Diablo IV, for me. I love the Diablo series and just a bit ago, I sank 2 hours down to get my necromancer character up and set in Diablo II Resurrection. I have Diablo III and its expansion too, but they’re online only and I almost can’t be bothered to go through that. I’ve beaten it a long time ago.
And I really do want to get Diablo IV, but they’ve made that online-only as well. Like, I know I’m always online and everything but I do like to have that fallback where if I am without internet or I can’t afford internet for a time, I can play or watch things to bide the time over. I can’t do that with online-only games because it’s like being gated away from something you bought.
So everytime I look at Diablo IV, I just get a little depressed at times. Blizzard should do what D2R did, have an online character and have an offline character.
Elite Dangerous. Extremely beautiful, especially impressive in VR - but way too time-consuming for me.
Holy fuck, “Space logistics simulator with some casual space piracy” the game.
For the receptive kind of brain that’s some premium crack.
rust,
- i’m on linux
- its rust
World of Warcraft. I’m honestly at my happiest when all I have to worry about are dailies and raids. Unfortunately, that’s not compatible with family life, my work, etc etc.
I quit my job and dropped out of college to do nothing but play WoW for 8 solid months. It was worth it
Myself, I miss the memories I could form playing with friends on WoW. Not the game that much.
I miss Night Shift on the WoW forums.
Silksong. My muscle disease has progressed too much to physically play it. That really stings because Hollow Knight was one of my favorite games ever.
That fucking suuuuuuuuucks. I wonder if there’s a mod that could accommodate you somehow. I’m not trying to spawn a big debate about difficulty in games here, but I really wish you’d be able to play it for yourself, somehow.
I’m sure there’s a cheat engine invulnerability hack or something I could use, but it would kinda take the fun out of it.
There are a few games that I would like to play but can’t because they have awefull cellshader graphics. I really don’t give anything about graphics most of the time (I play lots of retro games after all) but for some reason is cellshader problematic. I can tolerate it when it is a very light cellshader effect, but some games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have such a thick cellshadering that it is unbearable for me. Which is a shame, because I would love to play the games but can’t.
There’s like a boatload of really classic Xbox 360/One era games that I’d love to play on PC.
Problem is they were made by Ubisoft or EA. Repurchasing them is already dubious from the get-go, but chances are the versions in Steam, if they’re still there at all, are old neglected buggy builds. And things are not much rosier on the Uplay or Origin! They may have gotten a patch or two, but old shit’s janky. These need the GOG treatment.
I did get the Mass Effect trilogy rerelease for a pittance. Also found out I somehow had Dragon Age Origins already. These should keep me occupied for a while, as (to paraphrase a certain video game villain) at this very moment, EA burns.
I’ve bought the Witcher 3 for two different platforms, and I have neither the time or the patience to play it to completion.
People play games at their own pace. You have your own and there isn’t a shred of shame in that.
I was in that pit for a while, it took me years to actually sit down and play it long enough to kind of figure out what to do and how to play, when I did it was very good. I still never had the time to actually finish it, but I highly recommend just pushing through that first barrier, it’s worth it for at least a few days.
I love the story of Final Fantasy XIV, but it can easily categorize as “One of the most expensive singleplayer games of all time”. On top of buying the expansions, you’ll need to pay for each month you play; and unless someone’s really speedrunning, that will start to add up. Worse, for a first timer setting up their account, their website and payment system is really stuck in 1998, making giving them money an obtuse task. And, while the story has its great moments and excellent side content, a depressing amount of it is extensive polite dialog with just simple quests where you move to a location and right-click on someone. I’ve finished Dawntrail, and am glad I experienced it, but I can’t blame anyone who sees it all as beyond them.
Counterpoint: Someone can play up through Stormblood without having to buy anything.
But, yeah, I agree. I don’t really want to think about how much I’ve spent on this one game over the last 12 years. But roughly spitballing:
- ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, Endwalker, Dawntrail…I’ll say that’s 6 x $40 (not accurate since I bought special editions for some and moved from PS3 to Pc so that’s an extra cost there, too): $240
- $13/m for 11 years (I’ve played ARR since launch but there have been some times where I turned off my sub for a little bit so I’ll just knock off 12 months): 13 x 12 x 11 = $1,716
- Various Mogstation purchases, roughly $40?
- Total for me with this napkin math: $1,996
Woof. But, I do love the game and spent all weekend playing it just now. So there’s worse things to spend money on.
Alan Wake 2, I loved the 1st but I’m not using Epic’s shitty store. Especially with Epic’s general anti-linux stance.
Cyberpunk 2077 - it still doesn’t go on steep enough sales to justify buying when I have hundreds of unplayed games on Steam. But I’m keeping an eye on its downward progress. Maybe when it reaches £10-13…
I’m also waiting for it to hit a low-enough price to justify the amount of time I will lose just trying to mod the thing into a playable, enjoyable state.
It’s still a buggy mess, but it’s usually very pretty and occasionally fun.
Do yourself a favour and get the Ultimate Edition. Phantom Liberty is the only real reason to put yourself through it.
I played before phantom liberty and thought it was a neat enough game. Maybe I should give it another shot.
Make sure to make a save at the appropriate point so you can do both paths.
I wish I could go back and never experience it before PL. It’s what it should have been at release, took me ages to get around to trying it after the broken and underwhelming early versions because the main story was long and linear. I’m glad I did though, it’s an entirely different experience
I think the base game is really a testament to the fact that CDPR have a lot of success with open world games, but don’t really do them very well… They make really solid campaigns, and then pad them out with utter nonsense that kills the pacing stone-cold dead.
“Oh hey, here’s something really urgent. We cannot stress enough how urgent it is. By the way we’ve also just unlocked about a hundred side quests. Enjoy!”
I’m still salty that I missed one of the ending achievements because if you follow the instructions it gives you, it will cause a fail state on that particular ending.
I’d love to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren’t mindless slop.
Same with other slow-burn games like Project Zomboid and other survival/crafting games.
I learned to do slop to hang out with others, I even got good at slop like Rivals just to keep social contact alive. But I can’t drag anyone into a game that doesn’t have 2-minute matches filled with flashing lights and colors and gambling mini-games.
I’m in this boat with you. A few months ago I restarted my Valheim server for friends… And only one person joined me, for all of about 30 minutes. I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a Zomboid server, too, but I know it will be the same. We’ll play as a group maybe twice, and that will be it.
I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I have about 20 games where I stopped before getting too far “just in case they decide to join me.” Those games are now piled up in dusty, forgotten crates alongside the Ark of the Covenant in that same giant warehouse. I think I’m part of the slim margin of people who enjoy simulated hardships as a social bonding experience, I don’t know if makes other people too bored, or too anxious, but I can’t make people play hard, slow games where you have to rely on each other and talk through problems.
I used to be able to, I had great success running groups in SCUM and Project Zomboid but as more and more short-attention-span gaming has been released, people have migrated away from investment-gaming and now just want to “chill” with some colorful slop and fast battle royals or loot extraction. Now when I ask if someone wants to play something like SCUM, they ask if we can play a server where loot and experience gain is turned up to max, enemy robots are disabled, and you can order high level gear from discord bots in chat.
Breath of the wild God of war (ps4) God of war (ps5) Resident evil village Super Mario whatever the switch one is
I’m midway through all of these except the god of war sequel but life has taken over. I miss gaming.
I watched a friend beat TOTK so I just ran around and tried to 100% the game rather than beating it. Slower times too.
Any of the Civilization games. I used to spend 10+ hours on a single session! My ass can’t handle more than 1-2 now
I keep trying Civ VI and keep uninstalling it before finishing a single game.
I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed since earlier games, but it’s lost a lot of the addicting charm and intuitive flow that made me play prior versions for days. Also, the goofy-ass style and overly dramatic narrative starts to irk me.
If that’s the trend of the franchise I sure won’t be touching any of the later ones.
Sometimes I think it’s nostalgia talking, then I go back and play Civ II or Civ IV and confirm that no, no it is not.
Clair obscur.
It looks so good, and the music is great, and story is apparently fantastic, but I just can not get the hang of the counter/block mechanic in combats, and without it the battles are pretty much impossible.
I haven’t played since I beat it. But I did look into this after I did…
In general, every time the screen zooms in, you need to act. What type is something you learn, but that cuts down on the timing aspect There are also audio queues, like a sort of woosh effect. I don’t play a lot of fast response games like this, so I never noticed until it was pointed out.
I found it rough near the start, but it gets a lot easier as you go on, once you get more of a feel for when attacks are coming. Eventually you’ll be dodging things you’ve never seen before just on instinct.
Dodges are a lot easier than parries, even if you don’t get the extra AP from it. Fights last a bit longer, but you can definitely plough through most of it even with bad timing. Explore thoroughly in act 1, otherwise you’ll probably be underlevelled for the last boss there. Not really any need to grind mindlessly, but you can if you really need the extra levels.
I ended up using the auto-parry/block mod, but it means you’re practically invulnerable, you only need to do the jump and radiant attack counters
https://www.nexusmods.com/clairobscurexpedition33/mods/478
There’s also a mod to increase the block/parry “period”
https://www.nexusmods.com/clairobscurexpedition33/mods/28
I still hope there will be a mod to have the dodge/parry based on your stats (agility/luck), to feel like it’s a RPG and not a souls-like game
I’ll have to look at the mod to increase the block/parry period, to see if that is my issue.
cheers!
The one that upped it by 30% worked for me on a Steam Deck. I can’t parry everything, but i can at least hit the parry now.
I came to depend less on the visual cues which are often deceptive and more on the audio ones or counting in my head for dodges/parries. Also invest heavily (basically all your points) into defense/vitality which makes Dodge/Parry misses much more forgiving.
Eventually, even if you only do a smattering of side quests/areas, you’ll get powerful enough to basically ignore the timing mechanics altogether.
Also set it on story mode + auto QTEs. I did that on my first playthrough and had absolutely no regrets. The mechanics of the game are definitely secondary to the experience of the story.
Clair Obscur for me too, but because of the AI art controversy. I can’t stand AI, even if temporary, even if just store banners, I just can’t trust the company from then on not to sneak it into other areas.
They didn’t sneak anything and they never will. Looked into it deeply. They used AI assets as placeholders during development. But everything in the shipped game is human-made. No further use of generative AI is expected, since the game awards controversy the company’s management published a statement of banning AI use entirely in their company.
The whole controversy around indie game awards was also blown beyond proportions. A company used a new technology at a time when the tech was new and the debate around it’s use was still inmature. Then dismissed it for it was not good enough. They failed at quality assurance and a couple of textures weren’t deleted. They replaced them as soon at they found out. By all intents and purposes, this controversy does not qualify sandfall as an AI using company, and to affirm so is ignorant of the context of all that went down in reality.
I understand their reasoning, but still, it soured me on the game. GenAI models being built from non-consensually mass-scraped art was known from the very start, and yet the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game… They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
But anyway, we are free to just not agree and draw the line in different places on what we consider ethical conduct 🤷
the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game
That’s the point. They didn’t thought it was OK and didn’t.
They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
That is exactly what they did, any texture left in the first version of the game was a mistake that was promptly fixed as soon as they noticed it. We have the advantage of judging four years later with new info something they did back then and have since corrected. Ethical considerations must include intent and context, and here there was definitely no intent to harm.
Rdr2. I’m not making a damn account just to play the game offline.
I would create ten different accounts to play a game that’s the quality of rdr2.
Ya maybe one day. I also morally don’t want to support that behaviour.
Elden ring is the gold standard for me in multiplayer. It’s optional. It just requires you to be online. No account creation bullshit. And it’s a quality game also.
@cyberpunk007 @Abundance114 that is if you play on PC. other platforms might require subscriptions of some kind in order to enable multiplayer feature(s).
