Deadlock. As a parent and full time worker I don’t have time to commit to a new live service multiplayer. It would be amazing to be a teenager or student again and just grind that game as nolife.
Wow is kinda similar. Housing update seems like fun thing that they finally added but no way I have time to play wow.
Deadlock is no joke, the best game i have ever played. But i never played a maba before, so that part was completely new. Someone said that Deadlock might be the hardest game to learn, and they might be right. Deadlock is the only game that has ever made me nervous when i start playing. I’m glad i got into the game early, but even if you don’t want to learn, i think it’s worth downloading and walk around in the cursed apple or play some bot matches. The design and the feel of the game is one of a kind and it plays so smooth.
I played it when it was in closed beta. And as a fan of Overwatch and previous LoL player, Deadlock was super fun to play. But combination of high mechanical requirement and knowledge requirement it is hard to enjoy the game as casual peopler. Thank god now there is light version of Deadlock as Overwatch Stadium.
I went back to OW stadium because of deadlock, but i was sick of it pretty soon. It’s just not it for me. I think you can enjoy deadlock without being a good mechanical player, depending on the hero. The rough part is other people. Because of the moba part of it, people tend to get super angry. I never get angry because of video games, but even i can feel it. I’m not angry at other players, but it is frustrating to be in a team that is really bad, while the other team is really good. It happens a lot lately, and i never cared while i was learning, because it didn’t really matter. Now that i’m better at the game, or pretty good even, you just have players in your or the other team that just started playing and you usually just don’t win those. People get mad and it’s a whole thing.
I’m still bitter at Steam for taking a bunch of my single-player games off me that I’d already paid for when I moved to another country, and refusing to refund me because I’d already played 10 hours. Also the support guy treated me like I was a criminal for even trying.
There was a time when the swastika was not allowed to be shown in games because of a law in Germany, causing Wolfenstein (the uncencored version) to be banned. Maybe the country in question has similar laws?
That only made it so that you couldn’t buy games with symbols like the swastika. I used to live abroad and moved back to germany and kept all my games.
Some games are region-locked because the localisation is done by building another binary, Fallouts were like that, and some other I can’t remember, maybe it was this
I too am afraid to change region because Valve is very opaque in how they change availability, and there definitely were precedents of games not just being delisted but still available if you have them, but also disappearing completely from you library
Some countries have huge taxes on entertainment while others have nearly none. I’d guess he moved to a county with a higher tax rate and Valve can’t just have people using a VPN to circumvent their local taxes. Valve is left without a way to determine where you were when you’d purchased the game so they geo lock the titles to where you purchased them.
Minecraft. I love building things, and I especially love the idea of building things you can walk through in first person. I also loved the little of it I did play. Sadly, it makes me incredibly nauseous and gives me a headache after about half an hour of playing.
I know a number of people who have motion-sickness issues with games like this, it’s almost entirely first-person games that cause this.
Some things to consider from my years of assisting managing it:
You get motion sick because your eyes tell your brain that you’re moving, but your inner-ear gyroscopes say you’re not, so your brain assumes you must be infected with something so it starts measures to evacuate your stomach of potential poison.
View bobbing, screen-shaking, depth-of-field, motion-blur and frame-rates have a huge impact on your sense of balance and visual processing of motion, so try to always turn those off. (Minecraft has had view bobbing since early on, it’s always “step one” to turn it off for everyone.)
Framerates also can make you sick. If you’re playing an first-person game and the field of view isn’t moving smoothly it will be more likely to make you start to feel nauseous. Turn graphics settings down until your frame-rates are at least 40 or so. (You would have to look up the game and/or platform to figure out how to turn on FPS display on your screen to see where you’re at.)
The brain is highly elastic for learning new things, but also learns negative associations. This means sometimes you have to train it like a toddler or puppy. Patiently and with persistence. This can take the form of only playing for 15 minutes instead of waiting until you start to get nauseous. You need to train your brain that the viewing experience isn’t actually harmful by disconnecting the association with feeling sick, by getting used to the game without triggering the motion sickness. So frequent, short sessions, not letting yourself get sick. (This is the most effective method anyone I know has tried.)
Medication. Seriously, anti-histamines work pretty effectively. Motion-sickness pills are literally just anti-allergy medication. It will make you very quite groggy though so don’t plan on staying up late playing. Chewable nausea tablets also help a lot. Again, you’re just trying to let your brain adapt to a new perspective/activity without getting fully sick, so think of medications as a temporary measure to get to that adaptation point.
Field of view is also a huge factor. Try turning it up or down, most 3D games give you the option. Additionally, playing on a smaller screen can help a lot too. Play in windowed mode and gradually work on making the screen larger and larger until you’ve adapted.
Engagement in the game also helps. Once you start having fun you will often forget about the negative sensations and give your brain more time to adapt. If you’re not enjoying a game, don’t force it. Try a different one until you find some mechanic you enjoy that hooks you.
After adaptation, you would likely also need to periodically “refresh” it and play a 3D game for a little while every day or you will slip back into motion-sickness triggers again easily.
I didn't know Fall Guys got bought out. But then again, that was a flavor-of-the-week kind of game where streamers tried to care, then moved on and Fall Guys became irrelevant.
It looks so good, and the music is great, and story is apparently fantastic, but I just can not get the hang of the counter/block mechanic in combats, and without it the battles are pretty much impossible.
I came to depend less on the visual cues which are often deceptive and more on the audio ones or counting in my head for dodges/parries. Also invest heavily (basically all your points) into defense/vitality which makes Dodge/Parry misses much more forgiving.
Eventually, even if you only do a smattering of side quests/areas, you’ll get powerful enough to basically ignore the timing mechanics altogether.
Also set it on story mode + auto QTEs. I did that on my first playthrough and had absolutely no regrets. The mechanics of the game are definitely secondary to the experience of the story.
Clair Obscur for me too, but because of the AI art controversy. I can’t stand AI, even if temporary, even if just store banners, I just can’t trust the company from then on not to sneak it into other areas.
They didn’t sneak anything and they never will. Looked into it deeply. They used AI assets as placeholders during development. But everything in the shipped game is human-made. No further use of generative AI is expected, since the game awards controversy the company’s management published a statement of banning AI use entirely in their company.
The whole controversy around indie game awards was also blown beyond proportions. A company used a new technology at a time when the tech was new and the debate around it’s use was still inmature. Then dismissed it for it was not good enough. They failed at quality assurance and a couple of textures weren’t deleted. They replaced them as soon at they found out. By all intents and purposes, this controversy does not qualify sandfall as an AI using company, and to affirm so is ignorant of the context of all that went down in reality.
I understand their reasoning, but still, it soured me on the game. GenAI models being built from non-consensually mass-scraped art was known from the very start, and yet the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game… They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
But anyway, we are free to just not agree and draw the line in different places on what we consider ethical conduct 🤷
the devs thought it was ok to put it into their game
That’s the point. They didn’t thought it was OK and didn’t.
They could have just used stock textures as placeholders like developers have been doing for decades.
That is exactly what they did, any texture left in the first version of the game was a mistake that was promptly fixed as soon as they noticed it. We have the advantage of judging four years later with new info something they did back then and have since corrected. Ethical considerations must include intent and context, and here there was definitely no intent to harm.
I found it rough near the start, but it gets a lot easier as you go on, once you get more of a feel for when attacks are coming. Eventually you’ll be dodging things you’ve never seen before just on instinct.
Dodges are a lot easier than parries, even if you don’t get the extra AP from it. Fights last a bit longer, but you can definitely plough through most of it even with bad timing. Explore thoroughly in act 1, otherwise you’ll probably be underlevelled for the last boss there. Not really any need to grind mindlessly, but you can if you really need the extra levels.
I haven’t played since I beat it. But I did look into this after I did…
In general, every time the screen zooms in, you need to act. What type is something you learn, but that cuts down on the timing aspect There are also audio queues, like a sort of woosh effect. I don’t play a lot of fast response games like this, so I never noticed until it was pointed out.
Ya maybe one day. I also morally don’t want to support that behaviour.
Elden ring is the gold standard for me in multiplayer. It’s optional. It just requires you to be online. No account creation bullshit. And it’s a quality game also.
@cyberpunk007@Abundance114 that is if you play on PC. other platforms might require subscriptions of some kind in order to enable multiplayer feature(s).
Similar. I played a lot of Diablo 2 back in the day, but Blizzard got a lot worse as a game publisher during the years they were focused on WoW. I’m not super interested in starting up on Diablo 3 or 4 or even Starcraft 2.
For a different direction on this – I played Subnautica. It was terrifying. I’m not going to get the expansion or Subnautica 2 when it comes out. shudder
An OG D2 mod, adds a load of content and changes things dramatically, vibrant MP scene, and even after having spent most of a decade playing D2 back in the day it’s changed enough to feel new and shiny again.
Heard all the good things about Disco Elysium and found it on sale for the Steam Deck… Could not stand playing a character with traumatic brain injury. I thought I did something wrong generating the character, no, fanbase assures me that’s the way it’s supposed to be… Refunded it in less than an hour.
It was marketed as a game, when really it’s an interactive novel. If you don’t like that kind of experience, you won’t like it.
(But as far as novels go, it was one of the best, the story continues to open up paths and deep-dives into lore and philosophy branching ever deeper and further, while telling a story of personal tragedy.)
This was one I loved, but it wasn’t at all what I expected when I read the Steam blurb. “Be the kind of cop you want to be” or some such nonsense.
But, yeah, it’s basically an existential novel masquerading as a game, and if you don’t like (or at least find it interesting) spending time as the protagonist, then it makes sense to be a hard pass.
I have been interested in something like this for me and my girlfriend. Do you know if you’re able to do the link cable stuff for GBA/GB/GBC games that require it? I appreciate your opinions on it and I hope you have a lovely day.
Honestly, I kinda want to play Stellar Blade to see if the gooner bait makes up for what I’ve heard about the gameplay, but I’m not gonna shell out actual money for it, especially since it’s got Denuvo.
Also, I know it hasn’t even been announced yet, because Metroid Prime 4 only just came out a couple months ago, but Metroid Prime 5. At this point, it would have to be a Switch 2 game, and I refuse to get one because fuck that game key card shit.
Shaun has a video essay on Stellar Blade. According to him, its very much “can I copy your homework” of Nier Automata, and some sekiro gameplay.
I have only played the the later 2. Nier Automata is something I will never forget, and (IMO) Sekiro is the best Fromsoft+Combat game. Highly recomend both of them
I stopped Nier Automata midway because it felt completely awful. Then I was sternly motivated by someone to give it a full go and finish it all the way, and it got EVEN WORSE.
Stellar Blade, though, made the gameplay very enjoyable; and its writing, while following a very similar theme, didn’t feel nearly so excessively ultra-grimdark. It kept some core reveals for close to the end (I guess unless you were paying attention to what few audio logs amounted to more than just “They’re coming…! Agh! We’re all dead.”) but I liked the dilemma it posed.
I was going to say diablo4 as well. Diablo1 and 2 were some of my favorite games in my youth, but I just don’t want to give blizzard any more money. Path of exile 1 and 2 are good for the same itch.
Also any console exclusives. Bloodborne? Would love to play. Not buying a console. New Zelda and Mario? Same.
Diablo 2 was one of the best games of its type ever, and everything after has just been desperately trying to recapture that feeling. PoE was kind of close, but got a tad grindy. I like when a game just wraps up and you don’t have an endless slog at the end to do completion sub-goals.
I played it on steam deck about a year ago, and TBH it struggled. Though it’s probably been optimised better since, I think development is ongoing. Still the best driving game I’ve played.
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