I sometimes just start rdr2 just to be amazed again on how far game development has come. It's a shame though that as an programmer, I can't really play games anymore without constantly thinking: "how is that made?" And before I know it I'm taken out of the game and imagining algorithms. Very annoying, but can't help myself.

For me I can't play games anymore because there's something in the back of my head going "Why am I not learning or creating something? I should be improving my skills right now."

Very frustrating.

Cut yourself some slack! :)

The brain needs it, and who knows, you might get inspired.

I know what you mean though, but I’ve been working hard to just let my brain rest at times. Games can be useful to turn off or tune down the machinery at times.

So agree here, I built a PC to play a few games last year and I haven't turned it on in months, feels like such a waste of time. But at the same time I waste countless hours doing other dumb stuff that and reading about things I will probably never actually implement. We need to play more is probably what it comes down to.

I set a little time aside each day, outside of working hours, to spend learning new things. As long as I do that time I’ve stopped feeling that I should be more productive when I play games. Took a while but I got there!

For me it is the opposite. I've dabbled in game dev as a hobby now and then and it's all code and bugs until the art arrives and transforms everything I've tried to do using ugly placeholders into something beautiful and amazing. That transformation is something truly special for me when it happens.

That's an integral part to me.

Akin Feynman's "Fun to imagine".

How marvelous the true nature of nature.

Same here.

I thought I was alone.

I will happily second this. Along with Horizon Zero Dawn, this is the most amazing game I’ve played in years. I’ll start it up sometimes just to go horseback riding along the amazing scenery, or go fishing, or bird watching, or hunting, or any number of the seemingly pointless things you can do in that game. It’s very therapeutic, especially after a stressful day.

I'll eventually play it when I get to it in my ever-growing backlog of games and my ever-shrinking amount of personal time.

I feel you! :o/ I do hope you get the time to play, it's worth it!

Red Dead 2 is my favourite game of all time. It was an incredibly game to play.

I couldn't get into Horizon. The normal difficultly was just insanely hard. I think I got 4 ~ 5 hours in and never ended up finishing it :(

That's funny, I found HZD a bit too easy on the normal difficulty. There were a few boss fights that where difficult, but not impossibly so.

I think maybe this depends on your play style – I most often went for the strategy of divide and conquer, lure individual machines away from the pack and get them one by one from a distance, usually with a combination of hard point arrows and tear blast arrows to get rid of their most lethal weapons. Whenever I went for using the staff to kill a machine it was too hard, unless it was one of the smaller ones. Also, making use of different ammo to target weaknesses in the machines proved quite effective, and after a little while you just intuitively know which kinda of ammo works against which machines.

Hope you give it another go, I think the story really is worth it!

Edit: definitely second your feelings on RDR2. First rockstar game that had me hooked from start to finish, such a great story. I never played the first one, and I'm a little hesitant to try it because of how great and beautiful RDR2 is, and how well it plays, and I fear playing the previous game will feel too dated in comparison, regardless of how good the story seems to be.

Talk about a "tour de force" for video games.

RDR2 is mind-blowing. I've already finished the game, and am still playing it just to walk around and do silly stuff like fishing and hunting, which I would NEVER normally do in a game.

But I can't keep away from RDR2. It's by far the best game ever created IMHO.

I've never been so moved by an ending (I got the "high honor" ending in the main game).

Spoiler alert: https://youtu.be/jc8cWDHRncU?t=5

I love RDR2's world

I hated every second of the main story. I would have been alright with starting at the epilogue and throwing out the entire story before that.

My friends are always trying to get me to enjoy and not skip cut scenes in games so I gave this one a try. NEVER AGAIN.

The world building in RDR2 is amazing. In 4K, on a large screen, I sometimes forget I’m not seeing a real vista. Watching distant weather systems or the subtle, twinkling lights of a city almost beyond the horizon adds so much.