I 'd like to get some AA (not AAA) games to play as I tend to like games in that category the most. If anyone has good suggestions, or better a full list of games to check out, that would be very appreciated.
I look into all genres, but the most I like is FPS, Action RPGs, and if possible good open worlds.
The Ascent: Cyberpunk Action RPG, nice action and story, single/coop.
Star Valor: Top-Down Action space. not so much story wise, but great gameplay, costumisation, fleets, and the upcoming addon will add station building and (more) faction warfare.
Weird West: from the Arkane Austin crew (Prey 2016, Dishonored). Good story, immersive gameplay, and a innovative world. It’s 3rd person, but there is a mod which makes it 1st person!
Mortal Sin: Roguelike Melee-FPS. lots of fun, and the dev just replaced the level generation completely, adding verticality and much more variety.
Golden light: another Roguelike FPS, its on the weird side, but a lot to explore, had a lot of fun with that one!
Hardspace: Shipbreaker: scrapping spaceships in zero-g has never been more fun! good storyline highlighting the plight of workers in an inhumane system, and what they can do about it.
Red Faction: Guerilla: Older game, Open world is a bit bland, but the realtime destruction of large buildings with explosives will never get old
and if you haven’t played it yet: the System Shock Remake is an absolute joy to play.
My current FPS fix is Deadlink: another roguelike FPS, very tight gunplay and movement, good looking too.
if you can give a few examples what games you enjoyed, i can probably point you in the right direction… i think i have a slight game collecting problem with a few thousand titles, but at least i can help people like you out lol
I really enjoy The Ascent. It’s got a great setting, the gameplay is pretty fun, there are various play styles and builds you can spec into.
The only issue is that the devs seem to be done working on the game, and there are issues. Namely, the last mission of the DLC being bugged so you can’t officially complete it. And it’s been like that for two years at least.
I was actually kind of blown away by the scale and verticality of the open world in Elex. It has some jank (as most AA games do), But surprisingly in the end, it actually honestly soured my feelings towards Bethesda games somewhat because in Elex, your choices matter far more.
It always annoyed me in Bethesda games that if you do one factions quest line, you can still go and do the other factions quest lines and no one ever mentions it. It doesn’t change the game whatsoever except the ultimate ending. In Starfield, for example, you can do the entire United Colonies Quest line, and then go join the freestar collective and literally nobody mentions it, or trys to stop you, or treats you literally any differently because you joined their erstwhile enemy. Each quest line is a separate game in itself. For example (spoilers for Starfield…) When you’re trying to get the Freestar Collective’s cooperation to get access to some data, if you’ve previously become a Freestar Ranger, that should have mattered to the story in some way. But nothing you do in a Bethesda game has any bearing on anything else that you do except in the most cursory of ways.
Elex doesn’t play by those rules. Once you join a faction, that’s it… And the other factions treat you very differently as a result, with different dialog and different options. None of this “essential character” garbage either. If you kill them, you’ll get a notice on screen that says ("x"s death will change the story moving forward…) and stuff like that. Sometime that change is immediate, and sometime it comes back to haunt you hours and hours later in a completely different quest line.
It’s also HARD because it doesn’t lock off areas until you’ve reached a certain level. You can go anywhere and do anything right from the beginning, but if you stumble upon an enemy that is twenty levels above you, tough luck. Often, getting to a quest requires going through those areas, which means early on, you’re not necessarily fighting all the time. You pick your battles and you pick when to sneak by at night and when to just run like hell.
It was honestly a very refreshing open world experience. And the world was extremely “vertical”. And by that I mean you could jump off a mountain and fall into a valley that’s about as deep down as some other game maps are wide, with absolutely no loading screen. Really impressive for a AA game. Can’t speak highly enough about it.
A couple of other one’s that I enjoy but not on the level of Elex is the Spider Software games, The Technomancer and Greedfall. Fun enough for what they are, but not nearly the same scope as Elex.
I’m not sure what your definition of AA is so this might not be helpful to you, but here’s what I’d consider so:
Supergiant games, most Lego games, Telltale games, Klei games, most of the open world survival craft genre, Chorus, Alan Wake, Darkest Dungeon 1/2, Doom and other boomer shooters, most platformers (a hat in time, Celeste, ori, mirror’s edge etc.), risk of rain 2, disco elysium, most metroidvanias (hallow knight, hyper light drifter), older titles in some AAA game series / older AAA games in general…
I can second all of these. Generation zero is the only one I didn’t enjoy much but I suspect it’s a lot better with friends.
The rest are fab, I’m currently playing Kena it’s like Pixar/ Disney meets dark souls. Beautiful game, has these little critters which follow you around called rot who are super cute and you can put hats on them.
Control is just excellent. The combat feels great and for me the whole game was worth playing just for the Ashtray maze sequence.
Ditto. I don’t ever replay single player games, but I’ve played Control 3 times and this post makes me want to start again! It and the DLC are all atmospheric gold
Oh god not Outward. After trying it recently I’m honestly kinda shocked that it’s being played at all. Me and my mate got the impression of playing through a 20 year old hobby game dev project at best.
It felt so very unpolished. Combat, UI, inventory management, dialogues, character creation, narrative, quest logs, crafting; it all feels ancient. Co-op especially - only the host progresses the story, gets quest rewards, and so on. A second player can kinda come along, but that’s it.
Don’t want to discredit old fans of the game ofc, but I honestly believe without a hefty dose of nostalgia you wont enjoy it. It would be like picking up Half-Life for the first time in 2024 and expecting a decent game.
I will admit that Outward is something of an acquired taste. It’s not a looker for sure, and starts a bit harsh, difficulty-wise. However it has surprising depth and a true sense of discovery. It is very rewarding once you really get into it.
Plus it really shines in co-op play. It is the closest thing I know of, that can be compared to “Skyrim, but co-op”.
I stand by my recommendation as it is very much a “B game” and pretty unique.
Sanctum 2 is a bit older, but it holds up as a solid FPS tower defense hybrid. It’s often on sale for around $4. The dlc is also well worth it, doubling the base game content.
Operation Harsh Doorstop is an FPS is similar to Squad or Project Reality, a more realistic mod for Battlefield 2 back in the day, and I think it’s shaping up to be a great game. Plus it’s free to play so you lose nothing.
I would recommend Greedfall. It’s a solid AA open world rpg with combat that’s a bit janky and repetive but the story and sidequests kept me engaged all the way through.
I really liked Greedfall, but I didn’t finish the story. It felt like Dragon Age with guns, and it fits surprisingly well, especially with the rest of the world crafted around the game.
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No Man’s Sky
The Outer Worlds
Weird West
RoboCop: Rogue City
Taking a stroll through my library:
My current FPS fix is Deadlink: another roguelike FPS, very tight gunplay and movement, good looking too.
if you can give a few examples what games you enjoyed, i can probably point you in the right direction… i think i have a slight game collecting problem with a few thousand titles, but at least i can help people like you out lol
I recently played through Weird West and absolutely loved it. Makes a lot of sense to learn that it was made by former Arkane Austin people.
I really enjoy The Ascent. It’s got a great setting, the gameplay is pretty fun, there are various play styles and builds you can spec into.
The only issue is that the devs seem to be done working on the game, and there are issues. Namely, the last mission of the DLC being bugged so you can’t officially complete it. And it’s been like that for two years at least.
I agree on Red Faction: Guerilla, it shows its age with a lot of bland empty spaces and rudimentary models, but the destruction is still a ton of fun
I was actually kind of blown away by the scale and verticality of the open world in Elex. It has some jank (as most AA games do), But surprisingly in the end, it actually honestly soured my feelings towards Bethesda games somewhat because in Elex, your choices matter far more.
It always annoyed me in Bethesda games that if you do one factions quest line, you can still go and do the other factions quest lines and no one ever mentions it. It doesn’t change the game whatsoever except the ultimate ending. In Starfield, for example, you can do the entire United Colonies Quest line, and then go join the freestar collective and literally nobody mentions it, or trys to stop you, or treats you literally any differently because you joined their erstwhile enemy. Each quest line is a separate game in itself. For example (spoilers for Starfield…) When you’re trying to get the Freestar Collective’s cooperation to get access to some data, if you’ve previously become a Freestar Ranger, that should have mattered to the story in some way. But nothing you do in a Bethesda game has any bearing on anything else that you do except in the most cursory of ways.
Elex doesn’t play by those rules. Once you join a faction, that’s it… And the other factions treat you very differently as a result, with different dialog and different options. None of this “essential character” garbage either. If you kill them, you’ll get a notice on screen that says ("x"s death will change the story moving forward…) and stuff like that. Sometime that change is immediate, and sometime it comes back to haunt you hours and hours later in a completely different quest line.
It’s also HARD because it doesn’t lock off areas until you’ve reached a certain level. You can go anywhere and do anything right from the beginning, but if you stumble upon an enemy that is twenty levels above you, tough luck. Often, getting to a quest requires going through those areas, which means early on, you’re not necessarily fighting all the time. You pick your battles and you pick when to sneak by at night and when to just run like hell.
It was honestly a very refreshing open world experience. And the world was extremely “vertical”. And by that I mean you could jump off a mountain and fall into a valley that’s about as deep down as some other game maps are wide, with absolutely no loading screen. Really impressive for a AA game. Can’t speak highly enough about it.
A couple of other one’s that I enjoy but not on the level of Elex is the Spider Software games, The Technomancer and Greedfall. Fun enough for what they are, but not nearly the same scope as Elex.
Mad Max get’s not nearly enough love either.
I will checkout Elex, already have technomancer. Can you suggest some more, possibly a list?
Ys
I’m not sure what your definition of AA is so this might not be helpful to you, but here’s what I’d consider so:
Supergiant games, most Lego games, Telltale games, Klei games, most of the open world survival craft genre, Chorus, Alan Wake, Darkest Dungeon 1/2, Doom and other boomer shooters, most platformers (a hat in time, Celeste, ori, mirror’s edge etc.), risk of rain 2, disco elysium, most metroidvanias (hallow knight, hyper light drifter), older titles in some AAA game series / older AAA games in general…
The banner saga. I never liked turn based games, but this one is a banger.
Here are a few picks off the top of my head:
I can second all of these. Generation zero is the only one I didn’t enjoy much but I suspect it’s a lot better with friends.
The rest are fab, I’m currently playing Kena it’s like Pixar/ Disney meets dark souls. Beautiful game, has these little critters which follow you around called rot who are super cute and you can put hats on them.
Control is just excellent. The combat feels great and for me the whole game was worth playing just for the Ashtray maze sequence.
Ditto. I don’t ever replay single player games, but I’ve played Control 3 times and this post makes me want to start again! It and the DLC are all atmospheric gold
Oh god not Outward. After trying it recently I’m honestly kinda shocked that it’s being played at all. Me and my mate got the impression of playing through a 20 year old hobby game dev project at best.
It felt so very unpolished. Combat, UI, inventory management, dialogues, character creation, narrative, quest logs, crafting; it all feels ancient. Co-op especially - only the host progresses the story, gets quest rewards, and so on. A second player can kinda come along, but that’s it.
Don’t want to discredit old fans of the game ofc, but I honestly believe without a hefty dose of nostalgia you wont enjoy it. It would be like picking up Half-Life for the first time in 2024 and expecting a decent game.
Uh, OG Half-Life is a decent game in 2024.
Though I’ll say Black Mesa gives that same feeling of playing the OG for the first time as a kid.
I will admit that Outward is something of an acquired taste. It’s not a looker for sure, and starts a bit harsh, difficulty-wise. However it has surprising depth and a true sense of discovery. It is very rewarding once you really get into it.
Plus it really shines in co-op play. It is the closest thing I know of, that can be compared to “Skyrim, but co-op”.
I stand by my recommendation as it is very much a “B game” and pretty unique.
i can agree on Control, Outward, DRG and Remnant, they are all excellent!
Gen Zero and Kena are in my backlog - will put them on top of my list based on your recommendations, thanks ;-)
Sanctum 2 is a bit older, but it holds up as a solid FPS tower defense hybrid. It’s often on sale for around $4. The dlc is also well worth it, doubling the base game content.
Battle Bit Remastered
Children of Morta
Risk of Rain 2
Crab Champions
Echo
Gunfire Reborn
Journey
Hypercharge Unboxed
Journey to the savage planet
Perish
Scanner Sombre
Severed Steel
Shatterline
Strange Brigade
Zedfest
Thanks!I am interested in journey and severed steel from first look. Any recommendation for sci fi setting, like technomancer or chorus?
Maybe “Black Ice” or “Remember Me?”
Children of Morta has great storytelling and good Gauntlet-style gameplay :-) Risk of Rain 2 is real fun, and good to play with friends!
Hellblade is pretty cool. Not made by a huge studio but looks like it was. Combat is meh but presentation is excellent. Would buy on sale
Operation Harsh Doorstop is an FPS is similar to Squad or Project Reality, a more realistic mod for Battlefield 2 back in the day, and I think it’s shaping up to be a great game. Plus it’s free to play so you lose nothing.
I would recommend Greedfall. It’s a solid AA open world rpg with combat that’s a bit janky and repetive but the story and sidequests kept me engaged all the way through.
Actually playing Technomncer, their earlier release
I really liked Greedfall, but I didn’t finish the story. It felt like Dragon Age with guns, and it fits surprisingly well, especially with the rest of the world crafted around the game.