I should probably go to bed at this point. I typed up a short story of my arduous attempts at defending an outpost in the STALKER modpack GAMMA and how my game crashed when I turned in the quest. Sent off that post and woe-is-me, the entire text didn’t get submitted and I didn’t have it saved in copy-paste. It’s just so ironically fitting.
So ya, what’s something you’d like to ramble a bit about?
I feel super stagnated when it comes to games anymore. I still want to play but I only ever seem to play the same 2 games which are positively ancient now. I have tried to chip away at my backlog, but I will play for one night and then go right back to my comfy games even if I enjoyed it. Then if I want to try again I have to start over from scratch because too much time will have passed and I can’t remember the controls or what I was doing, so it’s back to the comfy games again because at least I won’t get frustrated.
Maybe I need to try some very short games or something? But also maybe I am just being too picky! I look for things that I think would scratch the same itch as my comfy games but haven’t found anything that gets close enough (yet!). I just want to have fun why do I have to make this so difficult?! >_<
I’m stuck in that same kind of gaming rut, I think it’s because dealing with “being an adult with responsibilities” is a lot more stress than when I first started gaming as a kid. My brain just does not want to learn a new system of rules, and I end up quitting new games halfway through the tutorial.
The couple times I’ve fought through that feeling, I’ve found a few new games I really love. So maybe it’s a mindset thing. I miss the ease with which I used to lose myself in new passions.
Yeah good point! Come to think of it I got a new game late last year that I thought would have a good shot with pushing through that mental block and then some life stuff got very in the way and I just didn’t go back to it and forgot about it until now. I should try that one again now that things are slightly less chaotic.
Yeah, same here.
I’ve mentioned this game before recently, but I just finished Gris and am absolutely smitten in a rare way. It’s very short, simple, and relaxed (no fail states), but it’s got probably the most beautiful art direction and score I can remember. That being said, it does also wind up doing some pretty interesting things with its simple mechanics too.
You can finish it in a few hours, but there’s a draw to return again just to sink back into the world, cause… It’s just pleasant there.
I just looked Gris up and even though I tend to avoid platformers, everything else about it really appeals so I will put it on my wishlist and have a think about whether to splash out for my birthday, thank you!
Happy to spread the word! If you do wind up giving it a shot I hope you enjoy it.
What are your comfy games? Maybe someone here can recommend something similar
I run my own single-player WoW-WotLK server and that is the main comfy game, the other is the Tropico series (mainly 3 & 4). I have tried a few alternatives over the years for both of these and nothing hooks me in as much, but maybe they only hook me in that much because of familiarity or nostalgia? Timberborn is I think the closest that has given me a similar feeling to Tropico (even though they are fairly different!), and I do have Guild Wars 2 which is a lot nicer overall than WoW but doesn’t really give the same feeling. I should still give it another shot though, I played it for a little while before I set up the WoW server and really liked that the clothes were so customisable :D But I have been out of the loop so other suggestions would be good too!
Oh wow servers emulation went huge compared to ten years ago(least time I checked) would you say that it is a nice seamless experience or is there a lot to tinker even when you have finished setting it up?
For mine there was very little for me to tinker with, it was a single player Azerothcore repack ready to go, which is good because I am not very technologically skilled! There have been a couple bugs, like a couple of quests are kinda janked, but I can just go into the database and mark them off as done for my character when that happens cos I don’t know how to properly fix them. Most of the tinkering was things like, do I want to adjust reputation/skill gains, how much stuff do I want the auctionhouse bot to list, how many profs do I want to allow per character, things like that. But that was all very easy to do thanks to the way the repack was done, and isn’t actually necessary because you can just stick with the default settings. The only thing I can’t do is PvP because I don’t have playerbots, but I never did PvP on WoW anyway so it doesn’t affect me much. I prefer it a lot to most of the multiplayer pservers I have tried, but I did tend to play WoW as a single player game mostly anyway! :D
This looks sorry promising, I will have to try. Thanks for your answer.
I’m the same with basically 2-3 games but I recently made a bold decision to actually start playing something I bought recently (Hitman 3) and I’m having a great time with it! Idk if you experience the same but I get this anxiety at playing something other than my comfort games, but honestly it’s been very nice to play something new for once :) so I really recommend to just give something else a try and really commit to it.
Yes, idk if it is anxiety exactly but I definitely find it stressful and discombobulating. But having the backlog sitting there looking at me is also stressful! Probably I need to take pressure off and just try to chill out with a new game, which is sort of the approach I have with drawing, like if I remove the pressure to be instantly good at it and let myself be terrible at it, it actually is a lot more fun for me and I will do it more often.
Have you played FTL? That might tickle your fancy.
I have actually! I do remember liking aspects of it but it is a bit too hard for me tbh, so it just ended up being too stressful. But it was a good suggestion anyway!
Gaming-wise, I’m honestly having a great time. I think there’s never been a better time for gaming. Yes, it’s true that a lot of newer games have horrible micro-transactions practices, but there’s also newer games that don’t do this, there’s always older games that can be played, leaked builds of games that you might have thought would have never existed (like Gears of War 3 on PC) which are actually quite fun to play and there’s more game mods now than ever before. I think this is kind of the golden age of gaming in it’s own way.
I’m kind of in a spur of playing or replaying older games. Replayed Fallout 1 recently and I’m doing a low intelligence build for the first time ever.
Debating playing VTM Bloodlines or the original Deus Ex, because this is a sin- I’ve never played either.
I would like to hear how your low int build goes! I have heard that it will lock you out of most quests.
So far I am locked out of the Killian/Gizmo quest because both characters think I’m too dumb and dismiss me.
And big problem: I’m too stupid to use a slot machine. I had planned on using gambling as my money maker so this is a problem. Even with Mentats I’m still too dumb to gamble.
Oh dear. Are Fallout 1 & 2 like New Vegas in their gambling where you just need a high luck skill and the money will roll in? I’ve played the both of them once but I never did any gambling.
You have also inspired me: next time I go back to Fallout 2 (never completed it because I made it close to the endgame with a shitty build and it got too hard for me) I will do a low int run for a little while since I heard there is some unique dialogue with other dumb characters.
Yes, your chance to win is based entirely on your gambling skill and once it is more likely than not to win, you can get infinite cash by going up to a slot machine or poker table and holding down the enter key to place infinite bets.
Tears of the Kingdom has been consuming my life at the moment. I have the final boss mission ready to go but havne’t commited to that yet. I want to explore more before “finishing” the game
Then I’ll follow it up with the Outer Wilds DLC
After that I want to dedicate myself to some platformers and indie games that everyone recommends.
Honestly, feel like I’m in a good place gaming-wise, just planning ahead so there isn’t a vacant hole in my life when I finish ToTK
TotK is amazing. I was put off the price point at first but with the sheer scope of the game I can’t complain. Flying around on the Wing device is my favorite.
I initially got frustrated at them because they’re so hard to launch, but now I appreciate that they’re not a one-and-done tool. Something I still want to do is freeze a block of ice, then use that to shift one off a cliff.
I’m feeling the loss of Cryonis for sure. And Stasis.
I mean, Cryonis is the type of thing you never have to miss as long as you have ice enemy parts, to either throw or put on arrows.
Anytime a blue chu-chu attacks you, kill it with an elemental attack so its blobs convert to that color; very useful.
yo 👀I didn’t realize
100% There are so many things you can do with the Wing, I mean just so many things you can do in general with all the Zonai devices. So many solutions to so many problems. Everybody I talk to handles problems in unique ways. That uniqueness to everything is really fantastic
I watch/listen to a bunch of gaming video essays which help me get a good fix. Been playing ToTK which has been great fun and have been all over Timberborn recently.
There’s so much to play these days, so I have a hard stance against anything with microtransactions.
Who are your favorite essayists for games? I’m keen on Monty Zander and Noah Caldwell-Gervais, as well as Chris Davis.
Conveniently I listed out some of my fav Gaming YouTubers here!
https://beehaw.org/comment/107048
I very much enjoy Monty Zander, they have great energy; I’ll check out those other two!
Omg lol, so many recommendations in that thread. Video essays are back on the menu boys!
And that’s just gaming Youtubers! I also have a lot of tech, philosophy, film & media ones I love. Also a couple of disaster essayists, train & themepark ones too 😂
Well, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to get some more of your top picks for the others, especially tech and film (been a Lindsay Ellis fan for years and am also fond of creators like Pop Culture Detective, Just Write, Thomas Flight, and lots more).
Big fan of Lindsay Ellis & Pop Culture Detective!
For Tech: Technology Connections, This Does Not Compute, Michael MJD and RetroBytes. MattKC is probably more tech than gaming too
Film & Culture stuff: Ladyknightthebrave, Big Joel, Schafarillas Productions, José, Shaun, CJ the X, Rowan Ellis, We’re in Hell, Jenny Nicholson, Super Eyepatch Wolf, Breadsword, Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, La’Ron Readus, Three Arrows
Shaun and Contrapoints are two of my three holy trinity for politics and culture too, with Folding Ideas being the third. I’m looking forward to checking out the rest, thanks for taking the time to put these together!
I’m just now realising my YT subs are out of control
I’m hesitant to buy games at full price these days, but I had a bad day last weekend and bought the Resident Evil 4 remake on a whim, and I love it. Not looking forward to beating it, because then I’ll be in the void again where I can’t find anything to play.
I’ve definitely done that, where I like a game so much that it’s like a candy that I want to “save” and not completely devour.
Overwhelmed honestly
Jedi fallen survivor Totk Many I haven’t finished (horizon, gow)
Yeah, these last few months have been a whirlwind for me. I got a Steam Deck, so I started working through that backlog (most notably, Horizon ZD). Then I got Jedi: Survivor, and ToTK (still working on this one).
YouTube has been helping my gaming fix. But digging Diablo 4 at the moment. I’m excited for the Xbox showcase since it will be all gameplay trailers verse CGI which shows nothing besides what the game could look like. This year has been great I think game wise. Harry Potter was great, started Jedi Survivor, Pokemon I ran through non-stop (yes it is a mess but I do love Pokemon a lot). Funny enough for Stalker Gamma, that mod got me into Stalker, super excited for Stalker 2
To be fair, I was expecting Diablo IV to be a complete fiasco considering Blizzard recent track record but things to be going really well here! The game is Solid!
Got to hit Street Fighter’s 6 training mode hard to learn some Cammy combos and also to practice some special moves (I’m not used to having a DP) and fundamentals. Getting bodied pretty hard by my friend lately, who mains Juri and plays JP on the side.
Also want to get back to Strive and play some ranked matches and, if I get enough free time, resume my Dragon Age: Origin’s playthrough.
I want to get it because it looks so nice, but I’m horrible at fighting games. DBZ fighterz was the only one I was mediocre at.
There’s a demo on Steam if you want to try it out. If you’re struggling with move inputs, the modern control scheme helps a lot with easing you in on the game. And, apparently, the single player mode World Tour is really well-made while teaching you some fundamental concepts effectively (I haven’t tried it yet, that’s what I read).
Unfortunately, I don’t really have a video or a review that describes the game in a newcomer-friendly yet succinct way. You can always search for rooflemonger’s street fighter 6 videos. He has a 30 minutes long review of the game if you can stomach it. He also has an hour-long beginner’s guide and a 2 hours-long(!!) character guide if you really want to get into it or if you just found a character you vibe with and want to know more about them.
I tried the demo earlier; I didn’t think much of it, but that’s probably more because of demo restrictions than actual game issues. The world tour never really got into very interesting tutorials of strategic dynamics, and I couldn’t try my hand against humans.
If they have a full free weekend at some point, that could be perfect for me.
Jaded and burned out. AAA games are rarely worth the $60 anymore, and I’m finding that indie devs are outputting far superior experiences. AAA got too caught up in graphics rendering instead of core gameplay loop, and I can’t stand how many interactive movie games there are. They’re just not for me, and I sincerely hope more devs spin off their own studios from the AAA space so they can make the games they want instead if games the shareholders think everyone wants.
Gaming wise it’s probably the best period I’ve had. I’ve finished a lot of smaller games, found absolute gems such as Outer Wilds (+ the perfect DLC) and Devil Daggers, P-ranked my way through Ultrakill and I’m slowly going through Elden Ring, which is just so awful on many fronts, that I don’t think I’ll be playing any other soulslikes ever. I’ve got a nice long rant about it brewing inside me.
Celeste got a massive, high quality community map pack recently, so I’m slowly chipping away at the maps, and I finally found a “main game” that I’ll probably be playing forever - Trackmania.
I don’t think I’ll be running out of stuff to play anytime soon.
So many games just want too much attention.
The single-player games are bloated with crafting, mission timers, levelling trees, giant worlds that required mounted traversal, etc. They all want to be 50+ hours game time each.
The multiplayer/Live service games are battlepasses, dailies/weeklies, limited-time content. They all want to be 6+ hours a week each.
When I decide to play a game after working, I’m not playing those games anymore. I want to, and I have a bunch of them installed, but they’re just sitting in my library. Games like that require me to choose to spend X hours at a time playing only that, and I’m probably not going to do that.
I love video games, and I enjoy playing those larger SP games when I do play them. But I had to dial back and stop playing a lot of ‘Live service’ games because the content was in passes that demanded too much time I couldn’t give them. I wasn’t playing enough to complete them, but their games were built around them that there wasn’t much point playing them if I couldn’t.
Each evening I feel like playing a game, and I just watch Youtube while playing something I can pickup and play for 30min instead - or fuck around on the internet and not play anything at all.
I decided to play Witcher 3 because it was so highly reviewed, and after playing it for ~5 hours, then going to bed and feeling like I was still in the ‘tutorial starting zone’, having mostly run around over empty ground. Barely any characterisation or story progression had actually occurred. With no meaningful progress or reason to continue, I just… didn’t. A few days later I decided to uninstall.
Well, Warcraft 3 Reforged isn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be. I thought it was going to be this awful crap experience, but I really haven’t seen that (okay yes, it has crashed on me once). I picked it up a few days ago and it’s been one helluva nostalgic power run. XD I think they actually did a fairly good job of just upgrading the graphics but still keep the style the same, even though I wasn’t a huge fan of the overly comic styling of War3. I haven’t done custom maps nor campaigns yet, I know people complained about the campaigns not working. I really only played the Founding of Durotar when I was young.
IDK, it really isn’t as bad as I thought. I heard that a new-ish team is running now, so maybe it will get better. I would like to get a custom game browser built into the game, similar to what Star craft 2 does.
It’s been fun double timing War3 and D4 the last few days. :)
I’m addicted to Hitman:WoA, I even have BOTW to play as I finally set up my Switch and I want to play BOTW before TOTK. But I just always end up playing Hitman again haha…
