Oh, you should also play Ms. Pac-Man! And if you get bored with that, try Pac-Man: Championship Edition.
Old guy wants gaming advice
No he doesn’t.
– What? Not everything is about me???
I’d say try some of the Telltale games.
It’s basically an interactive movie. And the “action” parts are really easy.
A good way to get your feet wet says this old man who got into video games late too.
<needle scratch> Wait, you’re a guy ?! Huh. What do you know. That’s an exclamation mark. I’d always, always, always read your username as Grrrl. Are you absolutely, **positively **sure you’re not a 30something gen-X sass-meisterette, possibly green- or pink-haired ? Because that’s what’s been working for me so far, you-wise.
On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.
Unless you give it away with a dog avatar, of course.
If Grrr! is a girl in your personal headcanon, I think he should respect that. 
I know, that’s what I’m saying, right ? Plus they just said they were retired, so they demonstrably have nothing better to do with their time than change sex, become ever so annoyingly chipper social science majors, be a bit too eager to launch into third wave feminist critiques of pop culture, sing Spice Girl deep cuts from “the good old days” when they’ve had a couple too many, the whole shebang.
I’m quite angry at this identity fraud they’ve been perpetrating on the unsuspecting public, for years.
You might want to try the Myst series, which at the time they were released were definitely considered amazing for their gorgeous graphics. The “action” is about discovering what happened in a mysterious place via exploration and puzzles rather than fighting. If you like that one you might also like The Neverhood which has a very different visual style but, again, involves exploration and puzzles to solve the mystery in a place.
The downside, if there is one, is that they’re all single-player games - but for some that’s a feature and not a bug.
You can get at least some of the Myst games on GOG. Not sure where you’d get the Neverhood these days. Think I still have my copy somewhere.
Ah, Myst…one of my first awesome video game experiences! May very well be a good suggestion for a newcomer to gaming who doesn’t want the stress of some other genres.
Looks like there are a lot of Myst-like game out there to appeal to different tastes.
One issue you might have with game controllers is that they are very complicated, and many games expect you to be “fluent” in using their basic functions. I am knocking around in a game now just trying to get proficient at pointing my character the direction i want, and moving smoothly.
I want to warn you may find your first few games frustrating. Games mechanically have a bit of a lingua franca in terms of things like control styles to menu navigation. Game literacy is a skill like any other. Imagine going into a movie without comprehending the language of Cinema intuitively like you’ve built up over your life, you wouldn’t be totally lost but it would take a lot more cognitive effort to think about what the various shots and techniques are signalling.
For your first games, I’d avoid anything 3D from gaming’s “awkward teenager” phase at the advent of home 3D. Any console game from the N64, PS1, or even early PS2 era probably made a lot of really awkward control decisions that are frustrating and have been discarded for pretty good reasons. SNES and Sega Genesis games are fairly comparable to modern 2D games in most cases, and I’d say the XBox 360/Gamecube/later PS2 era are when 3D games really came into having a consistent “language” that’s only incrementally evolved since then.
Alternatively, try downloading “Simon Tatham’s portable puzzle collection” on your smart phone. It’s free, and it had dozens of puzzle games, some very good.
So, hey. Hi there. Did we scare you off? That was NOT intentional. How do you like the advice so far?
It’s potentially a very cheap hobby indeed. We know you already have some sort of device, that you’re using to access this board. And whatever that device is, it can also play games, many of which are free. So you don’t necessarily need to spend anything more than what you already have. Now, the latest and greatest games might require a computer more expensive than the one you already have… but if this is your first foray into gaming, then there’s no reason you need those latest and greatest games. If Starcraft 1 and Doom II (say) were good enough for people in the 90s, then they can be good enough for you.
But yeah, we really need more info to make good suggestions.
Both.
Wow! Great information - thanks somuch for the advice. I’ll probably take a look at a single player thing first (Myst?). Im a terminal introvert so may take a while to get my feet wet before plunging into multiplayer. Thanks for the pointers and humor. Some of you folks sound a bit deranged. I like it here!
I have a brother who will be 70 this year; he owns exactly one commercially available video game, as far as I know. Tetris.
I say “commercially available” because I know he’s also played Beast.
Thanks for stopping back, that way we know the suggestions are worth it.
If you’re introverted and appreciate beautiful environments to explore, the only games I “play” (it’s more like “walk around and figure stuff out”) are Monument Valley and Lumino City. The city was entirely built of paper, and there are videos of it being constructed. I even upgraded my phone so I could run it.
Monument Valley was really nice. But I played it twice and was done with it.
I am having fun wandering around “Zelda, Breath of the Wild” but I’m going to have to get a LOT better at using the controller before I can advance very far in the game. The graphics are gorgeous, though. It’s a traditional first-person “wander around, kill things, collect stuff, and solve some puzzles” sort of game.
If you have a Nintendo Switch or a Steam account, you can play “Baba is you”. Steam is a system to buy and play games on your computer. “Baba is you” is sort of a mash-up of Fluxx and Sokoban, where you play the game by changing the rules of the game, by pushing words around. It’s also a single-player game.
Myst is an okay first place to start, but some people may find it obtuse. It’s a game that doesn’t really tell you anything about what you should be doing.
I’d suggest something in the turn-based singleplayer space. Possibilities include:
[ul]
[li]Sid Meier’s Civilization (any number) – a “4x” game, where you “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate”; Or, more politely, an empire builder.[/li][li]any “Total War” game – stripping away all that pesky civilization building and getting right into the “simulating warfare” part. If you’ve ever wanted to be Napoleon, here’s your chance.[/li][li] Xcom: Enemy Unknown – Smaller scale still. Command a squad of soldiers define earth from alien invasion.[/li][li] FTL – Taking things in a different direction. Guide your starship (and crew) through 8 eight sectors to save the Federation. Probably fail a lot, that’s okay.[/li][li] Tangledeep – A more traditional “roguelike” game about exploring a dungeon.[/li][li] The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel – A VERY different direction. Follow the story of a class of students at a fantasy military academy as they are drawn into the politics of their country. [/li][li] Invisible Inc. – Honorable mention here; Command a small team of high-tech operatives as you sneak in to corporate facilities and steal their stuff.[/li][/ul]
That’s got a 4x game, a “military sim”, a squad-based tactics game, a roguelike(ish), an actual roguelike, a turn-based RPG and… a squad-based-tactics-stealth-roguelike? Okay, that last one is a bit of the odd man out because I didn’t pick it to represent a “genre” but it’s super good anyway.
Other folks, did I miss any classic turn-based genres?