I’ve spent thousands on gaming and home theater equipment to realize I don’t love TV/movies/gaming, I loved hanging out with my friends.
I made my media collection portable so I can do movie nights at my friends’ houses.
Thankfully, I invested selfishly so I get to enjoy my investment, not forlorn for a game/movie day with the buddies.
Over here on the other side, I minmax’d “buddies” over “home theater equipment” so now whenever I have someone over to watch a movie it’s on my fucking laptop lmao.
For me its smashbros and Mario kart. Just about 6 of us.
For me it’s taking turns playing Morrowind with the general idea to kill everybody in the world while rotating who was playing and who was blowing the other one.
Awesome…wait, what.
Don’t worry, it’s not psychopathic behavior if they’re digital.
Er, I was talking about the other thing…?
How the hell do you take turns with Morrowind?
You play fifteen minutes, complete a dungeon or whatever, swap. Fuck. How do you manage to wipe your ass with that level of creative thinking? Like, if poo ever splatters on your ass cheeks from a particularly quaking bout of diarrhea, how is someone of your capabilities able to formulate the neural algorithms capable of maneuvering your hand with paper across the deleterious parts of your derriere? Or are you just a partially sentient Borg creature that uses a bidet?
Prose
Melee was the reason I had friends in college. It’s also a big part of the reason I never graduated college.
Damn lol.
I tried years ago to get back into it and I went to a local tourney. Played with a guy that didn’t wear deodorant and won…but it just wasn’t all that fun with randos. I like smack talking and having people do random matches.
We’d just have games running constantly with the 3rd and 4th ranked players handing off to whoever was next in rotation.
thats so much fun. We used to have the winner always switch out to make it fair.
Peak for me was modded Minecraft around… what. 1.7.10?
I found this whitelist Resonant Rise server that was just the right size; big, but not too populated. I made a community workshop close to spawn to help people start out.
Haven’t found that experience since, in any game.
This is an entire genre of videos
For me it was Mario Kart Wii…
Honestly its not too hard to get an xbox emulator running, and you can find a match fairly quickly. I think the main community night is Thursday, but you can find a game most nights.
Having old PCs splattered all over the house is a whole different vibe, nothing quite like it.
Xbox 360s are not expensive. The high never has to die!
The point isn’t the game. It is being carefree with few responsibilities and having friends to share the time with. If the point is finding a multiplayer game, there are plenty of options.
The point is also to be chilling in the same space between matches and gut punching people if they started shit talking too much.
Why not just play the PC version?
Tbh I was thinking of 2 as thats my home Halo. I guess for 1 yeah yu could just play PC
I know there is the MCC version of 2, but it doesn’t feel the same.
Halo 2 was also released for PC when it first came out.
It actually wasn’t when it first came out, the PC port wasn’t until 2007 (same year as halo 3) and wasn’t well received
I think the xbox version is used because modded xboxs can play online with PC users with emulators.
Fair enough, I forgot that they waited a couple years and made it Vista exclusive.
For me it was Quake II on the Nintendo 64. Didn’t even have a LAN, just a big-ass TV split into quads. It was a skill to watch your own screen but also everybody else’s so you knew where they were in the arena. My buddies always went for the BFG which was effective of course but pretty crude. I secretly spent months playing the single-player campaign and practicing like crazy with the rail gun, which could also take people out with one shot but was very difficult to get a hit with. I got so accurate with it that my buddies accused me of cheating somehow – the ultimate compliment.
And this was around 2003 - 2004, almost a decade after the N64’s heyday. You just don’t need the latest shit to have fun. Give me a stick and a hoop and I’ll be happy.
You can play all of the Master Chief collection in VR now. It’s fantastic!
VR mods have been going crazy lately. I’m getting some serious FOMO.
I also saw Mount and Blade: Lord of the Rings, Diablo 2, and a bunch of cool AR games.
How the fuck does diablo 2 work in vr?
Like Project Zomboid does? So glad a buddy showed me pzvr. I can actually survive in VR where I die in flat
Is it worth playing now or should I wait for the jank to be ironed out?
It is worth trying, I find the jank tolerable. Sometimes you don’t get the interaction popups, but they come back, I also lost 95% of my audio for a while, then it came back. Installation is all by workshop so quite easy to get running even on linux, mp in VR is not so easy
Check it out. I was so impressed by this.
Holy shit wow
That’s fucking awesome
I’m looking forward to going through Titanfall 2 in VR. All reviews I’ve seen say it’s like a AAA native VR game.
The rapid release of VR mods is making it really difficult to completely hate AI, but I do keep trying.
I think the dividing line for me is: when it’s speeding up work on tedious things or accomplishing tasks that we haven’t been able to - vs - when it’s being used sloppily for a product that’s worse than the old way.
This sounds both incredible and vomit inducing due to the fast traversal.
What!!!
I had a couple lan parties a while ago. That shit is so fun. Soldat was really popular.
Last year i had my cousins kids over for a tiny lan with them, me and my sis. We played UT99 for ages and they loved it.
UT99 is the goat. Ahh, the times where we’d play it on the school PCs during recess as kids until the teachers came and kicked us out of the library. Good times.
UT99 - best choice! <3
Can still have it. I have semi regular Mario Kart and Smash Bros nights. Loads of fun, always stay up until way too late. Finish off with a dumb movie.
You’re only chasing that high because you don’t embrace whimsy
Having 4 or 5 PCs in different rooms at a LAN party is a whole different vibe than multiplayer, shouts coming from all the bedrooms, stuff like that.
That’s why we switched to smash Bros. Not everyone has a laptop or desktop they want to bring but I can pull out a bunch of controllers. It’s so much fun actually seeing someone groan when they miss a super smash.
We all bring our favorite snack and pass bowls around. Case of whatever beers. We’re debating setting up a running leaderboard.
Ah yes, let me just embrace whimsy with all these… friends… that I totally have!
I started the smash bros nights specifically to make friends post college as most of my college friends moved away. One of the guys I met online only once through a TTRPG discord and now he brings the good beer.
Also, whimsy can be everywhere. Step outside and watch a flower dance in the wind. Bam, whimsy. Go visit a cemetery and make up funny stories about what led to inscriptions on the tombstones as you map it for findagrave.com , bam, whimsy. You need zero friends for whimsy, but whimsy has led to many friends in my experience.
Missing the point and moving the goalposts all in one comment! Good job, here’s an award 🥉
I think we’ve found the real reason you’re talking about few friends on a thread about whimsy and fun…
Because you said “It’s easy, just start a LAN party” as if you were assuming everyone already has friends to start a LAN party with?
The thread is about nostalgia, not whimsy. You introduced the latter, and you did so as if it’s predicated upon having friends, and as if someone with no friends is really just failing to embrace whimsy, which frames it as a personal failure and not one that depends on the participation of other beings.
Dude, you’re defending a nostalgia bait “back in my day” post. Yes I called it out. Maybe instead of sitting around here complaining about having no friends you do some introspection and recognize that why you are being called out here for complaining about no friends and being called out in other threads for complaining about not being allowed to approach women have something in common, you.
Now, I set up another LAN party tonight and we’re gonna have fun. We’re going to experience that high the original post is complaining about chasing. You can stew on some response to this post by yourself, or redirect the energy to making friends and go have fun yourself. ciao
It’s clearly shitpost-oriented. Not a genuine “back in my day.” You can’t handle a little bit of self-deprecation so you had to be condescending instead. That’s not embracing whimsy.
And the irony is not lost on me that although you came here preaching about whimsy, you completely failed to recognize the whimsy inherent in posting a fucking spongebob meme as an act of self-deprecating humor. That’s not “complaining about having no friends,” that’s just whimsy; the exact thing you came here preaching about.
But since you clearly felt so strongly about it that you felt the need to stalk my profile to prove a point (i.e., by condescending), I can only infer that you have a habit of making yourself feel better about yourself by putting other people down. Is that whimsy?
And if your interpretation of that other thread was me “complaining about not being allowed to approach women” then you’re completely misreading it based on pre-conceived notions that you walked into it with. I was clearly saying “Yeah, women have expressed that they don’t want to be approached, so the right thing to do is to not approach.” And making self-deprecating jokes in a thread with other guys in the same boat is called “emotional support,” which is exactly what people say men need to start doing for each other. So if you really want to shame people about that, then you’re part of the fucking problem.
Enjoy your LAN party, where I’m sure you’ll spend a significant portion of your time talking down about people who aren’t there to defend themselves, because that’s how you manage to feel good about yourself in a world where suffering is the norm and empathy the exception rather than the rule.
I embrace whimsy all the time, but a lot of people I know, don’t.
More people need to just embrace whimsy.
no game is going to bring back the era of being with your friends in a same physical space to spend hours gaming without a care in the world. the young don’t even have that now.
Millennial parents could buy some $30 8bitdo controllers (they’re very good dual stick controllers for the price), and then download and set up a series of games that have four player split screen…
…tell their kidso they’re doing a games night and should invite their buddies. Then see what happens.
If you can still hear them at 1 am, it worked. Make sure to provide snacks and cola.
they’re doing a games night and should invite their buddies
As in table top? Pssh, that’s so lame. I kid, I kid.
But I do think it’d be “exclusive” to setup your own kids with a split screen experience, with platforms that seem new and exciting. Just peddle it as “exclusive,” and it’ll sell hotter than hotcakes.
I was thinking more get on the pirate sites (steamrip) after finding out “best split screen PC games”… And there’s some pretty cheap overhead projectors these days. The HAPPRUN H1 for instance is extremely cheap, but still quite bright.
It’s so sad, it was so magical. I want that for my kids.
We have two laptops and a desktop, and we have three kids, so they get a bit of a LAN party experience playing Mineclonia.
The desktop also has a big screen (34 inch ultra-wide I think) and 4 xbone controllers so we play 4 player games like Overcooked, Stardew Valley, Sackboy, Tux Cart.
Generally we don’t have screens on when their friends come over but perhaps when they are a bit older they might still have a chance for that gaming with friends experience.
Sounds like lots of fun!
Don’t buy them a tablet or smartphone then until they’re almost adults, and limit computer time. I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was 16, didn’t get my first smartphone until 24. They will be okay.
They still won’t get that experience. All their friends will be in their homes playing Fortnite.
“Toy Story 5” had it right.
Imagine how insane this statement would sound with no context to a time traveler from like 2001
I’d be excited about there being more Toy Story movies that allegedly have good messages!
Well if that’s the case then it’s on you. You’re the parent, you decide whether or not the kid stays home all day. Like the other person said, arrange play dates. Also, take them places. Play at the park, go jet/water skiing on the lake, go to amusement parks, go camping, hiking, etc. There are endless activities you can do with your kids, many of them only costing you the price of gas or a train/bus ticket.
Yeah for sure! I just meant, merely not buying them phones and tablets isn’t enough. I rather like the idea of getting an old console with a bunch of split screen games and inviting their friends over like the other user suggested.
get two Wii’s with GoldenEye and a crossover cable
Or they’ll get the cops called on them for doing normal kid shit like exploring the woods or even just playing outside, because suburbanites are actually terrified of children doing children things and have been conditioned to hate and fear this.
Halloween is coming soon, time to trick or treat in a church parking lot
Pretty much me, except it was Halo 2 and probably 2006. We schlepped a heavy ass tube TV over from someone else’s house a few blocks away.
Bullshit. It was Day of Defeat.
Otherwise, yeah, that about sums it all up.
DoD LET FUCKING GOOO. I still play DoDS every now and then.
I would kill for it to get the CS2 treatment. Source 2 baby! Altho I’d be sad if they fucked with avalanche too much. Won’t happen, but damn would it be cool.
#SteamAccounts #OldEnough #ToDrink
Doom, head-to-head, while talking on the phone.
Ours was people bringing over their desktops to one person’s house and we played Aliens vs predator on a LAN. When we were done we played risk for the rest of the night.
Was much fun.
AvP when you were the only one who could easily deal with the alien doing ceiling shenanigans was hilarious. Just dropping out of the sky from great heights. This, Using the hitscan heavy machine gun in Soldier of Fortune as a sniper rifle, leaving a grid of the little nuclear bomb trucks in “allies” bases in Red Alert 2 who you knew were gonna backstab you and being an absolute terror with ripper headshots in Unreal Tournament - just absolute golden good times.
Well. For me anyway. Not sure others enjoyed it quite as much.
AvP was a fun LAN game!
