On a separate note, with all these excuses maybe he’s not wanting to play it as much as you think he does. Or, the man is stuck in his ways and needs to read up on basic computer security. I guarantee Steam is keeping his cc info a lot more secure than his work probably handles his PII.
Oh that’s awesome, must not have read the GOG page carefully enough, thanks!
And on that other note, he’s the one that keeps bringing it up, he just wants my help to find the best way to get it for him. I agree he’s a bit stuck in his ways, he doesn’t use anything that needs his CC or address (unless my mom signs up for it first lol), and doesn’t like downloading anything that he’s not 100% trustworthy of.
Thanks for your help, I think GOG is the way to go!
It’s a pretty common mindset in the neurodiverse community. It’s partially based on black and white thinking, and partially based on a type of anxiety that causes a sense of pre-dread before doing almost anything, once you break through and actually start it, that type of anxiety goes away. To be replaced by whatever other types of anxiety the individual has, lol.
And of course with most of these it’s more accurate to say it’s a result of the trauma of growing up with these cognitive differences in a world where they aren’t standard.
It might be a bit frustrating trying to navigate his defenses, hopefully you end up getting it all worked out.
Lol, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s neurodivergent (I probably am too tbh), but I think it’s just more how he was raised and now he’s just too old to change his way, lol. He’s been a computer engineer since the 80’s and has been on the internet since about then. I think he’s just gone to too many security conferences and gotten a bit paranoid. Better to be too cautious than the other way around in my opinion. And to be clear, it’s not like he’s overly paranoid to the point of affecting his life, he just doesn’t like giving his info out online to places he doesn’t trust.
Hehe yeah sorry. It wasn’t just the credit card thing. The whole story there was like 10 different hints. I know alot of normal people and alot of neurodivergent people, and there are alot of parallels there, too many to be coincidence.
But I don’t get why so many people push back on it. Not only is it fine to be neurodivergent, but it’s not like you can change it by pretending you aren’t. This isn’t the olden days anymore, we know a ton of stuff now that can really help even getting diagnosed in your later years. Still always best to get the diagnosis before school, since the standard school experience causes alot of unnecessary grief. But the next best time is always “as soon as possible”. Many things can be un-done with surprisingly little effort when done the right way.
I know the old mentality is to not get a label so people won’t treat you different, but that is not at all how anything works anymore. Getting diagnosed is basically everyone’s favourite day of their life nowadays. It’s the turning point where their life finally started to make sense for them. And they “caught back up” to where they were always supposed to be.
Not everyone has to be neurodivergent to not want to use a credit card on the Internet - there have been plenty of leaks for this to be a valid stance. Also, let’s not forget about other countries where credit cards play basically no significant role in day to day payment activities and people view them as “oddities” (for a lack of a better term).
Also, depending on how you hand your credit card info over, and if mechanisms like EMV 3d secure are in place, some merchants basically obtain a copy of your card and it’s on you to check the validity of the transaction and also re-check that no additional transactions have been made over time. While it is certainly good practice to go over your credit card statement each month, I could totally understand if someone wanted to avoid that hassle and the one that comes with a dispute.
Lol, that would work for me or my friends, but I think giving him a pirated version might make him even more sketched out. Thanks for the idea, though!
Someone else in this thread mentioned the GOG version works on Mac, although I can’t see anything about it working on ARM, but I’d assume it does since it says it works on OSX 12+.
I’ve tried getting him into Steam, but he has some sort of grudge against it, idk why. Thanks for the suggestion!
Maybe this isn’t the case in your neighborhood but my local grocery stores have racks of gift cards, including for Steam. I know people who have similar concerns as your dad, so they just buy Steam credit for themselves.
That’s not a bad idea. I was planning on just gifting it to him over Steam since I have no qualms with giving Valve my CC, but if he wanted to buy something in the future, that would be a great work around.
IIRC I’ve never given Valve/Steam payment info. Everything is processed through PayPal. But even then, you should be able to gift his account a purchase without him putting in payment methods if you can convince him to use steam at all
I mean, if credit card is the issue, you can buy steam gift cards with cash at most game/electronics stores. I know this will depend on your region, but he can absolutely have a steam account with no card attached. I sometimes delete my debit card info by accident trying to use a different card and have to readd the card entirely. There’s been plenty of times my steam account has had no payment method.
Isn’t combat just so boring? While none of the games you mentioned are familiar to me, story focused games are my main interest. My personal favorite is definitely The Wink and Kiss Part 2 for Neverwinter Nights. Its an adult romance damsel in distress bard’s tale in which there’s almost always a social solution. Whenever combat is apparently unavoidable even the nicest and most harmless character can prevail with the help of her friends! Still though, it is all based on the 3rd edition of DND, so don’t expect things to be easy!
If an old DND game doesn’t interest you, then perhaps consider The Sims 1. Its one of the best selling role-playing games of all time. The Sims is just so awesome it doesn’t even need combat to be creepy, scary, and hard! Right now that’s the game capturing all of my spare time.
There is also a really good visual-novel with enough different paths to cross over into similar territory: Cinders! Its a contemplative retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale which focuses on the player character’s own agency and freedom in an oppressive world. Perhaps its best described as being a game about the true meaning of freedom and independence.
Since you’ve already received many excellent suggestions in this thread by now you hopefully won’t mind these more unusual options. Have fun with which ever game you choose and good luck!
I appreciate your suggestions and detailed reply. That mod looks spicy haha!
The games I mentioned do have a significant combat elements in them - but the combat isn’t the reason I play them. I don’t mind combat provided that combat isn’t the whole focus, and that the difficulty can be turned down to “cheat mode” the combat and just get on with it. Hell, I’ll break them down, cause this thread has traction and maybe it’s interesting to you and others :)
Chronotrigger is a SNES era Japanese RPG – lots of plot, story, time travel shenanigans, branching story with multiple endings, and also encounters with monsters which are handled with turn-based menu driven combat (so combat isn’t button mashing at all!). It’s old now, but still very good. My favourite trivial example of attention to detail, particularly in the context of time travel shenanigans: there’s a chest in a cave that you can access in multiple timelines – open the chest in the past, and it’ll be empty in the future; so open it in the future first, and then go back to the past and open it again and grab the contents twice! Etc. Here’s a classic bit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_JEhBGDsrY – minor spoilers.
Tales of Symphonia is a GameCube era RPG – unfortunately it has real time combat, complete with button mashing – combat feels like an arcade. But on the easiest setting, you sort of let your AI-controlled companions manage the fight, and you can just mash one attack until combat is done. The rest of the game is mint though, with a lot of inter-NPC dialogue, exploration, a good story, good voice acting (for its era), etc. You have no idea how much time I spent finding recipes for cooking in this one while ignoring combat haha. Sample: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tAYiO8NSLU
The Witcher 3 is a semi-open world fantasy setting – third person view, swords and sorcery stuff. It has a big focus on monsters, so you do have to go out there and hunt them. But it’s not just random encounters. Each monster has a story, and a reason you’re hunting them. It’s probably the gold standard in open world exploration - or maybe it was before Baldur’s Gate 3. Since you recommended romance – there’s a bunch of endings with different partners – here’s one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ_FkPNdNcs
Outer Worlds is a first person shooter with exploration elements. On the easiest difficulty, the combat sort of slides off of you, and you can focus on the exploration side. It’s kind of a “ship and crew” feel that evokes Firefly (the TV show) where you go around collecting companions and solving the mystery of this corporate hellhole of a solar system. It’s well crafted and I hope there is more like this out there somewhere. It sort of scratches the Mass Effect itch, while being entirely different in story. Samples: www.youtube.com/watch?v=taHXNV7kFcE
Mass Effect is a third person shooter with major RPG elements. Half the time you’re bombing around in your moon buggy looking for crashed satellites, or trying to romance the aliens you picked up, or trying to cure a plague or find out what happens if you endorse a product in a shop… In many ways, it set the gold standard for character oriented RPG interactions, with meaningful choices. Even the NPCs in the background are always having conversations that you just want to stop and listen to. For example: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpgxry542M
There was a Mass Effect trilogy re-release recently, where they got updated to be able to be played on the current generation of platforms, so I replayed it. Combat in Mass Effect 1 is still boring, but I’m going to scan every planet for anomalies, and drive my little moonbuggy around doing jumps trying to unveil the map of each little area of interest, damnit! And Mass Effect 2 is such a great experience that even the combat is acceptable. I shot the “kid” in my replay of Mass Effect 3 and didn’t know they made that do a thing and was so pumped by getting an unexpected ending compared to my first playthrough years ago. Sample with combat, cutscene, romance: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5gqrsFLhqo
Just rediscovered Battlefield Heroes through the fanmade Rising Hub.
Pretty sure it’s the perfect kinda game for a group of 10 year olds to play and socialize on.
I recommend Astroneer - a solo / multiplayer survival game about collecting resources, refining stuff and building up bases on several planets. It’s hecking fun in multiplayer and it doesn’t have combat. There’s a ton of things to do and if the kids are good at communicating with each other they can quickly conquer the game. The only microtransactiony stuff it has is cosmetics (but it’s not being pushed upon you in any way), but you can unlock some of these through progression as well.
Post made me wonder where the IP ended up, Eidos published the series and owned the IP, that went through SquareEnix after they bought out Eidos, then they sold the IP to Embracer who is currently going through a very slow bankruptcy.
So outside the thought exercise, this is mostly wishful thinking. The best we can hope at this point is that embracer sell their IPs to someone else who maybe publishers remasters?
From software probably aren’t a good choice though, they don’t really vibe super well with the more straightforward European mythologies, they like to weave more (intentionally) convoluted worlds that don’t super mesh well with the stories in the soul reaver series.
The closest I can think of would be the psvr exclusive Déraciné, which is a time travelljng story about faries in a boarding school, and it’s still pretty far.
So, yeah. THQ Nordic is owned by the aformentioned Embracer. They got no money. Everything they have is currently being shut down and will likely all be sold off to pay the bills in the next year unless they pull a mega hit out of their behind
I love Soul Revear and the cain series, but they weren’t even hits at their most popular ;) Embracer needs a huge injection of money just to keep going. huge
Unironically, that seems like a pretty easy game to remaster and turn for a profit. But also, they seem like they could ask Sony for funding in exchange for exclusivity. People don’t like exclusives, but sometimes it can fund stuff that wouldn’t normally get made.
If shooters, beer visuals, and light swearing (think damn, shit, the voicelines are pretty rare and can be disabled with mods) are alright for your kid, check out deep rock galactic. its on steam as well as xbox, and is a 1-4 player coop mining and shooting game where you collect minerals and shoot the ant looking bugs trying to eat you. its incredibly fun and ive sunk over 2500 hours into it without feeling for even a second that any of it was predatory.
If the issue is having to go through Steam to launch the game, then GOG would be the better alternative, as it gives you a DRM-free version of the game that can be installed and run without depending on them.
I also crave a new Kings Field! Some of my favorite childhood games.
Have you heard of Lunacid? Indie PC game that fully released this year by the developer behind Lost in Vivo. It’s absolutely crammed full with the legacy of Kings Field. First person dungeon crawl with magic rings to equip (Eternal Ring!) and a weapon stamina build up mechanic like KF. A TON of hidden secrets behind fake walls. Very obscure story that you piece together by the few characters in the game and environmental story telling.
I wouldn’t call it a perfect Kings Field clone, but it sure scratched the itch. It’s on Steam for probably 15-20 usd.
Hey, I just wanted to say I bought Lunacid right after your comment and finally got around to playing it. I’m only at the Catacombs, but so far it’s excellent and a great throwback to Kings Field (though I miss having armor; with only weapons and rings there’s far less exciting loot).
Nice! Glad to hear that you are enjoying it, happy that the recommendation worked for you! Agreed about the armor. I did miss that. I did enjoy the weapon level ups and finding rings that worked well together. It was a good way to scratch the first person dungeon crawler itch.
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