For me: Easily Portal 2.
A deeply rich story, funny dialogue, and great puzzles that will truly make your brain think. The story is very rich and spans across several different eras of Aperture history, going as far back as the 50s. The dialogue is funny and some of the lines are the most memorable in all of gaming (like the Cave Johnson lemon rant). And last but not least, the puzzles are great. They start off pretty simple, but as you progress further in the story, they get more and more complicated, especially when you get the repulsion gel and proposion gel. I feel like Portal 2 is the Gold Standard for puzzle games that every game that comes after it will be judged on.
Also, if you don’t own Portal 2 yet, now is a fantastic time to get it - it’s on sale for $1 on Steam, same with Portal 1. And if you want both games, the bundle containing both games is $1.50. Do not miss out on this offer, it’s so worth it.
Satisfactory. It’s so fun automatizing stuff for 4 hours that could have been done manually in 30 minutes. I like looking at all of my work in the game and thinking “how, this is impressive”.
If you like building I guess Minecraft is an epic choice. I have sunk hundreds of hours into the game, easily
So many tedious recommendations when the answer is obviously heaven’s vault.
It’s dogshit in almost every way. Even moving around the world feels like pouring salt into your eyes. I hate almost every single thing, the protagonist, the pace, the awful vehicle sections to travel. But it’s something you should play, or perhaps experience.
It’s an archeological translation game and there are multiple moments of “Ok so maybe that actually means font of life not mother goddess, but that would mean this means artificial god which would mean that the extinction event was actually transcendence and holy shit…”
I agree with the guy that said Outer Wilds, even though I can’t finish it because of my thalassophobia.
Personally, the two games that had a really profound effect on me are Disco Elysium and Hi-Fi Rush.
Disco is an incredible political game that really is damn powerful. It’s definitely not for people who just want action.
Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm action game so I wouldn’t recommend it to people who hate rhythm games or people who hate action. But it’s so fun, so charming and really uplifting.
Disco is terrible, lazy writing. It’s just endless word vomit.
I like literature, smart word play. but this ain’t that. This is just throwing everything including piss, vomit, semen and feces on the wall and see what sticks. And in a lot of early game scenes it’s this quite literally.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Disco is not for everyone. You love it or it makes you nauseous. There is nothing in between. And you only know which one is you when you try it.
I’ll do you one better: completely free.
Check out Ashes: 2063. It started life as a mod for Doom, but is now completely standalone and has more in common with the Metro games than anything else at this point. PC only, but both games and their expansions are 100% free and worth every minute of your time.
Stardew Valley.
Its revolver has continuously released huge updates for free and has commuted to never charging for dlc.
The games mechanics are pretty great and nothing in the game requires too much grinding to get.
Even when you “finish” the game, there are still things to do and starting a new files is always fun.
The characters are all great and have unique personalities. It really makes you feel like you are part of the town.
My wife and I have over 400 hours on a single file. It’s also enjoyable starting a new file. I like to challenge myself to see how quickly I can do certain objectives in the game.
It’s also decently cheap and has a huge community behind it.
I bought it some time ago but I kind not got into it, and it saddens me because I only hear good things about it.
Any advice?
Well not every game is for everybody. This just might not be for you.
Without knowing you better, I’d advise things like.
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take it slow, there is no rush to do anything.
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it’s ok to sleep early if you can think of something to do.
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you can really lose in this game.
Thank you
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Outer Wilds.
If you like space games and puzzle games (in the sense that you need to piece together the situation you’re in), this is a great choice.
Highly recommend not looking anything up before you play.
I think everyone should play factorio for at least a few hours. It will be some of the most interesting 17 months of their lives.
Is it a time lapse game? Where you play for like an hour, then suddenly the sun is down?
And you’re absolutely starving, yes.
I would personally recommend Satisfactory over Factorio. I think it’s a more casual experience while still scratching that factory building itch.
Factorio is a casual game. You see a person with a massive base that makes a gazillion science packs a minute, don’t get intimidated. They have no clue what they’re doing either, and probably already forgot how a third of their factory is put together. They have just been in the game for longer.
I don’t mean less casual in that sense. I actually had 3 main points in mind that make satisfactory more casual.
First are the aliens. The evolution and pollution doesn’t stop which means in a way you are fighting against time. If you don’t keep up with it the aliens will attack and destroy your base. I know they can be turned off but the game is designed with their attacks in mind and you’re skipping entire production lines if you turn them off.
The second reason is factory building. I think the extra dimension in Satisfactory makes factory building much easier. If you run out of space horizontally, build up. In Factorio you better plan out how big your factory is going to be because if you run out of space you’re probably going to start spaghettifying your factory or you need to start tearing down parts of your factory to make more space. In my current satisfactory factory I just built a whole new level ontop of my old factory because I couldn’t be bothered to clean it up.
And the last point goes together with the previous point. You have so many things you need to produce. The entire belt production thing for example. If you want express belts you need to build the fast belts which needs the basic belts. If you want express splitters you’re going to have to build the fast splitter, which needs the basic splitter which requires basic belts. Meanwhile in Satisfactory if you want a faster belt you just need the new material for the belt. Factorio production pipelines are like a deep well while Satisfactory production lines are more like a wide puddle (that only towards the very end can go deep, like ficsonium fuel rods). Satisfactory has overall a wider variety of things to produce (if we exclude the tiered items in Factorio), but they’re much less dependent on each other. For example if your industrial beam production isn’t at peak performance that not going to stop you from getting the higher tier belts because they need aluminum which are built from a completely different raw material. Solve aluminum production and you get new belts. Compare that to Factorio where, lets say you want to start using express belts but you’ve been kinda winging your belt production. Well first you need to fix your fast belt production, which then means you need to fix your basic belt production which means you need to fix your iron production which means you have to scale up your iron mining.
The factory can grow over your head but Satisfactory still has easier production pipelines, easier factory planning and you can take however long you want to figure out how to build your factory. To me all of those things indicate that Satisfactory is a more casual experience.
Steel battalion with the full controller setup
I still kick myself for not grabbing that game off a buddy for $100… I did get to play it, though, but never finished.
Haven’t seen it here yet: Metro 2033 (sequels good too)
I’d also say S.T.A.L.K.E.R for the similar elements. But it’s pretty well known and if it interests you, you know why you should be playing it. :p
Metro 2033 wowed me, and I still think of it fondly. Y’see, at the time, everyone was loudly clamoring for “open world this” and “RPG progression system that” and “Every choice matters branching storylines!”. Everything had to be marketed as some huge pseudo-endless experience with limitless freedom. Sure, sure, there’s a place for that. BUT…
Metro 2033 is a fairly linear post apocalypse shooter based off of a novel of the same name that doesn’t overstay its welcome. And know what? It feels like playing through a good book.
You experience this twisted, scary, often beautiful world through Artyom’s eyes as he explores hostile tunnels and the inhospitable surface, and along the way you meet a cast of very interesting, very “alive” feeling characters. The various mutant creatures, too, have fascinating behaviors and personalities. Even though many parts are scripted, you still feel a sense of awe with seeing the consistency with how these things behave.
Subterranean tunnels and frozen post-nuke wastelands feel ALIVE when you’re checking your map with a lighter, or scrounging for a gas mask after yours cracked, and you cling to the numbered, desperate breaths through your last filter. (I’m being dramatic it rarely gets THAT desperate lol.)
The real beauty of the game, like humanity’s remnants, are under the surface. It’s subtle. There’s a hidden morality system keeping track of how Artyom reacts to the world, and the overall themes and sociology go much further than “war is bad mmkay?”. Do you meet brutality with brutality, or do you combat the darkness of this world with understanding and mercy?
Sadly, Metro Last Light carries on with 2033’s bad ending as canon. Which makes sense, but 2033’s good ending is so GOOD.
They’re regularly ridiculously cheap now, and I personally loved the experience.
Also: The best difficulty system I’ve ever seen in a shooter. It feels like playing on “Ranger Hardcore” is the intended experience. It doesn’t go the lazy route of making the player weak and the enemies strong. It goes for realism.
Enemies get smarter but will actually go down in a good hit or two…But careful!..So will you.
The Talos Principle
Seconded, Ive replayed that game like 3 times already. The first one had an amazing story imo, even though the puzzles could be a little difficult, especially the hidden ones. I’ve sadly only played a few hours of the second one, due to the game engine change (from Source to Unreal I think?) movement feels too different and the story didnt get me hooked right away like the first one did. Still going to finish it at some point though
Celeste absolutely! It’s difficult but it’s really really fun and has a great story. If you ever get super invested, the community is great and the skill ceiling is so high that you can always get better when playing new maps.
Civilization III and/or V
Edit: If you have lot’s of time available.
Half life, all of them, in order
There’s only 2 right? Exculding That VR version
There are two expansions for the first one, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. These explore the same events, from the points of view of different characters.
After the second one there are also the two shorter, stand alone, stories, Episode One and Episode two. These continue the story from the point of view of the protagonist.
factorio
the dedication of the dev is perceptible, almost unlimited replay value and the will release a major extension in 9 days that looks wonderful.
What? I thought the space DLC was months away!
It’s happening!
Could you explain the appeal to someone who hasnever played anything similar? I played RCT3, but I don’t know how comparable that is. It just seems like a really finnicky and tedious game of micromanagement.
I haven’t played RCT so not sure how I compares.
But Factorio is first of, a sandbox game. You can build however you want in your own tempo. Not sure what you mean by finicky?
But I don’t think it’s tedious micromanagement at all. it feels super good when you build something new and it works. And there is so many technologies and it’s jus fun exploring how everything works together and coming up with new designs!
There is also enemies, but can be turned off if you just want to focus on building a Factory. I mostly play with them, building up defences and killboxes and making automated train supply that comes with ammo, wall, etc.
It has a demo you can try out. It’s scenarios so you try out different base mechanics in the game. But the actual game is a sandbox game.
