Follow up on What I Want From Games, with inspiration from the video The 1996 Strategy Game No One Could Play - Until Now (Wages of War)
The thing that makes or breaks a game for me is that the game assigns you a role, and gives you the means to act withing that role. I have always struggled with pinning down what unifies my favorite games, and why univerally aclaimed games (like Red Dead Redemption 2) never clicked for me.
The list of my favorite games encompasses a large amount of genres, and I have always been confused how that comes. But going down the list, from insurence inspector simulators, spreadsheet-them-ups, rallying games, grand/real-time strategy games, playing pretend soldier, sailing & traiding, the list goes on.
To further paint what I mean, I'll list some of my favorite games along with games that never clicked, and how they fit that foundation.
You play as medieval blacksmith/adventurer/soldier/bastard in medieval Czechia, and while the story is very unrealistic and bombastic from a outside view, the game manages to uphold the veneer of being a fragile, make-do knight trying to make the best of his situation. Even if your kill-count will probably reach into the hundereds by the end of the game, you still feel vulnerable in most combat, especially when outnumbered by only 1-2 enemies.
The game does an amazing job of painting your charachter, his motivations and his circumstanses, along with giving you believable means and motivations to fulfill the story. Believability does NOT mean realism however. A game may paint a reality, far from our own, but as long as the systems are designed around it and the charachters act believably within them, the game stays believeable.
You are a insurance inspector, sent to write a report on a prevously dissapeared ship which has mysteriously returned. More importantly, one of the missing survivors of this ship has sent you a book along with a magical clock which allows you to see the moment of someones death. The game tasks you with figuring out the identity and fate of every participant of this voyage, for which you will have to use various clues and deductive reasoning to figure out.
Neither your clock, book nor the fate of the Obra Dinn are realistic, but within your assigned role, you are given believable means to achieve it. All the crew members act in believable ways, even in the fantasical situations the Obra Dinn encounters. The game also does a great job at pretending that these situations are not designed to be solved. It's hard to explain, but it truly feels like the various situations were not designed with the intent to be puzzle pieces, but as authentic situations. It is first after consuming the devlogs and podcasts that I understand how much thought was put into providing the player with ample clues on the various fates of the crewmen.
It feels like I bring up this game in every post, but apperantly I have only written about it in two posts. You play as the grand admiral of one of the great powers between 1890-1970. Importantly, you are not a all powerful leader. You do have the ability to nudge politics and diplomacy, but you are still at the whims of politicians, and they can drag you into a war you are not ready for, or even drag you into a international disarmament treaty.
You are given this role of grand admiral, and you are given the means to design, produce and maintain warships. With this, you are able to achieve your ambition within your role. The game doesn't give you a clear goal, you are free to do whatever you want within these limits. Perhaps you want to use your influence (and big boats) to secure colonies for your nation, or perahaps you want to build a bulwark against your international rivals. You are sometimes given tasks by the leader of your country, which could be to procure enough capital ships to not lose face internationally, or perhaps they think you should build destroyers or submarines to not fall behind technologically, but the rest is up to you.
You are given the role of a scrappy outlaw, living on the run with a merry band of bandits. However, your means don't reflect this. I only played like 15 hours before I gave up, but I think that should be enough to say that I won't like the rest. In one scene you are robbing innocent people trying to get by, and slaughtering enough cops to empty a minor village, in the next scene you are sad about white men hunting all the buffalos. You are supposedly a impovrished band, barely getting by, but within my 15 hours I had enough money to buy literally anything, and in-charachter enough to build a huge mansion and retire.
I played as a poor bandit who is rich, who is empathic when he isn't ruthless, who is a murdering machine while he is not terrified of being caught by the pinkertons. The dissonance between fishing/hunting one moment, to robbing enough people to become a (inflation adjusted) millionare the next, while always pretending to be a scrappy anti-hero was too large for me to actually enjoy the game.
You are given the role of a disenchanted young person working in a soulless office, who has just inherited his grandpa's old farm. However, quite a small part of the game is farming and/or making farming more efficient. The game is more focused on splunking, foraging, finding full sets of fruits/fish/plants/etc for magic fairies to restore a community center.
While not as egregious as RDR 2, I felt like my given role (disenchanted man in search for calmness in the country), and the role assigned by my means (adventuring do-it-all) were too far apart. Nothing does technically not stop you from just staying at the farm and farming, but you are actively encouraged not to do that. The game really want's you to partake in the community events, procure resources in the mine, make the forest sprites happy, etc.
I finally finished playing Return of the Obra Dinn(Great game, highly recommended), and that got me thinking about what I want from games. Many times hawe I looked at a game, not really been sold on the idea but being convinced by everyone telling me it's great, and like clockwork being dissapontied by it.
Plenty of games that are staple "Amazing Games", like Disco Elysium and Stardew Valley never really clicked for me, while other ones like Return of the Obra Dinn and Factorio did. This post mostly exists to help me explore what I want, and what I dont want. You should not look at this as some sort of guide on what you should like, but perhaps use it to reflect on your own preferences.
Life is scary, you mostly pretend you know what you are doing — and eventually you realize everyone else is doing the same. However, when scary turns into the mundane, that constitutes growth. I remember the first time I used a chainsaw, it was terifying, now it is mundane. I am a bit ashamed to admit that I feel like a man when I use a chainsaw nowadays, and it feels great.
I'm not saying that tutorials are bad. To harp back to Return of the Obra Dinn (let's use the acronym RotOD from now on), it explains the how the core loop works and how to navigate the book, but it doesnt hold your hand (click here, now select that guy, write that he did this, etc).
You could also use the chainsaw as an example, the first time I used a chainsaw I was basically left to follow the small image printed on it on how to start it, with my father in law nearby doing something else if I needed help. It was a bit scary, but I am also an adult with capable of deduction. I was respected and trusted enough to figure it out, and I did, and games that respect me as a player in the same way are great.
The definition of when something is "gamey" is quite wide, but I define it as when things are abstracted in spirit to define clear rules. I don't like this, since it hampers my immersion.
Even if they are in execution quite similar, I much prefer to see 120 men stand in formation in Total War, rather than having one unit stand in one hexagonal tile in Civilization. In this example, there is a small functional difference, but it doesnt have to be. Even if it's just fluff, it often really helps my immersion. Another example could be Europa Universales IV, where your units are always stacks of 1k men. They could easily had abstracted it to say:
You have 10.4 manpower
But they dont, they say:
You have 10 432 men available to recruit
And that makes it a lot easier to get sucked into the game.
Sometimes you have to make sacrifices however, and I understand that. Gates of Hell: Ostfront has quite abstract weapon ranges, since if everyone could shoot at ~1km range it would be really hard to play on maps that are rougly 500x500 meters. However it still comes at an undeniable cost for me, that for example Steel Division 2 doesnt have to deal with.
I don't vibe with games that only have one playstyle. Games that are open ended, along with the lack of handholding — tend to be fun since the player has time to experiment and tinker with different playstyles. If you can incorporate a good amount of fluff aswell, that let's the player make their own decisions based on what they would do in that situtation, rather than "What is the best solution to this algorithm?".
What I have been describing here is basically Rule the Waves 3, one of my favorite games ever (re-read paragraph 2 before buying!). You play as a grand admiral of a nation between the year 1890-1970, and you are mostly just thrown into it. You can probably deduct that big ships with big guns can destroy the big boats with big guns that the other nations have. However, how much better is a 12" gun than a 11" gun? Do I want to armor the deck or the superstructure? Why should I even fight the other nations?
There are no clear answers to these questions, but you slowly develop a understanding for roughly what you want and what these things entail. Eventually, you start to tinker with new strategies, perhaps you build heavy cruisers with long range that you can send on far away patrols to focus on raiding merchant ships. Perhaps you build coastal battleships, where you put big guns and tons of armor where the fuel used to be. Perhaps you focuse on light cruisers and bet on being able to run away from battles you don't want to fight. Perhaps you even just try to sign a naval treaty to push everyone back so you can more easily catch up in the arms race.
I could probably continue, but most of the qualities I desire harp back to these three topics. I like games that respect me as a competent adult, and that allows me to use my real life thougths and biases to form my playstyle. I prefer games that are a story, rather than a puzzle.
What aspects do you like in games? What makes your favorite games so fun for you? Do let me know by sending a mail!
Today is a tragic day, the unit I play with is shutting down. Luckily it isn't anything dramatic or hard feelings, it's just the classic that the leaders don't have the time required. We will have our last operation this Sunday.
I have only been a part of the unit for about eight months, so it isn't a life changing event. And to be honest, I was getting tired of the american kit. You can't ignore that M4s and M249s are super generic, and playing as a british unit back in the A3 days didn't feel as stale even after multiple years.
I'll miss the boys, especially Spoon, Soup, Öhr, Loustone and Doc (you guys know who you are). But my experience with previous units is that it's rarely worth trying sticking together, the only examples where that has worked is when leadership collapses (megalomania and such), and the entire unit splinters unanimously. Otherwise you'll just end up as a floundering group of more-or-less burnt out players.
I'll look for new pastures, even if they might not be greener necessarily. I'm going to attempt to find a unit that speaks my mother tounge aswell (makes it hard to rope in the boys aswell).
So long, loyal and steadfast.
I don't know why, but gaming just hasn't been too fun lately. Am I becoming old? Do I need to get rid of my ~5000€ steam account? I doubt it, probably it's just life that is heavy at the moment. Nothing dramatic, but just stuff that takes time and energy. I also feel like unmotivated to play since I don't know when I'll have time to continue, and I suck at continuing a playthrough after only a couple of weeks.
I still have some fun, my weekend ArmA sessions with the boys are still great (perhaps even Meaningful?). I atribute that to it both being a very involved experince,
Let's move in a wedge formation, take point and move bearing 300.
Blue team, hold here and provide support. Red team, move towards the compound and hold.
Contact Front!
But also that it's a scheduled event. Every Sunday and Saturday at 20:00, we sit down and play, no more and no less. It never get's saturated, but it's still regular enough to keep me engaged.
Not sure where that leaves me though. I guess I'll try to do other stuff in the meantime.
If it aint' fun, then it aint'. And if the only fun thing in life is it, then life needs to change.
Let me name some of my favorite games:
What do these games have — yes of course it's that they have career modes, either natively, implied or community made. In Rule The Waves 3, you play as the grand (imortal) admiral of a nation, in Dirt Rally 2, you play as a up-and-coming rally driver. In ArmA, you can play in a group where you get a rank, medals, awards, roles, etc.
There are generally two camps regarding how long games are:
Games today are too bloated and stretched. They are just padded with boring busywork to drag out playtime.
And
I just spent a lot of money on this game, and I finished it in just a couple of days, it feels like I wasted my money.
Here is where career modes excell, you don't get a game with cutscenes seperated with gameplay, where the amout of gameplay between cutscenes will always make someone angry. Instead you get to frame the gameplay as the story. These games are generally longer and more padded than games with a conventional story, this however is more honestly communicated to the player before purchase.
Similar to length, pacing is a matter of strong opinions. Either the game has unsatisfying progression, or it dripfeeds the player, and there is rarely a universally accepted middlepoint. When you have a linear progression with specific bosses, upgrades and difficulty, you often alienate either side of your audience. Career modes often grants the player more options regarding their pacing. Instead of having a linear lines of races/battles/bosses, allowing the player to choose themselves, along with setting their own difficulty within character, solves this issue.
Stories are great, my favorite game yet is Kingdom Come - Deliverence 1 and 2. Setting them in some simulated procedual story would spoil it completely. What makes KCD so great is how intertwined the story is to the gameplay, and how easy it is to do something else for a bit. You can easily focus on smithing, treasure hunting, completing sidequests, etc. However, other genres have a harder time for this.
Racing games mostly suffer from bad stories and/or poor immersion. Let's start with NFS, the latest game, NFS Unbound, has a poor story, however with a decent gameplay loop. You have a two stage gameplay loop, day and night. You get a unique set of races for each, with each granting cash in exchange for increasing heat. You choose which races you want not based on if you can be bothered, but if you dare increase heat more, especially during daytime, since it passes on to night.
Dirt Rally 2 has the opposite problem, there is no real story, however unlike in Unbound where you go from race to race in a open world, avoiding police and pushing your luck with heat trying to get the biggest payout. In Dirt, you just use menus. I hate menus, it ruins immersion and brings me out of the game, which sucks because Dirt is super immersive while actually driving.
Just having some setdressing hiding the fact that you are just starting a time trial works wonders. In IL-2, the menus are setup in a way to make the player feel like they are a pilot in a barrack. You can read the newspaper, you get a list of missions for the day, you can get called into random defence missions inbetween them. In Dirt, you simply press career mode, select which of the current championships you want to play, and just jump in. Boooooring
Continuing on from Immersion, being able to make your own choices and having your own motivations enables roleplaying, which in turn improves immersion. The main way to achieve this is the reframe choices (in all forms) as choices of the players charachter. This is where Rule The Waves 3 excells, you don't play as a nation, you play as the admiral, you can only advice politicians, but if they increase or lower your budget is still random. You can use your influence to increase/decrease tensions with other nations, but sometimes you are just at the mercy of a pacifist/jingoist parlament. Even though the game looks like Excel 2006, I get fully immersed in it in a way that Read Dead Redemption 2 couldn't achieve.
A quite popular progression setup is having two threads, mostly cash and reputation. I like this setup, since it allows the player to set their own pace and difficulty naturally. Do you want to grind your gear, or move forward in the story? Nothing stops you from having more, you can add time for example as a way to force the players hand (if that makes the game better!)
NFS Heat uses reputation and cash pretty well, Unbound uses cash and time, which I am slightly unsure about but it works (you generally rush to get a car good enough for the next championship, with customization being a drain on that).
31/12/2025
My Summer Car is one of my most favorite games of all time, with a great mix of both depth and width, along with great soul. I decided to go into My Winter Car as blind as I can, since the best part of MSC was when you where still trying to just get the car to start.
I think I'll update this post as I get further into the game. If you intend on playing this game however, I recommend not reading further. This is a game that is at it's best when you actively discover how things work for yourself.
I've seen some people complain about the player being an alcoholic, though I don't have a problem with it. I've slightly spoiled myself with knowing that it can be overcome, I assume by simply not drinking much over an extended period? It also does fit the vibe of being a dark and gloomy winter.
Seeing uncle at the old person home felt weird, mostly since it reminded me about my own grandfather. He always had a "Santa claus physique", and generally having a similar demeanour, however during his last years, he lost almost half of his weight, and generally just looked confused. Seeing Uncle sitting, reminissing about his wife, about half his weight from MSC — it felt weird...
Finding the packaging job felt quite rewarding, along with the bait and switch of the manager proudly proclaiming that they are a top of the line ICT company — it eventually being revealed that you will be packaging chargers for eight hours a day. Also weird seing the old faces around, but it is realistic. It gave me the same feeling as when I saw my old classmate behind the counter at the local bank office.
Not starting with anything but the boring Sorbet is also a good move, fitting the vibe of the player being a depressed alcoholic. Eventually finding and buying the Corris is a good narative beat to explain the players charachter going from "pre game start" depression to the player controlled action taker character.
Also I got a fucking automatic Corris VIN
02/01/2025
Managed to get my G29 + H-shifter working on linux. I used Proton 5, and all pedals where reversed and normalized. Only problem now is that I cant use the reverse gear, but most cars are 5 speed at max, so I use the sixth gear as reverse instead.
Especially the alcoholism doesnt help. I've found that you can drink anything, aslong as you have some alcohol in you. I tend to return home, chug two beers and then just drink water (plus pee alot) until the meter is empty again. Days tend to be going away, doing something and rushing back so you don't die of alcohol underdose.
07/01/2025
One complaint I had with MSC was that you eventually had not enough money to work on the car, but no jobs available (well except picking strawberries, but who would want to do that?). MWC solves that by having you work at a packaging plant for 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. It's also very manual work, so it's hard to watch videos or such at the same time. Podcasts probably work. Also a painful part is the very low income (just over 2000mk per two weeks...).
Another aspect is that gamers usually try to perfect things like this. I find myself trying to speed up my packaging, however the thing is that it doesnt change how much I earn, I just need to package things without slacking for the specified time. Fun...
To start with, I'm quite a fan of paradox games (as in the company, not the concept), with thousands of hours among their games. Recently they released Europa Universalis V, and while skeptical before release it seems to have gotten good ratings and it seems to be relatively stable. I feel like I need to buy it now until it's too late.
But like, why?
If you don't know paradox that well, they tend to release roughly yearly DLCs for their games. This can cause the cost for the "Full game" to bloat into the hundreds, (though I want to note that you still have access to the base game, you don't lose access to content just because they release more content as a dlc. However that discussion is for another post). Long story short, EU V is currently in it's worst state, and most expensive as it will ever be. For every year that goes, there will be free updates for every paid dlc, plus better and better sales. Why do I feel like I need it now? It's not like I have the time nor money at the moment anyway.
I'm going to (try to) do the reasonable thing and wait. Wait for work to calm done, wait for my wallet to recover from christmas (plus some other recent one time purchases), and wait for EU V to get better. Sure, it's probably quite good now, but it's only going to get better.
Let's see how long I can hold on to this...
Back when I was a wee child, playing free games and downloading viruses on my hand me down computer, I initially found Arma 2 Free which was the stripped down version of Arma 2.
I have vague memories of joining public games, running around and looking for enemies and not finding any. Though not being fluent in English yet, running around confused wasn't anything new. I also recall playing Chernarus Life and actually figuring out how to make money, though don't think I actually did any roleplay.
My experience with Arma 2 Free wasn't long nor eventful, but the possibilities of the large maps and sandbox tools set the seed in my brain that would get me to buy Arma 3.
Being a young insecure teen, I rarely used my mic while playing. My few friends who played Arma played mostly Altis Life, but I never really got into it. I tried playing public lobbies, but vanilla Arma is like white bread.
A lot of potential and a base for great things, but poor on its own.
I only started to slightly regularly play Arma 3 when me and my friend found procedurally generated scenarios. We would play around with long range sniping and generally not taking it too seriously.
It was first when we found more extensive mods like Antistasi that we would actually play a lot of Arma. I must have a good 500 hours invested across Antistasi, Overthrow and Vindicta.
This was also around the time a friend of my friend started his own milsim group, which I also joined. It was a very casual affair, and I think it only lasted about three months before we got bored of it. However this opened my eyes to another version of Arma.
I was coincidentally just old enough to join most units (15+), I looked through the steam forum looking for another group to play with and found one which looked good. It was based on 1 Para, and was led by two brits. It was a very serious unit, with mandatory training for new recruits and even more mandatory trainings if you wanted a specialized role.
However, I personally don't oppose this. It is a large relief to know that the person carrying our AT is actually capable of using it, along with all of its features, or knowing that our machine gunner knows how to conserve ammo while laying effective suppressing fire. Hell just knowing that our new recruits have learned to shoot slowly, conserving their ammo since they are a part of a squad that is engaging the exact same enemy.
I slowly made a minor name for myself as one of the originals. I had gotten most of the certifications I wanted and had a decent reputation as a reliable player, always showing up on operations and never breaking discipline.
I eventually got the courage to sign up as a fire team lead. Say goodbye to Pvt. M. Smith, and say hello to LCpl. M. Smith. Still being a insecure teenager it was quite scary, but having a good squad leader made it endurable. I would say I handled the role quite well, allowing my fire team to focus on fulfilling their tasks, while I managed the larger situation.
I had a good time, and having that responsibility made me a more confident person in real life. As time went on I eventually dabbled in squad leading, though I must admit it was a bit outside of my capabilities. Having a good platoon leader is what made it work. Eventually I landed as a Platoon Signaler, handling communication between the platoon leader, the squad leaders and fire support elements.
The unit eventually stagnated. We rarely got new recruits, and they very rarely stayed. However the roughly 20 people who routinely played were having a good time, however the unit leader (one of the brits) had higher ambitions. One evening he sent a @everyone stating that the unit would transform from 1 Para to a Halo unit (yes, the game. No, no one wanted this). Virtually everyone left immediately and we started a new unit.
We were all jaded by the complete ownership abuse, and this new unit had very strong democratic leadership. There was a five man council that was voted in, and they handled the rules and leadership of the unit. It was voted to run the unit as a PMC unit, to allow us to run more varied kit. The training requirements were also removed completely, turning the unit a lot more casual. However since most of us came from the previous unit we still tended to work quite seriously.
This new unit lasted about two years, but the stagnation could not be stopped. This was early 2023, and Arma 3 was now nearing its tenth birthday. Due to subduing interest from the players and no new blood, the unit hibernated, and I largely stopped playing Arma.
I immediately bought Arma Reforger on release, as I had amassed nearly 2000 hours in Arma 3. However that game was... let's just leave it as rough on release. However I didn't go full doomer, since I remembered that Arma 3 was also very rough on release. I kept an eye on the updates, the slowly stabilising netcode, the improved stability, and early June this year (2025) I decided to find a new unit.
It took a bit of searching, since Reforger is not as popular as Arma 3 was, especially in the PvE unit scene. I only had a couple of requirements
I luckily managed to avoid it, but people having power fantasies in Arma units is a pandemic problem. People giving themselves high ranks and forcing people to call them "sir" is nothing new, and the first couple of units I looked at had some alarming rules. The first unit I looked at for example had a system where the more people you recruited, the higher rank you could get. If you invited 50 people, then you were elegible to become a General of the Army (OF-10)... In a Arma Unit...
I eventually found a good bunch of guys, playing as the 4th Infantry division. And finally getting to play Arma again, especially in Reforger is amazing. After every operation I walk away from the computer with a smile. The banter, the cooperation, the seriousness, the "Big War Feels". It's the exact same feeling that Arma 3 gave me, in a lot more refined package.