Running video games (and consoles) thread

I got sucked into the original Everquest MMO back in the day. Max levelled my character, raided with an elite guild although not a leading edge one. It wasn't unusual for me to play four or five hours (or more) after getting home from work. This caused more than a little stress around the house, and a lot of lack of sleep at work the next day. Eventually I pulled a /played on my main character, divided the number of hours by 40 to convert it to weeks and winced because I had something on the order of a year and a half invested... in one of my several characters. I quit cold turkey. Refused to get involved with EQ2 or WoW when they came out. I confined myself to games that were things like solo shooters, or Civilization, games where no one was depending on me. I could save my game or just walk away and it wasn't a big deal.

Until about a month ago. Four of my degenerate gamer buddies, guys I've played with for twenty years or so, conned me into playing Classic Wow. The hook is set deep in my jaw. Sigh.

I'll still never do the big raid thing again. I just don't have the patience to fool with all that.

 

The original RDR was fantastic. Slightly better than the prequel, for my money.

 

Bumping this in light of recent events. I've been going deep in my Steam library to find my most reliable time sinks and thought I'd share a few.

Wholesome family fun: Stardew Valley, Slime Rancher, Graveyard Keeper, House Flipper
Grand strategy (for the Civ fans here): Stellaris, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV (if you're REALLY into micromanagement)
I'll give you something to worry about: The Long Dark, Surviving Mars, SOMA, Frostpunk

What is everyone else playing? My social media timeline is about evenly split between Doom Eternal people and Animal Crossing people. I don't have a Switch so the new Animal Crossing is a no-go, and my rickety laptop doesn't stand a chance in hell of running Doom Eternal.

 

I've been scooping up the various Steam games on sale, because my fiancee has been using the TV more, and not really leaving it free for PS4 usage. So! Darkest Dungeon, I took that out for a spin yesterday - really in-depth RPG where your hero's nerves are a big mechanic - along with a little builder game called Islanders. FTL recently got Steam Achievements, so, I've been doing some of them here and there too.

 

As long as she's not using the actual PS4, you can set up remote play on your laptop (desktop?) with your PS controller.

 

Eh, my laptop screen and specs are pretty old and crusty - like I can barely run Civ5.

 

Darkest Dungeon is brutal, but mostly in good ways. I don't think I've ever played a game that I was more sure had it in for me. Those 0-point heals by the Occultist are soul-crushing. Most of my rogue-like attention is devoted to Hades these days, though.

Islanders was nice. It's a good change of pace from Cities: Skylines, which I really enjoy but has frustrating traffic management and a seemingly endless loading screen.

 

Max-leveled two characters in Borderlands 3 and will probably get crushed by Doom Eternal when I can get it for under day one pricing.

 

Cities: Skylines is in my queue, but my laptop plays it at a snail's pace, and I didn't realize there weren't scenarios in there. Like, I'm a huge fan of stuff like Civ5, Railroad Tycoon 2 and Rollercoaster Tycoon, which have some objectives, vs. pure sandbox games like Transport Tycoon and SimCity.

 

Sounds like the Tropico series might be up your alley. It has lots of scenarios that you have to complete to fully unlock sandbox mode, and it's just a fun game with a killer soundtrack in general. Tropico 6 is 40 percent off now, but if that's still too much for your wallet or laptop, I've heard lots of people heap praise on Tropico 4 as peak Tropico.

 

I've got a huge backlog of PS Plus games to go through. Finally started playing MLB The Show 19. Fun game, except I probably need to up the difficulty a little more after my 2019 Padres team started 12-0.

 

I bought Witcher 3, which has a fun Skyrim type of feel and should keep me engaged for awhile. I had always wanted to play it but never had the time ... Obviously that's changed.

Also downloaded NBA2K20 off the PS store for $19.99 last week. It gives you an option to start a franchise with an expanded league, so I added franchises in Virginia and Kansas City to bring the league to 32.