thay could be savage cabbage !

Single player games do seem to be in decline, but wait for Skyrim, that'll show every other games developer what's still possible with a single player game. And Mass Effect 3, can't wait !!