A lot of good recommendations in here, some I’ve played, some I’m adding to my list!
I’ll share one that I haven’t seen in the thread yet: Crypt Custodian. You play as a ghost cat sentenced to clean garbage in the afterlife. Good mix of exploration and combat. I personally hate when combat keeps me from progressing in a story, so I like that they have Easy/Normal/Hard modes but that you can also further customize assists, like adding up to 3 extra hit points. You can also buy a market to show you the next place to go when you’re feeling stuck. Very good cozy-gamer territory.
The story wasn’t overly complex, but very sweet–the ending made me cry. I loved elements of the story like one of the bosses being the personification of grief.
I played it on XBox Game Pass, but it was worth paying for.
I do this so much by accident in desktop mode on the Steamdeck with a Steam controller. I dunno why big picture mode is apparently bound to pressing the Steam button on the controller (not every time, just sometimes!), but why is it even bound to anything when I’ve just switched intentionally to desktop mode? Why would I switch away from gaming mode just to enable big picture? What’s the use case that they’re catering to here by making it so easy to accidentally be in this situation?
Anyhow, pretty amazing that this minor annoyance is almost the only thing to complain about with my Steamdeck experience. Best gaming console I’ve ever had.
They kept rebalancing to chase the hardcore PvPers wants who ended up leaving anyways, started getting pushy with their microtransactions/battle pass (that were added in an update), and they added their Funcom launcher in an update.
Above all of that is there are still some ugly persistent bugs that have been huge problems for years now, many involving thralls which are pretty much required for late game content.
I won’t say Funcom did the worst job or anything that far, but they definitely put me in a ‘wait and see’ state for at least the first few major patches, as that will show what direction they want to take the game and who they’re focusing on for feedback.
edit: I mean on PC when you’re not using a controller, it definitely has a use.
though tbh I don’t think the UI design is that great tbh. The switches homepage is better imo
If you like space dogfighter sims, try Chorus. You can score it super cheap on sales and I think it’s a solid 6/10. Combat is fun and it’s nice to look at. Unfortunately the story has terrible pacing and kinda doesn’t make sense at times. Also, the missions get kinda repetitive. These two things really held it back for me, otherwise it’s a fairly good game.
Another, if you like top down shooters, is Subterrain. Doesn’t always go on sale, but when it does it’s dirt cheap because it’s like 10 years old at this point. It’s got some weird survival mechanics that I think are kinda pointless, but the gameplay and story were enough to keep me mildly entertained. I’d call this a “potato chip” type game. Not particularly good, but somehow kind of satisfying if you don’t think too much about it. Definitely a 6/10.
On another note, what’s y’all’s stance on the association that 5/10 = bad? I feel like it’s because people equate it to being 50% and associate that with bad due to school grades. I see it as an average score and when I give something a 5 or 6, that means I’m neutral to slightly positive feeling about it.
I don’t think a 5/10 game is necessarily bad, but it needs to have some kind of - I dont know, character? Niche appeal? - to shine for the players who are going to like it.
I’ll throw out Krater as an example. It’s not great, but it has a unique setting, great atmosphere, and some interesting ideas driving it. I kinda love it for its eccentricities in spite of the overall experience being a bit meh.
I remember Krater! I played it for a while and I liked the atmosphere, but I only got so far before I saw how… 1-dimensional it was?
I don’t know how exactly to put it into words, but some games that aren’t so good I have a “see behind the curtain” moment. Once that happens I tend to quickly get turned off to a game because I feel like it’s not fun anymore. In Krater that happened when I realized that all the fights were essentially the same and equipment was all stat sticks with no unique qualities.
Pretty much what your characters did at the beginning of the game was what they did at mid game with no noteworthy changes. There were other characters you could sub in and that changed things up a little but the repetitiveness of it all really ruined it for me.
I agree that’s a really good example of a “meh” game and I think 5/10 is a very fair assessment.
I just saw it was added to PS+ the other day, and I am downloading it just because I loved Control. I wonder if it has M&KB support on PS5 tho, because I fucking suck ass with a controller in FPS games.
I did like Control, and I do like coop-shooters… but I would prefer some story campaign instead of few repeatable/grindable mission-types with minor run-to-run variance.
Overall, I’m definitely wanting to play through this to completion.
So, this game does have some story arc? Genuinely do want to know.
Not really. It’s something I meant to touch on yesterday (and knowing me I probably forgot to bring up) but there’s very little story outside of the basics.
Generally you’re just told what’s wrong and how to fix it. I’ve been hearing Sam Lake had not much to do with it and it was a way smaller team than usual, which yeah. I can see that for sure.
I generally avoid reviews until I have played something but I did see the reviews were mixed on Steam also, big fan of remedy too. Though maybe that’s skewing my perspective
I really enjoyed it as an XCOM combat-ish game that felt like there was work done to make it feel like it belongs in the Gears Of War universe. It’s not infinitely replayable because the campaign has mandatory side-missions that are generated from a limited template and begin to feel stale once you’ve seen all the templates, and by the endgame you have so many special abilities unlocked in your squad that it kind of drifts away from any semblance of feeling like combat tactics and into a puzzle game about min-maxing abilities to combo chain them together (this opinion might read a little oddly but if you’ve played enough turnbased tactical games you notice many game riding this line, with some going extreme one way or the other). It is worth a sale price though if you need a turn based combat fix.
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Aktywne