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Gaming Comforts

Started by Abnormal Palm, May 17, 2020, 09:48:23 AM

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Abnormal Palm

I dunno about you but I'm struggling to get into anything besides story driven stuff at the moment. I've been working full time throughout lockdown, so I'm fortunate in a way that not so much has changed in my life. On the other hand, while I look forward to getting home every day and getting stuck into a game, I'm finding that a lot of my usual favourite things are just stressing me out and a lot of other games are boring me. I'm aware that I'm pretty tired out by the many problems caused by Covid, which is a big factor in my current tastes, but that's not the discussion. It's about what comfort gaming is for you these days (or in general).

I play a lot of bullet hell, rhythm and fighting games, and character action type stuff and I just can't be doing with the concentration or intensity right now. I still really enjoy them for a bit but I feel burned out very quickly. I lose my temper which isn't really me. I just want something mentally easier. So then I think, OK, time to really give Captain Toad, and Yoshi's Crafted World or whatever a proper chance and after even less time, I just think this is inane. They feel like the equivalent of one of those Spot the Dog books where he's looking for his ball or whatever. Is it in the picnic basket? No. Is it in the bog...? Look, it's obviously on the last page, let's get this charade over.

And so the only stuff that's really keeping me engaged are second playthroughs of FF7R, Skyrim, Uncharted 4 and RDR2 (which I'm taking much more slowly than first time around), and the AC Odyssey DLC. I've also started FFX for the first time on the Switch and I suspect that will be in the mix. They're games which don't especially respect your time, even Uncharted, long periods of repetition but they want to let you sink into them. And oddly for some perhaps, Dark Souls is also enormously comforting right now. I've just played it so much that the deliberate pace and knowing the entire thing inside out is very comfortable and familiar for me. I don't care if I die because I've already rinsed it. I just soak it all up and transport myself. Right now, that's all I want from gaming.

What about you?

colacentral

Re: Captain Toad. I don't know how far into it you've got but what you're describing is true for the first 20 or so stages (if I'm remembering correctly); there are tons and tons of levels though, it's a surprisingly long game, and the later ones are a bit more challenging. Of course the real challenge is 100% completion of the levels too, rather than just getting to the end star.

Relaxing games: I've gone back to Sim City 4, the pinnacle of city building games. Very addictive and satisfying to sit back and watch your coloured tiles build up. I'm aiming to build a successful city on every tile of the world map and link them with railways, motorways and airports. I find building games relaxing in general and I'd fancy getting into Dragon Quest Builders if I had the time.

bgmnts

Civ VI whilst listening to podcasts.


Al Tha Funkee Homosapien

I've been playing Company Heroes again, which despite being 14 years old still looks pretty great (well the character models and textures are pretty shonky when zoomed in, but fine when zoomed out). The gameplay is fairly straight forward. Just like a comfy sweater of a game for me.

Curious Expedition got a console release recently. That's brilliant, if you can get into that, it's lovely and relaxing.
It's like one of those choose your own adventure books, you have to find treasure and stuff and it has some really nice simple dice combat. Takes a little while before it reveals all of it's charms, but once it clicks, it's an amazing game.
You can try a demo in your browser here - https://curious-expedition.com/demo/

Wolcen kept me sane during the start of the lockdown, nice brainless looty ARPG with some comfortingly repetitious, grindy endgame content.

Roundguard is like a roguelite peggle crossed with a dungeon crawler which is colourful brainless fun. That stopped my brain from tipping over for a little while.

I'm still playing shoot em ups, I like things that consume all my attention and keep the scary thoughts away, but I understand, sometimes I just can't lose myself in anything at the minute and if it's stressing you out, that's no good at all.

Bazooka

I find recently, well for a while now that I need to have a few games on the go, say three all going at the same time, I jump into one do a little bit save, then jump into the other. Long gone are the days where I can just play one until completion without touching anything else, also partly because by backlog of untouched and unplayed games is huge. I really shouldn't use PS Now because it distracts me from my huge backlog of physical, but I just went through Shadows of Mordor because it's leaving the service in June, pretty repetitive but simply good fun.

My rule though is I don't start a new game until one of the plate spinning games is complete. Right now I'm spinning Control, Fairy Fencer F (ps3 jpg usual stuff) and The Last of Us(I know, had it for years but never got around to it).

I generally find I am in the mood for certain games at certain times of the day.


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I felt like wallowing in nostalgia with some SNES games yesterday. Donkey Kong Country is the closest thing I have to time travel.

I couldn't be bothered faffing about to plug the Retro Pi in though, so I ended up playing Broforce for ages again.

madhair60

Retrogaming. Mostly Master System games I've rinsed inside out since I was 4, or Sonic 3 & Knuckles on Mega Drive.

The structure of the Donkey Kong Country games is very comfortable, yes.

The Crumb

The Yakuza series does this for me, it's great to play one every year or so settle into its familiar rhythms - I'm currently playing Kiwami 2. There's something relaxing about how artificial and 'videogamey' it all is, while still being full of little realistic and immersive details. Also something comforting about the lack of coherency between its elements - you can spend a whole play session grinding away at various side activites which have no bearing on the main story, and everything else waits in perfect stasis until you decide to engage with it.

It also reminds me of my best friend in two ways. Firstly he introduced me to the series, and it remninds me of lazy hungover Sundays in our twenties. Secondly, he moved to Japan a few years ago, and I've had a couple of incredible trips out to visit him. Walking through the brilliantly vivid recreation of night time Osaka brings back a lot of fond half memories. I had one of the most unexpectedly strong emotional reactions to a game last night when I stumbled upon a dingy undergound corridor of bars that was a dead match for one where we ended up IRL, being served wonderfully oversized Negronis by a Japansese Rod Stewart lookalike.

Plus suplex gangsters through motorbikes, fun!

Jim Bob

Day of the Tentacle is a good cure for the blues.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Bazooka on May 17, 2020, 11:24:18 AM
I find recently, well for a while now that I need to have a few games on the go, say three all going at the same time, I jump into one do a little bit save, then jump into the other. Long gone are the days where I can just play one until completion without touching anything else, also partly because by backlog of untouched and unplayed games is huge.
I'm a bit like this - at the moment it's DiRT 2.0, Valkyrie Chronicles 4 and Wastelands 2. I actually completed the main story of VC4, but due to nothing else catching my eye I'm grinding it out to get all the sub-stories.

DiRT 2.0 was a surprise in how much I took to it, given how much Grid bored me after a while. The rally driving really focuses my concentration because one tiny error can cause all manner of problems, and the rallycross sections are a lot of fun to race in. I've a feeling my interest will wane when I get to the difficulty levels where you need to be really good at it to do much, but it's keeping me happy for the moment.

Wastelands 2 I put off for ages, then a bit stop/start, but I was determined to try something a bit more complex than what I've been used to.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: madhair60 on May 17, 2020, 01:12:11 PM
Retrogaming. Mostly Master System games I've rinsed inside out since I was 4, or Sonic 3 & Knuckles on Mega Drive.

The structure of the Donkey Kong Country games is very comfortable, yes.

I could murder a go on DKC 2 right now.

Right now it's Smash Bros Melee and Brawl; simple movesets, fair bit of variety, pleasing to look, steady stream of things to unlock and glance at, short and simple chunks of gameplay.

ahhhhhh

Pink Gregory

Also I've been doing LocoRoco 1 and 2 when in bed but it did start to get on my tits by the end.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Proust's whiffy cakes have nothing on DKC when it comes to inspiring nostalgia.

Pink Gregory

One of our cats makes the exact noise of Diddy and Dixie jumping on each other's shoulders.

Marner and Me

Just starting my 3rd run through of RD2 I like the slowness of just going out and stalking animals to hunt.

Dewt

Same with me and Animal Crossing

peanutbutter

I don't seem to be capable of playing anything that I can't complete in a single sitting these days, 80 Days was a treat and I'm expecting Wandersong to be a very pleasant evening filler whenever I get around to it.
Played one called FAR: Lone Sails a few weeks ago that was barely a game at all but it killed about 3 hours in a super chilled out way. Half tempted to try out Another World, always felt like it wouldn't hold up to someone who wasn't alive at the time it came out but it seems like I lap up anything kinda like it, is it worth a punt?

Had a few evenings on Burnout Paradise gather a few billboards and stuff I never got, that was great. Just discovered both NFS Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit still have an online mode and are on Origin cheap enough so I'm gonna have a go at both of them and see if I can rope some friends into playing but single player will more than suffice for a few days I'm sure.


Had a blast playing Portal 2 with a friend a few weeks ago, would love some other puzzley co-op suggestions.
So far I've got Knights and Bikes, We Were Here, _possibly_ Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, and ibb & obb (if I can find a Windows friend who's down to play it). Tri-force heroes looks like it'd be perfect too but there's no way I'll be able to figure out 3 3DS owners.
Find it wild there isn't more of a market for puzzley co-op things tbh.


Buying a PS4 Pro just to fuck around in things other people made in Dreams looks increasingly likely too.

A Boy and His Blob on the Vita.

Zetetic

I also played Far: Lone Sails in the last few days and thought it was a lovely game. Scratches a "pilot a vehicle bigger than the player" itch in a way that nothing else I know of has. Geared perfectly I thought to a sense of mild risk without ever really threatening to disrupt the journey. Very glad of the experience right now.

Part of me really wants, or wants to try to build, something similar but more challenging and open. But I also think that's probably not really wanting to accept what makes it work as it is.

Pushing me towards buying Snowrunner though. And wanting Deadstick more.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I finally got around to giving Donkey Kong Country a spin and had to give up after getting stuck on the first minecart level. I don't know if there is some problem with the RetroPi's emulation, or I'm just getting old, but something is up. I breezed through the entire game back when I was about 10 and again a few years ago on my PC.

The soundtrack still gave me the big nostalgia hit that I was after.

Thursday

I loved Far: Lone Sails. The vehicle provokes far more emotion in the player than any human companion like Ellie or Clementine.

madhair60

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on May 18, 2020, 02:35:23 PM
I finally got around to giving Donkey Kong Country a spin and had to give up after getting stuck on the first minecart level. I don't know if there is some problem with the RetroPi's emulation, or I'm just getting old, but something is up. I breezed through the entire game back when I was about 10 and again a few years ago on my PC.

The soundtrack still gave me the big nostalgia hit that I was after.

At the beginning of the minecart level, jump over the first blast barrel that fires you into the cart, then hold left as you fall

Jim Bob

Quote from: madhair60 on May 18, 2020, 07:00:06 PM
At the beginning of the minecart level, jump over the first blast barrel that fires you into the cart, then hold left as you fall

For reference.

Jaich

Wonder Boy in Monster Land in the Master System, revisited every year like a pilgrimage, get to this evil screen where jumps must be times perfectly and usually give up.


Mobius

I'm not getting much comfort or satisfaction from gaming lately. I feel like I've played every game out there, and revisiting old ones hasn't done it for me. There's nothing new or coming in the immediate future that looks very appealing.

I've been in a bit of a gaming funk since finishing Persona 5:Royal. Now that was a comfort, going to school and hanging with friends. It was very colourful and stylish, you can tell so much effort had gone into it.

Dead bored of PS4. I'm thinking I might buy a Switch when I get paid in a few days as I haven't had a Nintendo console in 15+ years so there's plenty of new stuff there. Pokemon + Animal Crossing for a start, never played Zelda..

Sebastian Cobb

I started playing Okami and like the story in general but find some of the painting with my wiimote infuriating. I don't know if it's the software being fussy when I do more or less what it asks of me, but at slightly the wrong time, me being a bit dyspraxic or the instructions being unclear. I had the same problem trying to catch that fucking fish in Zelda.

Wonderful Butternut

For something a bit relaxing, some of the "open world"[nb]It's not really open world, but it's 40+km of recreated public roads when the game was originally designed for closed circuits[/nb] mods on Assetto Corsa are hitting the spot for me lately. Take your super serious racing sim and just go for a nice relaxed drive in it, where caning it is completely optional:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqkIpm3Wcds

Then there's always old Championship Manager games.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: madhair60 on May 18, 2020, 07:00:06 PM
At the beginning of the minecart level, jump over the first blast barrel that fires you into the cart, then hold left as you fall
*Gasp* Are you suggesting I should cheat?

I am shocked and appalled and definitely going to do that.

Clownbaby

Rayman Legends has been my go to. It's warmed my heart in a way I haven't had a game do since I was 11