I can never relax with that game. I just get it in my head that I must get my chores done right now and it always fucks my head up.
It’s Portal 2… the Valve classic is Portal 2
It might feel wrong to call their last proper sit down at a couch/desk singeplayer experience a “classic”, but its older than Half-Life one was when it came out.
That makes me feel old and I wasn’t even around for HL1. How’s your back feeling, millennials?
Not great. Thanks for asking.
How’s your back feeling, millennials?
Wearing good shoes and keeping my weight down and staying active so it feels fine.
Gen X weighing in. That’ll only last you so long, then your body starts to rebel no matter what.
Won’t work for everyone but I switched to thin sandals and my feet got much stronger and healthier.
I’m still working on the being too fat partMy doctor says that you don’t want squishy shoes and he recommended doc martens because they have a cork insole.
I was 22 when Half-Life came out. I’m tired.
You didn’t have to be such a jerk about the back pain tho.
Doing fine. Sit up straight, do some light exercises, stretch, youll feel fine
Shit, you’re correct. It’s hard to believe. It feels like my first play of Portal 2 was just a couple years ago. It has been fourteen years…
That makes me feel old and I wasn’t even around for HL1. How’s your back feeling, millennials?
I’m not old you’re young! I’m not hunched over grabbing my back grimacing that’s just my power stance!
pretty okay, just had a shower and I’m chilling on the couch with my cat. She is steadily purring. comfort level is around a 7.8, maybe 7.9.
I bought HL1’s GOTY edition when it came out.
34 and need a cane. Now get off my parents lawn!
Ergonomic chairs, high end sports cars, and staying active has kept my back in great shape.
Also, {{{posture check}}}
We’re at that age where you have to exercise and watch what you eat if you want to be in good health (and not have your back hurt.) The friends I grew up with who haven’t touched a vegetable in their life, no longer happen to look healthy and thin.
writing headlines like that should earn a nice lengthy face tazing.
Here i was imagining “valve classic” was somehow a wildly popular game ive never heard of
And I’d say that it is 100% deserved. Stardew Valley is a once in a lifetime kind of game and has one of the best developers you could ask for. Free new content and updates for 10 years and it’s still like $20 and frequently on sale. The developer actually tweeted out once that if he ever charged for new content that he’d want everyone to publicly shame him.
“I swear on the honor of my family name, i will never charge money for a DLC or update for as long as I live. Screencap this and shame me if I ever violate this oath.”
Stardew Valley is the gaming industry at its best and one of the best indie games out there.
My only issue has always been that I cannot throw more money at the ape. So I buy the game for gaming-adjacent friends and almost always
ruin their livesconvert themThat’s what I do too. I’ve bought it for all my friends or have convinced them to get it. Feels like I’m a drug dealer trying to push it on everyone I know lol.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve re-purchased the game for Switch and iOS after already having it on my PC for ages. I didn’t really want to play it on those platforms but just wanted to give more money to concerned ape.
And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice
I’ve bought it at least 5 times; sent it to a lot of family members.
Hehe yeah. To celebrate the recent patch increasing multiplayer to 8 people. We basically started like a DnD group sessions style of playthrough. We would meet weekly and play for like 8 hours at a time. Was pretty great.
Meh, I prefer Terraria.
What valuing quality over profit does to a mf
To be fair, portal 2 was also built when valve valued quality over profit.
when valve valued quality over profit.
I like this
Fuck valve and their gambling
Portal is such a great series. I hope we get a new one one day.
I had to settle for Lego Dimensions. Better than nothing. And GLaDOS arguing with HAL 9000 was pretty epic.
Both Portal levels and both Doctor Who levels were great.
It’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I don’t think Portal 2’s basic formula would be culturally relevant if it was reused today. The quippy writing is very 2010s-coded (à la Guardians of the Galaxy), the gameplay is a bit too simple to be re-used as is in 2025, and the sweet&short linear storyline of Portal 2 would ironically be lacking ambition for a successor to Portal 2.
Like all truly Great pieces of classic media, Portal 2 is a product of a skilled and truly passionate team getting together at the perfect time with the right idea, and reaching its public at a culturally relevant time.
The Portal universe still has stories to tell, and there are still test chambers to solve, so I obviously wouldn’t complain if Portal 3 came out, but I understand why Valve wouldn’t want to make a barely decent game in the shadow of Portal 2.
If you like portal you may also like superliminal. It’s the only game I’ve found that scratches the similar itch
For the puzzle part, sure, but not the humor. I like The Stanley Parable for that aspect.
I’d also recommend The Talos Principle and The Turing Test for similar itch scratches.
Thanks for reminding me I have the Talos Principle 2 DLC in my inventory that I have to play!
I still haven’t played 2!
In a similar vein to Superluminal, I’d also recommend Viewfinder, it’s kinda like Portal but with a camera rather than a Portal gun.
Antichamber is another that feels similar. Although Antichamber doesn’t really have a plot.
Ooo I’ve never heard of this! Kinda sad I only saw this comment after the Summer Sale :P Thanks for sharing!
If that’s your kind of game, Unfinished Swan is another thats more plot based, but still has some fun puzzles. Doesn’t get mentioned as frequently so usually one people haven’t seen/played before.
For anyone that hasn’t seen it, Portal: Reloaded is a fan-made dlc that’s really quite good as well.
The fuck is with the clickbait title? For shame, OP
Edit: Thanks for changing it.
How exactly?
It didn’t mention portal 2 before OP edited the title
would’ve been better from the start indeed but it’s not that clickbait
it was the name of the original article
Well it is the best game.
Good.
Nothing against Portal 2, but Stardew Valley just offers so much more for so much longer
In game time isn’t everyone’s metric for a good game. Some of my favorite games only have a few hours of content, but those few hours are really good.
I’ve watched some let’s plays of Starcraft Valley, and I’m glad I did because I probably wouldn’t like it, and if I had to give it a rating, it would be pretty mediocre.
I think it being so positively rated is that there are a ton of casual gamers that this type of game really appeals to, not that it has a lot to do.
I know it’s a typo, but now I want a cozy space ranch game based in the world of StarCraft.
Isn’t that just Lightyear Frontier?
Lol, yeah, that could actually get me to play. “Whose a good hydralisk? You are! Yes you are!”
Can’t agree with this. I got dozens of hours out of Portal 2, simply from replaying it so many times (which is an amazing feat in of itself because I never finish games).
Meanwhile I was bored of Stardew Valley after two hours of wandering around and not being able to find anything to do. From what I’ve gathered, the game expects you to figure out how play it on your own. I’m in my late 30s and I have bills to pay. I don’t have the time nor the patience for a game like that anymore.
Edit: Point I forgot to make is that I feel like for a game to be considered the highest rated among them all, it should have universal appeal. But that’s just my 2¢.
I preface this with the caveat that all grants are subjective and you can like what you like.
Stardew Valley is a love letter to the harvest Moon games(and I guess rune factory as well). If you have ever encountered those games you immediately know what to do in Stardew.
I think where Stardew is different is that it came later and benefited massively from the “cozy game” popularity.
While I played harvest Moon on a super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and Gameboy my girl friend who did not have that exposure growing up loves Stardew. This generational and gender Crossing game has tapped markets that were not available back then. Couple that with the fact that at this point you can play that game on basically any platform from phone to console, new and old and it’s totally understandable why this headline might be true.
This is pretty much how I am, too. I’ve purchased SDV three times but could never get into it because I have no idea what I need to do.
Big fan of the dev though and how much he does for the game, even if I don’t personally play.
God I wish I could enjoy it. I feel like I’m missing out. I just, I don’t get it :(
While I enjoyed it, it was also very stressful. I think we just played wrong. We covered every millimeter of the plot with farms or other useful stuff and then proceeded to be busy for more than half the day with just maintenance. At some point this meant that we never got to explore and often barely had time to go to the stores or talk to the people in the village.
Apart from overcooked it was probably the most stressful game Is ever played and it’s not supposed to be like that
The urge to make even more money
The days are just too short in the game
Some people have a money anxiety built in that translates into the game. The funny thing is they bring it all themselves, the game makes absolutely no fuzz at all about making money.
The very first scene is the main character running away from the ratrace to a farm. Yet the very first thing some players do is bring in the ratrace with them. Everything in the game makes money and no money at all is ever required by the game from the player, except to advance the farming itself. It doesn’t even have banks or debts like animal crossing.
It’s bizarre how people, when left to their own devices, simply reproduce the worse habits of real life.
To open the community center (the primary goal for the first year+) specifically takes quite a lot of money actually, and outside of talking with NPC’s once a day, money is necessary to get every other advancement I can think of. I agree that many players probably go too hard into trying to min/max things, but the game isn’t as loosey-goosey with costs as you suggest.
no money at all is ever required by the game from the player
Yes it is though? To upgrade the house, purchase new equipment, buildings, to see more features
Sure, you can do without money, but then you’re going to miss half of the game’s features
I might be remembering wrong, but I think it is entirely possible to develop relationships with the town characters and see almost all of the cutscenes without ever upgrading any of those.
maybe, but I would say that’s not most of the game’s features, I personally don’t really care about it
Then you don’t engage with over 60% of the game anyways. Sounds to me like a balanced game that has something to offer to a variety of players, and anxieties, overfixation and stress with some gameplay and not other seems to be something the player brings in and is not caused by the game.
No the game has a much, much worse anxiety time crunch in trying to 100% it before the end of year… 2 ( I think) when grandpa shrine first measures progress.
You don’t find out what that means unless you made it to year two and it immediately tells you that you can keep trying anytime you want.
It’s not a one and done, you can literally retry the test infinitely. There is no crunch period at all, this anxiety comes from players misunderstanding things the game says in plain English.
I never understand why anyone puts together those massive farms. Personally, I always end up leaving the vast majority of the space unused. My farms only ever occupy the space directly in front of the house, and even that needs sprinklers asap.
I guess it’s just a mindset difference. I’d say me and my friends are all pretty competitive gamers (as opposed to more creative gamers). We tend to play games mostly for the challenge. Also didn’t help that we had just finished our Facorio playthrough. So in our mind we still had “the factory must grow”. So our minds were like “if space -> use space”.
Sorry, I probably could have been more clear that I was referring more to people that play SD for irl years and have crops spread all across their farm. I can definitely sympathize with new players that spread out too much without the experience to know what that entails. Hell, I’m pretty sure did the same my first time playing. It seems petty natural to make that choice.
Fwiw, if you end up trying the game again, I found QOL mods really enhanced my enjoyment of the game, particularly the one that provided the option to change how long days were. Even just a 20% change really helped make the game less stressful for me.
Are you into dramatic NPCs? If no, you have to play it multiplayer with someone who gives a crap about pixel people.
I tried playing it alone but every system in the game is puddle deep so I was only able to play until winter by myself.
Then I played it with my girlfriend, and I spent 100 fondly remembered hours.
<3
There are probably games or other media that you love that the average Stardew Valley fan wouldn’t click with. You’re not missing out, you’ve just got other stuff you enjoy.
Very true, but then again most Overwhelmingly Positive games I find amazing. I do have a long list of games I love and a selection I actually always keep installed, some of which are mediocre by many people’s standards ;)
jesus did i go back in time???
No, my child. You are where you belong.
As a DS9 fan, to me that sounds way meaner than you probably intended.
XD yeah no I meant just ironic edgy blasphemy
Bobby Lee did it.
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Published: Jul 08, 2025, 22:37
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