Again, you're putting aside examples of great games before even enquiring properly. If you're really into the old fashioned, dungeon crawler style games with classes and such. Get an old Commodore or something. Also, nearly 100% of games currently released on CD need something like Steam or Origin to be able to function. There's no way we can obviously satisfy you unless you start living in the present.
Have you tried the X3 series. OK, it's a space game, but there is progression and several different characters to play each with their own story and objectives. It is single player and available in a box. Plus, it's cheap now! Sorry, just read you have selected Skyrim. Excellent choice - even without mods this is a great game.
Have some rep. Soon as I get Windows 8 up and running, I'll test its backwards compatibility (without much optimism) by reinstalling Morrowind. I normally hate graphical mods because they're too mixed up, seamy and inconsistent in quality, but that looks really well-rounded-off. edit- I think your expectations are unrealistic. I've had meals that cost more than that (and they were worth it). I'm not going to say "get a job", because only complete douchebags use that repulsive phrase, but...acquire moneys? Gaming has never been the pursuit of the spendthrift, after all. It just kinda costs money. Considering how much films, TV shows and other forms of entertainment cost, your expectations of games are pretty high. edit 2- I'm...not really sure how to respond to this, so I'm just going to go to bed.
I'm using Windows 8 64-bit with morrowind and the Graphics Overhaul and quite a few other mods; it works great.
Agreed....so many suggestions, great ones, yet overall fairly trivial reasons not to play them. Did I mention about Morrowind? Four steps - install Morrowind/Expansions, download Morrowind Overhaul 3.0 (for free), Install MO 3.0 via exe file (has all graphical mods only), Play! NO mod managing. NO hassle as its an exe that installs everything for you to your desired settings inc resolution. AND has one of the best RPG stories/environment. Play as any class you want melee vs ranged vs mix vs magic.
The key fact you're missing is fun...FUN. Single player games aren't MEANT to be taxing and playing to rigid standards as its about enjoying the genre, enjoying the game, having fun and living through the story. There is no real singe player game that is competitive....some may be hard....but that doesn't make them competitive. The fact you state you had a lot of fun modding in the past is simply testament to that. Single player games are inherently non-competitive. That's why they are 'single player' - you have fun with it yourself as you want it, as there's no competition mods are a great way to help expand a game. Mods to multiplayer games is a whole different ball game, and yes that IS different, and I tend to avoid most of those. I have never used a multiplayer mod. For me, I only use mods that either improve slightly broken things and glitches, or improve graphics or expand extra areas and extra content. And tbh I've only ever used them for TES games. I plan to use some for STALKER but haven't got round to it yet. Morrowind, for example, has a lot of mods that add new areas that are visible on the map but cannot be visited and adds new quests. I never use mods that make the game 'easier'. I just like a large game with good graphics. Plenty of mods out there that change the 'apparently broken' combat system of Morrowind (same goes for Oblivion), whereas I find it the original just fine regardless of which game I'm playing. In morrowind in fact, I find its more RPG based combat thatn the other TEES games. I prefer to use the base attributes of the games I play and just add extra content, as opposed to changing any core elements. So Mods are not necessarily cheats/hacks....definitely not....they are just meant to add fun and increase game life and replayability, especially in single player games. Well, this just makes me think you are not just picky but well, not that 'good' at playing the game the right way. If you want skill based PvP in EvE there are soooooooo many ways to do it in EvE. Have been for a very long time. Yes, if you're in a big coalition it means you will be part of blob fights a lot. However, there are so many PvP corps out there that specialise in small gang warfare that live in the middle of NPC or edge of null sec space. These guys work in packs of 5-15-30 and some solo. They can be pretty good. Some are insanely dangerous and well you have to try avoid them. A lot of them roam enemy space and some of them quite deep in - I'm sure this adds to the adrenaline rush and the increasing skill requirements. It does mean playing decently fitted ships and ships that can be on the expensive side. But shouldn't be an issue if yiu've been playing since 2005. If you haven't come across this yet in EvE I'm not sure what you were doing PvP in EvE. Massive blolb warfare has been around a looong time, but small gang stuff has never been a problem. There's always a way to play EvE the way you want. EDIT: Skyrim a decent choice.
I agree about the combat, thats why I play stealth and go for silent kills with a knife or just summon a monster and let it do the work for me. Would be good if the combat was like it is in Severance: Blade of Darkness where some skill is involved in combat and not simply left clicking until someone dies.
You're just too lazy to actually click the button. You want a game that'll hold your hand and do it all for you. They don't make games like that anymore unless it's like Dragon age/ Mass effect and they're not making anymore of those. Look for games made in the early 00s or before because that's all you'll find that's to your liking. All you want is something good looking with very simplistic gameplay with a calculation based fighting system that does it all for you. There are none. Be open-minded otherwise you're not going to find anymore games that you'll enjoy.
This thread is dawdling around somewhere between trying to appease a gigantic entitlement complex and good old-fashioned trolling. Why did you ask about these popular A-list games, research these games, buy these games and make a thread about these games just to tell everybody that you don't like them? Is it hipsterdom? Do you enjoy being able to tell mainstream gamers that you thought their favourite games were rubbish? I'm flat out of sympathy, because you (a) expect hundreds of hours of entertainment for the price of a cheeseburger and (b) bought and played many hours into a game you were already well-informed about and convinced you wouldn't enjoy, then complained that you didn't enjoy it. I don't know where you got this idea that the games industry owes you a large, high-quality back-catalogue of games of one very specific subtype, but basically: it doesn't. Your craving for these imagined games doesn't compel them into existence, and we can't do anything more to help you find them, because beyond what you've already played, they don't exist. I'm sorry to say it. I really want a half-Asian girlfriend who looks like Anne Hathaway, speaks native German and is passionate about motorbikes, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to find her or even that she exists. Lower your standards and begin the search anew.
Exactly right. All the games we've said are the best games to be released in years. If you've got some games that are better; by all means share. But i've lost interest. This thread now encroaches upon a waste of time.
That's quite a silly question since in my experience the 3 ME games are vastly different in their gameplay. The first one was an RPG-lite and the last was a run-off-the-mill cover-based action-adventure run-in-straight-line-watch-vista-align-mouse-with-enemy-craniums shootfest. If you like the latter, go play some Uncharted or the latest Tomb Raider game. Both have shooty-shooty gameplay with something like a story in the background. This statement says more about your personal taste in video games rather than the industry. Many of the games named here are absolute classics and are widely regarded as the best of their genre. Even if they not align with your own tastes you should at least be able to respect them for their qualities. I would agree that Skyrim is a rather tedious game though. Not because of the lack of story (I liked that) but because, once you've played a 30-some (admittedly awesome) hours, the shallowness of the world and its unimaginative scenery starts to become irritating. It's still miles behind Morrowind IMO.
I lol'd at the OP of this thread on the Baldur's Gate forum on Steam. It's people like him that make modern RPG what they are.
sage Sorry, are we still doing this? This thing where you overcommit to something you don't like, and then complain loudly about not liking it? I fully agree that the lack of Mass Effect-like games is a sad thing, and I too hope that the industry picks up on this missing niche sometime soon, but repetitively complaining about it on here isn't going to do anything. If I were as hot under the collar about it as you (and immediately after finishing Mass Effect 1, I was) I'd write to Bioware and EA directly, thank them for the Mass Effect series, criticize their homogenizing efforts in the later instalments, and implore them to make more intelligent, rich, vast, open-ended, player-led games like the first one. There's a good chance they'd ignore us, but not half as much as the probability that they'll ignore this thread (~100%). I don't know if it's been mentioned earlier or not, but Dragon Age: Origins is supposedly a very similar experience, which would figure as it was Bioware at about the same time and without EA's latterly overbearing influence. I personally could not muscle through the terrible, uninvolving gameplay, but there is some wonderful writing, voice-acting and sidequesting to be had there if it's your bag. (Caveat: if Dragon Age: Origins turns out not to be your bag, don't come back and tell me about it in a tone that implies that it's somehow my fault for suggesting it. You can only throw peoples' attempts at help back at them so many times before they tire of it.)
I laughed at the idea that you could spend 150 hours playing something and then complain about it being tedious About six different people have suggested trying Dragon Age: Origins, and I'd agree that if you liked Mass Effect then it's a good shout. Try it! Personally, I think that for some reason you are being deliberately awkward. You're missing out on some fantastic games because you have a preconceived idea that they don't measure up to some gold standard. Games don't have to be perfect in order to be fun
I stopped playing far cry 3 because of the tedium after 2 hours not 150! More than a bit rich calling skyrim tedious whilst ignoring the biggest padding any game has ever seen - the mass effect resource gathering. Try something with a tight vision like deus ex human revolution or alpha protocol.
@jrs77: it feels offensive, though I totally believe that you don't mean it to. It's not that I think you're trying to be difficult, just that in the process of trying to find your ideal game/s you're having to tell us that many of our favourite games are inadequate for various reasons. I know I should be able to just chalk that up to personal tastes and leave it at that, but when people tell me that my favourite games are tedious it gets under my skin. I don't know why. I'm almost certainly repeating myself with these, but I don't want to reread the thread to check, so in case they haven't been covered already, these are the ones that spring to mind for me: Neverwinter Nights (and basically anything by Bioware) Morrowind Morrowind Morrowind STALKER (if you're into that wander-around sort of FPS) Fallout 3 (if you're only kinda into it) Deus Ex/Deus Ex: HR (if you're not at all into it) The Witcher/The Witcher 2 (apparently huge, sprawling and great; I couldn't get into it because my attention span sucks) Does Arhkam Asylum belong on this list? It's not a conventional RPG, but it has many of the same wandering/exploring/character-improving appeals.
Perhaps you should try something new and different? Step out of your comfort zone and maybe you'll discover another type of game you really like. Have you already tried adventure games, like Machinarium or The Walking Dead (more adventure-lite)? FPSs like Black Mesa (freeee!), fast-paced top-down action like Hotline Miami, hack-n-slash/ARPGs + great story like Bastion, a platformer like Super Meat Boy or Thomas Was Alone, an RTS like Company of Heroes or one of the Total War games, a puzzler like SpaceChem, maybe something entirely different like Proteus? etc. etc. etc. You might answer: “nahh, I'd never like that”, but until you've tried you can really never know. As a small personal anecdote that may or may not be relevant, I remember the first years I began playing videogames I played solely RTSs (only the Age of Empires games to be precise) and all the rest seemed rubbish or uninteresting to me. Then one day my dad installed a racing wheel he didn't use anymore (a red Logitech one, I believe) on the family computer and told me to play this racing game - Speed Busters it was called I think. It blew my mind. It was so unlike anything I'd ever played before. I never got far in the game and I couldn't understand a word of English back then so navigating the menus was pure guesswork and memorization, but I had a ton of fun in those first few tracks and it taught me that I'm often very wrong when keeping strict lines of “this I like”-“all the rest outside of that I don't like”. Ever since then I've been trying out games of as many genres as possible. Sometimes I found gems I still play today, sometimes I wasted my money on crap, but in the end I think it's very important to keep your mind as open as possible, just like in music or literature. Just my 2c.
You would've been right if the gaming landscape were completely static, but since it's quite the opposite, with new game “concepts” appearing every few days and genres evolving, merging and expanding continuously, saying you've seen it all is a probably bit pretentious and also absolutely untrue. How long you've been gaming doesn't matter at all, especially since you said you've been playing pretty much only MMORPGs for the last 12 years. I cannot believe the only single-player games you're able enjoy are (Mass Effect-like) RPGs, I can't. That'd be like saying “I can only bear to wear red shirts with a fold in the right sleeve.”, or “the only paintings I'm able to enjoy got to have two males, three females, a dog and a tree in them”. (…ok, I'm not that good at metaphors but you know, as the old saying goes: “Finding a good metaphor is as difficult as… as… hmm…”) It's certainly possible that you may feel like that currently, but if only you'd try something different, you would see that you can enjoy lots of other stuff too. To get back to my earlier question: have you already tried playing any of the (relatively recently released) games I named or the ones boiled_elephant for example suggested a few posts back (and other titles from the thread)? If not I really don't think you're able to judge the state of gaming at the moment at all and the only thing I can conclude is that the borders of your tastes are based on unjustified assumptions or broad generalizations. Having played Skyrim and not liking it (for 150 hours long?!) is not an argument for writing off everything but your ME-like RPGs. To shut out all diversity and bunker in your own little comfort zone seems a pretty dumb idea to me, but well, it's your life so you're free to do whatever you like. The reason why no games with ME-like gameplay exist is simply because they would immediately be compared to ME itself and be found inferior, since Mass Effect is an absolutely top-budget series. EDIT: Re-reading this, I must say it does sound a bit harsh. Sorry for that, it's only well-meant advice, but I guess I got a little carried away. ^^;
