Everyone, please do cast your votes in the PC Games Hall of Fame thread. 
I haven’t come up with 10 titles yet. Originally I thought I couldn’t because I’ve only played three games seriously in the past two years, and only two of them would be worth consideration. But now I realize there are several old-school games I could nominate, so I might have 10 after all.
I just read that Hitman 3 is coming out with a new mode (Freelancer) on January 26, 2023. From what I have read it is a really fun addition.
Also, if you own Hitman 3, they are making Hitman 1 & 2 free. You can then combine all of them (1, 2 & 3) into one, big super-game. The older games were brought to their current standard so it all works really well as one seamless game.
Hitman is a really good series and the recent ones are the best of them I think (also tons of replayability). Well worth a look if you like the genre.
Steam down / super slow again. WTF?
Unable to update a game, barely able to launch one.
These are on sale on Epic:
Assassin’s Creed Origins Deluxe Edition $13.99
Assassin’s Creed Origins Standard Edition $11.99
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Deluxe Edition (w/ in-game purchases) $19.99
The Hidden Ones – DLC (for Origins I think) $3.99
Now that I’ve typed all of them out I think Assassin’s Creed Origins Deluxe Edition is probably what I want. The story is that I’ve never played Assassin’s Creed. Last summer I put the above on my Epic Wishlist because they looked like something that I might like. It looks to me like Origins and Odyssey are two different games, right? And I don’t want Odyssey if it’s one of those online deals like Elder Scrolls Online and you’ve got to pony up to really play.
So my questions are
- Is Assassin’s Creed a good game if you’re in to open world type adventure stuff?
- If so, which of the above should I buy?
I’ve played two or three of the Assassin’s Creed games. Here’s what I found:
-The parkour is some of the best I’ve ever seen in any game. It’s so freaking satisfying to leap and climb and tumble around cities.
-The sneaking is pretty fun, but honestly I enjoyed the sneaking in the Batman Arkham games more.
-The combat wasn’t a ton of fun for me.
-The open world with a bajillion collectibles and achievements worked against the game for me: I was so worried about missing some achievement or quest that I eventually burned out on the game before finishing the main story. This has happened for me with a lot of open world games, though, so I think it’s more my personality than a criticism of the game.
-The modern world story is absolute shit and it’s unbelievable that they persist in making you slog through that stuff. Nobody cares about it or their stupid Templars story.
Only three AC games are open world RPG-ish games – Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. It’s hard to choose between Origins and Odyssey. Odyssey is a bit more polished and playing Kassandra is the Xena game we never got. Origins offers a slightly more interesting setting in Ancient Egypt though and bit more coherent plot. Both games have essentially abandoned the modern day stuff, thankfully.
Maybe get Origins since it costs less? Both are great though.
Òne of them was free-to-play last summer. I downloaded it, which took forever for some reason, and then the opening cut scene seemed to take forever with no way to skip it. (really some of these games need fast forward on these things). And when the game proper started it glitched after a few minutes, and I never got back to it. Still, concept seems great, so maybe I’ll get Origins, like @Palooka suggests, and wait for the other to roll around on sale again if I like it.
That used to be true, but I played one of the more recent ones, Odyssey, and they changed the parkour system so you can just climb any vertical surface, and it took a lot of the fun out of it. You don’t have to figure out a route up the side of a tower, you just run at it and hold X (or whatever) and you go right up the wall.
Oh. Well, boo. That puzzle aspect was the main thing I enjoyed about the ones I played. So I guess my advice would be to play one of the older ones.
Yeah I really didn’t like that in Odyssey. The guy is superhuman but he’s not Spider-man.
So I’m mildly curious about Elden Ring. What games is it like?
It’s Dark Souls mixed with Zelda-esque exploration – 70% Dark Souls and 30% Zelda. Maybe Darksiders 2 if I had to pick a specific game.
The technical aspects of the game are kind of a mess though. Rumour is a large DLC is dropping later this year and maybe that will attract enough development effort to fix the game. Like getting drops to 8 fps in boss fights despite CPU/GPU utilization under 20%.
I just documented my playthrough, which has gotten to difficult to continue right now. It’s like Breath of the Wild, but massively difficult. You die all the time and are super weak.
This Elden Ring thread is long and bitter and hard to get through, so it’ll give you a good idea of what playing the game is like. 
It’s not free to play, but you really want the DLC, a huge chunk is in there, and it’s in effect 1/3rd of the game is main, and 2/3s is the two DLCs to finish the story.
AC: Odyssey was my first AC, really. I played one years ago on PS3 but it didn’t take. I really enjoyed it, without reference to others. Sounds a pain if you have to navigate up the buildings, personally, perhaps that’s why the further 2 ACs I’ve tried also didn’t take (one was buggy and kept hard locking the machine (egyptian one?), the other was Black Flag, which was ok, but didn’t get into it half as much as Odyssey.
Perhaps the setting ancient Greece just suited me more, enjoyed the stealth, clearing out a place, exploring. Like the combination of classic greek military things, plus occasional argonaut/sinbad style mythical monsters. Yeah the modern day templar stuff just jarred and wasn’t important, but it’s inspired me to buy a bunch of other ACs and perhaps one might be as good. I’ve got hopes for Valhalla, most likely to be alike to Odyssey.
Steam is running a Ubisoft week; looks like the entire catalog there is on sale until 9 March. Having played the Watch Dogs: Legion / Assassin’s Creed crossover content last night, I picked up the complete editions of Syndicate & Black Flag for less than $30 total.
They’re also offering the entire AC franchise as a bundle at a pretty steep discount. Something like $115 for what would normally be over $400.
Czarcasm Jr. just upgraded his system, going from an RTX 3080 to a 4090, and asked me if I wanted the old card. Seeing as how my current video card is a 3050, I reluctantly said, “Sure, I’ll take it off your hands.”
Bought Crusader Kings 3 recently during Steam’s summer sale. I also picked up Anno 1800 while it was on sale too. CK3 a slightly older game but the 70% off sale made it very attractive. I tend to like strategy and management games, and Paradox has made a number of my other favorites (e.g. all iterations of Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron), so I went into it with fairly high expectations.
As you might expect with any Paradox game, there is a steep learning curve, but after 10 hours of gameplay I feel like I’ve got many of the basics down. I love the idea of building a family dynasty gradually improving bloodlines and lands over four centuries.
Any other fans of CK3 here?
We did a fun CK3 succession game a while ago. Hail, Bravagna!