Be Excellent To Each Other

[Relation X] hasn't played a video game before. What should they play?

On any format? Wow...

Here's a curveball... One of the Burnout games... but not Paradise.

Pretty much everyone knows how to drive a car but do they know what it's like to crash a car at high speed? Hopefully not. The graphics will surely wow them to invest more time in other games.

Portal 2: the epitome of puzzle games but with an actual plot and voice acting to gold plate the experience.

They haven’t played any video game before? Pac-Man, then. It’s the quintessential video game.

Animal Crossing.
Mario Party (if they’re playing at a family house over Christmas, for example).
Luigi’s Mansion.

Cannon Fodder - an example of using games as a slightly-quirky way of making political/ethical points (see also 'Papers Please')
The Secret of Monkey Island - proving that games can be just as funny, well-written, and engaging as any good novel or film
Outrun - turn up the music and chillout
Chuckie Egg - the platformer in its purest form.

This was exactly MrsDoc's gateway into modern gaming, having not played much of anything after Mario Kart in college. I was playing it, the voice acting gradually drew her in, eventually she tried some of the co-op with me, then she did the single player.

The controls were hard work for her at first, though. But I made sure to make her a fan of the One True Control Setting ie. inverted y-axis.

I’d take Outrun 2 over Outrun/Burnout. Such a beautiful, simple and rewarding game with even better music.

Portal.

You disgust me.

Your disgust is the wind beneath my wings.

Surely the top twenty of the best beex games list??

In all seriousness, peggle.

I think I'd have to start my list with Pong.

I'd be tempted to put another 18 Atari 2600 games and then #20 can be Horizon Zero Dawn or something just to see them ASPLODE.

I think it would go:

Pong
Pac-man
Galaga
Breakout / Arknoid
Super Mario Bros

I'm unsure about the order of these ones:
Quake 2 or Half Life
MarioKart Double Dash
Resident Evil
Final Fantasy 7
Doom (2016)
Gran Turismo
Street Fighter 2
Geometry Wars
GTA5

Minecraft

Whatever the current single player FPS de jour is (on easy)

GTA Online (with friends)

I Expect You To Die (with people watching and laughing)

XCOM 2

Just Cause 2 (I didn’t play the subsequent ones so sub them in if better - included as it’s just a ridiculously fun romp)

Good work.


You disgust yourself

Filthy whores.

But you like filthy whores.

The Megadrive version or the Amstrad one?

The only time in my life I've had that tabula rasa scenario. I could have stood by and let her learn to play without it. She had no natural preference either way. But my moment came, and I did not hesitate.

I think Geometry Wars is a good shout, but some of the others would be rather off-putting to someone who hadn't played a game before. Although I think it would also partly depend on the age of the person too - the only games I've ever got my Mum to play have been Tetris and Wii Sports, for instance.

That's why they start with Pong.

Tetris is totally going on the list.

I'm already curious about what'll happen when I get to the same moment with Mrs B over Christmas. Oh, and my niece as well who's getting a PS4 for Christmas. I'll report back on whether they make the one correct choice, or if they should be forever known as filthy wrongbrains.

This is a brilliant shout. I’ve never known anyone not enjoy it.

Note that if they invert like FILTHY UNNATURALS they'll forever be digging into menus to change the controls.

Unless they play Halo which is fucking dope when it comes to configuring your controls and set a standard every game should follow.

The Xbox 360 had the feature set in the console menu didn't it? On the Xbox One, you have to go into each game and change it... Sigh....

I have this argument with the kids all the time. They get super pissed off when I leave invert Y axis on in their games.... I've tried to get them to convert to the right way of doing things but they insist I'm a weirdo.

You did the only thing possible, as if she had got used to the wrong way, you would have had to divorce at some point in the near future.

You are. Unless you're flying a plane.

Yeah, that is the downside to having a brain that works properly. It's not an issue for my girlfriend as she'll always benefit from my games being set correctly before she even picks up a controller but it'll be annoying for my niece if she makes the One True Choice. Fuck Trump and Brexit; being persecuted like this for neural purity is the biggest indicator yet that we're living in the darkest timeline.

The boys were a blank slate in this respect but they were insistent it was just wrong. maybe it's genetic.

Wot no Joust? The single best and most intuitive control scheme ever created.

People, people. I say we can set aside our differences and come together as one against our true common enemy: the invert Xers.

What in the fuck kind of foul pervert even does that?

Invert Xers are a myth, put about by the non-inverting Ys to try and shift focus from their deviancy and to try and tar all true inverters with the brush of lunacy.

Sailors.

People that move strafe to the right stick are a thing for sure, though.

the x axis is an odd thing. On 3rd person games, does left mean move the camera physically to the left, and so rotating the view to the right, or the camera view to the left?

I genuinely couldn't say which is what I would expect without actually seeing what I did with a pad in hand. (all I know is beyond good and evil did the opposite of what I expected, and you couldn't change it) I suspect, although I'm not sure, that my mind has flipped multiple times on this.

I do know that my mind has done weird things for the y axis. Back in the heady days of Duke 3d, when I was trying to get mouse control to work (and rebind all the keys, because mouse control wasn't really a thing back then... Doom had mouse up as walk forward), I had to invert the y axis, else I couldn't aim well.
I found the same thing on the 2 stick pad (timesplitters 2...)

Then, for no apparent reason, when I came back to mouse controls I had to uninvert the y axis in order to play, while remaining inverted on the pad.

I'm not sure how that happened.

If you invert y, but not X, all arguments are null and void.

too, but preferably the original and best MS-DOS version with no fancy whistles and bells.

Technically the original version is on the Electronika 60.

Sensible world of soccer

Oh and bill and ted’s (gb) instead
Of Chucky egg.
Mario kart. Or Virtua Racing
Pikmin
Wii sports
Gunstar Heroes or donkey kong
Minecraft.
Rocket league
Mrs Pacman

In no particular order:

The Stanley Parable
Papers, Please
Alto’s Adventure
Monument Valley
Overcooked
Portal
The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
Rock Band 3
Katamari Damacy
Burnout Paradise
Super Mario Odyssey
Elite Beat Agents
Sensible World of Soccer 96/97
Mario Kart 8
Wii Sports
Gone Home
Beat Saber
The Beginner’s Guide
Pokemon GO

Fixed that for you.

Speaking of which, did anyone see this?

https://twitter.com/Nitomatta/status/1070791244782039040

#20 Kitchen (PSVR)

Monkey island.

Omg totally forgot about that. It would be brilliant for non-gamers (once they learned where all the buttons were).

Papers please is not brilliant.

Yes it is. Fite me binch