More Playing with Myself: But with Computers (and Consoles!)

Like probably everyone reading this blog I enjoy playing games, specifically RPGs. Now most of us here probably think of slinging dice first when talking about RPGs, but the average non-gamer tends to equate "RPGs" to computer games.

Now I like computer RPGs as well, but it's such a different animal and frankly the blend of D&D and computer RPGs has been rather hit-or-miss for me.

I've only played a few "Official" D&D computer games and really.....I only remember two: Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Both games were pretty awesome, for different reasons.

Baldur's Gate was a fun game I've played about 1/2 way through several times. I still have the original CD-Roms, the expansions, and even the follow-on games. I recently tried to install the game and play again, but no matter what I did I just couldn't get the game to run. No clue why....it was beyond frustrating. No worries, I'll just try another methodology.......I'll grab the Xbox version.

Now that starts right up......but OMG does the gameplay suck. For such an expensive game the graphics suck and navigation is problematic. It just isn't fun to play.

I ended up grabbing it again on Steam. Now I can play on my laptop wherever I am.....much, much better.

The one Xbox D&D(ish) game that did work, and I did enjoy was Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. It is so not like playing D&D, but the graphics were good and so was the gameplay. I especially enjoyed the fact that I it was a two-player hack & slash. Unfortunately it isn't available for backwards compatibility.....so no go, well at least not yet.

I'm working on a couple of emulation projects and maybe I'll get to try this game again that way. While I'm at it I might be able to check out one of the bazillion(ish) other actual D&D computer games.

I did not know there were so many other titles to check out.

Now to this point I've been restricting my computer gaming to D&D-only titles, but there are a metric-butt-ton of other Fantasy RPGish games out there, far more than I am aware of. One of my favs has been Torchlight, but you can only replay that so many times before it gets old. Now South Park: Stick of Truth was a fun homage of sorts and I do have a couple Witcher games to check out.

Clearly I have hours of future entertainment already lined up, but I'm thinking there could be some real gems out there I am just not aware of....and other readers might not know about either. If you have a favorite computer RPG game, especially one that does a good D&D-style fantasy RPG...please share with the group!