The Homeworld series is great with fantastic campaigns (minus Homeworld 3 I’ve heard, not even played that).
I’ll also throw in a classic Imperium Galactica 2 because I still think for a 90s 4X RTS it has so many elements that I’ve just not seen replicated since. Though usually short and quick, it has fully simulated and controllable space and ground battles; espionage; diplomacy; you assign your unlocked tech to hard points on your ships… It’s Stellaris but better in most ways, imo.
Unlikely to be it since it’s nowhere near from the last 10 years, but CITY 2000 seems like it could be similar at least artistically?
I think the best I can recommend is looking through Steam, searching for “London” and the mystery genre. I didn’t quite catch anything there that fit at a glance, but maybe you will. Similarly could be done on GOG, since it sounds like it could potentially be an older game? Or itch, but maybe the best way to search for that would be by googling london missing friend mystery site:itch.io.
I’m assuming a modern setting, with no supernatural elements and the mystery genre, so that’s the best I could do. It’s going to be very hard to find something without some details being fixed. Point and click? Photos or isometric? Is the player character visible? Do they have any identifying details? Does the pub have a name? Anything like that could do a lot.
You say you watched someone play it on youtube then you might be able to search your youtube viewing history?
If Deep Rock Galactic counts, then Monster Hunter games should as well. The hub is usually a bar/restaurant with food, drinking, and an arm wrestling mini game. You can also randomly cook meat out in the field or go to hot springs.
Many other games do have bars, but without any real interaction. Lego games and Borderlands come to mind.
Stardew Valley has cutscenes at the bar and you can play a mini game there, but not quite as interactively as DRG.
That’s all I can think of right now. It feels like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Saints Row should also have something similar to Stardew at least, but I can’t remember how much you can do in those bars. Same with MMOs I haven’t played in a while like Runescape. I’m sure if I mention them someone else will know though.
As a bonus: with modding, Lethal Company can have a casino with a bar you can get drinks at.
Late and I cannot possibly read everything here, but I’ll come back to it as well.
And just to do some due diligence:
Very space- and RTS-themed, but that’s what got my attention at the time. And they were having their golden age. Also I was very young in the 90s, so that’s all I have.
I’m not entirely sure what scene I would’ve said had me similar when I could still more surely remember those first years. Possibly a game I’ve forgotten since. Maybe one of the Bionicle Mata Nui Games or some other big online game. Or Imperium Galactica 2.
But a moment that will always stick with me is from the first Homeworld game: when you return from your first hyperspace voyage. That entire game was epic, including the intro sequence, but it’s that sequence that I think can stand forever as a masterpiece.
Not even just that. I can’t speak for Edinburgh, but in the area I live in in Glasgow we’ve had random fireworks go off during the day for weeks leading up to Guy Fawkes. One big explosion every now and then. One day, still bright out, I was walking home and almost hit the deck because one went off so close to me out of nowhere.
After Guy Fawkes it has been less frequent, but still happens, at very odd times. You can even check news and see that it’s been an issue for a while. E.g.: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j87zneq4vo
It stresses me out a bit, and I spend most of my time in my own home, with decent soundproofing. And I’m not a sensitive endangered animal.
So I’m not sure what might make you not feel lonely or anxious. Things like how directly you control the characters with you could he factors I imagine, so I’m just going to list a bunch of things:
A shorter one, but Star Wars Republic Commando. You’re a commando unit and work as one.
Dragon’s Dogma, either Dark Arisen or the new sequel.
Mass Effect series.
I don’t know if Earth Defence Force would be like that or not, at the end of the day your NPC allies could be hit or miss (literally, depending on the weapons you use).
Not sure how you feel about party-based RPGs, but there are tons of them.
I’m wondering if RTS games with campaigns would feel right as well. StarCraft’s campaigns have a lot of people constantly talk to/around you.
The Lego games?
Stardew Valley?
Can’t really think of indie games at the moment.
Games I haven’t played so I don’t know if they apply: Persona? Space Marine games?
Not even the denomination is named. I know a trans person who is religious and looking to become clergy because their church is open like that. We don’t know anything about these people and their beliefs or why they became priests.
Besides, your unedited message makes it sound like they deserve to go to hell simply because they had drugs or gay sex, not for any other views they had.
There is. Newer EA games, anything with Epic Online Services (but especially with a login), etc. They get negative reviews fairly consistently.
Some older games get overlooked, but even then adding in a third party software (not even necessarily needing an account) often lowers a game to a mixed rating on Steam for recent reviews.
Three games came to mind just now, for slightly different reasons.
Similarly to others, just for feeling good: Earth Defense Force (whichever release, really). While it’s great to have a challenge in the missions, getting through the game, finding a good mission to farm weapons on, then using those fun weapons to destroy horses of insects and aliens is just so fun. And some missions can feel a bit BS with the weapons you might have available normally.
I would also actually say Baldur’s Gate 3. I know a lot of people enjoy the tactical side of things, but my opinion is that the DnD 5e ruleset kinda just sucks for a video game. I play it as a TTRPG, it’s fine. But I found rolling badly in something my character’s meant to be good at just so frustrating. This let me actually explore the story and world my own way, which was way more fun to me than restarting combat because I got unlucky.
That one might be controversial, but I was also speed running completion because I wanted to know conclude the story and see the world, but something about the game just didn’t click for me.
And finally, because I think it’s a fantastic game that deserves attention (with the best soundtrack I’ve heard in a while): Rabbit and Steel. It’s a brutally hard roguelike bullet hell that’s based on dungeon raid boss mechanics from FFXIV (which I haven’t played, but that’s what everyone says). The difficulty will make you want to not play it, and for me stuff only really clicked once I unlocked my penultimate class. I can now heat Hard fairly consistently, but it has taken a lot of runs to get there. No shame in admitting that those started from Cute and Normal and involved me grinding out all the unlocks by charging through Cute difficulty.
So really, the summary of this far too long reply is: just lower the difficulty when it’s frustrating or keeping you too much from getting to the fun stuff. You can always try again on a higher difficulty later.
Just to add some even longer time goals to the other replies: you could get all achievements for games that have them. Though some of those, like the ones for Civ 6, are excessive. It could give you ideas or shorter term goals to work towards, then you can decide if you’ve had enough at any point before 100% if things get too BS.
A survival horror about dinosaurs can’t exist because an action game that includes fantasy dinosaur-like creatures does?
That sounds like saying you wouldn’t have space for Resident Evil because of Fallout, and those arguably have more overlap than Dino Crisis and Monster Hunter in their settings.
I mean I could be wrong, I haven’t played Dino Crisis (though I intend to at some point), but from what I know and have heard it’s not that close to Monster Hunter. People have been looking for AAA Dino horror-type stuff for ages. They wouldn’t bring up Dino Crisis instead of Monster Hunter in those discussions if they filled the same niche.
I’ve also said this before and I’ll say it again: names of suspects and even convicted criminals should not be shared unless necessary*. That just makes no sense for rehabilitation as it opens people up for judgement in a court of opinion. Justice is the job of the justice systems and should not generally involve the wider public.
Could there be issues with the judgement or other events where the only way to achieve justice is via the press? Sure, probably, but I don’t think the default should be that if I google the name of someone I can find if they or someone with a similar name (and god forbid, appearance) were involved in a crime.
*: unless necessary here can cover cases like trying to find an individual on the run, or when their previous crime is meant to exclude them from specific lines of work, although even that should be on a need-to-know basis imo, not public info.
Can’t say much about the game/DLC personally as I haven’t played it yet, but what you’re looking at seems the be the premium bundle, which is a separate listing. The normal DLC listing is at 63%, mixed.
A common negative review complaint also seems to be performance issues, so it’s not really just the difficulty.
Man, Veilguard is being covered a lot.
Honestly, this sounds potentially good or even great.
Two things though:
Maybe it could’ve been a good combat-focused fantasy game with linear missions instead of being forced to include some lame dialogue wheel and pretending it’ll appeal to Dragon Age fans.
My impression from the trailer was that the combat lacks any weight. The player character floated all over, the attacks looked like they didn’t even make contact, and the enemies seemed to be on the spongy side. That makes it look and feel bland. If that is the case the reaction won’t be great even from players who like action games.
And yeah, I think making this the first Dragon Age game after so long is a mistake. People will expect a game that follows on with same or similar gameplay. This feels like a spin-off game. That’s not inherently bad, but you do want mainline games to also release to keep the main fan base happy. Right now it’ll just be judged compared to mainline expectations and will obviously not meet most of those.
So I guess Kingdoms of Amalur-style combat but it doesn’t look fun or challenging. Story seems like it apparently jumps off of Inquisition which is fair but I could never be bothered to really play or care for that much.
How they got to this from “serious dark fantasy RPG” I don’t know. I can see the obvious Mass Effect influences, but other than the cutscene conversations it feels weaker than even Andromeda.
I agree. I was so convinced it’s a hero shooter/MOBA/whatever that I checked the description and was shocked it said single player RPG. Hell, I was surprised when it revealed there is a player character.
They 100% don’t seem to realise what people liked about the games.
Ok, I might be misunderstanding here, but since committing changes is allowed for everyone, doesn’t this mean fixing bugs is something you could do? You’d just be stuck with all the other rights as well until someone else makes a change.
Yeah… Would be smart. So Labour, who are trying to be the Tories but from 5-10 years ago, will not do it. Gotta court those undecided centre-right and right-wing voters: the people who still believe in Brexit, even though polls show that’s definitely not a majority.
Sigh.