What's the most complex game you know?

[Godot]

HAd quite some fun with Silent Hunter 4. Turns out it's not easy AT ALL to hit a moving target with a rather slow moving Torpedo.....

Ever tried Silent Hunter 3, with the Grey Wolves Mod?

(the latter adding a whole layer of realism to SH3 ... among others turning destroyers into the deadly Sub-Hunters they were and adding a huge number of real ship types of WW2)

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (tried over 20 years ago, completed lately with small help from Internetz)

I could only complete it by using the ZZAP64 guide at the time. Another extremely hard game to figure out by yourself is Spellbound by Mastertronic, as a kid I never found a walk through and I have only recently finished it for the first time ever thanks to the internet.

[Godot]

I could only complete it by using the ZZAP64 guide at the time. Another extremely hard game to figure out by yourself is Spellbound by Mastertronic, as a kid I never found a walk through and I have only recently finished it for the first time ever thanks to the internet.

Ye gods, I remember this game ... had it on Cassette for the C-64 ... also never finished it

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Ye gods, I remember this game ... had it on Cassette for the C-64 ... also never finished it

Another good example is "Impossible mission" (what's in a name). In fact, a lot of games from the 8-bit ERA are next to impossible to figure out without some help from a guide at some point. Also, it didn't help that our only sources of information were friends or magazines.

[lajoswinkler]

I think Pong.

[Person012345]

DF and Aurora.

[Mmmmyum]

Personally I found that Aardwolf (a MUD) was quite complex. I really enjoyed it awhile back, even had quite a nice Lv 23 Lizardman Ranger (remort 0, I think)

[Moach]

FSX

not playing it - that's fairly straightforward.

getting it to work, now... one could write a book about that. and have your claims disputed by another author years down...

There's a whole industry built around that thing - a lot of money goes through that

and a good "gaming rig" doesn't necessarily mean a good "FSX rig" -- it requires considering your hardware purchases up front

and have you ever heard of a thing called "superfetch"? I hadn't, until you know... FSX wasn't running as well as it should

it is now... took me just 8 years to get it done. straight and simple, eh?

[joppiesaus]

Locomotion

I still do not quite understand it.

You must transport stuff to earn money. You must build the transport company litarly.

[Depth]

DCS: A10C

Months and months and months of flying and learning, but only reach the tip of the iceberg.

[tom1499]

Tough one here. I'm gonna go with the mean and say Dwarf Fortress is pretty complex, and I'm just downloading Aurora. May get flamed for it but Garry's Mod when played in a more technical way than shooting random zombies with the WireMod mod can be pretty involving.

[Randox]

Just thinking about complex games again. I had forgotten about Silent Hunter 4, but I am actually now leaning toward games like Civilization (or in terms of ones I have actually played, Galactic Civilizations or Endless Space. Endless Space in particular throws me so badly that I have to pretty much go through tutorial mode again if I don't play it for a few months, and not because it's designed poorly, but because there is so much to the game, so much information available that needs considering and so on.

The most complex game I have ever actually played though is not a computer game, it's the pen and paper games, and to some extent, games like Magic the Gathering. Games like Magic, D&D, or Warhammer 40k, aren't any worse than anything else once you get into them (just detailed, with a lot to remember and consider) but when you first see them going the difficulty curve is strait up a mountain made of teflon in a blizzard.

[Thiel]

I'd have to say Harpoon.

[robino]

Battleground Europe: WW2OL is pretty steep learning curve - a half decent multi-vehicle simulator

Capitalism 2 has the most in-depth economic model that I know of in a game - following stocks and shares.

[vetrox]

DOTA 2.

Although not complex in the sense of "too many buttons, too much micromanage" but the team/underlying gameplay mechanics have alot of complexness about them. Its not all "moar=the most complex"

about 50 hours into ksp I had the majority of the mechanics down.

700 hours into dota and im still a nub

The more you play a game. The more you discover how complex it is.

Edited November 4, 2013 by vetrox

[nothke]

Well it's hard to explain first what does "complex" mean?. Sometimes the game itself is incredibly complex "under the hood", but still are easy to use and play (GTA series). There are some simple games that just have a terrible interface that you could also call "complex" cause they are just hard to play xD There are games that have steep learning curves but are very easy to play once you understand everything and learn "the tricks" just like in KSP.

You can say chess is a very simple game, it's rules are easy and anyone can start playing it. But then it's probably the most complex game ever made cause you have a billion ways to make moves. Many RTS games are similar.

Locomotion

I still do not quite understand it.

You must transport stuff to earn money. You must build the transport company litarly.

Locomotion was a continuation of Transport tycoon, but the open source versions simutrans and open TTD add even more components making the game even more complicated.

MS Flight Simulator, must be my favourite among "complex" games with steep learning curves, but when you learn it all, it's quite easy and at the same time challenging.

But to me, if I had to call games "complex" that would probably be those grand strategies like Hearts of Iron, Total War, Civilization and such.. Any big strategy that requires players to make hundreds of parallel movements and think about everything. But I really call them complex cause they are "not my cup of tea" and I personally find them very hard to learn. On the other hand there are people who find these games very easy and intuitive.

Edited November 4, 2013 by nothke

[Seret]

You can say chess is a very simple game, it's rules are easy and anyone can start playing it. But then it's probably the most complex game ever made cause you have a billion ways to make moves. Many RTS games are similar.

Good point. There's probably an even more extreme example; Go has even simpler rules than chess, but even more elaborate gameplay. The saying goes that if chess is a battle, Go is the whole war.

Any big strategy that requires players to make hundreds of parallel movements and think about everything. But I really call them complex cause they are "not my cup of tea" and I personally find them very hard to learn. On the other hand there are people who find these games very easy and intuitive.

Tbh, the thing with a lot of strategic games is that the principles of success are often the same. Sound strategy is fairly universal. The original Total War Shogun went out of it's way to make sure that if you read and applied Sun Tzu's principles you'd do well.

[KOCOUR]

I think I would have to say Arma 2. It's a very detailed combat sim, and I'm sure both its predecessor and successor are just as thorough. I still don't know how to work the entire squad command system (sort of like air traffic control in flight sims). Also, cheers to the combat game with bullet drop (mercifully, no wind).

Actually there are mods that add a lot more complexity to the game. Even the wind. I personally use ACE2 for combat and first aid realism, and ACRE for communication, but there is also mod called project reality, thats doing the same as ACE

[KvickFlygarn87]

KSP. It's complex for ya.

[Specialist290]

Most of the ones I was going to mention as candidates already have been, so I'm going to go with a few that haven't:

For the most part, some of the most complex games I've played are probably those published by Paradox Interactive -- Crusader Kings and its sequel, Europa Universalis and its sequels, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, etc. They have a knack for making world-level strategy games with simple, (mostly) intuitive mechanics that interact in complex ways. They've been some of my favorite games to play, in part because I'm a self-admitted history nerd who likes the opportunity to "change history" after a fashion.

[Thiel]

I've never been a fan of Europa Universalis and its ilk. Too much battle spreadsheet and not enough game.

[Person012345]

Speaking of strategies I suppose Wargame:AB is pretty complex in the sense that having ~800 varieties of rel world military hardware to pick from is fairly complex in itself and then the strategies such unit varieties create (although an unfortunately common strategy seems to involve going on the forum and whining that a unit is OP or UP, but that's not what I mean) can often be quite complex because whilst of course there are "best" units for a given job, everything has a counter in every situation.