Your Steam Replay for 2024 is now out!

If you're on the mobile app, hit Menu > New & Noteworthy > Steam Replay

Share your link (if you want to) or summarize your results. Tell us all about your most-played games, your year of gaming, and any other thoughts or highlights.

Hey Tildes, I'm super super out of the loop for gaming PCs. If I wanted to play AAA games like Stalker 2 on higher (!) settings, what kind of specs am I looking at, ballpark prices, makes that are good vs red flag don't buy? Everything seems way too expensive now I guess due to demands for AI and crypto stuff. Does it maybe make more sense to wait half a year or won't get any better?

Thoughts on GeForce rtx 4070? Need some kind of solid state hard drive, and it'll be a windows box it looks like for games. Or has Linux OS for gaming a good contender now esp when paired with steam ?

I should have done my homework well before cybermonday etc, but figure even weeks of work still isn't as good as copying you guy's homework. :) thanks in advance

Edit: Thank you everyone :D I've been leaning on the community for two big things this week (this, and learning to type software) and you guys really came through like eagles at Mt Doom.

Person I am asking for read all your comments, checked out a ton of sites you guys suggested, and
ended up finding a BlackFriday/Cyber Monday deal for a laptop with (reads sheet)

GeForce RTX 4080 Ryzen 9 7945HX 32GB 1TB SSD 240Hz 16" laptop

price was $2500 CAD ($ 1785 USD) + taxes. (non affiliated product link here)

many thanks again~

December 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight nine(!) Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

I'm completely hooked on this game.

My buddy and I have been sneaking in some Satisfactory at night when our families are in bed. If it makes it funnier, you can picture it like a secret love affair. Late night messages, slipping in and out bed trying not to wake the wives, and mid-day texts about our big plans (with our factories). Friends, I literally play this game in my head when I'm not able to play for real. And it's just as good since most of it based around planning.

Anyway, I'm surprised by the depth. A lot of it is intentional while a lot of the rest is the natural result of players kind of hacking the build mode to do things you can't normally do such as curves and 1 meter vertical conveyers.

What are your favorite tips and tricks for this game?

November 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Hello, it’s midnight where I am and I fell into a rabbit hole of MiniPCs and portable monitors.

I work from home with the occasional max once a month summon to office. I travel a lot and I ended up wondering if a MiniPC like Geekom would be for me.

I currently have a ThinkPad but I have an external keyboard, mouse, monitor, speaker and webcam at home. I only ever use the actual laptop parts when I am on a train or traveling. Which is also a pity because the laptop is heavy for me.

Anyway, does anyone travel with a MiniPC / monitor combo? I would love to hear your experiences and advice and maybe some obvious and not-so-obvious pros and cons that you can share.

Hi, I'm looking for a touchscreen desktop computer solution that is in the affordable range and capable of running Windows or Linux. Whether that is a touchscreen monitor and a standalone computer, or an all in one solution, do you guys have any recommendations? It will be used to run a marine charting program on a boat.

October 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Solution

It was probably my motherboard. I got a new CPU and motherboard and it worked. I also upgraded from DDR3 to DDR4 ram in the upgrade process

Background

So my computer is not posting, and I am unsure the cause. I am not getting an error code, so that complicates things. I do not know if this motherboard will provide post codes, it does not have a seven segment display for providing post codes.

How it started

It just randomly stopped displaying any pictures, unsure if it happened while in use or when the computer was asleep. I was doing stuff at my desk and had music playing on my computer. The music ended and I did not put on more music and the monitors went to sleep. Later when I went to use my computer It did not appear to wake up, I tried fully shutting down and turning on my computer, and that is when this problem occurred.

Symptoms:

• When I power on, computer appears to start normally, with all fans spinning so power delivery appears to be working. Even GPU fans are spinning.
• Holding down the power button turns the computer off as normal.
• Nothing is displayed on the screen, my monitors do not even detect an input.
• USB devices do not appear to be powering on.
• Every minute or two, the GPU fans ramp up briefly, and then ramp down. It may be all fans are ramping up, kind of hard to tell exactly which fans are ramping up.
• With the AMD GPU, the LEDs for power turn on. However, I vaguely recall the GPU itself having some RGB when the system was running that was not on. How my computer was setup I did not see inside my case that often, so the RGB on the GPU is a vague memory from a few years ago and I would not put much weight in there being some RGB.

Hardware:

• MOBO: Gigabyte 9900FXA-UD3
• CPU: AMD FX-8350
• GPU: ASUS Radeon HD7870 or EVGA GTX 970
• PSU: Cooler Master Elite V2 550W

Troubleshooting Attempted:

I initially assumed it was GPU related as the computer appears to turn on normally, but then nothing is displayed. So another user shipped me his old GPU (the GTX 970), and I swapped it out with my old one, and the problem persists.

I tried swapping out the RAM

I tried a brand new PSU and that also did not solve the issue

Leading hypothesis

Since I have changed everything out except CPU and MOBO, I am thinking it is probably my MOBO. I am currently researching my options for replacing my MOBO, or a friend offered me his CPU and RAM from his old rig with a broken MOBO that may be a better option than replacing mine.

I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want to keep my workflow consistent independent of my "workstation", and have identical dotfiles (like .bashrc, .vimrc etc.) on different devices.

So... How you personally deal with this issue, and what should I do?

Thanks!

September 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

August 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Basically the title. I think I've come to accept that as basic as it sounds, this is one of my favorite genres.

The issue I frequently run into is that so many of them are designed around PvP and / or Co-Op. Like ARK, I love the idea, but most of the mechanics are for PvP servers, which I have zero interest in.

Funny enough I'm not too into true survival games (Green Hell, The Forest), as I kinda enjoy the whole "Combine iron with two sticks and make an automatic weapon" progression of other games in the genre.

Obviously I've played Minecraft & Terraria, but also Subnautica, Palworld, Satisfactory (sort of counts), and NMS and enjoyed all of those.

Project Zomboid seems like it has too steep of a learning curve for me to get into.

I tried Astroneer, but the utter lack of base building and organization drove me up the wall.

EDIT: Forgot V Rising, which I also enjoyed solo, but it's definitely built with a PvP server in mind, which kind of makes progression in solo feel like you're aiming for a goal that doesn't exist.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions, I think I may give Raft or Project Zomboid a go.

Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta:

• What are some lesser-known Steam games that you recommend?

• Are there any genres you’d like hidden gem recommendations for?

If you're interested in previous Hidden Gem topics, you can find them here.

For popular recommendations and general purpose sale discussion, please use the main Steam Sale topic.

An update for this topic: I've always used the number of Steam reviews for a game as a rough proxy for the game's audience size. It's not perfect, but it works well enough. Steam effectively made this canon in one of their recent sales. They had a Hidden Gems category and then broke the game list out into different tiers based the number of reviews each one had. I saved their taxonomy so I could use it here.

Feel free to tag or group your recommendations based on these if you like:

All the categories above, except for the last one, are how Steam defined their different tiers. I have some qualms with them using "Cult Classic" there, but I'm going to follow suit for consistency's sake.

I myself added the last category, because I think there are plenty of games worth mentioning with more than 1000 reviews that still have a solid Hidden Gem vibe but have since found bigger audiences and "graduated" from the label.

July 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Edit: This community is amazing, thank you all for all of your suggestions. Feel free to keep them coming. I have a Google doc full of ideas with my comments that I'm going to drop on him. I was trying to respond to everyone and then discovered that Tildes will rate limit you. So if I don't respond to you, I'm sorry but I definitely read your comment and checked out your suggestions!

My friend suffers from depression and lives 6 hours away from me so the happiest I see him is when we are regularly gaming together. The problem is that I haven't been able to find a game we both wanted to play for a while.

I just cannot get into all the survival crafting games that seem to dominate co-op gaming these days. I am looking for suggestions for anything else. Also, it needs to be an online co-op instead of a couch co-op.

His computer isn't the best so that needs to be a consideration, nothing wrong with older games. Ideally we are talking about PC games on Steam.

Examples:

• we played a ton of Risk of Rain 2, probably the last game we played a lot together
• we have played through Halo co-op a bunch of times.

Who has ideas for me?

June 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

I almost need a "thumb sideways" button but I can't give this game a thumbs up.

Why should you listen to me?

For background, I beta tested Homeworld for Relic back in '98-99. I've played every single PC Homeworld game. I've sunk hundreds of hours into playing vanilla Homeworld, Complex, and Every. Single. Star Trek mod that anyone has ever made for Homeworld and Homeworld: Remastered.

That's to say: I adore love Homeworld/Homeworld 2. Over 25 years of PC gaming, they may be my all-time favorite games period!

Of course, I bought the "Fleet Command" edition. In truth, I did it to encourage the developers to keep pumping out more Homeworld.

Alas, the only thing I want right now is a complete and amazing mod toolkit so that this game can quickly become the substitute and successor for the original.

A little history: Homeworld (and Remastered) thrived with its mod community. The original game was not designed for modding. Yet so many intrepid individuals out there struggled their way through cracking the binary format(s?) of the game. And, at least, as I understand it, some of the game behavior is scripted in Lua, a less common but publicly available programming language. Just go look at the Workshop for Homeworld: Remastered. The number of different total conversion mods out there is staggering. The love put into so many of those mods is utterly mind-blowing!

In a nutshell, HW:3 plays a lot like Homeworld (the original) but, if anything, dumbed-down
significantly from the original but with 2024 visuals--except for the cut-scenes that oddly look rendered using vintage 2000 technology. The game mechanics lack the depth of any of the HW sequels. The campaign is linear and, at times, glitchy (I'm looking at you, asteroid mission and you, the one cut-scene where some of the lines repeat causing me to wonder if I'm suffering auditory hallucinations or if their QA missed something like that).

The gameplay is not particularly innovative or deep. The default pace of combat itself tends to be faster than previous Homeworlds. Though, in single player, you can change the game speed. However, the default speed can be overwhelming compared to previous Homeworld games, which can make multiplayer frustrating.

For fans, while it should not be surprising It's not Homeworld: Complex (or EVO), I expected to see more of the depth, introduced by HW:C and HW:2, For instance, there are no subsystems on ships; you can't target engines or weapons. Ships either blow up or they don't. There's no defense field frigates and no cloak generators.

My hope is that the mods (Star Trek or The Expanse, anyone?) will make this game shine. But right now? Unless you're a true super-hardcore Homeworld fan, who needs their Homeworld story fix, you should hold off.

On the plus side: it doesn't crash as often as a NASCAR driver like Helldivers 2 or the original Homeworld, for that matter.

Ultimately, I'm disappointed that Homeworld 3 plays like a dumbed-down version of Homeworld 1. I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, what with game studios increasingly desperate to get that larger market share which means appealing to a broader audience. But that means that if you long for the depth of Homeworld 2 or Complex, you're waiting for mods.

The modding tools aren't out yet.

And, so, thumbs down.