I got a new gaming laptop and I feel like a kid in a candy store. Has over 1 TB and I downloaded a few games from Steam like Skyrim, Starfield, Oblivion, and a police simulator. Any recommendations whether it is old or newer? I like games like the Sims and Civilization so anything like that would work. Or Dynasty warriors. Are any Baldur’s Gates worth it? I played those old Sierra games as a kid. I may download Leisure Suit Larry since that was one I always wanted to play but knew my parents would’ve thrown a fit. Thanks in advance
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Thanks! I need to look into more based developers.
Factorio devs are incredibly based. Doubled down after being accused of supporting a “racist”, “sexist”, and “transphobic” programming guru and kept the post that generated the controversy pinned to their Twitter for over a month. The game itself isn’t for everyone though.
I was looking at factorio after getting bored of rimworld.
Factorio is a dangerous drug. Extremely good game design, proceed with caution.
I wouldn't say incredibly based. They had a big "We support Ukraine" moment https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/we-support-ukraine , and have shown to be quite anti-consumers at times, like how they permanently increase the price of the game "because of inflation", even though the game was out for years already.
Market economics dictate how much a company charges for a product. If the developer of a game feels that it has the same value now as it did a year ago, the prospective consumer can agree and purchase the game, or disagree and not purchase it.
Steam's discount sale culture has created an expectation of discounts, and most companies find that in their interest because they'd rather move another 10,000 units during a sale instead of 1,000. The fixed costs of those titles are set and no game is going to go from a failure to a success because of a 50% discount.
And following the market is why gaming is so fucking bad now. Gamers have no self control and will buy everything as long as it's a little above garbage. So yeah no, I'll absolutely blame gamers for buying shit, but I'll also blame developers that try to abuse this as well and increase the price of their game for no reason.
Factorio was already a huge success, it's not like they need more money, they already have enough for their entire life.
I still need to finish grim dawn
Baldur’s gate 1/2 are both great, shitload of mods as well. Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas of course, Planescape Torment is awesome.
If you like shooters there is an insane amount of mods and total conversions for Doom alone, as well as a plethora of Boomer shooters inspired by it,
If you like FromSoftware Lies of P is pretty great, I’m having a lot of fun with it. The new Resident Evils are all pretty good, except for 3. Darkest Dungeon is an awesome sidescrolling rpg, it has an insane amount of mods as well. It’s sequel is way different but also enjoyable.
And of course you’ve got Emulation to consider as well, including mods and romhacks and stuff.
Thanks!
You got Skyrim? Grab a collection off of Nexus that includes "Legacy of the Dragonborn." It's a DLC sized expansion that has you owning a museum. One of the problems with Bethesda games is they have alot of legendary loot but no where to put it, Legacy fixes that by turning the game into a scavenger hunt of items to collect. You can get more expansions for more items but with the base game you can already fill up the museum. It also has integrated patches for quests like Forgotten City and Clockwork, meaning once you complete it you get a display. It has a player home, full loot sorter, expeditions for fossils and lost items. There's alot added just by this one mod.
If you're playing Dynasty Warriors, 8 Extreme Legends is a bit old but really fun. Grabbing One Piece Warriors 3 or 4 is also worth it.
Grab the Bioshock remasters if you haven't played Bioshock, 1 and 2 have been well done by 2k. 2 especially has aged well.
World in Conflict is an easy to get into RTS game. No base building and more unit management and zone control against the Cold War gone hot.
Oh, try the Metro games. 2033, Last Light and Exodus. Those will be a good test for your laptop.
Modded XCOM 2 is pretty fun if you can spare a few hours making characters for it.
The Baldur's Gate games are worth it. They are a bit old. Just be careful with the enhanced editions, Beamdog put out siege of trannysphere and it was a rubbish expansion.
Try the Earth Defense Force games, 5 is really good and they just announced a 2024 release date for 6.
Dawn of War with either Ultimate Apoc or Unification mod is peak 40k.
You could try "A Tale of Two Wastelands" for Fallout NV. It puts the content of Fallout 3 in the NV engine, it's still a little jank and the story of 3 still sucks but you can use brush guns and .50 cal anti-material sniper rifles against super mutants which is fun. Throw in the B42 animations and it's a different game than vanilla Fallout 3.
The Witcher series? I know CDPR went bad with Cyberpunk but they made an RPG series I have played over the years. 1 is kinda rough, 2 is too short and 3 was complained about being too long for the devs so they shortened 2077's story over it.
The Shadowrun games, Dragonfall and Hong Kong are worth a look at. Grab the Caldecott caper for Hong Kong, has you robbing a train to get rich in the San Fran area. it's really good.
Could try the Knights of the Old Republic. There's a mod list on r/kotor that is worth a look at.
Valkyria Chronicles is kinda anime but has a good gameplay loop I like. 1 and 4 are on PC.
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy is a remaster of the DS titles but is a good read. Kinda waiting for the Apollo Justice ones soon but that's next year.
NieR Automata. Wonder if your computer can handle android butts.
Okami is an older title but it's such a colorful adventure.
The Yakuza series. Like a Dragon or 0 is a good place to start. That new title comes out soon I think.
Age of the Ring mod takes a bit to work but worth it.
Alan Wake got remastered. Play the original before that black female cop comes in the sequel.
Ah, Project Wingman and Ace Combat 7. PW just got a major update and AC7 is always fun if a little restive in it's flying.
The Stanley Parable - Ultra Deluxe. It's a walking sim, true. But it makes you think about the connection between player and narrator. Worth a look.
SWAT 4 has the SEF mod and working multiplayer. Ready or Not is still in early access but you could try that.
Spyro Reignited is one I really enjoyed. A proper remaster of the PS1 games.
Maneater is where you play as a shark. Chomp chomp. The DLC is kinda glitchy for me.
ASTLIBRA Revision is kinda simple but it's a really fun JRPG. Glad I played this one.
And Symphony of War is a turn based tactics game where the unit composition of a squad matters more than individual firepower. The dev stumbled into it but it's a fun experience.
Should be something in there for you to play.
I'm obligated to mention Requiem whenever Skyrim is bought up. Restores old-school RPG combat mechanics from "Morrowind and Daggerfall, as well as Gothic, Deus Ex, Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale". One of the most satisfying single-player experiences I've had in the past 5 years. Wabbajack should have a mod collection; I haven't touched in 3 years so ymmv.
Oh nice. I've been replaying EDF5 whenever I get some free time.
Thank you! I actually just downloaded the mod for clockwork.
Seconding Symphony of War. It's built in RPGMaker, but does well at scratching that tactical itch while not being to simple or too hard. Played the hell out of it without finishing yet, but what I've seen is really good.
You don't really play a game like that for the story but for the gameplay. All the classes, feats and items that can stack so you can turn a simple group of bowman into War-Bows that can out-range archers on walls is so satisfying. But yeah, it is good.
I've got three squads built around dragons at this point. It's amusing as hell
Rimworld+ mods is sooo much fun. CK3 is fun. Civ 5 is usually pretty cheap and better than 6 in my opinion, but 6 has its own charm. Payday 3 is free with Xbox game pass and a decent successor. Stellaris is fun. Old world might be up your alley for civ clones.
My understanding is that the AI is better at posing a threat in Civ 5 compared to Civ 6.
I've only played 6 tho.
Civ 6 is a good empire builder but the AI isn't a threat militarily besides the very ancient era on higher levels, breaking immersion.
5 has a better fuck you factor all around compared to 6. This ranges from actual map randomization (where you can spawn on a three tile island) to being actually forced into aggressive wars against npcs early game (6 is again very lackluster in this and every “surprise war” is easily fended off with a few units)
Sounds cool!!! Thanks
Also with Xbox game pass (again sorry for recommending because Microsoft but it is solid for the price) lies of p, payday 3, the yakuza games, mass effect legendary edition, the original mass effect collection, the halo franchise ( mcc h2a still kicks and has an active community), also all the age of empires, there’s plenty of games that are cross play from Xbox/ pc but that’s intentional to keep trying to push PlayStation and Nintendo out of the market
Yea I made sure my PC had Microsoft. Any reason why Sony never tried doing PC gaming?
No idea, the have a game pass but it’s not cross play like Xbox
I felt dumb when I got my first gaming laptop because I was about to buy an Xbox when they announced Bethesda was bought by Microsoft until someone reminded me I had a Microsoft gaming laptop
PC gaming in Japan has a bit of a stigma. Most of the titles are meant to be played one-handed, if you catch my drift.
Against the Storm is my favorite city builder game of all time and scratches any Civilization itch I ever have. I bought it a year ago and got more than my money's worth despite it being Early Access, and its only improved from there. You wouldn't think a Roguelike City Builder would be a combo that worked but it does massively.
Though unlike Civ, its not a relax type of game. Its an "under pressure" type game where you are in constant panic to keep up with the ever mounting challenges. Unless you never increase the difficulty (which isn't forced on you to do until very late), in which case its quite relaxing.
I don't play a lot of "mainstream" games because I am severely autistic, so if you want obscure stuff I can set you up further with some narrowing down.
Know of any good Mutliscren RTS or 4x combined with hacking?
I'm not sure what you mean by a Multiscreen RTS, but some just RTS' I enjoyed were The Riftbreaker and Northgard, which go in very different ways with the genre. If you want to get pedantic about the label, the recently released Shadow Gambit was an incredible time, though an isometric stealth puzzle game isn't what most people think of as RTS.
4X isn't something I've ever explored beyond the generic answers anyone would give, so let's just say Endless Legend because its Civ with worse combat but more interesting everything else.
The Riftbreaker is that not more of a tower defense game with hack and slash?
I played the previous entrys of Mimimi Games and they are fun but I cannot get over the style of their latest game.
With multi screen RTS I was more of shot in the dark, the most I can remember multiscreen using is a second monitor for the map which is a bit too basic, was hoping some game had try and do something more with it.
You could describe Riftbreaker like such, but to me it feels a lot more like some of the Warcraft 3 Hero specific custom games. Exploring, building and teching up, with just waves coming to push you into doing so. By a little ways into the game you aren't really contributing to the big fights, mostly only making sure to help them not get overwhelmed and healed up.
I get your point on Mimimi, I skipped Desperados for the same reason. I suppose it helps that they made 3 almost indistinguishable games with different themes to pick from. Also probably why they shut down.
A bit of harvesting from an old post of mine, as well as some new suggestions.
If you find the idea of a "cozy farming sim" interesting, I would suggest Stardew Valley ($14.99). The process of taking your grandfather's ramshackle farm and turning it into something more with a bit of story, exploration, fishing and light combat thrown in is pretty fun, and you can go at your own pace.
Against the Storm ($19.49) is a roguelite colony builder/management sim. The storm cycle annihilates everything outside of one city, so your job as viceroy is to build and manage a series of resource gathering colonies before the storm destroys everything again while keeping your colonists and the queen happy, then improving various aspects and bonuses to make future colonies stronger.
Ever play a shooter and think, "I wish this gun could have more gun." Mothergunship ($24.99) is the end result of such thinking. Use the customization system to put rocket launchers on your shotgun with some machine gun for flavor, then test fire it and decide that swapping the shotgun for a rail shotgun is the best way forward.
Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time. strokes beard I played the shit out of that when it first came out, pretty sure I still have an old boxed copy around here somewhere.
Thanks!
Sounds good. Thanks
As the degenerate of the crowd, I recommend Sengoku Rance. It's 18+, off the bat, so chuck it if you're some kid, but...
It's got an amazing gameplay loop for an adult game, or even just a game in general. It's a 4x game, but it's also a turn-based strategy in a medium-fantasy fuedal Japan. The MC is, probably, the world's LEAST likeable or moral protagonist, fair warning.
Interesting. I am intrigued.
I can agree with the least moral part, but I don't think he's unlikeable. Especially in Sengoku. He's a lot more brutal in other games.
As for the recommendation itself, I endorse it. It's in my top 10 games ever and one of the best strategy games I have ever played.
He's an ass but very likable in a way. I only ever played some of the mainline games, never this spinoff though.
It's not a spinoff, behind the 戦国ランス title it says Rance VII. The only ones you could consider to be Rance spinoffs would be Brutal King Rance, another fantastic game, and Slash Thrust Burn, which does not even feature him.
X-Com 2.
I recently bought an XCom book. Sounds like it’s right up my alley
Subnautica (the original, not Below Zero) - You've crashlanded onto an ocean world. It's amazing, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying.
Lately I've been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance. A very realistic and scenic game set in 15th century Bohemia. The complete pack with the DLC is regularly on sale on either Steam or GOG.
My favourite Civ game is Alpha Centauri, available on GOG.
Baldur's Gate 1+2 are good, dunno about the new one which doesn't really have much to do with the originals. I'll probably pick up 3 at a discount once it is patched and has mods etc.
I bought Kingdom Come even though I don’t like first person because the developer didn’t back down to the absurd criticism
It took a couple of tries to get into, but after I did I found it worthwhile.
Tie Fighter (fan) remastered is out and apparently pretty good
Resident Evil 4
Red Dead Redemption 2
Hollow Knight
Hades
Portal 2
Tomb Raider 2013
Thanks!
FTL: Faster Than Light
Binding of Isaac
Darkest Dungeon
Hotline Miami
Baldur's Gate II / Baldur's Gate I
Mass Effect 1
Team Fortress 2 / Left 4 Dead
Longest Journey (proto-woke but if you like point and click puzzles it's good)
Thanks!
I started typing out a large verbose comment but I will change to a list of games I rate highly.
Some dead and gone games that I used to have fun with: Age of Empires 2, Battlefield 1942, Warcraft 3, the Command & Conquer series, Mechcommander 2
Thank you!
Get some emulators, I have PS2 and Wii one, covers four total consoles, it's pretty epic and enjoyable.
Gaming peaked in the ps2/gamecube era
There are very many good games from then, yes.
Starbound.
It's everything Starfield claimed to be but isn't. It's an actual RPG, where you can make friends/enemies across various moons/planets, and the exploration actually feels rewarding, especially with the Frackin Universe mod.
The multiplayer also makes it extra fun. Has a ton of cool features, from mechs, and sky-rails, to ship customisation, and the ability to build your own town and get NPCs to populate it (who can then give you missions, and if you build up enough rapport by completing their side-missions, they can even become part of your exploration crew on the ship, and fight by your side whenever you go planet-side).
Cool! But you can do single player?
The multiplayer is optional. Although like most things it make the game more fun.
Currently enjoying some normie fun with Deep Rock Galactic.
A cooperative game of mining expeditions on a bug-infested planet, with metaprogression.
You can play solo and offline too, with a flying drone to help you out, and offline progression of your characters counts.
More fun multi though.
Four classes with different guns and special gear. All have a pickaxe, flares and grenades with different effects ( one goes boom, one is a bait for bugs, etc )
Gunner has, well, big guns, but also a zip-line everyone can hop on to cross pits and big special shield that keeps the bugs out for several precious seconds.
Scout has a grappling hook and a mega flare to light the big caverns ( light is very important ).
Engeneer can shoot ''cheeze platforms'' and put-down an automatic turret ( two with meta progression). One of his weapons is a tiny bazooka, very fun to shoot. bugs splatter nicely.
Driller has, guess... a drill that can munch paths into the rock. Extremely useful to dig a ramp towards a fellow Dwarf who fell to his death down a pit... ( a down ally can be rescued ). Or to dig a shortcut towards the extraction pod about to leave the planet when mission is complete.
etc.
Many different mission types.
Very fun cooperation strategies. Takes a few games to get used to the hotkeys, moving, grabbing, mining, but people are either nice and helpful, or indifferent to newbies.
Text chat is fine. There is voice chat for convinience in the heat of action and busy fingers.
Some basic manners : don't take more than one pack per ressuply drop. Don't call the extraction pod without asking, especially if the secondary objective isn't finished, or a bug swarm is still going.
Another game : Colony building and water-management with... beavers.
Timberborn. Lots of fun if you like colony building survival. The most original spin on the genre in a long while. The game is still getting big content updates as it is in Early Access. The tutorial is straighforward enough to dive in.
Watch out for the drought season. If you didn't build a damn to keep some water ( that slowly evaporates ), and stored enough in tanks, your colony will go extinct from thirst and failed crops.
And you have to replant the slow-growing trees with a forester ( unlocked with research ) or you'll screw your progression by ressource depleation.
You can fall back on a save to avoid losing your whole colony to an unexpectedly long drought by... culling your population.
The more you pamper your beavers, the faster they work, walk and breed. Lots of hours of fun.
Both games I mentionned can run on a mid-range laptop with integrated graphics and 8GB ram.
(I could even run a small map of Timberborn on my old potato laptop before buying a better one.)
Thanks! Looks fun!
I'm travelling so much that I'm down to my phone, so I bought a Backbone which broke (stretched out elastic, it seems) within 2 months, then bought a Kishii which has stayed tight to this day.
Vampire Survivors, Rogue Genesia, Halls of Torment, Nomad Survival, and various others of the same genre.
They're cheap but easily enjoyable games that you can pick up and put down. Plus, once you get the hang of them, you can play them while listening to something else or half-ass watching a show.
Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods. You need to apply the community patch or it's a mess. Also, do not play the normal Gothic 3 because it is shit.
I'm playing Project Zomboid again and having fun. Just destroyed two cars and got stranded on foot, but made it back home. Now I have to walk back and find a new car.
I play mostly Warframe on my couch as a relaxing power fantasy so don't know if that fits for you, at least it's free.
Other than that, I still play sometimes C&C 3 Kane's Wrath on PC and sometimes Stronghold 2 steam addition for all the community maps.
Sounds like fun. Thanks
If you like flight games, Everspace 2 is a solid one. Roboquest is a fun diversionary game; roguelite shooter with some real well done movement tech. Did a good bit of Desynced if you like the factory sim type games.
I'd say stay the fuck away from the sacrilege that is 3 until you've played through the original saga. The original games are a long arduous journey but I am hard pressed to think of another game that's as worthwhile a time investment. Get them on GoG and get the original versions working, skip all of the blasphemy that Beamdog introduced and experience the masterpiece that earned Bioware its reputation as a company that made good RPGs.
I cannot recommend Baldur's Gate strongly enough. It's a game I've been able to replay regularly since it released over twenty years ago.
It holds up.
Thanks!
I prefer turn-based combat and found it very difficult to set up BG1&2 to work in a way similar to Larian's games (Divinity 1&2, BG3 uses the same system it looks like).
The original games had options to pause combat at certain points, but it's not the same from a gameplay perspective.
Yeah, as it turns out...Baldur's Gate and Divinity are different games, running on different engines, providing different experiences. That's like saying you find it very difficult to play Guilty Gear the way you play Street Fighter.
Then perhaps some people are going to enjoy Street Fighter, no matter how much better you think the story of Guilty Gear is.
I am a big Monster Hunter fan, I'd suggest MH:World, 30 bucks and may be on sale at some point, 50 bucks with the expansion Iceborne(huge expansion, tons of content - about as much as the base game). This is not the newest one (Rise/Sunbreak) but I think its one of the best games ever, and has tons to do. People still play online if you are ever looking for help, and you can do everything solo, except maybe some event quests that are super challenging at endgame.
It's essentially a bossfight simulator with some gathering, crafting, and I think beautiful maps to fight in. The wide variety of weapons and general learning curve to the game makes it really satisfying. Mods are also available for it to give it some QoL boosts if you are into modding.
Sounds like fun though
Civilization, eh? Try out Endless Dungeon and Endless Space. I also fancy Stellaris, but that would depend on if you’re into a more convoluted space 4X game.
Dynasty Warriors is good, but it seems like Koei neglects the PC side of their games. If you don’t care that much then there’s also Pirate Warriors 4 (One Piece Dynasty Warriors) and Warriors Orochi (Dynasty/Samurai Warriors mix).
Cool! I’ll have to check it out
City/Nation Builders: Startopia, Banished, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Nation Builders/OCD DLC Magnets: Crusader Kings II/Europa Universalis IV
Old Games: Wizardry series, Deus Ex, older Hitman games
Which one? If you haven't tried the SWAT series, you should.
Will do. I think it’s just called police simulator. Or Police
Startopia the old one not Starbase Startopia the recent one. The devs abandoned that and the AI assistant constantly puts you down.
I've been having a blast with Wildmender.
Wake up at an oasis around a dead magic tree. Make the desert bloom. Explore salt flats, poisonous valleys. Free the gods and defeat the wraiths who sucked the land dry. Grow all the plants. Run out of moist soil. Frustrate yourself trying to get water to go where you want by manipulating the terrain mesh so it flows correctly.
Thanks!
I'm currently replaying Subnautica. It's worth. The game is very well done and the sound design is fantastic.
Combat Mission is a favorite war game. I wish they could have done more than just world war II, but that's all we got. Now I'm thinking Combat Mission Warhammer 40K, or anything else Total War did.
Minecraft with graphics mods is awesome.
Grand Theft Auto 5 with graphics mods is also awesome.
The new Monkey Island is fun.
Lamplighters League is a Steampunk XCom style game. I haven't played it, but it looks like fun.
BattleBits is fun.
Tony Hawk 1-2 Remake is a lot of fun. The more recent one, not the 2010 HD edition with floaty physics.
Outer Worlds, and No Mans Sky are like Starfield.
Kingdom Come
I probably have the names wrong, so sorry about that.
RimWorld. Underrail. Darkest Dungeon. Baldur's Gate is a good series but it shows it's age, I recommend trying to get the NOT enhanced edition.
Thanks!
Are you familiar with the TypeMoon Fate franchise? Fate/Samurai Remnant was just released last week, and I'd say it's pretty good, and while most of the main plot can be understood without experience with the franchise, there's a lot of references and characters that can only really be appreciated by people familiar with everything.
Never heard of it. Will have to check it out.
If you have to start somewhere with the Fate franchise, you'd be better off looking into the anime Fate/Stay Night- Unlimited Blade Works.
Sounds cool.
I keep hearing about skylines. I take it that it’s more in depth than Sim City?
Skylinies is good, but like all Paradox games, it will constantly tease you with DLC that will cost you hundreds of dollars to purchase in its entirety.
Thanks for the heads up
It’s essentially the spiritual successor to sim city, another one that will be free with the Xbox game pass. As much as Microsoft sucks they are really pushing the pc/ console combo which is pretty great when you have the right rig.
Is that like RISK on steroids?
In a manner of speaking. Essentially, you build up cities and armies on a turn based world map. Building up your cities let’s you gain more income to support bigger armies, as well as unlocking new units to make up your armies. And much like IRL, your army is typically going to be made up of mostly militia or regular forces, with elites being rare due to high upkeep cost.
While it is turn based on the overworld, when your army attacks a city or another army, it turns into a real time battle, where your army is made up of what you actually brought, and you move them regiment by regiment.
For the better ones, I would recommend Total War Rome 2, Shogun 2, Fall of the Samurai (a standalone expansion for Shogun), Attila (the hardest one though), or Three Kingdoms.
Also, for city builders, Cities:Skylines 2 is about to come out and it looks like a pretty major step forward for the genre.
Thank you sir