I agree and I’m sure many feel the same.
At the same time, this is the reality we live in. Some need to have jobs at companies that don’t evaluate applications/materials as fairly as they’d like, and they will have to deal with this problem regardless.
Does the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer count, then? There are RPG elements, there are a bunch of playable women, and it is all about stomping hordes.
If this sounds appealing and you aren’t already aware: this is not available in the remaster. Andromeda has a version of this, too.
Arma is an interesting example. I’d say that it is only an open world game in some scenarios, and often times is a linear game that happens to have a big map and sandbox.
In any case, I’d agree that it having a large world with many possibilities is important for the gameplay and ability to mod/create content across the maps.
I personally use Matrix for text and Mumble for voice, but most probably won’t go anywhere. Discord is convenient, and most users won’t care enough about some extra ads to put in the effort to migrate.
Recent conversations with friends had me playing Star Fox 64 earlier last week, which has been very nostalgic.
Over the weekend, I was surprised to have a couple friends who I thought would never want to play an Arma title show interest in playing Arma Reforger with a group of friends I play with. I got to play a bunch with one of those newly-interested friends yesterday, and was super pleased that she enjoyed it.
Sometimes I chill after work by driving around the Nurburgring in a touring car in Automobilista 2.
Alternately, for more driving games:
Seems like it is just some cosmetics? Seems like many items you get by interacting with NPCs and others are somehow paid, but I haven’t looked at how that works.
I see a bunch of mentions of Journey. Recently, I’ve been playing Sky: Children of the Light for the first time, which is made by the same devs. It is beautiful, and feels like a spiritual successor to Journey, to me. It is also free to play, so it is easy to recommend trying it out.
I feel like it is best, in racing games, if either:
Otherwise you get some who want to have a fair race and others who think that all racing must be dirty, and it isn’t fun when these collide (literally).
I personally buy games almost exclusively on Steam after realizing how much Valve pumps money into open source/Linux gaming, and this is yet another thing on the list. Cool stuff!
I am not a fan of horror games all that much, and Half-Life Alyx is not one, but the horror elements are stronger than previous titles and I still haven’t finished the game because of that. The game is incredible, but I just can’t get past the scary parts.
This has improved further in recent years, so you probably weren’t seeing how it is now.
It may be different in other regions, but I see significantly less toxicity in Dota 2 compared to Counter-Strike, the only other big competitive game I have enough time in to compare it to. Though my CS experience was longer ago, and they could have improved things there, too.
Well, we can also look at their other games for this. For example, in Dota 2, everyone has a behavior score, based on reports and such. This is used for matchmaking on top of skill, and lower behavior scores result in certain restrictions (like can’t speak, can’t ping as much, can’t play ranked, can’t pause).
The way they are handling Deadlock has many parallels to Dota 2. For example: popular invite-only playtest, probably a free-to-play model with cosmetics for sale, Dota 2/Icefrog style gameplay depth and balancing.
This game has consistently had more players than most games on Steam without even being released yet. I think it is far from going the way of Artifact, and is much more likely to take a place alongside Dota 2 and CS2 as a giant multiplayer game with indefinite longevity.
Well, sometimes they do flavour-of-the-month, but only when they want to, not because they exclusively chase trends.
ROG Ally is. ROG is just their “Republic of Gamers” gaming brand, with a bunch of products.
A big part of it, I think: the Steam Controller is different in ways that are unpleasant if you approach it like a standard controller. For example, it is not designed to be gripped around the handles like an Xbox controller, but to rest in your fingers. If you attempt to grip it like a traditional controller, it is uncomfortable and the trackpads are hard to use.
I have a friend who grew to like his Steam Controller after using the trackpads on his Steam Deck. For him, it was realizing the potential of the hardware combined with Steam Input.
I really enjoy all of Valve’s hardware. Others are mentioning the Steam Deck, which is great, but I also love (and frequently use) the Steam Controller and Valve Index.
I don’t know if I have a clear least favorite, as I never owned the things which interest me the least.
On the other hand, each game progressively drops more RPG features and adds more action features.
I’ve been playing a couple new-to-me games lately, Plague Inc and Guntouchables.
I can see why Plague Inc is so popular. It has a bit of that “one more turn” feel to it for me, and it is interesting how you can employ different strategies to try to win. I find it to be a decent game for relaxing after a tough day of work (though it could also be frustrating when you lose).
Guntouchables I got for free when it first launched and just played it yesterday with some friends (who also got it for free). It is a fairly simple co-op rogue-lite top down shooter, but I think it is well executed, and I enjoyed the couple runs we had. I’ll probably buy the supporter pack DLC for this at some point, because I do feel it deserves that.