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Comment by emp_zealoth | Hacker News Reader

Simple - don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) because 99% of those is rehashed garbage and cliches

Buy gamess from small studios, made by a few people or even one guy, usually a lot of them are in Steam Early Access (yes, it is risky, some of them get abandoned or just never improve much)

For me this is like a reneissance in gaming. Have a look at Factorio, Starbound, Rimworld, Banished, Pillars of Eternity, SotS:The Pit, ARK:Survival Evolved, 7 Days to Die, Hearthlands. Some of those have multiplayer and are something else completely to play with a few friends

A whole lot of people don't even know there is entire world besides CoD or 50th fucking Asassins Creed...

I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable

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I've been playing XCom2 a lot recently, and it occurred to me that I was caring waaay too much about my soldiers. Then it occurred to me that actually the part of the game I was enjoying most was looking after my soldiers.

I have a sniper that never hits anything, ever, and I've started having little pep talk with her before each mission, trying to get her to buck her game up and be a useful member of the team.

Shooting aliens in the head isn't the fun bit. Caring for my little gang of incompetents and nursing them through each mission is the fun bit.

I spent a lot of time playing the original XCOM on both playstation and PC. This is what made the game amazing. I would name the soldiers after friends, family members, and famous people that I admired. When one would get injured or killed I really cared. It also made approach the tactical part of the game with much caution. I would get really nervous when taking on some of the more dangerous missions. However, once I would get one of my soldiers fully trained and ranked up it was totally worth it!

You might like Invisible Inc. It's a turn-based sneaking/spy game and one of the few recent games that I played straight through with no 'guilt' afterwards.

If caring for your incompetents is fun, then dwarf fortress or the genre of DF-lite will be for you.

love DF :)

> don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles)

Yep, that's a good rule to live by. There are a lot of great games out there if you put in the effort to look into them (and know where to look)

And I think that's the biggest problem: The entry-games that we present are mostly boring shooters, and the like. Non-gamers aren't going to spend time figuring out what kind of game they want, aside from friends recommending something, they'll probably just try what is popular or advertised.

I think movies have this same problem. Your weekly superhero blockbuster's are fun, they definitely aren't everyone's cup of tea. But if you weren't ever really into movies, and started jumping in, you'd think that's all there was.

Rimworld is so good. At the same time, no game has made me ragequit more intensely in a very long time. Broken thoughts right when you need the colonists to buckle down...

I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable

It's a shame to see how AAA companies have butchered the Dota-like genre. There's Valve's Dota 2 which is the shining example of what the genre should be and then there's all these garbage rehashes out there that have just tried to dumb down the game or introduce some kind of gimmick or cliche.

AAA games are just a race to the bottom in terms of design. They just try to appeal to the lowest common denominator and games get more shallow and casual with each iteration.

Games aren't getting more shallow and casual. More likely you're just getting older and developing a preference for nostalgia over novelty.

I'm not talking about games overall, just games made by AAA companies. There's certainly still games that cater to a hardcore/competitive audience but you have to look a little harder for them and they're usually coming from indie developers. But for a AAA studio casual is where the money is and it's the philosophy driving their game design even though from their perspective they'd probably call "easier to get into" or more "intuitive" or "streamlined".

Look at the difference between Starcraft Broodwar and Starcraft 2, Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, Dota and every clone like LoL and Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, Overwatch. All of the sequels and successors are more shallow and casual than what came before. And the novelties these games introduce are better characterized as gimmicks to hook casual players. Why make a game that caters to a hardcore audience? That's just limiting your playerbase and limiting your potential profit.

AAA = ?

I try to do this on PS4. Many indie titles are released on all platforms fairly simultaneously these days.

Sony's user experience in the store just really is horrible. It has gotten better, but its been how many years now?

Most titles don't have any screenshots or trailers or previews of any kind.

Most payment methods simply don't work.

A paypal account where you want to choose a payment source? TOUGH LUCK

A mobile payment from your telephone? NOT ON YOUR PROVIDER

Okay, fine don't take my money. I got a credit card to work once though, I saved that one.

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