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Ultima Retrospective - Very Cool

Eärendil

Legendary Mall Santa
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I will never forget U 6 & 7. These two games were the best computer role-playing games ever! U 7 was ultimatively complex and had such a dense atmosphere... The music was fantastic - the graphics were outstanding. Ultima was always the hardest test for your hardware... And the freedom... fantastic! You could do whatever you wanted to do... I will never forget how hard the dungeons were, how complex the dialogues and the story, and how much my own behaviour influenced the way the game went...

U 7 was the reason why I came to UO. And I must say that the UO I am playing today hasn´t much to do with the game I played in these times. It was a very different Britannia then. I am missing many things, among them the music (e.g. Rule Britannia when entering Brit or at least Lord Britishs Castle) and the atmosphere out there in the wilderness (music again!). I know that UO has an alternate timeline and so on. But UO could be a bit more like old U7, more focused on story and interplay between us players and less about items, vendors, transfer tokens, PKing, holiday gifts and stuff like that...

I love UO very much. It´s like a wife you have been married to for 25 years. But I will never forget that hot girlfriend I had, so many years ago in the age of VGA and 386-Computers...
 

Eärendil

Legendary Mall Santa
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
These Reviews are fantastic. And we all can really be happy that UO is much better than the last two games of the series ;-)
 

Deaol

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
wow im glad im not old enough to have played any of that LOL

edits response with

Dont worry my day will come... ;)
 
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Sauteed Onion

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
wow im glad im not old enough to have played any of that LOL

edits response with

Dont worry my day will come... ;)
I'm glad Ultima games were around when I was kid, I feel bad for the xbox 360 guys that call raging into a crappy mic or hell even "high" dolla turtle beaches a good time. Can't say I felt like I was embarking a mystical journey with good lore and anything resembling a plot whenever I saw what Left4Dead had to offer to our current gen of younguns, and TES 4 & 5 were made for mountain dew schwillin pre teens who probably think the internet started because World of Warcraft was too big for a lan party and have no idea how to breathe without doing it through their mouths and loudly into their headsets while begging their mom to stay up late and finish their homework in the morning. I played Ultima 3 Exodus on the Nintendo, and it blew my meowing mind away. Completely. I found Ultima 6 for the super nintendo and brought that home to play it and my little brother actually cried about how stupid it was, he couldn't see what was going on, and was like TAKE THIS CRAP back.. he loaded somebody else's game that I guess had it from the rental place I got it from and and they were outside in the country side. When we started over and he saw what was going on, he was like oh.. @ _@. And we sat there and beat the hell out of everything all day and night.. and took turns trying to figure out where to go and what to do. All summer long. And I've gone back and played most of them from that time to now and wonder what the hell is with games in general.

If this guy..


LOOK AT HIM..

That guy could make games like this with him and his family and friends 9642984623 years ago on a freaking calculator held together with vines and chewing gum (comparatively to today's super duper multi gajillion dollar computation machines), with brain melting amounts of cool nick naks packed in with the game like hint books, and illustrated books with lore and unique concepts that had never even been seen in gaming history before like virtue systems, day/night cycles, the freaking moongate system which was hand in hand with the day/night cycle and old nasty wizards that had hot booty momma girlfriends that created wicked nasty machine babies.. then ushered in an era of knowledge and peace which planted the seeds of the basis of the rest of the franchise. (however poop flavored and yucky 8 and 9 turned out to be not included).

Compared to today's: "Slap zombies in it and push it out the "DO" (DOE, slanderous smattering of Door producers are likely too in the moment to say full words even, if the buggy nature of many "first rate" games is anything to gauge personality types by.) and call people up and have them hype the damnit out of it on whatever website/magazine/tv.show/maybefoxnewstoo/site banner/etc we can get it on. Tell them nothing of the gameplay, let them watch a cut scene trailer that has nothing to do with the game at all except for to show them that we spent uber umpteen millions on a CGI Cut Scene in the hopes it stirs some interest in the "consumer" and let's call it a night! Oh, and when they realize it sucked really bad, give em some DLC and promise a better sequel. Yes, after continued years of this practice, the older people accustomed to decent games will forget what that was about, and their children will never know the difference. Kthnx for your time Mr. Chairman. We're golden we got this guy

to tell em to get doritos and mountain dew for promo codes too. Everything is going according to pla.."

And then The Apocalypse happens. The survivors will roam the remnants of the world, seeking those fabled "old" good games to take their mind off the decimation and cataclysms that wrack the rest of what's left. They will find only mindless braindead zombie people who will attempt to sway them into the festering black pits of Call of Dookie: Modern Bullshits and Halo: Wreaks. The term RPG will loose all semblance of dignity and be re-defined to mean ******** Person's Game with levels. They will look like that guy in the last picture.. as a matter of fact, he will be their leader. He will be the False Prophet to lead those weary un-knowledgeable survivors into the firey pits of Hell, where there will be no games, save for waiting eternally for their turn to play some Street Fighter XVIV Turbo Mega Alpha Complex Part 5 Turbo Mega Editions. And the catch is, they'll never get a turn. And over time, they'll finally grasp the concept that their whole life was a meaningless cash grab for the meta corporations who have crept into the gaming industry and made it what it is. Also, if you happened to read this massive pooping and wondering what the hell I'm going on about, I'm not entirely sure. >.>


I forced my nephew to play Elders Scrolls 2: Daggerfall. He likes it now. He could not believe how GINORMOUS the game was compared to Skyrim. I haven't even played Skyrim! Plasticy looking super muscular igmos in modern gaming are just stupid looking. People could be like :Oh you can't look at it like that Onions, just see it for what it is, not what it could have been.:. But they shouldn't be. The people shoving these newer crap games on you are demadning more money, giving less content, WAYY less in gratifying meaningful outcomes and lore, and flat out lying to you and everyone else. Top it off with a splash of scantily clad women or in some cases just completely butt naked women, who serve no meaningful plot point other than schwing factor and drop the word S.w.a.g. (Still Without A Girlfriend) all over their merchandise (which probably comes with some code to redeem for more ingame "S.w.a.g.). The only thing that could even be remotely conceived as better are the graphics. And that's it. The graphics.














^ Eeehhhhwwww.. ^ I used to like Jessica Chobott before. But then Mass Effect 3 happened.

Previously before cashing out and saying F.U. to everything. She even competed at Ninja Warrior and did
a cute Japanese School Girl Jump thingy after she beat the first obstacle and fell in the water like IMMEDIATELY
after. With enough money and video game debauchery anyone can loose themselves, and become whatever
that monstrosity was in the pic before this one.

That stuff vs.

(Language may be NSFW, don't watch youtube at work.. I'm lookin at you!!)

(This game set the benchmark for music in games at the time, and STILL rocks the house to this VERY DAY. I repurchased this game more times than any other game I've ever had, and almost entirely because them songs stick in my head like no other. I even learned how to play some of the wicked kewl guitar riffs
and most of the keyboard parts. DAMNIT why can't they make things like this today?)

(Again with the language pretty intense)

But no. NO. Move along folks. MOVE ALONG! We're moving into the fewchure. Things like the inexcusable
EA handling of the Mass Effect I.P. will rule the market. No more looking forward to getting off work and grinding some mobs on floor 6 of Werdna's Maze in Wizardy Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord to get a couple levels before you decide to try solo'ing the Monster Allocation Center on this level 13 Samurai who was a 12 level cleric before you changed his class. NO, NO MORE OF THAT WE SAID. You'll be glad to know we've
saved you the hassle of even playing the game. We'll make them to do that for you!
Wait, what? You don't want that? No no.. it's cool bro, have some doritos.
This is where it's at. No no seriously.


It gets better too man. We'll level scale everything like in The Elder Scrolls game, kinda like that Final Fantasy 8
game.. you know the one with that riveting Draw system, where you get blessed with that oh so fulfilling 2 hour
block of waste of time per battle everytime you find a new magic spell. And with every wave.. You get to pay
us MORE and MOOORE money.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. Nothing will top for me that Nerdriffic moment I subscribed to my first month of Ultima Online.. and lost
the color of my skin and forgot how to interact with people without holding a mouse and typing on a keyboard.
Despite the brimming market of just MMORPG's, and various slanderous reskinned zombie carcass clones of
eachother that they are also filled with, this one took the cake, and didn't leave any frackin' crumbs. None. It's not what it used to be, but nothing even went to culinary school to make cakes in some weird train of thought.
Star Wars Galaxies (Pre NGE, and some will debate even just the regular Combat Upgrade, but CU was still tastier than most other games) held a good bit of my attention til it died it's horrible death. Something is wrong
with the "biness". The price of development and all the tools that go along with it have reached extreme sums
of money for all the new "cool" gadgets and gizmos that this new development crap can deliver. But it's not about the graphics. Perhaps a bit, I want to be able to tell what I'm doing in an attractive and engrossing way..
but the super duper ultra mega 323428946729846728947 polygon count of someone's finger nail and then hand
and arm or armor doesn't even have to be in there. 2D Ultima Online Graphics aren't out of the question for a lot of people, so long as the gameplay is deep and enriching.. So long as getting "geared" ain't the pinnacle
of the rat race. It's not, but people have allowed the makers of games to make it appear this way and you can't
tell me doing a "Raid" over and over with a bunch of nasally voiced sunk chested kindergartners and their uncles is a meaningful play experience.

"Don't stand in the fire. Collect symbols/Coins/DKP(lol)/Mark.. see you next week. Braaaihhnnss.."

Maybe you can say it is, but you have the validity of the Dorito salesman in this post, and you and I and everyone else knows it. And just FYI, eating chips coated in a colored dust that leaves stains on your finger tips is nothing short of blonde joke intelligence levels, and most of the games I used as examples of Dorito Salesman's promotion are probably right up your alley.

For clarity, you are this intelligent.
 
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