Gaming

Yeah basically. It's a loot shooter, it's very fun in co-op but not good enough to carry itself in singleplayer.

The original trilogy of AC games was my jam back in the day, very solid games, still a new concept at the time and not run into the ground. The story was super interesting too, lots of history imparted through the locale and story as well. If you haven't played AC Odyssey, its the only AC game in the last few years that I genuinely enjoyed. It takes a new approach on the assassin gameplay by interspersing it with some genuine Arkham-Knight-like combat. Its open world too so you kinda choose your battles and can choose to go in hot and fast or slow and sneaky, lots of greek references and even famous philosophers and leaders of the time so a fun history lesson here and there as well. Genuinely recommend you take a look if you haven't. I feel the same about the Arkham games though, Batman was never my favorite superhero anyhow

What about games like Half Life or Metro? I don't like most mutiplayer shooters either, but storydriven singleplayer games can be great imo

Yep. I love planting things, harvesting them... I want Stardew Valley without the time management stuff.

I wanted to love FF14 and tried it after shadowlands in WoW. But I felt like the entire game was terribly dull. The story felt pretty generic to me, and the cutscenes were sooooo slow (long pauses and generic emotes between lines drives me nuts). But the thing I disliked the most was how samey all the dungeons felt.

I played a WHM for the campaign up until SGE came out and actually enjoyed the way that class played, but the world just felt kinda flat to me.

Which castlevania? The metroidvania ones, or the classic ones?

I love the metroidvania ones.

Speaking as a player with thousands and thousands of hours in CS... I definitely get why it doesn't appeal to some people. But what you describe about it is exactly why I and so many other people like it. The game changes very little, and pretty much only gives you guns and grenades as weapons, no fancy abilities or anything like most modern titles.

That unchanging-ness and limited toolset means that raw strategy and to a lesser degree reflexes are the only ways to get ahead. With the map designs set in stone, many with decades of refinement and balance adjustments, you get intimately familiar with every door, corner, and corridor. It becomes much more about predicting what the other team will do and strategizing against it, rather than just grappling with the game and mechanics.

I recently tried to play MH: Rise and bounced so hard. They really need to consider how to ease new players to the genre into the game. The first hour included so much exposition, paragraphs of text, and detailed menu tutorials before I really had any context for why anything is important. I know that the games have always been this way, but it felt lazy.