Have another play session with my partner planned tonight! We play with all kinds of mods and the sheer amount of them means that we’re nowhere near to having done and seen everything yet! Especially with the new content update that came out a couple months ago, which is amazing in itself, honestly.
Stardew Valley is the game that keeps on giving. At this point, I wish there was just more. More towns to visit, more activities, more everything.
The only thing that does kind of suck is that after year 1 I feel like I’ve kind of mastered whatever I was attempting to do. I’ve heard some people say after year 1 is where they enjoy the game the most, but idk I feel like by that point I’m making more money than I need and the only thing left to do is collect stuff or attempt the skull cavern.
But man. That first year is a blast. I’ve been thinking I should try out more mods or possibly a jojamart run at some point
Thank you for keeping these up. I enjoy seeing these threads a lot.
As to stardew, I’ve only played a little bit, never past the first season pretty much. I’m not one to play it solo and group session always die very quickly. When most of my friends are unemployed or don’t work full 9-5, it’s hard to coordinate with them.
That all said, I love this game and it does so much right and Dev is awesome. This game feels to me like a lot of what game companies should strive to be.
So I played it for a while several years ago and kinda got bored with it. I got to the bottom of the mine and had married one of the characters, and my farm (such as it was) was mostly automated so not much to do there. I know there are a bunch of story moments but I got tired of wandering around randomly trying to meet the conditions to trigger them. I wanted it to happen organically without looking it up. I just felt like I ran out of things to do and there was no point to keep playing.
At the same time, I want to play it on my Steam Deck because I did enjoy what I did play!
I just felt like I ran out of things to do and there was no point to keep playing.
To each their own of course, but it sounds like you basically just “beat” the game, in the same way someone beats Animal Crossing. You just stop playing eventually. I don’t see that as a negative if you enjoyed that time.
Hmm…440 hours on Steam…probably another 125 on the Switch…
I love this game. It’s so cozy and comfortable. I found SDV after my divorce just when it had originally released and I was drawn into the cute world and how much character oozes from every corner. Every person you meet has something going on or you can just be a weird hermit building out your farm in peace. There’s enough of a story to propel you forward but never overbearing and it gets out of the way when it’s “done”.
As time has gone on from my first playthrough, I’ll typically dive back in when the itch strikes or a new content update comes along. The last few playthroughs I’ve done a lot to mod the game and introduce new things into the world to discover, some of which just feels indistinguishable from the official content and others that just help reduce barriers that I want to skip over (like fishing).
Stardew Valley is a game I will likely always go back to. I’m sure it will eventually eclipse my current most played game (Team Fortress 2 @ ~800 hours). I’ve tried other games like it and while they’re fun, none seem to have the staying power that Stardew has over me. While I will absolutely check out his next game, I’m hoping Stardew Valley never really stops being updated over the years.
It’s been a while, but here is another “Let’s discuss” post! I hope everybody is doing fine and these posts are still appreciated :).
I haven’t played this myself, but I know so many people who are extremely passionate about it that it felt like a good candidate! Looking forward to all of your musings!
While that‘s true right now, a big patch called „Economy 2.0“ is expected to drop this week (more on that here and here).
I really hope this will be a successful first step of making the game actually better than its predecessor. Unfortunately the economy simulation is only one of many issues which make me want to play something else after a few minutes of gameplay. I think it‘ll be at least another year until they‘re able to fix all these minor annoyances, which sum up to one very big annoyance. Like not being able to place stuff sometimes without any obvious reason. Or those ugly, steep pathways on lots, when the connecting street isn‘t completely flat. Or missing animations for firemen, which currently only have to drive up to a burning building in order to stop a fire.
Cities Skylines was a better Sim City (2013) and was justifiably loved for that. For now, Cities Skylines 2 is unfortunately just a worse Cities Skylines.
Building a pedestrian over or underpass is another story entirely, had to force the game to do it and even then I somehow managed to place a path that looked like it was going through the roundabout, but somehow it wasn’t
Looking it up, it doesn’t sound like it. Looks to be planned for later this month.
My understanding is that they are making the economy harder and completely removing the government subsidies that small cities get that make them absurdly easy. Other changes include making utility exports less lucrative and roads etc more expensive.
I only played one The Sims many years ago. I wonder if it was the first or second.
It certainly was a good game with good mechanics and content.
I’ve only seen a little bit of how it evolved in videos. I wonder how much EA is reiterating and republishing the same content and mechanics, and how much has evolved and changed? Did the products warrant regular and many releases and DLC?
Each Sims game is quite different. The biggest difference is between Sims 1 and 2 simply due to the change from isometric 2D to 3D graphics. Not the first game in the genre to have 3D graphics and they weren’t even particularly impressive for the time nor good compared to its competitor, but the charming animations and attention to detail make it a far more enjoyable experience than the comparatively sterile predecessor. Sims 2 ended up becoming an evergreen with very long legs, to the point that people are still playing it, although it helped that EA distributed the complete version with all add-ons (the game is older than the term DLC) for free for a while (you can still find it if you know where to look).
Sims 3 was fundamentally different from Sims 2. Gone were the isolated homes of the predecessor (initially in Sims 2, you couldn’t even see your neighbors’ homes unless you were on the map screen; later they added in low-res stand-ins) and instead, it’s an open world game where you can see your Sim commute to work in real-time. Neighbors can be visited without going through a loading screen - it all feels more organic as a result. Customization saw a huge upgrade as well, the AI was improved, etc. Sounds nice in theory, but the problem was that it was too ambitious for PCs of the time. This series has traditionally attracted non-gamers who don’t deeply upgrade their machines all that often and instead play on laptops bought for homework or old rigs inherited from big brothers. Sims 1 ran on a toaster, Sims 2 on a pizza oven with some kind of GPU grafted to it - whereas Sims 3 was one of the most demanding games of its time in order to facilitate gameplay changes that few people actually asked for and rounded, bloated looking Sims that are somewhat offputting. It was still a massive success and a huge hit with modders as well, but Sims 2 remained popular due to its more focused nature, the fact that it ran on anything and the fact that it was complete with a massive library of add-ons that took years to be replicated in Sims 3.
Sims 4 reset the series back to Sims 2, but went too far initially, limiting player freedom in regards to neighborhood creation. Instanced homes returned, customization features and open world of Sims 3 were cut, the AI saw a massive improvements, Sims didn’t all look obese anymore, hardware requirements were modest again - but at the price of having incredibly intrusive DRM, an attempt to monetize the proud modding community and being very bare-bones in the beginning, requiring years of DLCs to reach feature-parity with Sims 2 and 3. IIRC, even pools - an absolutely essential part of Sims lore - were missing initially. All of the improvements to the building mechanics in particular were overshadowed by EA’s corporate nonsense. It’s come a long way since though. Just like with the predecessors, buying all DLC at once will make you poor - but the base game is free now and the actual intention is that you only buy the DLC that have features or items you care about. The modding scene is as vibrant as ever, making any non-feature DLC unnecessary anyway.
This series is an interesting and unique phenomenon. It’s a prime example of something that only ever truly works on PC. All of the many console, mobile and browser spinoffs and ports were nothing but mere blips on the radar, because fundamentally, it can only work on a platform as open as the PC. It primarily attracts female players who rarely play anything else, yet dive deep into modding and modifying every little aspect of these games like the most hardened PC nerds. It started out and still is in many ways a faksimile of ideal American suburbia, although enhanced by both some quite subversive humor and subverted by an astonishing level of player freedom that goes against the conformity of the real world - while at the same time replicating the fads, consumerism, cliques, feuds and other less wholesome aspects of the real world through its behemoth of a community. It’s ultimately a platform for individual creative expression and the worlds (both in-game and outside of it) that emerge as a result of it, a sandbox that was only ever bested by Minecraft, which literally broke everything down to its individual building blocks. Each game and its DLCs become more like car payments to seasoned players, something you pay for so that you can travel where you want to go, which in turn keeps the experience fresh, finances further development and prevents the community from getting stagnant as it has to learn to adapt to changes from the developers.
I’ll end this here. This wasn’t meant to turn into an essay and now my fingers hurt, because I typed all of this nonsense on a touchscreen.
I know multiple women who mainly got themselves a PC to play Sims back in the day and who are now in senior IT roles because once they got the PC they kind of “sticked with it”.
That is something we indeed should thank The Sims for.
Been playing TS4 again, lightly modded to facilitate poly relationships. I’m not a fan of the shit storm of DLC that’s basically the staple of the game’s monetization at this point, but that’s nothing that can’t be solved on the high seas. Otherwise, I still enjoy the series a lot. (Also, shout-out to the various weird spinoffs like Castaways.)
I recently helped another person I know, who is like your daughter, pirate the game with all dlc so they don’t spend even more on the game than they already have.
After I tried Hollow Knight for the 3rd time I finally had the realization that I just don’t like metroidvanias. Tunic, Ori, HK, Guacamelee. Bounced off every single one of them despite wanting to like them. The closest I’ve ever gotten to liking one was Death’s Door, but that took some work to get through. Not really a metroidvania but it sort of feels like one? Ultimately the music and vibe/combat kept me going and you don’t really need to return to locations if you don’t want to, so you can keep marching forward for 90% of the game.
I do like this genre but I had the same experience with hollow knight. I wanted to like it, but something about the way it controlled felt really off to me, and I didn’t enjoy the punishing death mechanics.
For me personally I’ve never liked combining hard challenges with infrequent saves. I don’t mind things to be hard if I’m allowed to get right back to the same spot after, but I don’t like having to get back to the hard thing from far away just to try again.
Not that my opinion matters any more than the next person’s, but I also can’t recommend Celeste enough.
It does so many things so very right.
The pure gameplay is crisp and responsive platforming.
Like any good platfmorer it has some specific mechanics that make it unique, but every one is intuitive enough to pick up easily enough. I have heard it called something like “the hardest platformer that everyone can finish.”
And it is true. I could never finish some of the harder SMB levels but I never got too frustrated with Celeste.
And if I were, there would have been accessibility options to make the game more approachable.
But it also caters to the hardcore crowd with completely optional collectibles that are organically included into the gorgeous level design.
It is speedrunnable for those folks.
And as if that wasn’t enough to make a good platformer it also tells a heartwarming story supported by a beautiful soundtrack.
Sorry I am rambling, but Celeste is fucking awesome.
I’m in the same boat: Hollow Knight frustrated me so much that I never finished it, even though I really liked the lore and the world and the non-boss fights. Celeste on the other hand might be even “harder”, but as you respawn on every screen literally instantly, you can fail and retry hard parts a hundred times until you make it.
I finally tried the first one not long ago and went in super excited. I had the same experience, though… I think for me what caught me off guard the most was how hard it was. I’ve played a lot of platformers and metroidvanias, and I found Ori to be punishingly difficult. The “escape the area” sections were the killers ultimately. The first one in the tree took me dozens of tries, and it turned a very cool and cinematic moment into a frustrating slog that I couldn’t wait to put behind me. I got as far as the next one of these in the ice area and it was even more intense, and finally I just threw in the towel. It’s a shame because there was a lot to like, but the difficulty was a bit too much for my enjoyment.
i think this is what made it unfun, not the difficulty but the fact that you have to die a few times to even see what you’re supposed to do and it was aggravating way early in the game. Also I’m not a fan of the difficulty stemming from the controls being hard to use, like when you’re carrying stuff.
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