Get your game on!

My teenage years were a little too cool.

Dropped out of one school, then almost got kicked out of the school for dropouts and troubled teens, but instead managed to test out and got graduated early due to some legal shenanigans there being investigated, so they were rushing everyone out, then after partying too hard with my roommate at our first apartment, ended up evicted and homeless for a bit.

It was a learning experience for sure. Or as Bruce Springsteen would say, Glory Days.

Which is about all we can talk about when I talk to my friends from back in that time. Like ā€œYeah, now we have kids and decent jobs. Remember the time _ happened?ā€

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Started up Alan Wake again. My Remedy-verse runthrough might be on track again, we’ll see. Last time I had played Alan Wake was a year and a half ago, so it really did fall by the wayside.

I didn’t restart, just kept from my last save. I hope that wasn’t a mistake.

ETA: No matter what, FBC isn’t getting added to the runthrough. I’m keeping just to the single player stuff.

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I’m curious what all this involves. I’ve played Alan Wake and Quantum Break (the latter I didn’t know was by the same people, so imagine my surprise when there was an in-game Alan Wake 2 trailer only a few minutes into the game), and I have but have not yet gotten around to playing Control and Alan Wake 2. I’d never heard of FBC until you mentioned it. Are there others I’ve missed?

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Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is the other one you’ve missed. I think you’ve hit all the others. I’ve played some of Control and Quantum Break, but didn’t finish either. I’ll be restarting those when I get to them.

I’m planning on original release order Alan Wake → American Nightmare → Quantum Break → Control → Alan Wake 2. I’ve got the AW:Remastered, so the DLC in there, and all the DLC for Control as well. I haven’t purchased AW2 yet, probably won’t bother until I’m done and when a complete edition is on sale.

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I actually have played that, just was counting it as DLC rather than a standalone game (even though I suppose that’s not accurate). Anyway, I played Alan Wake Remastered last Halloween season. Still holds up, IMO!

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And then there’s this, which I’ve been holding off on until I finish the first game

ETA: Finally watched it (2025-07-25). And it makes absolutely no sense, no spoilers to worry about if you haven’t played the game. Some related characters and this ends about a week before the first game starts.

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Also this blog!

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Has anyone played Sand Land (or read the manga / watched the anime)? I have a question of something that doesn’t make sense. Blurred for spoilers to act 2 of the game.

How did the aquanium get in the box in Forest Land? The box and the key make sense to me, it’s probably centuries or millennia old dating to whenever the races lived together in the ruins. From all the mentions in the game, it seems that aquanium technology is only 50-100 years old, with the big explosion 30 years ago, and it sounds like the age of the battleships was 50 or so years ago. So how did the aquanium end up in the box?

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Zachtronics made a new game (sort of). It’s totally a game, but Zachtronics doesn’t really exist any more, even though they sent me an email to announce it… Anyway, there’s a new game by Coincidence, which is at least some of the people formerly known as Zachtronics:

Somehow I missed the earlier reference by @Nonentity, but now it’s actually out.

I’m glad to see that Last Call BBS wasn’t really the end, and this one looks fun.

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Alan Wake Remastered done. Hated the DLC, plus it feels like it didn’t really add much to the story overall.

On to American Nightmare.

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I definitely found the DLC underwhelming. It was kind of weird and interesting, but it was all so short and really didn’t do all that much.

It’s been a long time since I played American Nightmare. I don’t remember it being particularly good or important. I’d be interested in your perspective having played everything back to back though.

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Not sure how it’ll go. A horror game on PC, which is a double whammy for me drifting away. On the flip side, all the reviews are saying it’s really short. On the gripping hand, very repetitive for its length. So I have no idea when or if I’ll manage to finish it. It took me a couple of years to finally finish AW.

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A lot of these things ring true.

https://www.howtogeek.com/games-became-more-enjoyable-when-i-stopped-doing-these-things/

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I’m guilty of all of them except the forcing hard mode one. Nope, can’t change. Just straight-up can’t. I don’t know if it’s some undiagnosed neurodivergence issue or what, but I’m absolutely a completionist, I gotta find all the things, I gotta do all the side quests. I wouldn’t say it ruins my enjoyment of a game, either- if I really don’t like a game, I’m still capable of just dropping it, but if I’m having even a little fun I tend to want to exhaust every experience and challenge the game has to offer.

ETA: I should probably add, I almost exclusively play single player games that have a definite ending- no MMOs, no mobile app games specifically designed to be endless, no participation in the multiplayer/ladder/seasons aspects of games like Starcraft, Doom or Diablo.

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ā€œI Stopped Chasing Secrets and Chestsā€ – If it’s a game I really like, I’ll do the extra work to do this. But it all depends.

ā€œI Don’t Force Interest in Side Contentā€ – When I spend good money and am playing a game I really like (especially Yakuza games), I really want to see and do everything, even if it doesn’t add a whole lot. I’m generally less interested in DLC unless it’s substantial. I don’t bother buying season passes anymore (at least not up front). In the Old Times, getting one of these would grant you all future DLC and then Assassins Creed started only offering some DLC and if you wanted other DLC you had to buy it separately. Other times the content just isn’t worth it (like Alan Wake 2). I’d rather just wait and decide later than subsidize the cost up front and hope for the best.

ā€œI Don’t Panic About Taking the ā€˜Wrong’ Pathā€ – For me, it depends on if achievements are on the line or not. Some games make it easy to checkpoint and go back later to get the ā€˜other’ path. Others make it impossible without another full playthrough. Generally, I’ll play how I want to play, and not worry about it. If it’s a Bethesda-like where it’s very easy to checkpoint and come back later to do alternative paths, I’ll try it the other way. It’s rare that I’ll replay a game in its entirety just to get missing content, especially really long ones. With games like the Persona series that can take 100+ hours just to finish, what I might do is replay it a year later and follow a guide to make sure I get 100% just because I love the overall story that much to make that effort.

ā€œI Stopped Forcing Roleplayā€ – I never got into roleplay to begin with. I like to play characters where I apply my morals and decisions wherever possible. It’s my game, my rules. In the end most ā€œmoral systemsā€ in games are a sham anyway because in almost every case all your previous decisions mean nothing by the end where you’re presented with one final dillema that will essentially invalidate everything that came before. The only time I will actually role play is if I were to do another playthrough and want to experience things a different way. For Bioware titles for example I’ll generally choose the moral path because that’s how I would do it and I prefer the resulting world. It can be fun to go back and try it again as a complete asshole just to see what happens, but I ultimately don’t find it satisfying beyond the dark comedy it can create because the world is much shittier as a result.

ā€œI Don’t Take the Game Too Seriouslyā€ – Yeah, I’m not afraid to exploit/cheat especially when a game is particularly wasteful of my time. Use an exploit to save me a few hours of pointless grinding? Sure. Fast travel rather than go the long way? Why not… I have limited time and don’t need hyper-realism. This was something that I found really aggravating about RDR2 – it tried so hard to present things in a realistic way, it stopped being fun. For example, in most games when you call your mount it will just appear. In RDR2 you have to wait however long it takes for your horse to get to you. If it’s really far away, you have to wait for it to get to your location, which takes a really long time. Is it realistic? Yes. Is it fun? No. In RDR2, any action like building a fire, collecting resources, or crafting an item is an arduous and slow multi-step process. It doesn’t have to be this way, but the developers decided they would rather have things be realistic versus fun. It sucks.

ā€œI Stopped Forcing Hard Difficulty Settingsā€ – Agreed. I’ll generally try to play using whatever mode the developers intended most people to use. I don’t like the idea of lowering the difficulty, either. But sometimes games are just really fucking hard and I don’t have the time or interest in ā€œGetting Gudā€, so I’ll drop it down because I don’t need the frustration. Prey was one such title where I eventually did this. I really liked the game and wanted to finish the story, but it got to a point where the difficulty went from a slow climb to a massive cliff and I was just running into a brick wall trying to do anything. It got much more fun when I dropped the difficulty down to easy and could enjoy the story without being killed every 2 minutes. It was still an intense story but I could enjoy it because I was concentrating on the story rather than simply trying to get from one room to another without dying 20 times.

ā€œI Let Go of Completionismā€ – This one is hard for me. If it’s a game I really like, I’ll go for the dopamine hit of getting as many achievements as I can. However, if it becomes too onerous, I won’t bother. For achievements that are highly reliant on RNGs or hours of grinding, it’s just not worth it to me. Many Yakuza games are notorious for this, and as much as I love them, I can’t bring myself to get to 100% on some of them when doing so would require 40+ extra hours of investment (including completing the entire game on the hardest difficulty). For those who do this, I applaud their commitment, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

ā€œI Stopped Hoarding Itemsā€ – Yeah, I’ve gotten better at this. I’m likely to hold on to unique items, but for most stuff, it’s just not worth it since most things aren’t really special. If I’m not playing a melee character, I’m not going to bother holding on to 100 melee weapons even if they are super awesome because I’ll never use them. Maybe I’ll hold on to a couple of really good ones in case I need to do a melee challenge or something, but otherwise it’s not worth it.

ā€œI No Longer Look for Help Onlineā€ – I do this all the time, especially when it comes to the previous bullet point around ā€œwrongā€ choices. Sometimes choices are hard so I’ll look up the consequences because I want to make sure whatever I choose leaves the world in a place I’m happy with. Even knowing ā€œthis choice doesn’t really matterā€ is fine. Also, sometimes I run into something so obtuse/difficult/annoying that I’ll look up help just to get past it because while I have no doubt I could have figured it out on my own, I have limited time and don’t want to screw with it. I guess it all depends. In general, I prefer to figure things out on my own, but I also know my limitations and getting help online can help increase my enjoyment.

In all, not bad tips, but as always ā€œit dependsā€ and I can find enjoyment from applying these rules as much as I can find enjoyment by ignoring them.

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ā€œI Stopped Chasing Secrets and Chestsā€ – I don’t recall the last time that I did that. Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Metroid? Sure 40 years ago. Maybe if you count the shortcuts you can find and use in some racing games. That can still be fun.

ā€œI Don’t Force Interest in Side Contentā€ – Not sure I ever forced interest in that. But there were times the sidelines were more fun than the main event. Nowadays, when so many of them are just annoying things like ā€œGather 50 clumps of rare devilgrass and 100 rat tails, then use them to craft a pillow.ā€ I just skip 'em.

ā€œI Don’t Panic About Taking the ā€˜Wrong’ Pathā€ – For most games I never did. For deep games which gate a lot of stuff behind your early choices (like Ancient Domains of Mystery), I still carefully consider which path I want to take. Because it can make a big difference.

ā€œI Stopped Forcing Roleplayā€ – I don’t think I ever forced it, outside of an in-person tabletop RPG, it’s just a fun thing you can do to add to the game if you feel like it.

ā€œI Don’t Take the Game Too Seriouslyā€ – Can’t say I’ve ever done that either. But if I buy a new ā€œComplete Editionā€ of a game, that comes with all the DLCs and stuff, there’s a good chance I’ll turn that off so I can at least play the campaign through once as it was meant to be played. It’s just more fun to work your way up and unlock new and better stuff. Starting from day 1 with all the best stuff in the game and everything unlocked is boring and totally spoils the game.

ā€œI Stopped Forcing Hard Difficulty Settingsā€ – Never did that either. But in recent years I have often adjusted difficulty down, because unlike a bored teenager, I don’t have 16 hours a day to practice a video game. I just want to have some fun and wind down after work.

ā€œI Let Go of Completionismā€ – Another thing I was never big on. But I do enjoy completing the main campaigns of some games. Launching the rocket in Subnautica felt great. No, I never went back to get that one achievement that I missed, and probably never will. I actually had the stuff to do it, but didn’t know that doing it was an achievement. I also like finishing the championships in racing games. But if I get bored of the game, I won’t.

ā€œI Stopped Hoarding Itemsā€ – I don’t play games that let you do that very often. And when I do, the majority of it is junk anyway. I guess I hoarded stuff in Creativerse (a Minecraft-like game) because half the game is building things and you need stuff to do it. But I’m not hoarding stuff in Fallout or anything like that.

ā€œI No Longer Look for Help Onlineā€ – Game specific. Some of the ridiculously hard ones from earlier years, you bet I’m gonna look up. (Remember those old text adventures and point-and-click adventures with the very obscure puzzles like needing to fix some plumbing and having to figure out to bring a monkey, which you could then use as a monkey wrench?) Modern games, meanwhile, mostly hold your hand and tell you what to do all the time. Minimaps and quest markers and highlights on things you’re supposed to care about and so on.

I’m guessing this was aimed at a very different type of gamer. Someone who tries very hard to compete, even in a single-player pastime, instead of enjoying it.

This is Yakuza-universe games. If you just focus on main story content, you get maybe 20 hours of gameplay. It’s not to say the main story content is bad by any stretch – it’s engaging and filled of all the kinds of hero’s journey stuff you expect, but overall focusing on the main story is just a small slice of what the games have to offer. The side content is where it’s at. There is just so much side content out there to mine. Sidequests you can unlock can run the gammut: goofy, bizarre, funny, sad, crushingly sad, and pure WTF.

Many side stories can seem simple enough – a small problem presents itself that’s usually resolved by beating up some hoodlums that had it coming – but as it twists and turns, it can become something really touching or special. A child gets a MacGuffin stolen from them by some hoodlums can lead into the child being estranged from a parent who unknowingly hired hoodlums to acquire said MacGuffin because it was rare and the parent wanted to get it for their kid to try to repair their relationship. Things like that. These games are filled with Aesops, and they are mostly very lovely to experience.

There’s all kinds of other content – some of which is either literal games-within-the-game (such as emulated Sega arcade or Master System games), darts, bowling, mahjong, casino games, gambling games, fighting arenas, pachinko, dating sims, UFO catchers, and all kinds of other invented stuff. Some of it’s great, some of it isn’t, but you can’t fault them for trying different things. All are fully fleshed out with extensive systems. Most of them are worth experimenting with because they often lead to more side quests. The latest Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth title had an entire cozy Animal Crossing-esque game-within-a-game that you could easily sink 10s of hours into by itself.

Whenever I play a Yakuza-universe title I always make an effort to not miss any side content. I’ll go off the beaten path of the main title for some 10 hours or so just doing side content and by the time I get back to the main story I’m like, ā€œok, who the hell is this guy again and what was I doing?ā€ You can easily sink 60+ hours into just completing side quests and if you were to complete everything that could be another 40+ hours depending on how punishing the systems are.

Most games with side content are definitely not like this. Ubisoft open world titles are notorious for most side content being ā€œgo here and kill this guyā€ or ā€œgo here and fetch this thingā€ without much else beyond it making it little more than checking boxes. At least with Yakuza-universe games you get something out of it beyond just checking a box.