I’m the same way. I’ll try and stack up damage and then just rush the boss. Never goes well. I love poison though because when I finally decide to pull back there’s a flow of damage that keeps going
I’ve started playing Chrono Ark, a roguelike deckbuilder I’ve heard a lot of good things about. So far I’ve played something like 3 runs, so only just begun. It’s fun so far, it’s not completely reinventing the genre or anything but each run has been fun and the upgrades seem varied enough.
I’ve also heard good things about the story, and it does involve time travel to play into the looping roguelike nature in a seamless way, but that’s about all I’ve been able to glean from it so far. I’m looking forward to finding out more.
I’ve mostly been playing Arknights Endfield. After a while I got my team set up and it’s become a bit too repetitive. For some reason I expected better from this one than other gachas but it ended up being as shallow and boring as all others.
I’ve played a bit of Deadlock, I couldn’t try any of the new characters tho. I’m trying to get back into Rabbit&Steel. I haven’t played in a while so it feels like starting from zero.
I’ve also tried the demo for Magenta Horizon. It’s not my style of game, it feels inspired a lot by Ninja Gaiden, which I can’t get into, but it seems really well made and the artstyle is pretty interesting.
Finished my time with Clair Obscur and feeling a bit adrift. Such a beautiful game and one I hope I can go back to and experience again some time later (plus I left one achievement behind before quitting).
Jumped in and out of a few things. Currently playing Monster Train 2 some more in preparation for the DLC today and not sure when I’ll dive into Spider-Man 2…but that’s my next big one on my radar.
There are a few games that I would like to play but can’t because they have awefull cellshader graphics. I really don’t give anything about graphics most of the time (I play lots of retro games after all) but for some reason is cellshader problematic. I can tolerate it when it is a very light cellshader effect, but some games like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have such a thick cellshadering that it is unbearable for me. Which is a shame, because I would love to play the games but can’t.
That fucking suuuuuuuuucks. I wonder if there’s a mod that could accommodate you somehow. I’m not trying to spawn a big debate about difficulty in games here, but I really wish you’d be able to play it for yourself, somehow.
I agree. I was imagining maybe a time dilation mod that you could toggle on/off to make your inputs less physically demanding, but I don’t know if that exists. That’s how I’d do accessibility in this game personally. I don’t know anything about your condition though, so really I’m just spitballing and daydreaming simultaneously.
There’s like a boatload of really classic Xbox 360/One era games that I’d love to play on PC.
Problem is they were made by Ubisoft or EA. Repurchasing them is already dubious from the get-go, but chances are the versions in Steam, if they’re still there at all, are old neglected buggy builds. And things are not much rosier on the Uplay or Origin! They may have gotten a patch or two, but old shit’s janky. These need the GOG treatment.
I did get the Mass Effect trilogy rerelease for a pittance. Also found out I somehow had Dragon Age Origins already. These should keep me occupied for a while, as (to paraphrase a certain video game villain) at this very moment, EA burns.
I was in that pit for a while, it took me years to actually sit down and play it long enough to kind of figure out what to do and how to play, when I did it was very good. I still never had the time to actually finish it, but I highly recommend just pushing through that first barrier, it’s worth it for at least a few days.
I was there for a while. I finally got around to it and played semi regularly for a year and a bit, took a year or two off, and then finished off what was apparently the last quest of the base game lol
it’s a decent game. you don’t need to a ton of time to make it worthwhile but you do need to play it in slightly longer individual chunks (playing 30 min at a time isn’t very viable).
if you can, give it a try. but yeah it does require some time, it’s not like popping into minecraft for a bit or mini metro for a round. but it’s also not like civ’s ‘just one more turn’
I liked the story, environments, and gameplay. I found I enjoyed it best when I actually relaxed into it instead of trying to rush through and complete stuff, so again yeah maybe won’t be possible for your available time. but it’s not necessary to complete it to get enjoyment out of it. around a third of the way through to halfway through is probably where I enjoyed it the most
I’d love to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren’t mindless slop.
Same with other slow-burn games like Project Zomboid and other survival/crafting games.
I learned to do slop to hang out with others, I even got good at slop like Rivals just to keep social contact alive. But I can’t drag anyone into a game that doesn’t have 2-minute matches filled with flashing lights and colors and gambling mini-games.
I’m in this boat with you. A few months ago I restarted my Valheim server for friends… And only one person joined me, for all of about 30 minutes. I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a Zomboid server, too, but I know it will be the same. We’ll play as a group maybe twice, and that will be it.
I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I have about 20 games where I stopped before getting too far “just in case they decide to join me.” Those games are now piled up in dusty, forgotten crates alongside the Ark of the Covenant in that same giant warehouse. I think I’m part of the slim margin of people who enjoy simulated hardships as a social bonding experience, I don’t know if makes other people too bored, or too anxious, but I can’t make people play hard, slow games where you have to rely on each other and talk through problems.
I used to be able to, I had great success running groups in SCUM and Project Zomboid but as more and more short-attention-span gaming has been released, people have migrated away from investment-gaming and now just want to “chill” with some colorful slop and fast battle royals or loot extraction. Now when I ask if someone wants to play something like SCUM, they ask if we can play a server where loot and experience gain is turned up to max, enemy robots are disabled, and you can order high level gear from discord bots in chat.
I've about given up on chasing multiplayer, even including friends. It never fails. Because, there would be times some friends I know are playing a multiplayer game that is big and they're all involved and I want to be involved. Then by the time I get it, they've moved on to something else and it would be a chore to have tried and get them to come back to the game I just got so we can have some of our memories poured into it.
It would never happen, they've grounded their footing into that next game and I would be a little begrudged and eventually I'd get that game, only for the cycle to repeat.
So, I've stopped doing that. Now I have a bunch of all of these games that were fun to have played with people on, just sitting and collecting dust because I tried playing with people I know and cared about. Now most of them play FFXIV, Escape from Tarkov or some other MMO-like game and they know I won't go there to them because I'm not a MMO player, but I was always open to play something else that was multiplayer, but they never bit.
“The legal action, originally filed in 2024 by digital rights campaigner Vicki Shotbolt”
Vicki is a leading campaigner for children’s digital rights, with over 20 years of senior leadership experience in national charities. She is the founder and CEO of Parent Zone, an organisation that works with families and global brands to improve the lives of children in today’s digital world.
That is why Valve is being sued for 900 million. Because Vicki Shotbolt wanted to. Why did she want to? Here is her claim (in her own words, not mine):
But Steam’s prices appear to be the lowest?
Steam can offer the lowest prices because of the anti-competitive price restrictions that Valve often imposes on game developers and producers (the Price Parity Obligations). This means a publisher or developer would not be able to list a game on another platform as well as Steam, unless the prices offered on Steam is the same or lower. This applies to games on all other distribution stores (including online and physical stores) not just those distributed by Steam Keys. This allows Valve to maintain the monopoly position it has for PC Games as there is not real incentive for gamers to go elsewhere where a game may be cheaper (which would then in turn enable those other platforms to improve).
It is also not possible to offer add-on content on other distribution platforms for cheaper or at an earlier time: this limits the ability of rivals to compete on price and enables Valve to charge the consumer higher prices in the absence of competition. The claim argues that the add-on content is a separate product, and that through the price restrictions and inability to purchase add-on content from another distribution platform or the developer itself Valve has illegally tied these products and limited consumer choice. Consumers must then purchase via Steam and pay its commission charge.
In the UK, dominant companies are not allowed to charge excessive prices. The claim argues that Valve’s commission rate of up to 30% is excessive given: competitors lower commission rates; the way the platform operates for the consumer; and the high level of profit that Valve is making absent a viable competitor (which its behaviour directly restricts as developers are not permitted to list games at lower prices on competing platforms). This unfair commission charge is paid for by the consumer.
"[…] but Epic Games wasn’t sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?
Steam has a much easier claim to be considered a monopoly. It’s a little like (note: I never said it’s exactly like or it is very much like—I only said it’s a little like) Chrome being a monopoly for web browsers—everyone chooses to install chrome on their computers when they install a PC and prefer not to use the pre-installed Edge or Safari. Very few people install Epic games, much like very few people install Firefox. If you want to game on PC, you pretty much have to install Steam to play with your friends you know? Otherwise you’re kinda lame and don’t have friends.
I love the story of Final Fantasy XIV, but it can easily categorize as “One of the most expensive singleplayer games of all time”. On top of buying the expansions, you’ll need to pay for each month you play; and unless someone’s really speedrunning, that will start to add up. Worse, for a first timer setting up their account, their website and payment system is really stuck in 1998, making giving them money an obtuse task. And, while the story has its great moments and excellent side content, a depressing amount of it is extensive polite dialog with just simple quests where you move to a location and right-click on someone. I’ve finished Dawntrail, and am glad I experienced it, but I can’t blame anyone who sees it all as beyond them.
Counterpoint: Someone can play up through Stormblood without having to buy anything.
But, yeah, I agree. I don’t really want to think about how much I’ve spent on this one game over the last 12 years. But roughly spitballing:
ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, Endwalker, Dawntrail…I’ll say that’s 6 x $40 (not accurate since I bought special editions for some and moved from PS3 to Pc so that’s an extra cost there, too): $240
$13/m for 11 years (I’ve played ARR since launch but there have been some times where I turned off my sub for a little bit so I’ll just knock off 12 months): 13 x 12 x 11 = $1,716
Various Mogstation purchases, roughly $40?
Total for me with this napkin math: $1,996
Woof. But, I do love the game and spent all weekend playing it just now. So there’s worse things to spend money on.
This expac broke me. Played for a decade. Decent ranked tank. The new raids are more of the same and PF has no healers. Tried to play Sage to balance it out and no one could make it work.
The game lost touch with what made it great. It’s no longer innovative. The story is ass. It’s just a whale hunter.
My thing with FFXIV is that, so much has blown by me, that just trying to get into it now is so overwhelming. There was a friend I knew that was into FFXIV and he was one of those people that spoke about it like it is his second language. He had his friends too that were into it and it was like they've built this in-depth chemistry through FFXIV and I even watched some of his livestreams of it.
But anytime I tried playing FFXIV, I really stuck out with this empty feeling because I never had that.
Cyberpunk 2077 - it still doesn’t go on steep enough sales to justify buying when I have hundreds of unplayed games on Steam. But I’m keeping an eye on its downward progress. Maybe when it reaches £10-13…
I wish I could go back and never experience it before PL. It’s what it should have been at release, took me ages to get around to trying it after the broken and underwhelming early versions because the main story was long and linear. I’m glad I did though, it’s an entirely different experience
I think the base game is really a testament to the fact that CDPR have a lot of success with open world games, but don’t really do them very well… They make really solid campaigns, and then pad them out with utter nonsense that kills the pacing stone-cold dead.
“Oh hey, here’s something really urgent. We cannot stress enough how urgent it is. By the way we’ve also just unlocked about a hundred side quests. Enjoy!”
I’m still salty that I missed one of the ending achievements because if you follow the instructions it gives you, it will cause a fail state on that particular ending.
buggy mess? not at all. 100+ hours, i don’t even remember a single bug. I’m sure i must have encountered some but clearly the nothing memorable. could be buggy but buggy mess is a ridiculous overstatement.
giving you the benefit of the doubt it could be related to hardware difference or something.
I encounter some kind of bizarre NPC behavior or graphics glitch about every ten minutes.
For example NPCs panicking for obvious or not so obvious reasons, trying to flee but nearly or actually hurting people by driving or running away, which incites the ire of NCPD, which results in them gunning down those civilians, which causes more to panic and flee, and suddenly the cops are just dumping lead at everyone with a pulse but no badge. I’m sure you’ve noticed the random screaming and cops shooting but I guess you never bothered to figure out why.
Another common one is people missing textures, their limbs (especially heads) wiggling chaotically or missing entirely, and then of course the classic A-pose. The latter is much more rare than on release in my experience, but I often catch someone just barely coming out of it as I turn to look at them and the game freshly renders their animation.
None of the above is game breaking, but it’s plenty noticeable if you’re paying attention, and it’s not the kind of thing you expect to see from a full priced AA or AAA game years after its release. Snaps my immersion in half every time.
If you go into a game expecting a buggy mess, you’re going to notice bugs more often.
Whether or not the objective amount of bugs present meets your criteria for “buggy mess” or not is of course highly subjective, even if you noticed 100% of the ones you encountered.
I’m also waiting for it to hit a low-enough price to justify the amount of time I will lose just trying to mod the thing into a playable, enjoyable state.
I bought it this winter for 25. Solid beginning. Haven’t finished it. But it’s there. I hop on when I want to veg out and the story is pretty damn good.
That’s my strategy as well. Whenever Witcher 3 is on sale i think to myself “Can’t wait for Cyberpunk to get that low”. Same thing for Elden Ring +DLC, except there i would be willing to pay about 30-40 bucks.
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