Yup. Steam is my go-to because of easy game steaming, steam deck integration, etc. But I know what I’m sacrificing for that convenience. Luckily Valve is an incredibly customer focused company and I have a huge amount of (well deserved IMO) faith in. GOG however is definitely still the best way to own your games.
A lot of things can cause “the mind to wander” and, frankly, I’m not a health professional but as a person who sometimes has trouble focusing I somewhat sympathize. There are times when I simply can’t sit down and enjoy myself, and there’s nothing that can be done about that. Usually times of high stress and anxiety.
But outside of those extreme cases, there’s generally a few things here and there that can help alleviate. The first, and maybe almost stupidly obvious one, is to do some of those tasks beforehand. I don’t have to stress about doing the dishes or paying the bills or returning a call if I just do it beforehand. Logging into the bank app is just 5 minutes, why worry about it otherwise.
Another is to get comfortable and shut yourself off. Leave your phone in a place you can’t reach from wherever you’re gaming (or watching a movie, or reading or studying. Your phone should actually be in a different room every time you don’t immediately need it) as well as any other electronic devices. Close the windows and doors, turn off your PC. Make it a bother to stop enjoying yourself.
Take a bathroom break (or if its in the evening, a shower+grooming) and maybe have a snack or a full meal. Have a bottle of water nearby. That crosses out basic biologic annoyances (until you need a pee break but that’s at least a healthy obstacle).
Exercise a bit. Sounds out there, but exhausting yourself physically isn’t only healthy, it also takes your mind off a lot of things. Since that’s a relatively boring activity that can also have your mind wander, have some podcasts handy, but something light and preferably with 2+ hosts so you can have several voices in your head that aren’t yours but also don’t need to follow a story or anything heavy. Going on a walk while listening to a 1 hour episode should be good enough (and something we all should do regardless of attention issues)
On the subject of podcasts, I’ve found that some games aren’t gripping enough to draw my attention or are repetitive enough that I don’t need to dedicate all of my attention to them, so I’ve dubbed them Podcast Games and do both at the same time. Roguelikes do very well in this regard, as well as management games, or anything that isn’t story heavy (or if the story blows) and where the sound isn’t exactly necessary.
And sometimes, ultimately, maybe you just aren’t really in the mood for a game. There are hobbies of mine that I enjoy, but don’t do much because I’m not “in the zone” as often, like reading or watching a TV series. So if gaming is like that for you, swap around and enjoy yourself, time spent doing something you like isn’t time wasted.
Optional: I’ve found that I’m much better at sitting down and watching a movie or a show when I have someone alongside me to chat up. Maybe having someone along to play/watch together, or simply streaming through Discord for a friend might be a solution. You’d be surprised at how many other people are also bored and would accept an invite to watch you play while chatting about their day.
The 2d platforming world and top-down world have smashed together. You control one hero from each dimension, who share the same space in the levels. You switch between platformer and top-down modes and must get both characters to the goal. The boss levels are hard but very cool, combining action and puzzles.
Also features local 2-player co-op and a generous assist mode.
Abiotic Factor has been really fun for my buddy and me. Especially with the new update that came out last week. It’s a Half Life themed survival game.
Others that get my vote:
Valheim - Norse mythology themed survival game with Playstationesque graphics
Phasmophobia - THE ghost hunting game(see also Ghost Exile, Ghost Exorcism Inc., Forewarned)
Left 4 Dead - the original Zombie FPS series (see also Back 4 Blood, it’s kinda alright) PILLS HERE!
Risk of Rain - Pretty tough shooter series
Stardew Valley - A modern Harvest Moon, farming/life sim
Don’t Starve Together - If you played Stardew valley in hell, but everyone’s name started with a W
Factorio/Satisfactory - Resource harvesting and logistics sims. One’s isometric, ones first person, one has zerg rushes
Grounded - Honey I Shrunk The Kids: the survival game
Deep Rock Galactic - Left 4 Dead for Dwarves. ROCK AND STONE!!!
Overcooked - cooking and serving game, lots of communication required
Portal 2 - First person puzzle game, also lots of communication required
Barotrauma - Submarine sim on Europa, requires marriage levels of communication
Binding of Isaac - Roguelike shooter that’s sort of Zelda inspired, multiplayer was a little janky last time I tried it, but that was a while ago
The Forest - Excellent horror survival series
Starbound - Terraria in space
Trine series - A modern Lost Vikings, side scrolling puzzles and platforming
Subnautica 2 - A beautiful and terrifying diving/exploration game, original game has a coop mod 8 years in development, but it’s been very buggy
Diablo - First and second games are still very solid experiences and there are some excellent mods out for both
Escape Simulator - Literally an escape room simulator. Has workshop support on steam for even more puzzles.
Green Hell - The Forest, but in the jungle, much more focus on the reality of being stranded in a place where just about everything is likely to kill you.
No Man’s Sky - Space/planetary exploration sim
Dead Island - another zombie FPS
Dying Light - a zombie game with parkour
20XX/30XX - Megaman X styled platformers with roguelite elements
GTFO - Extremely hard, stealth based, alien FPS
Most “Souls” games - Very fun coop summoning, if you don’t mind the sometimes extreme difficulty
Goat Simulator series - Goofy exploration games
Magicka series - Isometric action adventure games where you combine different elements to cast spells
Barony - a true roguelike FPS RPG, voxel based, very hard
Void Crew - Space sim, mission based, sort of Egyptian mythos themed, meant for up to 4 players but definitely possible with just 2
Human Fall Flat - Puzzle/exploration game
Half Dead series - Cube: the game
Orcs Must Die series - Tower defense
Dungeon Defenders series - also tower defense, but with class based
Secret of Mana - One of the first action JRPGS, the remake has drop in coop just like the original, but I believe it’s couch coop, so if you’re not right next to each other, you’ll need something like Parsec to play it
Have a ton more, but those are the ones I can recall having the most fun. Others have probably listed a bunch of them and I probably missed a few good ones, but hopefully a few of them are new.
You could always tinker with some emulators for some retro coop games!
The overcooked series is definitely fun and always comes up cheap on sales for like 3 bucks. It’s definitely one to add to any co-op rotation because it’s easy to learn but hard to execute so you’ll always be going back to get those extra stars you missed.
Note about Overcooked is that the new version that combines 1 & 2 (Overcooked All You Can Eat) seems to have major issues with online multiplayer that never got fixed. You’re better off just buying Overcooked 2.
I’m so nostalgia-driven, I can’t bring myself to play most MMOs because I feel like they’ll die and I’ll losev access to that “world”. If I knew that I could run a private server once the official ones shut down, it would completely change my outlook.
At the very least, a save game editor wouldn’t be too hard to create when running your own server.
Though that got me thinking if there’s some kind of GDPR shenanigans one could already utilize to get all your account data. I kind of doubt it, but it would be hilarious.
GDPR protects user data, not virtual data associated with an avatar you control. We might get there someday, but as of now, you’d only be able to request copies of stuff directly associated with yourself.
It’s funny because a lot of the things that bug you are immersion features that gamers of 20 years ago would be blown away by, regardless of how badly they were implemented. Goes to show how spoiled we are for immersive games these days. But interestingly, it sounds like RDR2 was less immersive for you because of those additional immersion features, because it always had little hitches that completely shattered your immersion. I guess realism has an uncanny valley in games - a game with more simulated elements also needs a higher degree of polish on those elements, as the errors become more obvious the closer you get to reality.
The game isn’t immersive to me because watching one button perform a 20 second interaction just isn’t engaging. Which to me is the forefront of the difference between “immersion” and “engagement”.
That on top of all the little frustrations that OP mentioned. Hitching your horse is a huge pain and takes you out of the moment every time, for example.
Tbh, the entirety of RDR2 feels like that to me. It’s been critically acclaimed as the most immersive game ever, but it just is so far from actually being that for me because of all of these little things that actively take away from it.
Overall, it’s fine. It’s not really a great game IMO, but a prolonged interactive story. The gameplay aspects are sporadic and mostly require you to mash the A button to keep your horse on the trail, else you don’t move along it. With the advertising and gamers both claiming it to be an immersive game, things like these really detract. I went in expecting a cinematic experience and came out of it with the saddest GTA jank and repetitive grinding for time sensitive unlocks.
Add in the senseless unskippable animal skinning and it just results in a good 70% of the game being unenjoyable for me. I played through the story, which was mostly pretty good, and the rest of the game was waiting to get to a destination to do one thing or see one event, then waiting til I got to the next destination. The gunplay is alright, the spontaneous events are funny, sometimes a little shallow but mostly are good. but man… I was disappointed with the game, as a game.
Of course, this is all my personal preference too. I just don’t find watching multiple extended cutscenes and multiple sub-scenes every few interactions. I don’t blame it all on these sorts of things, but I have a really hard time agreeing that it deserves the acclaim it’s gotten when these are pretty significant shortcomings for a game, specifically advertised to be immersive.
Sometimes you want to ride around on a horse and take on the sights, and it sure does to a good job at that. There’s some good tools and gunplay which are pretty fun to play with and… Well, that’s about where the fun ends.
Proton is steam’s compatibility tool, these “medals” basically indicate how well a game works through it. Platnium and gold mean work without troubleshooting. Silver means a little tinkering with settings. Bronze means it can work with effort, and borked means it just doesn’t work.
So, 84% working with 0 effort, and 11% working with light tinkering.
The post is kind of incomprehensible if you’re not already familiar with proton and the troubleshooting website proton DB.
i mean, basically everything works so long as it doesn’t use certain anti cheat systems. But knowing what they play would have been more useful for the sake of discussion.
yah, it’s a bummer, but most people who play games on PC aren’t playing such tittles. The current online player count for league is about 2.5 million as supposed to the total steam active player count of 25 million. A lot of people play league, but, like, it’s hardly a problem that everyone has.
I dunno, I haven’t been able to get Subnautica to work for some reason. It’s likely due to the games own spaghetti code barely being functional on the intended OS’s as is…
If they go off to form their own studio, they probably have to take out a business loan to pay themselves for the time being. Interest rates are high right now, and rent and food are both expensive. It’s a huge gamble to make a game and put it out on the assumption you’ll be able to pay back 6%+ interest on whatever you took out. Games are not a reliable money maker. Especially from new studios.
Even if you get some sort of deal with a publisher to fund your first endeavor, there will still be strings attached to that, and publishers are pretty tight with the purse strings right now.
Which means really the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.
the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.
So many Indie developers are making the mistake of thinking they’ll be the next [insert currently successful one-man dev here] and banking their careers and life savings on it. 99.999% of them are not.
Ain’t no way a brand new game studio is getting a loan at 6%. If they can even get a business loan at all (good luck!), it would be at a much higher interest rate due to the risk, and/or require assets to be held in collateral (only an option if you’re already wealthy to begin with…)
The themes, camera angle, and method of delivering rewards (loot) don’t really affect something being an action RPG or not. The focus on action over storytelling does.
I haven’t played Morrowind, but I hear that you can connect to an enemy with a hit, and then a die roll determines whether that actually happens. It seems to me that while such a feature would be good for making a character with their own unique strengths, it would be damaging to the immersion required to inhabit that character. Thus, immersion building features that make the character do what the player does, can easily be considered roleplaying features.
Slay the Spire is the gold standard for me, at least. I haven’t played Monster Train – it doesn’t look that appealing to me, but I’ve heard good things.
It’s very similar in some ways in the surface, but pretty different in essence. I like both. STS is more hardcore and “strict” and choices matter more, MT is more chill, relying on a single good combo usually, but with very high ceiling for broken fun things. I prefer MT more to unwind.
You say that, but I never made a spreadsheet to optimize my Slay the Spire runs. Balatro is way harder and more random.
Still fun though. I’m 50 hours into Balatro and loving every minute of it. Just made a hand calc spreadsheet last night as I’m pushing into blue stakes and need to optimize every move to keep the numbers going up.
Playing on the gold stake, I think I don’t make it past the first ante like 80% of the time. I might be too greedy or just bad at the game, but in StS I can make a decent run on ascension 20 at a much higher rate.
You should be able to play Flushes, Straights, or Full Houses and win in the first Ante without any buffs. Does the -1 hand size from Gold Stake really hurt that much?
Supergiant might not be 3 dudes in an apartment, but it’s still an indie studio. They do put an impressive amount of effort into their games though, I agree on that
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