I haven’t made a new thread weekly exactly, but with the amount of activity it might need to be fortnightly, here’s another recommendations thread.
Let everyone know below a game (6+ months old), that you have played recently, are currently playing or intend to play soon.
Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
Enjoy. Two of the most beautiful games to exist, although weird Owl obsession from creator.
I’ve been replaying disco elysium: the final cut lately. beautiful narration and voice acting, amazing art. love the feeling of being dropped into a completely different world.
I’m going to play Sleeping Dogs next. Bought it during steam sales for like $2. I heard it’s pretty good. I remember liking its predecessor, True Crime.
It’s really good and fun, and also as someone who grew up with HK movies and drama, captures that flavour very well!
Best GTA-like I’ve played. Completely ignored the driving part and focused on the beat-em up part. I wish Yakuza was a fraction as good in the fighting department, because otherwise I feel like it would be a perfect fix for me.
So wish there was a sequel! T_TI loved SD when it came out, think I have played it through 3 times now. I have all of Yakuza but just can’t get into it to the same extent, only managed to finish Zero so far.
I suggest that patient gamers put Aliens: Dark Descent onto their wishlist and wait for a good sale. It already had a small sale but the game only came out in June.
They really nailed the vibe, just all around, check out some Youtube plays of it to see if you like the gameplay. It looks like XCOM in screenshots but plays in real-time. The story takes place in a Weiland-Yutani mining base, of course isolated in an unwanted corner of the universe. A mysterious infection has appeared on the planet! I wonder what it could be? Better send some soldiers from your crashed ship to check out the situation and look for survivors. The characters are all new.
I’d say that the game benefits from all the comics and other less-known canon that fleshes out the world, and has the flavor down pat. They haven’t forgotten that the original movie was about a conflict between two powerful women, one of whom really doesn’t want to fuckin be here, and the gameplay does a great job of being a balancing act between making you fuckin sweat at the mercy of xenomorphs while also feeling like a badass. It’s a lot of people’s Game of the Year already, so I’d look into it, even though it’s gotten kinda lost in the shuffle.
Just finished Psychonauts 2 (haven’t played the first game) - it’s a solid 3D platformer with great art direction that trends on the easier side, though I appreciated having something that was somewhat relaxing to play for a change. I would highly recommend.
The first one was even better I feel!
Picked this up in the most recent steam sale… it’s installed on my desktop and steam deck, still haven’t booted it up.
Thanks for bringing it back to the surface. May have to start tomorrow.
Played and completed Return of the Obra Dinn a couple of weeks ago. It’s a walking logic puzzle wrapped in a very distinct art style. I have to say despite my worries on the style causing motion sickness, that never happened. It’s a really well-done game. It rarely goes on sale too!
I felt so proud when I finished that whole game without any hints. I was close to giving up a few times, but I’m so glad I kept pushing. It was so absolutely satisfying to walk off the boat knowing I’d done it all myself.
Won’t lie, towards the end when a lot of the identities were crossed off I started guessing and made random checks to see what worked. xD
Katamari reroll, which is just katamari damacy again… which is just so much fun and relaxing and the songs are funny. Go play it again, it’s great.
I’vebeen playing Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 while I wait for Baldurs Gate 3 and how did I sleep on these?? They’re great
I’m currently enjoying the evil within. Nice survival horror, plays almost like resident evil 4/5 but more slightly creepy and more dreamlike in its design.
Factorio. If you enjoy problem solving or simulation or management in your games. Factorio will scratch that itch endlessly. And then when you complete it, the mods will make you want to start over again!
Just played System Shock 2, it was pretty good.
Who can recommend me some similarly good games, similarly able to run on a bog-standard laptop? I’ve no interest in buying a gaming PC or any of that stuff, you never needed one to play Theme Hospital or whatever.
I know I’m asking for 3D games but you know what I mean. I just want to fuck around on the laptop I use for work, not drop a grand on hardware just to game for a few hours.
Edit: going to try Far Cry (the original).
I didnt play seither of the system shock games, but i would recommend Prey (2017) (Currently on 75% Sale) - SciFi / Alien setting with gorgeous gameplay due to the almost perfectly implemented Immersive Sim (Same genre as the System Shock games) mechanics. Its one of those games, that make you feel smart and creative while playing & also gives you such a high degree of freedom, that almost nothing feels forced - there is always another way! Got be one of my all time favourites, currently preparing for my 4th playthrough.
Should also be able to run on weaker hardware.
I’ve heard of it, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll put in on the wishlist. Struggling through STALKER at the moment - can’t decide if I like it or not.
STALKER is also on my wishlist, sitting there crammed between ~60 other games i’ll probably never get to buy/play xD
What do you dislike about it?
I can’t find a way to successfully play it that maintains enough realism to be properly satisfying.
The controls are awkwardly difficult in a way I can’t properly explain, I’m finding it interferes with the immersion a bit. Particularly the aiming system and the fact a headshot doesn’t kill unarmoured human characters in the early game. Also there’s a lot of running from point A to point B and back again.
Even so, I think I probably like it. I’m just finding that frustrating in a way that isn’t particularly fun. You’ll get a bunch of people online saying the difficulty is somehow meant to reflect the mood of the game, personally I don’t think that makes much sense.
Yeah, I usually don’t like the difficulty/depth either if it breaks the immersion and feels artificial/forced. Maybe there are some community mods/official settings to change that?
A lot of games unfortunately tend to increase the “difficulty” by making the tasks more tedious, rather than changing the actual gameplay :/ Stalker seems to fit the bill in terms of your criticism.
I think I’ll give it a try anyway, thanks for the insights!
Caesar III is a 1998 Windows city building game, so it’s like SimCity, but more fast paced, focused on efficiency, and set in Ancient Rome. You can get it from Steam or GOG. But the game is old, and clearly aged software and gameplay wise.
Then someone created a reimplementation named Julius project, adding some QoL improvement and compatibility with other OSes. And then someone else forked the project and added gameplay changes as well, incorporating features from later games.
Now I can play it in my Android phone in my bed.
On my android? Holy shit brb.
Last time I played a caeser game it was C1 and I was a kid who had no idea which sound card setting to use and would choose different settings every time I booted the game. Sometimes it worked. I had no idea how to play but I loved it.
+1 for the wiki link to check it out.
want to try some old school racing/management?
Try Gallop Racer (PSX). Pretty much Horse Racing Simulator. You play as a jockey/owner. You buy horses, race the horses (manually, no auto), and breed horses. Endgame is to win the prestigious horse races and get something similar to Triple Crown.
The racing part is simple to learn, hard to master, but fun overall.
My favourite part is getting the trophies by winning these specific combination of races (e.g. 10 G1 races, World Turf Cup + World Mile Cup+ World Dirt Cup, etc.). Or beating these particulary hard races with in-game “famous” horses.
There’s also a mini jockey competition called WSJ when you become top 10 by November of the year which you play 4 races with random horses and win by points.
Minecraft Story Mode
It’s school summer holiday here so something to play whiles kids are around. I’ve played a few episodes in the past but never finished it and so far we are all enjoying it.
I’m still playing Elder Scrolls Online, which means I am not playing much atm while I upskill in Linux/docker etc.
I just hop on, do my 15 minutes of daily writs between two characters with addons and hop off.
Tried it out a long time ago. Leveled up a bit but realised I could spam one dungeon over and over and level real fast… and after that I felt lost and eventually quit. How is the controller support?
How is the community over there? I played a lot of WoW during Wotlk (very cliche, I know), but not so many MMOs in the past years.
Solasta. It gives me that D&D joy, and it’s so much fun to make and playtest characters. Runs great on steam deck, too.
