sorry, should have clarified it more: In Sniper Elite 4/5 you can play the campaign in 2 player coop. I have not played The Saboteur so I don’t know about that one…
I suggested we play Sniper Elite 4 to my girlfriend recently. She’s not usually one for shooter games (she’s more of a Stardew Valley/Animal Crossing/Cozy Grove/Coral Island type of gamer), and I wasn’t sure she’d like it. She thought she wouldn’t, but she’s happy to try out a suggestion of mine every once in a while even if she thinks we won’t play it much.
We loaded into San Cellini island and she initially struggled with the controls and how to aim and shoot. The gravity and wind effects weren’t super easy to grasp either (she’s on the Steam Deck as well, making it slightly harder to aim too). She accidentally shot a couple times as I was giving her a quick tutorial, which attracted a Nazi soldier to investigate and try and shoot her (which scared her a bit as she got hit). Off to a rocky start, and I could tell she wasn’t enjoying it at all.
We got to the first tower, where the game gives you a pretty good view of the area and lets you fairly securely shoot a bunch of Nazi soldiers. Time to shoot! Here we learned she gets a bit jumpscared if the game suddenly shows you a slow-motion killcam, especially if I was the one triggering it. Again, not a great start for her.
She struggled, but did hit a couple of them. Then on the 3rd or 4th kill, the game showed her the magic words after the kill: “TESTICLE SHOT”. This caught her completely off guard, immediately exclaiming “WAIT DOES THAT MEAN I SHOT HIS BALLS OFF?!”. I have never witnessed her doing a complete 180 degrees turn on her opinion of a game. Suddenly the game became extremely enjoyable for her. The first time she had a killcam where she could see the Nazi balls pop one after the other was like giving her crack cocaine or something. Total bloodlust.
We’ve played through the entire campaign in a span of two weeks, then the DLC, the overwatch missions (twice to play both roles) and now the survival maps. Every evening after dinner she asks if we can “shoot more Nazi balls”. Her spirit animal is Hugo Stiglitz at this point.
Just, uh, be careful if she shows a sudden interest in certain “relationship aids” just in case it was less about what the balls were attached to than the pure act itself
Throwing Elite Dangerous in there as well. The learning curve is steep, and story is not driven by anything but you. But oh my god does it satisfy that “fuuuuck space is so big” feeling. The one thing that was fun in Starfield was the gunplay, which is the only thing missing in vanilla Elite, but they have an expansion that adds that. I haven’t played Odyssey, but supposedly it has gotten much better over the years.
You have to read the news in game. There is an evolving story line about the thargoids invading known space. There are new colonies that are being formed hundreds of light years from known space that need protection and supplies. There are communities like the fuel rats that are constantly coming to the rescue of stranded explorers. It’s a really big, open, beautiful galaxy that has a lot going on. It’s a shame it always gets overlooked because you have to search the story out instead of it being served to you on a platter by npc and cutscenes. Don’t get me wrong, I looooove a good story driven game. Elite is probably, in my little opinion, the best execution of a true open world game. You just have to really search for the story, and I can see how that could be a barrier for entry for a lot of people.
Adding to the other comment, I feel like you can get a taste for all that by visiting the game’s subreddit. Seeing all the cool things people do and how the community moves the story forward really motivates me to play the game. I guess you could also watch a youtube video to get up to date on the story and different ways to play the game.
It is a great game but you really do need to look stuff up to fully enjoy it, unfortunately. Also, space trucking is only one way to play it.
The E:D devs shit in every existing player’s mouth when the first paid expansion dropped, and they’ve never fixed their abusive pricing model. You’re actively punished for being a legacy user.
I probably would have bitten the bullet and kept playing if the game wasn’t incredibly shallow, though. Somehow it manages to still be that way after several content expansions… Everything is a novelty that gets repetitive the second time you do it, and the variance between systems is frankly embarrassing. PvP is the only facet that has any real replay value, and I’d rather dogfight in Star Citizen.
Everspace 2 (first one was a rogue like, you don’t need to play it to enjoy the sequel)
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (also a sequel, the first one doesn’t have a Y axys so you may not like it)
Chorus
All three are a lot of fun, neither are AAA games so they lack a bit of polish but aren’t vanilla as hell either. I enjoyed each one better than Starfield but neither as much as ME 1-3.
Cowboys in space is not my favourite trope, but I’ve heard good things about the first Rebel Galaxy. How was the switch from 2D combat to 3D combat in the sequel? (And is the story any good?)
Binding of Isaac is some OG classic stuff if you haven’t played that one, and Neon Abyss is a fun side-scrolling game on a similar vibe. Rogue Legacy 1 (very OG) and 2 and Dead Cells are also side scrolling , with a dash of Metroidvania.
If you like Slay the Spire, Astrea is the same thing but with dice, and Monster Train also scratches the same itch.
So, most of my recommendations are going to be FPS or first person. For Valve related stuff:
Half-Life 2 is pretty much a must have along with Episodes 1 and 2.
Black Mesa is a remake of the original.
Entropy : Zero 2 is a fantastic fan made mod that’s a good follow up after finishing Half-Life 2 and the episodes.
The original Entropy : Zero is pretty good, but the default difficulty is hard as hell.
Portal 1 and 2 are also a must have
Portal: Revolution is an independent mod that’s a good follow up after 2.
As for non-Valve games and related:
Crab Champions - fast paced, third-person, rogue-like shooter.
Talos Principle 1 and 2 - first-person puzzles with a serious philosophical scifi story. It actually gets a bit heavy when it discusses mortality and death. 1 is being remade into a “definitive edition”.
Untitled Goose Game - Honk!
Gnorp Apologue - fun little game
Pineapple on pizza - it’s free. I would describe it as games-as-art.
Any of the Serious Sam games. They were made for PC.
Fallen Aces is still in early access, but a good story driven retro FPS with sprites and multiple ways of navigating each level.
Trepang2 - a bit of an odd FPS with bullet time.
Roboquest - rogue like FPS
Exit 8 - horror walking simulator. Kinda short once you figure it out.
APE OUT - Ape smash! Top down “shooter”.
Hotline Miami 1 and 2 - top down shooters with fast deaths and excellent soundtracks
The Binding of Isaac - has always been popular if a little dated
Gunpoint - stealth puzzle third person. Came out a decade ago, but a good game.
Party Hard - little indie murder-everyone-and-don’t-get-caught.
The Stanley Parable - walking simulator with some interesting dialog and interactions. 9-to-5 office people can relate.
Dusk - awesome boomer shooter
Antichamber - came out a decade ago, but it’s mind bending first-person puzzles.
Hades and Hades 2 which is in early access. Third person isometric rogue-like.
The Invincible - Story driven walking simulator based off the book of the same name. Good story.
Firewatch - story driven walking simulator
Deep Rock Galactic - wasn’t my pint of beer, but a lot of people like it.
It was the first game I was gifted! My second recommendation is “I Love You Colonel Sanders!: A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator”. Who needs more satisfaction than that?
To this day, if I turn to my best friend and say “sup”, his response will either be “Oh, not much, just… keeping it real.” or just “Word.” Vice versa as well.
These are the exact responses Seaman gives, which we deliver with proper intonation and all.
Running counts! Also treadmills or walking pads, as long as you have your phone in your pocket.
Smart watches are not supported yet, but coming. Smart watch support would already work great on iOS, but we’re held up by Google with it as they introduced Health Connect for smart watch integrations and it’s a buggy mess at the moment. Google Fit APIs (that would’ve worked nicely) are deprecated.
OG FFVII is full of minigames. I don’t think rebirth has more than the OG, also it’s like half of the game not a third (the last disc is just the final dungeon, and the second disc is not as long as the first).
When the OG does a minigame it’s often a one and done thing. Rebirth madness it feel like more because you can go back and do more of each minigame with increasing difficulties etc.
I think subsystems just lend very well to JRPGs because they’re often trying to create a world, and adding such to their games makes their worlds feel more full. I also think the Japanese do their game development different to the west most of the time. Since a lot of these minigames are made because developers have finished the parts of the main game they were working on so they mess around trying to make something new and fun that might be able to be tacked on as an extra.
I’ve been playing a Half-Life mod called Sven Coop since 1999. I play almost daily, if only for a half an hour when I get home to unwind. Multiple server owners have given me admin rights to help manage their servers so sometimes I’m just there to kick griefers or change levels that are broken so people don’t leave. There are many thousands of user made levels. People are still making them. The mod is still getting updated. Just did actually.
It wasn’t added to Steam until 2016. So there was no way for me to track play hours until then. Since 2016 it shows that I have a little over 3000 hours. And I used to play more before I became an adult and had to do adult things. So I can only imagine what my total hours are.
10,000 hours? And that’s probably conservative.
I will have been playing regularly for 26 years this January.
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