SoupUser's recent activity
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Comment on Diablo IV discussion thread in ~games
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Comment on Cozy games in ~games
SoupUser (edited )LinkI just checked my Steam inventory and didn't find too many cozy games other than a few already mentioned elsewhere in this thread (Stardew Valley, VA-11 HALL-A). However, two "cozy" game...I just checked my Steam inventory and didn't find too many cozy games other than a few already mentioned elsewhere in this thread (Stardew Valley, VA-11 HALL-A). However, two "cozy" game experiences of mine came to mind: Minecraft and The Long Dark. Both games have survival modes that for me produce the most cozy moments in gaming if played right, though it's perhaps not exactly what you're looking for. I do recommend considering a few easier play-throughs in most survival games (those without a massive combat focus) to reach this cozy-optimal endpoint I'll talk about.
In essence, for me the opening peril of a survival game leads to in-game experiences later where my achieved self-sufficiency, often with a self-constructed home, allows me to look back at how far in the game world I made it and feel grateful that I survived. With Minecraft, that vanilla survival loop does hit the spot, since I never really want to leave the home I built, yet reticently I'll explore the surrounding area, do a bit of spelunking, get lost and get into trouble a few times, and then run back home to fish or eat or farm, and be cozy inside my house.
The Long Dark offered me a really exceptional version of this that I'll never forget. No spoilers, but I dropped into one of the easier starting zones, and slowly started setting up camp in a cabin I found. Collecting food, scavenging sometimes barely enough, waking myself up in the middle of the night to fish in a blizzard, slowly exploring. Then after a couple of weeks of in-game time, I was finally getting a hold on surviving.
Then on a short afternoon expedition to explore, I ended up accidentally getting locked outside a big encampment-fence that I couldn't get back around, and ... it was suddenly night, I was freezing, and a blizzard hit. Seeing no other option, and full of regret for having left home under prepared, I just had to turn my back on everything I'd worked on, and go forward to survive. I felt kind of staggered by how quick it all happened, one stupid mistake: everything I'd spent so long working on to make a home out of was gone. It was like a couple in-game days of sleeping in caves, barely scraping by on not much to eat, and trying as hard as I could to travel safely during the day.
Then, nearly worn out, I finally spotted a house way, way off in the distance. I was somehow atop this huge mountain up in a lookout tower, having wandered there looking for shelter. Decided to walk through the night to get to the new house, or I might not make it without food and water. Another in-game day to walk there, hungry, tired, frostbitten. But I got there, got inside the abandoned cabin, and there was some food and drink in the cupboards, a few spare jackets, a fireplace with tinder already in it. And honestly, when I lit that fire, I'd never felt so "happy" in my "gaming" life. That was my home.
I'd still explore nearby outside day to day, more cautious, hunting, foraging, fishing. But when I'd come back in before nightfall, I'd light the fire again, make some in-game tea or warm up soup or whatever, and kind of have this real moment of ... gratitude, warmth, and happiness that I was there. I'd remember how I got there, and I'd feel really good. Cozy was part of it. Having a story was another.
Couldn't have gotten that though without the in-game peril, that whole accidental losing my first home.
I'd recommend none of that Rust gaming stuff, but something survival that is more low-key, fair, and solo based where you can build a cozy home and still venture out into the wild yet have a place to come back to ... that I'd recommend could lead to cozy.
Funny enough, as a weird recommendation, years and years ago I saw this slight parody, partially sincere Skyrim play-through called "Rag's to Riches: Olaf's Diary" where the character would eat in the inn in the evenings, and it always felt cozy to me seeing someone actually using the Skyrim inns as if they were communal spaces.
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Comment on Film and feelings: Stalker (1979) in ~movies
SoupUser LinkIt's interesting because I'm about a decade out from my last viewing of Stalker, so how I feel about it would be more grounded had I recently seen it. I'm also very much in that uncanny territory...It's interesting because I'm about a decade out from my last viewing of Stalker, so how I feel about it would be more grounded had I recently seen it. I'm also very much in that uncanny territory of having a "tone poem" memory of it, though less like an eel fluidly lurking beneath the mythic mind, and more like "those meadowy murmurs on the ruined wind, with thoughts of you fading, though we once lived."
To answer your recommendation question first, but with feeling: Tarkovsky's Mirror felt similarly dreamlike and meditative, haunted, beautifully sad, and also interested in the ephemeral mundanity of the human condition. Paris, Texas left me with something similar too ... love and life amongst the ruins. Long dusty stretches of the land out west, the lonesome beating of the living heart. The bereavements of time. Loss as a "long, drawn-out goodbye, but in a waking dream." I also recommend Chris Marker's La Jetée and Sans Soleil, both stylistically different from Stalker and each other, but both glimpsing at living in the aftermath of living - an aftermath one can't escape.
Can I also recommend the video game Disco Elysium to you? If you play it with an open heart, it's all there, this stuff I'm thinking about Stalker. And also, music-wise, The Caretaker's Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom.
I feel sad and grateful and weirdly reassured by Stalker. I feel deeply alone watching it and Mirror, and kind of okay with being alone. It's the type of film that keeps me up at night afterward, longing to go back specifically because I can't go back. If I could go back in time, would Stalker hit differently? I think so. I think a lot about that final scene in the film, which - and I never knew if this was apocryphal or not - but apparently that "snow fall" is pollution from the nearby power plant, which was possibly radioactive, and is said to have later led to the deaths of many of the cast and crew via cancer. Is this true? Was this known when they filmed it?
I'd recommend joining that reading group on Roadside Picnic that another person mentioned here.. Ah, I see from another comment you've read it. I read Roadside Picnic after seeing the movie, and I thought it was quite good. It gave me a baseline impression of the political statements the film conveyed. I think part of what was so haunting about Stalker, to me, is that those statements are present in the film yet universalised in a way that moves the soul itself.
My initial impressions are good, not staggeringly good, but good. I'm still playing it having beaten the campaign, not yet level 50 but now doing all the side-quests on world tier three. The momentum of the game is quite strong (the mounts are a good addition), at least up to where I am (especially playing a rogue). However, I can see the boring grind just over the horizon, which honestly is (for me) the downside of most games like this. Playing just to roll better gear, leveling to hit a bit harder, it all becomes a bit Cookie Clicker with fireworks and micro-managing cool downs. No doubt there is skill required to play well on, say, tier four difficulty, where micro-movements and timing come into play. But, yeah, I don't love the endgame of these types of games.
What I really liked about this game is the tone, art direction, story, and general mood. This is more Diablo, to me, than Diablo 3 was. I played Diablo 1 as a kid, and then a bit of Diablo 2 as a young adult (unfortunately not as much as I wanted to). Those were both really excellent games, and especially in the case of the first one, I can really speak to just how dark, weird, and full of gothic-horror it was. I think Blizzard, and gaming in general, has really turned to the BRIGHT color palette to keep players engaged, whereas the really dark, shadowy, almost bloodless tones are less used now. Diablo 4 has more of that. I really, really didn't like Diablo 3. It felt cartoony, I never got invested in the story, and with all the early issues of the release (server-stuff, the real money AH), I didn't finish it.
Diablo 4 is way more brooding, violent, demonic. The story is something that intrigues me, that captures the weirdness of angels and demons being anti-pathic, not just monsters, but inhuman. A couple of the cutscene cinematics were the best I've come across in gaming so far. There's a feeling of Sanctuary's environment having taken inspiration from The Witcher and the Dark Souls series. The music is great. Just in general, this game world feels established, horrifying, and beautifully rendered.
I do wish the drop-in, drop-out co-op was available for dungeons. It is fun seamlessly teaming up with other players in the world, and I think an underrated part of the game. But for dungeons, I've once or twice stood around and spammed invites outside an entrance until I found a party to join. As for the in-game shop, it's a tab I've never even once bothered with. I understand that we've reached this ugly place in gaming where micro-transactions are full blown in-game cosmetic stores, gambling services (I'm not sure this is in Diablo 4, but it's in other Blizzard games), and currency-exchange schemes meant to rip off kids. It does make Diablo 4 shimmer a bit less for me, but it's worth saying it's never once been imposed on me during my play-through.
So yeah, in the future, hopefully some more story content I don't have to pay too much for, an in-game LFG, and that's really it.