Patient Gamers

Deus Ex.

... the original.

Kid at middle school just burned it onto a CD-R, gave me a post it note with the install key.

He kept saying this game wasn't like anything else, it was a 'roleplaying shooter'.

I just had to provide him the blank CD-R to burn, and I think a brownie, or cookie, at lunch.

I never even owned a legit copy untill it came out on Steam like a decade later.

So uh yeah, that's how I originally played 'the most important videogame of all time'.

Beyond the gameplay and game mechanics, uh, we are currently now more or less living in a world that more and more resemble's its canon storyline everyday.

Back in 2001, pre 9/11, it was a wild sci-fi/cyberpunk concept for... the entire internet to be routed through a centralized system for surveillance and archiving, for digital privacy to be wholly nonexistent.

Now that building just exists in Utah and is run by the NSA, and... well you have to be exceptionally tech savvy to maintain any kind of what was 25 years ago the norm of digital privacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

It was a wild concept to imagine the US being defined by external and internal terrorism, both real and as a widespread rhetorical accusation against your political opponents, to imagine the US basically being a dystopian economic nightmare defined by homelessness, paramilitarized police, openly and brazenly corrupt governments, corporations nakedly and obviously superseding the government.

Now uh... well, uh, yeah, look outside, look at the news.

It was a wild concept for a prototype AI to tell you:

"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."

"God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary."

"The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment."

"You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."

So uh, yeah, that's... basically currently happening, we sure are at least really trying to build a true, general intelligence AI, and more and more people are falling in love with AI bfs/gfs, tiktok/instagram/facebook/social media are the precursor data-mining algorithms that most people these days are addicted to, to feel observed and be judged, more and more people relinquish their cognitive abilities to some kind of 'AI' to just do all their thinking, their critical evaluating for them, their judgement formation.

Anyway, 9/10 game, pretty good but kinda janky in spots, lol.

The Witcher 3 felt very sloppy to me, controls wise. I felt like combat had me sliding all over the place. Blocking, parrying, and dodging didn't feel satisfying or responsive.

Just couldn't get into it at all because of it.

I ended up running around and talking to everyone I could, then realize there's a ton of combat stuff to do and nobody else to talk to and I just turned it off

I got one! The very first Assassin's Creed when it came out!

My childhood friend would NOT shut up about it! He would talk over and over again about the lore, show me extended cutscenes, videos, sent me lore theories, it was a whole thing!

Years later I finally get to play it and holy shit, what a disappointment… the entire game is just the same 3 missions over and over again… like no effort into hiding anything… literally the same 3 missions copied and pasted ad nauseum with different enemy names. I'm still shocked he sat through all of this bullshit to get to the awesome lore he went on and on about for weeks.

Bonus story with the same friend: we were talking about Devil May Cry and he said "I wish I could find another game like it…" and I noticed he said "game" and not "games" or "franchise" so I asked "Did you play the sequels? DMC3 is incredible!" and he goes "What sequels? I'm sure it's only one game…" and I swear I screamed at the realization he's talking about the reboot DmC: Devil May Cry and had no clue the original franchise even exists 😂 That was right after DMC5 came out too, which's wild.

I recommended starting with DMC5 because the story isn't great anyway and DMC1 or even DMC3 may feel a little dated. He ignored my advice because he wanted to experience the story from the beginning, picked up the HD collection, hated both DMC1 and DMC3 because they felt too stiff, and never touched the franchise again.

There's a lot of games people recommend me based on cozy things which is good cause I do like them.

Then they get confused when I'm going deep into the Warhammer or the rogue likes/lites cause those are not very cozy.

And I do not like visual novels despite being in the demographic.

Dark Souls 2. A coworker gave me a steam code for it after I told him I wasn't really a big fan of games where you just have to memorize opponent movesets. He said he'd gift it to me if I gave it an honest try, and I did.

And I didn't like it. Didn't understand the hype, didn't have any idea what was going on with me dying and transforming or something, or why there were weird ghosts of other players all over the map. Maybe it makes sense if you know the genre but I didn't like the gameplay and didn't get any lore/story, so I ditched it.

Friend of mine who doesn't play much recommended this poker game called Balatro to me. Damn is it fun. This was well before all the hype around it.

The only one I can currently think of is Gris - and I say that because I can't recall buying a game that made me want to get my money back upon finishing it.

Gris is very highly rated across the board, so clearly there's something I'm missing as to why. I enjoy walking sim games every now and then, but it'd be hard for me to even call this one a game. People point to the story as being beautiful and deep, but it felt like nothing new and, for me, a bit trite. There was nothing engaging about this game to me. The worst part? It's like 3 hours long.

Sorry if whomever reads this really likes Gris. I'm glad you could enjoy it. To me, it's one of the worst recommendations I've ever received.

Stray.

Like, it looked cool and the whole concept was great.

It ends up just being a game of "go here get this come back". Yawn fest.

KotoR. It doesn't matter how great the story or characters are if I have to grind terrible gameplay to get to them.

Dark Souls

It's not for me, honestly. I want to feel freedom from a game, but Souls-like games make me feel trapped.