It’s easily The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It has everything I could ask for in a game: Sword fighting. Magic. Secrets. Dungeon crawling. An alternate dimension. Side quests. Different tools and items. There’s enough content that it feels fulfilling to complete it. Peak art. Peak music. NPCs don’t talk too much, and there are just enough of them to make the world feel alive. Bosses.
-Dark Cloud (1 and 2)
-Time Splitters 2
-Red Faction
-Grandia 2
-ICO and Shadow of the Colossus
-Shinobi
-Twisted Metal Black
-Ape Escape (2 and 3)
-Armored Core 2
-Dead or Alive 2
-Gran Turismo 3
-Final Fantasy X
-Grand Theft Auto III / Vice City / San Andreas
-Midnight Club Street Racing
-Soul Calibur 2
Lambert: “Hurry up Keira, or we’ll never get to town before the Nightwraiths come out!”
Keira: “Well maybe if we took the actual ROAD and not walked through this field I wouldn’t have stepped in a massive cow pie!”
Lambert: “Uh, Keira? That’s way too big to be made by a cow…”
roar of a nearby Chort
Keira and Lambert look at each other
in unison, “RUUUUUN!”
Mine is pretty useless. I have 4 hours of playtime on CSGO from 10 years ago and it thinks I want more FPS.
Manually checking out the similar games section of the ones I do play has been a lot better personally.
Edit: not to say discovery queue isn’t good, just that the similar section is another good option
I’m dabbling in game development myself, and that’s part of why I asked the question originally- I’d be terrified to put something out there for the public if I wasn’t already confident it was ready. Early access seems like a double-edged sword. But you list some good points about the benefits of doing so.
By the way, I am interested to hear about your game project if you would like to share some details.
Grabbed about half of my wishlist. Disappointed that Dark Souls Remastered isn’t on sale at all, but it can wait.
Frogun
Mail Mole + Xpress Deliveries
Toree 3D
Toree2
Pseudoregalia
Heckabomb
Alwa’s Awakening
GRIS
Spyro Reignited Trilogy
Macbat 64
A Hat in Time - Nyakuza Metro DLC
Cavern of Dreams
Tails of Iron
Super Kiwi 64
Lunistice
Now begins the summer of platforming
It absolutely brought me back to the late 90s shooters I grew up with. Lots of fun, but there were also a lot of parts I got stuck on, too. I will need some time before I play again / consider the BM version - maybe after HL2. Thanks for the additional info.