Been playing Returnal on PS5, great game. Fast relentless action. Gran Turismo 7 with an actual wheel, lots of fun. I am really more of a casual gamer, if that’s a gamer at all…
Is anyone else into the interactive storytelling games? I think What Remains of Edith Finch was one of the more incredibly engrossing pieces of media I’ve ever experienced. I got emotional at the end. And Firewatch… man… loved that, just a truly impressive piece of immersive/ interactive storytelling. Recently finished 11-11: Memories Retold, very much enjoyed that as well. Always looking for more of these. Anyone got some to share?
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I really enjoy playing and replaying “Inside”. “Celeste” is a great one too
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I’ve heard a lot of great things about Inside! It’s definitely on my list
Its a beautiful game. And its about 5 hrs long.
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Yeah +1 for Inside
Perfect length and beautifully designed. Show don’t tell!
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The Unfinished Swan
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
Everybody’s gone to the Rapture
The Last day of June
The Gardens Between
Virginia
Also games by Annapurna
For those who love geometry (and who doesn’t here?) Engare and Tandis.
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“Stray” from Annapurna
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Seems they can do no wrong. 
Doughnut county anyone?
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Donut County is great. Love a “Katamari-type” game.
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I’m not a gamer but I looked up the trailer for Donut Country. I straight up laughed out loud…
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Yeah, it’s quite something. The writing is good too. I haven’t finished the game, but so far it seems that the controller of the hole–and proxy for the player–is a racoon who is playing the game on their phone for points to win a quadrocopter. Needless to say the rest of the town is quite upset with the racoon, 900 feet below Donut County.
+1 for Stardew, my wife plays it almost exclusively. I’ve got a couple hundred hours in it over the years.
I tend end up playing things like Cities Skylines, Planet Zoo, Crusader Kings 3. Either complex strategy or city builder type things.
Timberborn is a really interesting city builder in early access. You’re beavers and have to manage water and droughts with dams.
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Just completed “God of War: Ragnarok” and I’ve never felt so conflicted about a game before. I like it and dislike it. The characters are great, the relationships are solid and there are some genuinely emotional beats. There’s also many weak tropes, including a guy you’ve never spoken to sacrificing himself as swelling music plays, only for the sidequest imediately following to be, “that guy is totally not dead and lets go save him.”
I hate how horrible the combat is while also being so well done. It’s kind of hard to articulate, but despite loving how the combat feels, I didn’t enjoy the fighting at all. I repeatedly lowered the difficulty just to get through the combat. the whole game is “run to a flat area, fight ten humanoid screaming guys, run to the next flat area”. This is the gameplay loop.
The game is GORGEOUS but completely linear and forgettable. There’s never a reason to wander off the path or learn the map. There is no reason to explore, all the treasure is crafting materials, and the nuances of different weapon add-ons were minimal.
It’s strange.
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Thanks for the heads up. I might avoid.
I really want Elder Ring on my PS4 but I had to give up on Tunic cos it got too hard and I just hate doing the same enemy over and over and (looking at a guide) still over again.
I might not be cut out for Elder Ring
Who remembers LineRider? Apparently with a lot of transfer- and rendertimes on a project it was good enough again to use that time for good.
So choose one color and bet on the rider’s win 
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I cannot recommend the game highly enough. It’s difficult, but it has features to mitigate that. You can summon other players to help with boss fights, you can summon NPCs for boss fights, you can summon a jellyfish for in boss fights (and she’s good!).
As someone who dropped the difficulty on God of War Ragnarok down to, “I just want to watch the story because I’m so tired of fighting this boss,” I have nothing but praise for the design and challenge of Elden Ring’s many, many bosses.
There’s no sitting at a breakpoint in the game where the only way forward is a single boss. There’s always other shit to do, other dungeons, other bosses. You can just hop on your cow/horse/goat and ride off someplace else.
The only real “secret” to the game is to have a plan for your character’s stats. Don’t evenly distribute them. If you like fast weapons, level dexterity, if you like giant weapons level strength, if you like spells level intelligence. If you like suffering level faith1, and if you want to struggle at the beginning and wreck everything by the end level arcane.
1. Faith builds are pretty good compared to Dark Souls, and throwing botls of lighting is always fun, but there’s one seal that scales off arcane instead of faith making arcane a more useful stat because it also governs the bleed status, which is the way to ruin many bosses. If you want help with builds and game tips and all that we should start a dedicated thread, because Elden Ring is a lot of a lot.
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Elden Ring’s story is basically nonexistent, but if you look hard enough there’s extremely cringe fantasy writing to be found. You’re a faceless avatar running around a fantasy world swinging a sword / casting spells. They claim they paid George RR Martin to write for them, but all he did was name the bosses. Don’t get me wrong it’s a great game and probably GoTY, but it’s basically a polar opposite from God of War, story-wise.
It’s definitely the anti-God of War in it’s narritave approach, but I would not say the story is bad nor the approach bad. Definitely not cringe1. (gasp) I made friends with a big wolf man and it was awesome2. 
It’s a very game-y approach. Make a big world and just enough inertia for the player to careen through it. Never stop the game to tell the story, but let the player stop the game and discover the story if they want.
It’s apples and oranges, but I’m glad the Elden Ring approach is being acknowledged. Games can do a lot of cool things other media can’t.
1. I LOVE the writing and voice acting in Fromsoft games. Every character is their own little weirdo and I never tire of them.
2. Sincerely. Blaidd is the best.
Remembering when I last saw this thread Bloodborne was mentioned. Huge, huge fan of the game. A few years ago I felt confident in saying I had ingested all of the community-made lore content. Last night I was curious to see if there were any new perspectives on the game and came across an impressively interesting series that I wanted to share. Awesome to see people still manage to engage with this amazing game in new/novel ways!
…and since I’m posting Bloodborne lore…
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