SolOrion

On this topic, I've got a GoG key for Dishonored: Definitive Edition if anyone wants it. It's a great game.

I haven't gotten that far into the game, but I can't imagine how awful that would be with a badly built character if it was a slog with a good one. If it wasn't such a time investment, I'd consider building an intentionally awful party and see how brutal it was lol.

not properly balanced

IME, that's just the dangers of running Pathfinder. There can be such a disparity between a well built character and someone just going through character creation picking random stuff that it's hard to balance for both possibilities. As a DM, I've always kinda played it by ear and tried to have some way to scale the difficulty on the fly built into as many encounters as I can.

That's fair- I'm not trying to say the game is for everyone. I've just never understood the people that seem to ruin the game for themselves by trying to be efficient to the point of making the game stressful.

Also, I definitely feel the slow walking speed sometimes. I absolutely hate having to go talk to Clint before you get the minecarts going cuz it feels like it takes forever to walk all the way across town.

You can respect a game and not enjoy it.

Yes! I really want this to be more widely accepted. There are games that I absolutely hate playing, but I still respect a lot and view as excellent games. Just not a game for me.

That's the thing: You don't have to micromanage either, really. The only actual timer in the daily one. Other than making it to your bed in time, you're not on any other kind of time crunch on a macro scale. You don't need to make the most of every day. Waste those fuckers. Wake up, water your crops, go back to bed.

The only event that doesn't repeat, afaik, is Grandpa's ghost judging you at the end of year 3, and honestly you might be able to repeat that too somehow. Otherwise, pretty much every time triggered event will just happen again next year.

The way the game is structured seems to inspire a need to be extremely efficient with their time in people. Never wasting time or energy.

I feel like I took the direct opposite route and promptly didn't care even slightly. I regularly just water crops and skip days cuz I wanna sell them or get started making wine out of them or whatever else.

I deeply dislike Nintendo.

Some of them are related. Some of them aren't.

Black Ops and Modern Warfare are generally two separate series- the Modern Warfare games are all related.

Black Ops is a lot more complicated. Black Ops 2 is a direct sequel to Black Ops 1. Technically Black Ops 1 is sort of a sequel to World At War, as well. They share a major character, but it's kind of a minor thing and you won't be missing a ton.

Black Ops 3 has basically nothing to do with the rest- it takes place in 2065 and basically the only thing that links it to the previous games is a throwaway line related to a previous villain and some text logs.

Black Ops 4 didn't have a singleplayer campaign.

Black Ops 5 is Black Ops: Cold War, it is related to 1 & 2 but it's less of a direct continuation and more just the same characters are involved iirc.

Black Ops 6 follows up Cold War, but again is just the same characters.

Personally, I'd suggest doing World At War, Black Ops 1, Black Ops 2, Cold War, and then Black Ops 6 for the 'full experience.' If you wanna circle back around and do Black Ops 3, you can do that pretty much whenever because as I said it's unrelated. You can drop World At War if it doesn't interest you without any real issues. As I said, it just sets up a single character. Dropping any of the others you might actually be confused on plot and characters at points, idk.

Modern Warfare is a lot simpler. Just do them in order.

If you mean singleplayer campaigns: as far back as you can stomach the graphics of.

If you actually want good campaigns, Black Ops 1 is fuckin legendary. World At War was also great. As is Modern Warfare (2007) and Modern Warfare 2(2009). Modern Warfare 3 (2011) was also good. Black Ops 2 was good. I wouldn't bother with any further Black Ops games- one of them doesn't even have a campaign iirc.

For the much much newer titles, Modern Warfare (2019) was good. Modern Warfare (2022) was also solid. Modern Warfare 3 is 'last years title' being referred to in the OP.

None of these are narrative masterpieces exactly- the closest is probably the Black Ops games. With that said, they're very much 'action movie' videogames. Tons of crazy set pieces, unique segments, and then the cutscenes that usually tie together a reasonable enough plot to be interesting.

If you mean multiplayer: honestly just jump into Black Ops 6. None of the older titles are likely to be a great experience at this point. Or just spend your time on a better game lol

Narrative-driven games give players the illusion of choice.

What do you mean by this? There's a finite amount of possibilities coded into the game? You only get (number) of possible choices so choice is an illusion?

idk it certainly feels weird to me that videogames- even ones I don't personally enjoy- are viewed as relevant enough to get this kind of political attention.

Realistically, if I take a step back from it I'm just stuck in 2008, but.. yeah.

Besides, weird isn't necessarily a requirement here. Just 'it looks like satire but isn't'.

Also: you have excellent taste in videogames. Noita is great.

I didn't see much of it except for one burst where Hexbear was getting rowdy with my instance- that was.. annoying.

There was some drama I don't recall the specifics of but it apparently angered Hexbear enough that I started seeing a lot of them in basically every comment section.