Ask HN: What games are you having fun with?

51 points by brailsafe ↗ HN
Someone in another thread mentioned they purchased an RTX 3090 for Minecraft, which sounds awesome, but seems excessive, only because I'm not having as much fun with games atm.

So, what games are you having the most fun with, other than Factorio and Cities Skylines?

106 comments

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Recently I got back to Baldur’s Gate 1 (not Enhanced Edition, which -to me- is an abomination).

I play Baldur’s Gate every half year or so. Trying to complete the game without dying once with my character. So far I never succeeded. At some point I’d like to complete BG1 and then continue into BG2, ToB.

A short while ago I also played Iratus: Lord of the Dead. Pretty easy to finish to completion, which was quite fun, but not very replayable imo. It’s more accessible than The Darkest Dungeon though …

Perhaps half a year ago I played Lands of Lore 1 (didn’t finish yet). Was a lot of fun.

What's bad about the Enchanced Edition?
The same thing that's wrong with every other Enhanced Edition, like Star Wars. Some people prefer the original creative vision, that's all.

Or maybe they just want to save $40 bucks if they have the originals and know about bgtutu.

For me, the mechanics change too much from the way that I remember playing the game.

I like to play druid single or multiclasses the most in Baldur's Gate. Spell mechanics changed a lot for a few signature spells. For example the entangling roots spell in BG1 was more effective, while EE uses the more annoying BG2 version of the spell.

In BG1, when summoning animals, you'd get a lot of summons, but in EE you'd get very few.

There's possibly some other changes as well, but I haven't verified. For example in BG2 a player will get experience when learning spells or disarming traps and I'd imagine it's the same in EE.

In the end I feel the EE version doesn't align with the vision the devs had for BG1. I'm fine with BG2 having BG2 mechanics (BG2 is an excellent game as well), but I feel it's not appropriate for BG1.

Also, I don't think the NPCs that were added by Beamdog fit the game. The voice acting just isn't as great. Just encountering these NPCs (even when not adding them to my party) annoys me.

Maybe EE just isn't for me since I played the original game and it deviates to much from my initial experience so long ago ...

Borderlands 3 and RetroBowl on Switch and Android.
I am addicted to Clash Royale for the time being.
XCOM: Enemy Within with Long War and Long War Rebalance. It blows my mind just how much better the game is with them. This is a turn-based game, but without Long War the game is about carefully activating one enemy group at a time, hoping that RNG is on your side. With Long War Rebalance you don't have to think about defensive positions until the aliens notice your presence, at which point most of them on the map do and a front line forms that you have to break in a timely manner.

Disco Elysium. Robert Kurvitz can write or what, great game. It runs on a toaster, but it's literary aspirations elevate it into a subjective experience you can't reproduce with just an RTX 3090 running hot.

Never heard of Rebalance. Thanks for the tip!

Though, after playing XCOM2, I don't know if I can go back to LW.

Elden Ring delivers the sort of frustration I require to distract me from my IRL frustrations.
10 thumbs up for Elden Ring!

...

don't ask me how I have 10 thumbs. It's embarrassing.

I still play (and enjoy) Minecraft SMP even after all these years.
Tekken 7, I have recently started and I really like the complexity of a 3d fighter. Major plus is that its a 1v1 competitive game, so all my losses are on me. I can't blame my teammates nor do i have to depend on them to not lose the game.
Please do yourself a favour and do =not= play online until you're really good. It's a frustrating experience, to say the least. The online players will combo your ass so much you just can't do anything to defend yourself!
I completely disagree. There is no substitute for playing actual opponents. Playing against people is completely different than playing against the CPU.

You need to lose your fear of losing as quickly as possible to enjoy fighting games. (Also you won’t lose as much as you think.)

Tekken in particular you really just need a couple of core strings and learn to block.

Replaying the Mass Effect series on Steam Deck.
Roadwarden. A little Indie gem, full text rpg in a Fantasy world with a nice pixel style.

It embodies the feeling I got when I was "reading" book "Choose your own adventure books" but with proper inventory management, music and quest book instead of a piece of paper.

Right now Guild Wars 2 and the Yakuza series. Friends and I also try to get in a few rounds of Brawlhalla every few days.
I am currently playing a game called "Reventure" [0]. The objective of this game is taking back the Princess from the Dark Lord. The funny thing about the game is that you can select different paths to take back the Princess and it will end with different endings. For example, you are seeing a fisherman during your adventure and somehow you are distracted by what he does. You join the fishing instead of taking back the Princess. The game ends with the story of the fishing :)

Your character appearance changes over time depending on the end of your adventure. Also, there are many items and hidden routes in the game. These make you think about how the journey will end.

[0]: https://pixelatto.com/store/reventure/

Outer Wilds. The best sci-fi exploration game I’ve ever played. A very beautiful & profound experience that leaves you reflecting on life.

If anyone sees this and plays the game, don’t read any reviews or information online! Go in completely blind and you will not regret it.

Couldn’t recommend it more. Simply beautiful game. Definitely agree with going in completely blind, try not to even read the Steam description, discovering the core mechanics was very much part of the experience for me. I was left very empty when I finished it, I wanted more and more; like finishing a fantastic book. Easily one of my favourite games of all time.

I didn’t enjoy the DLC as much as the base game, it felt rather disconnected. Which was disappointing given how connected the rest of the game is. Still a nice story, just not quite as good for me.

Are there any other similar games I may also enjoy? I’ve also played Journey and found that to be similarly touching. Stray was also very enjoyable for me.

It’s in a different genre, but check out Her Story. It’s a wonderful game that asks for the same curiosity and creativity from the player that Outer Wilds does.
That’s one I heard about a while back but haven’t given it a shot yet. I will now, thanks.
You might look into "The Forgotten City". Similar "world mechanic" and you really get to know the place while playing it. I enjoyed it after also playing Outer Wilds.
Subnautica, Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Life is Strange all similarly left gigantic holes in my heart and left me unable to play other games for a while.
What an incredible game. All I want now are more games like this, where exploration takes the front seat and the player decides how to traverse the narrative and landscape. Breath of the Wild is another fantastic example.

But Outer Wilds sure is something special. Make sure to check out Subnautica if you haven't as well.

Outer Wilds is great but it honestly makes my skin crawl sometimes. The game does a great job of making me feel like I made a big mistake when I hurtling past my target planet and into the abyss
I’m not a ‘gamer’ and haven’t played much since multiplayer Quake once upon a time. I recently bought a PC with a 3060ti to experiment with ML, and thought I’d try a few recent games to stretch it. I found a few of the recent big games (Doom, Cyberpunk 2077) pretty disappointing. I tried Factorio (HN’s recommendation) but found it frustrating as the complexity hit a certain level.

Mindustry is my crack-cocaine. It’s wonderful, but honestly, do be careful if you’ve got any trace of an addictive personality and have ever enjoyed tower defense games!

Noita is a fun “roguelite” game that is different than anything else I’ve played.

2D pixel physics + spell casting

Death comes for you pretty quickly.

Join r/Noita to see fun death gifs

I've been playing a lot of BF2042 lately.

My first play thru was very underwhelming and I had walked away from it for months. I had tried to play it like an old school battlefield and found myself getting frustrated quickly (i.e. constantly dying while trying to learn guns/vehicles).

Then, I gave it one more shot after watching some YouTube video about the new season. None of the new content was actually interesting to me, but I was observing some new gameplay techniques that seemed a bit more compelling.

Now, I play but I don't ever fire a single bullet. I use that class that lets you spot enemies with a drone and I let all the other kids do the hard work for me. In certain game modes, this style of play does feel very rewarding as you can guide the front lines via intelligence. In 128 player modes especially. The average time between spotting and seeing the target site explode is usually less than 5 seconds in the most contested zones.

Satisfactory is the main game holding my attention these days.

Most the time time I'm too exhausted to play anything, and this can be a tough game for that pattern.

Age of Empires II, in its various incarnations, available on Steam.

They start out at the level of the first expansion, The Conquerors, which really helped game play. Hits that sweet spot, IMHO, of battle + resource management without going into the weeds for micromanaging the different resources.

I'd add that AoE 4 is also pretty fantastic. I love the fact that the campaign starts out with the battle of Hastings, and after each victory they give you the option to watch a history documentary video they produced just for the game, and these videos are REALLY well done! I learned how they built castles from the first one and it's brilliant!
The Yakuza series. As I've gotten older I've started to enjoy narrative-driven games more. I used to play MMOs and multiplayer games but they just can't keep my attention these days.
I’ve started playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon and it’s amazing. I almost stopped playing after Chapter 3 because some cutscenes are way too long (at some point I put my controller down for half an hour, had the time to make sandwiches and eat them, and the cutscenes still weren’t over) but the story is incredible.

Maybe they should make a movie.

I highly recommend Yakuza 0 if you haven't played it, it's by far my favorite!
Wish I could get more into single player story games. But I simply do not get the same dopamine rush that I get from winning against real people online. When I as younger I used to love story games because we didn't have internet back then and video games were a luxury. Now I have all the great story games of our era but it simply does not give me the same satisfaction as online multiplayer games.
I am burnt out of playing video games right now because I played my PlayStation non stop for around 30 days. I found out about this because I made a post on reddit about how I was not enjoying playing video games and people told me to stop playing asap and do other things instead. Great advice, turned out I was actually running away from real life responsibilities.
I guess I've been sort of doing the opposite. Trying to aggressively go after real world responsibilities for a while, and now trying to reconnect with games and chill a bit. Agreed with reddit though.
Same, but every game I buy - I tend to drop after 1-2 days and can't get into anything :(
I have put a ton of hours into Crusader Kings III. It is less complicated than other grand strategy games, but the real fun is leaning into the generative story aspect and roleplaying as your family throughout generations.

It also has a great modding scene, as most of the game logic is defined in text files in a custom scripting language. If you learn a bit about the language it is very easy to get into, you can just edit files in a text editor and the game will automatically live reload and apply your changes.

Minecraft RTX is awesome.

Elden Ring for me. It's my first From Soft game and I love it. It feels like all the best of BotW and Skyrim plus challenging gameplay (with an admittedly steep learning curve that doesn't need to be that way).

I'm surprised how much I like this game. I normally don't play a games with this setting. But I want to say its probably one of the best games I have ever played. I start hating a boss when I first fight them because its difficult, and and up loving and appreciating the boss design so much when I finally beat them.
Same here. I didn’t think I’d get into it nearly as much as I did. I’m at over 200 hours played. I don’t think I broke 100 hours for factorio.
I really had an amazing time recently playing this game called Inside (by playdead).

It's such a simple 2d scroller game but somehow I really enjoyed the whole gameplay and the story.

The game I play the most is Apex Legends. It's a Hero-based shooter, but so much polished in terms of mechanics. Everything feels so satisfying, and the skill scale is pretty broad.

I also play Dirt Rally 2, but not so much as I hit a bottleneck. I play with a controller and not a proper sim setup (my current excuse).

I've been playing Dirt 4 with a controller, but god damn is it boring. Do you actually find Dirt Rally 2 fun?
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