this is probably the best answer imo. This does sound like genuine addiction, and OP’s best bet might just be to work with a therapist on breaking the loop that makes gaming such a honey trap for them.
I’ve been thinking about the disappearance of God games. I think they didn’t disappear, but they evolved so much that we don’t recognize them anymore.
I feel some moved into the direction that we now call “simulators”, like RimWorld, the Sims, Two Point Hospital, and more. In my mind, the big difference between the God games of old and those new games is that in the older games your role as the player was explicitly defined, where in the new games it’s not. In the old games, you were “playing the role of a god in that realm”. The new games don’t bother to tell you “who” you are in this setting. You’re just the player, get on with it, play the game.
I feel like other God games moved in the direction of top down colony builders, like Against the Storm or Frostpunk. And again, I think the big difference between those games and something like Populous is that your role as the player doesn’t have an explicit name in the game world. You’re not a “God”. But most of the rest of the trappings are there, I think.
But when I think of a God game I really mean a game where you literally play as a god and can do god stuff.
In all of your examples the player either controls what each character does or just whoever is is command of the colony. You can’t do miracles and supernatural stuff at the click of a button, you don’t control nature itself, your character is a human like anyone else.
Still fairly old, but newer than B&W: From Dust . Replace trainable animals with fluid physics and light hearted songs with didgeridoos, and it’s kind of similar.
I’m absolutely baffled as to why more than one game I’ve ever played had fishing in it.
I love the X series (despite the unfortunate name), but the literal real-time days you spend waiting for money to appear in your account are still more engaging than any fishing minigame ever.
I agree with fishing mini games, it’s almost never anything like actual fishing, but some sort of weird experience that requires a combination of precise timing, button mashing or both.
That being said I think it’s insane to me that Nintendo crammed a fishing mini game in basically every Zelda game except for BotW and TotK, the two games where it would actually make sense. I just wanna chill and throw out a line. It’s every other zelda game where I just did the minimum amount required to get a bottle or whatever I needed.
I don’t mind the fishing mini game in Breath of Fire 3. You can see all the fish and it’s just a matter of skill not patience. That said, it’s optional (the only fish you need, I believe you can buy) and trying to 100% it is a chore I’d rather not do again.
Well that is what lot of devs do, after scamming and getting the quick money and stop working on it. But they kept working for years, still ongoing 10 years after launch. Even with the hate they got and after they got exposed.
Because, as this article that you keep linking says, they already made bank with the broken product in the first place. They could have just taken the money and closed the studio, or at least rebranding and going for the same trick again and again, as so many other actually do. They did not do that, they chose to do the opposite, which was an incredibly bold decision at the time.
You also keep linking another article showing how they made so much money recently, like in 2022, but you forget that this is now, with hindsight. In 2016 just after release, it was more dangerous for them to keep working on a game nobody trusted anymore.
And for the record, I bought NMS in 2022, and liked it okay-ish. It’s far from the best game ever, but arguing like you do that “they only added stuff they said would be in the game in the first place” is clearly fallacious.
Fair enough, I will address that. It’s a commendable act…in the game industry, but at the same time, it is the professionalism expected in another industry, which is why I brought up the building analogy in my original post.
It’s a line from the movie “The Exorcist”. Coincidentally just watched Ricky Gervais’ new standup special that just came out in which he riffs on this exact line.
I’d also make that complaint about adjustable difficulty, but to speak to the game progression, I have to agree.
Games should be teaching players what they’re getting into from the very beginning. The tutorial should be “When you do everything right, this is how easy the game is. When it’s not this easy, it means you’re doing something wrong”. That “wrong” thing could be messing up a mechanic, not upgrading your character enough, or you’re trying to go to a later area too early. It’s a teaching moment.
So many games today, at “Normal” difficulty, will throw players into combat encounters where they just basically kill everything in one hit. So players in the tutorial think “This is a bit too easy, I’m going to up the difficulty to Hard”, but then they don’t realize that everything gets harder when you exit the tutorial, and then over the course of the game the difficulty keeps outpacing your progression.
As far as the difficulty slider goes, I think it’s always better when harder modes just make you easier to kill, rather than enemies being more difficult to kill. There’s often a good balance that can be struck between the two, but too many games just opt for just making enemies tankier and tankier, which ends up turning the “difficulty” slider into a “time/resources waster” slider.
I enjoyed Blue Prince, I’m exactly who it was made for, but it was definitely much worse than people would lead you to believe.
The game makers had no respect for players’ time. You solve one of the large, run-independent puzzles and it all clicks, then it could take you several hours to playtime to luck into the conditions to actually test your solution. Everything takes longer than it should. It’s obvious that I’m going to toggle security settings every time I’m in the Security Room, why do you make me go through this slow as hell PC every time? It’s not for realism because no PC back then had such fantastical functionality, so why not make the PCs load screens faster? How does the slowness enhance the experience? Why not just put buttons on the wall you can toggle for the security settings, at least? There were times where I figured something out, and rather than spend ten hours trying to actually do the thing, I just looked up that part of a walkthrough to get the next info.
Really interesting game, but I did some napkin math and I wasted 25 avoidable hours during my playthrough (long unskippable loads and such) that could have been spend completing an entire different game.
It’s a huge part of why I quit Destiny 2 entirely. A game that doesn’t respect the player’s time and pads it with RNG on top of RNG to extend playtime feels awful.
I absolutely agree with you, I got to a point where I had solved the “main” puzzle, but was struggling to complete other puzzles (that I knew the solution to) simply due to room draws.
I wanted to love the game, but it held itself back on the RNG design. It can be so detrimental to the game that I wouldn’t recommend it to most people.
I bought into the review hype, bought the game, then realized about two hours after the Steam refund window expired just how tedious this game felt to play.
I really wanted to like it, but it stopped being fun and started being so tedious that I uninstalled it.
I bought it ages ago but finally decided go give it a go. From the first day I could tell it wasn’t gonna be a game for me. Note-taking is basically mandatory, and it seems so easy just to get fucked out of a run by RNG.
Narrative seemed interesting but I feel like the whole “ability to decide what room you’re going into” thing should be weaved into the story off the bat.
Neat concept but not for me, but I think since I’ve owned it for so long I’m outside of the refund window.
Same. The game is fantastic but the RNG is only cool on paper and falls apart just a few hours into the game. The methods they give you to influence your luck are just not enough to do much at all.
It’s really frustrating when you are trying to do something but you constantly have to do something else because that’s what the game is giving you.
I cheated at the end and gave me infinite rerolls for rooms so I could create the layout I needed in that moment. Much better that way.
In Postal 2 there's a platforming section and, because I suck at platformers, let alone in first person, so I was saving a lot. After a few very short and successive saves, the dude made fun of me for saving so much.
Also in Portal 2, just a lot of GlaDOS lines in general.
Protagonist has got to be Bayonetta (though it’s based only on the first game). Her character growth in the first game was so good, even if the plot was a little convoluted. Never finished the second one since I didn’t like playing on the Switch and never played the third one. Hope her character is still good though.
Honorable mentions are Kassandra from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite, and Stelle from Honkai Star Rail (though this one is mostly for the absolutely ridiculous dialogue options we get to choose).
Favorite female antagonist is hands down GLaDOS. Such a fun, sarcastic, and likeable villain.
You have one of, if not the best starting points for Final Fantasy in the whole series on this system with X. Just play it. There’s no mainline numbered Final Fantasy game that ties together. They’re all separate stories. A few share a common setting with Ivalice, but that’s about it. Hop on X now. I know there’s a PC version, and that’s probably the recommended way to experience that game at this point, but I don’t really care how you start it. If you ever wanna experience Final Fantasy, FFX is the one a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooot of people will say start with.
Radiata Stories - a looker even for a PS2 game.
NFL 2K5 - the greatest NFL game ever made.
Jak and Daxter - This console’s Crash Bandicoot.
Rachet and Clank - I actually have the same problem you have with Final Fantasy with this series. Just pick one.
Need For Speed Underground 2 - One of the best arcade racing games ever made.
Burnout 3 Takedown - Same as above except you crash the cars instead of pimp them out.
SSX3 - Some say Tricky is better, I like them both but usually give 3 the edge.
Soul Calibur II - Best Soul Calibur game IMO
Dragonball Z Budokai 3 - Played the shit out of both this and Budokai Tenkaichi 3
Probably the best list imo. I remember picking Radiata Stories up, at random, for my birthday. It blew me away. The story, combat and recruitment mechanic are different from everything else I experienced at the time.
And a few suggestions also:
Def Jam: Fight for NY. Lowkey my favorite fighting game, with 4-players simultaneously beating the crap of each other.
Battle Stadium D.O.N… Fighting/smash bros style game with the biggest jump stars at the time (Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto).
Dokapon Kingdom. Board/rpg game with a lot of fun mechanics.
Fuck yes, Fight for NY was amazing. I love the idea of a fighting game where you have to end the fight, not just knock the other guy’s health bar down to zero so he falls over. So satisfying to put your opponent down with a haymaker or chucking him in front of a subway train
Re: Final Fantasy games not tying together or having continuities.
Yes. Except, ironically, specifically Final Fantasy X, which had a direct sequel in X-2. Final Fantasy XIII also managed to have a direct sequel in Lightning Returns. Thankfully, if you care to think of it that way, it was crap and can be safely ignored.
Anyway, have an upvote for not blithely suggesting that everyone start with VII.
Yes and they’re all neatly contained in their numbered entry which is why I say no mainline numbered games tie together. And all the 2s are optional IMO. Especially X-2, which always seemed like a cash grab to capitalize off of X’s success to me. As much as I love, love, love X, I’ve never touched X-2 and probably never will.
Link special character was best special character… because… it was a great meming time when people realized there were what appeared to be the silhouette of his tower and bases visible during certain moves.
That’s the thing. PS2 at one time was the best selling system of all time. I forget if that record still holds up. I know the DS oversold it, but thats not a tv console.
Point is, with any console that had that big of an impact on gaming, it’s going to have a ton of bangers that still hold up 20+ years later.
And boy howdy if that ain’t true!
I’m honestly surprised there aren’t independant projects releasing new PS2 games today, in the same way you see occasional new releases for NES and Game Boy Color.
Jak and Daxter are better played via OpenGoal - a modern open source engine implementation that runs natively on Steam Deck and includes fixes, graphics improvements, proper widescreen, etc.
NFS Underground 1 is better than the sequel IMO. The open world is empty and tedious filler vs just loading directly into the tracks.
Best NFS on the PS2 is Hot Pursuit 2 however. Made by Black Box, it’s vastly superior in every way to the other console versions and the PC version made by a different company despite sharing assets.
Great list! I totally agree with FFX being a fantastic starting point for the Final Fantasy series. It’s such a solid entry that so many people love. Also, Jak and Daxter and NFS Underground 2 are classics!
I also wanted to throw in a game I recently came across called Naruto Senki. It’s a fun Naruto-themed mobile game where you can engage in 3v3 battles with characters from the anime. It’s not as big as the others on your list, but it’s definitely a great choice if you're a fan of Naruto and want something casual and action-packed. Thought it’d be worth mentioning if you’re looking for something new to try from here !
I’ve a dual boot with Linux + Windows, my games are isolated on Windows where I’m not logged in anything important. I can just encrypt my Linux partition for a possible vulnerability. But I really think that it’s hard to happen, at least it never happened to me, I’ve pirated before a few times.
Also it’s allowed to pirate on my country, it’s just not allowed to redistribute it, so I don’t need a VPN.
Just download from trusted sources and it’s fine. At this point I’d rather to trust the community providing pirated games than big companies harvesting my data.
I didn’t have a good experience with Linux, I tried twice, I’ve a laptop wit hybrid GPU AMD + NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is painful on Linux. I loose a lot of performance playing on Linux, tried Fedora last time, OpenSUSE before that.
Thats why you usually use a VM / dedicated computer to download / check pirated software. Its annoying… But less annoying than the shit that ubisoft / EA does…
Using a VM to check pirated software, but then running it on your main pc if you don’t notice any malware (I think that’s what you are saying?) is not safe.
Running untrusted software only on a vm or machine that you don’t care about with zero personal info is safest.
At least from Lutris you can run your games (pirated our otherwise) genuinelly sandboxed with something like Bubblewrap or Firejail, which as far as I can tell you can’t do in Steam (unless you sandbox Steam itself, which is problematic if for example you want to deny networking to some games but not others).
IMHO, if you sandbox them it’s actually safer to run pirated versions of games in Linux than running the official versions from Steam with no sandboxing, at least for AAA games since pretty much all those companies have done or do abusive shit.
Gaming in a vm is possible, high end multi-player game in a vm is more complicated because of the performance penalty and the anti cheat (again the same problem) honestly I don’t know how good this solution could be
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