Okay, I’m really enjoying Deathloop now. At first I wasn’t super feeling it, but as it went on, it seems to have become kind of like “Dishonored, but if it didn’t take itself seriously at all”.

Part immersive sim, part detective/puzzle game, part rogue-lite.

Has a lot in common with the Sexy Brutale as well, which is interesting, but plays very differently.

Weapons are fun and I love the '60s spy-fi vibe, so I’m enjoying it.

Edit: Lol, wrote a whole thing about Elite: Dangerous here since I was about to start it.

As predicted, not for me.

Trying out Deathloop. It’s not bad, but also kind of just makes me yearn for older Arkane. I do enjoy the setting and humor, and the '60s spy-fi vibe and artstyle is great.

Just feels like it’s missing something. It might be that the whole thing is in like bite sizes as opposed to the usual “wide open levels” of other immersive sims.

A quick run through a mission takes a few minutes. They get longer as the game goes on and each Loop itself can take a bit of time to finish, but it also feels a bit like it rushes you with to the whole “times of day” thing instead of really letting you take your time and soak it all in.

All said, it’s got charm and is pretty fun. Less emphasis on stealth than I expected, but I can still generally stealth through most of it.

Also, I thought Dunkey’s video with all the kicking was just him being, well, him. But the kick is actually very versatile (sometimes feeling a little, but not too, OP) and does make for some pretty funny moments.

Styx: Master of Shadows. Been meaning to play it for years.

On paper, I should be enjoying the fuck out of this. Stealth is my favorite genre, I enjoy fantasy, and it even reminds me a little of Thief in some aspects (mainly art design and some of the mechanics).

Yet, I’m just not enjoying it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the skill tree gating basic abilities like aerial/ledge kills, but I never had an issue with the skill tree or gated abilities in something like Dishonored, just as an example.

Maybe I’m finding the AI overly aggressive and hyper aware, but I rarely have that problem with most other stealth games, some of which do have acutely aware enemies who’ll spot you immediately.

Maybe it’s that it feels like there are just too many guards/enemies in each level, while also feeling cramped (like there’s oftentimes no corner you turn without a new enemy to deal with), which makes it crowded and much more difficult to navigate.

Maybe I’m just not vibing with the controls or the story or something.

I honestly don’t know. It just doesn’t feel fun for some reason, despite checking nearly all my boxes. It’s missing something that I can’t quite put my finger on.

EA FC 24 is so unrealistic.

Imagine Barcelona Feminí actually conceding more than like 2 goals in an average Liga F game IRL.

Ridiculous.

Charrua Soccer.

Man, I miss these pure arcade football games. Feels a bit like FIFA circa early 2000s, although a lot more fast-paced, no commentary, and no offsides. I would have said FIFA Street, but this sticks with the general rules, stays eleven-aside, and without super powers (although you do get some crazy screamers from outside the box and knocking in a bicycle kick feels ridiculously fun).

A little bit like Redcard in terms of silliness, though it’s been a couple of decades since I played that.

Also, bonus for having women’s teams and leagues/cups. Only about four (maybe five, I’ve forgotten) cups/leagues in total, but that’s just a touch less than FC 24 which has two women’s tournaments and five leagues.

When I saw the “store”, I was immediately all, “oh, fuck no” only to realize we’re doing good ol’ PS2-era stuff where you actually unlock things by playing (earn coins from games, buy random shit).

Now I need to try the other one I bought, Kopatino All-Stars Soccer. Looks wild with all the powers and gameplay modifiers and what have you.

Edit: Lol, Kopatino is basically a “cute” version of Redcard. No rules, foul the fuck out of everyone because no cards, score crazy goals. Powers can also result in some funny scenarios. Turns out you can teleport yourself with the ball directly into the opposing goal net because why the fuck not.

All that said, I can see myself getting a bit bored of these because I get the sense that they’re geared heavily toward multiplayer (offline included). They do have a shit ton of stuff to do, though, even single player, so who knows. Probably best for short sessions here and there, rather than longterm.

Huh, didn’t even realize it had started.

Taking a look at my wishlist, and seems like I’ve got enough in my wallet to snag a couple of heavy sale games purely from all the cards I’ve sold on the marketplace.

May not get anything, though. Got tons of other shit to play and I’m not aching for anything in particular, although Charrua Soccer and Kopanito All-Star Soccer might be a options because I want some good old fashioned arcade football and they seem fun enough.

Oh, and Shadow Gambit and Desperados 3, mainly because getting them now is one of the last opportunities to actually have the money go directly to Mimimi (the developers), who are shutting down end of year (which at least was their own choice and not because some publisher/holding company fired them).

Edit: Oh, I might get one of Frogware’s Sherlock games. Don’t know what the consensus is on the newer ones.

Edit of original comment:

Loaded up Vampyr after ditching it a while ago. Remembered why I didn’t enjoy it and ditched it again.

Took a break, listened to some podcasts, saw Jusant finally got an accessibility update which makes it actually playable for me, so going to spend some more time with that, since I can actually enjoy it without destroying my wrists now.

Lol, some of these replies…

I think you know what it is you enjoy, so you’ve just got to remember not to fall into that trap of “well, everyone says it’s good, so I must try it”.

The great reviews come from the people who already enjoy that kind of game. Like, reviewers on a site usually favor specific genres. If something gets a good review, you’ve got to put it into the context of whether or not it’s something the reviewer usually plays.

You’re not often going to see an RPG review by someone who mostly plays platformers.

So if an RPG is good to an RPG-enjoyer reviewer, and most of the people picking it up are already RPG fans, then good reviews are always going to be biased in favor of people who enjoy that gaming experience.

My advice?

Take a look at the tags on Steam. I know they’re user-submitted and “RPG” is on like every fucking game now, but things like “turn-based”, “tactical”, “simulation”, “crafting”, and a few others I’m forgetting will most likely be the things you’ll want to avoid (maybe there will be some exceptions here and there).

Also, wait a bit. No need to play games immediately. Play some stuff you enjoy for a year and then see if you still want to play it.

As for how and why people play these games… Just preference really. It comes down to the energy and time someone’s willing to commit. Neither a good thing or bad thing. Some find that thrilling, others find it chore. Both perspectives are perfectly valid.

Sometimes, people just enjoy them as is without getting too deep and never bother with “the meta” or whatever. Usually one of two things happens here: either they really enjoy it because they don’t have people backseat gaming them and telling them how to play and they’re finding creative ways to do things, or they find it a miserable experience because it’s just not fun if they don’t like the core mechanics.

I personally don’t have the energy for “deep complex games”, despite enjoying RPGs and immersive sims. I don’t ever bother with crafting or strategy games (although I did get into Civ V for a while, which was nice).

Over the years, I’ve learned what I like, what I don’t like, and just wait things out. Game Pass and deep sales help a lot here, actually. (Also other options, but not strictly ones people necessarily approve of for various reasons.)

Pulling off a Junkrat mine-assisted jump and destroying Pharah on a wide outdoor map is always glorious. Love(d) doing that shit.

Then just spring a trap and blast Mercy as soon as she immediately goes to res the dead Egyptian rocket lady, because that’s what she almost always does.

Man, I miss the good days of that game.

Finished up Return of the Obra Dinn earlier.

I’ll admit I started getting a bit frustrated about halfway through, but then some more stuff started clicking and I managed to get through the rest.

I had looked up a couple of hints to point me in the right direction when I was stuck, which I ended up only needing for about three cases. Admittedly, I did also brute force some shit with pure guesswork, but I don’t really mind all that much.

Still, it was interesting. Might hit up some other detective game soon, not quite sure.

More stealth games that aren’t horror and don’t allow you to punch or shoot your way out of the situation, should you get caught.

If you have any weapons, make them underpowered to the point of useless in combat (eg. Thief) or just having gadgets to use that won’t help you if you get caught (except maybe something that helps you get away like smoke bombs or some shit).

At the same time, though, I don’t want that “get caught, immediate game over” thing. You should still be able to run away and hide or whatever. Just make it exciting enough that you don’t feel like you need to load up a quicksave.

Similarly (if not directly related to stealth), more espionage/spy games. Not as many as there used to be.

I’d also like more actual detective games. Zero action and preferably ones that let you fuck up a case by accusing the wrong person or making the wrong conclusions and have it impact the narrative. Like, if you get it wrong, you get it wrong and you have to live with that. There are several currently, but I’d love more.

God, I so badly want more.

There’s maybe a chance that the Adam Jenson trilogy gets finished up, but the Embracer situation has made that less clear.

Still on my ten hour trial of FC 24, which is almost done.

Trash optimization, but I prefer the gameplay over 23. Still not going to buy it.

It’ll probably come to regular EA Play around May/June, so it’s not a terrible wait and not like I’m in a rush.

I do wish we had more straight up arcade football games. EA tries too hard to straddle the line between “sim” and “arcade” and feels less fun because of it (IMO), especially in comparison to the older FIFA games.

The only reason I really play it is because right now it’s the only game with actual women’s teams.

They do the bare minimum, and the commentary reflects that better than anything (more generic than male teams, also occasionally hear “he/him/his”, though it’s fairly rare), but at least it’s something.

Otherwise, I booted up Mad Max the other day as a spontaneous decision. Seems fairly fun and might get into that, but I could also just catch up on TV. Who knows.

I do still like to clean out ~/.cache from time to time, often because of the thumbnail cache (which more or less rebuilds itself to the same size within a few days, so kind of pointless sometimes).

No need for an application, though. Just an alias (well, abbreviation in fish) when I feel it’s getting too much.

It’s completely pointless for anything else. This does remind me to check for empty or left over ~/.config and ~/.local/share folders, though. Haven’t cleared those out in a while.

I had encountered it a lot before the whole “what, with like a cloth or something?” thing (it was basically everyone’s FOSS answer to CCleaner), but I did find it funny when they used that whole situation as a “selling point” on their site.

Close.

2016 US presidential election race.

May have something to do with this.

To be honest, ever since that news hit, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen.

I’m actually surprised it took as long as it has.

Lol, I love how they can’t mention it in the article, but freeing the main bugfixing patch from Arthmoor’s grasp is probably a bigger accomplishment than the patch itself.

They’ll definitely release the CK.

But it’s not for the benefit of modders anymore. It’s because of how they can monetize them like they did with Skyrim and Fallout’s “Creation Club”.

Get modders to make what’s essentially some minor DLC for you and offer it at a “small price” or with a “Special Edition upgrade” while those same modders are actually making waaaaay better mods and releasing them for free on Nexus or wherever (this is basically the state of Skyrim AE; some very notable modders did some cool stuff for CC, but their other mods were way fucking beyond those in terms of quality).

You can get a Cinnamon image via U-Blue.

U-Blue in general is a nice collection of images because not only are there various unofficial options, but a lot of things like RPMFusion, etc. are preconfigured in their versions of the main editions (SilverBlue, Kinoite, Sericea, Onyx).

Or you can just rebase regular SilverBlue (or one of the three other official variants) to one of those images if you’re running it already. Can roll back if you don’t like it.

I doubt there’ll be an official edition until Cinnamon has full Wayland support since Fedora is going all in on that now.

In the meantime, the community has it covered.