Games that just waste hours away

Just sat here playing Hearts of Iron 2 and 4 hours has just disappeared, feeling like I only was playing for bout an hour.

What other games are notorious for this?

Footie Manager and Civilisation I can vouch for.

All the Red Alerts for me and of course FM.

Civ 2 was a killer, would get back from my gf's house about midnight, stick it on for an 'hour' then realise i was going to bed as my parents were waking up!

The first PES. Perhaps later ones, too, but it was so good compared to anything else I'd played footie wise at that time - was at uni at the time and several times went round a mates house and we ended up still playing it at 5am, thinking "whoops".

ah yeah, footie games are a nightmare, Fifa now is the same and still pull all nighters with mates - to the other halfs dismay

"oh i'll just hit continue one more time"

Absolutely addicted to Fifa 09 on xbox live at the moment, can't stop playing it. Spend hours on end on the bloody thing and seeing as i've completed my course at college and only work 3 days a week their are many late nights to be had, happy days!

Code of Honour.. Evening's just vanish..

COD4 online

Fifa 09 without a doubt, have that whole "one more game" mentality which is never just one more game, its like half a season....

Other games Total War series especially the new one: Empire.

Forza 2 and a few other sports games like Fight Night.

Used to play Football Manager loads but got bored of it, just the same old thing every year with maybe 1 new type of text. Could probably just update the games files yourself and save yourself money. They really need a huge overhaul of the game, need to make it more quicker like how it used to be. Could finish a season in a day, now takes ages and ages.

been on football manager a few times when almost a whole day has gone past in what seems like an hour or two.

Absolutely addicted to Fifa 09 on xbox live at the moment, can't stop playing it. Spend hours on end on the bloody thing and seeing as i've completed my course at college and only work 3 days a week their are many late nights to be had, happy days!

get down town or to a few giggs you freak!

The Civ games are killers for that. It's so hard not to hit continue ' just one more time'.

FM, Fallout 3, definately COD 4 online, and a bit of PES

get down town or to a few giggs you freak!

As in Ryan Giggs, you freak!

COD4 & Killzone2 online. Sim City 4 and Civ 4 were always hard to put down too, oh and Final Fantasy 7 and 10 seemed to take weekends away from my life!!!

As in Ryan Giggs, you freak!

NO you tosser, gigs, oops it was a mis spelt you tawt (spotted anymore)?

Get a life your 17/18

. They really need a huge overhaul of the game

What would you consider as a "huge overhaul"?

NO you tosser, gigs, oops it was a mis spelt you tawt (spotted anymore)?

Get a life your 17/18

I have been to many gigs this year i'll have you know Tac-tit. Did you go to school mate?

oblivion took over my life before xmas

football manager

amd command and conquer

I have been to many gigs this year i'll have you know Tac-tit. Did you go to school mate?

90, How would that make me 17 you tard.

Jesus christ check out the playschool tiff

1990 would make you 18/19 you silly tosser, so at least I got half right.

Not most 19 year olds are still in college, so the fact you said you just finished your course suggests your either 18 or kept back a year or re sat a year, so hush down you hyper.

Yes you've been to many gigs this year? so why the **** are you staying in on fifa?weirdo

Elite was my first serious time waster. Firstly, cos it took three attempts or more to load from a cassette each time and then cos it was addictive for a mid 80s game.

What would you consider as a "huge overhaul"?

Personally i think they need to sort of go in a different direction and add better graphics and animations to it. If you can remember the old Total Football Manager series or Fifa manager they do some really good things but overall it is let down by the statistical side of the games.

I would love to see the series evolve from a database late 80's early 90's style game into a modern era game. So if there are press conferences then have them so you can see yourself sitting down at the table, if you sign a player you have him shown to the press with you. You can go to games and see the players playing rather then reading text and so on. Because at the end of the day that is what FM is and always has been a text game. This is fun but it is old now. We are in the HD era, the world could be virtually made to a degree which would add a lot more realism to it.

For example in a shooting game they get more and more realistic, racing games and most sports games do too, but FM is stuck. They have the licence's to the leagues, they should use that to it's max potential and re-create the stadiums. Playing Fifa it is one of the best things when you go to say Anfield or Old Trafford. You know it is that place by looking at it. In FM it is just a pitch, you could be anywhere.

It is things like this which FM could be thinking about rather then just the text aspect of the game.

Fallout 3 must be the winner of this hands down, got up at 11AM the other day thought i'd just play for a couple of hours....ended up turning it off at 8 o'clock in the evening to go down for dinner...god knows how long i would have been on there if mum hadn't of called me for dinner...lol

1990 would make you 18/19 you silly tosser, so at least I got half right.

 

Not most 19 year olds are still in college, so the fact you said you just finished your course suggests your either 18 or kept back a year or re sat a year, so hush down you hyper.

 

Yes you've been to many gigs this year? so why the **** are you staying in on fifa?weirdo

90, How would that make me 17 you tard.

I have been to many gigs this year i'll have you know Tac-tit. Did you go to school mate?

NO you tosser, gigs, oops it was a mis spelt you tawt (spotted anymore)?

Get a life your 17/18

As in Ryan Giggs, you freak!

get down town or to a few giggs you freak!

Knock it off, children.

Personally i think they need to sort of go in a different direction and add better graphics and animations to it. If you can remember the old Total Football Manager series or Fifa manager they do some really good things but overall it is let down by the statistical side of the games.

I would love to see the series evolve from a database late 80's early 90's style game into a modern era game. So if there are press conferences then have them so you can see yourself sitting down at the table, if you sign a player you have him shown to the press with you. You can go to games and see the players playing rather then reading text and so on. Because at the end of the day that is what FM is and always has been a text game. This is fun but it is old now. We are in the HD era, the world could be virtually made to a degree which would add a lot more realism to it.

For example in a shooting game they get more and more realistic, racing games and most sports games do too, but FM is stuck. They have the licence's to the leagues, they should use that to it's max potential and re-create the stadiums. Playing Fifa it is one of the best things when you go to say Anfield or Old Trafford. You know it is that place by looking at it. In FM it is just a pitch, you could be anywhere.

It is things like this which FM could be thinking about rather then just the text aspect of the game.

Did you not know that matches in FM are now in 3D?

Did you not know that matches in FM are now in 3D?

yes i have 09, but as i said it is bog standard, my mobile phone football game has better graphics then that. The pitches need to be made unique with each stadium.

SI can't recreate grounds like EA can, due to licensing issues. Third party stadium add-ons like with kits and logos for teams could be a possibility in the future.

As for the standards of graphics remember that the 3D engine in FM09 was SI's first go at 3D. EA have had a 15 year head start so not bad from SI imo.

It will improve dramatically in the coming years. The underlying match engine is far better than FIFA manager even if the graphics aren't.

SI can't recreate grounds like EA can, due to licensing issues. Third party stadium add-ons like with kits and logos for teams could be a possibility in the future.

 

As for the standards of graphics remember that the 3D engine in FM09 was SI's first go at 3D. EA have had a 15 year head start so not bad from SI imo.

 

It will improve dramatically in the coming years. The underlying match engine is far better than FIFA manager even if the graphics aren't.

See i don't agree that it is better then Fifa Manager. I hate Fifa Manager but they are more likely to be the ones to make that realism break through. All im saying is in today's 21st century world where we have a games which are based on realism FM is in need of a huge change to be on par with that.

Text based games died out long ago and if sales of the FM series are to go by in recent years then it would seem the trend is continuing with the series.

If you look at its metacritic score it goes as follows

09 = 83

08 = 86

07 = 87

06 = 89

05 = 89

CM4 = 92

The game has been in decline since 2004 opinions wise with its latest version just into the 80's.

Now that is loads better then any of it's competitors but as you said the 3d pitch was their 1st try this year. Which shows they are trying new things which is great. But they are in my view trying the wrong things. They need to make the game more realistic and in text format that is not as emersive as virtuality. Example if you look at COD4 does that make you feel more like you are there then reading Hearts of Darkness? Does driving a lambo on Forza 2 make you feel more there then reading Top Car magazine? Text based format is very limited, there are only so many ways you can say "xyz takes a corner" or "xyz has scored a goal". A huge part of the atmosphere is missing from the game and in my view as i said that is a area that at some point a games company will look at to it. It happens with every genre. EA at some point will do what they did with their other franchises and go back to the drawing board. They will realise their is a massive market for these games that is waiting to be exploited if done right. I remember ages ago a football manager game called Premier Manager on amiga. They had the right idea.

Here is an example of their progress in terms of graphics from over 20 years ago

all the way to this in 07 and

this in Fifa Manager 09

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If you look at it you can see the evolution of this style of management game, it has grown with the graphics available to it. Where as if you look at the CM screens of 10 years ago and compare them to today they are almost the same, and that is the problem with the FM series. It is technically the same game every year just with updated teams. Which could be done by a patch every year, there is no real need for a new game yearly as not much is different. And in my view this is why the series has gone stale. Soon as i get FM each year i play it for a few weeks then stop playing it until the new one comes. Fifa 09 has taken the place of FM even though it has a crap manager game to it.

What point are you trying to make? Can you bullet point them so I can respond please? To say that FM each year is just an update is clearly wrong. 60 staff working for 12 months on new features for each version. The data is done by over 1,500 researchers so thats where the data comes from. The way the game is made is modular and each module has changed massively over the years.

At the moment 'Plants vs Zombies' is madly addictive.

Such a simple game on the PC but great fun

Peggle.

What point are you trying to make? Can you bullet point them so I can respond please? To say that FM each year is just an update is clearly wrong. 60 staff working for 12 months on new features for each version. The data is done by over 1,500 researchers so thats where the data comes from. The way the game is made is modular and each module has changed massively over the years.

- Series looks dated in comparison to other games

- Series lacks features other games have

- Series is in decline both sales and review wise, question is why?

- Series is tedius and just the same game year after year

- Zero atmosphere to the game, you do not feel any different going to Old Trafford as you do going to your local sunday league team's ground.

- The series is predictable and has few if any shocks, in some areas the game is very unrealistic e.g every year at the end of the season Fergie retires, he is still going nearly 5 years later..., a player scores a hat trick every few games when in reality this is a very very rare event, in fact only two people did it last year (Gerrad and Arshavin) etc etc.

- Prediction of players is poor. You say you have a group of researchers but are they gamers or fans who actually are at the games and in a position to give un-biased feedback on every player? By the looks of it they are just gamers on a forum most likely.

- No individualism at all. Every person is different by their number and that is it. Having contact with that person is the same with everyone else. The same goes with other managers. You can have mind games that actually have zero influence on anything. FM prides itself on being a database but what is the point of having asthetics like that if they do nothing?

i can go on and on

As i said before FM at it's heart is a text based game, this can only go so far, while the other genres are progressing with the technology available to it FM does not, in fact if you look at its scores as i said it has gone backwards.

I am a die hard Saints fan, go to most of the away games, i am a massive games fan but more importantly i am a massive Championship Manager/Football manager fan. If people such as myself now no longer care about the game what does it say about it's future? Looking at Amazon i see it has just a 2.5 rating from nearly 300 reviews. The question as i said is do you continue to make the same game or change things? What changes will make people happy with the series once more and make them pump in those hours that they once did? My view as i have mentioned countless times is to change direction, drop the prehistoric engine and presentation and join the HD digital age and make a game that blows you away both graphicaly and gameplay wise. If the database numbers of FM met with the virtual world of FIfa manager then that would be the greatest most realisitc football manager game of all time, why won't they do that?

St Marco

i think FM is as popular as it is...is because it is pretty simple and does no over load you from the nuts and bolts of the aim of the game...

What point are you trying to make? Can you bullet point them so I can respond please? To say that FM each year is just an update is clearly wrong. 60 staff working for 12 months on new features for each version. The data is done by over 1,500 researchers so thats where the data comes from. The way the game is made is modular and each module has changed massively over the years.

reread Marcos comments, its easy to see what point he is making.

St Marco

 

i think FM is as popular as it is...is because it is pretty simple and does no over load you from the nuts and bolts of the aim of the game...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B001FA0DLK/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0

would not say people find it very popular....

As i mentioned i love Football Manager, the old CM games i probably played more then any other. But how long can you release the same thing year after year and not expect things to go down hill? A fine example of this is Fifa. They made the same crap just changed the last number in the title. They tried to say "well we changed xyz, this and that is new" when in reality it was new years ago. People stopped buying Fifa and went to the competitor which was Pro Evo. That games was more realistic and that is why people loved it. That in turn made Fifa go back to the drawing board and create something better. Point being Football Manager is now like the old Fifa games, the same crap year after year, it is a rip off for what it is.

- Series looks dated in comparison to other games

 

Nice fresh modern look imo compared to CM or FIFA manager http://twitpic.com/a9jzt

 

- Series lacks features other games have

 

What features on other games does FM not have? FM will never have any features that a real life manager would not do

- Series is in decline both sales and review wise, question is why?

 

It is the world's biggest selling game of its type and you are being selective in the reviews you are showing

 

- Series is tedius and just the same game year after year

 

Personnal opinion. However every year SI add over 100 new features.

 

- Zero atmosphere to the game, you do not feel any different going to Old Trafford as you do going to your local sunday league team's ground.

 

What exactly are you expecting here?

 

- The series is predictable and has few if any shocks, in some areas the game is very unrealistic e.g every year at the end of the season Fergie retires, he is still going nearly 5 years later..., a player scores a hat trick every few games when in reality this is a very very rare event, in fact only two people did it last year (Gerrad and Arshavin) etc etc.

 

 

- Prediction of players is poor. You say you have a group of researchers but are they gamers or fans who actually are at the games and in a position to give un-biased feedback on every player? By the looks of it they are just gamers on a forum most likely.

 

All researchers are fans of the teams and most are season ticket holders. They are as objective as you can be for a fan of the club and a large amount of checks are done to make data accurate. It is the largest database of footballers anywhere in the world and a large number of professional clubs have admitted to using it.

 

- No individualism at all. Every person is different by their number and that is it. Having contact with that person is the same with everyone else. The same goes with other managers. You can have mind games that actually have zero influence on anything. FM prides itself on being a database but what is the point of having asthetics like that if they do nothing?

 

Mind games and staff interaction have a BIG impact. Players also have a large number of hidden stats for personalities

Cheer up Marco. It does sound like the simpler FIFA manager with its superficial graphics and girlfriends/golf days/choosing the price of hotdogs is for you

look at the fifa training page compared to that link...dull is one word i would use

look at the fifa training page compared to that link...dull is one word i would use

You aren't comparing like for like!

Have you seen the FM2010 training page?

no linky please

no linky please

That screenshot is the only one of FM2010 that exists in public and was leaked by accident.

"A fresh modern look".....seriously mate that looks no different at all.

What is the new feature this year? The box colour is orange? The disc has a new artwork of a football? The menu's have been slightly tweeked so that you can now get to your manager screen that has your stats while your at the training screen quicker?! Wow sounds awesome

Interestingly this other SI games fella mentions what i have mentioned and most of the board of SI games people tend to agree with it

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=26782

Guess they all want to have golf days with superficial graphics too right

FM is fully customizable if you don't like it. Plenty of people have made their own skins. Other games haven't programmed this facility.

Yeah they should employ that guy who made that thread, he banged that out in 5 mins, but it highlights fully what i said and obviously lookslike most people on there agree with my view. You know your in trouble when a guy makes better looking screens for a game in his bedroom in 5 mins then a team of 15.000 people do in a year.

FM is fully customizable if you don't like it. Plenty of people have made their own skins. Other games haven't programmed this facility.

load of old tosh, i play a few games where users have brought out graphics/mods for games.

load of old tosh, i play a few games where users have brought out graphics/mods for games.

I mean other management games of course! Like for like or no point making the statement.

I mean other management games of course! Like for like or no point making the statement.

fair enough, but surely if they designed the game better then there would be no need for the extra skins etc

Many think the game is designed well. But as shown here some people don't like the user interface so this allows people to change it. A happy medium I think.