u/Emmyy_Beans

For me a game becomes pretty boring once the meta is figured out and everyone knows what the optimal strategies are. It becomes tempting to just follow what everyone is doing instead of going against the grain and figuring things out on your own. It’s way more fun when a game is new or a bit underground so there isn’t a large community yet to datamine everything and kind of spoil the fun.

I love playing roguelites these days for this reason, used to be into MMOs but they just don’t feel the same in this day and age (everything gets figured out too quickly) and I don’t have as much free time. There’s always some new interesting roguelite to experiment in. Some of my favorites are Tiny Rogues and Brotato, simple games with good depth and satisfying buildcrafting.

I’m also into ARPGs, but I stay away from the big popular live service games that get balanced around a meta. I really like Grim Dawn, still trying out some class combos from the newest expansion. And I pretty much try any interesting new one that shows up, currently The Dark West looks really good. I like that it’s not set in the typical dark fantasy kind of world. Guns are my favorite weapons in ARPGs so I’m hoping there’s a lot of cool gun build possibilities.

I’m just tired of everyone trying to over optimize the fun out of everything they play, so I’m kind of in my own lane playing smaller and less known stuff (some of the games are popular but still in the shadow of big games in their genre). Wondering if I’m alone in this among the older crowd, I would imagine I’m not.

I noticed a sort of pattern, depending on the game you get communities that are completely horrible or the complete opposite. Usually really popular competitive games are the worst, while relaxed casual games are on the other end of the spectrum.

I guess it kind of makes sense when you are playing something really intense and high stakes that you would get a bit stressed, but people take it way too far in games like LoL (cant imagine how it would be without the filters and automated mutes), Counter Strike or Dota 2.

And when I’m playing something like Deep Rock Galactic or some other casual or co-op game everyone is literally the nicest person alive. I was playing the Loftia playtest about a month ago and my neighbors literally gave me all the resources I needed to build up my plot, I didn’t even ask. I started playing Helldivers 2 super late compared to most players yet nobody was ever toxic to me even when I was totally useless while I was learning.

The weird part is how there seems to be no middle ground. I’ve never been asked “How’s the community in that game?” and answered anything other than “Super toxic” or “lovely”. Maybe the middle ground people are just not that vocal so I don’t notice them, or I’m just not playing the games they are in. 

Why do you reckon game communities are this polarized, either pure toxicity or extreme wholesomeness?

I’ve recently realized that when I’m looking for a game to relax with, I don’t care about how hard a game is, as long as it's singleplayer. Multiplayer gaming is just rarely that chill for me, I’m kind of competitive so even co-op games kind of get me fired up.

When I’m playing something like Dota 2 I can barely stand losing (which kinda sucks cuz I lose like 50% of my games), but when I’m playing some really hard singleplayer game like Sekiro, or Nine Sols I literally don’t care. Like I know the game is hard, and there’s nobody I’m competing with other than myself, it just feels way different.

Right now I’m working through Celeste for the first time, and I’m not that good at platforming so it's really hard. I’m just slowly getting better and chilling, though I think if I tried any of those crazy challenges people do I wouldn’t find it so relaxing. Next I wanna try Croak when it comes out, it's also a pure platforming game but it looks a lot faster than Celeste, and pretty hard too.

I suspect I’m not the only one that feels this way, considering how successful Fromsoft games are. But still I’m wondering if anyone else has come to the same realization.

Local couch co-op is definitely my favorite way to game, it reminds me of my childhood, and it just feels great to actually see the other players reactions while you are playing. Unfortunately local co-op support is becoming more and more rare these days, even co-op games usually expect you to use online multiplayer, which is fine but definitely not as fun as playing from the same room.

This is where the Steam Deck comes in handy. I can play pretty much any compatible multiplayer game sitting right next to my bf and it basically feels like local co-op at that point. It’s become my favorite use for my Deck. In some ways it might be even better for some games, because you don’t have to use split screen which is always a bit annoying.

We have been binging Palworld like this lately, lots of fun, feels way different playing like this. We are also thinking of playing games that have local co-op in this way because it's just more convenient, Water Me & You is probably the next one we wanna try out (already played Split Fiction and It Takes Two). Apart from that we will definitely be playing Loftia like this when it comes out, I loved the playtest and my bf used to be really into MMOs so I think he will like it too.

Has anyone else tried this out? We randomly got the idea when we were sitting next to each other playing different games, and we had the idea of trying something together like that.

Given the choice, in a character creator, I will almost always go female. It just helps me immerse myself into the game easier. It’s just more natural for me to project myself so to speak on a character that at least vaguely resembles me. After I’m done with my first playthrough, if I'm playing more I usually roll a male to see if the game is any different like that, especially if there are romance options.

There is an exception though. When a game uses gender locked classes, like some MMOs and ARPGs do, I don’t really care about immersion and I choose whatever playstyle seems the most fun. I’ve always been mostly focused on gameplay so choosing a class based on how the character looks is just not something I would do.

Obviously the best case scenario is when the class I want to play is a female character anyway. This is the case in Last Epoch for example, where my favorite is the Rogue and that one is female along with the Acolyte (Necro basically). I am completely fine with this system btw, as long as the female classes are as badass as the male ones. In Diablo 4 they let you pick male or female for any class, which oddly feels kinda bad for me, I always loved the fact that my favorite classes in D2 were gender locked to female (Sorceress and Assassin)

I feel like it's fine for developers to not let you pick all the time. Because sometimes the story of a character only makes sense from one perspective. But in games that give you a lot of choices when it comes to character creation things should be at least somewhat fair, I hate it when all the female characters are some type of support or healer archetype.

I’d like to hear what you think about this. Do you ever pick the male option when you create your character? And what is your feeling on gender locked characters?

Disco Elysium reminded everyone how interesting you can make the protagonist of an RPG. For some reason despite it being praised as one of the best games ever, nobody really tried to replicate what Planescape Torment did right. I can’t say I blame them, you need really high quality writing to make it work and if your writers aren’t excellent it's probably wiser to do something simpler.

Everyone who has played it knows that the thoughts of the Nameless One and his interpretations of body language and other cues were a really important addition to the dialogue in the game. And the insane internal monologues and strange thoughts popping up during conversations in Disco were one of the highlights of the game for a lot of players.

Companions and side characters always seem to be quite fleshed out, but the protagonist is often just a blank slate. A deliberate blank slate for the player to project onto, which definitely helps immersion in some cases. But sometimes playing an established character with their own backstory can be really interesting, especially for the current generation of players that aren’t used to it. Showing the protagonists thoughts is probably one of the best ways to actually do this.

I’ve been playing all the newer CRPGs that take inspiration from DE and this rich inner world of the protagonist is something they share. Right now I’m doing my second playthrough of Esoteric Ebb and it’s pretty fun to see how different the “thoughts” are when you allocate your stats differently. When Hollow Home comes out I really want to see how it will feel there, since the protagonist is a child I assume the inner thoughts will also be more child like, should be fun.

How do you feel about this? Obviously it's not something that would work for any game, but when you have a really opinionated and established protagonist I can’t think of a better way to actually show the player what’s going on in their mind.

My answer is definitely metroidvanias and platformers, basically 2d platforming games. And the reason is very simple, those are my favorite but for some reason, despite playing them a lot, I still suck.

I am not sure what’s wrong with me, but I’ve even had this embarrassing moment when a friend watched me die to a boss in Grime over and over again. He wanted to try so I handed him the controller, and he beat it in like 3 tries (he never touched the game before).

Right now I kind of circled back to Silksong because I never finished it, not sure if I’m gonna start over or try to pick up where I left off (its kinda weird with metroidvanias when you forget where stuff was its hard to figure things out). After that I wanna play Croak when it comes out, the demo feels really nice and I am a big fan of that hand drawn artstyle, it has graphics kind of like Cuphead.

Celeste is one of my favorite games and I am a bit ashamed to admit I make liberal use of the assist mode features, mostly infinite stamina and for some sections more dashes too. I did manage to beat most of the game like that but it doesn’t feel like much of an achievement because of the assistance. The weird thing is I’m not even that bad at other games, I was diamond 3 in valorant at one point and emerald in LoL.

If I was really good at platforming I could finish all the games I like so much faster and I think it would be more fun if I didn’t have to replay the hard sections so many times because I keep dying lol.

My dad just turned 56 and has started thinking about taking up video games as a hobby again, which I'm thrilled about, he is pretty much the reason I got into it in the first place. The thing is he is not a very patient man, and I know he would mostly enjoy stuff that feels familiar to him, at least at first.

He pretty much stopped gaming somewhere right before Morrowind, I remember I could never get him to try that game out cuz he found it too complicated. And he was never a big fan of first person games, he mostly liked RPGs and RTS. I have loads of great memories of him teaching me how to play Diablo and Red Alert.

I’m trying to figure out what newer games he would enjoy. I myself still play ARPGs so I have that covered. Definitely going to set him up with both Diablo 4 and D2 Resurrected. Apart from that definitely Last Epoch as well, since that’s my favorite, I really wanna see what he thinks about it. I remember he used to love playing the sorceress so I really wanna show him mine in LE. And I can explain all the mechanics he isn’t used to like the skill trees, the crafting and faction stuff.

But I definitely need your help to find some modern RTS games that would be fun for him. I only know of the Age of Empires remake pretty much. It’s not really a genre I keep up with, I’m down to play with him though, especially if there's a fun co-op one.

I am open to other genres as well, if you have suggestions that would be really fun for someone who stopped gaming ages ago and wants to ease back into gaming with something familiar. I figured older people that have experienced that era of gaming would know what I’m looking for. He is only interested in PC games btw, he never really learned to use a controller.

This has happened to me more than once, and it's made me realize how much the "vibe" of a game actually matters. Sometimes a game has an aesthetic that I can’t get enough of, and I play it despite not being that interested in the genre before.

The perfect example for me is Celeste. It’s a brutally hard precision platformer, a genre I had less than zero interest in. I always thought platformers were for the speedrunner types, people that really like mastering a brutally hard game (which doesn’t describe me at all lol). But once I saw the pixel art and heard what the game was about and who the protagonist was I had to try it, expecting I would quickly bounce off it because it's so hard.

What ended up happening was I completely fell in love with the game (with assist mode on), and realized I actually like platformers. I’ve played a bunch of awesome games since, that I would have never even looked at if it wasn’t for Celeste. And I actually got good at the genre now as well, recently managed to finish Nine Sols (more of a metroidvania but has a bunch of platforming). Now I’m looking at Croak next, the demo is great. It has graphics kind of like Cuphead and it's pretty much a pure precision platformer. For me the movement doesn’t even feel hard anymore, I can’t imagine how much I would struggle with a game like this before. 

I am also thinking of playing Celeste again but without assist mode and seeing how far I can get, I don’t think I’m good enough to beat the harder parts even now. And I don’t even wanna attempt getting golden strawberries or anything super hard like that, but I think I can play through most of the levels.

Has this happened for anyone else? I feel kind of dumb for ignoring such a fun genre just because I never ran into a game that looked like something I wanna play.

I found a few old gaming mags in a box a few days ago. I ended up flipping through them and I remembered how excited I was about the future of gaming when I was a kid. Some of my hopes and predictions came true, but some things ended up way different compared to my expectations.

Basically what I expected was photorealistic graphics you couldn't tell from a movie,actual proper virtual reality and enormous seamless worlds you could walk across forever. And we did get all of that, kind of. The RDR2 or GTAV open world would have melted my tiny brain in 1999. Also back then the big companies were the only ones making any relevant games, I was a major Blizzard fanboy, I would have never predicted their fall from grace to be honest.

ARPGs and RTS games were my obsession, and I thought those genres would stay relevant forever, I guess I was right about ARPGs at least. They are still going strong, Last Epoch is my favorite modern one but I also really like Grim Dawn, they have the right ratio of fun vs complexity for me. PoE is a bit too much for me, I’m not smart enough to come up with good builds and I hate copying builds from other people. Also really dig the SSF system in LE, it's really satisfying and I dislike trading generally.

I also thought MMOs were going to be the most popular and important genre in the future, as everyone gets internet and technology evolves. Sadly it turns out the golden age of MMOs is kind of over. I played WoW from about the release of TBC till Wrath and I had a really fun time with that. I don’t have a lot of free time now so I try to recapture the magic a bit with some newer games that don’t expect you to nolife them as much. 

After getting disappointed by WoW classic (its just not the same when everyone metagames and minmaxes) I’m just having fun and not taking things that seriously. Currently trying out the Dominus Automa playtest and its pretty fun, the game plays itself while you're offline which is a pretty interesting way to curb the time investment problem a lot of people have, and prevents people from being tempted to bot (I admit I experimented with that in runescape a bit).

Obviously I could never have predicted the new genres we have now like extraction shooters, auto battlers and stuff like that. Another thing that I would have never expected is how big (and relevant) the indie market is. I barely pay attention to AAA games these days, with all the absolutely awesome indie games coming out all the time.

Does modern gaming line up with what you pictured back then? I don’t think anyone could have predicted how things would turn out, but I’m interested in hearing what other people expected.

I had a bit of a nostalgia overload a few days ago, digging through my old video game boxes from the 90s and early 2000s. I couldn’t believe how many RTS games I had. And I don’t think it was just me being a big fan of the genre, it felt like everyone was playing these back then.

And I mean everyone. Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Warcraft, these weren't cult titles you whispered about to fellow strategy nerds, they were the games your whole class played. They were almost as popular as the shooters back then, and the guaranteed pick at any LAN party (we especially liked playing weird custom maps in warcraft 3). I have very fond memories of crushing my friends in Red Alert. I had this stupid strat of rushing a dog and placing it at my friends barracks, he would get so angry hahahah. Even my mom knew the names of some of the games, which sounds ridiculous right now when the genre is considered kind of niche.

At some point the popularity of the genre sharply declined, I’m not sure why exactly. The community is still there (albeit much smaller) but very much out of the mainstream. We even have some really cool relatively recent games, and even subgenres evolving. Like the fortress defense stuff, my favorite being Diplomacy is Not an Option, which even has a nice long campaign that really reminds me of the golden age of the genre. But the releases are definitely few and far between nowadays, and they don’t get as much attention.

And it's weird because it didn’t happen to all the old school genres. The best example is ARPGs, they are still really relevant. New ones are announced all the time and we have a few of the live service heavy hitters pretty much everyone knows about going strong. I just discovered The Dark West a few days ago, a western themed singleplayer ARPG, like how oldschool does that sound lol? And people are hyped for it (including myself). While almost all of the old school RTS franchises have been shut down, we still have a new Diablo game every few years.

I have some suspicions about what happened. Obviously MOBAs played a part, they basically grew out of a Warcraft 3 mod and then ate an entire generation of the playerbase that might otherwise have been buying RTS games. I also think devs were leaning hard into brutal high APM competitive esports and leaving the fun, long single player campaigns that pulled most of us in as an afterthought, they treated them as a tutorial for the pvp. A part of it was probably economics too, nobody ever figured out a way to cram a battlepass into an RTS game well, and those are where a lot of the companies make most of their money now.

Whatever actually happened we have to deal with it now. Anyway, I’m glad there’s a nice community keeping the flame alive. Part of me still hopes the genre claws its way back one day.

I've noticed my gaming tastes are kind of weird. I used to think gameplay was all that matters for me but I kept catching myself playing games for reasons completely unrelated to the gameplay. What I actually care about above all else is the characters and the “vibe” the game has, if I get a cool feeling playing something It doesn’t really matter if the gameplay isn’t perfect.

I'll happily push through a genre I'm bad at or don't even really enjoy if the aesthetics are on point and the characters are loveable. I've suffered through games that I am really bad at because I just couldn’t get enough of the visuals and vibe. 

A good example of this was Cuphead, it was so difficult for me (and my OCD prevented me from lowering the difficulty to simple mode) but I beat the game eventually, because I just couldn’t get enough of the amazing hand drawn visuals. I think I will have the same love-hate relationship with Croak when it comes out, I am so bad at platforming even the demo is not easy for me. But it has that same awesome hand drawn style and the main character is an adorable fat frog. I will make myself finish no matter what it takes because I have to see all the art.

Sometimes it's just ridiculous, I see something on tiktok, like a short clip and fall in love with a cute character and immediately decide “I’m playing this”. Which is especially annoying when it's some game that isn’t even close to being out yet. Right now its Water Me & You I’m kind of impatiently waiting for, I love the little water droplet character (it reminds me of something I have tattooed on my arm). I’ve already convinced my boyfriend to play with with me so now all that’s missing is for the game to actually come out. And we will play the whole thing no matter how much I struggle with  the platforming because I have to see the story through. Cuz I have to know what happens with the little droplet.

I just read my post and it makes me sound so shallow, I swear I’m not haha. I just have a huge sweet spot for certain aesthetics and cute characters, I can’t help it. Please don’t judge me.

My favorite gaming experiences are when I play something without a lot of expectations and the game kind of surprises you with something you really didn't anticipate going in. I’m not talking about major plot twists, more like when a game just gives you more than you expected from it. Three games come to mind immediately for me.

Outer Wilds is the first one that comes to mind and I'll try not to spoil it. On paper it's a charming little space exploration game about a solar system stuck in a time loop. The puzzles and the world were really interesting but nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the presentation (the way the game teaches you its rules is very fun). Then the ending came and the conclusion kind of moved me in a way I wasn't remotely prepared for. I don’t think a game ever made me feel that emotional before or since.

The other one was something I played recently, Diplomacy Is Not an Option. I pretty much expected a simple satisfying fortress defense game, and I did get that. But what I also got was one of the best RTS campaigns I’ve ever played. Literally reminded me of old school RTS games I would play when I was a kid, I had no idea how much I actually missed that. At some point RTS devs started treating the campaign as like a pseudo tutorial and put all their focus on the multiplayer stuff, so this was really refreshing.

Cruelty Squad is probably the silliest example, because I went into it just because the visuals looked interesting and I wanted to experience it for myself. It's like a deliberate assault on your eyes, the kind of thing you assume is totally style over substance edgelord nonsense. However underneath that is a shockingly good immersive sim shooter with great gameplay and some very interesting ideas. And while it may not be something everyone agrees on, the visuals kind of grew on me and I feel like they added to the atmosphere.

I was wondering if you have experienced something like this too, playing something not expecting much and then getting wowed by something you never saw coming?

This kind of gradually happened but I noticed I’m using my main PC less and less over time, and instead I’m on my balcony or my couch with the deck. I spent a stupid amount of money on that rig, had to save up for a bit and skipped out on a vacation with friends to buy it. These days it sits there completely powered off unless my friends convince me to jump on for a few games of Dota 2 or some Counter Strike.

I think my gaming habits also changed as well, most of my time before was spent grinding Dota 2 ranked (I literally have over 7k hours) and CS a bit less seriously. While now I’m all over the place, trying out way more games, especially interesting indie stuff, RPGs, Platformers and Roguelites mostly. 

Recently got really into narrative heavy RPGs, they almost give me the feeling of getting comfy with a nice good book, it's like a video game equivalent of that. Played through Disco and Esoteric Ebb, right now I’m on Zero Parades and I’m really looking forward to Hollow Home. Never really played an RPG based on real events before, so that should be interesting. And it's a story told from the perspective of a child. I wonder how that will feel narrative wise since a lot of the story is told through internal monologues in these games.

Everyone seems to really like platformers/metroidvanias on the deck so I thought I would give that a shot as well. I started with Celeste, never tried it before but better late than never, masterpiece of a game, I can see why everyone loves it. Next I wanna play Croak when it comes out. I love games with hand drawn graphics like that (big Cuphead fan), I get major nostalgia from that visual style so it always feels somehow comforting. I played the demo a bit and it felt great.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my work is done sitting at a desk glued to a screen. After eight hours of that, the last thing I wanna do is sit in the same posture to relax (both physically and mentally tbh). The deck on the other hand gives me the freedom to change my environment and lay down if I want to, also the ergonomics are way different compared to being hunched over a keyboard and reaching for a mouse. That comfort turns out to matter way more than I ever expected and my previous obsession with framerates and resolution is kind of a thing of the past for me.

I don’t feel bad about buying an expensive PC, it's there when I need it. But I can’t help but notice I’m pretty much only using it for a few games that I really can’t play without a keyboard and mouse setup. I was wondering for those of you that have both a good gaming PC and a deck, what do you play on which platform?

Cozy is such a weird word, because I doubt it means the same thing for everyone. Some people really care about the visuals, and find a game cozy even if the gameplay is a bit stressful. They need the soft colour palette and the cute artstyle with a nice calming soundtrack. If a game has that they already consider it cozy. For other people the gameplay matters way more. They want a nice satisfying low stakes gameplay loop that makes it hard to lose or have a bad time, and couldn't care less about the visuals.

It gets interesting when a game only has one of those 2 aspects. I've tried games that look really cute and then kick your ass with difficult platforming or time management that's hard enough to feel stressful. I had such a wrong idea about Oxygen Not Included for example, I thought it was a cute little game (the visuals tricked me) but it's actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever played.

And then the reverse, games that look grimy or downright bleak but have really cozy gameplay. Powerwash Simulator instantly comes to mind here, the gameplay loop is so relaxing, even if the environments are really dirty (obviously hehe) and grimey. Or something like Dredge, which proves even with horror elements and really dark visuals a game can still turn out really cozy because the gameplay is just so chill.

When it comes to my personal tastes the absolute coziest games are the ones with all the elements. Animal Crossing was probably where it all started. Then when Stardew valley came out I was instantly hooked. These days I’m mostly excited for games like Loftia, which also have that kind of community friendly multiplayer vibe, along with a chill gameplay loop and the proper visuals to go with it. And maybe some relaxed exploration based games like Big Walk, really looking forward to trying that one.

What makes a game cozy for you, is it the visual style and vibes, or do you mostly focus on how the gameplay feels?

We have reached the point where you can be almost any animal in a video game except for some reason a fish. You can be a goat causing chaos in a suburb or a stray cat wandering a neon city and an insufferable goose terrorising a village. 

You can even be a jumping spider, in Webbed, a really awesome game btw. Croak is coming out soon so that will cover frogs, and it looks really good with the hand drawn graphics (along the lines of Cuphead). A platformer fits perfectly for a frog game when you think about it, and the demo is great.

Pretty much the whole animal kingdom is covered. And yet I cannot for the life of me find a game where you just get to be a fish in its normal environment, swimming around underwater, doing normal fish things.

The one everybody points me to is I Am Fish, but in my opinion it doesn’t count. The entire joke of that game is that the fish is out of its element, rolling around in bowls and glass jars and mop buckets, flopping across dry land trying to get back to water. It's a physics comedy about being a fish in the wrong place, which is the exact opposite of what I'm after. 

Meanwhile, I just want to be in the water, and actually get immersed (no pun intended) into the fish lyfe.

It might be a dumb question but has anyone heard of a game that actually lets you live as a fish, gliding around beneath the surface? I don't really care if the game is old or not that good, I just want to lead that fish life for a bit.

Funny how my taste in game art has swung this way and that as I've gotten older and my perception of games followed suit.

As a kid I was the exact sort of dummy who judged a game by how "realistic" it looked. Yes, I’m one of those people who thought the Crysis engine was the best thing to ever happen in gaming. It wasn’t but it did set off a specific kind of trend that led to the graphic fidelity bottleneck we’re at now. 

These days that stuff mostly washes right past me, and my eye  goes to the games willing to commit steadily to a look of their own. Even if it’s a niche look, so long as it comes from the devs/artists hearts. 

A big part of it is a straight up return to the retro stuff I grew up on, pixel art especially. The good stuff, not lazy retro bait that’s popping up everywhere. Back then the artists had to imply detail instead of render it, and your brain happily filled in the rest. But the real treat lately has been the newer games raiding older animation traditions and doing something fresh with them. 

The rubber hose look is another I didn’t think would make a comeback, that 1930s cartoon look that came back in full style with Cuphead reminded everybody about it. Mouse P.I. For Hire also came out this year and there’s others like CROAK that are following its tracks. Even though Croak is kind of similar to Cuphead in look but it’s a classic platformer instead of a hardcore precision shooter. This is great because all three (and beyond) show how the art style can be used cross genre. I never thought I’d say this either but it’s one kind of Disnification I LIKE, so far as the visual style goes because it’s retro Disney that still had some soul.

The only new “popular” look I just can’t relate with is the anime adjacent look that's everywhere now, all clean cel-shading and big expressive eyes. Loads of people clearly adore it - proportional to popularity of anime - and the good ones are gorgeous and readable in motion. It's just never been my particular flavour. I like the Final Fantasy games in principle, but I just never liked the way the characters are modelled. Human characters to be fair, the way those crazy Japanese do monsters and fictional races is insanely good.

Anyway, that's my own biased tour of it. Which artstyle would you follow a game for on looks alone?