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Great games for multitasking

T

Tagyhag

Member
Ever since getting two monitors I've always felt like I was wasting it if I wasn't watching something or listening to a podcast. It's also nice since my free time is limited, so I've tried to find some games that didn't require 100% of my attention or to hear everything that's going on in the game.

Off the top of my head:

-Heroes of Might and Magic series
-Spelunky
-Mount and Blade
-Binding of Isaac
-Diablo
-Path of Exile
-Hearthstone
-Witcher 3 sidequests or points of interest
-Dead Rising series
-Worms series
-Final Fantasy series
-Just Cause series
-Civ V
-Europa Universalis series.
-Total War series
-Recettear
-Torchlight series
-Titan Quest
-X-COM Series
-Star Wars: Empire at War
-KOTOR
-State of Decay

What are yours?

Do you also associate any TV shows or movies with any games? Every time I watch Friends I'm reminded of my Runescape grinding due to how much play those DVDs got during my RS years.
 
Any MMO is fantastic for this. I always have something playing in the background to listen to while playing FFXIV.
 
I love WoW and the Starcraft arcade and co-op stuff for that. Never ladder though lol, need focus if you're actually playing.
 
Football Manager or some MMO. JRPG grinding if I'm playing one at the moment.
I have a terrible attention span so I pretty much always have something in the background even if I'm not actively watching (random sports games usually).
 
Just a side note, if you have both your PS4 and PC wired, remote play is really good for this. I've been playing stuff on the side while I do dungeons in Persona 5, but then I unmute the game when it's time for the story.
 
Elite Dangerous: particularly trading. It's not incredibly reliant on sounds and it's fairly easy to multitask while playing it. You really only need more focus if you get interdicted or get into combat or something.
 
The Souls games are great for this (if you're not new to them). There's very little dialogue and sound/music.

I used to do this but not anymore (watching shows on a second monitor). I watched almost all of Parks and Rec that way and really don't remember anything about it. I'd rather browse gaf on my tablet these days. If a show can't hold my attention even on that level then it's not worth watching.
 
Hylian7 said:
Elite Dangerous: particularly trading. It's not incredibly reliant on sounds and it's fairly easy to multitask while playing it. You really only need more focus if you get interdicted or get into combat or something.
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came to post this. also nice to watch netflix/youtube with it on. can do it in VR too, which is nice.
 
Bravely default for grinding. Once you set up a nice attack pattern, you can put it on auto and let the game do the grind haha
 
How bout world of goo?
Game is chilly and i don't remind of it having any deadline to do the next move so you could take ur sweet time to finish a stage.
Also love the sound of that game.
 
Costia said:
Do you have a 3ds?
I sometimes play on mine while watching streams on twitch.
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Nah it's mostly PC. I should watch more Twitch streams though, only one I watch is Kripparian.

Problem is that if you watch it on Source quality it's a performance hog.
 
Football Manager is the perfect game for this. Also grindy games like Runescape of course. I watched a lot of Breaking Bad while leveling my combat at bandits and fishing.

A big no no to games like KOTOR or Witcher 3 though, I like to be fully immersed in these for the best experience.
 
His Majesty said:
A big no no to games like KOTOR or Witcher 3 though, I like to be fully immersed in these for the best experience.
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Yeah I can understand that, especially with Witcher 3. For me it was that there were just so many points of interest that I needed something to watch in between all the traveling. Same for Witcher contracts.
 
I've been doing this while grinding in Persona 5 and when I just felt like killing machines in Horizon.

Another great game that I did this with was Super Meat Boy.
 
afternoon delight said:
May I ask why?
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Daily roulettes and most of the dungeon content being at a very low difficulty. I don't really need to put my full attention on the game when I do those, especially when they're low-level enough that I have one or two buttons to hit. There's also the fact that I've done most of the dungeons enough that it's practically muscle memory.

If I'm raiding or doing certain 24 man content, then yeah, I'll put all of my attention on the game.
 
The vita versions of Darkest Dungeon and P3/P4G. Absolutely fantastic to have on hand while doing other stuff and just kind of going back and forth between. Other than that, FTL and (back in high school) Runescape used to be my big go-to games to have on in the background while doing other stuff.
 
Duskers; You control up to 4 drones in real time, and you command them by typing down commands for example: "Drone 1 to R3, Drone 2 use stealth generator" etc.
 
Eriugam said:
Runescape.

On one monitor I will be fishing Tuna and the other I'll be watching Netflix
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Lol that was pretty much me with Woodcutting and lobster fishing. Game was great but so damn grindy. Tried playing it recently but even with multitasking it was just too slow for its own good.
 
pokemon... for sure


it was my ultimate multitasking game, although it became such a multitasking game that I cannot play it anyMore without watching TV or doing something else. I just fall asleep if I play it without something else
 
I've been doing this more and more as I'm learning a huge amount of podcasts and I get to get through my backlog at the same time!

My choice would be Dark Souls. Minimal music and story so there's that.
 
Any time where I get to the grinding parts of an RPG. So usually cleanup for those extra goodies, not main story progress.

For some reason I love this too. It's just calming to me. If you're going through podcast backlog with a good podcast style game, it's really relaxing I find.

Space_nut said:
Zelda BOTW on Switch seriously
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Yeah, there's a lot of downtime with nothing going on when exploring so I always put on a podcast or whatever.
 
Any game that isnt story heavy,

Games i regularly play, EU4, CK2, TW Warhammer, Overwatch, MLB the Show are all perfect for it.
 
World of Warcraft is definitely this for me. Maybe not if I'm raiding or doing a new questline, but if I'm doing other stuff in-game I usually have a podcast playing.

WoW reminds me of the Giant Bombcast big time. I first started listening to Arrow Pointing Down (the precursor to the Bombcast) because I was looking for stuff to listen to while playing WoW.
 
Gran tourismo 4 bspec mode
Gran tourismo 5 bspec mode
Pokemon looking for shiny pokemons

Diablo 3
Wow pugs
 
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