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Comment by p1necone | Hacker News Reader

I feel like focusing on the classic games of the past so heavily like this means missing out on so many great newer games. Sometimes it pays to take off the nostalgia goggles and try out some newer offerings too.

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Depends.

I have tried some of newer games but often were very disappointed.

I have tried to play what Bethesda made as 'Fallout 3' but I really do not like it. Its just not Fallout and they should have chosen different name. I really like Fallout 1 and 2. I always disliked Fallout Tactics for what they have done to battle mechanics in 'turn based' mode (they broken it generally) but recently I even got to finish it and even started to like it a little, but not to the point to play it again.

I have similar thoughts with Heroes of Might and Magic III (especially with new Horn of the Abyss addon). I have tried Heroes IV and Heroes V but VERY disliked them. I still like Heroes IV music a lot but the mechanics of play are terrible.

From more modern games I really enjoyed playing Shadowrun Returns series.

I also plan to play these some day (in no particular order): - Art of Rally (as Colin McRae Rally 2.0 replacement) - Mewnbase - Wasteland 2 - Wasteland 3 - Dreamscaper - Pillars of Eternity (all of them I and II) - Expeditions: Viking - Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Disco Elysium - Into the Breach - Xenonauts - Opus Magnum - Metro Exodus - Invisible Inc.

Regards.

Pillars of Eternity is fantastic - I'd also recommend Divinity Original Sin in a similar "spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate" tone (the same developers are actually working on Baldurs Gate 3, although I would say Pillars felt more like a pseudo sequel than Divinity does). I haven't played Wasteland 2/3 but according to others they are worthy successors to Fallout 1/2 (and the same guy wrote the soundtrack!)

You should check out Dirt Rally 1 and 2 (not Dirt 1 and 2, they're different) if you liked the older Colin McCrae Rally games but hated the transformation into Monster Energy sponsored arcade racers when they dropped the Colin McCrae branding - they're a return back to the semi realistic simcade style and are actually really good.

I also highly recommend everything made by Zachtronics games (the dev of Opus Magnum) - also try Shenzhen IO if you want to go further into the "it's just programming with more concrete goals" style of puzzle game, or Infinifactory if you want something that still has the same design optimization feel but feels a bit less like your day job.

I don't know if you ever played the Age of Wonders series back in the day, but I recommend those as something along the lines of HOMM, for the more recent titles Age of Wonders 3 seems to be well received, but the sci fi spinoff Planetfall has less positive reception.

I also don't know if you were ever in to business sim games, but Cities Skylines, Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster are all worthy successors to Sim City, Zoo Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon respectively. Transport Fever is also a good Railroad Tycoon esque game, although if you were heavily into the latter I don't know if it will quite feel the same.

I find this third party steam search tool very useful for finding games: https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam/store/ - type in a mix of genre tags you're interested in, specify > about 50 user reviews, sort by user rating. If the results look a bit too low budget to you bump the minimum user rating.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot Factorio. Although maybe stay away from that one if you value your free time... it might suck you in hard.

Hi and thanks for very in depth comment and all these recommendations.

I have seen Dirt Rally 1/2 gameplay on YouTube and I really liked it. Unfortunately it will probably not run on FreeBSD ... and even if then my graphics card would not like it that much :)

I also read some good things about Divinity Original Sin, thanks for adding another small part to making me finally play this game sometime.

I will check other Zachtronics games as per your recommendation.

I played Age of Wonders about 17-18 years ago and I liked some of their concepts, I also liked Disciples 1 and 2 games. Also quite similar to Heroes of Might and Magic.

From the 'Tycoons' I played Transport Tycoon and Airline Tycoon. Also liked the first Theme Part and Theme Hospital.

Also first Portal was really nice.

Regards.

Just an addendum - when I said Railroad Tycoon I meant Transport Tycoon - I was getting the two mixed up.

And no problem :)

Thanks :)

From my more up to date gamers at work, new games sound full of dark patterns.

There's a handful of big game publishers (EA and Activision mostly) that put out big AAA games full of microtransaction nonsense. But after you subtract those the market of quality games without those dark patterns is still massively bigger than it ever has been in the past.

(I am talking solely of the PC market of course. Mobile games have way more widespread crap, and all the app stores have discoverability issues that result in all the good games basically being impossible to find unless you find out about them from somewhere else (yes there are actually good, non microtransaction based mobile games too)).

Many are, and many aren't. Sadly, you can't just pick something up and expect not to be exploited for it

Is there a good website or somebody who logs this stuff?

https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam/store/

I linked this steam search tool in another reply - I like to specify a minimum number of user reviews and sort by user review score after adding some genre tags I'm interested in. I find the steam community doesn't look particularly favourably on microtransaction/loot box gambling heavy games (at least ones where the microtransactions make you more powerful, as opposed to just being extra single player content a la expansion packs or whatever.) So generally you end up with some good recommendations.

Setting the minimum user review score higher or lower tends to filter out/let in lower budget/more niche indie titles depending on your preferences.

Also just avoiding the major AAA publishers is a good strategy - EA and Activision are by far the worst. I don't really want to say to stay away from Ubisoft because they put out some great games (check out the Anno series) and almost always don't employ the same tactics as EA and Activision, just be aware that some of the most recent Assassins Creed games do have some weird microtransaction stuff, although you can completely ignore it and still see all the content.

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