Memes

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!"

And replay games I already know by heart. I can start a new game or....... play Starfox 64 again. "Do a barrel roll".

How do you know he doesn't have a dual boot

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.

Yeah, play the story and sidequests but don't do any of the collectibles that are often necessary for 100%.

Good choice to fast-forward your time perception

Ah the early times of factorio, learning everything for the first time. Those are long ago, 1700h+ now. The addiction is real.

I like the Shapez too

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.

Disco Elysium

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Blackwell series, West of Loathing, Talos Principle II, To The Moon series.

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.

In Stars and Time is especially appropriate for Pride Month!

Disco Elysium is phenomenal as well.

I bought outer wilds a while ago but haven't played it yet, I should probably give it a try

I also hate that the grammatical standard for all cap pluralization is to include an apostrophe. What is it the Oakland A's possess!?

I read this in Steve Austin’s voice