Outerwilds is a beautiful game and quite short, try to go in as blind as possible. It’s space archaeology.
Gris is an art game that’s about 3hrs long. Very pretty, very zen.
Into the breach, is a puzzle game (chess vibes) where you are time travellers saving the world from insect aliens. has a long time to beat, but play sessions are fairly short. I think it’s a great game for when you are taking short breaks between something else. it might be a tad too on the roguelike side for you, but it’s primarily about solving puzzles.
Carrion is a puzzle-horror game that took me about 5hrs to beat, it’s extremely satisfying
Nauticrawl is a very esoteric game, you pilot a sub at the bottom of the ocean and have to learn from scratch how to pilot it. If you like doing stuff with no instructions you’ll enjoy it.
Not for broadcast is a shortish (~20hrs) game where you control a live action broadcast and get points for how well you do cuts… or censor people
Superliminal is a 3hr puzzle game that plays with size and perspective.
Some games, like the Pathfinder games by Owlcat, use that initial input to determine if you are playing with mouse/keyboard or a gamepad. Depending on that, you get presented with a different UI in the main menu.
Another reason for such a screen could also be Xbox support. Nowadays it’s no longer necessary, because user-handling has been vastly improved with the GDK, but before the GDK was released a splash screen was the most user-friendly way to do user-handling in a single-player or online-multiplayer game on Xbox.
I get your point. And kind of agree for the most part. But idk, some title screens are nice to look at. Having the option to just view it until I’m ready to go on is nice imo. One button press isn’t all that bad. But yeah when loading or dlc checking has to be done after pressing the button it’s more annoying. That should happen before imo
You support more unethical bullshit buying avocados and meat than you do video games. To even give the issues you’ve mentioned as much attention as you have, while ignoring the much less ethical things you purchase far more often, shows how disingenuous and shallow your objection to those products really is, and it leads to more problems than it solves.
For example, Balders Gate 3 is a pretty fantastic game, with no micro transactions or as far as I can see any other form of end user manipulation.
They’re also one of the few studios I’ve seen recently that the devs dont seem burnt out on, which says a lot about how they were managed.
And they just license the content from wizards, to go “oh they’re tangentially related so it’s evil!” (Which you also did with hogwarts legacy) denies all the hundreds and thousands of passionate developers of a chance.
Indie games are a great alternative, true, but as others have said indies can be as toxic as the big companies when they want to be. Not to mention the long term consequences of that direction being developers can’t work together to make AAA games anymore, because according to your rules if a shithead makes it to the top everyone else’s work should be thrown away.
Mine is simply a more specific example of the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument that has been repeated here many times.
You mean the argument saying we cannot fix the system without abolishing the system? You’re using it to instead justify the inequities of the system and henceforth ignoring them because you completely missed the point of the phrase?
You know what an example is? Regardless of whether I agree with him or not, those were examples. They good list a whole bunch of other foods or shampoos or drinks or whatever the hell you can imagine. The poster was trying to make a point. Fixating on the examples and giving personal examples of people you specifically don’t do the two things the poster mentioned doesn’t make the argument lose its merit.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster’s, which can be summarized to that I don’t oppose art because I don’t like the artist, I won’t stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don’t in fact agree with what the poster said, but clinging to personal examples to refute an argument while ignoring the global average which is what the argument was using is disingenuous.
With the same logic, since the people you know don’t eat meat, that’d mean there’s no problem with the meat eating in the world, which I’m sure you’d rush to point out the absurdity of logic there.
My personal opinion on the subject is very different than the poster’s, which can be summarized to that I don’t oppose art because I don’t like the artist, I won’t stop reading Lovecraft or listening to Vivaldi because they were trash people, because their art is great. So I don’t in fact agree with what the poster said
OP did not say they did not want to play the games. They said they could not play their games because that would be giving money to the studios; that which is a form of support. The relevant sentence is here:
I can’t play them because it’d be giving those companies/people money
I am fairly sure that OP would love to play the games they cite. And that they love the art. But that is not the point. The point is whether or not they are willing to support the bad practices from the studio. Because if they did buy the game, indirectly it would be supporting those bad practices.
Your initial point (the “global average” of it) was that there are more serious things to care in the world - you were assuming that OP had to be doing something else such as buying non-local food which is bad for the planet, and you were more or less saying that it is stupid for them to care about what happens in the game industry when they most probably do not care about the food they eat.
My point was that you were doing moral assumptions about OP - I pointed your specific avocado example, but even more generally than that, you were assuming that OP had to be doing something wrong somewhere in the context of ecology.
Well, now, my last and final point is that OP may be someone who is careful about what they buy generally speaking (not just avocados), whether it be shampoo or whatever. Again, I do know people who are very careful about what they buy. They will try their best to never buy something new for instance ; buying from second-hand places for example. And they will try their best to almost never waste something. If OP were to be someone like that, then your whole point would not apply to them. Hence my initial point.
I did not get your meta-logical reasoning on your last paragraph. But I will leave it at that because I am not sure continuing this discussion is fruitful.
You’re right it’s not, since neither did I comment on the original poster’s message, but the one’s you were responding to, nor did I assume anything about the original poster. And I’m certain I was not the person you originally replied to either.
Maybe pay more attention next time? If you’re interested in my answer to the OP, I have that below in another comment that answers to the OP, not you answering to someone else that commented on the OP.
Apologies - I am not good with names and the “Show context” feature only shows one message. I did not even realize I was talking to a different person. Thanks for clarifying
I appreciate your thought-out response. I’m going to respond as best I can to your points.
I struggle with moral/ethical conundrums in all areas of my life. The current discussion is games, but I really do consider the harm I might be causing any time I buy things. There are some harms that I cannot avoid, such as the purchase of gasoline (my current income is low and I cannot afford a greenee car). Others, such as food purchases, are limited in what I can do… But I try anyway. I have an app for telling me about ethical sourcing by company/product which I use at the store. Clothing, sadly, tends to be unethical no matter what, unless I make my own clothes - I sadly don’t have the time or money to do so.
With video games, which are themselves a luxury, I have so many choices of what to play that I feel I have much more ability to decide what not to play, based on how I feel about where my money is going.
I should also acknowledge that I don’t think any of these games/developers will suffer as a result of me not purchasing them. Developers/programmers also do not make income based on sales, and layoffs happen after the release of many major AAA games, simply because they don’t need that large team anymore (I don’t agree with this practice at all, and I think it’s horrible to do to people who already don’t make enough for their work, but it’s relatively industry standard). The gaming community is also waaaay too large for any kind of boycott to be effective. I’m just trying to be mindful about my purchases based on my own feeling.
I think you raise a fair point about indie games. I think it’s a good reminder to me to look into those as well. As long as there’s no major publicized controversy surrounding an indie company, however, there’s no information I can use to steer me away from it. But, I appreciate your reminder not to blindly purchase indie games just because the company is “indie.”
Overall, I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I will be considering your points as I move forward.
As far as I know, Larian is not such a company like you mention. Everything they’ve done or said so far, to my knowledge, both referring to BG3 and their previous games is classes above the average for the industry.
Of course it’s your decision to not buy their game based on the fact they had to use WotC’s IP, but you’re punishing an actually good developer for something they did not have a choice on (WotC’s ethics and way of running things).
Truth is like that you’re not hurting them, and most importantly not hurting WotC who’d get a small percentage of a small percentage of your sale. Couple of bucks at best is nothing to WotC’s bottom line.
But that’s your prerogative and that’s fine. However, I do suggest you play the game, cracked if you must because so far with about 20h in, it’s an amazing game from a great company. Maybe it won’t make you buy it, but at least it might make you consider supporting their other, or future, games that are not connected with WotC. Because the last few years we’re fast to point fingers to others, but forget to reward the few that do things properly.
Really none. The game walks you through rolls and what each thing does.
Having a little knowledge of how D&D works only serves to make the leveling up process go quicker since you have ideas on how to allocate stats or what specialties you take without reading through everything.
Yeah I think OP is looking at this from the wrong way. As opposed to a normal game you’ve never played before in which you have to learn the mechanics completely from scratch, with BG3, if you have any knowledge of 5e, you’ll be able to pick it up easier.
The only argument for piracy being bad is that it is stealing because they lost a sale they would have otherwise gotten. You already bought the game. Therefore, there is no lost sale. There’s not a single moral argument against it now.
That being said, your ISP can’t tell the difference, so make sure you use a VPN (especially if torrenting)
And that argument is BS anyway, because there’s no such thing as “potential profit” even though companies say there is.
When I pirated the most games I had no money. If I didn’t pirate it, I’d go play on the street or whatever lol. Not going to buy what you literally can’t.
Same goes for denuvo and the “always online” for single player games crap. I’m not buying any games using those on principle.
I don’t disagree, I brought it up just because it’s the only argument against piracy that holds any merit at all )even if little) and is, in this case, completely irrelevant anyway.
As far as I know ow most paid VPNs allow it, a lot of free ones don’t. I can say from experience that Windscribe allows torrenting, although there is a 10gb limit per month on free accounts (there is a way to get around that tho)
When the big brother dies in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The game is short, but does a great job of getting you emotionally attached to these brothers. Even through the controls, you control both brothers at once with each getting half of your controller. When he dies, it also essentially kills half of your controller. I found myself trying to move the brothers together as I have for the rest of the game.
Such a great way to implement gameplay into the emotions of a game. It was like after someone died in real life, you keep thinking about messaging them all the cool things you find that they’d like only to realize they’re not there. You just sent a meme to a phone number that hasn’t been paid for in months. Maybe you even start paying the phone bill so you can keep hearing their voicemail. Continuing to reach for half of the controller that can’t do anything now is just amazing.
I was playing this game with my 4 yo daughter, giving her a controller pretending she was controlling the younger brother. We would talk to the characters as if the younger brother was her and the elder brother was me. It was an amazing experience. Then the elder brother dies, and it’s not even a quick thing. There’s a whole big segment of the younger brother carrying the elder brother’s body and burying it. My daughter doesn’t exactly understands what is happening, but keeps getting more and more upset and scared, and keeps asking me why I wouldn’t wake up. That segment fucked me up as I was trying to get through that part while also trying to comfort my daughter.
I cried that whole bit with the controller feeling like you’re missing an arm. So exact a representation of grief.
But the last scene, where the father simply falls to his knees at his son’s grave. He’s been granted his life back at a price no human parent would ever, ever accept. I cried racking sobs. It was so awful and true.
This game is my answer as well. I held it together through big big brother’s burial. When I lost it was in the epilogue when I realized I needed to press big brother’s action button for little brother to pull the big lever. I literally wept as I pressed that button.
Hate soulslike stuff other than combat, bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process until you’ve learned the boss moved… or shot yourself. Oh and you can’t pause so tough luck if you ordered food or kids want something. Fromsoft are masters or marketing to sell this bullshit as something great
Also hate unskippable cutscenes, good story like witcher, ffvii remake or kotor defends itself. If you feel the need to do it chances are your story is bad and so you shouldn’t. Just look at ghost of tsushima, good combat, great world and visuals. Easily an 8/10 or better potential but mostly bad story without skips makes it tedious and just not fun. A samurai fetching herbs for peasants 😂 Bonus points if you can’t even pause the mighty cutscene
bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process
DS1 I feel is decent with this (could be Stockholm syndrome) and Elden Ring removes the issue almost completely. But Jesus Christ DS2 was awful in this regard. At least they added the mechanic where mobs stop respawning after you’ve killed them N times; I removed every single enemy from along the Smelter Demon corpse run lmao
I usually call them management games. Looking at the Steam tags for Factorio and RimWorld, they both have “Management” and Factorio additionally has “Resource Management”. But I think “Management” is your best bet.
I think RTS games don’t usually fall under management and instead are just called RTS.
In terms of my favourite ones, I love FTL: Faster Than Light. I’m picking it up again at the moment actually. I also like RinWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and Dungeon of the Endless.
I don’t know if I would call FTL a process optimization game. One thing I feel like it’s missing is feedback if your process is being optimized or if you just got lucky. With Rimworld, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Factorio all include metrics that allow you to judge if you’ve made your process better but because of FTLs randomness, it’s hard to determine if you played better or just had better rolls. That said I love FTL and it’s an amazing game.
Absolutely how I felt. It’s heavy on the randomness and I’ve never beat it despite doing very well on some runs. I think the important thing about FTL is that it’s about the journey. The ending is always depressing.
Well I can tell you that a PC is definitely in your interest because not only is there access to great indie games and modding, but it acts less like a subscription service and you get to keep the games on steam forever. Unlike PlayStation, your games won’t be obsolete and you can run them on newer hardware to enjoy them all over again. Want to play Morrowind at 4k, you bet.
That being said, here’s what I would do in your shoes. I wouldn’t invest in a steam deck up front. I think the deck is great for a lot of gaming experiences, but if you’re used to a Ps5, it’s not going to satisfy you probably. Too little power for more complex games isn’t enough for me as my only console.
I would get a cheap computer. Learn to build one yourself if you can, it’s not hard and can be a fun community effort to get parts in your price range. Consult forums for the individual parts. Sounds hard, but it’s not that bad.
The next part will sound weird because subscriptions are bad buuuut I recommend anyone new to Pc games go look at humble bundle and especially at their subscription. They usually provide a good value for games while also donating to charity.
But yeah overall, you should probably take a break after selling your Ps5. I think it’d be a good opportunity to see if gaming still feels right for you.
I think I’m also in the boat of moving into PC gaming soon. I would be interested in doing a cheap build, but I don’t know much about good components and wouldn’t be sure where to start my research. It would definitely be a good project and I would feel more invested with a build I put together and can upgrade over time.
I do think I need a break from the PS5. The thing is that I’m a college student and just started my summer break, so I didn’t play the PS5 for about 6 months. Now that I have time, I pick it up again and quickly feel drained or uninspired by what there is to play. Even going through the store I struggle to find anything worth my time. So my thinking is that if I already need a break again, then it might just mean that I have outgrown the console gaming life and would benefit from moving onto PC or simplifying my gaming to lighter titles that are more story rich.
I think I’m going to take some time to evaluate the PS5 more. Probably if I don’t use it much before Christmas, then I can look to offload it.
Ah, I have more advice then. So most people build their PCs on PCPartPicker. Other than that you can find or make posts on Toms hardware, the LTT forums, the Reddit pc gaming sub, or even probably here. There are plenty of people much more skilled than I at picking parts. It’s somewhat of an art but you have to start somewhere. Also just consider your upgrade paths. Don’t buy a motherboard without knowing that there is a better CPU for the same socket. Stuff like that.
The college life is rough. I do it myself so I’d just keep in mind if you’re moving around a lot, you’ll need to be okay with moving the pc and it’s components. I move mine around often in a large case with a big monitor. It’s a task for sure. So consider building in a smaller case, it’s harder but may be worth it in the long run.
Not sure what kind of games you enjoy but steam loves their sales. Both the sales and humble bundle are a good way to try games for really cheap. Also steam let’s you refund games with less than 2hrs played. So trying things out for a bit and returning them is a very good deal. Also no subscription for online so that’s cool.
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)
Not a shooter, but superliminal I think has a few levels that let you use portals to change your size, and there’s no limits on how many times you can do it, so you can shrink yourself to be microscopic to the point where you can fit inside a straw and it takes like a minute to walk to the end of the straw. Everything in the room is modeled to be quite detailed, so there’s also a chess board, and you can get on top of the rook piece and it’s like being on top of a castle.
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