OT: Game Ideas for bday

Well, its that time of the year for me, so that means some bad presents and a 100 dollar gift card for games that i love getting to a local game shop.

IDk what to get. i dont really have any ideas other than possibly getting the bnw expansion. what are you guys playing now or some favorites from the past 10-15 yrs thats compatible for todays pcs. i basically play any genre.

im thinking about the 3 below. ive played every simcity except for the new one. however since they have an offline play option now, its on the board of wants. i played the first 2 sims, but i never felt the desire to play 3, but its 17 bucks for sims3 and two addons now in australia. i prefer to only go after pc games this bday. i havent been playing my consoles much. id list games ive played or own.. but that would take too long.. so what ideas do you peeps have.

BNW - is 28 bucks
simcity is 19
sims3 starter pack is 17.

Galactic Civilizations 3. You could join the Alpha, have all the updates for life, and best of all, name a star! Not cheap, since it would eat your entire gift card, but an interesting long term investment if you like it at all.

I'd recommend BNW it adds a lot to the game. If you want something more in depth you could try a Paradox game like Europa Universalis IV or Crusader Kings II or Victoria 2 or Hearts of Iron 3(although Hearts of Iron 4 will be coming out soon). Or you could try a city-builder game like tropico or sim-city(don't get sim-city 5 it's a trap).

Don't go anywhere near Simcity 5, possibly the worst game of all time, even with offline mode.

BNW is a good idea, really makes the game better than GnK.

Divinity: Original Sin is pretty cool, but beware, your PC needs to be top class to run it smoothly.

Galactic Civilization 3 is still a long way from being completed so if you aren't interested in the Alpha + extras you might want to wait until next year to get it.

EU, CK, etc are all good games although have quite a steep learning curve.

Get BNW certainly. Then get either Victoria II plus the "A House Divided" and "Heart of Darkness" expansions or Europa Universalis IV plus the "Conquest of Paradise", "Wealth of Nations", and "Res Publica" expansions.
If you decide you want to get Tropico (like others have suggested) get 4, not 5. 5 requires a top-tier graphics card to play and also, from what I've heard, just kind of generally sucks.

thanks for some of the ideas. Divinity Original Sin is something ive been thinking about, however it doesnt come out in australia until sometime in September.

Galactic Civilization 3 seems interesting but ill wait to see where it goes.

I have tropico 1-4. Ill get 5 when its dirt cheap. I generally like builders. i have several settlers - just not 7, but this store doesnt carry it. i have anno 1404 and recently picked up 2070. I have Cities XL. i have simcity 1-4 and society (blah) i always wished 5 would have been an updated 4 and not some always online reboot - mods made 4 enjoyable for years, but for whatever reasons now sc4 doesnt run well on my win7 systems - i got rid of my old xp pc where it ran great, it may be mod issues or something, idk.

However, since the new sc is playable offline now, i thought id give it a look. why is it a trap? I get it has smaller map sizes and drm bs but what else is flawed with the game? im not buying different region packs.

im getting older now and idk what to play anymore. ill be 36 in a week and ive been playing games since i was 4 from systems (thanks to my two older bros) like the odyssey, atari, intellivision, commadore 64, nes, sega, turbo gfx, neo geo, etc etc to my latest gaming pc rig and xbox 360,ps3 - i wont jump to the new consoles for a year or two once they come down in price a lot and there are tons of games to choose from. hell i was playing ultima on the commadore 64 when i was 6, not knowing what an rpg was or really how to play it.

im played out on FPS for now.. my last FPS was call of duty ghosts but its boring and i hate having to buy more maps. i mean from doom/wolfenstein 3d to duke to goldeneye to the MOH run, counterstrike, halflife, halos, etc etc etc to the call of duty run - im done for awhile

i havent been blow away by a game for ages now. sure, i play games i like and that are wtf bad to good to great, its just nothing has sucked me in completely in years.. the last couple of games that did that was Metal Gear 3:Snake Eater and Resident Evil 4 - RE4 was a 10/10 to me. i hate how games get high 9's and 10's now a days, like the ps3 exclusive the last of us did on many sites. sure the game looked pretty and had it s moments but the ai was beyond ******ed at times etc.. 8's should have been the highest it got.. because if that game was a 10 - resident evil 4 had to of been a 20.

RE4 was so good i got it for gamecube, ps2, and the pc. res 5 was annoying, havent even picked up 6 yet - one day when its in the bargin bin.

maybe its just me, ive been playing games from every genre for 32 years... idk. i look forward to new games, but most of the time they turn out to be metal gear ground zeroes or worse if you know what i mean.

yeah maybe im just getting old. or maybe games are becoming ________

I've historically found a strong oceanic presence in MMOs.

Is there any particular reason you're adverse to them?

Two months back I was playing SWTOR, after dropping it for two years; it had a strong oceanic presence when it released, and last I played still offered enough activity during oceanic hours that it was "playable." You can play it free to play, with minimal impact from its f2p status (almost all of the subscription perks can be bought off other players via the in-game auction hall, and really only 1-2 are necessary if you want to stay purely f2p).

If you at least marginally enjoy FPS games, you should at least marginally enjoy a decent MMO, which SWTOR is (and it's A+ as a f2p game). At worst, you can play it as a high quality SPRPG, for free.

aprince said:

yeah maybe im just getting old. or maybe games are becoming ________

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It's both. I just hope the upcoming WH40k MMO is good, or that they release another Dawn of War game.

Speaking of, that's another title you can look into....Dawn of War. RTS based, but without the base building of starcraft. Always an epic struggle against an innumerable foe.