I would have started this sooner, but after doing a lot of gaming over the holiday break (including replaying the GOAT, Outer Wilds - @Tilted knows what’s up) I haven’t actually played anything in several days.
But, the algorithm suggested this video to me which I thought was interesting:
A guy has his non-gamer wife play Elden Ring, and observes. There’s some really interesting stuff here about the kind of implicit language through which games silently converse with us - the conventions that we learn to look for and take for granted, and which people who don’t play games are completely blind to and find utterly bewildering.
There is one (Dark Souls-specific) thing about this video that I find insanely tilting, and will spoiler here because I’m curious if anyone else notices:
At both the beginning and end of the video, the guy talks about having to kill Asylum Demon. That boss is COMPLETLY F’ING OPTIONAL, right?? Am I taking crazy pills? Isn’t the idea that you just run by it because it’s too hard for anyone but a seasoned veteran to kill your first time through?? I don’t think I killed that boss in my first DS playthrough!
What if this guy’s wife had a miserable time with DS all these years because he gave her BAD ADVICE?!?!?!!?
I watched about half of that video the other day and yeah the Asylum Demon thing jumped out immediately. Throwing your non gaming spouse into Elden Ring of all things is ridiculous, it is intentionally vague and intentionally designed for “experienced gamers”, and you use the D-pad, paddles, buttons all about equally which requires memorizing 14 inputs not even counting for the analog sticks of which non gamers will not get the camera + movement style of play that we’re all used to for 15+ years.
Have a new PC getting built this weekend, super curious to see what happens. In my current PC with the 4090 I was getting ~10 frames per second on Portal 1 with RTX, yikes. So must have been heavily bottlenecked by the 9th gen i5 and the rest. This has a 13th gen i7 and DDR5 so we’ll see. Honestly all ~8 parts costed less than the 4090… yeah.
God of war: Ragnarok, horizon: forbidden west if you like those kind of games comes to mind. Those are both the major PS exclusives.
However, the difference between PS4 pro and PS5 seems almost nil in terms of graphics, I think it’ll be another year or two before we start to see titles that shine on the PS5.
I’m an old-school DnD nerd and a slight glutton for punishment, so I’m currently working my way through the Pathfinder games on the highest difficulty setting.
Finished Kingmaker and am about halfway through Wrath of the Righteous. If you like top-down isometric games, they are pretty fun, and mostly familiar to anyone who knows DnD. Wouldn’t recommend Unfair difficulty for the first playthrough, though.
I think signing for PS+ is a pretty good value, particularly if you didn’t have a PS4 and didn’t play a lot of these games already on previous generations. See here for a full list, highlights of which (for me) are…
God of War (PS4)
The Last Guardian (PS4)
Bloodborne (PS4)
I think those are available with any tier of PS+, and the highest tier also has access to a lot more games, of which I highly recommend (you can filter based on what sounds good for your tastes, ofc)…
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (PS4)
Control (remastered PS5 I think)
Death Stranding (remastered PS5)
Demon’s Souls (PS5 remake of PS3 game, but feels like a top-tier modern Souls experience imo, I really loved this)
Doom (PS4)
Far Cry 4 (PS4, if you haven’t played this series then check it out, I think they’re kinda formulaic and redundant once you’ve played one tho)
Ghost of Tsushima (remastered PS5)
Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)
OUTER WILDS (remastered PS5, as I called out in the OP this game is THE GOAT)
Overcooked 2 (v fun if you have someone to play it with local co-op, my wife isn’t into games but this is fun for us to play together in small doses)
Second-tier games on that list:
Deathloop
Returnal
Stray
So, there’s a pretty big list of solid games you can enjoy with a single subscription cost, which I think is pretty great. Beyond that, other games I’ve bought & recommend:
Elden Ring (if you have any interest in Soulsborne games it’s phenomenal obv)
Dark Souls III (see above)
Hades
Rocket League (f2p, and PS4, but a phenomenal game and a classic)
Why is this a game that’s apparently 20 years old but I’m only just starting to hear mentioned a lot now?
On another subject, I’ve been getting back into Kerbal Space Program a little lately, and it’s always fun but one thing I struggle with is setting goals for myself. I dunno if some of this is related to not understanding why you do some stuff in the game - for example, I see a lot of people on the KSP forum posting these big, expansive space stations they build. My question: why? Am I missing an in-game purpose for space stations, or are lots of people just like “the ISS is cool and I want to build one in this game”?
The game loop of visit new place → gain science to unlock bigger rockets → build bigger rockets → visit farther place is kinda fun early on, but it doesn’t take that long to unlock the biggest rockets, and then I start to falter a little from a lack of imagination (is a Tylo mission all that different from Laythe? Is there anything particularly interesting to do visiting Dres?).
@McTrollson, you play(ed) KSP, right? Any thoughts?
Replaying Elden Ring, this time trying to understand the story and characters instead of thundergunning through it, it’s amazing how just trying to puzzle out the story is a kind of game in and of itself.
Yeah, you can play it without needing to look at the Matrix, but it’s still one of those games you put a lot of time in and then one random squirrel attack destroys your entire fortress population and you get to start again.
Is it at least fair? I like that aspect of XCOM 2 (if you play on ironman) - if you aren’t careful and play too fast and loose, you can get fucked at basically any time, but if you are properly careful then this should mostly never happen to you. (unless you have The Alien Hunters DLC turned on, fuck those unfair pieces of shit)
It keeps the game tense & the stakes high when they otherwise wouldn’t be.
no matter how careful you are nothing can seemingly stop the ai from hitting 4 crits in a row from across the map while you’re behind large cover + defense drone active, at least in my play throughs
Yeah it seems to be pretty fair assuming you’re OK with figuring out why your production chains have broken. By far the most annoying thing in the game is figuring out why something you need done isn’t getting done.
But that being said I have done some super cool shit in DF and I’ve barely scratched the surface. Just figuring out how to dam a river to route it under ground to provide my dwarves with unlimited water wheel power and safe fishing spots ended up being a major project.
I saw someone do a really good job of explaining DF vs rimworld since they really are very similar games… in Dwarf Fortress the fotress is the main character, and in Rimworld the colonists are the main characters.
Now if you’ve got questions about rimworld, I’ve got you fully covered there. I’ve played a lot of rimworld lol.
I mostly agree with boredsocial, but be aware the learning curve is a bit steep and there are lots and lots of different game play loops to get good at. I think it inspired the “everyone dying really quickly is a feature not a bug” game style that make DF and Rimworld fans a bit over the top sometimes. I don’t think it is very discoverable but there is a good wiki and a crap ton of explanatory YouTube videos that make it much more accessible than 10 years ago when I first tried playing it.
