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Returning to adventure games after 5 years, some questions

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Joined 2013-04-26

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After an approximate five year absence I have decided to return to adventure gaming. I intend to regularly play a bit of resource management and hidden object games as well.

Before elaborating on why I’ve decided to spend my time playing these games again, I have some questions for my fellow adventurers:

1. Is now a good time to buy a new computer for adventure gaming?

2. If so, can you give me some general idea of the state of laptops/desktops today and the recommended system requirements of today’s most demanding adventure games? Do you prefer a laptop or PC for adventure gaming and why? I remember that many excellent adventure games were coming out of Germany back when I was playing, which coincidentally had a more PC gamer (as opposed to console) culture, and was more advanced in that respect. My desktop PC was just short of being able to smoothly run Night of the Rabbit and Dark Eye: Memoria.

3. What set-up do you consider ideal for adventure gaming? Not just regarding your computer, but seating, atmosphere etc as well? I remember when I was playing them I had a more comfortable and enjoyable experience using my laptop (which was an Acer Aspire One with only 1 GB of RAM).

There was once a time, back in 2006 when I was working at Staples, when I felt ahead of the curve in terms of consumer electronics. I even acted as adviser and salesman to business people about what computers they should get. Now I haven’t played any video games at all for the past five years (except playing for about ten hours altogether, Earthworm Jim), nor have a used a laptop, and very seldom have even sat down at a desktop during this time.

I am seeking to play them again because I believe they have a high synergy with other aspects of my life and thus a low opportunity cost. We are in the enviable position today of having a multitude of fun choices as to how to spend our time. It’s almost like we’re children running loose in a toy store, with the stipulation that we can only fill up one basket full of toys. For most of us, our challenge is to choose what improves our happiness and quality of life the most, and not get stuck in a “sort of” happy life. There’s nothing wrong with a “sort of” happy life, of course, but I prefer to aim for an optimally happy life. I believe adventure games are part of that mix for me.

Adventure games have synergy with my other hobbies, which are poker, reading, and antiques/interior decorating. Like poker, adventure games require observation of and listening to characters. Not just the characters in the game but the game developers and writers themselves, whose personalities reveal hints of themselves and are themselves a clue. They also require close observation of objects, many of which may be drawn or based on objects from the real world. Not just observation, but reflection also, of how these items relate and “fit” into the overall scheme being presented. And finally, taking place in many different eras and settings, these games can have a synergistic effect with reading as well. For example, I intend to read Treasure Island in the near future. No doubt revisiting Monkey Island at this same period will improve my enjoyment of both.

     

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The prices on gpu’s seem to be reasonable right now (they inflated ridiculously in the last couple years). A desktop gives you more options for quality at lower price levels. Unless you have reasons you need portable, desktop is usually the better investment. Adventure games typically aren’t too spec demanding… However the genre has blended to the point where many (if not most) main stream titles have some kind of adventure element. You should check out games like sunless sea since you also like resource management. Regardless, if you had trouble running NotR then it’s time for a PC refresh.

     
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AdorableMogwai - 01 June 2020 03:04 PM

1. Is now a good time to buy a new computer for adventure gaming?

There’s never a good time to buy a computer, because you can always get that same computer cheaper if you simply wait a bit longer. At some point you just have to decide to do it. Adventure games don’t require special performance power usually, so buying any five years old computer or newer can run 99,9% of all adventure games ever made.

It’s best to match your computer specs to whatever else you want to do, FPS games, video editing, etc. Adventure games won’t be a problem, unless you are attempting to play that one special game which requires this or that (and no such title comes to my mind right now…).

     
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AdorableMogwai, first, let me say that Treasure Island is my favorite book, so you get a point for good taste Wink  Second, if you have the means, the new MacBook Airs are pretty sweet, especially if you move up the food chain a little bit and spec it out with a slightly better processor and larger SSD.  Of course, a Mac won’t play quite as many games as a PC, but they’re pretty darn close these days. Now that they’ve corrected that cursed keyboard issue (with the butterfly keyboard), I’d call it a good investment. However, I want to add that I’m presently using an Acer Aspire 5, 15-incher that was about as cheap as I could get, and it’s run any adventure game I can throw at it, albeit with less class than a MB Air, of course. Good luck in your search!

     

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Thanks all for your thought-provoking and interesting suggestions. A desktop, thrift, and a MacBook Air, with a game recommendation for Sunless Sea thrown into the bargain. I knew this forum wouldn’t disappoint me.

The superiority of desktops over laptops at the cost of mobility is appealing. However, I’m wary since desktop usage for me has always correlated with weight gain in the past. At the height of my desktop usage, from 2008 to 2014, I also reached the heaviest of my weight (184 lbs, being 5’6”). I haven’t dismissed the idea of a desktop, and I don’t know how much that’s really to blame. It’s a difficult decision.

When I made this post I was speculating if the coronavirus lockdown had created a surplus of computers in the market as it has for other consumer goods like cars. I’ve since learned that the opposite happened, and that computer sales significantly increased during the lockdown. Maybe now there’s a shortage of new computers and a surplus of used ones.

Worries about future inflation caused by the fiscal stimulus also got me considering purchasing a new computer, and other big ticket purchases, if not immediately than sometime in the next 18 months. I’m going to be keeping a close watch on the consumer price index and other inflationary indicators. I hold John Maynard Keynes in high regard, but intuitively I feel our system of fiat currency is unsound. It’s easy to lose perspective that everything around us is new and the long term effects are unknown. According to Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar, in which he compresses the history of the Universe into an Earth year, The Milky Way doesn’t appear until May and the Earth itself only in September. Our species only appears at 10:30 PM on December 31st. All the technological advances since the industrial revolution happen in the very last seconds of December 31st. Our species has gone from using commodity currencies like shells and cacao beans, to using paper money backed by hard commodities, to using fiat paper currency, and now its just digital imaginary points. I know that there are differing opinions and theories about fiat currency, and that there are counter-intuitive things in our world, but I personally feel insecure about the safety of my own imaginary points at the present time.

     
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AdorableMogwai - 02 June 2020 07:34 PM

Worries about future inflation caused by the fiscal stimulus also got me considering purchasing a new computer, and other big ticket purchases, if not immediately than sometime in the next 18 months. I’m going to be keeping a close watch on the consumer price index and other inflationary indicators. I hold John Maynard Keynes in high regard, but intuitively I feel our system of fiat currency is unsound. It’s easy to lose perspective that everything around us is new and the long term effects are unknown. According to Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar, in which he compresses the history of the Universe into an Earth year, The Milky Way doesn’t appear until May and the Earth itself only in September. Our species only appears at 10:30 PM on December 31st. All the technological advances since the industrial revolution happen in the very last seconds of December 31st. Our species has gone from using commodity currencies like shells and cacao beans, to using paper money backed by hard commodities, to using fiat paper currency, and now its just digital imaginary points. I know that there are differing opinions and theories about fiat currency, and that there are counter-intuitive things in our world, but I personally feel insecure about the safety of my own imaginary points at the present time.

Well this went off the rails pretty quick.

Existential dread aside,  I actually would recommend you look at some of the newest and hardest to run adventure games.  The reason I say that is because, yes it’s typical for adventure games to be easy to run, but if you’re going to go through all the trouble of getting other people’s advice, building a PC etc, then I would say just go ahead and look at something like the latest Quantic Dream game (Detroit: Become Human)  I think that is coming to PC’s and other games like it.  You’ll end up with a PC that can play anything in the adventure game world, and probably for years to come.

Similar photo-realistic titles I would recommend you look into their specs, and what you need to run them.  The rest should fall into place.

I regularly play on a PC that can’t even run Fran Bow, I had to use my dad’s PC to play it.  So sometimes it’s not about the graphical fidelity, so much as engine, and optimization issues.

     
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Detroit Became Human is a good bench mark to use, it’s the Most advanced adventure game for graphics I have ever played or seen:

OS: Windows 10 (64 bit)
Processor: i5-8400 @ 2.8GHz or Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 16GB RAM
Video: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 580
Video RAM: 4GB or more

I recommend a Laptop computer, that way if you get in the mood to play at Starbucks you can take it with you.

A typical laptop with those specs are:

Lenovo - Legion Y540 17.3” Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 1TB Solid State Drive - Black Which is 1,399 dollars.

Not cheap, but would last for several years before you need an upgrade and is VR ready.


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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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Mikekelly - 02 June 2020 09:43 PM

I recommend a Laptop computer, that way if you get in the mood to play at Starbucks you can take it with you.

That’s one plus for laptops. Another one is that it takes less space. And that’s where the pluses end.

If something breaks in a laptop, usually that’s the end of the entire computer, maybe some warranty fix is doable, outside of that, it’s a pile of junk. I recently tried to fix someone’s computer, and it wasn’t even a laptop, it was a mini computer, and as simple thing as changing a power unit turned out to be impossible, because there just aren’t such power units available!

Any old-fashioned PC, however, you can change power units and other components as much as you want, and keep upgrading it for years to come.

     
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Joined 2003-09-30

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Today adventuregames are mostly and if you look the aggie awards,adventure gaming in general return where it started: pixelart.So actually you don’t need to buy a new pc for enjoy most of the new adventure games on market.

     

“Going on means going far - Going far means returning”

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Joined 2013-04-26

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Yesterday I found out that the Playstation 5 is being released later this year. How will this effect gaming PCs? Will a new benchmark soon be set by the PS5 that surpasses Detroit: Become Human?

PC sales increasing along with the imminent launch of the PS5 has cancelled any plans I had to buy a new computer, and I may not ever get one. I will keep an eye out at estate sales and the secondary market for a used computer maybe.

The thing I’ve realized, and the reason why I stopped gaming these past five years, and stopped playing online chess, etc. Anything that pulls us out of the real world into a fantasy world can be dangerous, simply because, the real world is a problematic place and requires our engagement. During the period of my life when I was best at chess, playing and solving puzzles everyday, my real life was at its worst.

I grew up an only child with an alcoholic mom. For years of my life I lived on a desktop PC and gaming was an escape. What I’ve learned over my life is, that we don’t have to turn away from reality, we can confront it, and change it. We have a tremendous power to change reality if we only do it instead of diverting ourselves with fantasy and gaming.

I like adventure and resource management games because I believe they improve the people who play them, and better prepare people for the real world. Still however I feel these things are kind of a luxury.

     
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Gaming PCs can do so much more than a gaming console. Gaming PCs also have many more games. If an adventure game with better Graphics than Detroit Became Human gets released on the PS5, then you will need an even more powerful PC of course.

But you could always buy both a gaming console and a gaming PC of course. You could even get a PC with more modest specs if you are going to use a gaming console for the more graphics intensive games.

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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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