June 2023 Random Game Thoughts Thread

[ZedClampet]

I'm getting a bit tired of my Minecraft game. I've been thinking about how to automate the rest of my set up, but I don't feel like actually doing the work. Especially since I've also just been tired in general. But I also don't really have any other goals I want to accomplish in Minecraft.

So I decided to play something else today. The recent Starfield news has gotten me in the mood for a Bethesda game, so I decided to check if I could play Fallout 4, which I haven't played yet. Turns out my friend who's sharing his Steam library with me does own it, so I installed it, then researched mods for about half an hour and downloaded about a dozen of them.

Only once I got all the mods properly sorted out did I discover that some of them depend on the DLC and that my friend apparently never bothered to get those. I didn't have the energy to figure out the mods again and I'd rather just play the game with all the content included anyway, so I just uninstalled everything again.

Haha I posted about this problem of the mods needing the DLC a couple of weeks ago. I decided to wait until the Summer Sale and see if I could get the DLC cheap. Bethesda is known for decent discounts during the big sale, maybe you can get the complete version (GOTY) for cheap.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'm very familiar with this feeling. My saving grace is that I don't own most of the games that sound interesting when other people talk about them and I don't have the disposable income to buy just anything that sounds interesting.

15 or even 25 year old me would struggle to comprehend having around 350 games available to play all at once. I used to trade most stuff in and only had 10 games at a time on the shelf, if that. So usually I'll hear a game I own mentioned somewhere and get a bit excited to play it, then its 2 days later when I get another hour and I've heard/read about something else.

 

[neogunhero]

Ahh yes, the modern day struggle of owning 1000+ games but having nothing to play. I blame Humble Bundle and similar bundle sites for my Steam library reaching nearly 1100 games. Most games I have on my library are either games I will never have interest in playing or something that will forever be in my backlog. I’ve since moved to subscription services. Ubisoft+ is great every once in a while when I have a hankering for one of their games but don’t want to spend $60 to get the full editions.

After about 20 hours of DayZ in the past two weeks I’m pretty burnt out. Played on a PVE only server running pure vanilla and I’ve done just about everything I can besides build a full base. I’m so geared out that I’ll most likely never run out of ammo as long as I keep searching for more, and my main campsite is at a pond in a forest so I can always drink from that and catch fish to eat, so I will never die of hunger or thirst. I’ve got so much medicine I could run my own pharmacy. So at this point I think I’ll quit, either try a modded server which is hard for me to find one I really like, or find a new game altogether.

Found out I had enough Microsoft Points to get a free month of Game Pass, so I have been playing some Gears of War 5 and Forza Horizon 5. Plus, my girlfriend got me a new Xbox Series X controller, the Starfield Limited Edition one, and I need some games to play using it, so naturally Game Pass was a good fit to test it out. The controller feels amazing and is definitely an upgrade from the old Xbox One controller. Plus the Starfield one has rubber grips all the way around.

 

[Zloth]

15 or even 25 year old me would struggle to comprehend having around 350 games available to play all at once.

I still don't! I've only got about 200 after 18 years on Steam.

What would really freak old-me out is that I've got about a dozen installed all at the same time. Though 15-year-old-me was playing games off floppy disks, and wouldn't know what 'installed' was supposed to mean in the first place.

 

[ZedClampet]

I still don't! I've only got about 200 after 18 years on Steam.

What would really freak old-me out is that I've got about a dozen installed all at the same time.

Just counted and my laptop has 192 Steam games installed, plus maybe 4 or 5 from Epic, 9 from Game Pass and 3 on EA.

 

[Zloth]

200 games INSTALLED!? How?? Even for indie games, that's a ton of space!

 

[Brian Boru]

I've only got about 200 after 18 years on Steam

N00b

I should probably get a spreadsheet going—after one big setup, it would be easy to maintain

That's from Zed's recent Launchers/Stores thread, so I went ahead and tackled it. I didn't expect to succeed, but it only took ~3 hours to get it all—so that's my Dad's Day pressie to myself

Store	Games
BigFish	503​
EA	35​
Epic	409​
GOG	968​
Steam	1,014​
Ubi	33​
Total	2,962​

There's some dross in Steam and maybe GOG, eg DLCs, so actual games is prob nearer 2,500—gradual cleanup as I use the list. All I have is Game Title and Store name, nothing else. I'll add a Status column to fill over time with Replay, Keep, Hide etc.

Details of getting Libraries into Excel
[similar may work in Google sheets, dunno]

Steam		https://store.steampowered.com/account/licenses/
		Drag & Copy page, Paste no formatting
Epic		https://www.epicgames.com/account/transactions
		Keep clicking 'Show More' at bottom, then Copy it all and Paste
GOG		https://www.gog.com/en/account
		Save each webpage as PDF, Import from TXT into XL
BigFish		Game mgr Purchase History
		Screenshot each screen, Paste in OneNote
		Copy Text from Picture, Paste into XL
EA		Same as BigFish
Ubi		Same as BigFish

Epic was a slight pain with the 'Keep clicking', but BigFish was the killer, took maybe an hour —the BF website purchase history lists only Orders, not Products, so I had to use the client.

Still, mission accomplished, joy in the tent

 

[ZedClampet]

200 games INSTALLED!? How?? Even for indie games, that's a ton of space!

I have 6 TB of storage and plenty of space left over. I have thousands of mods, I have all my game dev tools on there, too, including two versions of Unreal. I've got OpenOffice, three video players, at least a couple of video recorders, Nvidia's modelling AI, several Corel art programs, lots of pictures, some videos, etc. I have a metric ton of save files plus backups, too, and Total War dev kits. I could go on.

 

[Pifanjr]

15 or even 25 year old me would struggle to comprehend having around 350 games available to play all at once. I used to trade most stuff in and only had 10 games at a time on the shelf, if that. So usually I'll hear a game I own mentioned somewhere and get a bit excited to play it, then its 2 days later when I get another hour and I've heard/read about something else.

I'm only 30, so when I was 15 there were already tons of free flash games available online. I never owned a lot of physical games and I only have 167 game entries on Steam, including DLCs.

 

[ZedClampet]

Maybe I should write a "Best Co-op Games" post. That's something that comes up often, and I dare say few people on this planet have played as many co-op games as I have. I've played hundreds. Most people haven't played hundreds of games, period.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I still don't! I've only got about 200 after 18 years on Steam.

What would really freak old-me out is that I've got about a dozen installed all at the same time. Though 15-year-old-me was playing games off floppy disks, and wouldn't know what 'installed' was supposed to mean in the first place.

Yea I have 44 installed according to GOG Galaxy, Ideally I'd have everything I own installed, quite often I get the urge to play something and the multi hour download scuppers it. My floppy disc gaming time was mostly on an Atari ST, and most of those were on 2-3 discs maximum. My first PC had a quad speed CD ROM drive, fancy.

I'm only 30, so when I was 15 there were already tons of free flash games available online. I never owned a lot of physical games and I only have 167 game entries on Steam, including DLCs.

Aside from an old MMO called Legend of Mir 2 which would happily run on a 33k6 modem and a potato, all my games came in boxes until 2012. I only changed to digital because I bought Far Cry 3 and Metro 2033 to play on my new PC and one of the install disks was a downloader for the digital version of the game and the other was actually just a Steam code in the box.

I got Half Life 2 whenever it came out, and I was one of those who were really annoyed I had to install some stupid third party launcher to play the games instead of just launching from desktop icons like I'd always done. Guess things change, its way better to use a launcher when you have so many games anyway.

 

[Pifanjr]

Guess things change, its way better to use a launcher when you have so many games anyway.

Agreed. I wouldn't want to find space for ~200 physical games, let alone 2000. Even if I had the space to store them, there's no way I could keep them all organised.

 

[DXCHASE]

Has anyone had this problem since Steams new UI came out?

So if i am watching a video on a games page, or its playing a livestream and i decide to leave and close the steam app out, it keeps playing in the background. Even if i pause anything playing and hit the back arrow to get out of the page, it starts up again? So then i have to completely exit steam to stop it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Has anyone had this problem since Steams new UI came out?

So if i am watching a video on a games page, or its playing a livestream and i decide to leave and close the steam app out, it keeps playing in the background. Even if i pause anything playing and hit the back arrow to get out of the page, it starts up again? So then i have to completely exit steam to stop it.

Seems to be working OK for me, I just tested with a live stream and pausing the video works OK, and hitting back arrow in Steam closes the stream.

Agreed. I wouldn't want to find space for ~200 physical games, let alone 2000. Even if I had the space to store them, there's no way I could keep them all organised.

I kind of miss physical boxes and media, but its all nostalgia and not practical.

 

[Johnway]

I kind of miss physical boxes and media, but its all nostalgia and not practical.

i think thats the issue. if they were physical copies of games i would be seriously concerned for all the unplayed games (so 300+) taking up space. but since its all digital its a lot easier to ignore or oversee. Plus with humblebundles realeasing lots of games for a decent price its easier to say yes. back in the day your options were like the budget labels like Soldout, sierra collection, GOTY editions etc. But they never were that frequently and quite selective. through in supply/demand issues and it made things harder to acquire for your gaming collection.

That said, being from a poor family, me and my brothers had to democratically decide which game we were going to get. We would probably play at tops4-5 games a year and usually nothing full price so £20 tops. obviously if it was part of a bundle 3 for 20 that was ok, but again, we had to "democratically" (majority rules) and decide.

As i got older with my disposal income and ebay and flash sales, screw moderation, i could buy the games i wanted for a knock down price compared to RRP.

Atm i only have 4 games installed (minecraft, chivalry 2, Path of exile and Anno 1404)buy t i do have a load of Roms and Doom wads on my pc so you could argue i have a lot more. I play one or 2 at a time so that they get my full attention and ensure i finish them. it can be boring at times, but as long as i pick/buy games i want or have a high score i should be fine.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

i think thats the issue. if they were physical copies of games i would be seriously concerned for all the unplayed games (so 300+) taking up space. but since its all digital its a lot easier to ignore or oversee. Plus with humblebundles realeasing lots of games for a decent price its easier to say yes. back in the day your options were like the budget labels like Soldout, sierra collection, GOTY editions etc. But they never were that frequently and quite selective. through in supply/demand issues and it made things harder to acquire for your gaming collection.

That said, being from a poor family, me and my brothers had to democratically decide which game we were going to get. We would probably play at tops4-5 games a year and usually nothing full price so £20 tops. obviously if it was part of a bundle 3 for 20 that was ok, but again, we had to "democratically" (majority rules) and decide.

As i got older with my disposal income and ebay and flash sales, screw moderation, i could buy the games i wanted for a knock down price compared to RRP.

Atm i only have 4 games installed (minecraft, chivalry 2, Path of exile and Anno 1404)buy t i do have a load of Roms and Doom wads on my pc so you could argue i have a lot more. I play one or 2 at a time so that they get my full attention and ensure i finish them. it can be boring at times, but as long as i pick/buy games i want or have a high score i should be fine.

Yea theres no way pre and early teen me was getting the 30 quid games, it was the 7.99 specials in the small cardboard boxes. Obvs used to be able to borrow and lend from friends as well which was great. Unless you had an Atari ST and no one else did of course

Later on I used to trade in until digital launchers and other drm killed it all completely.

No complaints, digital sales are way cheaper and theres a million more games then they ever got in a Gamestop or Electronics Boutique at a time.

 

[MysticalChaos]

Games are taking more and more space these days lol. Funny that even 1TB is sometimes not enough if you have a bunch of newer games

 

[ZedClampet]

Agreed. I wouldn't want to find space for ~200 physical games, let alone 2000. Even if I had the space to store them, there's no way I could keep them all organised.

Would make for some cool bookcases. I used to have hundreds of books, but when we gave each of the kids their own room, I donated them all except for a few of my favorites I wanted the kids to read or thought I might reread. I never had that many games until everything went digital. If my wife could see a physical representation of my collection, I might end up with broken bones.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played some more Outlast Trials. Did the second mission and two challenges, but we failed one of the challenges and no one wants to try it again because someone has to carry a gas canister the whole time, which is not fun. The problem is that we aren't stealthy. We're fast. But you can't be fast carrying the gas can.

*************

Playing a co-op campaign in Total War Shogun 2. I decided early I wasn't going to declare war on anyone else, that I was going to wait for them to declare war on me instead, but no one has declared war. I'm just hanging out at turn 50 doing research and building out my territory.

 

[DXCHASE]

Games are taking more and more space these days lol. Funny that even 1TB is sometimes not enough if you have a bunch of newer games

Starfield is going to be what? 125 gb? Yea games are def. getting too big, good thing though storage is cheap lol. I have 2 tb on my pc and im pretty much maxed out give or take 100gb but i have 1 gig internet so i dont really mind having to re-install games.

 

[ZedClampet]

Played the Lies of P demo. Died to the first boss/mini-boss (not sure what to call him). This was mostly because I had been getting used to the keyboard/mouse controls on the way there and had used up my health. Went back and still just barely beat him. Keyboard and mouse are even worse to use in this than in Dark Souls (based on my faulty memory), so I will try the controller if I go back to it. Things like rolling in different directions and backwards will just be a lot better with controller. Camera will be worse for me, but that's the trade-off.

I'm not going to buy the game, though. I still haven't gotten Elden Ring, which refuses to go on sale. Maybe I'll just get whichever one goes on deep discount first. But I kind of wanted Elden Ring for the co-op, which would be a blast.

 

[MysticalChaos]

I'm hyped for Starfield. One of my friends who has only played one game for the past ten years say this is the one that will finally break his streak

 

[Zloth]

Unless you had an Atari ST and no one else did of course

I did!! In fact, I think it's still down in the basement...

 

[neogunhero]

I'm hyped for Starfield. One of my friends who has only played one game for the past ten years say this is the one that will finally break his streak

In this day and age of games releasing broken and get better through patches, I’m skeptical, but at the same time very excited for the next huge Bethesda RPG. I’m beyond excited that it will be on Game Pass day 1 and that I don’t have to spend $70 on it just yet.

 

[Brian Boru]

Steams new UI … watching a video on a games page

Huh, I just tried a couple of games—Elden Ring and Armored Core Vi Fires Of Rubicon—and the videos wouldn't play, just a blank black view. So there's some problem they're working on.

its way better to use a launcher when you have so many games

Totally disagree
You know I have lots of games, and have been messing with launchers for years, and I wouldn't dream of using any other method than desktop icons to launch them—one click, which then fires up whichever launcher is required and launches the game.

That's so much faster than recalling which launcher has a particular game—or waiting for Galaxy's slow start… eh, shouldn't a launcher, you know, launch quickly?—firing that up, and then hunting for the game to click on.

It's also so much easier to organize via icons if you use Stardock's Fences—you can have hundreds on desktop without much screen used, all as organized as you want, instantly reorganizable via drag n drop. I keep an 'In Play' fence visible for instant access to the games currently of interest, and keep all the other fences 'rolled up' like the 'Gaming' one below—just mouseover to see what's in it.

I understand that as a true RPGer you love the pain of using launchers, but if you ever get a hanker to forsake the dark sou side, icons ftw!