You've convinced me to finally play Serious Sam. I've had it on Steam for years.
Varyag
Depends on what you consider "cozy". OP listed Medal of Honor and CoD, I think Doom is super cozy. If shooting Nazis or demons is our comfort activity, anything can be cozy. I still desperately need to play Boltgun, too.
sigh. Not everything must be GZDoom and Brutal Doom. The new port is perfectly fine if they're going to play mostly vanilla. There's no need to be this angry at everything you don't understand in the internet.
Absolutely second the recommendations of Doom and Quake here in the thread. Boomer shooters in general. Even if the movement can be really fast, playing them on your own can be extremely cozy. Just get into the rhythm of circle strafing, shooting and weaving in and out of cover and you'll be in the zone very quickly. Bonus point, that both Doom and Quake have 30 years of EXCELLENT quality player created content that can keep you playing fresh new levels for as long as you want to. You could play them for the rest of your life, at your own pace and preferred difficulty.
The new rereleases of both games even bundle a mod browser that you can access with zero knowledge of modding, just hop on.
Holy crap, they had to use a custom build of DSDA-Doom to mitigate lag from so many monsters. DSDA is already super efficient and can handle most absurd maps (like Nuts.wad) with no problems. This map was truly something else.
Oh wait, this isn't the same Zoom of the video chats from the pandemic? I had no idea this store even existed. It having Linux support is a big plus now.
Companies want all games to be multiplayer with online live ops and events and a steady flow of microtransactions money.
Yes, actually, it is part of the charm. The series started back on the PS2 and still kinda looks like that. Instead, they get to use fancy bright lighting for the weapons and lasers, and hundreds of enemies on screen at the same time, with each of them blowing up into hundreds of tiny pieces. It's a very bonkers game, just focused on being a fun horde destroying experience. And it's themed as classic monster B-movies with alien invasions and legally distinct Godzillas.
It's not just about the tech, it's about their mindset. They're stuck in that era mentally.
Win11 might get "usable" in the same sense that 8.1 was "usable" closer to the end. It was still a turd. I'm sticking with my Windows10 install as long as I can, and later switching the gaming PC to Linux if necessary. Maybe even keep a partition or drive with 10 as a "retrobox" for when it's end of life. It's mostly old games that don't run well on Linux, anything more modern should be fine.
There's even launchers that do the work of the batch files for you! I like using Doom Explorer or Doom Runner for that. You set it up with your ports, point it at your wads folder and then you can save preset combinations of mods, it's so practical.
There's way too much stuff in there, but as of right now I think it's Mechanicus, and the Serious Sam HD remasters, thanks to a recommendation in another thread just now. I also have a couple interesting demos I downloaded. The problem is, I haven't played anything from my Steam at all in the past month or so. Everything I've been gaming has been outside of it.
Also hilariously, these Serious Sam games were the literal first games I bought when I created my Steam account and I never played through them. They were an impulse buy from a friend's recommendation back in the day but I wasn't as into boomer shooters as I am now.