Half Life 2 base now includes the Episodes and they have been delisted. The only thing in The Orange Box now really is Portal, since Lost Coast is also delisted and TF2 is free. Still a great deal tbh for one game, but you don’t need it for basically any item in there.

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.

The moral low ground? Willingness to pay for exclusivity, allowing crypto games, that sort of stuff?

People opening it once a week sometimes to get a free game?

Yeah, I don’t see what Randy is on about, but that guy says a lot of bullshit.

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.

See the other reply about why the EU can’t act. I’d just like to add context on the “why were they let in” front.

Hungary joined the EU in 2004. The country was more democratic back then. There were even some hopes of joining the Euro zone. Then the government of the time cocked up (basically their words), and Fidesz/Orbán, who were part of the anti-communist wave in 1989, gained a supermajority in 2010 and gradually rewrote the constitution and electoral system. Slowly eroded all the systems, took control of all the media, etc.

Not sure when they became Russia-friendly/controlled, but Hungary has been less democratic since 2010 and that’s where the problems stem from. I genuinely wonder how much of it all was a Russian plot from the start and how much was opportunistic.

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.