My favorite is the Sims 3, and I’ve spent a lot of time on it! It’s a very addicting game for me, but only by spells. I’ll play it every chance I get for a few weeks, then let it sit for a long time. I’ve also played 2 and 4 as well. 2 was good, and 4 was disappointing to me. The overall gameplay wasn’t as good in my opinion, and losing the open world aspect of 3 was a negative too. Add to that the launcher and additional login requirements and I quit playing it fairly quickly.
I think the main reason I like 3 better than the others is because of the open world aspect. I can quickly switch back and forth between two sims at opposite ends of the map, and the world itself feels more real due to not having loading screens. I also like the graphics style a little better, but that’s a minor thing.
The way I normally play is to create a sim, either by picking traits or randomizing, and drop them into the world with a starter house. From there I normally have them get a job or learn a freelance skill to make some money. I generally let my sims find their own friends and spouses by finding who they get along with and going from there. I generally get at least a few generations in before I move on to another game or start over. I rarely do the challenges and things that many people do, but I have done games where I tried to keep a generational line going for a while.
I was really looking forward to both Life by You and Paralives, but the publisher and/or devs of Life by You just blew through their third release date, and have now delayed it indefinitely. So maybe Paralives will be good!
Sims 3 was my favorite for the open world and freelance jobs too. Was nice to be able to secure an income without disappearing off the map for 8 hours a day. Was surprised 4 didn’t follow through on that as much but I only played it a little.
My wife plays Sims with cheats all the time and I get that it becomes a fancy interactive dollhouse in that case, but to me the game is all about that progression from bachelor in a one room box to old family man in a mansion.
That is my primary playstyle in a nutshell! 😂 I really like the painter and writer professions, but I sometimes don’t even go that far! I’ve had sims that have never had a job and have made every simoleon by picking up rocks, playing guitar, and selling random things they found in the dumpsters around town. That’s the great thing about it, you get more freedom to do what you want.
Sims 3 has the most hours played in my steam library, but I haven't played it recently. I seem to go in cycles where it's all I'll play for a few weeks, and then I won't touch it for several months, and then I'll come back to it again. It's a great game to have mindless fun in, and last I checked, the mod community was still going strong.
My first experience with the Sims was jumping behind a random computer at some kind of event that was running the Sims 1. Most of the family had just died because the previous person behind the PC had let the house burn down. Needless to say, I was a bit confused. I’ve played the Sims quite a bit after that, and I honestly like messing around with it.
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game without cheating a lot of money. I don’t like that the Sims that I made have to go off to work or school, so usually I just build a big fence around the property to keep them all there. From there on it used to devolve into chaos when I was younger. Building huge mazes to access basic necessities, launching fireworks indoors, etc. Nowadays im a bit more behaved though.
Imo the Sims 4 is the best nowadays. The older ones are showing their age. That being said, the Sims 4 is definitely in need of some competition. It’s inexcusably buggy sometimes, and I personally think there’s a lot more that can be done with a game like this. Hopefully the upcoming competitors can spark some fire into this genre.
The Sims 2 Castaway is basically the proto survival crafting game. It’s kinda cool to see the classic Sim stats get used in such a different way. I sometimes wish EA would return to those days of selling spinoff Sim games like Castaway and the Urbz, rather than just dumping every single new idea they get into one game as DLC.
I liked 1 but played so much sims 2 back when I was in school. It is still really relaxing for me, so from time to time I come back and build a house with a crazy family in it.
I think original Sims made the biggest impact on me since I probably played that one the most. Our PC couldn’t handle The Sims 2 when it came out, and I only tangentially tried 3 and 4. Mostly enough to build a cool house and spend a few days with the Sims I created. Sims 1 I probably poured a ton of hours into it.
One thing I did discover and never fully completed in the later games was trying to do some sort of haunted house family. As in, have someone move in and intentionally die in a way that created a new color of ghost. Get all of the different ghost colors in one house/lot then move a normal family in. I don’t think it really mattered in any way, I just loved the idea of a regular family cohabitating with a rainbow of ghosts.
There’s something both so unique and also so simple to the Sims that I’m surprised it’s taken this long for folks to try and “go for it” the way Cities:Skylines went for Sim City. Like, you have to craft interesting stories within the game but you don’t need to wholecloth invent a galactic empire/fantasy world/etc…you can broadly look at our world and copy/paste for inspiration. With Paralives and Life By You “coming soon” in some fashion, there’s going to be some interesting competition here.
This might be my first PC gaming experience. My niece had this game and when I came to visit we would play it together and build houses and stuff. I have really fond memories of the first game and some of its expansions (vacation and night-life, also pets if I remember correctly?).
I somehow completely skipped The Sims 2, but by the time The Sims 3 released, I was extremely hyped. It is the only time in my life I bought a collector’s edition. It had a USB key chain in the shape of the green diamond! I remember really enjoying it and especially loving the music and the vibes it brought.
I also had a Sims game on Game Boy Advance (with cats and dogs) and one on Nintendo DS (on a lost island). Both were really fun!
Half-Life was my introduction to FPS gaming; I loved every game in the series that I had the pleasure to play - Half-Life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 (Lost Coast, Episode One, Episode 2). I never got round to playing Alyx; I didn’t have hardware that would cope!
Half-Life also spawned the CounterStrike series; I sank way to many hours into them.
My favourite game remains the original; I enjoyed the narrative and the occasional puzzle. I purchased the upgraded graphics pack (which also fixed a few glitches) and prefer the original with this pack to the remastered version of the game (Half-Life: Source).
I love the dragon age series, my favourite RPG games by far. I honestly think inquisition was my favourite game of the series so far and has a lot of replay ability. I can say enough good things about this series the combat, story, characters, crafting, I absolutely love these games. I’m hyped for dreadwolf.
For anybody playing this for the first time, an important piece of advice:
Don’t be a completionist. Leave areas before you’ve done everything in them and don’t do any side quests you’re not interested in.
It’s my least favorite Dragon Age but it got a lot more hate than it deserved because other open world games trained people to play it the boringest way possible.
Interesting. So the side content is mostly uninteresting, I take it?
I still have only played DA:O, which I really liked. I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?
Not in the sense where they failed to make it interesting, more in the Breath of the Wild type philosophy where any side-content you do is indirectly progress toward the main goal so there’s a mix of things of varying levels of interestingness in all directions. You have an organization that raises in “power” or whatever they call those points whenever you do a side quest and you need to bank up certain amounts of those power points to do the next story mission or unlock the next region. That progression is paced in such a way that you simply don’t need to do most things.
Many quests are genuinely interesting but other ones are just filler. And some filler between good quests is inoffensive, maybe even a refreshing little diversion. One generic filler side quest is essentially “stand next to this portal and kill all the ghosts that come out of it”. Doing that once in a while is okay, doing it as many times as there are portals to find is torture.
I still haven’t played the sequels, would you say they’re still worthwhile or is it for the best to leave the story at the end of Origins?
The short version of that answer is that the sequels do not have what you love about the original but you might also like them for the different things that they are.
Awakening feels less like a sequel (technically an optionally standalone expansion but I’m counting it) and more like a fan mod. It’s nerdier, sillier, edgier, and has that high-effort mod habit of adding concepts that should logically be new mechanics but are executed by old ones because you’re doing it on minimal skill and zero budget. I think that’s a pretty cute vibe but it’s fundamentally just Origins again but worse.
2 has high highs and low lows and, while I personally love it, it’s negative general reception is very fairly earned. The thing that it was trying to do in the first place, story-wise, is something that would already have been divisive even if the rest of the game were flawlessly executed and it was emphatically not flawlessly executed. The simplest way I can describe it is that it is not a story about an adventure, it’s a story about a place. You do not leave that place, you just stay there over the course of several years and experience the historically significant events that are happening there. So the narrative focus for you as a protagonist is on how you feel about things rather than what you’re accomplishing.
Inquisition, conversely, is the least interesting one from a conceptual standpoint but, like, it’s competent from a technical standpoint and the harsh criticisms you tend to hear usually stem from misunderstandings about its design rather than the lack of creative ambition. There’s another new evil horde and you’re another special dude who’s the only one who can stop them and now you’ve got a personal army instead of being an underdog. There’s more political conflict than the first game but the politics are less complex. Ultimately, though, I think the most important factor of any open world game is simply the degree to which you want to spend time in that world regardless of what it is you’re actually doing and it’s an interesting enough world to spend some time in. Certainly, it’s worth trying for free.
Thank you for the extremely comprehensive run-down! I don’t think I’ve ever had it laid out so clearly before.
I think I’ll keep them on my tentative “to-do” list, but maybe not at the highest priority. I loved Origins but with how it ends I don’t have a super pressing need to continue the story immediately. There are so many good games out there, and more keep being released. It’s hard to find time for all of them. I’m really looking forward to Hellblade 2 next.
I think I will get around to them at some point, though. Exporting my save through all three games and seeing callbacks and consequences does sound interesting, and I’ve heard that is something that does happen.
My opinion is that Inquistion is the best of them. Story wise and characters are far better. Even though there are a number of returning characters, they are fleshed out and have more memorable scenes.
The downside to it is the gameplay can be arduous and taking on every side quest can feel like a fruitless endeavour.
HL2 is probably the game I’ve replayed the most. It’s just as amazing every time.
When I played it for the first time almost 20 years ago (gosh!) I expected all games would have this level of immersion onward. It was such a leap forward. Things I normally could expect from the real world applied to HL2 as well.
Oh, there’s roller mines hurtling towards me? Obviously I’m supposed to throw them down the cliff using my gravity gun. No explanation from the game about this. It just felt like I would do the same in the real world.
Is this immersion the future of gaming? I can’t wait to see what the future will bring!
Turns out 20 years later that HL2 was a one of a kind game. Other games might have better graphics and physics, but no game is HL2.
The graphics still impress me. It’s like the effects in Jurassic Park in that, while the overall tech has improved by leaps and bounds, the execution is so good that it still dazzles.
The original graphics, physics, and performance were incredible for the time, but to be fair, that’s not what you’re running when you download HL2 on steam today. The textures have been silently updated many times over the years. Your mind’s eye says “yeah, this is how I remember it”, and I’ve seen multiple streamers playing it for the first time thinking they’re seeing the original textures from 2004.
It does everything through clever game design, nothing takes you out of the game. No cut scenes or text popping up or freezing everything while dialogue is going on. You’re just in that world.
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