What games are you having fun with?

I only own a MacBook Air and miss my PC days for a more hardcore experience but I find it super hard to find fun games to play (maybe its age...) these days.

The last one I really had fun was: Desperados III - just a good nostalgia if you were into Commandos like games Divinity Original Sin 2 - probably the greatest turn-based RPG SteamWorld Dig 2 Firewatch

Really want to try the suggestions here though like Outer Wilds, Deathloop

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.

Give Hard space: Ship breaker a try. It's a chore-core set in space where you break down surprisingly believable ships with surprisingly believable physics to a fantastic soundtrack in a kinda-borderlands-precursor universe. It's got a maximum timer of 15m per shift, so it's easy to drop in and out, but you can spend multiple shifts on a particular ship, or just gut the biggest systems and move on every day.

The attention to detail is my favorite part. Good sound of vacuum (dampened and transmitted by touch), good 3d movement and drift, and great attention to pressure and decompression hazards.

Deathloop: I was expecting another FPS, but I've been pleasantly surprised by the story and the characters.

Death Stranding: I've beaten the game, now I'm just trying to collect everything and do all the deliveries. Although stressful, I'm engaging BTs more. The story and the world Hideo Kojima built it's really fascinating.

I've historically played FPS games. Recently stumbled onto Foxhole which is more of a large team strategy game. It's a sort of wargame that emulates multiple aspects of war beyond just the frontline fighting. Imagine an RTS, but you play as a single unit. Every item, weapon, vehicle, etc in the game has to be manufactured by players. Players then have to deliver those to the frontline. There is a whole manufacturing and logistics network outside of the actual combat. There are no combat stats, no killfeed, and very little incentive to play only for solo efforts. Even ranking up requires commendations from your team for playing support roles like medic. Everything is designed around teamwork and long-term efforts towards the war and I really like that. Especially compared to how most games are designed more recently.

What drew me to it was the potential for multiple ways of play. You don't just have to go out and shoot people. You can instead be the guy who digs trenches prepping for defense. Or building structures in a newly captured zone. Being able to switch between them at will. What has kept me playing is the community. Very few games have a player base that will stop what they are doing to explain things to new players. There are definitely goofy players. And probably some trolls. But I've never asked a question in chat and not gotten a serious answer.

While the game doesn't have the same appeal as say, Counter Strike which I thoroughly enjoy, it does have a refreshing style of play. You can play hardcore or casual or anything in between. And sometimes it's nice to just chat with folks while you're pinned down in a trench waiting for backup or a much needed shipment of ammo.

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.

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.

Stationeers, considering the love that games like factorio and satisfactory get around here I'm surprised I don't see it mentioned more.

The main aim is to build a space colony within a surprisingly detailed physics system, involving things like atmospheric control, pressurising an environment, growing food etc.

Just today I felt proud for being able to pressurise my working area, not realising that filling an atmosphere with 100% oxygen is a recipe for explosive disaster the moment I turned the furnace on :)

Would recommend for fans of factorio, oxygen not included etc.

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.

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/

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.

A good modern GPU could also be an opportunity to replay older games in full resolution & graphics quality. I've recently replayed the Crysis series.

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.

Elden Ring delivers the sort of frustration I require to distract me from my IRL frustrations.

I've been playing Apex Legends for the last 3 years, for like 3 hours every days for 2.5 years of those 3, but in the last 6 months since I switched jobs, i've been playing maybe 2-3 hours a week because i got burned out.

Some games i can also recommend are :

Risk Of Rain

Oxygen not included

Overcooked 2 ( goot to play with friends )

and of course, Among Us

Definitely not the most graphics-intensive game by a long shot, but I recently discovered "Octopath Traveler" on Steam. It's kinda like those old-school JRPGs from the Super Nintendo days, but with some interesting improvements in graphic quality like focus and depth, lighting, etc., but definitely hits that "nostalgia" vein pretty good. The voice acting isn't bad either, and it's got some depth and isn't a quick 2-hour campaign that's forgettable for $65 bucks; it seems worth your money as far as I can tell.

Other than that, I'm digging on Dying Light 2, Elden Ring, and recently re-played the Middle Earth games, which helped me understand some of the plot in the new Lord of the Rings series that's "airing" on Amazon right now (I'd have been entirely lost otherwise).

I'm also trying Black Desert again, and over on PS5 I'm re-playing The Last of Us Part 2. Also planning to finally give State of Decay 2 over on xbox a real try for once. Seems to have improved quite a bit since release.

Planetside 2. It's a decade old MMO now but still getting substantial updates. It can be quite frustrating because it has shooter gameplay with an effectively open lobby so the teams can be very stacked and you aren't given any matchmaking to make your first sessions easy. There's a lot of confusing and incoherent-by-design stuff with its massive combined-arms PVP scope. It doesn't have enough player population to be a really complete experience round-the-clock now. As well, there's the usual laundry list of old bugs and accumulated cruft that may never be addressed. But the deeper you go with it, the more evident it is that there is no equivalent game. Battlefield gives some of the flavor(and PS2's moment-to-moment is largely copied from BFBC2), but it's far more tame and controlled.

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 fell in love with roguelikes (or roguelites, never sure how it’s really spelled).

Hades is one of the best, especially with a controller. Gameplay is amazing.

Risk of Rain 2 scratched the same itch for me. A run takes about 30/40 minutes and it has a great learning curve.

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.

Star Citizen! Seriously, makes me feel like a kid every time I boot it up. None of the pay to win DLC nonsense either. If there's a ship or piece of equipment you want, you can just make enough money in the course of playing the game to get it eventually. Plus, it's one of the only games in recent memory that can put my 3090 to good use. The graphics the engine spits out are so impressive, people have started making movies with it and they're not bad!

Currently:

- The Spider-man port that finally made its way to the PC. Insomniac nailed the movement and combat on this one to the extent that it already feels awesome to mop up the side missions without even concentrating on the main story.

- Moonlighter. I'm stuck in the DLC and it's becoming more of a grind, but I still like its formula quite a bit. I just miss the music from dungeon 2&3…

Dyson Sphere Program

Build as many Dyson spheres as you can.

Absolutely phenomenal game, I have 200+ hours in

Crusader Kings 3 is a lot of fun. I knew how complex 2 was and didn't think it would be for me, but 3 does a lot of good tutorialization and UI simplification. It's a 4X strategy game with a focus on dynasty building and backstabbing, somewhat like Civilization meets The Sims?

Hunt Showdown is an interesting shooter I've been playing with friends. It's a PvPvE game where you're dropped into a monster infested Louisiana bayou with the goal of killing the boss and successfully escaping with it's head. Dying means your character and their progression is lost, and you're competing against other people. The excellent sound design, use of "sound traps" and quick time-to-kill means it's a very high tension and unique game, with a lot of really interesting mechanics.

I still play (and enjoy) Minecraft SMP even after all these years.

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).

Stardew Valley! It's extremely fun, specially if you have a partner to play with. Feels like a get out from all the worldly stress. I would buy a steam deck just to play it, even though i don't have any other use for one.

Magic: The Gathering is fantastic collectible card game on various platforms.

- MTG Arena if you want a Hearthstone-like experience (free, great animations/sounds, but microtransactions or grinding to stay competitive)

- untap.in or Tabletop Simulator for completely free, though a rules engine doesn't exist so you'll need to know the rules properly yourself

- MTG Online which includes a rules engine but you'll need to pay for cards

- XMage which is free and includes a rules engine, but the UX is the worst of the above

I play mostly Arena, with a bit of untap when I want to play Commander/EDH.

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!

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.

Sea of Thieves is fun. It required a pretty big time commitment, so I only play a few days a week (mostly weekends).

The developers do a decent job masking the MVP-ness of the game with mystique and lore. There are certainly improvements that could be made, but overall it’s been a fun experience.

A bonus for me is that it’s relatively kid friendly (excluding some experiences with voice chat, which can be disabled) meaning I can play this game with my kids.

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.

Disco Elysium is a piece of art! A lot of text, but what a fulfilling experience. It is, sadly only a one timer. For continuous entertainment I can recommend Into The Breach - the best UX of a strategy game I've ever seen. It is replayable for hours and hours, and is great at every moment of gameplay.

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 do have fun with dota2, its not too competitive and there are times in it when you dont have to pay attention/ can relax.

Do also enjoy starcraft 2 but it can stress me a lot.

Did also enjoy the new doom games and also terminator resistance.

Sometimes creeper world 4, its really about micro management. Vampire survivors also fun.

Yeah.

I really enjoy playing Teardown. Not every mission is great in the campaign but some are a lot of fun.

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.

I think Counter Strike will be the answer to most of us South Asian folks including me :D

A few days ago I installed Icewind Dale 2 EE (a community project with many improvements) and dived into it. I played BG and PST but was never into the more action oriented IWD. Hopefully this time I can finish it.

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 grew up a Halo fan so I’ve just been playing Infinite in my free time. I take online really casually now unlike I used to so I’m actually enjoying just playing.

Great games for an RTX 3090 and some of the best of all time:

- Dwarf Fortress

- Europa Universalis 4

- Caves of Qud

Ultrakill. It's a game that I've been playing untill my eyes start burning.

The skill ceiling not necessarily high, but it's very demonstrable, with things like shotgun switching, parrying, etc.

If you enjoy boomer shooters- or just violence in general, I could greatly recommend it.

To describe it in brief, it's a sort of mix of Devil May Cry, with it's fast paced combat that involves you mowing down grunts (In a stylish manner), and Doom Eternal, where you.... well, mow down grunts?

It's currently being made by one single developer, and is quite cheap on the game scale coming in at less than 20 euros, if you want to spend a good hour and a half playing something and shutting off your brain, I recommend it.

By the way, there's secrets everywhere ;)

Wildlander, a modpack for Skyrim Special Edition. Basically, it's Skyrim with a graphics upgrade, some new content, new survival mechanics, and a different philosophy.

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.

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

Factorio

I've been playing a lot of Supertuxkart lately. It's a lot of fun and the story mode presents a good challenge IMO.

Cities: Skylines

Islets - brilliant metroidvania.

Songs of conquest - spiritual successor to heroes of might and magic.

Noita whenever I am in a long, no cam meeting.

Borderlands 3 and RetroBowl on Switch and Android.

I am addicted to Clash Royale for the time being.

Replaying the Mass Effect series on Steam Deck.

FPS games: Serious Sam and Left 2 Death.

Minecraft and Last Epoch mainly.

Chess, Baba is You.

civ 6 and the occasional game of Stellaris

FreeCraft.