May I recommend taking it a step further and going for games that have no cycle in them at all? That is, finite games that you can play and actually finish, for good. That’s what I’ve been looking for a lot lately.
Some recommendations:
The Talos Principle (puzzles with a story)
Outer Wilds (best to go in blind, read absolutely nothing about it, not even the steam description)
CrossCode (fast paced fun combat and a cool story and characters. Somewhat grindy but still finite)
Beacon Pines (short and sweet visual novel)
Chants of Sennaar (language translation game, surprisingly fun and satisfying)
Outer Wilds is a gem of a 3D first-person indie game. Other games might have you find required items so you can progress (like Pokemon or Zelda games), but in this game it’s all about the knowledge you learn while playing (like Tunic). You explore, learn, and puzzle solve. By looking up anything about the game, or by looking up a solution to a puzzle, you essentially lock yourself out of experiencing that piece of content. It’s all about the journey.
It’s a game you can only really play once, but it is so worth it. It’s my favorite video game and I wish I could forget everything about it so I can play it again for the first time.
Well… Without spoiling anything I would say, you are a member of an alien species on another planet. You are also an aspiring astronaut about to take your first journey into space. Let’s just say your journey is quite remarkable.
Chants of Sennaar is absolutely one of my favorite games. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where the mechanics of the game and the themes of the game were in perfect harmony.
Not every game needs a story or campaign you can finish to be enjoyable. Playing random skirmishes in Age of Empires 2 or Supreme Commander can be loads of fun. Civilization 5 has scenarios that I suspect most players don’t even know exist (also, you can play Unciv for free). You can pick up and put down much like you’d do to boardgames.
Then there’s “infinite” games like Cities Skyline, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Satisfactory. It’s ok to want once and done games, but games that you want to replay when they lack any mtx or dark patterns speaks something about your enjoyment
Definitely, not disagreeing with that. I’ve played plenty of those games too. I just find that “enjoyment per hour” is actually better with shorter, finite games. But I also find myself spending a lot of time playing Civ or Stellaris haha
#Balatro (Steam, iOS, Android, Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One/X/S)
A deck-builder card game where you make poker hands, but Jokers and other cards give you crazy power-ups. I probably didn’t explain that very well, but it’s absurdly addictive. It’s like the perfect Steam Deck game.
At the beginning, it definitly is. But after you played several runs, you get less and less new ways of winning. The game offers you new jokers whenever you make some significant progress and for a while, thats a lot of fun.
I haven’t had so much fun for a while now. I played it for like 40 or 50 hours
The age old conundrum of the unit that may or may not be strong in real combat situations, but becomes absolutely gamebreakingly busted when added to videogames, because it’s strenghts translate into overwhelming advantages with none of the real life drawbacks it had to endure, usually via game design, bad balancing or games putting said units in unrealistic situations.
Take for example anti-aircraft guns since WW2. Other than the obvious real example of the FlaK88 being turned into an AT gun by the Germans, several others of these become anti-infantry or even anti-armor rapid firing nightmares in war games, because they’re put well inside their optimal range and within threatening range of infantry and tanks. Which would usually destroy them from afar. The OTO Melara gun is a good modern example. Italian radar guided 110mm naval gun, was never mounted onto a proper line vehicle that was adopted by any country. But the prototypes, like the OTOMatic, absolutely terrorize every game where they appear, as a hyper accurate, rapid firing, high damage anti-everything gun.
Horse archers are just the ancient ages example of that.
Um…archers on chariots were almost certainly extremely effective in any era they appeared. The main reason they stopped being popular in combat was because horses became big enough to ride after thousands of years of breeding.
Also because they were absurdly expensive for the civilizations that were using them. The loss of their chariots to Sea People invasions and the cost of replacing them is sometimes listed among the reasons for the Bronze Age collapse of the Hittites and the decline of Egypt despite their battlefield victories.
And it takes a lot of time to train soldiers to effectively ride horses, shoot bows and especially to ride horses while shooting bows while also making sure there’s enough money/logistics to take care of those troops. Much easier to give tons of people a simple bow and tell them to have at it. Or spears. Just… spears for everyone.
The exclusivity deals appear to have been good for no one involved: Epic, Square Enix, Sony, or customers, so I think we’ve seen the last of them outside of things Epic publishes themselves.
How was it bad for epic? They would’ve made more from cuts on sales on steam than selling the full game at the lower rates on their own store? God I wonder how dismal their customer engagement rate is.
They paid more for it than they saw back in sales or expected new customers. What they’ve said publicly is that they won’t be using this strategy anymore, because it isn’t working. They claim free game giveaways are working, but I have my doubts as to how valuable those user acquisitions are.
No, not sure if other industries do this, but buying a game in a weak currency usually turns out cheaper (by alot) because Devs will usually offer the game for a lower price in the weaker economy
So OP wrote a misleading description when saying the increase was from $12 to $14?
I don’t play RuneScape and I’m just going off of their description, which is inconsistent and the derogatory “just read lol” has so far shown to be wrong.
I feel like I’m missing something completely - maybe I do need to learn how to read. The only thing I’m seeing on the jagex page is new prices for a handful of currencies under “pricing table”, SEK is not one of them.
There’s no mention of past prices at all? Is there another link I’m not seeing?
EDIT: I think my main point is that as far as I can tell, you need to be an active member of the RuneScape community to know what the prices actually increased from, so “learn to read” wasn’t very helpful to casual passerbys, and OPs post could have some more clarity and examples of increased prices for those not already in the know. It was especially confusing that the only example they provided wasn’t an example of the 50% increase mentioned in the title.
This is a general games community so I think it’s fair to ask for some more context and leniency for such a niche game. If you want folks to care, don’t make it hard for them to do so.
I don’t think I care enough about drama in a niche game to do a deep dive on all of the reddit comments to learn about something…
It would be helpful if you or OP could provide links, or at least quote things. Most passerbys simply have better things to do than to find better context of what OP is saying about a game from 20 years ago. I think it’s only natural for people to be confused when OP didn’t provide enough context, or the only way to get context is to apparently read an entire Reddit threads worth of comments.
Choose one. I told you where I found the specific prices. I mentioned which currency was particularly egregious so you could find the price yourself independently but you didn’t care to.
I think a compelling statement should be made with citations if it’s not a well known fact, especially when provided to a general community.
I don’t care enough about niche old game drama to chase down the facts myself if it involves going through the comments of an entire Reddit mega thread.
Does that resolve your proposed cognitive dissonance?
The person gave you a percentage range of the increase and that it applies to different currencies. You have been given the opportunity to find more info if that’s insufficient. If you don’t care enough, that’s on you. I don’t play this game and don’t care to read any more comments from you about this silly topic.
You were given enough information about something you said you don’t care about. I told you I don’t care to read any more comments from you, yet you persist. Weird.
Underhero is a RPG. There is (bad) 2D platforming and an interesting blend between turn based and real time battles with decent amount of player expression, but I find most interesting the writing and scenarios you will find yourself in during the game. You play as an Underling after the Hero has an unfortunate accident after all, and while technically a silent protagonist, all entries in the journal/hint system/to-do list are just brimming with personality.
I swear I first saw this game in list of “Paper Mario-likes”, but I can’t find a single video with that topic that mentions it, and now I realize that it only has like 600 reviews on steam.
Yep, it sounds pretty much exactly like what people expected.
Honestly, I’m on a bit of a Star Wars kick lately and it’s been long enough since I’ve played an Ubisoft open world to find some enjoyment, so I might pick this up. But it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s going to blow me away.
I love the world of Star Wars more so than the stories lately aside from Andor so I’ll be giving this a go through their sub service. 18 bucks to knock this out and Prince Of Persia in a month, two games I’ll never touch again after completion, is quite a deal imo.
Lmao, are you kidding me? In his review, he paints the picture of missing climbing Far Cry radio towers and finding a thousand pointless little POI and stupid number challenges.
That is by far the most tiresome aspect of the Ubisoft open world formula…
He… didn’t? Far Cry was not mentioned at all and he had this to say about radio towers:
You may be delighted to hear there are no towers to scale to push back Outlaws’ fog of war here: these open world areas - really a collection of entirely distinct biomes, separated by hyper space or fast travel - reveal themselves fully on arrival.
Maybe you were thinking of this in the conclusion, but I don’t think these observations are incorrect:
It speaks back to Outlaws’ issues with stripping away the bulk of the Ubisoft formula and finding so little underneath - or more broadly, a general misunderstanding of what you ought to be stripping away here and why. The Ubisoft open world functions so well because of how this clutter weaves itself together so intoxicatingly that you can’t help but flow from one to the next, from looting to crafting to combat to gear to unlocking another area of the world and more. The heist flick works because of its characters - their complexity, obsession or greed - as much as it does the sheer fun of actually doing a heist.
Star Wars Outlaws, by comparison, feels like it’s blagging it - much as Kay can, when regularly caught out by some far more worldly syndicate boss. The result is a series of quite painful comparisons: it lacks the branching, open stealth of an Arkham game, the systemic options of a Dishonored or the incisive, relentlessly satisfying speed of picking enemies off in Assassin’s Creed. It lacks the linear polish and charisma of Uncharted. Lacks the animation flow to its yellow-ledge platforming next to a Horizon, or the sheer joy of taking platforming and making it into an actual game in itself, as in Star Wars Jedi.
I always ignore anyone who uses phrases like “waste of time”. Too many people don’t have an in between anymore and games are either a 10/10 or “unplayable garbage”, like come on now, just cause a game is a 7 it doesn’t mean it’s trash.
What does “7” even mean? I enjoyed every aspect of it precisely 70 percent? Seven out of ten criteria were perfect but the remaining three failed? I had seven great hours for every three terrible ones? Boiling down the experience of playing a game to a number is like giving someone your telephone number via the medium of interpretative dance.
My recommendation for this will always be Cyberpunk 2077. There are SO many secrets and sub-plots to discover in the game, and every single one of them feels like an intricate, deliberate piece to the overall puzzle that makes up Night City.
To experience everything requires multiple playthroughs, which I normally dislike in long, narrative-driven games because I lack the attention span needed when it comes to repeating things in games. But CP2077 offers so many new ways to tackle every situation, and it's one of the few games I've played where it truly feels like a new experience on the second and all subsequent playthroughs. The writing and acting are spectacular, and going back and picking different options for various encounters will yield very different, yet authentic results.
I've 100%'d it and still went back and did at least 3 full playthroughs after. I can't sing this game's praises enough.
A lot of people will still parrot the launch criticisms at you and refuse to acknowledge that they pretty well fixed it. The devs overpromised and underdelivered, even now its not quite what they promised. But if they had dropped what the game is now on release it would be pretty universally regarded as one of the best games of all time.
I’m glad to hear this. Bought it at launch, on PS4, which I understand had some of the worst problems. Maybe one of the most disappointing games I ever got after all the htype. Gave up after maybe two hours because of all the bugs.
I now have a PS4-Pro, and keep wondering if its finally time to give this game another go.
If the world exploration and character interactions in RDR2 are scratching your itch, then 2077 will definitely have you covered there; Night City is huge and has a lot of hidden spots and characters to find. I'd say that the combat is generally a bit more hectic in 2077, but not overwhelming. You can also freely adjust the difficulty whenever you want, so if you're not interested in mastering the buildcrafting aspects (since it leans more heavily into RPG aspects than RDR2) and just wanna get the story, that's also an option.
While it's definitely not required to have an amazing experience, I'd strongly recommend also picking up the Phantom Liberty expansion if you decide to give 2077 a shot. It adds a lot of additional content, including some new endings. And Idris Elba is fucking fantastic in it. He brings a very similar energy to Keanu, where you can tell that he really loves his character and the story he gets to tell. It honestly sets a ridiculously high bar for video game acting in general.
Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and xcom-style combat, with a genealogy system and chances for your heroes (and their descendants) to reappear in future games.
It’s definitely not as comfortable as something like the Steam Deck, but I played so much Switch while commuting on the train since it came out. It’s been a real joy to have. It’s also WAY smaller than any of the current-gen handhelds.
What do you mean by “cart games being downloaded in full to the system?”
I never owned a Switch, but I would say it was instrumental in the Deck’s conception. If the popularity of the Switch had never happened, I wonder if Gabe would have taken the chance.
Nintendo cuts all kinds of corners and usually doesn’t bother competing as a “performance” console, but people generally loved that thing when it first came out. I’m sure people will have gripes about Steam Deck v1 when v2+ comes out, too.
Further to this - it doesn’t download cart data to the Switch/SD card, but it does store save data, update data and DLC data on the Switch/SD card. So while BOTW may not download its whole 10Gb onto the Switch, you may end up with a few Gb in other data that’s locally stored.
Yeah, I’d almost say it’s an essential purchase. I buy a fair few online titles and I’ve found my 128Gb SD to be a bit lacking. I’m considering upgrading to a 256Gb or 512Gb but they’re still too expensive at high transfer rates.
If you have to choose between capacity and transfer rate for an SD card for a Switch, go for transfer. I had an old slow card and that was abhorrent for load times and stuttering on games that were stored there.
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