Half Life 2 base now includes the Episodes and they have been delisted. The only thing in The Orange Box now really is Portal, since Lost Coast is also delisted and TF2 is free. Still a great deal tbh for one game, but you don’t need it for basically any item in there.

So I’m not sure what might make you not feel lonely or anxious. Things like how directly you control the characters with you could he factors I imagine, so I’m just going to list a bunch of things:

A shorter one, but Star Wars Republic Commando. You’re a commando unit and work as one.

Dragon’s Dogma, either Dark Arisen or the new sequel.

Mass Effect series.

I don’t know if Earth Defence Force would be like that or not, at the end of the day your NPC allies could be hit or miss (literally, depending on the weapons you use).

Not sure how you feel about party-based RPGs, but there are tons of them.

I’m wondering if RTS games with campaigns would feel right as well. StarCraft’s campaigns have a lot of people constantly talk to/around you.

The Lego games?

Stardew Valley?

Can’t really think of indie games at the moment.

Games I haven’t played so I don’t know if they apply: Persona? Space Marine games?

There is. Newer EA games, anything with Epic Online Services (but especially with a login), etc. They get negative reviews fairly consistently.

Some older games get overlooked, but even then adding in a third party software (not even necessarily needing an account) often lowers a game to a mixed rating on Steam for recent reviews.

Three games came to mind just now, for slightly different reasons.

Similarly to others, just for feeling good: Earth Defense Force (whichever release, really). While it’s great to have a challenge in the missions, getting through the game, finding a good mission to farm weapons on, then using those fun weapons to destroy horses of insects and aliens is just so fun. And some missions can feel a bit BS with the weapons you might have available normally.

I would also actually say Baldur’s Gate 3. I know a lot of people enjoy the tactical side of things, but my opinion is that the DnD 5e ruleset kinda just sucks for a video game. I play it as a TTRPG, it’s fine. But I found rolling badly in something my character’s meant to be good at just so frustrating. This let me actually explore the story and world my own way, which was way more fun to me than restarting combat because I got unlucky.

That one might be controversial, but I was also speed running completion because I wanted to know conclude the story and see the world, but something about the game just didn’t click for me.

And finally, because I think it’s a fantastic game that deserves attention (with the best soundtrack I’ve heard in a while): Rabbit and Steel. It’s a brutally hard roguelike bullet hell that’s based on dungeon raid boss mechanics from FFXIV (which I haven’t played, but that’s what everyone says). The difficulty will make you want to not play it, and for me stuff only really clicked once I unlocked my penultimate class. I can now heat Hard fairly consistently, but it has taken a lot of runs to get there. No shame in admitting that those started from Cute and Normal and involved me grinding out all the unlocks by charging through Cute difficulty.

So really, the summary of this far too long reply is: just lower the difficulty when it’s frustrating or keeping you too much from getting to the fun stuff. You can always try again on a higher difficulty later.

Just to add some even longer time goals to the other replies: you could get all achievements for games that have them. Though some of those, like the ones for Civ 6, are excessive. It could give you ideas or shorter term goals to work towards, then you can decide if you’ve had enough at any point before 100% if things get too BS.

A survival horror about dinosaurs can’t exist because an action game that includes fantasy dinosaur-like creatures does?

That sounds like saying you wouldn’t have space for Resident Evil because of Fallout, and those arguably have more overlap than Dino Crisis and Monster Hunter in their settings.

I mean I could be wrong, I haven’t played Dino Crisis (though I intend to at some point), but from what I know and have heard it’s not that close to Monster Hunter. People have been looking for AAA Dino horror-type stuff for ages. They wouldn’t bring up Dino Crisis instead of Monster Hunter in those discussions if they filled the same niche.

The moral low ground? Willingness to pay for exclusivity, allowing crypto games, that sort of stuff?

People opening it once a week sometimes to get a free game?

Yeah, I don’t see what Randy is on about, but that guy says a lot of bullshit.

So they just compared averages/peaks and said “it’s just your perception being used to too hot weather, it’s not unusually cold”.

Fair, but that feels very superficial. Was the temperature variation higher than usual? More/less rainfall or humidity?

This is not to say our perception isn’t warped by climate change, but climate change isn’t just higher temperatures. Normal weather patterns changing, more extremes, etc.

I don’t have the time or will to check on that, but I just feel making a 3 paragraph article on a complicated phenomenon as weather and climate is just a bit lacking.

Jesus fucking Christ people. Yes, this is an unfortunate decision from Switzerland. You dislike it, fair. Calling the entire country and/or everyone who lives there monsters, a disease, etc though is insane.

Can we maybe not use fascist rhetorics like blanket demonising and dehumanising statements about entities we don’t like?

I’ll just add that Fidesz (the right wing governing party) started out centrist in 1990. In 2010 they’d moved towards the right, but in a lot people’s minds they were one of the big, reasonable parties since the end of Soviet control. And also just in general “the opposition”.

The social democratic governing party also was inept and admitted as such (see Őszöd sleech).

So what happened was the left side of the spectrum lost all support, and what in many people’s minds was the centrist or centre-right opposition picked it all up. Just over half the votes gave them a supermajority and from that point they gradually attained complete control over all institutions as a result.

I think the main issue I have, and likely many others too, is how strongly it is phrased. If he thinks he’ll die in the next 5 or 10 years… fine, I guess? But that’s unlikely, and with how things have shifted just in the past 25 years, making a statement like this seems arrogant.

Is that overanalysing a one line answer to a question? Probably, but that’s what a politician gets and the effect of modern media.

Not to mention how the population and especially Labour supporters have turned pro-EU so he’ll likely alienate that part of his base. Strong stances are seen as better, but I really feel sometimes he should take a softer approach.

Can’t say much about the game/DLC personally as I haven’t played it yet, but what you’re looking at seems the be the premium bundle, which is a separate listing. The normal DLC listing is at 63%, mixed.

A common negative review complaint also seems to be performance issues, so it’s not really just the difficulty.

Man, Veilguard is being covered a lot.

Honestly, this sounds potentially good or even great.

Two things though:

• They should have shown it in the gameplay trailer, instead of making claims in articles.
• Not in a mainline Dragon Age game.

Maybe it could’ve been a good combat-focused fantasy game with linear missions instead of being forced to include some lame dialogue wheel and pretending it’ll appeal to Dragon Age fans.

My impression from the trailer was that the combat lacks any weight. The player character floated all over, the attacks looked like they didn’t even make contact, and the enemies seemed to be on the spongy side. That makes it look and feel bland. If that is the case the reaction won’t be great even from players who like action games.

And yeah, I think making this the first Dragon Age game after so long is a mistake. People will expect a game that follows on with same or similar gameplay. This feels like a spin-off game. That’s not inherently bad, but you do want mainline games to also release to keep the main fan base happy. Right now it’ll just be judged compared to mainline expectations and will obviously not meet most of those.

So I guess Kingdoms of Amalur-style combat but it doesn’t look fun or challenging. Story seems like it apparently jumps off of Inquisition which is fair but I could never be bothered to really play or care for that much.

How they got to this from “serious dark fantasy RPG” I don’t know. I can see the obvious Mass Effect influences, but other than the cutscene conversations it feels weaker than even Andromeda.

I agree. I was so convinced it’s a hero shooter/MOBA/whatever that I checked the description and was shocked it said single player RPG. Hell, I was surprised when it revealed there is a player character.

They 100% don’t seem to realise what people liked about the games.

See the other reply about why the EU can’t act. I’d just like to add context on the “why were they let in” front.

Hungary joined the EU in 2004. The country was more democratic back then. There were even some hopes of joining the Euro zone. Then the government of the time cocked up (basically their words), and Fidesz/Orbán, who were part of the anti-communist wave in 1989, gained a supermajority in 2010 and gradually rewrote the constitution and electoral system. Slowly eroded all the systems, took control of all the media, etc.

Not sure when they became Russia-friendly/controlled, but Hungary has been less democratic since 2010 and that’s where the problems stem from. I genuinely wonder how much of it all was a Russian plot from the start and how much was opportunistic.

In places the article seems to imply they hadn’t noticed Hungary was a problem before. It has been, for years, and not just in relation to Ukraine.

Openly buddying up with Russia isn’t exactly new and should have raised red flags. Same with open hostility towards the EU. You can also add China there now too, so it’s not like the problem is just Russia.

Sadly, I don’t see things changing internally. People who support the opposition in Hungary are disillusioned and many of those who could have left. Most, if not all by now, media is owned by either the governing party or affiliates. The electoral system disproportionally rewards whoever gets a plurality, which will be Fidesz with the previous two points.

This has been developing for over a decade. Suggestions that this is something that is only now a problem shouldn’t exist.

Also FFS, Russia has been managing to either control people in power all over the world (see: USA) or put their own people in power. Treat this as proper foreign action.

Ok, I might be misunderstanding here, but since committing changes is allowed for everyone, doesn’t this mean fixing bugs is something you could do? You’d just be stuck with all the other rights as well until someone else makes a change.

Man who publicly restricts his freedom has his freedom publicly restricted.

On a more serious note though: why is sharing his name and face necessary or even allowed? Seems like it’ll result in consequences greater than what the court has deemed appropriate to dole out.