I’m not a gamer. Suggestions?

I think it sounds like Skyrim is the droid I'm looking for. First priority is just pure exploration of possibilities, if that takes then I may become interested in following some storyline. 
Anyone know if that is available on the Xbox package subscription? Or is there a list somewhere? 
An open world with basically unlimited play options is what I'm after. Basically D&D but doesn't require so much prep or planning (or a group of folks who can manage to actually show up)

As for other game types, I quite enjoy FPS games if I'm in a room playing with friends. Not so much online. I used to play a lot of Halo when I had roommates, but only multiplayer games and never campaign mode. That said, I was never very good and in a similar setting all I think I would find is frustration. That's fine for killing time with some friends where I can throw  chips at someone in frustration or just as a distraction, but not what I'm after now. 

In reply to ProDarwin :

Ahhh, got it, thanks.  I wasn't thinking physically.

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

There's a list at the link I posted on the last page. 

Skyrim is on PC, console, and cloud streaming through game pass. 

ProDarwin said:

Duke said:

ProDarwin said:

Yeah my setup is a compromise because I like non-sim games as well.  A lot of the full send sim rig setups would be awful for anything else.

Could you elaborate?  Because I figure more power is more power.  I understand how certain applications might not take advantage of a sim rig's strengths, but I don't understand how it would actually be worse.  Thanks.

You are right RE: Power.  The desktop I use would be fine for both and generally anything beneficial for normal games helps with racing games also. 

Mostly I mean ergonomics.  The Kb tray, mouse, seat, etc. are all different between "normal" and "Sim" gaming.  For playing Doom/Quake/whatever and general office tasks, I want the KB & Mouse almost right in the middle of where my wheel would normally be with my 'sim' setup.  Thankfully I can easily slide my playseat out of the way and slide the monitor back in about 30 seconds.  The more serious sim rigs you can't do that.  Extra shifters, handbrakes, triple screens, etc. all add to the complexity.

 

My sim setup

 

My normal setup:

 

 

 

Yeah in terms of the computer itself, there's really no difference between a sim racing PC and a general gaming PC, it's the controls. My solution was to have a separate dedicated sim seat, when I want to play a driving sim I just pick up my monitor and move it a couple feet across from the normal-use seat to the sim seat, and then plant my ass in the sim seat (which has a dedicated keyboard/mouse as well).

In reply to RevRico :

Thanks!

Once you're finished with skyrim you can go back in time to Morrowind. It's skyrim without the hand holding, and... graphics.

Strike one against modern gaming. Downloading the things. I understand that the sheer amount of info cannot be contained by a cartridge or on a disc, but it's a little annoying. 
 

I signed up for game pass. Little bro is a big gamer and he was visiting town for a couple days so we talked about a few different things. I'm gonna try both No Mans Sky and Skyrim and see where we are. I'll try and put a couple hours into each before making any conclusions. 
 

Maybe we should have opted for something other than the baby internet package. 

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

Those are relatively small games. Skyrim is 10 years old. It's a modest 6gb. That would require 2 dvds. No Man's Sky is only 10gb, it would need 3.

DOOM: Eternal is 80gb...

ProDarwin said:

z31maniac said:

ProDarwin said:

All of these are a little bit sandboxy:

 

Cities Skylines (modern Sim City)

Kerbal

Project Highrise (modern Sim Tower)

beamng.drive (car physics sandbox - controller is the suggested way of playing)

antichamber - first person puzzle game (think Portal, Quantumn Conundrum, etc)

subnautica - a weird, beautiful grind

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator looks pretty entertaining

 

I do really enjoy Sim games, but my sim rig sucks for doing anything but racing games. 

Another one I forgot about, that is somewhat like Sim City/Skylines, is Tropico. 

Yeah my setup is a compromise because I like non-sim games as well.  A lot of the full send sim rig setups would be awful for anything else.

I'm working on a new design that allows me to rotate the monitor 90 degrees to switch between sim & normal gaming.

Hopefully VR gets good in the next few years and I can physically divorce the sim setup from the desktop setup.

Oh I have a triple 32" 1440p 144hz curved monitor setup. I bought the rotating keyboard mount for the monitor mount, but the way I have everything setup, it just won't work. 

If I could get that over my laptop with a mouse it would be fine. 

Beer Baron said:

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

Those are relatively small games. Skyrim is 10 years old. It's a modest 6gb. That would require 2 dvds. No Man's Sky is only 10gb, it would need 3.

DOOM: Eternal is 80gb...

Playstation's have had Blue Ray players for 15+ years which hold a LOT of info. And the newer XBOX models do as well. 

Depending on the exact flavor, Blue-Ray discs will hold between 25 to 100gbs. But even still, those will transfer over to the HDD what is needed MUCH faster than even a fast internet connection. Maybe if you're hardwired. But my router is in the sim rig room so I have the PC hardwired to the router. 

In reply to z31maniac :

Yea, but the last few years, buying a physical disc just gets you a key to download the game most of the time. Blu ray was a big deal for the PS3, now we're getting consoles without optical drives at all. 

Then there are games like COD, GTA, RDR2, ARK, etc that are pushing 110+GB after all the expansions and updates and bug fixes are tacked on. 

Really makes me wonder why the biggest and best newest consoles only have a 1TB SSD. I understand cost, but you can max one out with 6 games if you're not careful. 

Then again there are still large parts of the country where the best internet speed available is in the single digit MB/s, pretty much ensures you can't game when you can barely stream a movie. 

Beer Baron said:

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

Those are relatively small games. Skyrim is 10 years old. It's a modest 6gb. That would require 2 dvds. No Man's Sky is only 10gb, it would need 3.

DOOM: Eternal is 80gb...

And it's worth it. 

RevRico said:

In reply to z31maniac :

Yea, but the last few years, buying a physical disc just gets you a key to download the game most of the time. Blu ray was a big deal for the PS3, now we're getting consoles without optical drives at all. 

Then there are games like COD, GTA, RDR2, ARK, etc that are pushing 110+GB after all the expansions and updates and bug fixes are tacked on. 

Really makes me wonder why the biggest and best newest consoles only have a 1TB SSD. I understand cost, but you can max one out with 6 games if you're not careful. 

Then again there are still large parts of the country where the best internet speed available is in the single digit MB/s, pretty much ensures you can't game when you can barely stream a movie. 

You can still order a PS5 and new XBOX series with Blu-Ray drives. I don't really have many DVDs anymore, but still have a decent amount of Blu Ray movies/concerts. Since I can get a console that does it, no need for a separate player. 

Granted, the last game I bought in the store was RDR2. I went to Game Stop, bought the game and it game with two Blu Ray discs to get the game on the HDD, then one you always had to have in the PS4 itself to play the game. 

The thing that sucks for me, I'm not interested in online gaming (outside of racing sims). I like "campaign modes." Which is why we don't have a new GTA yet and RDR3 is predicte for 2026!

In reply to z31maniac :

Yea, I'm pretty much exclusively single player these days since horizon wanted to be all broken. I just like being all digital, so there's 5TB of external storage connected to my Series X. Having multiple Xboxes in the house, game sharing through digital titles is awesome.

Switching games between drives is annoying as hell though. Because the "optimized for series X"games need to be on the SSD for the speed, but storage is so limited. 

I hadn't heard anything about another Red dead game. Like anywhere, let alone as early as 2026. Got a link? I haven't even hard much about Red dead online lately.

My prediction for GTA6, that we've been waiting 9 years for currently, is that the single player campaign will start with a cut scene in Vice City, leading to a mission to go to the airport, where it will just dump you into GTA online 2.0. Maybe for an extra fee you can import your old online character. 

I've been countered in that prediction by single player micro transactions for missions and NFT outfits and weapons. 

We'll see what the update brings in March for GTAV. 

There's not a lot of hope for Rockstar/Take 2 since the Hauser brothers (the writing geniuses behind the GTAs and bully and many other games) left the company and micro transactions became Strauss Zelnicks (CEO of take 2, rockstar's owner) reason to live. 

In reply to RevRico :

I just did a google search and ran across a couple of articles. Of course, it's all speculation. 

I will be bummed if we don't get sequels for either. 

barefootcyborg5000 said:

Strike one against modern gaming. Downloading the things. I understand that the sheer amount of info cannot be contained by a cartridge or on a disc, but it's a little annoying.

It's not really about storage, it's more about being able to push out patches.  Games are massively more complex than they were 20 years ago and with complexity inevitably come bugs.  If you're shipping a game on a blu-ray disc then you need to send a "golden master" to the manufacturing guys at least a month or two before the release date, and that's a month or two that you don't have to finish the bug fixing.  As such, the version on the disc is often unplayably buggy and really depends on getting that patch.

In reply to z31maniac :

They've formally announced GTA 6, finally, stating that it is in production but little else. I expect come E3 in June we may get a trailer or a few details. 

I'm hoping for something to play by next October, which would be the 10 year anniversary of 5. 

Back on the original topic, the Mass Effect trilogy with Shepard is awesome. I finally got around to playing it last month for the first time. I think 2 was the best game of the trilogy, but the story arc was worth it. 

I'm now slogging through mass effect andromeda and it sucks. The controls, the story, I'm using the female option of character and her voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me, the dialog options are generic, it's just not on par with the Trilogy. It's ok as a standalone game, but I'm barely into the story and it's already repetitive fetch quest after repetitive take the base back quest. Stick to the Shepard trilogy if you want to check these games out.

One of my buddies mentioned Death Stranding because he oldest son really liked it. I think I got 2 hours and decided, this just isn't the kind of game for me. 

PS4 + 4k TV, it was absolutely gorgeous though. 

z31maniac said:

One of my buddies mentioned Death Stranding because he oldest son really liked it. I think I got 2 hours and decided, this just isn't the kind of game for me. 

I put over a dozen hours into it before giving up in exasperation. I got tired of feeling like most of the game was cutscenes, and like it went out of its way to explain things that didn't need explaining and didn't bother to explain things that did. I found the experience more tedious and frustrating than actually challenging.

I think it could have been a great game, if someone had come in and gotten rid of all the unnecessary crap. As it was, it felt like it didn't respect my time.

Terraria is fantastic for wonderfully addictive and time-wasting. Easy to jump in/out. Manageable learning curve. Modestly sized and not hardware intensive.

After about an hour on No Man's Sky and I'm moderately interested. The constant need to resupply is a little irritating but I'm sure eventual upgrades will make that part a lot less time consuming. Haven't died yet and I have a base built, if a modest one. I've never been very fond of pc controls...

Skyrim is still downloading. Eager to play that. 
 

Also of note, maybe it's proximity to the screen, but my head hurts after an hour. I wonder if those blue light glasses would help? I'm on a computer most of the day at work so maybe it's not that. Taking a break for a few hours. 

The beginning of Skyrim is fairly long and boring. Once you get past the linear introduction it gets more interesting. Just a heads up, it can be a slog.

(Maybe I'm biased from having sat / played through it at least 10 times over the years)

In reply to birdmayne :

Apparenlty one of the most commonly downloaded mods is one to let you skip the intro section. So you're not the only one to feel that way. I think it's more bearable the first time through.

Nowhere near as bad as Death Stranding, as mentioned above.

In reply to barefootcyborg5000 :

The first...however many hours of nms are fairly grindy. The good news is, once you start getting good stuff and upgrades (right around the time you make your first jump to a different system) it gets a lot more fun. New drives, new planets, new materials, etc. 

No surprises really, but 5yo is thoroughly enjoying creative mode.