I played the 3 CD OG Age of Empires III with my brothers as a kid. It was great. We rigged up Hamachi to create a private network and manually edited some AoE config files with our Hamachi IP addresses to be able to have LAN coop sessions. Half the session was getting everything installed and working.
Now it’s even easier and we play regularly, decades later.
Loved AoE II. I still play it on occasion, and I grew up playing it with cheat codes (there’s some silly ones). I think it still holds up well to this day, even with my nostalgia glasses off.
If you’ve never played it, my only caveat would be to expect the AI to not compare to modern iterations. “Balance” in campaign missions sometimes comes in the form of giving the AI an unfair advantage, but everything can be overcome, and you can always save-scum your way to victory. It’s fun, and I definitely recommend a play if you are into retro gaming or RTS’s.
My favorite game in the series was Super Mario 3. I first played it on the SNES when it was part of the Super Mario All Stars cartridge. I really liked the levels, especially the variety of landscapes and the secrets you could find if you had the right powerup.
Super Mario World is just as good imo. Everything I liked about 3 and more, plus the star road levels, that was a good game.
The most recent game I loved was Yoshi’s Wooly World on the WiiU. Excellent art style and super fun levels, especially the unlockable bonus levels.
Oh and let’s not forget Legend of the Seven Stars. That was a fun and bizarre story.
That being said, does anyone else think the Mario universe is just fucking weird? How did the creators come up with Italian plumbers who can jump really high saving a Princess from an oversized turtle in a fantasy land with walking mushrooms? Who thought that was a good idea? What inspired them? I think the only reason it became popular was because Super Mario on the NES was one of the first decent games, and most players were kids who didn’t care about the game’s universe and narrative beyond saving the princess.
If Mario wasn’t the first popular platformer in the 80s and was instead introduced today, nobody would take it seriously. Since we all grew up with Mario, it’s a thing we accept as is. Of course high jumping Italian plumbers discovered the mushroom kingdom and rescued their princess from Bowser, again and again and again. Of course little dudes with mushroom heads are ruled by a blond haired human. Of course giant pipes are a normal mode of transit. Of course goombas and koopa troopas are the baddies.
This universe came about because they would design fun gameplay first and then write an absurd story around it.
The “reasons” for things were usually dictated by gameplay and the stories reflected that.
It’s why Katamari Damacy is one of my favorite games, because it took that notion and really ran with it. It’s story is as absurd and over-the-top as the gameplay of rolling up objects to make stars in the sky. The gameplay is absurd and not in any way reflective of any reality except the reality of the game world itself.
The Mario series has always kept that ethos as well. The stories have grown and changed as long as the Mario gameplay has, each a response to a new set of moves, and at one point the move from 2D to 3D, all of it forever changing the path forward and the details of the canon Mario universe.
I remember first trying the original when I was like 11 or something.
At the time, I didn’t really understand much beyond “shooty shooty” when it came to games with guns (it would be shortly after this that I’d find stealth games and have that passion ignited), so I was given guns, used them how I usually did at the time and proceeded to get obliterated in the first level and gave up.
A few years later, after I’d gotten into stealth games, my love affair with immersive sims began.
Along with playing the Thief series, I went back to give Deus Ex a try and it all just clicked. I think it and Thief II were instrumental in cementing my love for the genre.
After playing and enjoying the first one, I played them all over the next few years and Mankind Divided is probably my second favourite after the original. Loved every moment.
Then fucking Square Enix does their bullshit, and then fucking Embracer ruined it for good.
All in all, I love Deus Ex and I’m super glad I found myself getting into stealth games and immersive sims, otherwise I would have missed out on it so many other of my favourite gaming experiences, Deus Ex being one of them.
What’s weird is that it’s like the only Looking Glass/Ion Storm/Eidos Montréal immersive sim franchise that doesn’t have a clear spiritual successor. For System Shock we got not only BioShock, but Prey (2017) as well. For Thief, we got Dishonored. For Ultima, we got Arx Fatalis/Libertatis (and early Elder Scrolls to a very lesser extent).
But for Deus Ex, we’ve got… I don’t know, Cyberpunk 2077, maybe? But the whole open world thing doesn’t really fit in with the usual gameplay loop of Deus Ex. There are a fair amount of great cyberpunk games, but none seem to really scratch that immersive sim itch. I guess Prey is pretty close as well (in addition to its System Shock influences), if you consider some of the body/power upgrades, but it’s not all that similar thematically.
I’d love for someone to come around and pull a Thanos by just going, “fine, I’ll do it myself”. If the franchise is dead, maybe now there’s more motivation for that, since, before a few months ago, we were still clinging to what little hope remained for the third Adam Jensen game. Or maybe someone already has and I’ve missed it.
There’s an indie game called Shadows of Doubt that does the whole immersive sim in a big hub stuff pretty well. Kind of jank and unfinished, but I think it’s the closest thing I’ve seen in recent times to Deus Ex.
That’s that procedurally generated detective game, right?
I really need to try it because it seems right up my alley. From what I understand, it can get pretty intricate when it comes to the detective work which seems really interesting.
Yeah, that’s the one. And yeah, the cases can get pretty complicated at times, I’ve had one case for instance where I had to find a person by their description… Except the description was literally their job title and their first name initial letter (or something very similar). I had to go to a gubermint building, hack into a computer and manually cross-reference the health history of literally everyone in town to find the person. And that was just the first step of the case.
Check out Core Decay. It’s still in development but from what I’ve seen it follows the Deus Ex formula down to a T. Probably the game I’m most excited about at the moment.
The successor to Deus Ex is Deus Ex. Mankind Divided was released in 2016, so it’s roughly as old as the other games you listed as successors to the other IPs.
But for Deus Ex, we’ve got… I don’t know, Cyberpunk 2077, maybe? But the whole open world thing doesn’t really fit in with the usual gameplay loop of Deus Ex. There are a fair amount of great cyberpunk games, but none seem to really scratch that immersive sim itch. I guess Prey is pretty close as well (in addition to its System Shock influences), if you consider some of the body/power upgrades, but it’s not all that similar thematically.
Check out Cruelty Squad by Ville Kallio on Steam. Aesthetically and spiritually it scrys into the future on the same level Deus Ex did and delivers an even more dire prophecy that feels as disturbingly prescient. It takes the open ended levels of DX and adds insane verticality and mind bending traversal. It plays more tactically than Deus Ex but the augment system is really rewarding and enables the player to munchkin their way to their target.
You may notice it looks artistically like a 13th century Christian piece with a Jackson Pollock splotch of New Years Eve stomach soup all over the canvas. I retort that so did DX1 most of the time. The CS playerbase refers to our ability to parse and navigate this style of level design and eclectic color composition as the ‘CEO mindset.’
But seriously I am a big Deus Ex enjoyer and other than Thief nothing has come as close to the full breadth of experience that world evokes in me. It is both terrible and beautiful to behold.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched these, his video on the original is spot on, but I really dislike his takes on Human Revolution, felt like he was mostly nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, especially the story bits.
I really want to love this game. The artstyle is amazing, the music and sound effects are to die for, it’s truly magnificent. However, the gameplay seems too mechanic for me, like there’s no actual freedom to the game, you need to do these tasks on these days at these times or else you’re playing it wrong.
To be fair, that’s just the culture that’s come up around the game. You have to plan how you play if you want to “win” in the first 2 years, but the only thing you get is a few candles lit in your backyard, and you can still “win” in later years if you play more slowly. You absolutely can just plant some stuff around a sprinkler, sleep until they are grown, and do everything you want to do without being at all efficient with it
100% agree, i personally just don’t enjoy that background feeling that i have saying I’m doing this wrong and the stress i feel over having to get certain things done everyday. i already feel enough of that outside of videogames, I’d rather my time spent gaming to be an escape from the norm. Love the game, love the community, heck I play it semi-regularly, it’s just not my cup of tea, that’s all!
The weird thing about Stardew Valley is I cannot understand why I don’t like it. I’ve tried to like it. I’ve poured many hours into games in the same genre, but I haven’t even managed to get 2 hours into Stardew Valley and I do not understand why. I can’t point at anything in particular that doesn’t work for me, and it’s exactly the kind of game I love to play, so I’m honestly perplexed as to why I don’t like it.
The first time I tried my time at Portia, I found building stuff took forever. I was trying to build a bridge(iirc?) And I felt like it was just going to be a lot of waiting. Was I playing it wrong?
The first time I played My Time at Portia, I had the same issue, and it felt like it took ages and ages to do the bridge. It was much easier on subsequent playthroughs. Basically what I did was build about 6 furnaces to get the crafting going early on, and always had at least 2 of each subsequent crafting station (more as space and resources allowed, although there were a few that just one was sufficient for. Making sure you get a crafting commission every day really helps as well, because that’s your main source of income, which makes it easier to afford more land, inventory upgrades, etc. Fishing is also ridiculously lucrative once you get good at it.
What my Portia daily routine normally looks like is something like this:
Wake up, check mail (if any).
Grab resources that have crafted overnight (if any).
Go to town hall and pick a commission, looking for something that I have most or all of the materials to craft. The plan is to get it made and delivered that day if possible, so if there’s a choice of something that doesn’t pay well but can be done immediately or something that pays better but will take 2-3 days to make happen, I pick the low paying one.
Check map to see if any locals have quests that day. If they do, go and get the quests.
Go home and craft the commission item, plus any items required by other quests picked up that day. If any crafting stations have finished production, set them going again.
Deliver crafted item to recipient(s).
Gather resources for the rest of the day. I usually pick one activity and stick to it, say mining, fishing, hunting (the sound of dying colourful llamas makes me sad, but I want their pelts), etc.
Check crafting stations when stamina has run out. Set more crafting going if needed.
Go to bed.
The other thing is that the big “main” quests for building those major projects aren’t necessarily meant to be done quickly, as they’re the bigger story events that gate your progress through the game. Once I stopped trying to get them done as quickly as possible, and let myself get sidetracked on other stuff, I enjoyed the game a lot more. I spent quite a lot of time just spending whole days on, say, just mining, or harvesting wood, or fishing, while ignoring the bridge entirely. (I actually think I spent about two weeks fishing once. I got really, really into it. It then took me another week to sell them all.) By the time I thought “oh yeah, I should do that bridge thing”, I had more than enough of all the resources needed, and then it felt really quick to do. I ignored quite a lot of main quests for a really long time, including one that narratively I should have done much quicker. Let’s just say that
spoilerPortia went without clean drinking water for so long that everybody should have died
Speaking purely from my own experience, the mistake I made with My Time at Portia the first time I played it was I was too focused on being goal-oriented by following the main quest. But the game’s not really about that. I had a much better time when I slowed down, focused less on the main quest, and more on crafting stuff for the locals (so many stone stools) and selling them preposterous amounts of fish.
Sorry for the late reply! This is an incredibly extensive list, thank you so much! I’ll have to give the game another go at some point here. It seems super charming, so maybe if I go into it with this added knowledge, I’ll be able to get my bearings. Have you tried the new game that just released a while back? I think it was called my time at Sandrock?
I love the game, but I like extremely slow progress, so I use mods and modify the wealth multiplier(?) as well in the vanilla to make it more challenging. I also really love mods that add content, and there are quite a few out there! it’s annoying to always update mods manually (as compared to the steam workshop) but I did really enjoy when I was playing with my partner and we had 30+ mods!
a family member who I’m close to who also plays Stardew Valley likes to refer to me playing “Dark Souls Stardew Valley” which I thought was funny, especially because I’m terrible at Dark Souls.
overall I really like the game on it’s own. it helps that ConcernedApe has kept adding to it even though he absolutely doesn’t have to (it’s a big game as it is!) and I appreciate him for that. I do get a tiny bit stressed about the timer on days (notably when I’m playing with someone else and they’re really stretching the time thin) but it’s a very, very small thing. I had never played Harvest Moon or any other farming sim games before SDV, so I have no point to compare, but I just really appreciate the game being chill and a change of pace from games I’d usually play, that are almost entirely based on combat.
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.
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