Slaps2

Psycho: I'll give it 4/4. I kind of wish it were a movie I'd be able to watched without knowing the twist. I was surprised to find out that there are only two kills in the entire movie, but that's more than a little refreshing. It only happens when the plot needs to move forward and they aren't planted liberally throughout the film for some fetishistic need for gory nonsense. I'm also starting to be fascinated by films with (relatively) low budgets. There isn't a single ounce of fat in the film and the dialog is much more natural than I imagined. The killer's motivations for murder make a lot of sense and Norman isn't just some faceless psy... well, you get the point.

Ok, dudettes and duders...

My dad was born in 1948. He just turned 70. My mother, at the spry age of 67, loves Tetris. I'm going back home this winter and I want to find a game that the old man will finally like. Suffice to say, he does not have the hand/eye skills to play too many modern games. He's kind of a workaholic and this (admittedly) is a real impossible task, but I think with the help of GB, we can find a piece of interactive entertainment he will like.

About him, he knew Arthur C. Clarke personally. Gravity and Apollo 13 are his favorite movies. He played flight sims about 15 years ago. He might like science fiction with a slight lean towards science. Even so, I am open to hearing about any games non-gamers tend to like, generally.

To Be Updated: I know he is a sucker for movies. He gets hit real hard over father-son stuff. Even more generally, I will try to update the thread with stuff that I know he likes via bulleted list.

• Iron Giant
• Super 8

To Also Be Updated: This is another bulleted list of games I think my dad may like.

• Portal
• Ori and The Blind Forest on easy (might be a stretch)

I would really love to see him beat a game without any help or at least find some game he really loves. It would be a real amazing moment between us. He has 44.5 years on me and I would love to share this awesome hobby with him. Thanks guys.

@sombre: Develop a hobby. Anything you're interested in? Also, becoming a gym rat always fixes the melancholy. Also, grad school is a thing.

@slag: I've tried everything short of espionage in order to find a release date.

He ate it, I assume.

5.0 ... Garfield put mushrooms in his lasagna.

Ok, bit of an odd question I admit, but I keep seeing footage of Wargroove and I'm not exaggerating when I say it's sending shivers down my spine. Usually when I see footage of a new game these days I say, "Hmmm, that's cool," then I give a shrug and more often than not wait to buy it at a discount. This is the first game since maybe Halo: Reach that I can't watch without smiling.

Here's what I want to know. Obviously, what game triggered you like this emotionally? Why are you so excited about it and what in particular do you think makes that specific game strike a chord with you. If perhaps it reminds you of a game from childhood, what was that game? How old were you when you first played it and what can you remember about playing it your first time around.

A good OP goes first. Anyway, here's Wargroove:

I fucking loved Advance Wars. In fact, anything vaguely turn base strategy on the GBA is something I would play until I was blue in the face, and that console was full of them. I loved them so much, it's strange to acknowledge than I don't think I ever beat a single one. I probably got Advance Wars for my birthday and I can't even remember knowing anything about it. It quickly became my favorite thing on planet Earth... until Fire Emblem became my favorite thing on planet Earth... until finally Final Fantasy Tactics Advance became my favorite thing on planet earth... until my mom made me go outside.

Other than consistently finding the next game I wanted to play, I guess I was a pretty anxious kid when it came to strategy games even though I loved them unequivocally. The levels in Advance Wars where the enemy could spawn units were ones that I found intimidating, I found myself always frustrated by Fire Emblem's permadeath, and I never figured out you could pay to remove stat penalties in Tactics. In hindsight, that last one in particular is a real head-slapper, but what do you want, I'm terrible at video games.

A while ago, someone in the world used the phrase "spiritual successor to Advance Wars" in a sentence and I awoke to a cold sweat. I lamented to imagine something like Skulls of the Shogun or a very modern Valkyria Chronicles, but my tac-strat-spidey senses sent me hurdling through google searches none-the-less until, as if sent down by God, I laid eyes upon not only an attempt to realize the old grid-base-pixelly-goodness exactly as I had remembered it, but a pretty gorgeous and shockingly faithful one at that.

I can confirm that I check Wikipedia daily in the hopes of finding the exact day of Wargroove's release. If you haven't played a game from this genre, I urged you to make it your first.

That's it for my wall of text. Please write your own. I love it when you guys go in depth and I promise you I read every post.

If you are at all familiar with RedLetterMedia, I was watching two gamers introduce a third to Outlast. It was somewhat a shit show and that is exactly what inspired me to make this thread.

I think games journalist (or more precisely editorialists) get a bad wrap. I'm sure Jeff and the crew have fun playing games they give a lukewarm review to, but they are writing to inform a consumer base. They are helping their readers answer the question, "should I buy this?" Because of that, game reviews are almost always inherently negative. They are critiques.

@yourbrain: It's interesting that our dads are the same age, but you have 17 years on me. To be honest, your dad and I have similar og Zelda skills.