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[amjh]

I've been playing Pathfinder Adventures for a few days, it seems decent so far. Anyone here have experience with it?

It's a card game where you play campaigns, with some mechanics from the tabletop game. It's free with some ads, but you can spend money to unlock characters and new campaigns faster.

[Wiles]

I was hoping to get some recommendations for games on an android tablet. I recently got a Samsung Galaxy tab A. As far as preferences go I am looking for something with more depth than your average phone game.

I was looking at the Banner Saga 2 and was wondering if anyone had any experience playing it on a device similar to mine? It is a game I have been wanting to play but if it doesn't work well on tablets I would rather play it on PC.

Also has anyone played the old infinity engine games on a tablet? I'd be tempted to replay Baldur's Gate 2 if the controls were palatable.

[Retropunch]

Also has anyone played the old infinity engine games on a tablet? I'd be tempted to replay Baldur's Gate 2 if the controls were palatable.

I've not personally but I've heard good things from a few friends about playing BG1 and IWD on tablets. One of them it was their first play of any infinity games and the other was a long time fan and they both loved it.

Their caveat was that you need to be a bit patient with the controls, they're not amazing but they sorta work as long as you don't mind a few times of people wandering where you didn't ask and whatever - perfect for long journeys/whatever when you've got a lot of patience, less good if you're just wanting to blast away at stuff for a while.

That being said, BG2:EE is a buggy mess (as in, wiping all saves type bugs). Best to avoid unless you're really patient.

[Sappho]

Banner Saga works fine on my Shield K1 tablet. It's designed for mobile, I think, and everything is turn-based and perfect for touch screens.

Other games that work well on tablet and have more depth than typical mobile games, I can recommend:
Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery
Cook, Serve, Delicious (works surprisingly well!)
Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go
This War of Mine
Pretty much all point&click adventure games (Machinarium, Dropsy, Broken Sword series, Grim Fandango...)
Rebuild 3
Shadowrun (possibly - haven't tried it out yet but heard it works well)

Just avoid any action game that sticks a controller overlay on the screen and tells you it'll work like a gamepad. It does not. Ever.

[itisnotlogical]

Sonic 2 and Sonic CD kinda do. Your mileage may vary.

[Wiles]

Thanks for the recommendations! It's too bad that BG2:EE is a mess as that is the IE game I would be most interested in replaying.

I might go for Banner Saga 2 to start out with. I have enough credit on my google play account to pick it up too which is nice. It's 7.99 for android compared to the 21.99 for a steam version, but it has in app purchases apparently.

I've been trying with rather limited success to stream games from my PC using Moonlight. It uses the Nvidia geforce experience but allows you to stream it to a wide variety of devices rather than just shield devices. I was able to get the new Master of Orion to run (text was pretty hard to read) but I have been having issues running Civ6.

[DeKaFu]

That Pathfinder Adventures game looks pretty interesting. Looking at screenshots makes me suspect it might be designed for tablets only, though...

Any idea if it would work well on a 5.5" phone?

----

I've also been playing Adventure Bar Story on my phone, and it works reasonably well. This translation, though... XD
I'm sure they had the best of intentions, but the fact that they translated all the Japanese foods and ingredients instead of using the actual Japanese names makes it so much harder than it needs to be. It took me a while to figure out that "Sealeaf" is probably supposed to be Kombu, and I'm still amazed that I managed to guess that "Steamed Chicken" was actually Chawanmushi (a savory egg custard which can include chicken).

I have enough knowledge of Japanese food that it should be easy to guess ingredients, but half the challenge is trying to untranslate the terms into something recognizable.

Also the description for Strawberry Jelly cracks me up every time.

"It is jelloy"

[LoSboccacc]

> Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go

those are terrible, terrible games

[Frumple]

Stuff kemco publishes kinda' trends towards that, dek. I'm still not sure how intentional it is, heh.

... also, if you haven't seen it already, and it doesn't cycle out or somethin'. Other restaurant, second floor, right side. Dude and his daughter. Think I actually mentioned in earlier in the thread, but seeing it in the wild is good, too

[Sappho]

> Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go

those are terrible, terrible games

Why do you say that? I've been enjoying Lara Croft GO immensely for a few months now. I do a level or two now and then on my commute to and from work (metro/tram). I'm still stuck on one of the last few bonus levels that unlock after the main storyline is complete, determined to work it out without cheating.

I mean, I could see someone saying that those games aren't their cup of tea, but "terrible"? Really? The controls work fine and are designed perfectly for mobile. The puzzles are well-designed (if a bit easy for most of the main game). The graphics and sound are pretty good. I've yet to encounter a single bug or glitch or freeze. Why on earth would anyone consider them terrible?

(Also, looking around, it has almost universal praise in reviews. So... I feel like maybe you just don't like this type of game?)

[LoSboccacc]

it's probably because I got one expecting the hitman experience instead I got subbuteo with dumbed down rules, moreover I hate puzzle games where each puzzle has one and only one solution, it's lazy design for the most part

[Sappho]

it's probably because I got one expecting the hitman experience instead I got subbuteo with dumbed down rules, moreover I hate puzzle games where each puzzle has one and only one solution, it's lazy design for the most part

So first off, you've declared your personal opinion as a fact: "Those games are terrible" rather than "I don't like those games". That makes me less inclined to trust your recommendations in the future. The games are objectively good, they're just not the type of game you expected or wanted to play. You don't have to like them for them to be good games.

Second, I can see that you've never actually designed a puzzle. At the publishing house where I work, I am responsible for the puzzle pages for three magazines. I write 6-8 puzzles per issue, and they all have to have exactly one solution so that we can print an answer key. If I screw up and let another solution slip through which isn't in the key, we get complaints, and I get in trouble. And do you know what the most difficult part of my job is? Making sure each puzzle has one and only one solution. It is incredibly easy to design a puzzle with multiple solutions. Anyone can do that without hardly trying at all. The difficult thing is making sure there is only one possible way to solve a puzzle. That takes a lot of time and effort and testing, and it's extremely difficult to make that one solution both not immediately obvious, but not too difficult for the target audience to solve. Making a puzzle game where each puzzle has one and only one solution is not even remotely "lazy design", and in fact takes far, FAR more work than you realize, especially to do as elegantly and with such a perfect difficulty curve as the GO series of puzzle games. As a matter of fact, as someone who designs puzzles myself and knows exactly what goes into that job, I spend a lot of time with these games marveling at how well-designed they are, and how much work must have gone into them.

It's best not to declare yourself an expert on something you have no experience with and dismiss things you don't like as "bad". While you are obviously just as entitled as anyone else to like or not like something and declare your opinion, opinions are not facts, and by dismissing something as "terrible" just because it's not your cup of tea and calling a team of highly skilled designers "lazy" for not making the type of game you personally like, you might prevent someone else from enjoying a great game because they assumed you knew what you were talking about. And it comes across as narcissistic when you present your personal opinions and preferences as though they were universal truths. Not everyone is you.

[LoSboccacc]

> I am responsible for the puzzle pages for three magazines

apples to oranges, the medium you are working on has limitations, this one not. and I'd be fine with a puzzle, but:

"Hitman GO is an award-winning turn-based strategy game with beautifully rendered diorama-style set pieces. You will strategically navigate fixed spaces on a grid to avoid enemies and take out your target or infiltrate well-guarded locations."

there's nothing strategic in these games, they're about the same openness and depth as sudoku. which if fine if you like sudoku like games, but it's just a cash grab when you claim it's a 'hitman strategy game'

they're the one wanting to be compared to strategy games, and as strategy games they suck balls.

[Retropunch]

It's best not to declare yourself an expert on something you have no experience with and dismiss things you don't like as "bad". While you are obviously just as entitled as anyone else to like or not like something and declare your opinion, opinions are not facts, and by dismissing something as "terrible" just because it's not your cup of tea and calling a team of highly skilled designers "lazy" for not making the type of game you personally like, you might prevent someone else from enjoying a great game because they assumed you knew what you were talking about. And it comes across as narcissistic when you present your personal opinions and preferences as though they were universal truths. Not everyone is you.

Sappho, you're being awkward and childish, and it's uncalled for. More than that, if anyone is being narcissistic here, it's you - LoSboccacc could be the online alias of Kasparov for all you know. 

EVERYONE says that games they like are 'great' and games they don't like are 'terrible' - I don't think LoSboccacc was stating that s/he is somehow capable of being the one person in the world who can objectively analyse things. It's implied in the very foundations of a 'forum' that the views you express are going to be your own - no one feels the need to qualify every statement with 'it's only my opinion...' because it's so obvious. However, you've somehow stated that the hitman game is objectively good - could you qualify how something can be objectively 'good'? I didn't know there was provable science behind game reviewing.

More than that, your rambling about building puzzles is just bizarre and frankly not true. If the game Civilisation could only be won one way, it'd be rubbish. As another example, take the game for the forum we're on; DF is basically a set of puzzles (keep dwarves happy, well fed etc.) and the whole reason people play it is that there is so much freedom to work out how to tackle the puzzles. Sure, certain puzzles only have one way of tackling them, but that often doesn't happen in games.

This is especially true in the Hitman series which has prided itself above all else as giving the player the freedom to be able to tackle the challenge in many different ways - so of course LoS would expect that to be mirrored in the mobile game.

Please try to be a bit more easy going Sappho, it's not really the B12 spirit.

[Frumple]

N... not everyone. Pretty regularly see folks acknowledge games they don't like as good, or ones they do as bad. Certainly have often enough m'self.

Also you probably want to re-read what saph was actually writing about puzzles. The thing was a counterargument against the proposition that puzzles with a single solution are mostly lazy design. Not some kind of statement that puzzles with multiple solutions are bad.