Retrospective: Aging Nicely or Turning To Vinegar?
After trying to keep pace with releases in multiple genres on multiple platforms through the fall and winter of last year, I thought I had burned myself out. In one way I had – I was burned out on playing games I didn’t want to play in genres I really didn’t like. That doesn’t mean that they were all bad games, just that they weren’t anything I really wanted to play. Fortunately I didn’t burn out on replaying games or trying games I had missed through the years. So instead of continuing to push myself to play games I didn’t want to play, I have taken a step back and started smelling the glorious flowers of games and genres I love …
I already started this last year with a retrospective on Jedi Knight, and more recently with my revisiting my ‘No Sweating the Oldies’ article. Now I am continuing the series with a retrospective on the highly divisive PC RPG game Dungeon Lords over at RPGWatch (I have been called both an apologist and an unfairly harsh critic) . I will continue the feature throughout the year at different sites and will focus mostly on role-playing games and first-person shooters. For now, take a look over at RPGWatch!
May 13th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Y’know, I kind of did a bit of that a few years ago myself. I still have a whole bunch of games gathering dust in their wrappers because of it ;-). I did have a lot of fun by stretching my horizons, though. I’m not much of a FPS kind of gamer (I prefer squeezing a trigger slowly to blasting at full auto) but Jedi Knight was a lot of fun with the right people! But I find myself spending most of my time playing Civilization (usually IV lately, but I go back to II and even occasionally the first just for fun), the occasional RTS (Battle for Middle Earth and Rise of Nations) and a lot of casual games (Mater-National is a ton of fun!). Of course, the budget thing hits home pretty often, too, so I almost never buy a game fresh off the development line.
So I’m all for retrospective gaming!
May 14th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Oh I will definitely be playing this one again someday. I love the artwork and dungeons. I kept sticking to it through all the bugs until the stable patch and then finally bought the Collector’s Edition. For all it’s bugs this game had a certain magic that kept me at it. I think of RPG’s I enjoyed this one and Divine Divinity the most. There are RPG’s with way better graphics and stories but for me these 2 had special qualtities (it also helped that I could finish them without walkthroughs lol)
May 14th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I honestly wouldn’t pair Divine Divinity with Dungeon Lords – one is a pariah in the RPG community, and one is an all time-classic marred only by a rushed ending. Oh, I will have a retrospective coming very soon on Divinity since it recently passed its’ 5-year anniversary.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Which one is the pariah and which is the classic? Is Dungeon Lords the pariah and DD the rushed ending?
May 14th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Yes, you are correct – I have been called a ‘fanboy’ and ‘apologist’ for giving Dungeon Lords a 6/10 score more than a few times.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:36 am
No I wasn’t comparing the 2 at all. I was just saying that these 2 games had something other games didn’t that actually got me to finish them. And that is saying a lot for a father of 2 kids and no time on his hands … I don’t waste time on games that lose my attention.
May 15th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Very good point, Andre! And one that I make in the heading. There *is* something that keeps me coming back to Dungeon Lords …