rivingtondown

To be honest, I've never been able to get over the hump in ONI. I play for hours, have a blast but eventually things start falling apart and I'm not usually able to recover. That being said, I know there's been some updates since last I played so I may go back to it soon.

Back in 2011 or so I got really into Minecraft mods. I think it was literally just Buildcraft and Industrialcraft. It involved many steps, putting folders inside the Minecraft JAR file, deleting meta INF files, etc. I stuck with it for a few years during which the scene exploded. I actually paid to host a website for my friend's only server that just included links to the specifics mod versions and step by step instructions how to install them. It was around the same time FTB modpacks came out that I fell off, I played one or two SP worlds with FTB Infinity Evolved and had a lot of fun but Factorio and eventually Satisfactory scratched that same itch.

They're called management sims, or in the case of Factorio a factory builder.

Rimworld is a colony management sim... check out Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included for similar games

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a theme park management sim, the obvious suggestions are Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo but also check out City Skylines.

Factorio is a factory builder, I would recommend Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, there's a few handfuls of those types of games. If you want to get a little wild look into Minecraft (Java edition) w/ mods - most easily something like the FTB Infinity Evolved or one of the new Direwolf packs, it's arguably where the factory building craze started.

Maybe not my favorite game but one of the very few games I truly felt required pen and paper were some of the old Might & Magic games - most notably I think of the first 3 games.

Those were first person dungeon crawling RPGs. They didn't have, what later became termed "automaps", but what is now just a in-game map. So if you wanted to look at a map you had to either buy real life books they sold called Cluebooks which had maps printed in them or you had to pull out the graphing paper and get to drawing.

It wasn't just a limitation of the time, the games back then honestly treated it like a feature. I think it was in M&M3 that you could eventually cast the spell "Wizard Eye" and the entire point of the spell was to present to you a minimap of the surrounding area. NPCs and quests didn't put icons on your map (there was no map), you were given directions and had to figure out how to get there.

Maybe I'm mistaken because I haven't played it as much as some people but this is pretty similar to Mount & Blade. I think if the NPC factions simply did more and were more effective at sieging one another it would be that almost exactly.

Similarly, Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode is almost exactly this but it leans deeply into roguelike survival and is still part of the old school ASCII version.

The problem is if you're just a pawn in a dynamic procedural strategy game against NPCs it seems very easy for the factions to be procedurally put in a situation where one AI absolutely dominates another and the lack of control you would have over the bigger events would become frustrating.

I tend to lean the same way, with a kid and busy job I just don't have enough time to finish long games. Hearing something like FF16 is not 80 hours makes me happy.

That being said, I also lean toward sandbox games as I get older with no definitive ending. Factory builders, city builders, colony management sims, etc... even though those games can last hundreds or even a thousand+ hours. The difference is sandbox style games typically always allow you to quick save or save anywhere, and I never have to worry about finishing some storyline to feel good about my playtime.

Deathloop is great, I got it right around release and played through it over the course of a few weeks.

It doesn't take brainpower to solve. There's a whole time loop puzzle but the most disappointing aspect of the game was that it's a solved solution. The game spells out exactly what objectives to complete at which places and at what times. While you play through the game the first time you're uncovering twists and clues as to how to solve the puzzle but instead of letting you deduce a solution the games builds out a step by step list of markers for you to follow.

It's essentially the complete opposite of how The Outer Wilds, which has a similar time loop aspect with a puzzle to solve, handles it.

That being said, give Deathloop a shot because it's still a fun shooter with neat mechanics that lean very close to immersive sim levels of freedom.

There's no story throughline at all through any of the FF games, they're all completely separate and you can literally play them in any order with no regard for anything. They only share vague concepts, relatively generic fantasy/sci-fi tropes, and a loosely followed compendium of creature types, spells, and races.

FF1 - Depending on your comfort level with 40 year old games I may recommend you check out the very first Final Fantasy on NES. It has a very slight story, you're into the meat of the gameplay loop almost immediately and it introduces the most basic mechanics of the franchise. Playing the first game will also potentially give you some reference points for many concepts the games still follow today.

FF4 - An absolute classic SNES game. Unlike the original you'll immediately notice this one has actual named characters with story arcs. Most all of the modern FF tropes are now in the game (active time battles, chocobos, summons, dragoons, etc)

FF6 - Arguably the best in the series. One of the best stories at least. This is the first one where they started introducing themes of technology. You'll see Moogles. There's miniganes. Gameplay still feels fresh to this day.

FF7 - They went deep into technomagic science stuff with this one. Being the first one on Playstation it's 3D and filled to the brim with cutscenes. I doubt you heard of this game, it's pretty unpopular /s

FF9 - I like this one because they went back to a high fantasy theme and it really perfected the PS1 style they had been going for since 7. Loveable characters too.

FF12 - Not counting the MMO, this is when they started experimenting with moving away from their classic turn-based combat system. The class and skill system, specifically in the Zodiac version, is very open ended. The story and tone is also much more political.

FF16 - From 12 I would jump straight to this one (unless you're into MMORPGs with 14). 13 and 15 have their merits but don't stand the test of time IMO. FF16 switches the FF formula up more than any other mainline game. It's arguably not even an RPG but a Character Action game like DMC or Bayonetta. The story, though obviously heavily influenced by GoT, is squarely wrapped in Final Fantasy tropes from the last ~40 years.

My kid is a toddler, I can't play games around him, even on my Switch or Steam Deck because he's too distracting and wants too much attention. My wife and I usually play games for about an hour after he goes to sleep and we finish all the chores (laundry, cooking, dishes, food prep, daycare prep).

Between about 9:00pm and 10:00pm, on weekends if either of us have the time we'll try to get chores done during the day while he's awake which would give us maybe one more hour.

That's it though, probably a third of the time we spend that single hour with some other form of relaxation (TV, book, social media, maybe ½ a movie). Another third of the time we just have other obligations or extra chores - maybe we need to do taxes or buy airplane tickets or book hotels for travel. Then, probably one or two nights a week on average we're just too tired to do anything past 9pm and go to bed early.

So... all said, maybe 3 hours of gaming a week on average. Every so often my wife or I will take the kiddo out by ourselves and the other will have an extra hour or two for whatever but that's not every week.

I liked Skyrim and will defend it but Fallout 4 had some inexcusable problems. I still played it and had a lot of fun once the mods rolled in but the base game is a mess in terms of story, dialogue, role-playing, balance, graphics, animations, etc...

The settlement building was pure silly sandbox, there was no reason to engage with it, no benefit it provided, in fact it only introduced extra nuisance if you engaged (in the form of annoying settlement raid alerts). The dialogue options may have as well been nonexistent and all the skill check mechanics were stripped out in favor of the most bog basic charisma checks. The leveling and SPECIAL mechanics ended up meaning every character was exactly the same, there was no build variety past 10 or 12 hours. If you wanted to argue there was it by was only stealth or no stealth, melee or ranged, but the balance between them was fubar.

The game was extraordinarily disappointing as someone who was a huge fan of Fallout since the original, liked 3, and loved New Vegas. FO4 was a step back in every way EXCEPT first-person shooter mechanics which wasn't even an true aspect of the franchise.

The one thing FO4 has going for it were mods. Like Skyrim before it, FO4 was completely reworked in multiple ways by different mods and that's what basically saved the game for me.

I wonder how long this will take to catch up to the current game though in terms of content. There's, what... 10 expansions for the original plus a dozen content packs and music packs? It's almost as extreme as The Sims.

Might be hard to dive deep into C:S2 if your used to playing C:S1 with a large amount of the expansions from the last 8 years

When I have the chance to pick up and play these days it's usually Diablo IV. Just prior to that I was replaying through the original Marvel Ultimate Alliance with the absolutely insane roster mod (increases the roster to something like 50 heroes and unlocks them, and the custom team building / team perks system all from the start). Decided to run an all girl team lead by Jean Grey and Rogue.

That's funny, I actually think TotK is great in this regard.

The DPad Up quick inventory menu is awesome and the sorting options are exactly what I'd want (most used, attack power, type, and zonai).

Having quick swappable equipment sets would be nice but so many games lack that feature that I don't even think about it. In TotK it also seems unnecessary unless you're into min-max. Like, I just need one piece of fire immune clothing to go into Death Mountain, I don't need to wear an entire set and if I was really lazy I could pop an elixir from the quick select menu instead.

Cooking is annoying though. It's such a fun animation and satisfying outcome but the laborious hold and drop mechanics get tedious when you're cooking in bulk.