Gaming is a great stress reliever and I make sure to make some time for it everyday. I mainly like single player games for my PS5 such as Horizon, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher and more recently Spider-Man 2. Sometimes you just need to be selfish and have you time!
I retired, and my chronic burnout started to recede (slowly). I realized that, for me, the issue was learning and remembering new systems were introducing a cognitive load that I just couldn't handle on top of the load I was carrying.
I know that's not directly helpful, but it may be worth looking at whether you are showing signs of burnout.
Controls have gotten easier in my experience, at least on anything made for a mainstream audience. Recently it came up on a podcast with a game reviewer among the hosts that games nowadays seem to all have a setting where enemies can be beaten by looking at them angrily and how it's basically story mode at that setting, and how much that's doing for inclusivity and how many non-gamers they've seen play/enjoy such-and-such game.
More anecdotal, my partner started playing hogwarts a few days ago and wanted to set it to easy. The default was normal, and there's also "story mode" and "hard" available at opposite ends of the spectrum. She's terrible with wasd+mouse (her own words, but I concur) and wanted to go for easy but I encouraged her to go with the default setting, figuring that'll be balanced to be enjoyable for Harry Potter fans (who are book nerds, not necessarily gamers). So far, she's managed to beat everything in one try!
I'm surprised you experience the opposite
I also find it rewarding after getting robotics and memorizing recipes. Which allows me to focus more on designing (I suck so bad at it but it's fun).
After a good few hundred hours I moved on to krastorio2 + space exploration. It's so much more complex.
Oh and multiplayer is a great addition allowing me to asynchronously play with some friends /colleagues.
I do want to come back to Factorio since it's an awesome game, but currently I cannot find the good timing for it.
Maybe I’m not the target audience. I also play console games, so most of my library are games that don’t overlap with console (so games that are probably designed for keyboard/mouse).
I played it for a bit, and there are definitely some good games on it (I finally beat Portal on it), but I just haven’t found any games that make me want to break it back out.
I'm planning on going back and playing the Divinity: Original Sin games that Larian made before it. I hear they're fantastic as well.
They are. I'd play them in order -- the combat mechanics of DOS1 are kind of tough to swallow after the improvements in DOS2.
The DOS1 plot is also a bit thin, and you have to appreciate their brand of humor. But they are both great.
There were many technical issues with the release version, but GOG sells the game with unofficial patches integrated, which worked great for me.
Also a surprise like was Blue Reflection, if you watch its trailer it doesn't even look too dynamic but it was great fun.
