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I should have mentioned as well, combat is fine, but not really the primary draw for me. NMS and ED are both in my library, I'm sure from some sale or another, so I'll give one of them a try.
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Jan 28, 2022 22:09
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Dissenting opinion: No Man’s Sky may be improved from where it was on release, but it’s still a bad game. None of the interactions feel good, the UI is cludgy, the story is self-important faff wrapped in endless courier missions that never gets to the meat of anything. The upgrades are boring percentage increases, and most exist only to bring you up the point where the game should have started you. The best thing about it, exploring new worlds, feels weighed down and held back by the rest of its systems. It’s Tedium: The Game
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Jan 28, 2022 22:09
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FakePoet posted:I imagine this question gets asked every now and then: Outer Wilds a game doesn't have to be huge to make you feel small
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Jan 28, 2022 22:11
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Ben Nerevarine posted:Dissenting opinion: No Man’s Sky may be improved from where it was on release, but it’s still a bad game. None of the interactions feel good, the UI is cludgy, the story is self-important faff wrapped in endless courier missions that never gets to the meat of anything. The upgrades are boring percentage increases, and most exist only to bring you up the point where the game should have started you. The best thing about it, exploring new worlds, feels weighed down and held back by the rest of its systems. It’s Tedium: The Game I played it a year or so ago on Game Pass and enjoyed it a good bit for what it was, but all of this is completely correct
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Jan 28, 2022 22:17
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Hwurmp posted:Outer Wilds I've tried twice and cannot bring myself to enjoy anything about that game
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Jan 28, 2022 23:00
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Ben Nerevarine posted:No Man’s Sky may be improved from where it was on release, but it’s still a bad game.
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Jan 28, 2022 23:04
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Ben Nerevarine posted:Dissenting opinion: No Man’s Sky may be improved from where it was on release, but it’s still a bad game. None of the interactions feel good, the UI is cludgy, the story is self-important faff wrapped in endless courier missions that never gets to the meat of anything. The upgrades are boring percentage increases, and most exist only to bring you up the point where the game should have started you. The best thing about it, exploring new worlds, feels weighed down and held back by the rest of its systems. It’s Tedium: The Game Overall agree with this. I really want to like no man's sky, but it is not respectful of your time. So many basic quality of life things are stuck behind very expensive upgrades that would take forever to purchase if playing "the normal way" and not optimizing complex production chains on your base. I just want an unlimited inventory to throw junk in while I explore cool worlds, quit loving making me do bookkeeping. I hate the UI, I hate the grind, it's just so distracting to the flow.
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Jan 28, 2022 23:06
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No Man's Sky has what I am pretty sure is the absolute worst UI ever unleashed upon a piece of software Elite: Dangerous is the best 'just chill in space' sim IMO. There are plenty of low-pressure activities you can do like core mining (they actually made mining fun and engaging), flinging yourself into uncharted space and driving your buggy around on the surface of never-before-scanned planets, occasionally stumbling across strange ruins or whatever. Scanning planets for cartography payouts, ferrying passengers between planets, being a luxury cruise liner in space, trading/smuggling/hauling goods, etc. It took all the best parts of true sim games (making the act of engaging with your machinery/equipment/vehicle fun and immersive) and stuck them in an actual game. The actual game is kind of mediocre but the sim parts are great, and don't require the grognardy hardware/joysticks/knowledge that sim games usually do. Plus you're in deep space and it's gorgeous, and it has the most impressive sense of scale of any videogame I've ever played (including Space Engine!) There's a bit of a hurdle getting started because it has a trillion keybinds and you'll probably want to change them all from their defaults, but learning to fly and flip all the switches in the ship was all part of the fun and didn't require any esoteric real-world knowledge, and it does a good job of making you feel like you've mastered your vessel when you figure it all out. It's the kind of game that I have unique memories from - like the time I spent a full 4 days flying out into the fringe of nowhere, learning how to slingshot myself with the gravity wells of neutron stars along the way, then just before reaching the destination I marked at the start I miscalculated how close I could fly to a neutron star and got blasted by some star plasma or whatever. It cracked my cockpit and blew out my engines and sent my ship spiraling out of control. I got up and made dinner while the oxygen slowly drained out of the cracked windshield and my life support systems ticked down until oxygen depletion. Or the time I was just doin' jumps off craters in my moon buggy and a colossal alien probe suddenly poked its head over the horizon, blocked out the sun, and studied me while making weird beeps. I didn't even know the game had aliens in it. It has (or used to have?) an in-universe news podcast that you could listen to from your ship that had dry news anchor voices rambling on about events throughout the galaxy and the game's evolving storyline. It was an excellent immersion thing and backdrop to just sitting there cracking asteroids open with well placed/timed seismic charges in the solitude of space, hoping no pirates show up before you can make your payday, and it updated frequently. I haven't played the game in a couple years and I think they paused that at some point but it may have come back. There's also a pretty sizable lore codex, and each of the articles is fully narrated and can be queued up on your ship's radio. The one major caveat I'll mention is that it has no way to automate long-distance travel. You can't set a waypoint to a far off star and walk away from your computer for 30 minutes and come back just in time to arrive at your destination. You have to actively do each jump between stars (either manually or by engaging autopilot to do it for you - but you can't queue up autopilot for the next jump or the one after that, etc) - generally doing things like manually scooping energy from stars to refill your fuel and "honking" (scanning planets) along the way. Edit: And despite being "technically an MMO" it's not very MMO-like at all. Every time you boot it up the first selection you make is whether you want to fly in solo instances or in online instances with other players. There are "Engineers" which are specific NPCs in weird/annoying places with kind of annoying questlines that you have to do to unlock their ability to min/max your ship's components - they're kind of annoying and MMO-like but there's no urgent drive to sit down and grind them out, it only becomes necessary for very high-end alien hunting or optional PVP (iirc) deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Jan 29, 2022 |
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Jan 29, 2022 00:32
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Appreciate all of the input; I imagine I'll end up puttering with all of them to get a feel at the very least. Are the X games (X4 I think is the newest? Correct me if that's inaccurate) worth a drat, or are they something different?
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Jan 29, 2022 02:38
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FakePoet posted:Appreciate all of the input; I imagine I'll end up puttering with all of them to get a feel at the very least. They are extremely the super-dense spreadsheet sort of game.
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Jan 29, 2022 03:20
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In my opinion, having not played No Man's Sky before they "fixed" it, yeah they added some goals, but the overarching gameplay still isn't something you will enjoy unless you enjoyed it already and just wanted more stuff to reach for. It doesn't fix the game for people who found it boring and grindy, it just adds stuff for people who found the grind fun and want more stuff to grind for. I dunno if that's true, because of course I didn't play it before the "fix", but that's what it feels like.
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Jan 29, 2022 06:05
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credburn posted:Hey gang Dawn of War 2 & the DLC have really good entertaining co-op campaigns. Rocket League is free and it's one of those games that's super easy to get into, but also has a skill ceiling you're not going to bonk against any time soon.
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Jan 29, 2022 09:47
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FakePoet posted:Appreciate all of the input; I imagine I'll end up puttering with all of them to get a feel at the very least. The early game can be pretty chill, just flying around exploring the galaxy and taking odd-jobs to make money. Mid to late game is all about amassing a fleet of ships to dominate economically and militarily. It’s pretty cool but definitely a different kind of game.
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Jan 29, 2022 11:01
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signalnoise posted:In my opinion, having not played No Man's Sky before they "fixed" it, yeah they added some goals, but the overarching gameplay still isn't something you will enjoy unless you enjoyed it already and just wanted more stuff to reach for. It doesn't fix the game for people who found it boring and grindy, it just adds stuff for people who found the grind fun and want more stuff to grind for. I dunno if that's true, because of course I didn't play it before the "fix", but that's what it feels like. Yeah, I tried to get into it probably every major update, but the core problem is not something they can fix without rebuilding everything from the ground up. The fundamental gameplay is just dull as gently caress.
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Jan 29, 2022 11:29
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If you just want to cruise around and explore without engaging in inventory micromanagement / crafting, NMS has a creative mode. edit: whoops there was another page
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Jan 29, 2022 16:46
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Tried the creative mode. Still boring. You simply can’t fix the fact that the basic minute to minute game is insanely tedious
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Jan 29, 2022 17:04
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Ok cool
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Jan 29, 2022 17:13
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I was responding to FakePoet asking thisquote:What's a good space game that might be good as just a quasi-chill in the vastness of space exploration? but thanks for your valuable post
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Jan 29, 2022 17:55
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Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? I'm asking for my wife. She loves exploration games. She played Subnautica and love the exploration aspects of it, but unfortunately the game gave her headaches for some reason - an issue she's never had with games before. Also, the underwater nature of everything often got her very turned around and lost. We've been playing Satisfactory together - she goes and explores while I design and build the factory. This is the same way we used to play Minecraft together. I would build/design while she explored. Are there any good games out there where exploration is the main point of the game? Also something that is meant to be played single-player. Base building can be a part of it, but if it is, it should be fairly simple and not require much planning. She likes to throw down bases wherever is convenient and then get back to exploration. (And and a preemptive no to No Man's Sky)
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Feb 3, 2022 20:09
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? Outer Wilds?
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Feb 3, 2022 20:11
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Firewatch?
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Feb 3, 2022 20:13
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Jack Trades posted:Outer Wilds? She prefers stuff with some combat and not so much a puzzle focus. And story-lite, if any at all. A perfect game for her would have the exploration elements of something like Satisfactory or Minecraft or Subnautica, but then much much more simplified base building. Like an "above ground" Subnautica would be incredible.
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Feb 3, 2022 20:15
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Mordiceius posted:She prefers stuff with some combat and not so much a puzzle focus. And story-lite, if any at all. Death Stranding, except for the story-lite part you can go pretty long stretches just placing stuff, clearing out MULE camps, and delivering to the various preppers without getting much story, but then you go do a primary mission and boom forty-five minutes of purestrain Kojima Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Feb 3, 2022 |
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Feb 3, 2022 20:20
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… Skyrim?
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Feb 3, 2022 20:22
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? This is exactly Valheim.
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Feb 3, 2022 20:26
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Terraria is basically the same as you would play subnautica and minecraft. No real base building needed, just slap some rooms together for the NPC's. For a more singleplayer focused experience: maybe Steamworld Dig 2 as a sorta gateway drug to metroidvania's? Another 'genre' of games where exploring around and finding cool things is the main hook are Bethesda's games (Skyrim/3D Fallouts) and Ubisoft's (AC: Odyssey springs to mind). Fallout 4 even hase some light base-building! A more intense form of exploration but on a smaller scale would be "immersive sims" like Deus Ex, Prey, Dishonored, Deathloop. Exploring intricate smaller places, often filled with hostiles. Those games aren't lovingly nicknamed apartement break-in simulators for nothing! Finally, the new Hitman trilogy is largely built around exploring awesomely detailed areas full of cool details. You could literally spend hours just walking around the maps, rooting around all kinds of places. There are hundreds of secrets, easter eggs, conversations, hidden area's to explore, stuff to unlock and find.... such a generous game.
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Feb 3, 2022 20:27
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Mordiceius posted:She prefers stuff with some combat and not so much a puzzle focus. And story-lite, if any at all. Astroneer has very simple base building and a fair bit of exploration. Starbound is kind of like 2d Minecraft but you explore planets and your base is a starship that's always accesabble. Slime Rancher does a lot of exploration interspersed with some base management/racial segregation simulator. Also very cute.
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Feb 3, 2022 20:29
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Isn't that a pretty good description of Sable?
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Feb 3, 2022 20:36
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? Sable imo. Exploration is the main thing and I feel like it does it better than any game I’ve played. There is sort of a story, but it mostly comes out from all the exploration you do. Probably the first open world game I’ve explored where I was really just excited to go climb that thing to see if I could/what might be up there, even absent any reward. The one thing it doesn’t have is combat. It also does have some short puzzles but they are by and large insanely simple. ultrafilter posted:Isn't that a pretty good description of Sable? ^^^ tildes fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 3, 2022 |
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Feb 3, 2022 20:39
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Hwurmp posted:Death Stranding Death Stranding is one that's been on my radar, but it feels like a more "commitment" game, if that makes sense. In that it doesn't seem as easy to just drop in and play for a few minutes. Deltasquid posted:… Skyrim? She already has wrung all she could out of that game. Samopsa posted:Terraria While I love Terraria, it's not really her style of game. She much prefers first/third person character action. Jack Trades posted:Astroneer has very simple base building and a fair bit of exploration. She played Slime Rancher a ton back in the day. I don't know that she ever "finished" it though. I'll have to check. For Starbound, I don't think she'd like it for the same reasons as Terraria. I'll look into Astroneer. Osmosisch posted:This is exactly Valheim. I saw that Valheim is 1-10 players. Is it fun in singleplayer or is it one of those games that is fine in singleplayer but 100x better with multiplayer? I originally thought Satisfactory would be a game for just her to play, but then the base building got overwhelming so we've been playing it completely co-op. Which, to be fair, is a loving blast. I do the factory building, she does the exploration, but I'm hoping to find a game that she can just enjoy on her own. ultrafilter posted:Isn't that a pretty good description of Sable? tildes posted:Sable imo. Exploration is the main thing and I feel like it does it better than any game I’ve played Never heard of Sable. I'll definitely look into it. Thanks everyone! Some great recommendations!
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Feb 3, 2022 20:45
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Feb 3, 2022 20:50
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Valheim 100%. It's good SP or multiplayer
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Feb 3, 2022 21:01
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Mordiceius posted:Death Stranding is one that's been on my radar, but it feels like a more "commitment" game, if that makes sense. In that it doesn't seem as easy to just drop in and play for a few minutes. This is definitely true, especially when you're picking your way across a rugged area for the first time or crossing a long distance.
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Feb 3, 2022 21:05
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? If she's ok with something very simplistic and abstracted, In Other Waters is great
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Feb 3, 2022 21:11
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Valheim is pretty good solo and about as close as anything gets to Subnautica. One caveat: the crafting recipes are tuned for co-op. You’ll want to find a mod that lessens the amount of materials needed. Or just spend a lot of time logging and mining.
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Feb 4, 2022 01:49
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? To go in a very different direction from the other suggestions that have been made, you could check out Nifflas' earlier games. Especially Knytt, Within a Deep Forest, and Knytt Underground. They're all open-world 2D platformers that pretty much just give you a space to explore and set you loose to find stuff in it. Within a Deep Forest has more of a metroidvania thing going on where you find different upgrades that let you access more of the map, but the other two give you access to everything from the get-go.
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Feb 4, 2022 02:36
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Mordiceius posted:Okay, here's a random request - are there any games out there where the point of the game is exploration? I'm pretty sure you can spend dozens of hours exploring the world of red dead redemption 2 (after the intro chapter) without doing any of the story missions. There is hunting, fishing, discovering strange locations, or simply riding through the gorgeous sceneries. edit: oh and there are the Discovery tours for Assassin's creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla which are really cool if you want exploration without combat. You can go everywhere, visit every place like in the base game, sail and ride, without being interrupted by ennemies and there are guided tours with didactic contents all over the map. There are no objectives though, but I think they did put some narrative quests for Valhalla. SpaceGoatFarts fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Feb 4, 2022 |
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Feb 4, 2022 09:10
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SpaceGoatFarts posted:
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Feb 4, 2022 13:51
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:To go in a very different direction from the other suggestions that have been made, you could check out Nifflas' earlier games. Especially Knytt, Within a Deep Forest, and Knytt Underground. They're all open-world 2D platformers that pretty much just give you a space to explore and set you loose to find stuff in it. Within a Deep Forest has more of a metroidvania thing going on where you find different upgrades that let you access more of the map, but the other two give you access to everything from the get-go. Seconding this! Nifflas' games are awesome.
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Feb 4, 2022 15:17
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SpaceGoatFarts posted:I'm pretty sure you can spend dozens of hours exploring the world of red dead redemption 2 (after the intro chapter) without doing any of the story missions. I think like half the map in RDR2 is locked until you get to the epilogue, but yeah it's an incredibly pretty game. I spent a lot of time just riding around rather than fast travelling because the environments were interesting and well designed. Lots of stranger missions to keep things interesting, too.
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Feb 4, 2022 15:39
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