StaceyPowers

I’m far more interested in the quality of a game than I am in how new or old it is. When I play an older game that looks or feels dated to me, I usually research and ask around to put it in context for its time and get an understanding of how it pushed the envelope when it was released.

I cannot honestly claim to be insanely good at any video game. I am just glad I am past the days of my youth where I was insanely bad at almost every game I tried.

I have too many other responsibilities to juggle to find days where I could do this, though I imagine (with rest breaks, however) that I would if I could. The closest I have to this psychologically is when I get so into a game that I speed through my day just to get back to playing it, and when I’m not playing it, I’m thinking about it non-stop.

True, and I would add to that the fact that some of the more meaningful interactions I've had with people have been online, including in games I've played. The physical world is part of the real world, but the digital world is too.

Watching gameplay videos is another idea, although the trick is to manage to avoid spoilers along the way. I’ve also often figured out if I will like a game by reading what the developers have said about their creative process, interestingly enough.

The Last of Us is one of the most mindblowing games I have ever played, featuring both incredible stealth game play and amazing writing about wonderful characters. I also can highly recommend the Dragon Age games to you in particular, because they capture that sense of family/community which you’ve talked about getting from other games before.

While technically a drawback, I look at the feeding part more as a fun kind of challenge/mission. It’s kind of like doing the thief quests, except the thing I am stealthily steeling isn’t a candlestick, it’s blood.

It is possible to play through every quest line and thus “complete” the game, but once you complete the main quest line, the game doesn’t actually end. You can effectively play a single playthrough forever, assuming you don’t get bored with radiant quests and other somewhat repetitious activities.

I honestly have no idea why anyone is preoccupied with scores. When picking a game to play, I usually do it because I’ve seen other people talking about aspects of the game which I know will appeal to me from their description.

Thank you for the tip! I have never used an emulator before and haven’t known where to start, but now I do :)

I'd be more than happy to help @DC @The Blackangel

Eventually I will find out what you are talking about. I am still playing the original RDR, and won’t be able to play RDR2 until I have a system that can handle it (I am waiting to grab a PS5 since it should be able to play PS4 games).

This is similar to how I play in Fallout New Vegas with the hunting rifle, although I have found it works best if I have another ranged character doing the same (i.e. me and Boone both picking everyone off from a million miles away). This is pretty much what I do in Skyrim as well, but I use atronachs for this rather than followers; with followers, I still prefer them to be ranged so I don’t accidentally hack at them with my axe when I dive into the fray.

I really miss a DOS game called Heaven and Earth which was all puzzles (yes, I usually hate puzzles, but I liked that game a lot). I found a version of it once that was able to work in a version of Windows, but alas it had a virus onboard, so I haven’t tried to find a way to play it again.

It is a similar situation for me in dealing with both my anxiety and my pain and the toll that they take on me. They distract me from the things that make me anxious by giving my brain’s reward center something else to fixate on, and while they don’t distract me from my pain, gaming is one of the things I can do that I really enjoy that the pain didn’t take away from me.

Oh yeah, I have long found that line to be absolutely hilarious. It seems like you pretty much own your housecarls though since they are bound to serve you, so I guess I’d rather she complains a bit like a regular person than be totally docile.

Assuming I understand the question right, I would try to make my original characters, just so I have a reference for what they look like which I could easily show people or use when trying to draw or paint them. Alas, even with a lot of freedom in modifying appearances, I often still find it impossible to replicate any of my OCs closely.

I usually game for between 1 and 2 hours a day, depending on how late I get started and whether my pain levels force me to bed early or not.

Wow, I had no idea that in RDR 2 you can get your opponents drunk—I don’t think that’s a thing in the first game (though I haven’t tried cheating, so I don’t know what form that takes). Without cheating, I have a small net loss across many, many hands of poker, but I have yet to beat everyone at a table.

I think I am pretty mediocre at just about every type of game, but I am especially bad at puzzle games. I also am terrible at anything which requires timing and reflexes, like for example all those little manual decoding things in Mass Effect to access equipment where you have to push the buttons when they light up on your screen.

I have been playing Skyrim for several years now on a regular basis and only just got around to starting this DLC. It is a huge game with so much to explore.

I think the problem is that it forces you to melee fight, and by the time you reach your target, your health is already down significantly in some cases and you can’t drink any potions. Though I did discover a ring in Solstheim which allows your health to gradually regenerate (at the same rate it usually does in normal form, I believe) when in werewolf form.

Definitely am most excited for The Last of Us II. I adore everything about the first game—its story, the writing, the characters, the atmosphere, the gameplay—and am super stoked after watching the live presentation on the sequel the other week during State of Play.

holy crap, lol. I expected responses involving maybe up to around 5 years for some open world games or something; I totally did not expect anyone to have been struggling to beat a game for the past three decades!

I probably have the weirdest and most specific game-related activity when I am not gaming. I fell in love with art deco and art nouveau styles when playing BioShock games, so I bought a set of drafting stencils so I can try to make designs of my own (so far I am incredibly bad at it).