Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20171111143841/@comment-3547390-20171128030254

Daum is a really funky version of DosBox indeed. I would love it if I could use some other version, but the hassle of trying to get it hooked up to my recorder makes it just not worth the effort. Plus from memory I had more popping and other stability issues. Daum tends to work right, just has that issue with dynamic core which seems to ALWAYS come up.

It isn't so much the failure that is making me dislike the game, even if it is possibly preventing me from experiencing better. As I seem to repeat a lot, challenge is perfectly fine, but in a bad game that challenge is going to make the game drag all the more to the point of sheer boredom because you aren't so much thrilled for the challenge as wishing for the game to end as soon as possible. So yes, it is a factor, but isn't the contributor which makes it bad in the first place to make that challenge in turn bad.

Part of the reason could be the DOS platform. The more games I play that are DOS related, the more I seem to realize just how unsmooth things can be. Menu transitions are a pain, skipping cutscenes is a pain, I have yet to find an experience on DOS I can say is fully enjoyable. Even Quake, a game I highly enjoy on GLQuake, feels less fun when run in DOS. The biggest flaw of old-school titles is not the graphics, but the fact that every game feels clunky. Make X-Wing 3d, it wouldn't change a thing, it would still be boring because DOS just dulls the experience of everything. This is sort of the reason why I am trying to get through DOS stuff and never bother with it again, either DOSBox or DOS itself just is not fun to mess with, and isn't the same as selecting a menu in a native Windows game.

I think I have vocalized before that my main reason for enjoying the games I enjoy is because I can explore a world. The challenge is nice and builds on that to make it not just a walking sim, but the world must exist first for me to want to get invested. X-Wing pretty much gives you the opposite of a world. It gives you a timer, demanding you rush through the entire thing instead of exploring. It gives you a bunch of blocks that are pretty much identical, killing any sort of interest in the track, and outside is just empty space where there is nothing to see. There is nothing to check out or be intrigued by in X-Wing, just being told to be rushed through a monotonous background. This is how Star Wars Droids was better in my mind. At least Star Wars Droids had some different sprites and things to break up the monotony. Yes, I know this is the tutorial. Yes, I know the actual game probably has more variety. But I just feel there is little to no excuse for sitting through courses that will, at the least, take half an hour of your life to see orange things to fly through and some grey turrets that shoot at you. Is it optional? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that this is part of the game, and is a pretty atrocious part of the game, which detracts from the whole experience. Especially since I am expected to pretty much play this before doing anything else if I wish to handle even the basics. I get about as much investment from playing an Arcade game, but at least an Arcade game doesn't have the pomp to advertise itself as an experience to progress through.

I have spent six hours trying over and over to beat a training course. That isn't fun. It isn't fun that the training course doesn't change besides some minor variables, meaning even winning part of it doesn't feel like much of a victory, but just a setup for a repeat course. I think the course even runs the same shape, they might even be copy-pasted from one trial to the next. I have had training levels before, but they tend to show far more variation and excitement. I have never experienced one where you can say "well, it is complete garbage, but you need to do it over and over until you learn to play. Don't worry, the game itself is enjoyable.". Waiting a bunch of hours to get to something remotely interesting is not exactly what I expected from a title you held in such high esteem. This would be like if Doom had a target practice area that you needed to do to learn how to shoot, but for some reason completing each round takes ages because you need to manage a bunch of keys.

Funny you mention freedom. I don't really see freedom when getting disoriented means you just lose track of where you are going. Perhaps the whole "you need to go this direction" thing of the training course isn't helping that either, I don't really get much freedom unless I decide to fly into an empty void. If that was fun, Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing would be one of the best games of all time.