and my own personal experience; most games I have bought in the past 10 years have been off of recommendations from r/gamingsuggestions before Reddit went to crap and Lemmy came into existence; and even moreso when it is a personal friend recommending things to me.
Mods, feel free to nuke if this feels too close to advertising or better-suited for [email protected] (my own community); I mean it more as a discussion piece but I don’t run the place.
EDIT: The “not” in the title is optional; I’m asking about both successful and failed recommendations.
I was the main marketer for “weird, different games” to my friends, back in school. I was the one that first found out about Harvest Moon on PSX and recommended it to another friend, he loved it - mind you, this was back in 2004. In 2006, I got 3 into World of Warcraft, I even printed a “beginners’ guide” I made myself just to help them understand the game.
Two games that I experimented from word of mouth were Tibia and Ragnarok Online. The former I gave up the same day - there were like 10 players for each rat in the sewers, the respawn took forever and you were supposed to grind them until you reached level 7, which would take over a week of real playtime at that rate.
RO was an interesting situation, the dude who first started it was bragging about having lots of hours to play, when I disdainfully replied “Why pay when you can just play for free”? He didn’t like the reply, but we didn’t get along anyway, so I took every chance to jab him, and he did the same to me. Anyhoo, I went online, looked around for a private server and started playing, free of charge. The others didn’t join in.
During school and college, none of my friends were interested in RTS or even turn-based strategy games. I already knew about Civilization thanks to my dad. In the internet years, I always lurked around some talks about strategy games and that’s where I found Supreme Commander, which is still one of my favorites. Total Annihilation is still on my “to-play” list.
Time for some more word of mouth (potentially): have you tried Beyond all Reason? It’s more or less a modern open source remake of Total Annihilation. Runs like a dream even with tens of AI players and tens of thousands of units in-game.
Compared to SupCom I would say there is more unit diversity but less wacky experimentals, and the commander unit cannot be upgraded. There are currently only 2 factions, that basically map to UEF and Cybran from SupCom (or rather SupCom derived those two from the 2 in Total Annihilation). The dev team is currently working on a third faction that, from the previews, seems to me to be a mashup of the Aeon and Seraphim from SupCom: Forged Alliance.
Undertale was zero fun. Interesting story and I liked the graphics and music but the combat got extremely annoying, and I say this as someone who plays 8 bit (heck even 4 bit) combat games. I quit it.
I beg to differ. It was a lifechanging game for me. I can trace a half a dozen major life decisions and events to the people I met through the Undertale fandom. It has some deep personal sentimental value, too.
The Witcher 3 felt very sloppy to me, controls wise. I felt like combat had me sliding all over the place. Blocking, parrying, and dodging didn’t feel satisfying or responsive.
Just couldn’t get into it at all because of it.
I ended up running around and talking to everyone I could, then realize there’s a ton of combat stuff to do and nobody else to talk to and I just turned it off
Dark Souls 2. A coworker gave me a steam code for it after I told him I wasn’t really a big fan of games where you just have to memorize opponent movesets. He said he’d gift it to me if I gave it an honest try, and I did.
And I didn’t like it. Didn’t understand the hype, didn’t have any idea what was going on with me dying and transforming or something, or why there were weird ghosts of other players all over the map. Maybe it makes sense if you know the genre but I didn’t like the gameplay and didn’t get any lore/story, so I ditched it.
Kid at middle school just burned it onto a CD-R, gave me a post it note with the install key.
He kept saying this game wasn’t like anything else, it was a ‘roleplaying shooter’.
I just had to provide him the blank CD-R to burn, and I think a brownie, or cookie, at lunch.
I never even owned a legit copy untill it came out on Steam like a decade later.
So uh yeah, that’s how I originally played ‘the most important videogame of all time’.
Beyond the gameplay and game mechanics, uh, we are currently now more or less living in a world that more and more resemble’s its canon storyline everyday.
Back in 2001, pre 9/11, it was a wild sci-fi/cyberpunk concept for… the entire internet to be routed through a centralized system for surveillance and archiving, for digital privacy to be wholly nonexistent.
Now that building just exists in Utah and is run by the NSA, and… well you have to be exceptionally tech savvy to maintain any kind of what was 25 years ago the norm of digital privacy.
It was a wild concept to imagine the US being defined by external and internal terrorism, both real and as a widespread rhetorical accusation against your political opponents, to imagine the US basically being a dystopian economic nightmare defined by homelessness, paramilitarized police, openly and brazenly corrupt governments, corporations nakedly and obviously superseding the government.
Now uh… well, uh, yeah, look outside, look at the news.
It was a wild concept for a prototype AI to tell you:
“The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.”
“God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary.”
“The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.”
“You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands.”
So uh, yeah, that’s… basically currently happening, we sure are at least really trying to build a true, general intelligence AI, and more and more people are falling in love with AI bfs/gfs, tiktok/instagram/facebook/social media are the precursor data-mining algorithms that most people these days are addicted to, to feel observed and be judged, more and more people relinquish their cognitive abilities to some kind of ‘AI’ to just do all their thinking, their critical evaluating for them, their judgement formation.
Anyway, 9/10 game, pretty good but kinda janky in spots, lol.
Yes, particularly MGS 2 was absurdly prescient with the entire concept of… the vast majority of the internet being unordered and uncontextualized noise and chaos, and… there needing to be a way to structure it, but also, there is essentially no way to do that that is not also going to manipulative/exploitative.
We also now do pretty much live in PMC world, it just isn’t as… stylish? I’m gonna use that word.
Our world is agruably at least as absurd as the MGS plotline, but in different ways.
Basically… our technology has indeed surpassed the ability of the average person or government to understand it and use/regulate it responsibly, we are now addicited to it more so than intentionally using it, and that is all being driven by the capitalist machines that profit from it, and every day, they more and more overtly oversee the maintenance and direction of the torment nexus.
EDIT:
i will also throw in as a sort of esoteric lore detail:
Shadowrun particularly predicted that coffee would become an unaffordable luxury good, as economies and climate collapse.
Uh yep, thats happening, coffee prices are up 40% in the US, just this year.
I am glad I quit my coffee addiction a few years ago.
I got one! The very first Assassin’s Creed when it came out!
My childhood friend would NOT shut up about it! He would talk over and over again about the lore, show me extended cutscenes, videos, sent me lore theories, it was a whole thing!
Years later I finally get to play it and holy shit, what a disappointment… the entire game is just the same 3 missions over and over again… like no effort into hiding anything… literally the same 3 missions copied and pasted ad nauseum with different enemy names. I’m still shocked he sat through all of this bullshit to get to the awesome lore he went on and on about for weeks.
Bonus story with the same friend: we were talking about Devil May Cry and he said “I wish I could find another game like it…” and I noticed he said “game” and not “games” or “franchise” so I asked “Did you play the sequels? DMC3 is incredible!” and he goes “What sequels? I’m sure it’s only one game…” and I swear I screamed at the realization he’s talking about the reboot DmC: Devil May Cry and had no clue the original franchise even exists 😂 That was right after DMC5 came out too, which’s wild.
I recommended starting with DMC5 because the story isn’t great anyway and DMC1 or even DMC3 may feel a little dated. He ignored my advice because he wanted to experience the story from the beginning, picked up the HD collection, hated both DMC1 and DMC3 because they felt too stiff, and never touched the franchise again.
I agree, but the main problem is the “years later” part of your experience. Assassin’s Creed had many gameplay innovations with (for the time) amazing graphics that shaped certain game mechanics for years to come, but gaming has evolved…
That’s why many of these former “innovations” have lost their shine and sometimes even became annoying (e.g. climbing a tower to unlock parts of the map).
“years later” does not matter in my case because it wasn’t that many years later—l probably played it only 3 or 4 years after release, and I don’t play western action RPGs or stealth games. I think the first Assassin’s Creed is the only Ubisoft game I played, for example, and it surely did not influence any of the games I actually play: Bayonetta, The Wonderful 101, Hellsinker, or Guilty Gear.
Pretty sure I would’ve had a problem with it on release because it’s shitty repetitive design.
The only one I can currently think of is Gris - and I say that because I can’t recall buying a game that made me want to get my money back upon finishing it.
Gris is very highly rated across the board, so clearly there’s something I’m missing as to why. I enjoy walking sim games every now and then, but it’d be hard for me to even call this one a game. People point to the story as being beautiful and deep, but it felt like nothing new and, for me, a bit trite. There was nothing engaging about this game to me. The worst part? It’s like 3 hours long.
Sorry if whomever reads this really likes Gris. I’m glad you could enjoy it. To me, it’s one of the worst recommendations I’ve ever received.
Gris is a hard game to recommend because, while it is a game, it doesn’t really do anything particularly unusual for a game. The platforming is passable and there really isn’t a narrative in the sense of the game telling you what is happening. If you go into it expecting a game it will be disappointing or at least just ok.
Instead, if you go into it expecting a visual and audio journey through the emotional prossessing of grief, and growing to move forward, it is incredible. Especially if you happen to play it while working through your own grief.
People who recommend it need to provide a caveat that it is less the game mechanics and more the emotional journey.
It was recommended to me not as a game, but like an interactive movie. As more art than game. Going into it with those expectations is probably why I loved it so much. I can definitely see how someone might get a very different experience with very different expectations.
I can definitely see that if you’re not expecting it to be a game, it’d be a lot more enjoyable. It’s been a couple of years, so I think all I really knew about it was that it was highly rated and a platformer.
All I can say is that I’m glad I got it on deep sale, as I’d be even more furious if I paid the local price of $20 for this game.
One of the most emotional gaming experiences I ever had was Iji, a freeware game I happened upon while looking for something else. I did not expect that.
I have good memories of Gris, but it is a game about grief. It was kind of janky but I was in the right mood for it I guess, having lost someone earlier. I completely agree that it is not for everyone. I enjoyed it but I certainly did not have fun (what a weird thing to say about a game!).
For me it‘s Darkest Dungeon. I just don‘t enjoy „scraping by,“ I like to take care of and connect with my party, and that‘s just not the kinda game it is. It‘s just bleak everywhere, by design and fully intentional; and just not my thing. Saw a lotta friends play it and thought I should try it.
Yeah that game was just too much of a grind for me. I really wanted to like it but there was just something that didn’t catch me about it. Super popular, highly recommended by my friends, just not my bag, baby
I saw promotional stuff to it and thought it looked interesting. Then a watched gameplay and there really isn’t gameplay. You just walk from one place to another, but you’re a cat. I’m fine if other people enjoy that, but I know it’s not for me. I’m fine with walking Sims too, but the whole point of those is they’re telling a story while you play. Stray technically has a story, but it seems very minimal and not engaging. They’re giving you so little to do so you can think ideally. It shouldn’t just be a meaningless story that doesn’t engage you if the gameplay also doesn’t engage you.
I agree with you, it was too much walking Sim for my liking.
Little Kitty Big City is a much more fun cat game in my opinion. Slight mix of collectathon, platformer, puzzle game that does a good job of making you feel like a cat.
Funny I had exactly the opposite reaction. It was far too short in a tiny area, I spent far more time battling the controls than solving puzzles, not that the puzzles were hard. I hated the experience unfortunately. There was so many times I thought, why can’t I do X, I’m a cat, but the game was locked into it’s traditional platforming. I did have a good bit of fun making people do their phones and run away with them, best bit of the game.
This comment has prompted me to but this and will be playing it later tonight. I still loved Stray but as a void keeper, this looks right up my boulevard.
If you’re yawning, there’s a great bookshelf in a library in the game that you can curl up and take a little nap in. Being a cat was great and made me want less of the rest of the gameplay. ฅ•ﻌ•ฅ
Some people are saying DS is free. I agree with them, but also there are issues.
For example, early players who are struggling should go down into the catacombs, because they can unlock The Rite of Kindling, allowing you to get even more estus at a bonfire if you’re having a hard time. However, almost every guide will say not to do this, and I agree. It’s at the bottom of a giant pit with enemies that are more annoying than you’ll have faced before. If you get a divine weapon than it’s probably fine though, but getting back out will still not be trivial.
Dark Souls is all about giving players options, and giving them the tools to deal with problems. The issue is you need to pay attention to the world and read. The problem with the example above is the necromancers revive enemies, unless they’re killed by a divine weapon. This isn’t obvious though, and it also isn’t obvious where you might find a divine weapon, or where to unlock the ability to upgrade a weapon down the divine path.
There are just too few signposts to guide new players who are getting frustrated. There’s plenty for people enjoying their time, reading, and exploring. For the people who are slamming their head into a wall on a boss trying to brute force it, like most games would require you to do, there’s not enough to guide them out of this tactic.
I’ve played many Soulslikes, and found pretty much all of them fun…EXCEPT for the ones by FromSoftware. All others branch out into a lot of exploration, they just don’t put 8 paths square at the beginning of the game and then slap you down for 5 of them.
Interesting. How far in did you get? I think maybe if you looked up a getting started guide you might be able to assuage that trapped feeling, because Dark Souls and Elden Ring manage to feel like some of the most “free” games in my experience. But there’s definitely a crushing learning curve.
If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”
Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.
That is kind of wild to me because Souls game are some of the most free-form action games I know. You can often tackle areas in an order of your choice, use a build of your choice, even kill NPCs if you so please.
These days I feel like an outlier saying I love kotor combat. It’s like Disgaea games to me. The joy is watching the animations and building your character to see big damage happen and/or make your character a defensive/health monster. Like on rare occasion I’ll play an ARPG like Victor Vran solely just to mow down monsters at ease. That’s the joy by the end of kotor 2. In the academy just force jump mowing down enemies
I wish more games adopted kotors combat. To me its the perfect casual streamlining of a turn based CRPG. It feels faster to me than traditional real time with pause games. Talk about kotor remakes and how the combat has to change.
To me the only need in modernization of the combat is adding more cool animations to cycle through and more abilities that possibly chain together animations that react a bit with each other. That’s the mainstream hook, cool animations you wouldn’t get with real time combat. Uncharted 4 sold huge numbers and that’s not very heavy on gameplay mechanics. It’s a spectacle. Kotor style combat can be a spectacle without being a QTE and cutscene battles festival
I agree combat shouldn’t change with a remake. However, how the player interacts with it I think should, at least for PC. The UI/UX is not great, and we’ve figured out better ways to do things since then, even for controllers.
This was years ago so I’m not sure, but I remember I got to a sand planet.
There’s a 21-hour full playthrough on YT by a channel called Lacry, I got to hour 8~9.
I watched all the Star Wars movies and I actually enjoy them, but I’m not a die hard fan so a lot of the lore was not interesting to me. My biggest issue was the combat though: it did not grip me at all.
I prefer much faster paced games overall.
If the announced remake is a fast-paced action game, I may give it a shot.
I very much enjoyed both KotOR games, but I agree with you. That’s why whenever I recommend it to my friends I flat-out just tell them to cheat with a save editor to max out your character off the bat. Trivialize the combat so you can enjoy the world and character interactions
Half Life 2. Wasn’t a big fan of the first one, but the second had tons of hype, so I gave it a shot. The physics stuff was cool, but the gameplay, story and characters were boring and flat. And the “revolutionary” storytelling method of locking you in a box to talk at you rather than making a proper cutscene still sucks.
Back when I was first getting into gaming and learning about this Steam thing a friend told me I needed to play the Half Life games. I snagged them on sale started playing and every one I tried I ended up putting down pretty quickly because I’m just not a shooter fan.
Funnily enough I actually like more combat-oriented games more now but I’ve played too many newer games that were at least partially inspired by Half Life so I have a feeling I’ll go play it and find it’s too unpolished and not aged too well
This game was what pulled me into PC gaming, but when I’ve watched novices return to it even with all the time I spent listening to their commentaries on good teaching…players don’t learn the things they want well, and I can’t blame them on reflection. Even things like where to go are tough for reasons they shouldn’t be.
HL2 has better, more realistic and detailed and believable mouth and facial animations than many current AAA games, they just have higher res textures and fancier lighting.
That’s not to say no game has exceeded it, thats not what I mean, some clearly have.
But… the other side of this is that a lot of modern AAA games, with 20 years of improved/new tech… still can’t figure it out.
AAA games that market themselves as being very graphically detailed/realistic/immersive.
I’m not trying to say waaagh how can you not personally have thought HL2 was amazing!
I’m trying to say that the technical advancements it made, which you do not find compelling, well, a good deal of game devs still haven’t even reached that level from 20+ years ago, when they say they are trying to.
My cousin’s talked me into giving CoD ‘one more try’ like three times now. It’s never worth it. The game is always worse and my cousin also tends to just not play for months after a handful of gaming sessions, so I don’t even get the benefit of hanging out.
Generally stopped trying to game with him anymore. Just too flaky.
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A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it’s price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don’t meet the system requirements, or just haven’t had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
I was the main marketer for “weird, different games” to my friends, back in school. I was the one that first found out about Harvest Moon on PSX and recommended it to another friend, he loved it - mind you, this was back in 2004. In 2006, I got 3 into World of Warcraft, I even printed a “beginners’ guide” I made myself just to help them understand the game.
Two games that I experimented from word of mouth were Tibia and Ragnarok Online. The former I gave up the same day - there were like 10 players for each rat in the sewers, the respawn took forever and you were supposed to grind them until you reached level 7, which would take over a week of real playtime at that rate.
RO was an interesting situation, the dude who first started it was bragging about having lots of hours to play, when I disdainfully replied “Why pay when you can just play for free”? He didn’t like the reply, but we didn’t get along anyway, so I took every chance to jab him, and he did the same to me. Anyhoo, I went online, looked around for a private server and started playing, free of charge. The others didn’t join in.
During school and college, none of my friends were interested in RTS or even turn-based strategy games. I already knew about Civilization thanks to my dad. In the internet years, I always lurked around some talks about strategy games and that’s where I found Supreme Commander, which is still one of my favorites. Total Annihilation is still on my “to-play” list.
Time for some more word of mouth (potentially): have you tried Beyond all Reason? It’s more or less a modern open source remake of Total Annihilation. Runs like a dream even with tens of AI players and tens of thousands of units in-game.
Compared to SupCom I would say there is more unit diversity but less wacky experimentals, and the commander unit cannot be upgraded. There are currently only 2 factions, that basically map to UEF and Cybran from SupCom (or rather SupCom derived those two from the 2 in Total Annihilation). The dev team is currently working on a third faction that, from the previews, seems to me to be a mashup of the Aeon and Seraphim from SupCom: Forged Alliance.
Undertale was zero fun. Interesting story and I liked the graphics and music but the combat got extremely annoying, and I say this as someone who plays 8 bit (heck even 4 bit) combat games. I quit it.
I beg to differ. It was a lifechanging game for me. I can trace a half a dozen major life decisions and events to the people I met through the Undertale fandom. It has some deep personal sentimental value, too.
The Witcher 3 felt very sloppy to me, controls wise. I felt like combat had me sliding all over the place. Blocking, parrying, and dodging didn’t feel satisfying or responsive.
Just couldn’t get into it at all because of it.
I ended up running around and talking to everyone I could, then realize there’s a ton of combat stuff to do and nobody else to talk to and I just turned it off
Maybe you’d prefer Monster Hunter or Elden Ring combat.
I love elden Ring! I’ve played through and beaten it several times.
and just feels mushy. eh
I got it for free, installed it and got into the tutorial. There I soon realized that the combat system wasn’t my bag.
Dark Souls 2. A coworker gave me a steam code for it after I told him I wasn’t really a big fan of games where you just have to memorize opponent movesets. He said he’d gift it to me if I gave it an honest try, and I did.
And I didn’t like it. Didn’t understand the hype, didn’t have any idea what was going on with me dying and transforming or something, or why there were weird ghosts of other players all over the map. Maybe it makes sense if you know the genre but I didn’t like the gameplay and didn’t get any lore/story, so I ditched it.
Deus Ex.
… the original.
Kid at middle school just burned it onto a CD-R, gave me a post it note with the install key.
He kept saying this game wasn’t like anything else, it was a ‘roleplaying shooter’.
I just had to provide him the blank CD-R to burn, and I think a brownie, or cookie, at lunch.
I never even owned a legit copy untill it came out on Steam like a decade later.
So uh yeah, that’s how I originally played ‘the most important videogame of all time’.
Beyond the gameplay and game mechanics, uh, we are currently now more or less living in a world that more and more resemble’s its canon storyline everyday.
Back in 2001, pre 9/11, it was a wild sci-fi/cyberpunk concept for… the entire internet to be routed through a centralized system for surveillance and archiving, for digital privacy to be wholly nonexistent.
Now that building just exists in Utah and is run by the NSA, and… well you have to be exceptionally tech savvy to maintain any kind of what was 25 years ago the norm of digital privacy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
It was a wild concept to imagine the US being defined by external and internal terrorism, both real and as a widespread rhetorical accusation against your political opponents, to imagine the US basically being a dystopian economic nightmare defined by homelessness, paramilitarized police, openly and brazenly corrupt governments, corporations nakedly and obviously superseding the government.
Now uh… well, uh, yeah, look outside, look at the news.
It was a wild concept for a prototype AI to tell you:
So uh, yeah, that’s… basically currently happening, we sure are at least really trying to build a true, general intelligence AI, and more and more people are falling in love with AI bfs/gfs, tiktok/instagram/facebook/social media are the precursor data-mining algorithms that most people these days are addicted to, to feel observed and be judged, more and more people relinquish their cognitive abilities to some kind of ‘AI’ to just do all their thinking, their critical evaluating for them, their judgement formation.
Anyway, 9/10 game, pretty good but kinda janky in spots, lol.
Deus Ex and the Metal Gear Solid series both have some shockingly prescient plot points. In 2025 playing these is a trip.
Yes, particularly MGS 2 was absurdly prescient with the entire concept of… the vast majority of the internet being unordered and uncontextualized noise and chaos, and… there needing to be a way to structure it, but also, there is essentially no way to do that that is not also going to manipulative/exploitative.
We also now do pretty much live in PMC world, it just isn’t as… stylish? I’m gonna use that word.
Our world is agruably at least as absurd as the MGS plotline, but in different ways.
Basically… our technology has indeed surpassed the ability of the average person or government to understand it and use/regulate it responsibly, we are now addicited to it more so than intentionally using it, and that is all being driven by the capitalist machines that profit from it, and every day, they more and more overtly oversee the maintenance and direction of the torment nexus.
EDIT:
i will also throw in as a sort of esoteric lore detail:
Shadowrun particularly predicted that coffee would become an unaffordable luxury good, as economies and climate collapse.
Uh yep, thats happening, coffee prices are up 40% in the US, just this year.
I am glad I quit my coffee addiction a few years ago.
I got one! The very first Assassin’s Creed when it came out!
My childhood friend would NOT shut up about it! He would talk over and over again about the lore, show me extended cutscenes, videos, sent me lore theories, it was a whole thing!
Years later I finally get to play it and holy shit, what a disappointment… the entire game is just the same 3 missions over and over again… like no effort into hiding anything… literally the same 3 missions copied and pasted ad nauseum with different enemy names. I’m still shocked he sat through all of this bullshit to get to the awesome lore he went on and on about for weeks.
Bonus story with the same friend: we were talking about Devil May Cry and he said “I wish I could find another game like it…” and I noticed he said “game” and not “games” or “franchise” so I asked “Did you play the sequels? DMC3 is incredible!” and he goes “What sequels? I’m sure it’s only one game…” and I swear I screamed at the realization he’s talking about the reboot DmC: Devil May Cry and had no clue the original franchise even exists 😂 That was right after DMC5 came out too, which’s wild.
I recommended starting with DMC5 because the story isn’t great anyway and DMC1 or even DMC3 may feel a little dated. He ignored my advice because he wanted to experience the story from the beginning, picked up the HD collection, hated both DMC1 and DMC3 because they felt too stiff, and never touched the franchise again.
I agree, but the main problem is the “years later” part of your experience. Assassin’s Creed had many gameplay innovations with (for the time) amazing graphics that shaped certain game mechanics for years to come, but gaming has evolved…
That’s why many of these former “innovations” have lost their shine and sometimes even became annoying (e.g. climbing a tower to unlock parts of the map).
“years later” does not matter in my case because it wasn’t that many years later—l probably played it only 3 or 4 years after release, and I don’t play western action RPGs or stealth games. I think the first Assassin’s Creed is the only Ubisoft game I played, for example, and it surely did not influence any of the games I actually play: Bayonetta, The Wonderful 101, Hellsinker, or Guilty Gear.
Pretty sure I would’ve had a problem with it on release because it’s shitty repetitive design.
Yep it absolutely was a problem on release.
I enjoyed playing ac1 back then but it was very repetitive.
Time was cheap back then.
There’s a lot of games people recommend me based on cozy things which is good cause I do like them.
Then they get confused when I’m going deep into the Warhammer or the rogue likes/lites cause those are not very cozy.
And I do not like visual novels despite being in the demographic.
The only one I can currently think of is Gris - and I say that because I can’t recall buying a game that made me want to get my money back upon finishing it.
Gris is very highly rated across the board, so clearly there’s something I’m missing as to why. I enjoy walking sim games every now and then, but it’d be hard for me to even call this one a game. People point to the story as being beautiful and deep, but it felt like nothing new and, for me, a bit trite. There was nothing engaging about this game to me. The worst part? It’s like 3 hours long.
Sorry if whomever reads this really likes Gris. I’m glad you could enjoy it. To me, it’s one of the worst recommendations I’ve ever received.
Gris is a hard game to recommend because, while it is a game, it doesn’t really do anything particularly unusual for a game. The platforming is passable and there really isn’t a narrative in the sense of the game telling you what is happening. If you go into it expecting a game it will be disappointing or at least just ok.
Instead, if you go into it expecting a visual and audio journey through the emotional prossessing of grief, and growing to move forward, it is incredible. Especially if you happen to play it while working through your own grief.
People who recommend it need to provide a caveat that it is less the game mechanics and more the emotional journey.
It was recommended to me not as a game, but like an interactive movie. As more art than game. Going into it with those expectations is probably why I loved it so much. I can definitely see how someone might get a very different experience with very different expectations.
I can definitely see that if you’re not expecting it to be a game, it’d be a lot more enjoyable. It’s been a couple of years, so I think all I really knew about it was that it was highly rated and a platformer.
All I can say is that I’m glad I got it on deep sale, as I’d be even more furious if I paid the local price of $20 for this game.
I agree with you, the game seems mediocre at everything it does (platforming, puzzles, etc.) and there are much better “games as art” out there.
http://www.gorogoa.com/ always comes to mind (although it’s definitely a “harder” puzzle game).
One of the most emotional gaming experiences I ever had was Iji, a freeware game I happened upon while looking for something else. I did not expect that.
Prepare yourself for two playthroughs :)
Oh god, I actually played this year’s ago. Great game!
I have good memories of Gris, but it is a game about grief. It was kind of janky but I was in the right mood for it I guess, having lost someone earlier. I completely agree that it is not for everyone. I enjoyed it but I certainly did not have fun (what a weird thing to say about a game!).
For me it‘s Darkest Dungeon. I just don‘t enjoy „scraping by,“ I like to take care of and connect with my party, and that‘s just not the kinda game it is. It‘s just bleak everywhere, by design and fully intentional; and just not my thing. Saw a lotta friends play it and thought I should try it.
Yeah, I was put off by about everything in that game.
Yeah that game was just too much of a grind for me. I really wanted to like it but there was just something that didn’t catch me about it. Super popular, highly recommended by my friends, just not my bag, baby
Stray.
Like, it looked cool and the whole concept was great.
It ends up just being a game of “go here get this come back”. Yawn fest.
I think thats a game where previous expectations play a big role. I was okay with it being a simple platformed with an interesting story.
I saw promotional stuff to it and thought it looked interesting. Then a watched gameplay and there really isn’t gameplay. You just walk from one place to another, but you’re a cat. I’m fine if other people enjoy that, but I know it’s not for me. I’m fine with walking Sims too, but the whole point of those is they’re telling a story while you play. Stray technically has a story, but it seems very minimal and not engaging. They’re giving you so little to do so you can think ideally. It shouldn’t just be a meaningless story that doesn’t engage you if the gameplay also doesn’t engage you.
I agree with you, it was too much walking Sim for my liking.
Little Kitty Big City is a much more fun cat game in my opinion. Slight mix of collectathon, platformer, puzzle game that does a good job of making you feel like a cat.
Funny I had exactly the opposite reaction. It was far too short in a tiny area, I spent far more time battling the controls than solving puzzles, not that the puzzles were hard. I hated the experience unfortunately. There was so many times I thought, why can’t I do X, I’m a cat, but the game was locked into it’s traditional platforming. I did have a good bit of fun making people do their phones and run away with them, best bit of the game.
This comment has prompted me to but this and will be playing it later tonight. I still loved Stray but as a void keeper, this looks right up my boulevard.
Fuck you, meow.
I mean I still beat it, meow.
Meow
If you’re yawning, there’s a great bookshelf in a library in the game that you can curl up and take a little nap in. Being a cat was great and made me want less of the rest of the gameplay. ฅ•ﻌ•ฅ
Friend of mine who doesn’t play much recommended this poker game called Balatro to me. Damn is it fun. This was well before all the hype around it.
Take a look at Ballionaire and Cloverpit if you enjoy Balatro.
Thanks! I’ll have a look!
Dark Souls
It’s not for me, honestly. I want to feel freedom from a game, but Souls-like games make me feel trapped.
Some people are saying DS is free. I agree with them, but also there are issues.
For example, early players who are struggling should go down into the catacombs, because they can unlock The Rite of Kindling, allowing you to get even more estus at a bonfire if you’re having a hard time. However, almost every guide will say not to do this, and I agree. It’s at the bottom of a giant pit with enemies that are more annoying than you’ll have faced before. If you get a divine weapon than it’s probably fine though, but getting back out will still not be trivial.
Dark Souls is all about giving players options, and giving them the tools to deal with problems. The issue is you need to pay attention to the world and read. The problem with the example above is the necromancers revive enemies, unless they’re killed by a divine weapon. This isn’t obvious though, and it also isn’t obvious where you might find a divine weapon, or where to unlock the ability to upgrade a weapon down the divine path.
There are just too few signposts to guide new players who are getting frustrated. There’s plenty for people enjoying their time, reading, and exploring. For the people who are slamming their head into a wall on a boss trying to brute force it, like most games would require you to do, there’s not enough to guide them out of this tactic.
I’ve played many Soulslikes, and found pretty much all of them fun…EXCEPT for the ones by FromSoftware. All others branch out into a lot of exploration, they just don’t put 8 paths square at the beginning of the game and then slap you down for 5 of them.
Interesting. How far in did you get? I think maybe if you looked up a getting started guide you might be able to assuage that trapped feeling, because Dark Souls and Elden Ring manage to feel like some of the most “free” games in my experience. But there’s definitely a crushing learning curve.
If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”
Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.
I mean, dying in Dark Souls just isn’t very punishing at all. Idk, not every game is for every person, after all.
That is kind of wild to me because Souls game are some of the most free-form action games I know. You can often tackle areas in an order of your choice, use a build of your choice, even kill NPCs if you so please.
KotoR. It doesn’t matter how great the story or characters are if I have to grind terrible gameplay to get to them.
Upvoting because this fits the thread perfectly, but a little bit of me died inside reading this, you heathen lol ;)
These days I feel like an outlier saying I love kotor combat. It’s like Disgaea games to me. The joy is watching the animations and building your character to see big damage happen and/or make your character a defensive/health monster. Like on rare occasion I’ll play an ARPG like Victor Vran solely just to mow down monsters at ease. That’s the joy by the end of kotor 2. In the academy just force jump mowing down enemies
Nah I liked it too. It took some getting used to but it is strategic and it really gets absorbing.
Yeah! I really like the combat in KotOR. It’s like a normal turn based CRPG, but faster.
I wish more games adopted kotors combat. To me its the perfect casual streamlining of a turn based CRPG. It feels faster to me than traditional real time with pause games. Talk about kotor remakes and how the combat has to change.
To me the only need in modernization of the combat is adding more cool animations to cycle through and more abilities that possibly chain together animations that react a bit with each other. That’s the mainstream hook, cool animations you wouldn’t get with real time combat. Uncharted 4 sold huge numbers and that’s not very heavy on gameplay mechanics. It’s a spectacle. Kotor style combat can be a spectacle without being a QTE and cutscene battles festival
I agree combat shouldn’t change with a remake. However, how the player interacts with it I think should, at least for PC. The UI/UX is not great, and we’ve figured out better ways to do things since then, even for controllers.
On the other hand, the graphics can be ASCII if the gameplay and story are good enough.
I feel that, for sure.
OMG, it’s so boring 🫠 I got like halfway through and concluded nothing could make me keep going.
Did you at least do the Sith planet? Thats where the game peaked other than the finale.
This was years ago so I’m not sure, but I remember I got to a sand planet.
There’s a 21-hour full playthrough on YT by a channel called Lacry, I got to hour 8~9.
I watched all the Star Wars movies and I actually enjoy them, but I’m not a die hard fan so a lot of the lore was not interesting to me. My biggest issue was the combat though: it did not grip me at all.
I prefer much faster paced games overall.
If the announced remake is a fast-paced action game, I may give it a shot.
Life’s too short to spend on grinds that aren’t fun. Cheat in a 1-shot-kill gun, and it becomes a good Star Wars movie.
I very much enjoyed both KotOR games, but I agree with you. That’s why whenever I recommend it to my friends I flat-out just tell them to cheat with a save editor to max out your character off the bat. Trivialize the combat so you can enjoy the world and character interactions
Half Life 2. Wasn’t a big fan of the first one, but the second had tons of hype, so I gave it a shot. The physics stuff was cool, but the gameplay, story and characters were boring and flat. And the “revolutionary” storytelling method of locking you in a box to talk at you rather than making a proper cutscene still sucks.
Back when I was first getting into gaming and learning about this Steam thing a friend told me I needed to play the Half Life games. I snagged them on sale started playing and every one I tried I ended up putting down pretty quickly because I’m just not a shooter fan.
Funnily enough I actually like more combat-oriented games more now but I’ve played too many newer games that were at least partially inspired by Half Life so I have a feeling I’ll go play it and find it’s too unpolished and not aged too well
This game was what pulled me into PC gaming, but when I’ve watched novices return to it even with all the time I spent listening to their commentaries on good teaching…players don’t learn the things they want well, and I can’t blame them on reflection. Even things like where to go are tough for reasons they shouldn’t be.
Because I can’t help myself from countering:
HL2 has better, more realistic and detailed and believable mouth and facial animations than many current AAA games, they just have higher res textures and fancier lighting.
That’s not to say no game has exceeded it, thats not what I mean, some clearly have.
But… the other side of this is that a lot of modern AAA games, with 20 years of improved/new tech… still can’t figure it out.
AAA games that market themselves as being very graphically detailed/realistic/immersive.
I’m not trying to say waaagh how can you not personally have thought HL2 was amazing!
I’m trying to say that the technical advancements it made, which you do not find compelling, well, a good deal of game devs still haven’t even reached that level from 20+ years ago, when they say they are trying to.
Damn, that is a hot take.
Honestly impressive for a 20+ year-old game to still inspire hot takes.HL2 remains undefeated.
Fuck yeah!
My cousin’s talked me into giving CoD ‘one more try’ like three times now. It’s never worth it. The game is always worse and my cousin also tends to just not play for months after a handful of gaming sessions, so I don’t even get the benefit of hanging out.
Generally stopped trying to game with him anymore. Just too flaky.