For sheer versatility you can’t beat PC, so that is going to have to be my choice. Having flexibility between KB+M and controller, having access to mods and tweaks and (typically) having a wider array of graphics/performance options to tailor to your preferences makes for an unbeatable package.
That being said (and it pains me to say this given my distaste for Nintendo), I absolutely loved the 3DS. The dual screens were cool, it had good ergonomics for me and a nice weight in your hands and there was something very satisfying in the mechanics of flipping it open or listening to the click as you slam it shut. It’s just a really nice device to use.
I’ve been playing Etrian Odyssey 3 HD and I’m enjoying it. It’s a lovely blobber with an interesting take on mapping. You can choose between full, minimal or no automapping. I’m playing with minimal automapping and I’m rediscovering the joys of mapping a dungeon crawl, a thing which I thought I was officially done with. At “normal” the difficulty is just right for me. I’m particularly enjoying the total absence of brutally obtuse puzzles, a staple of western RPGs for some reason. Only downside is the fan service some of the art suffers from, a staple of JRPGs for some reason.
What spoilers? That you fight a big, weird-looking boss with multiple baby heads or something at some point? The game’s story is not exactly full of twists and turns.
I agree, those are those play for the gameplay games, I don’t want to sit in a menu for 20 hours reading lore and still don’t know that I’m missing the necklace that explains why the jesters head was cut off or some stupid shit.
These games are made for some passionate fan to explain the lore in a way for others to grasp and that’s not always a bad thing. Still friggen stupid though.
Well, I personally love the Lore/Story. But I also love Games like Majoras Mask with lots of speculation and mysteries. If I play a Souls Game it feels like I’m an archeologist, most of the story is told by looking at the environments and reading old descriptions for Weapons/items.
“And thus it was that the Great Finger Lords, thralls to Gordana the Pulchritudinous, cast their withered finger-bodies into the Well of Sanguine Apoploxy, shattering the Piteous Eye, and covering the vale in a shadow of fingers.
Only when the Order of the Beshivered Spindle is restored upon the Great Finger-ruine Mountain will Bodkin the Befingered, with his Great Spear of Unreturning, return to rebuild the Yeoman’s Sepulchre and return the Affrighted Digitus, with its many weird, tiny baby-faced fingers, to its finger-realm. Fingers.”
I can only speak for myself. For me it felt really great being able to explore the world having absolutely zero idea of what is what, how much game is left, etc. It is reminiscent of a time when I was a kid and playing a game was exactly like that.
I even got quite sad when my friend “accidentally” told me
spoilerThat a certain action I did locked me into a specific ending unless I did something I probably wouldn’t be able to figure out. Rationally I understand that this is as inconsequential as it gets, but I didn’t even know for sure if there were multiple endings until that point.
Haven’t played since close to launch (because it was very laggy). I really liked the idea and had a lot of fun when it was working. I haven’t played in a while so I can’t comment on the current state of the game but if you like Tarkov or DMZ there’s a good chance you’ll like this game. It feels like it’s somewhere between the arcade feel of DMZ and the milsim feel of Tarkov.
I also like that it’s one big living map. I haven’t tested it but I’m pretty sure you can be in one zone and run all the way over to a totally different zone (what would be considered a different map in Tarkov). The map feels super big. I’m excited to check it out again.
I play it since launch and it is not laggy (if it becomes laggy just change server). It had some connection problems at first but nothing too bad, you just had to retry once or twice.
The major problems players complained were not enough helicopters spawn use to “fast travel” around the map (leading to queues of people waiting for an airlift or just walking to destination) and some AI having god sight and shooting you in bushes.
There’s been several updates and the roadmap is public.
I enjoy the game but I play very slowly, I still haven’t unlocked everything. The missions are nice, I like walking in the nature to enjoy the scenery and snipe people.
I like that it is PVE or PVPVE. Other players are usually helpful and talks on the proximity chat (at least on pve) so you can be a lone wolf and participate in a more difficult assault with randoms passing by.
I’d say look at some YouTube reviews but be aware, some of those players finished the game in 48 hours and are complaining that they have nothing left to do (duh) so they want updates (which are coming).
If I hadn’t already I would definitely buy the game, maybe not on full price.
After staring at my screen for 45 minutes trying to pick a game for the weekend, I decided to start up The Sims 3 again. Just like always, the addiction is back! It seems like at least once or twice a year I go really hard on it for about a week.
My desktop which I got hooked up to a monitor and also a TV, so I switch between the two depending on if I want something super responsive or a cinematic couch experience.
Been also supplementing that with my Steam Deck where I can pick up playing the same game and continue my progress with a handheld.
Steam Deck on lunch breaks, travel, and shorter sessions at home. PC when I want max settings gameplay. I tend to play games that can wrap up a loop in ≈30min on the Deck and more graphically intense/immersive/grindy games on the PC.
Linux PC. Almost entirely on a desktop, though I’ve got a few games (Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Caves of Qud) that I’ll play on a laptop.
Very limited use of Android, if I’m away from a computer, for the mobility.
I’ve owned a few consoles, but the experience has consistently disappointed me.
Loading times are worse (well, maybe this has improved, but historically was a pain)
I can’t as trivially flip over to a wiki in a web browser. I smack a button, I’m on another workspace on my PC.
For some reason, a lot of “deep” games that one spends a lot of time learning, like strategy and milsims, don’t have much of a presence on consoles. I like a lot of entrants in those genres.
Games cost more than the PC. I mean, sure, the console vendor loses money on the hardware, has to make their money back on the games, but that especially makes consoles a bad buy if you’re going to get a lot of games.
The PC has more potential to be upgraded (though I’ll concede that consoles have generally improved here).
I’m not constrained by what the game developer wanted me to do; I can drop in with a memory editor and cheat in a game, can add mods to the game, have control over save state, etc.
The drawbacks of a PC are things that don’t really bother me:
You’ve got setup and configuration, which I’m gonna do anyway.
You’re more-likely to hit driver or hardware compatibility issues than on a console.
As for mobile…
I would be potentially willing to pay a lot more for mobile games than I do, but the entire commercial game infrastructure on Android is tied to getting a Google account, and I refuse to do that; I don’t want Google logging and data-mining what I do. So I almost-exclusively use open-source software on Android. And most good mobile games have made it to the PC.
Honestly, I was kind of unexpectedly disappointed with Android gaming (and this is even based on what I see in the Google Play Store).
Okay, the touchscreen isn’t a fantastic input medium for a lot of game genres, but I thought that stuff like multiple-choice choose-your-own-adventure games and gamebook-type games would see a huge renaissance, but some of the main games in that line have been…not that great; Choice of Games has a lot of titles, and some of the writing is good, but the gameplay mechanics are kinda disappointing.
Turn-based strategy games seemed like a good fit for the touchscreen, but as with the console, deep strategy games also haven’t been hugely in evidence. As best I can tell, there’s a strong focus on games that you can drop into for a few minutes while waiting in a line or something and then drop out of…which is fine, but really constrains the experience. I guess deckbuilders are okay, but the PC does fine there too.
A lot of Android games aren’t super-considerate of the battery. Some games that I like on the PC, like real time sim games (Oxygen Not Included or Dwarf Fortress) require constant load and just wouldn’t be a great match for a phone running on battery, even if they were present.
I’m not really into games that leverage location, which is one thing that a phone can do that other platforms can’t. I could maybe believe that there could be games that could leverage multi-touch support to do things that PCs can’t and really get a lot of good out of it, but I haven’t seen that.
The screen has major limitations in that few Android devices have a large screen (so they can’t expect to control a large portion of your visual arc) and on a touchscreen, your hands are going to be obscuring part of the screen, making things even more difficult for the developer.
Touchscreens have gotten better, but they just don’t have reliable, rapid response to input the way that the mouse-and-keyboard (which a PC is guaranteed to have) or a gamepad (which a console is guaranteed to have) have.
Android phones can take external peripherals, but it’s hard for a game to expect that they be present, especially since not everyone wants to haul a lot of hardware around with their phone. So you can get game controllers, earphones, a keyboard, or even an external projector, but it’s hard for a game to expect that you have them available.
Finished F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin and even played the very short DLC Reborn.
I am in love with the Alan Wake 2: Night Springs DLC. Overall it was really short, which is understandable for a free dlc. The stories fit the right tone for the game and for Night Springs à la The Twilight Zone, as well as fitting in with each episode's playable character's backstory. It makes me excited for lore drop that's going to come with The Lakehouse in October.
I got sucked into a conversation with a close friend of mine about Furiosa, and it put me in the mood to replay Mad Max again. I played it earlier this year, but fuck it, I'll play it again because I love it.
Even if I’m playing a regular non-VR game, I like playing it in a VR environment so I can have a bigger screen than my biggest display IRL. I spend a lot of time in VRChat on the native Quest app while using a 2D remote desktop app that runs in the menu overlay to play Elden Ring.
I was a console player, now I am on PC. And I harvest the power of emulation alongside playing modern games.
Long Version
I’m an 80s guy and was fortunate enough to experience the 90s in its full glory; from Snes Jrpgs to the transitioning to 3D to the first consoles with internet connection. Nowadays I am a PC player and play ton of games through emulation. And the little cute Steam Deck on my side is the extra fun.
I played this year Breath of the Wild from the Switch, but through emulation on my PC in 60 fps, higher resolution and with my Xbox gamepad. Got all or almost all shrines in the game with over 130 hours playtime (Edit: Played it this year on Yuzu BTW. They started suing while I was playing.)! And besides that, I play old Romhacks and mods of old console games for the SNES, in example translations, bug fixes or just new stages (like DLCs from the community!). Or play games to beat highscores and times from your friends or other players in the community. There is so much to explore through emulation.
If you have a good PC and the patience, then I recommend you to get into emulation a little bit. Maybe not as hardcore as I do, but for your favorite consoles and games. You can play games that you missed back in the day in example, or just waste 20 minutes testing old games and then go back to modern games. It’s such a fun experience.
I used to do emulation but stopped for a while. now it seems more difficult, but a family member just gave me quite a few old games (and I’m planning to ask for some others, like Banjo Kazooie and Pokemon SoulSilver hahaha) so I’m looking forward to getting back into that! I also miss the pokemon fangames that weren’t actually for emulators, have some good memories of those.
I love modding things and appreciate the modding community for games a lot. most recently modded game I played was Stardew Valley, but it made me miss the steam workshop and auto updating mods :c
I still haven’t touched Breath of the Wild but I own it for the switch.
90% of my steamdeck usage is ps2 emulation. Old games get so much battery life and they always have pause and no forced online making them ideal for steamdeck
trying out Mario Odyssey, since my main computer is down for the count. I don’t know why console gaming has become difficult for me after I started gaming on pc.
then, I’m dipping my toes in with Caves of Qud, but I don’t know if my brain is in the place right now to learn how to play. tutorial videos are likely in my future.
thank you for the tip!! I didn’t even notice it had a steam workshop, hahaha. I got the mod, so hopefully things go a little smoother next time. I have to play on controller currently which is a bit weird but I’m hoping I get used to it.
I’ve had laptops, consoles and a steam deck. Nothing comes close to sitting at a desk and gaming on my pc. I don’t know what it is I just like my desk. Even when I’m using the steamdeck I sit at my desk.
this is such a mood. I was playing Mario Odyssey earlier on a big screen tv, and… it still didn’t feel great, hahahaha. even though my monitors are smaller, I just prefer it.
I love making things and trying to figure out new ways to improve my experience. So I spent half a day making my lounge perfectly comfy, big 60inch 4k TV, pc hooked up, controller If I needed but also mouse and keyboard. and I played for 30mins before I realized it sucks compared to sitting at my desk.
I’m with you on wanting the big, upholstered chair, but also liking the desk.
I kind of wish that easy chairs at desks were more of a thing. As it is, a typical desk doesn’t really fit them: you have “office chairs” and “living room chairs”, and the two don’t meet much. Couple problems:
A big and top-heavy chair is gonna tip more easily, so you have to extend the base and casters.
A big chair isn’t gonna roll as easily, so you can’t push back from a desk.
For years, I’ve been thinking about switching to a table or workbench with a higher top or something.
I think that the answer probably has several elements.
Maybe the desk can just…go away. Desks are important for paperwork, were important for supporting heavy CRTs, but I rarely actually need one now.
Monitor goes on an table/desk/floor-mounted arm. I’ve been diong that, and I’m happy with it, but still have the “cubbyhole” desk from the CRT era. Maybe just swing the thing into place every time you sit down.
Keyboard and mouse need to be attached to the floor or chair, not the desk. This is a bit harder. There are keyboard and mouse trays, but if one reclines in a chair, they also tilt the tray, which I don’t want – the mouse surface has to remain horizontal. If you can live with a trackball or trackpad, that might be tolerable. It might be possible to have some kind of leveling attachment that fits over the arms, or have a free-standing keyboard/mouse tray that fits over the chair, pole on each side of it. Something like this. If reclining adjusts the required height of the keyboard/mouse and the mount is freestanding, then it has to be trivial to adjust the height.
A big sofa chair that wheels would be perfect. Even though my desk is empty and only has a keyboard, mouse I still like the space incase I need to solder or draw or store rubbish.
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