As you’ve played it for so many hours, what is it that hooks you about this game? I’ve never played it, but I heard it’s sort of a very deep / simulated survival game similar to dwarf fortress? Just love it when you can be so passionate about something that you can lose yourself in it for thousands of hours and keep coming back for more!

I have this with only 1 game (though I’m around the 1000h mark myself): Slay the Spire!

Is Outer Wilds indie? Because Outer Wilds is my favorite :).

I really like Donkey Kong Country as a kid. Great environments, fun platforming and a timeless soundtrack.

On GBA my most played game became an underated licensed gem: Lord of the Rings: The Third Age. The GBA version is completely separate from the ones on other platforms, but it’s a great turn based strategy game in which you get to command the heroes and other units through all important battles of the original story. Really fun!

I recently did the opposite, I sold my Emerald and Blue for a decent price, which helped fund my second hand new 3DS. I don’t really care for the cartridges as long as I can play the games, and I feel no guilt for playing roms for games that are no longer being produced :).

I do like seeing large collections of other people, but I don’t have the same satisfaction from that compared to what it would cost. (I say quite hypocritically, as I have a larger than rational LEGO collection including tonnes of Bionicle sets that I will never let go for any price)

There is still a thick layer of dust on my Valbrace copy, nice to know that another gem is waiting for me!

I remember hearing about wizardry from another enthusiastic fan, but don’t remember what it was about. Some sort of old school RPG?

I have been a bit cheeky, as I have chosen my first Pokémon game as the thumbnail for this post: Pokémon Blue for the Game Boy.

Sadly, I was very young and English was not my mother tongue, so I had no idea how it worked. Skip to several years later, and I gave it another go (this time with some extremely rudimentary knowledge of English, but more importantly with some more experience in games in general). Playing Pokémon this way was a mix of an RPG and a translation based puzzle game, but I was absolutely hooked. Even though I never got past about halfway through the game before my attention faded, I must have done that first half about 10 times in those years.

Later I got Pokémon Emerald for the GBA after my previous GBA game was finished in only a few hours: I figured a Pokémon game would give me my money’s worth. Again, I played this numerous times and had a lot of fun, but never reached the ending.

A few years ago I was feeling nostalgic, and bought a second hand copy of Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu, knowing that it was a remake of my first Pokémon game of years ago. Reviews of this version are mixed because of the Pokémon Go like catching mini game, but nostalgia goggles made this an amazing experience for me. I especially remember one whole day where I was at home with a fever, laying on my couch and playing Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu while dipping in and out of the strangest Pokémon related dreams. Even with that bumpy ride, I was eventually able to reach the end of the story and beat the elite four! I know that there is stuff to do after that, but I was happy and sold my copy again.

I have recently bought a second hand New Nintendo 3DS and have been procuring a lot of games on it in a seafaring fashion. One of those that I’m giving a go is Yo-Kai Watch. I’m only a few hours in, and right now it looks absolutely gorgeous, but I’m unsure of the combat design and the actual design of the monsters. If any of you have some other 3DS tips, please let me now, I have a seemingly unlimited budget for 3DS games right now :).

That’s the stupid part. Serious criminals will always find a way to encrypt their data. Any communication channel can be used for encrypted communication if you do the encryption part yourself (like with an agreed upon passphrase or something similar). The only people who are hit by this are the average users.

This makes me so mad.

Isn’t that worse though? They use your computing power but they still get the data :). At least with cloud apps you get the benefit of not having to run the app locally (this was the idea behind low powered chromebooks).

How come you have such strong feelings against Firefox?

Not trying to start a fight, just an honest question. Choosing to rather stop using the internet all together seems extreme for a browser that I use daily, but maybe I’m missing something in your use case.

Silent Hill: The Short Message (53 on metacritic)

This game is almost universally hated, but I really quite enjoyed it and even respected what they were going for with the writing. My 8/10 review from when I played it: https://howlongtobeat.com/user/knokelmaat/reviews/u-145005/1

I have no experience with other Silent Hill games, which might have made me less critical of this game. By no means a masterpiece, but an interesting experience for me.

I had similar issues until I gave myself this rule: only do side stories and main story quests. If they require playing a mini game, sure, but only play the minigames as a novelty, don’t try to complete them!

Thanks for the long and interesting writeup! I’m still working through AC 1 and enjoying it, I’ll see if I stay on the train as long as you :).

I did play Ghost of Tsushima. One of the most beautiful looking games I’ve ever played with amazing combat and good characters. For me, it was just way to long and repetitive. I eventually found the solution, playing each of the three acts and the DLC with a long break in between each time, so it felt fresh again. In the end I even got the platinum trophy for it, but I still see it as a great 8/10 game that could have been an all time favorite if it was trimmed to about half its runtime. Here’s hoping that they don’t make the same mistakes for Ghost of Yotei. If they can keep the good and trim the bloat, this could be the game of a generation.

It’s hard to discuss such a massive series. It feels as if everything has been said about it and people have largely gotten tired of the formula, but hear me out.

I actually never played any of them, I recently started playing the first one (from 2007) on my Steam Deck and I am actually loving it. It’s such a simple, straightforward game, with a basic but engaging story and honestly gorgeous visuals for the time. The mechanics are delightfully limited, in a sense that it really helps me to turn of my brain and just enjoy myself. I really like the world and how dense it is: all objectives are reasonably close and movement is quick and agile. A real gem for the Steam Deck!

I most certainly will get the sequel trilogy, as that one seems to be loved by a lot of people.

You absolutely beautiful person! What a thoughtful and sincere reply, I cannot thank you enough.

You’re 100 percent right that those experiences will still be there for me in the future when I feel the space. For now I am limiting myself to your second group of suggestions (I’ve played the first Frog Detective and loved it), knowing that your first group is there when I feel like it.

I did already play Edith Finch though, a masterpiece in my opinion, but indeed quite heavy (but extremely hopeful too).

Seems right down my alley. Does it feature any triggering subjects? (Mainly severe mental health stuff and suicide is stuff I avoid for the time being)

Do you have recommendations for similar games?

I am am continuing to extend the life of my 6 years old laptop for as long as possible, hopefully I will be able to buy a framework when it does eventually die on me. (It’s a semi-shitty clevo model but I recently replaced the battery and it’s kind of decent again)

I looked it up, the horrible sub is TheLastOfUs2 (avoid!), the normal one is LastOfUsPart2

I completely agree with your last part, the story would have been perfect if it was switched.

To counter your other argument, the surrogate lesbian daughter is still more visually stereotypically attractive though. The number of hate posts for Abby that even go into transfobic territory and misgendering was massive. I made the mistake of wanting to read some discussion on part 2 after playing it on reddit: the whole sub is just hate (there probably is an alternative but I didn’t look further, I was to disgusted by it).

But your opinion on Joel vs Abby is valid, it’s actually annoying that actual discussion about storytelling gets overshadowed by bigots.

On a similar note, I had issues with the change in direction of Doctor Who which accidently coincided with the casting of the first female Doctor, and it was so hard to have genuinely critical discussions without misogynists taking over or being accused of being one myself.

I also cannot understand how you could play the Last of Us Part 1 and not realise how horrible Joel is.

Spoilers for both games ahead.

The ending of 1 was super difficult for me to play and super powerful in its delivery. It was horrible to decide to “save” Ellie by literally murdering everyone in the research station and destroying all hope for a cure. I was really impressed that they went there storywise, but then when in 2 Joel gets killed, all these so-called “fans” are angry because their lovely protagonist was killed. It’s like they willfully ignore the complicated morals that were already present in the first game. When Abby does horrible stuff, they hate her. When Joel does horrible stuff in 1, it’s fine. Part 2 had some problems, but I hugely respect what they were going for and how it polarised the community.