It’s a little janky, and the blocky aesthetic may or may not be your thing, but it handles the idea of detective work better than any other game I’ve ever played. It’s not just “Walk around in detective vision until you assemble enough clues for the character to tell you the solution.” You have to actually think about things, examine the evidence, assemble a theory of the crime. Which is doubly impressive given that every crime is procedurally generated.
Sure, but again the amount of actual player to player interaction involved in that is minimal. Like I said, I’m in a clan, and outside of obtaining my initial invite (which basically went “Clan plz” in chat followed by clicking accept) I’ve had literally zero social interaction with my current clan. Trading has been effectively automated by Warframe market. You copy and paste something into chat, and the rest of the interaction consists of a pro forma exchange of "ty"s. Also, you don’t actually need a clan to trade, because anyone you’re trading with will inevitably invite you to theirs, so they’re only really important when selling.
This is absolutely nothing like the way that raiding and guilds are core to World of Warcraft. Clans play an almost purely mechanical role in Warframe, they’re not remotely the same thing, and do not have remotely the same requirement of social interaction.
A lot of the game is built around guilds and player to player interactions.
For a while that was true. But that entire design direction has basically been abandoned. Clans are more or less a vestigial organ at this point. Literally the only interaction I have ever had with a member of my clan was when I asked for an invite.
The core story content is single player only. The rest is multiplayer, but unlike Destiny there’s nothing that requires you to form your own group outside of the game, and all the gameplay is designed in such a way that you really don’t need to communicate. You can basically just turn on public matchmaking and get a bunch of humans who might as well be bots for all you’ll have to actually interact with them.
You can play all the content solo if you want to, but the difficulty might get a bit much, especially starting out (there are also certain game modes / mission types that really lean on having a full group).
First thing that comes to mind is Warframe. It’s a co-op third person looter-shooter, with full crossplay, so you can all party up across your platforms. It’s all very controller friendly, with lots of shotguns, SMGs, melee weapons and space magic that are all really forgiving of imprecise aim. It cares less about twitch reflexes and more about movement.
The scifi setting and “space ninja” aesthetic may or may not be to your taste, although I promise if you take the time really sink into the world it’s actually one of the most refreshingly different and unique scifi settings out there. There’s a lot of weirdness, but as you dig deeper into the story that weirdness all makes sense. And, like, it’s the good kind of weird if you get me? Stuff that makes you go “Holy fuck I want to know what the deal with that is!”
It does have a lot of MMO elements, so it can get grindy at times, but in my experience it’s a really solid game for hanging out and chilling on Discord together. Plus the game itself is free, with no paid DLC or add-ons, and for an adult with an income a few bucks here and there skips a LOT of grind, especially if you check out the third party market website where players will sell you a lot of the rare drops you’ll want for less than a dollar.
Added bonus, it’s made by the original developers of Unreal Tournament, Digital Extremes (there are actually a bunch of UT references squirelled away in the game).
The fact that “plateaued” is a cause for concern is everything wrong with our global economic system. Infinite growth shouldn’t be a necessary component of stability. A plateau should be a goal to aspire to.
I don’t say that lightly. And I’m not saying it’s the greatest game ever made or anything like that. What I’m saying is that everything it’s trying to do, it does perfectly.
The writing is incredible. The voice performances absolutely nail it, every line read feeling like a mic drop. The art is gorgeous. The music is subtle and evocative. The design of the branching narrative is brilliant.
There’s not a single thing I can find to criticise. Slay the Princess is an absolute gem and you owe it to yourself to try it.
Star Citizen and Squadron 42 are the games. Cloud Imperium Games (CIG) is the organization. It also operates as Roberts Space Industries (RSI) but that’s primarily a marketing arm.