Sulphur on 5/9/2011 at 11:57

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Okay, so why's this place suddenly gone still? Where have all the topics gone?

But setting that aside, a crisis. Okay, so I'm in another city, I've got a phone that can just about barely display 640x480 pixels and is usable IF it manages to pick up a connection in the dusty rathole cubicle of an internet cafe I'm typing this from, I didn't pack any iDevices or music with me because I had to leave in a hurry, and obviously I haven't brought a laptop or mobile gaming device.

So what do I play?

I play the waiting game in a hospital room. Dad's fine, recovering from surgery from last Friday, but someone's gotta be there with him, y'know? It's me and my phone and a copy of Perdido Street station (which has an entire page and a half on moth penises, yum!). I have newspapers. There's crosswords. I fucking hate crosswords. There's Sudoku. I fucking hate recreational math. What's left... word jumbles? Oh bugger me sideways.

There's nothing to play here. I got a book, I got coffee, I got a few snatches of conversation. It's humid, sultry here this time of the year next to the ocean. Sweat drips and beads and tickles across folds of skin around all the various places of your body you'd rather it wouldn't. I'm usually sitting on a bench-bed that feels like someone took a rectangle of plywood and stretched brown rawhide and a layer of sponge around it and called it a bed.

I could maybe try some cricket outside on one of the grounds, but my god I hate that more than recreational math. And the sweat - it's not funny, gents. It's so humid, when you got have a shower, by the time you're done towelling off, you'll have to start over again because you're now drenched in sweat. Might as well not step out of the bleeding bathroom.

I could go out and get myself a Nintendo DS or a PSP or something, but at this stage in the mobile handheld transition? I dunno.

It's terrible. I want to twiddle my thumbs, flick my fingers across a control mechanism, watch a screen coruscate with colours, high scores scudding along neon-lit skies like rainclouds pregnant with replay potential. I've got a Flying Tigers-ish shmup on my phone that gives me some release, and a terrible Zombie shooter thing that's laughably short and horrifyingly bad. But it's something.

And it's taught me one thing: never, ever, leave home without a mobile entertainment device of some description. So here I am, making this thread, because it's a horror I would not want visited upon me, or anyone else, in the small hours of the night when the only thing you can do is lie awake and ponder if the warm shitstain brown and cream vermillion paint was spread in fudgey dollops or watery glissades across the ceiling of the room.

So, mobile entertainment: it's a fucking necessity in this day and age. Suggestions welcome, and the more left-field they are, the better!

Briareos H on 5/9/2011 at 12:27

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Nintendo DS: I've pretty much given up on new games on my DS lite as there is barely anything interesting coming out anymore. There are however tons of great games already out, well enough of them to keep me entertained for some time. There might be a thread for you somewhere with a good list, or I can compile something if you're interested.

Nintendo 3DS: 3DS is more or less a dying joke failing the transition to dematerialised against smartphones. DS was self-consciously underpowered and its initial success forced third-party developers into getting around the limitations through innovation. 3DS pretends to be a "serious" console with immersive 3D graphics and a good graphics processor but the former is disputedly a gimmick and the latter is simply not true. There are barely any good first-party games and all of them are remakes anyway. I'm very doubtful it will meet the late success that the NDS knew.

PSP: I can't really tell, I have almost zero interest in PSP games. Except Wipeout maybe. Still a very nice piece of hardware with "reasonable" battery life considering the power and size of the screen. But it's also very Playstation. If you loved the PS2 it's made for you. I hear it also has a nice batch of small playstation market games.

PS Vita: I tried it under NDA a few months ago (don't judge me, I needed to make a quick buck that month -_-). Back then it sucked. Focused on ridiculous social and aug'reality features, piss-poor battery life and trying to put multiplayer at the center of handheld gaming (what?). The graphics are nice though I wasn't impressed.

Smartphones: They could be much more if they allowed stylus control. At the moment, touch controls and battery life are blocking any serious gaming. Still, they are good for cheap puzzle games (I really love Apparatus on my HTC Desire) but when you build your economy on an average maximum price of 5 euro for a game, you get what you paid for (read: games are often shallow and short).

If you want something right here and right now, a used DS lite with the right games should be pretty cheap and entertaining.

Matthew on 5/9/2011 at 17:12

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The PSP was my fave for a long time over the DS, though the DS Lite eventually rose to prominence. Some very good games there*, mostly prior to the inevitable MoH/FIFA/ProEvo glut admittedly. Indeed, it looks like the PSP will live on as a low-cost alternative to the Vita in the future. Smahe the UMDs are shit, though.

* Exit, Everybody's Golf, Wipeout, Pirates, Every Extend Extra, Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, G-Police, Guitaroo Man Lives, R-Type Command, the Persona games, Tactics Ogre among others.

june gloom on 5/9/2011 at 21:35

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What the fuck does that even mean?

Trance on 6/9/2011 at 00:03

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More succinctly, it means "remember how you passed the time before mobile gaming". How was that hard to understand?

But if a greater argument was implied by Nuhfer's post, it pretty much falls flat when you consider the example Sulphur gave. I remember what I used to do in a hospital waiting room in the absence of mobile gaming... absolutely nothing interesting. The argument might be made that gaming-on-the-go has softened our tolerance of boredom, but I think actually that it's not that our tolerance has changed, but rather we've finally got a sufficient method of diversion for life's dull moments.