Last Game You Played

I play a lot of PC games, namely boring simulation types. Any other Rimworld players here? Psyched about 1.6 updates and Odyssey? It's almost time to completely ruin my sleep schedule again playing this crack cocaine disguised as a settlement simulator.
 
vicious said:
I play a lot of PC games, namely boring simulation types. Any other Rimworld players here? Psyched about 1.6 updates and Odyssey? It's almost time to completely ruin my sleep schedule again playing this crack cocaine disguised as a settlement simulator.
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Not exactly the same, but I used to play SO much of the games like Civ, Caesar, and Pharaoh. And a bunch of ones whose names I don't remember. I genuinely love city builder/civilization builder type games. But I've hugely fallen out with them because I feel (right or wrong) like they're too much of a time sync. I can play something like RDR2 for 150 hours, but I feel like that 150 hours is pretty decently spread out and I can leave and come back whenever. I find that way harder to do with PC games like Civ, where I just get locked in to this loop where there's no good stopping point to go to bed... or work.
 
Damien said:
Not exactly the same, but I used to play SO much of the games like Civ, Caesar, and Pharaoh. And a bunch of ones whose names I don't remember. I genuinely love city builder/civilization builder type games. But I've hugely fallen out with them because I feel (right or wrong) like they're too much of a time sync. I can play something like RDR2 for 150 hours, but I feel like that 150 hours is pretty decently spread out and I can leave and come back whenever. I find that way harder to do with PC games like Civ, where I just get locked in to this loop where there's no good stopping point to go to bed... or work.
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Those are some great games. Always loved the Sid Meier games, and in a similar way, Stronghold: Crusader was a lot of fun. There's a "theme" game I played recently called Two Point Museum, it's really fantastic. You're right about not being able to stop, I was up two hours too late last night, lol. Usually I don't recommend these kinds of games because they're so addictive, but I bought Civilization 4 for my dad and he's put 5200+ hours into it in just shy of 10 years. Always the same gameplay, always military victory 🤷‍♂️
 
vicious said:
but I bought Civilization 4 for my dad and he's put 5200+ hours into it in just shy of 10 years. Always the same gameplay, always military victory 🤷‍♂️
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Hahahaha..... I feel that so hard. I can't tell you how many times I played Civ as a teenager and yelled 'okay, I tried to fucking talk to you people but now I'm just gonna kill you.'


vicious said:
Stronghold: Crusader
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Oh, that was a good one! Although, for something like that, I was definitely more of an Age of Empires guy. 1 and 2 are outright classics and I don't even want to think about how many collective hours I logged in those two games.
 
I technically beat the other six games in Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics today. That has to be some kind of record for me, though I don't know how much it counts when the games are ~45 minutes long.

I'm going to lump X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes together. These games came out annually from 1994–1998. I'm very glad I played them in release order. Children of Atom is almost unplayable while MvC1 is obviously recognizable as the precursor to MvC2. The games include most of the same playable characters, slightly expanding the roster as time passed. The gameplay and mechanics improved with each iteration. Honestly, none of these tickled my fancy. I'd give the earlier games 6/10 and the last two 7/10.

That brings me to Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which is the most fun I've had with a fighting game since Soul Calibur 2 or Super Smash Bros. Melee. I've played a handful of fighting games in the years since: Injustice, Mortal Kombat X, Tekken 5, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I mostly learned that I don't like fighting games. I don't like memorizing attack inputs or dodge timing and I definitely don't like sweaty, competitive games. I dropped the game to nearly the lowest difficulty and played it for the vibes. The art, sounds, and animations are all iconic. I saw so many of these moves for the first time in gif form on the internet. There's something nostalgic about digging into the game and seeing those animations in action.

I can see myself going back to the versus mode and dicking around against the CPU in the future. After I beat the game, I played ~10 matches for fun, mixing and matching my team and opponents. I was drawn to Psylocke, Rogue, Wolverine, Storm, Cable, and Sakura—many of the game's quick, nimble characters. Going back to a game after I've beaten it is very unlike me. I'm an objective-based gamer. Once I check the box, I move on. I probably wouldn't put 5200 hours into Civ unless I'd beaten every other game first. I just had to try Marrow and see the Street Fighter characters based on the conversations we've had on this board.

MvC2 holds up. It's absolutely worthy of its legendary status in the fighting game space. I'd give it an 8.5/10.

These games had me missing the good old days, when the X-Men were well and truly king. By my quick count, 16 of MvC2's 27 Marvel characters were X-Men-related. Sorry Avengers stans, that's the way it should be.

It also made me incredibly excited for the toys. I'd really like to see this guy in Legends form, too:

358px-MVC2_doctordoom_art.png
 
Super Mario cart. My two girls 5 and 7 are becoming quite the Super Mario (and Star Wars) fans. I found some extra Wii steering wheels at Half Price Books and now the whole family of four has been having "Mario Cart Mornings" lately.
 
Been trying to get my boyfriend more into gaming, to little success. He apparently had a PS2 when he was younger, but didn't have any consoles again until I got him an Xbox One a few years back. I got him a couple games to start him out, but the only one he's really been interested in playing is the old Star Wars Battlefront 2. He did play and enjoy Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, but he's played very little else. Every now and then- maybe once or twice a year or so- I can convince him to play something with me- at first it was the new Battlefront 2 or Injustice 2, but I got It Takes Two a while back and he's really enjoyed that the few times we've played it.

My question is- what game or games would you recommend for him to play? He's quite nerdy like me, so usually pretty big into lore and whatnot, but he always deflects and says he doesn't know if he'll like a game's story or feels overwhelmed if there's too much to do. He claims to really like being able to just kinda pick up and play for however long- half an hour, an hour, or so- and not have to worry about continuity and all that. I figured an open world or RPG could be good for him, and tried getting him into Mass Effect, but he didn't seem too enthused. To be fair, that may be because it's one of my favorite franchises (I named both my cats after ME characters), and I have no doubt I overwhelmed him and was a backseat gamer the one time he tried it, which probably ruined things for him.

But yeah- any suggestions? Something simple, easy to get into, and a simplified control scheme (having not played any games in a few console generations, he's not very familiar with modern controllers or controls). Preferably something available on Xbox One.
 
I've heard it's a lot like It Takes Two, and I'm definitely curious. At this point, I'll take anything that can get him interested even a little in gaming- single player story based, co-op, whatever.
 
joshsquash729 said:
My question is- what game or games would you recommend for him to play? He's quite nerdy like me, so usually pretty big into lore and whatnot, but he always deflects and says he doesn't know if he'll like a game's story or feels overwhelmed if there's too much to do. He claims to really like being able to just kinda pick up and play for however long- half an hour, an hour, or so- and not have to worry about continuity and all that. I figured an open world or RPG could be good for him, and tried getting him into Mass Effect, but he didn't seem too enthused. To be fair, that may be because it's one of my favorite franchises (I named both my cats after ME characters), and I have no doubt I overwhelmed him and was a backseat gamer the one time he tried it, which probably ruined things for him.

But yeah- any suggestions? Something simple, easy to get into, and a simplified control scheme (having not played any games in a few console generations, he's not very familiar with modern controllers or controls). Preferably something available on Xbox One.
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I think the problem you're going to have with lore-heavy games is that almost none of them are very 'pick up and play' friendly. I love me some Mass Effect, Red Dead, or Kingdom Come -- all games that I STRONGLY recommend people play. But if you didn't play them for a while, you'd be absolutely fucking lost once you turn them back on. There's just too many systems, the buttons do too many things, the story is too deep to remember what you were doing or why... etc etc. Those are games for people that want to sit down and play a game for 10 straight hours, and/or who want to play for an hour or two every single day.

It's hard to give suggestions because there's no way to know what he really likes to play, and there's thousands of games to choose from. But based solely on 'fairly easy to get into, fairly simple controls, cool story' - I have a few recommendations that he'll either love or hate.

Hades
Hades is so good. It's a Rogue-like isometric. You're the son of Hades and you have to try to escape from his realm. Every time you fail, you gain things you can use to do better next time. It's VERY good. One of my favorite games ever. But also one of the simplest games I've ever played purely in terms of mechanics. Very 'pick up and play' friendly. Even if you just decide to turn off the game mid-run, you literally only lose the progress you might have gained from that run. Runs take however long you can survive or until you defeat the final boss (you probably won't get there for a fair bit of time, but if you can get there I think the entire run from beginning to end of boss fight is like an hour and a half or 2 hours?).

While not my favorite game of all time, I'd say this is my absolute top suggestion for basically anyone that wants to play a video game and doesn't know what to play.

Borderlands
Any of them.
Literally the quintessential looter-shooter. There's fun story but it doesn't really matter so if you forget stuff between sessions it doesn't matter. You run, you shoot, you use a special ability determined by your class, and you level up which mostly just means getting percentage points better at doing stuff, but also can have cool effects and change how the character plays a bit. But it's not really complicated at all -- if you can play any shooter like Call of Duty or whatever, you can play Borderlands. You run. You shoot stuff. Everything explodes into sparkly NEW weapons for better shooting stuff fun.
I don't want to say it's mindless fun, because there is some level of strategy and story here. But it's fairly easy to get into, and fairly easy to get -back- into if you put it down for too long.


Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War

If he's a nerd, but doesn't care about something not necessarily respecting the lore, these are excellent Lord of the Rings games. If you're familiar with the Batman: Arkham games - it's just that, but with swords and enemies that remember you and get better if they defeat you. It's an incredibly cool enemy system that is actually proprietary so that no other game can ever use it - which is bullshit because it really is crazy fun to die and have the goon that killed you become an actual named character that starts stalking you and shit. It's hard to describe quickly, but it's an awesome system.

Anyway, the controls aren't particularly complicated. There's a pretty cool story, but if you dip out for a week, you won't forget everything that's going on and what to do. Actual missions generally don't take very long to do - maybe an hour at most per mission. And you can choose to just do 'open world' type stuff without actually doing a mission, which allows you to just play for even ten or fifteen minutes if that's what you feel like doing.

I'd also want to recommend Space Marine 2 as a VERY fun pick-up-and-play with relatively straight forward controls and gameplay, but you'd need a Series X or PS5 to play it. Or a decent gaming PC.
 
I'd recommend a more casual experience for someone who isn't into games. Something with lower stakes and fewer mechanics.

Stardew Valley, Portal, The Sims, Overcooked, or Cities: Skylines. Find a game to hook him and then you might have an easier time with meatier games that aren't as friendly to new/casual gamers, like The Witcher 3 or Mass Effect.

If you have a Switch, a game like Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, or Super Smash Bros. could be the way to go.
 
Thanks, Damien and TSI!

Trust, I'm very familiar with the Batman: Arkham games, and you'd best believe I've tried to get him to play those more than a few times. I've even offered to just let him watch while I play through them, just so he can experience the story. The reason why I think he'd like some of the more open-world/lore heavy games is sorta two-fold; One, with open world games, there's so many little side missions you can do that are shorter fi you don't have time for story missions. Two, the lore and interactions with characters can help him get hooked and want to keep returning. He did play and love one of the GTA games in the past, and he's expressed some interest in Star Wars: Outlaws, so I may have him come play that on my PS5.

I may start him with some platformers, honestly- he played Crash Bandicoot way back in the day and enjoyed the level or two he played of the most recent one from a few years ago. He liked the Lego games as well. I've been looking into getting Astro Bot myself, and something tells me he may enjoy that, even if he wouldn't get all the references. Shadow of Mordor/War is a good suggestion- we both love LOTR. Borderlands/Bioshock are good ones too- may look into those.

Really been wanting him to play The Last of Us games, if only so I can finally talk to him about what happens, but those aren't good ones to start with.

Thanks, all! Some really good suggestions to start with!
 
joshsquash729 said:
Thanks, Damien and TSI!

Trust, I'm very familiar with the Batman: Arkham games, and you'd best believe I've tried to get him to play those more than a few times. I've even offered to just let him watch while I play through them, just so he can experience the story. The reason why I think he'd like some of the more open-world/lore heavy games is sorta two-fold; One, with open world games, there's so many little side missions you can do that are shorter fi you don't have time for story missions. Two, the lore and interactions with characters can help him get hooked and want to keep returning. He did play and love one of the GTA games in the past, and he's expressed some interest in Star Wars: Outlaws, so I may have him come play that on my PS5.

I may start him with some platformers, honestly- he played Crash Bandicoot way back in the day and enjoyed the level or two he played of the most recent one from a few years ago. He liked the Lego games as well. I've been looking into getting Astro Bot myself, and something tells me he may enjoy that, even if he wouldn't get all the references. Shadow of Mordor/War is a good suggestion- we both love LOTR. Borderlands/Bioshock are good ones too- may look into those.

Really been wanting him to play The Last of Us games, if only so I can finally talk to him about what happens, but those aren't good ones to start with.

Thanks, all! Some really good suggestions to start with!
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I look forward to you updating us, so don't leave us in the dark with what, if anything, worked.


I get you on the open world games. But yeah, I still think it's always going to be a struggle for someone that isn't a regular gamer because basically every open world game that exists is so easy to get lost playing if you're not regularly at it. Especially if the player may be prone to getting frustrated with that 'wait... what was I doing last time I played?' feeling and having to go read journal entries and shit to figure out what the story was supposed to be. A good story and lore is great, but only if you don't forget half of it between play sessions.

That's why I like the Shadow of... games. A lot of the deeper lore you guys probably already know by heart, or near to. So you can still dig into it as you play, but you're unlikely to be completely lost if you put it down and don't come back to it for a couple weeks.

Oh and if he's already expressed interest in GTA - obviously GTA5 is on a billion top 10 lists for a reason. I'd only argue that GTA5 controls are in the 'mid level' of complexity for someone that isn't really much of a gamer.
And yeah, you said it - the LEGO Star Wars games are actually SUPER fun.

Last of Us is definitely something I recommend with my whole heart. And really, I'd argue it's not that complex. But yes, it's definitely not the perfect game for onboarding someone unfamiliar with a modern PS controller. Basically, any game where you have to automatically remember which button is which without looking down and severely punishes mistakes is gonna be tough.


Also definitely agree with TSI's suggestions. Lots of good options there if maybe he'd be more into cosy games rather than action-oriented games. Good luck winning him over, in any case.
 
joshsquash729 said:
I may start him with some platformers, honestly- he played Crash Bandicoot way back in the day and enjoyed the level or two he played of the most recent one from a few years ago.
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Oh, the Astro Bot games are the way to go, then. He may also like LittleBigPlanet or Ratchet & Clank.

Celeste, Psychonauts & Psychonauts 2, Super Meatboy, and Ori and the Blind Forest are worth a look, too.
 
A couple weeks ago, some friends approached me about playing Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree. I gave up on the DLC after banging my head against the wall for four or five hours when it first came out. I wrote this on Fwoosh at the time:
I promised an Elden Ring DLC update. Honestly, I've played just a few hours. While the environments and level design are on point, the difficulty is not. This is the first time in a long time that I've considered shelving a game I paid decent money for.

While I could grind my way up in the base game, that doesn't seem to be as much of an option in the DLC. Your defense is directly correlated to a new DLC-based currency. They're hidden throughout the world like flask upgrades in the base game. The simple solution is to search the map for the currency (Scadutree Fragments), but exploration is such a chore that I haven't been able to force myself to do it. Even the most basic enemies can kill me in three hits, and I'm level 160 with 60 vitality. I've also skipped multiple optional bosses because they were kicking my ass. That's not how I played the base game, and I'm frustrated that the game is pigeonholing me into that playstyle in the DLC.
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We beat it this afternoon. Shadow of the Erdtree is full of gorgeous environments and unforgettable bosses, but it's so much harder than the base game that I can't wholeheartedly recommend it. Even with three people, the final boss took us four hours.

Messmer, another DLC boss, is on the shortlist of all-time FromSoft bosses. His animations were breathtaking. It's too bad he and other bosses are locked behind a DLC several times harder than the original game. If not for the insane difficulty spike, I'd probably give it a full 10/10. It'll have to settle for an 8.5, because without friends, I wouldn't have touched it again.

I've also been playing Mass Effect 3. Last month, I documented my issues with its predecessor. I was surprised by how harsh I was, considering Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite games ever. Well, my time with Mass Effect 3 clarified those feelings. When I think of the series, its gameplay, player choices, and jaw-dropping moments, I'm really thinking of Mass Effect 3. The third game is a huge improvement on 1 and 2 in every area.

If you think I'm crazy, play 2 and 3 consecutively. I promise you, you're remembering Mass Effect 2 through rose-colored glasses. It's Mass Effect 3 that has cinematic setpieces, diverse gameplay, and difficult player decisions. The original ending put such a bad taste in everyone's mouth that ME2 is considered the best in the series. It isn't.

About 75% of the way through the game, I have three minor complaints:
  • Holding A to sprint is a nightmare. I'm playing it in the Legendary Edition, and while a full remake would be nice, something more than a basic remaster would've made all the difference. All we needed was the ability to customize the controls. Once you've sprinted by clicking the left stick, everything else feels antiquated (just ask Elden Ring after Nightreign finally moved sprint off the B button). In 1 and 2, Shepard feels like a runaway train. In 3, she's a little better, maybe like an out-of-control toddler.
  • The Renegade/Paragon system is too reductive. I'm someone who has too much conscience. I've only played a "bad" character twice in my life, and both times I felt terrible about it. I'm the model Paragon player. However, in all three Mass Effect games, the Paragon option is a "win" button. It's always the better choice. Choosing the paragon option never has negative consequences. Strictly speaking, I'm not opposed to this. People have no media literacy. Like, half of the people who see The Wolf of Wall Street think Jordan Belfort is the hero. While I love movies with protagonists who are various shades of gray, mainstream audiences can't handle it. It's probably good that Mass Effect says Be a Good Guy or Else, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in a series full of nuance.
  • The Quarian/Geth war. Going into this playthrough, the only thing I wanted to remedy was the resolution to this conflict. The first time I played the game,
I accidentally sided with the Geth, Tali killed herself, and the Quarians were exterminated. I don't know how this happened because I was always sympathetic to the Quarians and wanted to side with them.

Well, I played through the series for the second time, and it happened again. While the game seems to give you plenty of runway to create the ending you want in every other conflict, it doesn't do that here.

It gives you a very specific list of items to complete to get the best ending possible. If you don't do that, you're barred from the Paragon/Renegade options that allow you to end the war peacefully. Then, oddly enough, it presents Legion/the Geth as the Paragon option and the Quarians as the renegade option. I clicked through the Paragon options thinking I'd just reload my save, select the Renegade options, and side with the Quarians. Welp, this is an instance of Old Game being Old. The latest auto-save was before the one-hour mission started. Honey, life ain't long enough for that. I'll just watch it on YouTube.

Nonetheless, I have committed genocide against the Quarians twice now, totally by accident. Frustrating.
 
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