Probably just a lot of bloatware. When I’ve been in this situation in the past, I did a completely fresh install of windows. Much smaller. Linux can free up even more space.

There really isn’t anything necessary from HP, but it also depends a lot on your comfort working with the computer so ymmv. I don’t know what’s gonna happen if 3 months down the line you need to call customer support for something. If it were me, I’d be thinking “worst case scenario I can just factory reset”, especially if I had everything important backed up somewhere.

Christmas has come early!

Now this is a list! Thank you, based on the few I have played here I can’t wait to check out the rest

Yea! An all time favorite, but I played it a long time ago. I wanted to keep my little list just to recent games. Irl I am very annoying about recommending OW to everyone, as well as its dlc which continued to blow me away

Lots of people have replied with similar experiences.

But personally? I’m having the time of my life currently playing tons of new games. I love trying new ones and getting surprised, and maybe falling in love with a genre I hadn’t considered before.

I feel totally contrary to what others are saying: as I’ve gotten older, I find myself enjoying games way more. My time is more valuable to me now than ever before, so I want to fill it with things that are joyful and meaningful. Often those things are art. Games to me have always been very special in the way they can deliver a powerful artistic experience.

I think they also have a special power to be blatant disgusting soulless cash grabs, to be fair. As the years go by I feel like many aspects of the industry have become particularly unpalatable. But many studios are still releasing good games, and so far I’ve continued to find joy in seeking them out.

Not too many people on this post are actually listing games. So, in no particular order, here are some games I absolutely adored that I played recently. Games from the last ~year that have touched and moved me in some way. Experiences I don’t think I’ll forget.

Sable
Chicory: A colorful tale
Manifold Garden
Signalis
OneShot
The Talos Principle
Night in the Woods
Citizen Sleeper
Webbed
Rusted Moss
Armored Core VI
Iron Lung
Slay the Princess
Ghostrunner
Mundaun
Crosscode
Eastward
Animal Well
Pseudoregalia
Dave the Diver
Nine Sols
Patrick’s Parabox
Cocoon
Smushi Come Home

Not to imply that I expect you or anyone else to take a deep look here or to try any of these games. Just wanted to throw my perspective out there, and to show the games in concrete terms that have left an impression and continue to motivate me to keep looking and keep trying more

Oh, the mechanics are superb. I also didn’t see it from the trailer, and originally got the game based on the art alone lol.

But the gameplay feels absurdly good. The main hook I would say is the talisman system. When you parry attacks, you build up charges of what is essentially an explosive that you can then use an another offensive option. Not only that, but it’s applied via a dash, which is a movement option (and can be used to do some cheeky sequence breaking outside of combat, if you’re into that sort of thing in these games). There’s an upgrade tree with several options for it that affect gameplay in a huge way as well.

Other than that I mean, I just like everything about the game. The story was well constructed and emotional. The characters are well designed, especially the bosses who are not just enemies but important characters in the story. The boss fights themselves as I mentioned. Music got me going. Environments are jaw dropping.

To give voice to the other commenter who bounced off the game after 4 hours, it has overwhelmingly positive reviews on steam but even among the good reviews a common complaint is that the game takes a fairly long time to spin up. There’s a lengthy linear section before you get some more freedom of exploration, and even then it never becomes the game’s strongest point. It also takes a long time to get certain essential upgrades. I think this is a good thing in terms of boss design, but can feel like somewhat of a slog if you’re experienced with metroidvanias and really just want your basic dash and double jump etc.

It’s a long game, took me around 40 hours. But I enjoyed it very much in the beginning, and continued to enjoy it more as I progressed and unlocked things. I went in with no expectations however, and was surprised as the game organically developed from “cool little project I’m supporting because I like the genre and the cat is cute”, to “possibly my favorite action game since sekiro”. I hope I’m not doing a disservice by setting expectations too high! But in the end, yes I was left feeling like it was that good

So awesome! I had some really nice cheese earlier, made my whole day

This is purely conspiratorial but I think given the studio’s notable previous controversy, they probably excluded it because Wukong has such a prominent presence this year.

Other than that, yeah it just doesn’t make sense to me. Nine sols has better sales and reviews than other games being honored

My GOTY personally. Left a really strong impression. Combat is an absolute joy, and the boss fights are my favorite since Sekiro. Story and atmosphere are incredible, you can at times really feel that this is a studio accustomed to making horror games.

They totally nailed it, in other words. Great post-release support as well. Can’t wait to see what they do next

Also fwiw most devices manage this automatically and you do not need to concern yourself with maintaining any given battery percentage

I must admit I am not opposed to this development

Please continue with your rants then, that was the most clear and concise breakdown of events I’ve ever seen. Thank you for writing it up

Definitely unneeded. The ending letter of the series of letters we employ to form words is especially useless, but to be honest the first is mostly superfluous too

Genuinely shocking to me how disgusting fast food places have gotten. But I’m also not sure if it’s just my perception

Same, but without the finesse and the home ownership and such

There’s this dude at the gym who watches netflix on his phone between sets, taking 10+ minute breaks while people wait in line to use the machine.

I normally try to be charitable about these things. I have no idea if he has some type of fatigue issue or something along those lines justifying the long breaks, right?

But I need to actively push my thoughts in this direction, in some probably misguided attempt to cultivate kindness within my own life. Truth is there’s just something infuriating about watching a movie while sitting in the building’s only leg extension

Absolute banger of a game. Loved it when it first launched, excited to jump back in with the new content. Just in time for Halloween, too

Yeah, I love it and actually prefer it to my old reddit experience for general browsing.

What isn’t quite there yet is the ability to like, sit down all day and scroll and post in a community dedicated to my current hyperfixation of the week. Be it guitar maintenance, some indie game, or whatever.

But reddit also didn’t have that when I started using it. Excited to hang here and watch the garden grow

For me personally, the solution I prefer to see for “Our idea for this game is shaping up to be packed full assets that will swamp development” is for them to find some excuse to cut the content. Genuinely. Artistry thrives in the presence of limitations.

Have an AI naturally grow the forest. Wait, there are plenty of games already doing that

What games out of curiosity? You don’t just mean normal procedural generation which has been around forever? It’s not the same as using AI to generate a million different haircuts.

Honestly I’ve done just about everything over the years except ultimates (I play with IRL friends and I’m happy if we can clear a savage tier lol)

If I had to pick a “main” activity I think it would be parsing tbh, I really enjoy chasing the numbers. I level up all jobs and also try to perfect at least the basic rotation for all of them. I’ll hang out on party finder and jump into extreme farms on off jobs to practice.

But there’s also been months where I’ve done nothing but like, ocean fishing, diadem, pvp (I love crystal conflict, best part about endwalker to me) and so on. That’s been one of my favorite things about the game; you can get totally wrapped up in a huge project. Almost like you can play the game to take a break from playing the game. Just recently we’ve gotten into treasure maps, super chill