Holy shit, I thought I was alone in the big gaming world!
The reason I never played it is because at the time the game was out, my PC couldn’t handle it, so I gave up after my sad attempts to sit through the unplayable frames. And by the time I upgraded, there were simply too many games to steal my attention entirely - that’s how it been ever since.
I want to play it, though. I never considered it boring - I liked it even when I wasn’t that interested in fantasy, and now I’m gravitating even more towards it. Hope to get my hands down to it one day, but with Starfield (hopefully) coming out this year, and with The Outer Worlds to beat before that happens, I think I’m not slaying any dragons any time soon.
I have spent probably hundreds of hours in Skyrim at this point, but I would say the most fun playthrough I did was actually on the Nintendo Switch. I think that I enjoyed it because I didn’t stop every hour to install a bunch more mods, since that wasn’t an option (and I guess having it anywhere was nice too…).
If you want a bit of a smoother experience, I would recommend SkiUI on PC and Alternate Start, but I would also suggest trying it vanilla too as it can be a bit prickly to get SKSE (requirement for SkyUI) set up if you’ve never done it before.
I don’t recommend doing what I did and installing 200 mods, finally getting it all working and then not actually going back to the game. Do we really need 12 million K textures?
Deus Ex, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Cyberpunk 2077. Like you said, they are games I like to get lost in, just walk/drive around in, soak in the ambience. I like to pretend I’m there; it’s a great escape, like you said, comforting.
BOTW for sure. The expansive open world is just great to get lost in. Not to mention the soundtrack can be calming when you’re out riding your horse in the fields.
Try not to have an overly rosy retrospection about this. There were plenty of crappy, cash-grabby games in decades past. We just don’t remember them because they were crappy, cash-grabby, and not worth remembering. They hadn’t invented microtransactions yet, but that’s just one more flavor of crappiness.
We’ve been playing Camel Up a lot. It’s nice because there is some skill and a good amount of luck involved, so no matter your board game experience, you have a shot at winning.
Agricola is my favorite but it is pretty complex so we don’t play much.
We play all the dune games at work. The new remake of 1978, done betrayal and dune imperium. And sometimes twilight imperium.
With friends we have bought spirit island, which is fun but really difficult. We also play dead of winter and some DND spinniof games. My mate works at a Games Store so he has lots of games i haven’t played yet. Oh and I’ve joined a poker home game.
My favourite is twilight imperium if we can ever find enough people who can spend their whole day playing a game.
You have (in my opinion) a great taste in games.
There's nothing quite like a session of TI. It doesn't get on the table a lot but the few times it does it's amazing every time.
Unfortunately I personally get to play big games all to seldom as I mostly play with my SO and she prefers them a bit lighter and with a bit less conflict. Some of the games we've enjoyed and played recently 2 player..
Viticulture is the one we fall back on alot of the time. It really is a great worker placement.
Castles of Burgundy is a new one in our collection but probably not new to a lot of people in the hobby. Really don't know why I've not picked this up earlier because it is a really good game.
If we want to go for something fast we usually bring out Azul. No setup time and no teardown is a trait I value more now than I have in the past. Sure Gloomhaven is fun but the setup alone makes me want to cry.
If you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend Cascadia for a couples game. Also, Tuscany adds some pleasant complexity to Viticulture … Not that you were asking for recommends, I just couldn’t resist…
Titanfall 2 was so good, I miss it. A lot of it’s slick movement mechanics show up in some of those modern “movement shooters” like Ultrakill for example.
I’ve been getting into Go/Baduk lately, it’s a shame how few people there are playing it in the US! Would love to play in-person instead of always online
Go is the most amazing game I know. I often regret not sticking with it as a kid. And IRL games are wonderful. The feeling of the stones on fingertips, the rattle of prisoners, the clicks and clacks when placing stones on the goban…
I like Quill18 as a non-hypey gamer who plays a nice array of games. He’s mostly into stategic sims, but ventures out to other game types every now and than. He has a solid understanding of the games he plays, yet he doesn’t cheese it.
Easily Path of Exile. There’s something so relaxing about blowing up the entire screen with one flick of my wrist, and it really gets my endorphins flowing to minmax my stats using third party tools like Path of Building and testing out items on the trade site / changes to my skill tree to see how they’d affect my build.
To some people it sounds like work, but for me it hits that sweet spot of minmaxing and complexity that no other game really can.
Edit: I should also mention that lately I’ve been mostly playing on Steam Deck which has been a revelation for me. Endgame “alch and go” mapping is so perfect for the pick up and play style, only enhanced by having access to it from the couch/toilet.
The map system is so good for this. If you manage to get the bewildering learning curve, it’s so nice to come home from work and spin a few maps to relax and pick up loot. PoE is so overwhelmingly easily my choice as well.
Honestly the learning curve isn’t that atrocious. I’ve always advocated for following a build guide then start looking at ways to personalize it at level ~70 (and with Exarch altars you can farm regrets to respec.)
Learning the skill tree is hard but it’s made much easier when you have a base to modify.
The learning curve gets really bad when you start trying to craft though. And expensive.
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