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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

That's a common meme, but in reality there are more solid single player games out and coming out than you can play unless you play games full time. Just google lists of recent "best single-player games" -- you've really played all of those? Not to mention the current boom of indie games, almost all of them single player. You don't need to be a big studio anymore to get a game on a console, it's truly amazing.

You probably just don't follow gaming like you used to as a kid so assume it has gone to shit just because multiplayer games create the biggest waves. Or maybe you just don't really care for gaming like you used to.

Kinda like when people assume there's no good music during the hey day of dubstep. Or when people lament there's nothing to watch just because they only watch The Office and never branch out.

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Yup. I just finished putting 100 hours into Dark Souls 3. Anyone who says there aren't any quality single-player games anymore just isn't paying attention; video games are better than they've ever been. Just to list a few great single-player games I've enjoyed over the past couple of years:

* XCOM: Enemy Within

* SOMA

* MGS V: The Phantom Pain

* Dark Souls 1 & 3

* Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

* DOOM (2016)

* Nier: Automata

* Hyper Light Drifter

* Hollow Knight

* The Talos Principle

* The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

* Wolfenstein: The New Order

* Furi

* Katana Zero

* Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Plus many more; I put significantly more hours into video games than many people (probably to the detriment of my career, lol) and I am barely scratching the surface of what's out there. Times are good for entertainment!

I’m sort of the opposite of the poster, as I look for mostly multiplayer games. This month alone you could have gotten Gears of War: Tactics and Half Life: Alyx which are strictly single player. I really thought Jedi Fallen Order had multiplayer, but that is also single player. Cyberpunk looks like another amazing single player game coming out this year.

It’s very easy to say ‘music is just not the same as the music back in the day’, which is never true. Just catch up, stop with the developer only MacBooks and get an powerful gaming laptop (similar prices for some odd reason even though the specs are better) or console, and you’ll at least now have a chance to dip your toes back in.

> video games are better than they've ever been.

They've never been more accessible and cheaper, either. Anyone else remember seeing SNES cartridge costs at launch?

Up to $70 in 1994

https://imgur.com/r/snes/mMRJz

Man, local markup must have been pretty insane. I remember my parents picking up Link to the Past from Pamida for $90 USD in the great plains.

Or, I'd venture, more diverse.

> Yup. I just finished putting 100 hours into Dark Souls 3. Anyone who says there aren't any quality single-player games anymore just isn't paying attention

The Dark/Demon Souls franchise is the undisputed king of forced online participation. MGS V has the same forced-online elements in the form of bases. You are literally penalized in both games for attempting to play entirely single-player.

I haven't played enough of the other examples to comment.

People famously play those games without an ethernet cable attached simply to play with some kind of similarity to a true single-player game -- I think that points to something being different between today's single-player games and yesterday's.

> The Dark/Demon Souls franchise is the undisputed king of forced online participation. MGS V has the same forced-online elements in the form of bases. You are literally penalized in both games for attempting to play entirely single-player.

I played both Dark Souls 3 and MGS V to completion and never once engaged in multiplayer, except for that one time in DS3 where you have to get killed by a player if I recall?

The bases in MGS V were completely optional to the main story line. I put 100+ hours into the game without engaging once in those.

I think referring to either game as having "forced online participation" is a huge stretch.

You have explicit offline modes in Soulsborne. What are you talking about? There is nothing forced about the online modes of Soulsborne games.

To add my top 3 single player games of the last 5 years:

- Stardew Valley

- The Witness

- Untitled Goose Game

The Witness is a masterpiece. It blew me away when I played it the first time (I just started another playthrough of it last night too). Although now I have since played The Outer Wilds, and I think it does something that feels similar to The Witness, but executed it a little better, despite being a different game. The world building is a lot stronger in The Outer Wilds, and it's more of a technical achievement, and it a lot more tense and dangerous.

Although I do think Jonathon Blow successfully dug into and found just about every single possible interesting puzzle you can make with moving from a dot and drawing a line through a maze to the end, including some really crazy things that most people wouldn't think of and wouldn't be possible if he didn't create a giant world for those puzzles to live in.

> Stardew Valley

Has now multiplayer (CoOp based).

So not useful to meat new people but can be used as a platform to hang out with outer people you already know over the net.

> Dark Souls 1 & 3

sigh of one of the 5 people that liked II

Especially as Dark Souls 2 actually has the highest rating on metacritic from the trilogy haha.

Ahaha. I've just heard II has a lot of ganks and not many lore connections.

I just don't care for grindfests like you do.

Prey - Doom 2016 - Subnautica - Tacoma - Zelda Breath of the Wild - Mario Odyssey - Cities: Skylines - Oxygen Not Included

All very different games, all very much single player focused (Doom is a very complete without ever going online). Tons more out there for every play style and taste. Steam will drown you in games if you wish.

Edit: notice that this list spans many years, with a single player game there is no need to rush and play it the day it drops. There is a huge backlog of games to tap into.

Subnautica was so good. Pop in and bugs aside, that was just the right balance of survival, crafting, exploration, narrative without forcing it on you. Top10 ever.

I'm excited for Below Zero. Bought EA Subnautica just to give Unknown Worlds money (loved their work on Natural Selection 2), and wow, turns out to be one of the best gaming experiences I've had in the last 5 years.

I bought early access subnautica too, a little too early if fact. Had to restart 5 times or so over months before I could make it to the end. So I’ll wait a little longer for Below Zero, but it’ll be worth it.

It was intersecting to watch their progress on their public Trello board as well. They used it pretty well.

Yea this. There are more excellent single player games today than there is time to play. Just my PS4 backlog alone is hundreds of hours of gameplay that I know I will never have the time to play.

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