Recommend me games for my dad plz
He is recently divorced, extremely lonely, extremely boomery, and has a gambling problem, so preferably something with online play and no micro transactions. Does that even exist?
Since Covid he’s gone from married and occasionally doing a poker night with friends to divorced with his own apartment. He sits alone all day chatting with virtual poker folks and he is in desperate need of something to replace his addiction, preferably in a way that’s less isolating than text chats with strangers online.
Basically, I’ve effectively cut him out of my life, but him asking me to set up a new game on his computer is the closest he’s come to wanting to change in about a year. Any recommendations? Is Minecraft still free of micro transactions?
where the chess players go, their shadow, the go players, follow
I would recommend lichess over chess.com because it's free and open source and you don't have to pay for a membership to get things like game analysis and to remove adds. I also like the UI better but that's just a personal preference thing.
the Civilization games are a great time sink, they have multiplayer options but are more tailored to singleplayer
He does not like zombies. He does not like anything game-related, really. He likes solitaire but knows playing cards alone isn’t going to help anyone right now. Then he mentioned the games I play with friends
Mtg arena is official and free, I've played for over a year made it fairly high in rank and only ever spent $5. But if he has a gambling problem even though you don't need to spend money it might be too tempting.
Minecraft only has paid skins for bedrock edition (which also contains several other microtransactions), Java doesn't have any microtransactions as far as I know.
So Java’s the way to go? Isn’s that the version you use to play on most hosted servers anyway?
Yes, Java has more servers and also has mods. The only reason not to go java is that it is not as well as optimized as the bedrock version from what I've heard, but it's still just Minecraft, so pretty much any crappy business laptop can do a fine job running it.
Cars cars cars. Racing games are the only games my dad would consider
Slay the Spire is really addictive in a way that at least won't bankrupt him, but probably isn't going to help him make friends. I share play it with some of mine and we make choices collaboratively, so you can play it with other people if you want, even if it isn't online or co-op per se.
If he's into sports, Football Manager has online multi-player. That game can also be incredibly addictive though. I've also never played it online, so can't speak to how it works. Was just trying to think of a game that might appeal to a boomer who isn't into games
Play some board games against him, there are hundreds and are more approachable because you sit next to people
I think minecraft is still free of microtransaction, and in case it no longer is (which I don't believe is the case but you never know) you can always find whatever pirated launched on the internet and have it play on an older version (which I don't think would be needed because microtransaction just don't feel like minecraft to me)Minecraft has micro transaction but not on its java version as mentioned up above.Online pictionary can be a cool way to spend time with someone but you're gonna need to be more than two people. https://skribbl.io/ is the best site I know of for pictionary. Since browser games are finnicky, you can also play it the ol' fashioned way by using https://awwapp.com/ for the drawing board and having each player take turns getting a word from a site like https://www.randomlists.com/random-words
I'm not sure about the dad part, but I've recently started playing Phasmophobia and it's great multiplayer experience. I had trouble getting it to run on windows tho. It's basically a spooky game (I wouldn't exactly classify it as horror) where you and a team of max. 4 people basically go ghosthunting, going to a place and gathering evidence that it's haunted and trying to not get killed by it. I just bought the game and already spent an unreasonnable amount of time playing it.
My personal best experience of coop game is without any doubt Battleblock Theater. The story is a bit too bizarre for me to explain from memory but the gameplay is great and the experience is fun and colorful. You could also play the previous game of the developpers of battleblock theaters which is called "Castle Crashers", it's also very good fun but more action oriented.
You could also try playing rocket league although you would both probably need a controller for better experience, and I believe despite being great fun it unfortunately does have micro-transactions.
I'll be editing this post to add more stuff if more ideas come to my mind
I've enjoyed playing Broforce solo, and I know you can play it coop. Plus there's a nice "critique" of american imperialism through sarcasm in the campaign.
Terraria is really cool too!
Hard-install KR, TNO, or EAW so by the time he realizes it's modded, he is already too poisoned to play vanilla for 10 minutes.
europa universalis community has some fash but that is generally more of a online foruns problem
Yeah, my mans sounds like he's in need of a good MMO. RuneScape's not gonna work because of the sand casino in OSRS and MTX in RS3. FF14 isn't really for boomers. All the other ones seem like trash. WoW is your ticket
I would recommend you find something that’s less focus-intensive that will allow you to just chat with your dad. My picks are Heroes of Hammerwatch (a simple ARPG), Torchlight 2 (Probably requires a bit more focus/investment), and Stardew Valley (my go-to zen game). Planting crops and chatting with your dat sounds like the best bet for me. Plus, all those games are on sale now.
I'll second Grim Dawn, my siblings and I are spread across the states but we use Grim Dawn to hang out.
Maybe RDR2? The story mode is great and the online is pretty chill and a place you can talk while doing stuff together. I think they do have microtransactions but they're not really that incentivized, the daily login stuff is still enough to do most of it.
This! My papá who is in a similar situation will be getting this masterpiece for festivus
