Interstellar Pilot 2. It’s admittedly a mobile game, but genuinely the best one I’ve ever played.
TLDR: It’s a sandbox spaceship pilot simulator where the “goals” are to dominate laissez-faire capitalism
Essentially, in the game, you start with one small starship, and travel the universe completing missions, buying and selling goods, and fighting off bandits.
Other games have this premise, but they’re mostly point-and-click games that take place universally in menus. Not so for Interstellar Pilot.
In Interstellar Pilot, the UI really matches the thing that you’re doing. When you’re at a station trading, it’s an ordinary menu, but when you’re in your ship, the UI is much more reminiscent of an actual ship’s dashboard, and you can pilot your ship anywhere you like in the 2.5d space, rather than just clicking buttons. Even in stations, where the UI is more menu-ey, the buttons you can select are on the peripheries of your screen, while the center is occupied by a view of the station and the area around it, as it updates in real-time.
Anyway, once you get enough money you can build up your empire sandbox style, buying ships and having them run automated scripts in the background—and eventually building stations that can let you manufacture goods and military ships to further your plans.
And what are those plans? They can be anything! IP is a sandbox game, so you can make as much money as possible, set up a self-sufficient economy, hunt bandits, or attempt to conquer the galaxy to your heart’s content.
And that’s not even getting into how good and layered the combat is. From light but reliable lasers, to stronger but less accurate plasma pulses, to slugthrower-style guns and guided missile, to ECM’s, which interfere with missile guidance, to mines that deter chasing another ship, to the hexagonal shield system, in which you can only take so many hits from each direction before they start to damage your hull, to the fact that your weapons themselves sometimes take damage randomly, to the space dust and cloaking devices that ships can use to hide and the echolocation mines that can be used to find such ships.
That said, for all the complexity the combat has, it never feels overwhelming. At any point, the player can pause the game at any time, freezing the entire universe, but still allowing the player to manage their stuff in it—activating weapons on ships (that will fire right when the player resumes time), buying and selling goods and ships, giving their ships new orders, etc.
Honestly, the game’s combat is both intuitive and spectacular and rarely gets talked about just because of how simple it feels. It’s also integrated perfectly with the trade and cargo systems. If your ship gets hit without it being blocked by a shield, some cargo might fall out of it, and you’ll have to pull it back in with your tractor beam before your opponent grabs it with theirs. Artillery shells, missiles, mines, and ECM’s have to be stored in your cargo bay, so you have to keep track of how many you have and balance that with how much cargo you’d like to carry.
And the ships are crazy customizable. There’s over a dozen different ship models, each with its own stats for things like maximum speed, turning rate, hull strengh, and weapon turret placement. As for weapon variation, each ship model has a couple of different variations with different turret placements, but that’s just the beginning. At military outpost stations, any weapon can be swapped out into any turret (as long as it’s compatible with the ship model), and ships be upgraded with a variety of other components too (better generators and shields, cloaking devices, passenger modules, etc.)
And for what it’s worth, the art and animation kicks ass. (Admittedly the old IP1 models more than IP2, but the creator (yes, singular) is planning to add custom paint jobs in the future, allowing for even more ship customizability). The space scenery looks stunning and seamless, and the ships all feel unique control-wise.
Anyway, Interstellar Pilot is a phenomenal game, and a (rare) credit to the entire mobile gaming industry. If you’re going to get it, I recommend getting Interstellar Pilot 2, which is the one currently in development (by the way, this entire game was made by one person in their spare time). (I think it’s also on Steam now for PC but it did originally start as a mobile game so I’m still counting it as one)
How the heck is this game free? It doesn’t even capture any data (on iOS) except identifies and they aren’t used to track players. Gonna give it a try.
A VN/RPG that has romance and doesn't make it an after thought. Like in most persona games or fire emblem games or even like mass effect. When romance is a thing, once you hit that we're a couple button that's pretty much it.
But then VNs represent the opposite end of the spectrum where you make the decision to pursue someone and that's it, the entire narrative shifts to completely focus on that. I want a middle ground, where there is one structured narrative that asks the question "How might chasing down the big bad change if this person versus this person was the person most important to the main character"
Like for example of you wanted to woo the nerdy tech wizard, following his or her story might involve tracking down parts and materials to improve tech and brace against the coming of the bbeg. On the other hand of you want to romance the overeager hothead it might involve trying to take the fight to the bad guys while saving puppies and children along the way. Completely different paths with the same end goal of defeating the bbeg.
If you’re enjoying yourself while you play, then the time was well spent. Like you said, try to remember that nobody is making you play every game you start to 100% completion, that’s an entirely self-imposed rule.
That said, for me personally, the length of a game is generally irrelevant to whether or not I will enjoy that game. If I enjoy a game, I enjoy that game. If it’s long, it’s long. If not, cool.
The big thing for me is that if I play narrative-focused games like immersive sims, I want to dive deep into those worlds, and that takes a certain amount of brain energy.
A RPG type game where you play as a single character, in a world of simulated NPCs, where some of those NPCs are playing something like a 4x or grand strategy game in the background and things happen independently of your actions.
Or something along the lines of being a background/supporting character in some grand fantasy adventure. The story isn’t about you; you exist within a greater plot that isn’t hinging on your actions. Basically I want NPC the game lol. I’m sure there’s a way to do it in an interesting manner
Maybe I’m mistaken because I haven’t played it as much as some people but this is pretty similar to Mount & Blade. I think if the NPC factions simply did more and were more effective at sieging one another it would be that almost exactly.
Similarly, Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode is almost exactly this but it leans deeply into roguelike survival and is still part of the old school ASCII version.
The problem is if you’re just a pawn in a dynamic procedural strategy game against NPCs it seems very easy for the factions to be procedurally put in a situation where one AI absolutely dominates another and the lack of control you would have over the bigger events would become frustrating.
If you're expecting 100 hour plus experiences in open worlds or detailed campaigns like AAA titles for $30-60 then there aren't that many. There are still good titles. Might want to check out steam and see what's popular in their VR section. Maybe see what has longer play times if that is what you're interested in.
Skyrim is next level in VR. Not sure if you can play it on the quest, but the level of immersion in the obscenely large world and exploring it in 3D makes the older engine feel entirely irrelevant.
You can 100% play on the quest (2 at least). I thought it was really good. The scale of everything hits a lot different. Not every mod works but a lot of them do - even the big ones. Archery is super fun.
The unskippable "boring" introduction we've all seen 1000 times in VR is wildly better. You really feel like you're being carted through a town, hearing people all around you talk their shit. Then the dragon.
I didn't actually get that far because space constraints became an issue with where I had my setup, but going to the little town then white run felt like an adventure on its own.
Whenever I see a game needs 50 hours to finish now, I just hard pass. Most games simply do not deserve 50 hours of life. Especially Ubisoft games which just patch out the length with fetch quests. Unnecessarily long games is a big problem and its partly caused by people with “bang for the buck” mindset. Do these people don’t have other things to do? Like going out? Watching movies?
Assetto Corsa has a great VR mode, No Man’s Sky, Half life Alyx, V-Racer Hoverbike, Walkabout Mini-golf , Box VR (My workout game), Arizona Sunshine, Observer (great game but too short)
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Aktywne