Patient Gamers

Like, will there be a point in time where you think that with all of the games of yesteryear to play that are thousands and thousands, with thousands more forward ahead to be released. There's only so much time available to be playing so much in a lifetime.

Hearing that Civ 7 is going to have Steam Deck support is tempting me.

Also, I’m playing around with what day of the week to post this, and seeing what days get the best interaction. If you have a preference, please let me know!

I love the idea of getting older AAA titles for free, but hate the idea of installing the Epic Games Launcher on my computer. Where do you guys stand on this?

I don't think the game is all that good or fun(personally).

I saw this question asked in another gaming community and thought it might be a good discussion here too.

Do you have a game you play over and over, when nothing else fits your mood? That game that is infinitely re-playable, somewhat the same every time and somewhat new and interesting?

Lots of people have traditions for their favourite Christmas songs and Christmas movies, but I don’t see games get talked about as much. It makes sense, there’s not many Christmas video games, but does anyone have anything they like to play specifically around the holidays? For me, I always go back and play some Elder Scrolls games. I also tend to play a lot of racing games around Christmas (tradition with my dad), and of course most of my playtime in hockey games are during the winter. Does anyone else have anything they like to revisit, or any genres they save, for this time of year? I’d love to hear about it

Last December I did an end-of-year recap thing that got a lot of fun comments. Thought I'd do it again this year! What games did you complete (or just play a lot of)? What did you think about them? Highlights? Lowlights? Might be a good chance to find some hidden gems while the Steam sale is on too.

Could be a console startup, title screen, intro cutscene, etc. I just got wired off an energy drink so I apologize in advance if this post is unhinged.

Trope or not, gods just end up being a common target for games about heroes escalating in power while fighting increasingly world-destroying consequences.

I have just finished the Half-Life series. Prompted by the 20th anniversary of HL2, I decided to play HL1 (1997), then HL2 (2004), and both episodes. I'm currently playing through Black Mesa and it's very enjoyable so far, it's like they took everything from HL1 and removed the annoying parts, I'm excited to see what more changes they decided to make, and what other references are present.

Just picked up DOS1 in the steam sale; just started playing only 4 hours into it. I started a tactician run, I've been party wiped about 8 times so far.

I've played Ghost Recon on and off since....well forever. I first played it on PS2, and it's the only game to get the honor of first install (and never uninstall) on every PC I've ever owned, paired with the incredible Heroes Unleashed mod. I'm going to try to explain why I still come back to it. I'll take you along with me via screenshots I took over my last few outings.

As before, Steam goes strictly by the Steam release date rather than the PC release year when determining whether a game qualifies for most of the nominations. This allows to nominate quite a number of former Epic exclusives, Ubisoft releases, or other games previously unavailable on Steam, including:

I've been playing Kingdome Come Deliverance on and off for quite a while and after finishing the story years after my initial install and I feel like I'm finally qualified to write a bit about it!

Citizen Sleeper, a light RPG with dice-based gameplay, feels like a classic sci-fi story with contemporary ideas and worries. It's tight gameplay; I felt on edge most of my time in this decaying space station, always a sense of urgency maintaining my body and getting enough scrip for my greater goals.

I really enjoyed the Witcher 3 so I thought I would go back and play the first two games even though some people seemed to have mixed opinions on what they think of them both. Then after playing the first two games my partner got interested in W3 so we then played through that together. I feel like now I have some good perspective to offer on the whole series and what people should do if they really enjoyed 3 but haven't gone back.

Having come across videos of that new Dragon Age game and its (by the look of it) cool looking combat I've gotten the urge for something similar. Action RPG of some kind, being able to rock on as a wizard and blast spells all day. Some tactical element to spell slinging and comboing would be nice.

Arcade car games don't seem that popular nowadays, so what is your opinion on this series?

Seems to be the remaster of a PS3 / Xbox 360 title. The name rings a bell, but I never played it.

I love this game. I played the Dreamcast version as a kid so many times and recently replaced the PC version.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/warcraft-2-orcs-and-humans-remastered-apparently-leaks-ahead-of-the-rts-series-30th-anniversary-direct-next-week

Found this review elsewhere (credits at the end). First time I hear about it, curious to see what people think

Hi, In early 2000 , my dad, my brothers and I used to play the shit out of this game called Chicken Invaders.

I just wrapped up on playing the iOS version of Professor Layton: The Curious Village (HD) and let me just say, it was an experience I wasn’t expecting. I’m curious how other people think about these games.

This is a long post about the various aspects of Fallout, don't read it all unless you care to. Instead, find a section and comment on that so we can have a focused discussion if you prefer.

So picked this up in the recent Steam sale and just finished it. What does everyone think? I liked it, though I definitely enjoyed the earlier portions more, when it felt more grounded than fantastical. I would love to see a game centered around LeBlanc and his time as a PI before Kay returns. I feel like that would be a good setting to really dig into this awesome dystopia that was created here.

I've never been a fan of Visual Novels, or at least, of the ones I'd always come across. But I'm also a sucker for good cyberpunk, and a good story. When I saw that Snatcher might tick both those boxes, I decided to give it a shot.

Never in my life have I felt so *used* by a game. Feels dirty. The video game equivalent of emotional abuse.

I enjoyed Respawn's first Star Wars game, Fallen Order, a pastiche of present-day gameplay concepts on top of a venerable, popular IP. Eager for something with the potential to improve upon some of Fallen Order's shortcomings, I was interested in Survivor from the moment it was announced. There were damning reports about Star Wars: Jedi Survivor's performance on PC, so I held off until the recent patch. Happily, I can report a patient gaming win here.

This will be a bit of a hybrid review of both the digital edition of Scythe and the board game.

So after eight years since VI's release, it decided to get into Civilization VI. People were often talking about how innovative this game was, and it knew the Civilization Players League had a ton of cool balancing tools to make the game really engaging.

While a lot of people praise Chrono Trigger (and right they are! Play it! It's an often recommended game for a reason), its sequel Chrono Cross doesn't get as much love. There are valid reasons for that in my opinion, but I want to argue that CC is still a strong and good game, but it needs to be looked at separated from its ancestor. They didn't call it Crono Trigger 2, in order to separate it more from the first game, but people still expected a sequel to the characters they loved in the first game. And they didn't get that. Spoiler for CC now:

This one got a little longer since there are so many things to talk about. TL;DR at the end

I highly recommend this game to all those who want to have a more wholesome game and bemoan that so often we can just solve things by violence. In fact, that is one of the main ethical points of the protagonist: he doesn’t want to use violence. The problem is just, the world is ending and a hero is needed. And what is a hero who doesn’t wield a sword and uses that sword? Well, play this game and find out if the protagonist can stay true to their convication or not.

This game probably is not that unknown, considering it sold more than 1 million copies, but I still recommend it because it fantastically showcases the power of the human mind for anthropomorphism. The game is only made up out of rectangles. So graphicwise, a potato could run it.

The game is a 2D side scroller where you can create clones of yourself which mimic your movement and you can also swap into those clones to solve puzzles with switches and pressure plates to find out what happened on a derelectic space station stranded on a planet. Fitting to the central mechanic is also a bit philosophy about what is the mind etc. involved, but not as explicit as in Soma.

Eternal Darkness is a game for the GameCube and was the first Nintendo published game to receive a Mature rating by the ESRB. If you play the game today, I think most will agree that that rating was a bit too much. But the damage was already done, the game didn’t sell enough copies and was a commercial failure. A decade later, two attempts by the game director to finance a successor via kickstarter failed, so it seems the game is as cursed as its protagonists.

I highly recommend this game to all those who bemoan that all games are the same and nothing new gets released.

The Longest Journey takes apparently 17 years, because that is the time span between the release of the original game in 1999 and the last game of the series in 2016, which finally finished the story. The Longest Journey is a classic point and click adventure game, meaning it has a wonderful story and world but sometimes really, really, REALLY stupid puzzles. But luckily only sometimes, often they are both entertaining and brain teasing, but you should still keep a guide nearby to not get frustrated.

Let’s talk about a more well known game this time. Bioware is most known for their 3D RPG series Mass Effect and Dragon Age nowadays, but in the past they created isometric RPGs like the Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights series. So how did that transition happen? Well, they published 2 games between those periods that helped them find their formula for 3D RPGs. While the first one was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which fits more to Dragon Age:Origins due to the pausable real time combat system with multiple party members (which I couldn’t play till now due to gamebreaking bugs), I want to talk about their second intermediate game today: Jade Empire.

This time I want to put the spotlight on a free game called Iji, named after the main character and developed by Daniel Remar. As the titular character, a nanomachine enhanced human, you are the last hope in the fight against alien invaders to rescue the last bits of humanity that survived the alien invasion. It is mostly a 2D action game with a little bit of platformer & RPG elements. You put ability points gained by finding them or killing enemies into different stats. Thereby you gain more health, more attack/kick power or can even use the weapons of the enemies against them. There are multiple difficulties for those who seek a challenge. The gameplay consists of you running and jumping through the levels and fighting against the enemies via weapons, kicks or tricks (like making enemies fight against each other by dodging a rocket and letting it hit the enemies behind you).

The Vale is a game like no other game I played before, because you see it through the eyes of a blind woman. Meaning you won’t see shit. Instead you rely on your ears to navigate and fight. The game was developed based around the thought to create a video game for blind people. This meant that at minimum a stereo speaker system (so at least a headset) is necessary, since the attacks will come from left, center or right. You have to block and counter them with the correct timing by listening to the sounds your enemies are producing. Menues are also visually presented in addition to being read by a narrator, so that you don’t need to select each option in order to know it, if you are not visually impaired.

Since I have time at the moment and in order to put a bit life in this community, I will post some recommendations for older games in the coming days.

How is it in 2024 now that it’s finished? A lot of reviews I see are based on when it originally came out but I’m curious about the current state of the game. With it being on sale now it seems like it’s worth it even with flaws.

Earlier this year I posted some thoughts on the games I’d been playing. Here are the ones I’ve completed recently.

Mostly referring to the release of the latest WoW extension which isn’t discussed anywhere (or maybe I missed it)

I have added 2 Steam and 1 GOG game libraries to my HLTB account. Then I have categorized the games based on completion/pad controller usage etc.

Team Fortress and Counter Strike too. It's nice to jump on and play every once in a while and not have to deal with all the mobile game crap.

***Edit: deux ex

I have very fond memories of the first Halo on the OG Xbox. It was very cool to be able to do the campaign together with a friend.

Stumbled upon this video, which kind of summarizes the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJxaIP8F3K8

The last time I touched Xbox was with the 360, and only because I needed to test used games to sell on eBay. But I've wanted to try out modern Xbox to see if things like GamePass and what exclusives they do have is worth it. Especially since on the used market, Xbox One games can be cheaper than PS4 games. With the loose justification of buying Conkers Bad Fur Day as my target price I bought Rare Replay and a Xbox One.

I have this loosely defined made-up genre I call "Summer Games".

Ever since it came out I have heard only good things about this game. And it sounds like a perfect fit for me. I enjoy figuring out puzzles, I enjoy figuring out lore and I love to explore.

Things have sort of come full circle for me. When I was younger, I recall playing a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 on Game Boy Advance and never being able to complete it (in fairness I eventually got to the final world). This was the case for a lot of games for me; essentially they’d have infinite replayability.

TLDR: I loved Borderlands two and I'm going to start a replay with a different character, which i almost never do.

Recently finally gotten around to playing Lies of P, and I've been enjoying my time a lot - I'd probably put it right between Sekiro and Bloodborne for my favourite Soulslikes. The boss fights have been pretty cool throughout the playthrough. However, the last few bosses, especially Laxasia and Simon, have been kicking my teeth in, so I used a summon to kill both easily.