Asklemmy

Apex 🥴

i used to play clash royale, it is a massive credit card grab and a mental health nightmare

Kingdom come deliverance. It was a rollercoaster. One of the first games I played after building a new computer. I progressed far enough and finally found that the combat was jank and the story was pretty garbage. Still have fond memories of the game though. Almost like the first time playing Oblivion 🙂.

Lost ark

I have thousands of hours in MORDHAU, a crazy medieval PvP "First Person Sworder". It has been my main game since release four years ago. There's nothing that compares in my opinion, Chivalry 2 is in the same genre but I vastly prefer the combat of Mord.

It's on sale on Steam right now, -75%, check it out. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/629760/MORDHAU/

Any free to play game. TF2 was mine, I spent stupid amounts of money on it as a kid because it had the addictive loot crate dark patterns. I don't play games like that anymore.

Lost Ark. As an MMORPG it has terrible game design and profession systems on top of extremely heavy reliance on RNG. Everything has an RNG factor, from levelling your gear up and improving skills to pointless collectibles that don't really matter to the end game. Apart from all this the devs refuse to fix the core problems of the game such as reliance on alt characters to level up your main, stupidly high grinding for materials, bugs, performance and dumb designs for raids. The new player experience is terrible so anyone coming into the game will most likely quit withing a few weeks. On top of all this the game has egregious pricing for their shop and players are encouraged to spend to power up. I have 2500 hours in this game and only continue to play it because of my friend group that I made through the game. We play together so we avoid most of the horrible pub lobby experiences and gatekeeping.

Dota 2

Since I haven't seen it yet, Dead by Daylight is a pay-to-win disaster that is consistently making boneheaded decisions nearly every update.

Ark, The Sims 4, or CoD I'm sadly addicted, don't fall for these.

This godawful matching mobile game called Hello Kitty Friends.

Seriously it's the worst. But also it's mindless and cute and when I had back pain that was keeping me up all night I used to pace back and forth across my living room playing it.

RDR2, or "cowboy oblivion" is such a huge, fun, and enthralling play. I cannot recommend it enough

Temple run. I used to play it a lot back in high school, unlocked everything with gameplay only including seasonal things like Santa Claus. It was fun enough, but updates would regularily reset my game completely loosing everything I archieved and unlocked, and the developers never gave a shit about that issue. I eventually gave up on it because of that.

Recently, project zomboid. I feel like my ratio of exploring vs inventory management is super low. And then I have one misclick against a horde and have to spend the better part of an hour to get back to what I was doing with a buddy. Still get sucked into it though regardless.

Dragon Ball: Legends

Good mobile game with awful gatcha mechanics. After multiple attempts to quit it's like a bad relationship. I just keep coming back. I love to hate this game sometimes lmao.

I had 2000+ hours in Sea of Thieves before I stopped playing. I enjoyed the multiplayer aspect - meeting new people and having long chats without big groups (max crew of 4). It also has decent pve content. But the devs did a terrible job at bug fixing and it felt like they cared more about the lore/story telling than the sandbox aspects and combat which is the core of the game.

I'm always torn about Elite Dangerous, similar to Eve's grind I beleive. It's a space game that requires hundreds of hours and 3rd party databases to have any sense of efficiency. There's no true interplayer economy so you're still free to operate solo (except that one time people with fleet carriers kidnapped noobs to slave mine). I have 900+ hours in 3 years and still don't feel like I can do anything I want. I enjoy the sights, but they're really repetitive. I relax while mining, but the payout just isn't on the same level as some gaming methods. There's no campaign and the lore is just small journal entries, so progress is only measured by purchases. You're free to write your own story, but eventually you grow tired of the sandbox. The alien invasion events spiced things up about 9 years into the game's life, but even that has become a little stale. Build the meta ship, work the events methodically, go home. The real world time sunk into travel for necessary upgrades is tiring.

But then, every once in a while, I'll use my laptop on the big screen with great sound quality and I remember what makes this game so special.

Gex.

Mobile Legends Bang Bang, a mobile-based LoL ripoff thats very popular in South East Asia. It is very catered to newbie and low skilled players, most items sold as gatchas, and has severe skill-imbalance in matchmaking (many suspect they will pair you with low-skilled low-winrate players if you win too much, giving birth to many grievance from good solo players).
Alas, with my rl responsibilities, I can't play more serious moba like Dota2 anymore. The only way to satisfy my crave for moba is by playing MLBB as most matches only take 12 to 20 minutes to finish. I can cram it to my commute time or break time.

Guild Wars 2, although I don't know if people think it's garbage, just more obscure now