FinnianWhitefir

Nope. I haven't played the last 2 Far Crys. Haven't played the last 4? ACs. Haven't seen a reason to play any new MOBAs. I tune in to see if there is something new or exciting or a reason to play these new games, and I see nothing. I'm surprised the guys aren't way more negative about how all these games look, and I think their outlook on them matches mine.

They seems like cookie-cutter games that will be fine to play if you just want another open-world game to check stuff off a list, or collect X items, or just shoot people. We should be negative about these games if we want exceptional games with amazing stories and new mechanics.

Abby talks up those Nancy Drew games, and honestly when my niece was pretty young I fired one up and she really liked it. We played through together for a few, but as she grew up she would mostly play and I'd help a little. The newer ones are way more UI-friendly and I wouldn't suggest going back to the first ones anymore. You also have to carefully curate them as some can be super-scary to a little kid. I think she super appreciated that it was a girl main character solving things.

The Witcher. I used to only play is a perfectionist style, only choosing the "good" path and trying to leave these imaginary people with the best life possible. Then I got asked by some elves to get them medicine that the humans were keeping from them. Elves are normally good, and these ones were sick, so I set off to get that medicine and save them. Then I met the humans and heard the elves were killing them whenever they stepped out into the forest, so a bunch of them were starving. I pondered a bit, then alt-tabbed out to check the internet for what the "right" solution was.

There wasn't any. There was no good guy, no bad guy, just a messy grey situation just like in the real world. I almost quit the game because it was so hard to confront my "I must do the right thing". And then I realized this wasn't a problem to be solved. It wasn't something to be done perfectly. It was my story and special to me. It led me down this better path of "This playthrough is my playthrough, this story is my story, there's no right answer or perfect way". It really freed me to feel better about exploring other story-based games.

Would love a look at this. So far the games seem lackluster, but this alone puts me on the fence to buy a Vive.

I used to have this big stress over wanting the full experience, like it felt psychologically negative to miss any part of the story. I don't know, just issues I have with missing out on things. What helped a ton was a comment Jeff made about pre-order mission bonuses: "All the DLC/pre-order stuff is just extra stuff, it can't be meaningful to the actual story/game or they would have included it in the real game". This gave me the insight that all this stuff is just tacked-on minor stuff that doesn't matter in the "real game". And now I can relax, I can play the game how the developers meant it, I can have that experience, and if a DLC or pre-order bonus sounds good enough then I buy it. I've probably gone from buying 90% of the DLC for my games to buying 10%.

Really liked it. Probably put in 80 hours. Would have played more and looked at NG+, but I got to a mission where the boss could destroy every one of my guys and I couldn't even scratch him. I guessed that I was looking at ~20 hours of grinding for random loot/rewards to level up my guys to the classes I'd need to beat him, so I quit. I really wish it were better so that I could play it more. I probably caused it myself by trying to keep everyone upgraded and optimize classes/perks, but the randomness of rewards just killed any interest in grinding.

I used to buy season passes and a lot of DLC, until heard Jeff saying that none of this stuff could be game-critical or actually matter, or they would have to include it in the main game. It's all fluff and extra meaningless stuff, so it doesn't matter. Since then I've bought almost none. For instance I bought the Mordor season pass because they promised it would be non-PvP and actual story additions. I have zero interest in Tomb Raider's because it's short, meaningless, PvP, and from what I've heard virtually no story.

I've grown really soured on any sort of DLC, crowd-funding, early-access, etc. You offer me a game for a price, I'll verify I want to play that game for that price, and we're done. I don't need more later, I don't need to play through a game for a second time to access it like XCom, I don't need this mobile "Buy gems for $10 to get something" when I have no clue if I'll end up with everything for $10 or if I'll need to put in $10 every day for a month.

He also mentions feeling pressure to not make it boring for viewers. Most of you would likely be into it, but I imagine lots of casual viewers would completely tune out to a 2 hour video of Drew slowly sneaking around and stealth darting and fultoning enemies to complete one mission.

However, they ended up with the opposite of the spectrum, where he blazes in and dies for 45 minutes straight, then gets lucky once and beats the mission.

He didn't really listen to the codecs except when he had to. Dan was visibly disappointed in previous games that Drew wasn't calling random people all the time to get every bit of info/story. Just seems like how he plays. I totally understand that "Make a game that shows me everything, I'll play through it and enjoy it, we're done", as opposed to Dan's apparent "I want to spend time hunting around, uncovering side-quests and talking to people". It occurred to me yesterday that Drew didn't visit Paz a single time after Dan made him, which makes it clear how invested in the story he is.

Drew seems to have enjoyed the previous gameplay of the series, which can be summed up by "Little bit of sneaking, little bit of action, campy/funny boss fight that takes specific/interesting tactics, interesting/esoteric story video, repeat until you get a story dump at the end explaining things". MGSV is very different, you don't have to do anything specific for many bosses, and as an outsider it looks like a really boring generic open-world adventure game that is super different from MGS1-4.

I think it's obvious he's getting no enjoyment from the game, the end of Chapter 1 is nothing, doesn't add to the world at all, doesn't explain anything, and he was fine just assuming the game/story was meaningless and being done. Hopefully Chapter 2 has more interesting stuff, builds up the kids/Paz, and Drew gets into the story parts. I doubt it though. Just seems like they spent all their money/time making a good-playing game, and very little putting actual MGS into it.

I recommend traditional talk therapy. When I did a lot of research and googled names of therapists near me to find one that was a member of psychological associations and had actual scientific papers published, I got a ton of progress.

Dr Drew talks about it sometimes on his podcast. His claim, which I found true with me, is that you need one safe, stable relationship to learn how to actually open up and communicate and just exist comfortable with another person. It seems dumb and impossible at first, but just sitting with someone and talking slowly shows you that you can do that, that the things you say have meaning and are important, and that others won't just attack you every time you open your mouth. This opens the way for self-esteem and getting in touch with yourself.

As others said here, making sure you have good sleep, good diet, good exercise, meditation, all those help a lot of people with regulating this stuff.