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.
As a game studio - a developer rather than a publisher - it’s very much hand to mouth. You are paid by the publishers on delivery of milestones. Milestone reviews can sometimes be subjective. You’re basically the lowest link in the food chain and can be subject to a publisher’s whim, which can often be a bit random depending on your external producer. Keeping such a studio open in the long term is about chasing new contacts, and any gaps between contacts is expensive because you aren’t generating any income, but are having to pay wages. One or two project cancellations can easily shutter an independent developer.
In some cases studio owners may simply want out, or they might legitimately see a sale as bringing stability to the studio… Or it might just be greed. But I think it’s hard to say whether a studio would have a safer long term future being independent or being sold.
Uh… I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another… oh well… :)
Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it’s an exploration game, but what you’re exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.
Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that “huh?” factor where right until the end you’re not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?
Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.
Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).
Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you’re a robotic loader than can put down dots. That’s all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You’re attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.
Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you’re the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you’re up against and that all the corpses stay. It’s not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.
Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It’s 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You’re an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the “freaky alien attack” recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?
Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you’re digging underground for metal and for “lumen.” To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.
Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.
Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You’re a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the “SCP” universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won’t spread again.
Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you’re bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn’t grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.
Space Run - 2D base building. You’re a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don’t do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.
Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you’re just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species “gift” to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.
i’m not saying you didn’t run into quality posts on reddit, but this is the kind of post i see way more often here and it makes these spaces way more enjoyable.
nice work, definitely going to try a few of these out!
this is a great post. I do think the outer wilds description is a smidge spoilery. I know, people figure that out pretty quickly but it’s still a neat experience if going in blind
Angle the your nose down on a straightaway and you’ll see the speed indicator on the right get a red bar that’ll go up to a green light. When that light goes yellow, you can hit the boost key to go turbo.
(On keyboard, the defaults are the up arrow to angle down and shift to activate boost)
As a console gamer who loves tinkering with my pc, I can’t agree. As much as I love tinkering on PC, when I want to game I don’t want to setup anything or wonder if my computer can run a game.
As long as PC gaming isn’t giving you that for every game, they’ll be some kind of console market.
And as long as consoles remain cheaper than gaming systems. Sure, you can technically build a gaming computer for less than the cost of a PS5 or Series X, but the consoles will massively out-perform it.
Yeah I’m already annoyed because you have to choose between Fps and graphic fidelity on that generation, so I’d have a stroke in front of all the parameters you have on a pc😅
And yeah the price is a big plus on a console, especially if you only buy a few new games and buy second hand a lot.
Consoles are basically just pre built PCs with an OS dedicated to games. There will always be a huge audience that wants an easier to use purpose built device for games. The situation might change though with steam os getting better and allowing for PC games to compete with consoles on the same footing.
For starters: complete lack of features and user support. EGS gives you the game and basically no way to interact with the community around that game. They don’t support Linux, which is huge for some people, but also makes some peripherals like Steamdeck that operate on Linux entirely incompatible.
Because their user support is so bad, nobody really chooses EGS to buy/play games from, so Epic tries to take that choice away buy giving payouts to publishers to only let the game be on their store for six months or longer, meaning anyone who wants to play such a game has to come to them. This is also why you see a lot of free games, EGS trying to lure people to their “service”.
Which is where the real big problem comes in. Instead of user beneficial features, most of the storefront and game launcher is bloat ware that would rather show you more and more ads for other products on their store than let you get into the game you want to play. And if reports are true, advertising games already in your library. So they aren’t even trying to tailor a custom user experience, they are just blasting you with a bunch of shit till something sticks (or you uninstall)
There have also been allegations of EGS scanning personal computer files outside of its install directory, which is scummy enough on its own but its also transmitting that data back to their central server, which gets handed off to Tencent, the Chinese owned company that is a big investor in Epic and has their own history of scandal and anti consumer behavior. So if this all is happening, its hard to say just what data on your computer is behind handed off to Tencent and the Chinise Government because you wanted to play a silly game on an inferior game service.
On a separate note, with all these excuses maybe he’s not wanting to play it as much as you think he does. Or, the man is stuck in his ways and needs to read up on basic computer security. I guarantee Steam is keeping his cc info a lot more secure than his work probably handles his PII.
Oh that’s awesome, must not have read the GOG page carefully enough, thanks!
And on that other note, he’s the one that keeps bringing it up, he just wants my help to find the best way to get it for him. I agree he’s a bit stuck in his ways, he doesn’t use anything that needs his CC or address (unless my mom signs up for it first lol), and doesn’t like downloading anything that he’s not 100% trustworthy of.
Thanks for your help, I think GOG is the way to go!
It’s a pretty common mindset in the neurodiverse community. It’s partially based on black and white thinking, and partially based on a type of anxiety that causes a sense of pre-dread before doing almost anything, once you break through and actually start it, that type of anxiety goes away. To be replaced by whatever other types of anxiety the individual has, lol.
And of course with most of these it’s more accurate to say it’s a result of the trauma of growing up with these cognitive differences in a world where they aren’t standard.
It might be a bit frustrating trying to navigate his defenses, hopefully you end up getting it all worked out.
Lol, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s neurodivergent (I probably am too tbh), but I think it’s just more how he was raised and now he’s just too old to change his way, lol. He’s been a computer engineer since the 80’s and has been on the internet since about then. I think he’s just gone to too many security conferences and gotten a bit paranoid. Better to be too cautious than the other way around in my opinion. And to be clear, it’s not like he’s overly paranoid to the point of affecting his life, he just doesn’t like giving his info out online to places he doesn’t trust.
Hehe yeah sorry. It wasn’t just the credit card thing. The whole story there was like 10 different hints. I know alot of normal people and alot of neurodivergent people, and there are alot of parallels there, too many to be coincidence.
But I don’t get why so many people push back on it. Not only is it fine to be neurodivergent, but it’s not like you can change it by pretending you aren’t. This isn’t the olden days anymore, we know a ton of stuff now that can really help even getting diagnosed in your later years. Still always best to get the diagnosis before school, since the standard school experience causes alot of unnecessary grief. But the next best time is always “as soon as possible”. Many things can be un-done with surprisingly little effort when done the right way.
I know the old mentality is to not get a label so people won’t treat you different, but that is not at all how anything works anymore. Getting diagnosed is basically everyone’s favourite day of their life nowadays. It’s the turning point where their life finally started to make sense for them. And they “caught back up” to where they were always supposed to be.
Not everyone has to be neurodivergent to not want to use a credit card on the Internet - there have been plenty of leaks for this to be a valid stance. Also, let’s not forget about other countries where credit cards play basically no significant role in day to day payment activities and people view them as “oddities” (for a lack of a better term).
Also, depending on how you hand your credit card info over, and if mechanisms like EMV 3d secure are in place, some merchants basically obtain a copy of your card and it’s on you to check the validity of the transaction and also re-check that no additional transactions have been made over time. While it is certainly good practice to go over your credit card statement each month, I could totally understand if someone wanted to avoid that hassle and the one that comes with a dispute.
I’m talking to you Hello Games (No man’s sky), just don’t mess it up with upcoming ‘Light no fire’.
What messed up NMS was overpromise to a basically criminal degree. If this were a B2B-transaction, they’d have been sued to hell and back. There’s absolutely 0 chance LNF won’t suffer exactly the same fate.
I’m playing Jedi: Survivor on story mode right now and this is exactly how I feel. It’s a shame because even on story mode, boss fights in Fallen Order were still a little challenging.
In certain circumstances, I agree. I am currently playing The Outer Worlds RPG. In the game there is a companion quest which culminates in fighting a “Mantinqueen”- a giant monster space bug. There is a ton of build up to it. The monster had previously killed the companion’s entire mercenary group. The lair was spooky and atmospheric.
Problem was, mantiqueens were creatures I’d already fought in the open world. I could demolish one is about a minute with my upgraded weapons. This made the boss fight underwhelming.
I wouldn’t want the solution to be just tacking on more healthpoints, but there are other options to make the boss creature more interesting to fight and the game took none of them.
Yeah I was going to say… in many cases bosses seem to be easier than the normal fights. The bosses sort of focus on being a novel gimmick with easily telegraphed attacks, which often ends up being easier than normal fights in some games.
It’s pretty common for hardcore FPS gamers to switch their right click (which is usually ADS) from a “press and hold” configuration to a “toggle” configuration, meaning you just click to ADS, and then click again to release it. The idea is that you shouldn’t be constantly pushing down on you mouse while aiming, it creates drag and makes aiming harder.
Are you talking about remapping your mouse buttons to keyboard buttons? Seems like it would be difficult, but it’s plausible.
FPS players are beasts on their own next level where it comes to binds. They also rebind movement options like jump to mouse wheel and switch WASD to ESDF so there’s more surrounding keys and better pinkie access.
I hadn’t seen ESDF in FPS, I personally used to use it in WoW.
But mousewheel scroll is actually a great jump bind for when you precisely need to input the next jump action to time it with the end of the last. This is less an FPS thing and more a movement thing. Spacebar (or other buttons) will only work if you hit it at the precise time, while mousewheel is a lot more forgiving, since it is multiple inputs in quick succession, kind of like the rapid-fire macros. Like I suck at bhopping for example, but I could do some easy bhop sequences in cs 1.6 with scrollwheel, there is no way I would be able to with spacebar.
When I play FPS, I bind movement to SDF, jump to A and forward to the right mouse button. That allows me to control aiming and forward movement with one hand and to squeeze the mouse with the whole hand when shooting to avoid jerking. WASD is a silly scheme in any case, I don’t understand why it is a default.
I would be nice if the game detects that it’s been quite some time since I last played, and give a quick refresher of the keybinds as well as brief rundown of recent missions completed / story-so-far.
Dragon Quest XI also! I love this feature. Final Fantasy XII-2 also did it in a nice cinematic way, like you’re watching a show, with snippets of cutscenes after a voice says “Final Fantasy XIII-2, the story so far…”
Good that you beat the Great Filter of oil production (I think trains might be around or after researching that?)! Many of us find introducing oil…demoralizing playing motivation (did for me unfortunately!) 😅
I’m going to be real- I enjoyed BotW and TotK enough, but I don’t see them as traditional Zelda games and it actually pisses me off that Aonuma has come out and said we will NEVER get a traditional 3D Zelda ever again. So the success of the open-world Zeldas is the nail in the coffin for the games we actually grew up loving. The death of the open-world fad can’t come soon enough, most of these games are nothing special.
I tried and hated both. Which sucks, because I have played just about every Zelda game up to botw. It’s just not a Zelda game. It’s generic open world adventure game number 58957853378 with a Zelda graphics pack…
I agree wholeheartedly, I haven’t played any Zelda before BotW and based purely on reviews you’d think it’s the second coming, but then it’s just kind of a cool open-world puzzle game with truly atrocious combat system. It feels like some people just love bland and uninspired as long as it has Zelda branding.
I know I like a game when I start it at 5pm and then two seconds later it’s 11pm and I tell myself I’ll just finish this one quest and then boom it’s now 1230.
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