Actually, Universal Paperclips is the most recent "game" I've tried, although in some respects I wouldn't call it a game as much as, perhaps, a technology demonstration.
The last true "video game" I played, ever, in the clasic sense of the word, would be GTA: Vice City. That's the last time I had a console, bought a title, and immersed myself in the game play, to beat the game, as intended by the producers of the game. I also revisited it, when they re-released it as a mobile app, and played it on a tablet.
After that experience, the deep dive of investing maybe 80 hours of zombie-like effort into beating a richly developed video game, while being mildly entertained by the story arc of the game, I washed my hands of video games. It had eaten up about a month of my life, and had amounted to pretty much nothing in return. I gained a new variant of button mashing skills, while vegetating at home on the couch.
Mobile or not, games are time wasters, for when you have time to spare. As I've gotten older, I resist getting sucked into media that tries to engulf me and swallow up weeks of time, to unravel a yarn of riddles attached to a gaming environment. (or whatever)
I've seen all the newer games, and they're interesting for sure, but to sit inside and play a video game like it's a job feels like erasing whole sections of your life, when you come up for air. You ask yourself: What the fuck am I doing with my life?
I don't really care about all of the new, emerging technology and advancements. It's kind of a sad joke at this point. Graphics cards, consoles, downloadable content, live streaming speed runs, e-sports celebrities and fame? I just... I just don't care anymore.
If something makes you happy, you should do it. It is not a waste of time if you enjoy it. Also, I find listening to people a waste of time. Work is a waste of time. To be honest everything in a sense is a waste of time.
Oh, they good 'ol waste of time argument in a sauce of nostalgia and regret. Been there, done that.
Games do not have to be time wasters! There are good games which you can play casually. An example is Wordfeud (a Scrabble clone) which only takes about 5 minutes every 3 days if you want it to be. Its great to play whilst traveling or on the toilet.
Puzzle elements and competitive elements can be a useful aid. Even hand eye coordination has uses. Doing so in a playful manner can be constructive. I've seen games which even learn a toddler programming basics. Even the social element of a game such as a pen & pencil RPG or an MMORPG (why travel IRL for RPG) is worth something.
> You ask yourself: What the fuck am I doing with my life?
This is a good question to ask for people who get sucked into time sinks of gaming. What I've observed is that people who do those grindy games need to get their mind of their RL issues. You can call it avoiding reality, or trying to cope with reality.
In ~five years between 2006-11 we went to full onslaught of indie games with the markets barely distinguishable from the olde Flash game sites. Everyone can make an ‘indie game’ now―they're not even called that anymore, I think. IPhone and Android happened in the same time.
BTW, it sorta helps to have ‘queues’ of stuff you want to read, watch, listen to, or play. I've gathered some titles just from seeing each mentioned twenty times on the web―many are classics by now, of course (especially since my games queue doesn't move much anyway).
For a while, I also watched Twitch, but seems that everyone except most promoted streamers got tired and there's nothing except streams of Fortnite. I discovered few games from there, at the times when it was interesting.
My friends are mostly playing AAA games on Playstation nowadays, so unfortunately I lost this way of discovery too.
I don't read much about the latest games, and my rig needs a serious upgrade as well...
However, when I do read articles about game development and such, some games get mentioned more than others. For their gameplay, story line, art, etc..
So those games get added to my wishlist, and when they go on sale (such as Spec Ops: The Line, which looks to be a morally ambiguous experience), I pick them up. It helps that years old titles (like the remastered BioShock series) run OK on my rig.
Now that I think of it, it's sorta weird that despite ads being such an omnipresent nuisance these days there's not a website equivalent of that today.
I don't any more, but I believe it's still published. It never really felt like advertising, of course they were sent free copies to review, but there were plenty of negative reviews.
If you can apply a mental 'Fortnite filter' (or want to read about Fortnite) then Polygon is good too.
I'm ashamed that I forgot about it in my other comment, but Rock Paper Shotgun is my other favourite gaming site. I've never gotten any whiffs of shilling from there, but I may not have the nose for it.
Ehat really stopped was the recurring hardware upgrades ever two or three years. The last one was more than 5 years ago I think...
Me too. Reminds me of this quote: "we don't stop playing game because we get old, we get old because we stop playing games".
There is a sea of terrible games, and that’s especially true on mobile, and in my experience it’s impossible to find the ones I like.
When I was younger, my friend group had time to try a lot of games to find the good ones. Once you found a good one, you’d recommend it to other people, and they would do the same to you.
That’s how I found the original Fallout. I played all the demos that came with a PC magazine of the time, and one of those demos was Fallout. I found x-com ufo enemy unknown because my cousin played it at my grandparents house. Dune 2 because it was installed in my youth club. Diablo because it was the hottest game at a Net-cafe.
With age I’ve lost that recommendation zone. I don’t have time to try games and neither do my friends, so we don’t. Once in a while something will blow up so large that you can’t avoid hearing about it. But finding the gems? How do you even do that? I mean, I guess you could turn to gaming-“journalism”, but that is mainly just advertising.