Or puzzles that are completely esoteric or unintuitive. Just replayed some of the Myst games, and it’s like “oh ok I was stuck on this for 30min because the lever was on the other side of the map and there was literally no indication that it was related”. That’s just artificially inflating your game’s difficulty, and it’s lazy puzzle making. Boooo
I love fast travel, warp gates, teleporting and anything that makes it easier and faster for me to get from Point A to Point B.
“Scenery is pretty.” Don’t care.
“Look at the extra content.” I’ll look if I want to. Don’t force it.
While I enjoy casual and relaxed games, taking forever to walk to where I want to go is neither casual nor relaxed. I wanna be where I wanna be in game and don’t pad on the gameplay hours with slow transport options.
I hate when folks ask for this and assholes say “people will just use this to save scum, don’t cheat.” As if working adults with children should be able to dedicate a whole hour totally uninterrupted.
Also, who cares? It’s your game; play it however you like. I mean, isn’t the whole reason why people play video games is to have fun? If save scumming is your idea of fun, I say scum away.
The problem being that a lot of people don’t actually know what it is that will make them happy. Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy. Being to save the game state at any point makes a lot of games much too easy to be any fun. And while you might argue “well just don’t save all the time,” people are also bad at creating their own handicaps to increase fun.
Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization (see: OSRS Ultimate Ironman) but by and large there’s a reason why the most popular kind of games are set up the way they are.
You ever play Monopoly Go? Straight-up not fun because it’s basically impossible to lose.
Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy
That’s how you feel about it, though, not an objective thing everybody feels the same about. I absolutely cheat whenever I’m finding a game too difficult, and I assure you, I’m still enjoying the game. I don’t know what people get out of what I find to be the extremely infuriating act of repeatedly failing over and over until I finally get it right, but I have not ever felt the sense of accomplishment I’m told I should feel after finally beating something I struggled with. I feel angry and like I wasted a bunch of time when I could have been enjoying something more fun.
I’m just trying to have a good time, not compete with myself or prove that I can learn just the right way and right time to hit certain button combos or whatever.
The too-easy levels of notfun are very far away from the too-hard levels of notfun.
Different games are for different styles of fun and for different people. Heck, some games are more like walk-through stories than actual games. If the game is too hard for you to enjoy, then that game just isn’t for you, that’s all. Let other people have their difficult games and find a different one to enjoy. When I played Monopoly Go and found it boringly easy, I didn’t complain that they should make it harder so I could enjoy it, I just recognized that I wasn’t the kind of player they were targeting and found something else to play.
These are subjective statements though and different people want different things. And difficulty variation can broaden the audience while not really changing the game. Sometimes I love a fight. Sometimes I want a story. Sometimes I want to couch coop with my youngest kid and he struggles with some games that he otherwise loves (looking at you Cuphead) that an easier mode would totally fix. And he absolutely loves Sonic, but the originals would be unplayable for him if not for modern saving and non permadeath. Or emulation with save states and cheat codes.
Why are you trying to convince people that if a game is too difficult or long periods between saving doesn’t work for them then it is their fault and not that of the game design. That’s a weird stance to take. If someone designed a car that was generally very nice but with the gear shift next to the passenger seat door, would you say that is just a car for people with super long arms or would you say that was a poor design choice that is going to massively limit an otherwise nice car?
This is more like you complaining that some cars don’t come with automatic transmission options. Sorry buddy, some of us like sports cars and having an automatic transmission option would devalue the very concept of what that particular car is.
I still haven’t beaten Super Mario Brothers. I’ve gotten very close, but I choked on the final Bowser multiple times. I’m not mad at Nintendo for that. I’m not even mad at myself for that. I had loads of fun playing Super Mario Brothers and being able to save would lower the value of the game.
I don’t understand why you’re insistent that all games need to cater to your desired difficulty level. Some games are made for you, some games are made for other people. Chasing the widest audience possible is how you end up with bland art, be it games, movies, social media platforms, or any other thing people enjoy.
Look, you said it yourself. Different people want different things, and what some people want is fundamentally incompatible with what you want. So, you get a different set of games than they get.
This seems to act like games and their default difficulty options are commandments carved in stone when they’re not. If I find a game to difficulty to enjoy and then find it enjoyable by cheating, that’s what I’m gonna do.
I know what will make me happy and it’s not being forced to sit for a full hour through a rogue like just because of whiny goobers complaining to the devs so they don’t implement save and quit.
Dishonored was the first thing that came to mind when I read the title, too. OP, if you haven’t played it, check it out!
As for others…
Skyrim and Fallout aren’t exactly deep stealth games, but stealth is hands down the most popular and arguably most fun way to play. Sneaky archer is a freaking meme.
Far Cry games all favour stealth as well. While you’re totally allowed to go in guns a blazing and it’s frankly more effective sometimes, the game does reward stealth and is clearly designed with it in mind. Silencers are magic, you can distract enemies, can lure wildlife to attack, smoke bombs, knife combos, “death from above”, etc.
The Metro series isn’t entirely stealth, but a lot of human enemy sections are meant to be done with stealth and I recall it being actually very difficult if you’re not stealthy (you die fast). I also recall the stealth feeling more realistic in terms of detection time. Finally, there’s something extra fun about being stealthy in a very dark post apocalyptic subway tunnel. Much better atmosphere for it!
As a final side note, the way OP described assassin’s Creed sounds like the older games. They might like some of the “middle” games like Unity more. The games that came just before Origins (Origins and later are very fun games, but the stealth is no longer the focus).
I don't quite remember how I played Metro 2033, but I do know that I played so much with Metro Last Light to get that stupid 'kill no humans' achievement that whenever I play it now I can practically zoom through most areas with stealth. Same way with Dishonored. Both great games, I love revisiting them from time to time.
With dishonored I wanted to be the ultimate ninja that leave no trace and had a lot of fun doing a clean hands ghost run. So challenging though, since I didn’t know if I had been detected until the end of each stage when they show you your performance.
I disliked Dishonored because the game tells you not to kill too many people or bad things will happen and then proceeds to make most of the items and abilities for killing people. You can kill some people, but it’s not clear exactly how many each level. I wasn’t really interested in spending tens of hours playing a game only to be told that I was a bad person who gets the bad ending. As a result I kept killing to a minimum and missed out on or barely used a huge portion of the items and abilities. Seemed like questionable game design.
Prey was great though. Not sure if I’d call it a stealth game, however.
The game doesn’t really want you to spare enemies. It’s just that there are 3 different ways to play the game and 3 different flavors of the story : low, mid and high chaos. I think you should feel free to massacre everyone, and then maybe start over a new game and try lower chaos !
A short 2D Collectathon in the style of 5th Generation games of the genre. Jump into a 2D world and explore, solve puzzles and overcome challenges to collect gears to take you higher. A beautiful art style and soundtrack make me wonder why this wasn’t talked about more when it came out earlier this year
Bopl Battle is a hilarious party game for up to 4 people. The rounds go really quick so it’s a great game to play with friends when you have a limited amount of time, but the fun doesn’t wear out fast either.
Had to downvote, but the game is great. I play it with my kids and it is reliably hilarious. There are so many interactions that something surprising happens with amazing regularity.
Achron A RTS with time travel. You can actually send troops and orders in the past to change the outcome of the battle. youtu.be/b6YYWCW1wVs?si=UfuVQX0j4c8fFIkZ
It’s a shame it never got big. The time travel mechanic is awesome.
It did pop up in my feed when it was in development. I think the time travel is neat in concept but just becomes too hard to wrap one’s head around - and from what I remember, the core RTS elements were a bit lacking.
The core RTS is very standard like the first command and conquer. The visual were a bit lacking not becaus ugly but hard to differentiate between untis when in the heat of battle. The single player mission is like a large training. And I kept getting destroyed by the AI even on easy.
I might give it a try again to play with my son, now that he is old enough. It’s really the time travel that should be revived by a bigger or more experienced studio. Lots of potential in there.
Surprised to only see this mentioned a couple of times in here. This and the sequel are probably the two games I would recommend everyone play, gamers and non-gamers alike. They’re just that good and easy to get into from a controls perspective.
If I’m going to recommend old games, it’ll be mostly games from the age of Intel Pentium 3, before all this newfangled multi core stuff they’re up to these days. Anything that comes after that is someone else’s to go to bat to. Heck I was playing Doom for a few years at a cousin’s house before we had our family computer in 98
I was going to say “ahh, too bad the Internet isn’t really helpful for that method of learning”, but with AI who knows, maybe that’ll be something your computer can do before too long
I don’t really understand your comment - sorry! - but I’ve played some games with the plasma deck and I still have to understand how to play exactly with it, I do good-ish at first but after a few rounds/first boss I do so little numbers and I can’t win, having someone watching what I do wrong and telling me would be great
For plasma specifically I’d focus on high additive chip jokers. While that’s normally bad advice, consider how crazy good a card with +50 mult on it would be. Now consider that a +100 chip joker is effectively a +50 chip/+50 mult (I know that’s not technically true but I’m illustrating a point). Also eventually you do hit a point of diminishing returns because plasma prevents you from having a super high multiplier or chips, so like every build, total score multipliers are the best
The one who played it before me said it was best to get the X multi jokers so I always ignored the + multi ones and even the X multi final score… I tried but I don’t exactly know which ones do that. I should try with what you said and see if it works, thanks! Which poker hand is better with it?
It’s hard to offer strong heuristics for Balatro because you could theoretically build up to a point where you’ve got a crazy high multiplier but if your chips are low it doesn’t matter.
For example let’s say you’ve got a face card 4 of a kind build going with: Pareidolia, Zany, Smiley, Trio, and Family jokers. These give you (respectively) all cards are face cards, +12 mult for 3 of a kind, +20 mult for each hand (all cards are face cards), x3 mult, x4 mult for a total of 384 multiplier! On base 4 of a kind this is
60x([7+12+20]x3x4)=28,080
However if you were to drop smiley face (+5 mult per face) for scary face (+30 chips per face card) which by almost every heuristic is a bad decision your score becomes:
(60+120)x([7+12]x3x4)=41,040
Which is a way bigger score!
So while people can offer general advice like stack high chips on plasma, always go for total score multipliers, etc. sometimes you just have to evaluate your specific build and figure out the best play
Finally outside of decks like abandoned and checkered which are specifically made to get certain hands, there isn’t a “best” hand to go for. The highest possible scores I’ve seen all come from high card builds but most normal players won’t get those. I’ve won two of a kind runs, flush 5 runs, straight runs, flush runs. You just have to evaluate your deck and tarot cards to see your options
This is interesting to know since I would love to win at least one game with plasma since people said it the funniest deck but for some reasons I can’t get past ante 2/3. I’m going to try to play a game or 2 trying to buy chip jokers and tarots hoping for the best, I do really need to understand better jokers and synergies between them
Well, you must have already got quite a bit of experienge then, since that one get unlocked after the second most difficult stake, right? Have you tried focusing on chips, instead of mult? Chips are way easier to raise.
With the plasma deck you don’t need to balance the chips with multiplier, as it does that for you. So what you want to do is to go all in on either chips or multiplier. Usually it’s easier to get chips bonuses early, and then, when you have the opportunity, to pivot into massive multiplier multiples. Or just keep going with chips, if you have enough levels on your main hand - that might be enough to get you through ante 8 on lower stakes
Generally some good advice is that Balatro is a math game first and foremost so you want to focus on things that raise your score the quickest. So adding chips is ok, adding multiplier is better, and multiplying your total is the best.
For example let’s say you are playing straights and you have a 10-6 with level 3 straights. So you’d have:
10+9+8+7+6=40
(40+90)x10=1300
So let’s compare how jokers impact that score:
Devious joker: +100 chips if you have a straight
(40+90+100)x10=2300
Crazy joker: +12 mult if you have a straight
(40+90)x(10+12)=2860
The order: x3 mult if you have a straight
(40+90)x(10x3)=3900
You can see those are very big differences! It’s also helpful to pay attention to the order of your cards. Generally Balatro cards are scored left to right. The most important thing is to take any card that multiplies any part of your score on the right so you can add as much to the score as possible, then you multiply that number
So in short: multiplier jokers are best, additive multiplier jokers are good, additive chip jokers are ok, and pay attention to the order of your jokers/played cards
This is basically correct but i would add sometimes it’s better to add chips than to add mult. For example, if your score is something like:
<span style="color:#323232;">10 x 50 = 500
</span>
Adding +50 mult here would give you 10x100=1000 points. Adding +50 chips will give you 60x50=3000 points.
Adding to the lowest of the two numbers improves your score the most. Especially early game, mult is much lower than chips, so you want to improve mult. However once you have some good mult jokers improving chips becomes important. Especially in high card based decks, where you get very few chips from your hand.
If the multiplier jokers come in, the picture can change again. It makes adding mult more valuable because the addition will be multiplied.
One thing to watch out for though, is that if you focus exclusively on mult, eventually the scale tips and chips become more valuable.
You’re always ultimately doing c * m, chips times mult, right? Increasing c by 1 increases your total by…
(c+1)*m - (c*m) = (c + 1 - c) * m = m
And vice versa for increasing m by 1. So, whichever is higher - your total mult or total chips - you should increase the other one. Usually this means increase mult, but building a bit multiplier can quickly make it outpace your chips for some hands.
Elden Ring is the best one for beginners, because if you get stuck at a boss you can just leave that area and go somewhere else. You are very rarely ever “stuck”. That is not the case with any of the other Soulsborne games.
In addition, it has spirit summons which make the game significantly easier.
And since it’s the newest one AND has a DLC coming out soon, it’s also the most played one right now. So finding other players for co-op is easy.
I also consider the bosses, on the whole, to be the easiest of all of the FROM Software games.
I second this, one of my good friends only started gaming over covid. We were all hardcore souls players and helped her get through bloodborne and ds3 but she was basically just letting us handle most of the fighting. But when ER came out she got really into it and has played through solo several times. From Software took a lot of the pain points out of the format while keeping it challenging and fresh. Elden ring also has great online, I wasn’t a huge fan of the game (I prefer Bloodborne, Sekiro and AC 6) just I spent hundreds of hours just running around the Lands Between with my friends during covid.
Yeah you’re right. I forgot to mention that with Elden Ring, FROM smoothed away a lot of the rough edges of the older games. And because of that it is much easier to get into for newer players. I’m glad you friend enjoyed it.
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