For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
spoiler
I knew it was an English cipher from the beginning. Nobody ever goes full conlang, as much as I would love that. I got as far as deducing it was phonemic, as the same glyphs kept appearing before cleartext words, which I assumed were “a/an” and “the”, and the way “the” was written made me think it was two glyphs, one for the <th> and one for <e>. The last thing I got before giving up and looking it up online was one of hte ghosts standing next to the well in the village and repeating the same word three times. Of course he’s saying “well well well”.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
Outer wilds, went in blind (as you should) was not disappointed.
I have become an Outer Wilds evangelist. One of my favorite games hands down.
I went in to this blind and ended up quitting after a couple hours because there was no save ability and the checkpoint system was useless.
I learned months later, from my son-in-law, that it’s a time-loop game. Tried it again with this knowledge and had a MUCH better experience.
So, my advice is to go in 99% blind. The player should know it’s a time-loop game before they start.
Hellblade. Senua’s sacrifice
I don’t particularly like “medieval” games. Which I thought this was. It isn’t. But I played it because I heard somewhere it was a psychological game. It is.
It also was cheap when I bought it. Like $10.
I really like it. I ended up watching all the dev log videos on it. I have a background in psychology and was rather impressed by how many things in the game are based on the perception distortions common in schizophrenia.
Like the mask thing is part of that too. The pattern matching from perspectives. Seeing faces in trees or rocks (paraedolia). That’s all part of the condition.
The story itself was also very good and it is a personal story of her journey.
However that said. Hellblade 2 was awful in every way that made the first one good. Bad puzzles. No real personal journey. Story was garbage. And very little player autonomy. No exploration. Fixed speeds and at the start of every single enemy encounter, the enemy, a man, beats the piss out of you.
Almost to the point it felt exploitive, and for people who like watching men beat up women.
Sad to see the 2nd so terrible. But the first is brilliant. It’s also the perfect length. Not too long.
The first game was a trip. Played it in a pitch black room with noise canceling headphones. It’s wild how quickly I got used to hearing Senua’s voices. World felt empty when I stopped playing. I still go back and listen to that one cutscene every couple months
Dwarf Fortress.
And, I mean pre-steam release.
The ASCII graphics, controls and everything about it were not appealing to me. I started playing it because of the Boatmurdered story and some friends trying to recreate that. We started playing and rotating fortresses on a random Friday night.
And once things started to click? I put way too much time into it. I’d eventually mod it and make it easier to play but I put many many hours into it.
I wouldeventually put the game down after that initial burst and then years later the steam release came, making it much more enjoyable and well… A couple thousand hours later I still keep going back to it.
Talos Principle 2. It’s a solid chamber puzzle game like Portal, but the philosophy audio logs were so good that they shifted my real world views into a less nihilistic place.
They just released an updated version of the first one. Few extra puzzles and some other updates. I bought it recently. Haven’t played it or the 2nd one. (But plan to). But just letting you know. It might be worth checking out.
Thanks!
My biggest complaint with TP2 is that, between the two games, they added forced TAA like so many other games. TAA introduces blurring that drives me into a rage. The original came out before all that and was great, so I’m not super excited to try the modified version, though I might grab it just to support them a little more.
What is TAA. ? I’m not sure what that is. Do you mean motion blurring or depth of field blurring ?
Temporal Anti-Aliasing. It’s a cheap and effective way to get rid of the jagged edges of a rendered image, but temporal effects like TAA and all of the other tools derived from it, like a lot of other AA options and most frame generation techniques, introduce blurring and shadow smearing.
I tried posting a three second clip from TP2 showing it clearly, but Voyager didn’t seem to like it. This post is an extreme example, but you can see it in most modern AAA games. Cyberpunk had it bad (another game I adore).
Ohhhh. Yes. I do know what you are talking about. I just forgot that abbreviation . I think the more modern ant aliasing “type” is called something else. I feel like there are multiple options on a lot of games (on steam at least) ??
Yeah I really don’t like the jagged edges. It’s Pretty common in all switch games. But if the resolution is already low and then you apply a basic blur fix , it just makes the resolution look even lower and a loss of details.
So there are trade offs. And there are more sophisticated ways to resolve the jagged edges that are less destructive to the quality.
I’ve not seen the motion fade effect before ,(the video you sent) but that would give me terrible motion sickness.
I’m not sure if this feature has been updated in the new version of the game. But maybe.
I watched a video about a month ago where a review went into depth on the changes. Made by someone who had played the original. They said it fixed a lot of things players had been complaining about.
Hades. Hate roguelikes. Quite enjoyed that.
Supergiant Games are great if you enjoyed Hades would recommend Transistor
Transistor is way more tactical.
If you wished you could customize your boons in Hades to a specific style without having to deal with randomness, Transistor is the game for you!
The saboteur
Picked it up randomly back in the day with 0 expectations . I loved playing this game. The way it uses black and white to express the despair of ww2 France , slowly transforming to colour as you destroy nazi infrastructure and the tide of the war changes is so satisfying .
It’s tremendously fun and the aesthetic was amazing. I think I got it for free, and I’ve never met anyone else who has played it!
I went back and played it on my ps3 during the pandemic, I thought it really held up. So disappointed there won’t be any more of them.
That is a shame.
Disco Elysium…, totally not my kind of game, gameplay-wise. I reluctantly accepted to give it a go after my best friend sold it to me passionately. and damn
I died sitting in an uncomfortable chair. I’ll have to pick it up again when I’m in the mood.
heh, didn’t know that was possible ! I almost died during a standoff, but I pulled it off with the magic of save loading
Gris
I was looking for a game to play with my daughter and I saw it included in the Apple Arcade subscription.
…. I don’t remember ugly bawling like that at the end of a game. Truly a work of art.
My kid and I recently got Split Fiction and love it. It’s so simple, but can be tricky in parts. Not hard enough to rage quit, each area is just long enough and interesting enough to keep you engaged. 6.5 hours straight the first night, streams to TV very well, controls are awesome and fluid. We’re loving it, haven’t finished yet. Looking at A Way Out next.
Deep Rock Galactic. Even after a few years, I still regularly play this one with a group of friends.
Hollow Knight. I tried playing it back when it came out but it wasn’t until silksong was about to come out I gave it a shot. Was obsessed with the game and almost did everything in the game. Never thought I’d like a Metroidvania this much before
Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and 2
I had an odd, roundabout way to getting into these games. Last year KCD2 showed up on GOTY lists, and it’s a series I just hadn’t paid any attention to. But over the holiday break, I noticed I had a copy of KCD1 on Epic because they give away free games during the holidays, and I just happened to get it at some point (probably years ago).
So on a whim I downloaded it and tried it out, and damn was it good. Right up my alley. I’m a little sad I played it before this new patch dropped a recently.
So I blasted through KCD1 so I could get into KCD2, and that’s where I am currently, 100 hours into the story and still happily trucking along.
These are some of the best open world RPGs BY FAR. There’s no magic, no dragons, no bullshit. Henry isn’t a superhero. He’s just a guy. But it all feels so good. You want to go down huge dialog trees because it’s all interesting. The only bad part about these games are that you want to play for hours at a time and often can’t because real life exists.
Another non-VN guy, but 1000xResist became one of my favorite games despite being essentially a VN. Like the gameplay is literally just walking up to people and talking, and the dialogue options don’t impact the story at all, but damn if the narrative wasn’t enough to earn a 10/10 from me
marvel’s midnight suns. the only other turn based game ive played was fallout 1. i just expected something to scratch my superhero video game itch and instead found a new favorite. im on my 2nd playthrough now and still loving it. my favorite “relaxing” game
Midnight Suns is one of the few games I never skip the cutscenes in. Everyone is so cozy and delightful!
A bit of an odd choice, but Half Life 2’s episodes.
I really didn’t like the base game, it was a huge disappointment after playing the first one imo. So I expected the episodes to be just more of the same, but they turned out to be so much better than what I expected.
For anyone wondering how I could not like base HL2, I also think of Halo 3 as being the second worst Halo. I have some odd stances like that.
Halo 3’s writing is a huge step down from 2 and the gameplay suffers from still trying to make dual wielding work. I wasn’t sad when later games went back to holding one weapon at a time. Brute ranks are also nearly impossible for me to tell apart. What do you think is the actual worst Halo?
What do you think is the actual worst Halo?
Halo 5.
Imo the ranking of the main line games is:
- Halo 2
- Halo Infinite
- Halo 1
- Halo 4
- Halo 3
- Halo 5
Half Life 2 was cool, but very slow paced at times. The episodes had much better pacing IMO.
I was one of the people that wasn’t mystified by HL2. It was cool, but it was just a spectacle of good graphics and the gravity gun.
I felt they really mucked around with the story laid out by the first game, it barely felt related. Like, Independence Day 2 vibes.
I played Warframe for about 3 years before I realized it was my favorite game ever. As in I was 12 when I started playing, and at the time, it was just what I had. It wasn’t until I got my first personal gaming laptop and began playing on there that I realized how much I liked it, and started engaging in the community more.
JoeAAverage, if you’re out there: Thanks, man. It may have seemed like a small gift at the time—especially for an already 3-year player—but now, 11 years in, I still can’t be certain that I would’ve realized how cool of a game I had in my hands had you not gifted me that Limbo set. Limbo may be forgotten by DE, and I may not play him much anymore, but he will always be my favorite frame.
