And people wonder why I still play Factorio, Parkitect, ATS, or RCT. People suck and being able to ignore them is great.
I’ve been playing Planet Crafter waaay too much. Check it out if you like Factorio, Satisfactory, etc. It’s fun and super addictive. At least to me.
Dyson Sphere Program
I’ve played DSP, it’s a great game too. I’ll probably jump back to that when I burn out on Planet Crafter. The thing I don’t like about it and Satisfactory is conveyor belt management. The constant battle to rewire the spaghetti.
DSP recently got localized small distribution drones, you can convert any storage box into a tiny logistics station now. It’s pretty sweet, really reduces the spaghetti early on in recent playthroughs
bruh factorio is literally in active development and has a huge active community, who would even think twice seeing someone playing it.
I absolutely love rollercoaster Tycoon. There really isn’t a game like it.
Have you tried Planet Coaster? Might be up your alley.
Here I am playing games from the 90s and 00s. Crazy that Quake III and Unreal Tournament are still active.
I often use UT, Q3 and CS 1.6 as examples of how long a game can stay active when players are given tools to setup their own servers, as opposed to companies handling multiplayer themselves (and often killing it off in a few years).
When they’re good, they’re good. Good gameplay beats good graphics every day
You might like Oxygen Not Included as well
Single player is the best.
yes but i do miss co-op gaming.
Couch co-op, split-screen, hotseat; Kingdom Two Crowns is nice. So is Darksiders Genesis, For The King, Moon Hunters, Trine, etc.
Always on the lookout for other good co-op couch games, especially with a good story, but I feel that they are few and far between. :(
Brothers, It takes two and A way out.
A way out I really liked.
For me its the Borderlands series & portal 2.
It takes two is absolutely amazing in every aspect.
Deep Rock Galactic.
Rock and Stone, Miner!
Powerwash Simulator.
A few games that are great single player can also be played with friends such as Terraria, Stardew Valley, Factorio and Minecraft.
10 year old games on a 4k OLED with maxed out settings is the best. Especially if it’s a game you can run above 60 fps.
100% Online gaming is pretty toxic and I love being able to play at my own pace.
Only exception to this for me was stardew with my wife.
Toxicity is one thing for sure but I don’t like how the commercialization of MP has shaped it.
Indie games have a very different feel in their online gameplay compared to “commercial” games.
Even way back, HL1 online and those online experiences felt so different because it was designed to be about the group experience rather than level up and get a skin, buy a weapon, our skill tree is massive. Sure technology was holding it back but I wish I could see what it would’ve been without the massive push for $$$.
Oh, yeah. I just ignore that stuff. But it’s really annoying. I can’t even think of the last time I played a game online.
Oh, I got fallout 76 on sale super cheap and uninstalled it after 20-30 minutes.
I only want to play single player games. I’m not a super big gamer, but I just want campaigns. I recently got a PS5 and I’ve been struggling to find newer games that have a great single player campaign. RDR2 is my style, it’s my favorite game. The gameplay itself is a little problematic, but it’s gorgeous and the story just gets me where I live. And that’s what I want.
I only play single player games, but couldn’t care less about achievements. It is all about exploration, story, game mechanics and modding for me.
People treat achievements as if they are a status symbol. I mean sure, if you don’t know what else to do in a game, they can give you some goal, but IMO the game itself should encourage you to reach the goal, not some external badge. The experience doing the task should be the reward in of itself.
Achievement unlocked! You’ve completed the tutorial!
What’s even funnier is “14.39% of players have gotten this far before uninstalling the game and forgetting about it forever”
Achievement unlocked! You opened the game!
I feel like even that would have only like a 60% achievement rate.
depends on the game, achievement hunting can be a lot of fun in a game u already love its just more stuff to do and more reasons to play, sure if all the achievements in a game are things like getting all of a collectible or beating certain story missions/quests they are pretty boring but in pdx map simulators for example many of the are interesting run ideas or they indicate where the hand crafted content is at. And despite how much i love the game i dont think i would have played as much of Tyranny as i did if i hadnt decide to get all the achievements.
Sure there are some interesting achievment, like the Stanley parable ones. For instance: ‘Go outside: Don’t play the game for 5 years’ (https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Achievements)
last played oct 15 2017 damn i guess its been more than 5 years
Only silly people flaunt achievements. I use them as a meta-gaming guideline, which in a good game leads to interesting and fun challenges. In an RPG, it’s like a check box for getting every ultimate weapon, fighting every boss, etc.
Can also give me something to do in a game I’ve played but loved. Retroachevements for instance encouraged me replay SaGa (aka Final Fantasy Legend) with only one character in the team. Wasn’t too hard, but definitely a second playthrough thing.
Well, the issue with that is that achievements are global over all playthroughs, so it doesn’t really work as a checklist.
True, if and when I ever get around to replaying things that could be a problem (although the industry has seen to remaking everything I cared about, sometimes poorly, but that’s another problem).
Another shout-out to the nerds running retroachevements though because they thought it that; they have an encore mode that let’s you redo achievements. Although honestly you could just make a second account, that stuff is for emulated content anyway and it’s not like it’s DRMed, haha.
There used to be an effort made with how you play a game to get achievements. The Orange box was a great example of this. The ‘Little Rocket Man’ and ‘The One Free bullet’ achievements both made you play the game in a different way. Sadly now it’s mostly just ‘play the game’ ‘collect all the things’.
I love any game with a handcrafted map and some exploration. Even Satisfactory, a factory building game, does an excellent job at that. Procedural generation has its uses but lacks soul I guess.
It never went away.
Was gonna say, nobody took shit, lol
Yeah, single player games are nowhere near dead. If they ever did go the way of the dodo, I would probably stop playing altogether, because for the most part I just don’t like multiplayer games.
“$3,000 setup to play a game from 2010.”
I have an RTX 4070 that I’ve been using to play Half Life. I’ve owned my copy for a while, but have never played it.
Drives my wife crazy lol
You can play it at “accurately model the thermal vibration of molecules” framerates.
Gimme dat visible Brownian Motion!
Isn’t there an RTX Version?
There’s a fan made mod for the original, but HL2 has official RTX support I believe
I know that Nvidia released a Portal mod, so the Source Engine is already done. No idea how much effort is needed between games.
I upgraded to a 3070 from a 1080 just to play grim Dawn. Good games are good games
$5 Black Mesa brother. It looks phenomenal now.
If he never played the original I think it’s good he starts with it. Black Mess is great, but the original Half Life has a certain historical value (and is still a great game).
New Black Mesa is Half Life…
You are saying the third party remake in another engine from 2020 is the same as the original from 1998?
Black Mesa is literally just better looking Half-Life approved by Valve. I can really only say the same thing so many times before you understand that what I’m saying is what it is lol.
And you’re saying there’s no difference between playing Black Mesa today vs playing Half life today, and therefore he might as well start out with Black Mesa? Or what is the meaning of your reply?
Hard disagree. Games like Half life have a huge historical value for their impact. Playing the original is worth it. Especially if one takes the medium itself seriously. You wouldn’t say an original movie and a 22 years younger remake are “the same”, right? I think you’re playing dumb with me.
Love the Wikipedia link btw. I’ve played Black Mesa in its early access phase already and then later on again when they released Xen.
No, I just think you’re kinda dumb now looking for a pedantic fight on Lemmy of all places trying to argue that Half-Life and Black Mesa aren’t the same story and essential game lol.
Sometimes I even set the difficulty to Easy to really chill.
Wait, you play games to have fun and not as a duty? What about “pride and accomplishment”? ;)
The moment I embraced easy mode was when Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was like: “Is the gameplay we designed for our single player game too tedious? Then buy some legendary items with IRL money or maybe our XP cheat!”
I hate that games started designing around microtransactions. Like who thought “hey let’s take the worst parts of MMOs and put them into single player”. I loved AC origins and was so looking forward to odyssey and then I just bounced off it within a few hours because so much of it just felt like doing chores.
Everyone who looked at how much money WoW was pulling in without having to churn out game after game and figured out why
The suits did. You know, so the line goes up. Because we’re all gonna die otherwise or something.
Extra bonus: Odyssey was supposed to feature a female lead, rather than the choice, but a misogynistic Ubisoft exec vetoed it, which I can only assume was reason for the absolutely garbage dialog.
And replay games I already know by heart. I can start a new game or… play Starfox 64 again. “Do a barrel roll”.
StarFox 64 is so perfect in that arcade-game way, where you can technically finish it in a sitting but it’s so cool to figure out different paths and stuff. :D
“Okay guys, let’s ROCK N’ ROLL!”
In case you haven’t seen it, this video might make you very happy.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=GXLmDRwxAUU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I had not seen it, that was pretty cool.
A lot of times I start out with Normal difficulty, and a game eventually escalates its difficulty past what I am capable of delivering. At which point I find that the only way to change the difficulty is to start over, so I uninstall it.
Sometimes I’ll get the trainer so I can chill and feel like a badass. I could “Git gud” or better yet ill take infinite ammo and no reload and relaxingly kill everything
I’m glad I’m not the only one! Though if I play something for a second time I do tend to up the difficulty a bit.
Don’t care about achievements play games till like 70% then drop them. If it stops being fun I’m done, finishing a game is never a requirement don’t have time for that
I got to like 98% in RDR2 before I realized the gambling ones were going to be a giant pain in the ass. At that point I was in too deep to give up. I watched all 3 Robocop movies in one sitting and still didn’t complete the last blackjack one. Eventually got it but that was a frustrating experience.
The truly infuriating part is there’s likely lots of people out there that got them on the first try or by accident
Yea I was like looking for a solution online because I was like “there’s no way you’re just supposed to brute force this” and came across so many people that were like “no there’s no trick but I got in like 30 minutes”
Yeah, play the story and sidequests but don’t do any of the collectibles that are often necessary for 100%.
Yeah unless the story is good I’m rarely going to stick around for the last bit, which is usually just padding. Actually, good difficulty levels / other accessibility options have been a nice development.
Lets you turn down the volume on the gameplay so you can finish for the story.
Or play factorio… Look at the time, ah it hasn’t changed, then an hour later notices the date incremented. Oh
Or Civilization, where one more turn becomes five hours where you’ve barely moved.
Gods I was strong then.
That’s when you find yourself asking the important question, “What day is it?”
Friends don’t let friends play League of Legends
That’s why I play DotA 😎
(Yes, this is a cry for help)
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How do you know he doesn’t have a dual boot
He’d have told you.
hes also calm instead of RAGING because windows has YET AGAIN overwritten his linux bootloader.
He didn’t spend half of the meme writing about the hours spent on forums trying to get each game to work.
Lol
Well it’s an AI generated picture
I want to play my character, not just play towards whatever the optimal setup is
I strive to ultimately be able to tank enemies and kill them with weak weapons like forks.
If you want to be the Cutlery Colossus then you can
Please recommend me your favourite story games. This is me and I’m in need of a good ‘book.’ :)
Edit: I’m going to tell you all to play Night in the Woods. Now, it is set in my home region and felt like a game made for me, but I think it has messages anyone could relate to.
Disco Elysium
The only run I haven’t done is the fascist run because I cannot be a dick to Kim.
‘Outer wilds’ don’t look it up. The most fun is play ing it for the first time. It doesn’t hold your hand though.
I’ve read that comment a lot and it makes me feel like there’s something big that I might spoil if I ever Google about it. But like I’m a couple dozen hours in at this point… After how many hours of playtime would you say the “don’t look it up” advice expires?
I think there are guides that gently point you in the right direction, without too many spoilers.
I definitely got stuck on a few things.
Seconding this, and its a great game but only if you do like games where there is a story line, but its up to you to find it.
Thirding lol
Fourthing, my absolute favourite game.
YouTube started recommending Outer Wilds videos, intermixed with my Minecraft: Create mod videos and I was very confused what mod it was
Spiritfarer, To the Moon, Gris (no words in this one but still a good story imo), anything SuperGiant has ever made with my favorite being Transistor.
Definitely anything SuperGiant. Bastion, Hades, and Transistor are some of the only games I’ve actually finished, and the sound tracks are incredible.
Best response
Sea of Stars.
I’m listening to the soundtrack right now and it’s awesome. The story is decent and the graphics and design are top notch. It was so captivating that I pretty much didn’t play anything else while I was working through the game.
I have to say is this is clearly the closest gaming has come to a sequel to Chrono trigger
Bastion will make you feel like you’re reading a book. It’s one of my all-time favorites, by the developers now best known for Hades.
“Proper story’s s’posed to start at the beginning…”
“Kid just rages for awhile.”
That game is still fantastic.
Oh sweet nobody’s mentioned it yet! One of my personal favorite “book-feeling games” is an FPS series.
Linear, tightly focused, and feels like a novel because it’s based on one:
Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light. (Haven’t played Exodus yet)
You play a young fella named Artyom. Living in formerly-Russia’s metro tunnels with other survivors after a nuclear apocalypse devastates the surface.
Your settlement comes under threat from seemingly psychic creatures called “the Dark Ones”, and you’re sent on a quest to go get help.
Across the way is a bit of a “coming of age” adventure. You run across really interesting and well-acted characters, sneak past hostile factions, contend with scary (and diversely behaviored) mutants, and risk dangerous excursions on the surface. This is a dark world where gasmask filters are precious and bullets are literally currency, but somehow it’s still beautiful and fascinating.
(That intro guitar melody will stay with me forever.)
Like any good hero, Artyom finds himself in one bad situation after another, and along the way if you pick up on the hints, may even come to understand the world around him and the role he plays in it.
There’s a morality system that’s more subtle than “be boyscout or be a villain”, and “ranger difficulty” is an amazing way to play because it makes gunfights feel tense and realistic.
You can only take a few hits in this mode, but unlike in most games, so can your enemies! It makes things feel much less “bullet spongey.”
Everyone begged for an “open world” experience and we got Exodus which is supposed to be awesome, but something will always stay close to me about this post apocalypse story that takes you on a focused, well paced, and at times emotional ride to save a transformed world.
And that’s just the first title mostly.
You won’t be running between towns for hours or making rubber bands and glue into machineguns. You’ll still feel like you’re surviving, but know exactly where you’re supposed to be going.
They go for super cheap on GoG and Steam all the time. Well worth the experience. :)
Tales of Vesperia. I like the combat system most, but the story’s pretty good, and there’s a lot of optional content.
Mostly in alphabetical order going down my steam list:
Great stories great games: Tales of Symphonia and Vesperia, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky trilogy, Metal Gear Solid, 2, and 3, Subnautica, Secret of Mana, Legend of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Hollow Knight, Spec Ops: The Line, A Hat in Time, Hades, Doom, Deus Ex, Eternal Sonata, F.E.A.R., FF6, FF13-2, Nier Replicant & Automata, Sleeping Dogs, Undertale, Valkyria Chronicles (admittedly haven’t beaten it though).
Mindless fun simple stories: Ys (almost any of them), My Time at Portia or Sandrock, Resident Evil games, Rune Factory 4 and 5, Harvest Moon 64 and Friends of Mineral Town, Stray, Amnesia, Armored Core 6, Have a Nice Death, I am Setsuna, Life is Strange, Neon White, Cyberpunk 2077.
If you had to twist my arm I’d give you these variations of top recommendations.
Best typical JRPG: Tales of Symphonia
Best Metroidvania: Hollow Knight
Best where choices matter: Undertale
Best fps: Spec Ops: The Line
Best comfy story: My Time at Portia
Best environmental storytelling: Subnautica
Best simple stories in stories: A Hat in Time
Best story with a bajillion endings and things to keep playing for: Nier Automata (play Replicant too!)
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Negative. I’ll take a look, thanks.
Nier automata, nier replicant, Yakuza like a dragon, FF7R, Baldurs Gate 3, Divinity Original Sin 2, Control, star wars fallen order/survivor
Story first games: Tacoma, What Remains of Edith Finch, Life Is Strange, Botany Manor(more puzzle than story), Open Roads, Lake, Deliver Us The Moon, Firewatch, Kona, Day of the Tentacle (The remaster is incredible)
For more standard shoot or action games with good writing/story I love the remedy games, Alan Wake, Quantum Break, Control.
I was never a huge fan of Telltale style story games that much, but I really enjoyed the Back to the Future one that came out years back. Not sure if that’s still available anywhere though.
I absolutely adored a low budget game called Firewatch. It’s first person and your only contact with another human is through a radio. You’re running away from your life and work for a summer in a fire watch tower in a national park.
The story is nice and the characters are interesting and flawed and relatable.
Buy it on sale and have a fun evening or two with it.
Star Wars Fallen Order has a great story and really fun gameplay.
The Blackwell series, West of Loathing, Talos Principle II, To The Moon series.
Seconding the Blackwell series, with a caveat. The earlier games can be a little rough around the edges, resulting in a few Guide Dang It! moments. Walkthroughs are your friends.
I recently got “Yakuza Like a Dragon” from my Humble Choice bundle and it’s so good it’s made me want to check the rest of the series.
It’s maybe my fav series in gaming. Kiryu is so much better than ichiban
Yakuza 0 was absolutely fantastic, kiwami 1 was ok and kiwami 2 was also good
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Pillars of Eternity. I’ve owned the game for 8 years but finally sat down recently to learn how to play a classic CRPG. I haven’t been this engrossed in a game since Mass Effect 2 or Skyrim.
Witcher 3. The story is insanely good, just remember: your decisions matter (but don’t look anything up).
Some people say it’s hard to get into it and to be fair it is a bit complicated first but you don’t have to use all mechanics, and it’s well worth getting into it.
It just got an official mod creator (yes, that game from… 2015? (graphics from 2022 since there was a huge graphics update) still got a new update in 2024) and the community still is strong so it’ll get even better over the next years.
Favorite point and click adventure: Sam and Max. They recently remastered the first season. Funny/silly game.
“To the moon”, it will take you 4h to finish and the story is awesome, it’s worth playing in a single playthrough. I wish I could forget and play it again.
In Stars and Time is especially appropriate for Pride Month!
Disco Elysium is phenomenal as well.
I have played “The Invincibles” recently. It’s a beautiful walking sim.
Steins;Gate. It starts slow, but once it picks up it’s amazing and puts all that slow build up to good use. Not sure if it technically counts though. Visual novels are a weird middle ground that aren’t really book or game, but there are some really good ones. Definitely the way to go if you’re in more of a reading mood but want some art and music to go with it.
Don’t know that they’ll all be ported to PC but the Supermassive standalones (Until Dawn, The Quarry) and Dark Pictures Anthology are great, if you like horror movies. I prefer to watch my wife play them. They’re literally like interactive/choose your own adventure films.
Martha is Dead. A tragic and frightening story. Heed to the warnings they give at the start, tho. My wife literally got sick from playing it. No other game or movie has touched me that deep.
The Sea Will Claim Everything
https://store.steampowered.com/app/337720/The_Sea_Will_Claim_Everything/
Just looking through my HLTB at things I’ve done recently:
The Ace Attorney series Sucker for Love Coffee Talk Haven (good for co-op)
If you want a bit more gameplay, but still chill:
Paradise Killer Braid Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
More gameplay focused:
Control Portal Wargroove Cat Quest Knack (I know it’s a meme, but the games are actually pretty fun)
Disco Elysium. Its an RPG, but most skills have an application both in the world but also in conversations (of which there are a lot, and very well written). Its got a very bitter-sweet vibe to it.
You got a lot of great recommendations already, but I want to add one more indie game: Lost Words Beyond the Page. Gameplay is simple and it’s not very long, but the writing is excellent.
I almost never buy multiplayer-focused games anymore. Of course not all gamers are shitty, but enough are to matter. Having left those games behind I can see how they were taking more joy from my life than they added. If friends want to do private co-op that’s cool, but it’s also rarer now that we’re all older.
As far as sales go, I love playing a year or two behind new releases. Patched games at a discount ftw and timing doesn’t matter in single-player games.
To me, multiplayer video games should be about having fun with friends. Couch co-op, LAN parties, online multiplayer work for different genres and depending where your friends are. I don’t care if they’re older games, newer games, as long as it’s fun and interesting.
Yeah I don’t really care to play with strangers and none of my friends have ever asked to play so I also stick to single player games when I do play.
Don’t forget that you’re also allowed to ask them to play, if you should feel like it
What did they take from us? I haven’t played an online game in years now.
I’ve been hmming and hawing in answering this. But I’m out for dinner and bored. So alot games original vision is to be a single player experience but then online features or an online overhaul is shoved by the aboves. IE SimCity was considered unplayable by thr online features, anthem was originally designed to be single player but was completely redone, etc etc.
Yeah I see that. I remember the disappointment of sim city.
It could be I don’t follow games close enough to see what I’m missing. I find more SP games popping up in my feeds / friend recommendations than I could ever hope to play.
I definitely feel like mainstream AAA/AAAA and even iii to a certain extent have been progressively enshittified. But I’ve been at this a while, so I’ve seen how it’s gone this way as more and more money got brought to bare on games.
The moment someone who wasn’t involved in actually making some part of the game was expecting a fat return on investment was the moment the wheel of shit started to turn.
