That’s positively surprising, I expected them to leave it at that until petition reaches the second milestone (if that even happens). Let’s see if anything new comes out of this.

Can’t talk for the others, obviously, but I tend to avoid unsolicited advice since I know how annoying it can be.

Oh, totally. I never went beyond Shogun 2 so I forgot to mention it. Good catch.

In case you’re not aware, there’s a project called VCMI which rewrites the Heroes 3 engine to add lots of modern improvements, fixes and easier access to mods. Thought it might be of interest since you like the game.

As for other games, how about XCOM? These games are turn based so you should be fine with touchpad + there’s plenty of time to think. Don’t know what specs we’re talking about but in case of modern revival, XCOM: Enemy Unknown should work without issues. XCOM 2 is slightly heavier but might also work.

You could also go for 4X titles like Star Ruler or Total War series.

Finally, there are turn-based RPGs like Knights of Pen and Paper - it’s light and pretty fun (as far as I remember anyway). A bit simple but might be enough to spend some time on.

Yeah, Metal Wolf is a cheesy action movie filtered through Japanese lens. It’s crazy, stupid and unintentionally hilarious.

As for Gothics, I think they hold up really well as long as you can overcome a few things:

• get used to the controls - they really aren’t bad but they were created when standards weren’t as established as they are now.
• treat them as worlds you are a part of rather than games - it helps figure out alternative solutions to quests and avoid some unpleasant surprises (in universe, not bugs).
• game world does not revolve around you - early on even basic wildlife will be a challenge, treat enemies with respect.
• there’s no level scaling - some areas will be unavailable to you until you’re strong (or crafty) enough.
• don’t play Gothic II with Night of the Raven expansion installed from the start - it adds a bunch of difficult enemies available from the get go and will make the game way harder if you don’t know how to avoid them.

I think some of those points might sound more serious than they really are but should make for a good primer anyway. There’s a lot to like about those games (even compared to another titan of that time, Morrowind) so I hope you have fun!

Couple of disclaimers to start with: I’m primarily a PC player, even most of the console games I played happened via emulation so I’ll drop stuff from both. I’m also really fond of games willing to try something different, even if they end up mediocre or bad - these ain’t GOTY material.

With that out of the way, here’s a short list of titles I really enjoyed:

• Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (PC, PSX, Sega Saturn) - 3D platformer with relatively slow and clunky gameplay (kind of similar to classic Tomb Raider games). Colorful, cute and simple.
• Kao the Kangaroo (Dreamcast, PC) - series very similar to Croc though might feel a bit less polished at times. Don’t really care about the sequel even though it’s not a bad game.
• Parasite Eve (PSX) - JRPG set in 1990’s New York. Interesting combat system focused on guns and positioning, great art and fun story.
• Gothic I & II (PC) - German RPGs with a unique atmosphere and world. Surprisingly open-ended with some of its quests. Has an unusual keyboard-centric control scheme.
• Sheep (Mac OS, PC) - game about herding sheep through various wacky levels. Lots of humor.
• Metal Wolf Chaos (Xbox) - crazy story about an American president fighting FOR DEMOCRACY in a mech suit, created by From Soft. Has modern ports for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
• Oni (Mac OS, PC, PS2) - the best Ghost in the Shell game without actually being one*. Third person action with a great melee combat, big empty levels and rough difficulty spikes. Has a community made “Anniversary Edition” with fixes and access to mods.

* I haven’t played all of the GitS games to back that up.

Nothing wrong with that.

The ability to play all that old stuff is a thing of beauty and seems to be getting stronger, both in practice and as a general concept within the industry, with each passing year. It’s great!

Lame? Not really. Cheating? Maybe a little bit but yeah, if we were to go by access to the history of gaming then “current year” always wins.

Probably fifth and sixth gens (PSX-PS2 era), for three reasons:

• graphics - there’s something about art styles used at the time that aged surprisingly well and is just pleasant to look at, even compared to later games.
• variety - both gens were filled with mid budget titles trying out new, often weird ideas that didn’t always work but can be really interesting even to this day (as long as you can overcome jank usually present there).
• (least important point) there’s a lower chance I’ll find games from this era to be too old-school for me. I have a high tolerance to old game design but I’m not immune to it. Sometimes there is such thing as “too old” and that’s alright.

That’s cool, didn’t know that!

Because that’s what it is. I think some of it might have to do with the limited content of the petition itself (a pretty short description about “customers being robbed” without any broader ideas suggested by the campaign) and some with the fact they get plenty of petitions so the first reaction is to stick with what’s already there. That’s my guess at least.

I hope that if this petition reached 100k signatures and went to a parliamentary hearing there could be a chance for a more nuanced presentation of the topic but who knows, maybe I’m just being naive.

Joplin is my goto as well!

I’ve got a lot of jank to write about in my backlog, might find some interesting surprises if you like that type of experiences.

I’m one of those posting walls of text so I guess I’ll throw in my thoughts on this.

I tend to write down bullet points about stuff that pops out the most while playing - I jump between many different games all the times so it’s a useful habit to avoid mixing my thoughts about them. I note these points shortly after play session (if I’m on my PC) or the next day (if I was playing on handheld in bed) and then expand on them after I’m done with the game.

Since I don’t really have anyone to talk about older titles my write ups tend to be on the longer side and read more like a draft than a thought out summary. My desire to include as much info as I can also doesn’t help with this issue. Lots of thoughts + no way to filter them through a third party + limited time do not make for a sensible process.

In the end, I just want to let people know about the weird jank I play. Bad and mediocre games need love too!

You’re absolutely right about the dialog and I’m not sure why I forgot to include it in my post - that’s a pretty stupid decision on dev’s part, especially since there’s enough downtime that could be used for that purpose instead.

While mission design is pretty linear I never really found it to be a huge issue. It might be because I never expected any openness to begin with so anytime there was an option to avoid full-on combat seemed like a nice surprise. It doesn’t help that there isn’t much room for experimentation since enemies can be really deadly at times.

It’s definitely not a game for everyone and I can understand why you bounced off of it. I’ve been molded by jank so my tolerance to many of game’s issues is rather high. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for mediocre titles - I seem to drift towards them more than to polished, high-budget games.

It’s the question of both though - sure, game preservation aspect is important but it would also be nice for the law to catch up to technology and decide whether companies should have the right to remove your ability to use the product you bought.

If the law would go through in the way envisioned by the campaign, games should be designed and developed in a way that releasing a patch/server software should be possible even for a company at the verge of closing. We’re not talking about creating these releases at the last moment but baking their creation into the development process from the start.

At the end of the day all the possible solutions proposed by the campaign are just ideas to give lawmakers some kind of starting point. If this goes anywhere it’ll be debated and decided upon by people with far more law and customer protection knowledge than anyone involved in the campaign itself. The important part right now is to bring the issue to someone willing to look into it.

That’s why the campaign is aimed at multiple jurisdictions - there’s a chance at least one of them works out.

Fair enough. My experience is mostly tied to companies where even shutting down would be run through a process of sunsetting all projects and tying up as many loose ends as possible before that so my perspective might be a bit skewed.

I can see this being an issue for a small or indie developer but something like Embracer Group shouldn’t have any leeway in that regard - they could absolutely afford keeping a studio (at least a skeleton crew) long enough to release a single server package/patch.

Maybe, maybe not. Australia has a decent track record ruling for the customers so there is a chance (that’s also the reason why France is one of the main targets of this campaign).

At the very least the odds are better than in the US.

Just so we’re clear, this is not my petition. It’s related to the Stop Killing Games campaign mentioned in the post description, though it was slightly modified by the author (one of the volunteers helping with the campaign).

I’m not sure I follow your example.

First things first - companies don’t poof out of existence suddenly. Secondly, the whole reason behind the end-of-life proposal is for devs/publishers to have a ready and easy to execute plan in case of ending the official support (whether it’s closing the developer run servers or closure of the company). The whole idea is that something like that would be planned and prepared for during the development.

It’s still being processed apparently. I’ll be sure to post it when that changes.