What video game did you not expect to like as much as you did?
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 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 and one for . 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.
Subnautica, I thought it was just minecraft under water, which sounded ok. Didn't expect it to have a story, absolutely didn't expect it to have an interesting story. The audio logs had some charming characters, ham and cheese had me cracking up whilst trying not to die. BUT, the exact moment I realized this game was special was the translated message you get after getting your arm poked, suddenly hours of environmental story telling snap into place as you realize what is about to happen. 11/10 would buy again.
Bro it was so good! I expected to not give a shit about it. I really enjoyed it throughout and felt soooo epic at the end.
Real shame that the next one is queued up to be mess
Subnautica is the fastest 75 hours I ever put into a game. I blitzed it over the course of a week. The end of every play session felt like the most satisfying workout of my life. I'm not a horror gamer at all but Subnautica hits every aspect of survival horror so we'll that I, pun intended, really submerged myself in the world of that game.
I'm not a fan of survival/crafting games at all, but Subnautica completely captured me.
That game did exploration as well or better than any other game I've ever played.
People with thalassophobia should DEFINITELY stay away, or maybe just play in the shallows.
Alternatively, it might be a great way to do low risk exposure therapy.
It's all fun and games until "Detecting multiple leviathan class life forms in the region. Are you certain whatever you’re doing is worth it?"
No, they should play it. I was deathly afraid of the sea and after playing Subnautica I picked up free diving, went to lie down in the seagrass and all. Had I tried to do such a thing before experiencing the game and getting more comfortable underwater, I would have died of fright, literally, I think -or perhaps drowned
It was truly therapeutic for me
Horizon Zero Dawn - From what I saw from the marketing seemed just odd. Relatively primitive looking humans fighting animal shaped robots. It just looked a bit too gimmicky. Several years after it's initial release I saw that it was on sale and gave it a shot. I was genuinely surprised by the depth of the story. It was much more emotionally impactful than I expected and the story now feels almost prescient.
This is the one I was going to say - I got it second hand somewhere, on a whim because I had a voucher to spend. Had never even heard of it before, but boy oh boy, what an amazing decision that turned out to be!
I had the opposite experience. I was looking forward to it and disliked it. I still haven’t completed it yet.
If you don't mind me asking, what specifically didn't you like about the game?
I found it a bit confusing. It wasn’t really explained what the optional weapons were. I found a few guides online but really hoped the game would guide a bit better. Also the fact that you need to blow bits off the enemies to make them weaker wasn’t fully explained.
Also didn’t really gel with the story. I put it on easy to make progress and got bored.
Not saying it’s a bad game. Just not for me.
Fair enough. There were a lot of weapons and variations of the weapons and I'd agree that some things weren't explained well or at all. But for me part of the fun was experimenting and figuring out what worked and what didn't.
As for the story, it really didn't click for me either until later in the game when the how and why of that world became clearer. Prior to that it felt like just another derivative (post-post-)post-apocalyptic story. But from that point on I was fully invested, which made the ending all the more impactful for me.
Maybe I’ll give it another go. And if I can find this thread again in 5 years when I finish it… I’ll let you know :)
Thanks for the feedback.
Funny you mention HZD, I just fired it back up a couple weeks ago and completed the main story last weekend.
This game was a real rollercoaster for me. I had low expectations for HZD and became obsessed with completing it. I was then totally hyped for HFW and gave up halfway through, utterly disapointed.
Haven't played the sequel yet. Waiting to get it on sale if/when it shows up on GOG. That said, I don't have big expectations. Sequels rarely live up to the original.
I, on the other hand from the person above, really like both games. I don't really know why some folks hated Forbidden West. Even if it is a little "worse" than the first game (and I don't really subscribe to that), that still makes it one of the best action/adventure games out there. I ended up getting the platinum in both games by the end.
I agree with you. I don't get the hate. I preferred the first one but that's not because of anything wrong with the second one. Both really good games.
Yeah I was similarly VERY skeptical by the premise but was pleasantly surprised when I discovered what was actually going on.
These three jump out at me. I went blind on all three.
I always up vote Spiritfarer.
Hehe, I just played the cat on my sister's playthrough. Did all the tedious/difficult stuff so she could focus on the story.
Spiritfarer hit hard. Came into the room with my wife crying playing the game.
Control. I've always had a fondness for SCP-related stuff so when I saw Control on sale for $3 or $4 it was an instant mindless purchase. Bored a few days later I decided to give it a go, and then I went and beat the entire game and the DLC. Great power fantasy, great lore, great voice acting, fun moment to moment gameplay balanced between exploring, upgrading, story beats, and boss fights. Also ties in to their other games like Alan Wake; I haven't played that one, but I've strongly considered it just because of Control and wanting more of that universe.
I bounced off of that one for a while. Bought it on sale and was kinda digging it until I hit the first boss and just couldn't beat him. I tried a few times until I noticed that I was losing some not -yet-defined currency with every death and found that very antagonistic. I can't remember if they'd implemented the invincibility toggle and I was too bull headed to use it, or if this was before that update.
Put it down for a few years, then came back to it when I heard enough people raving about how much they had enjoyed it. I think Alan Wake 2 was out by that point. Picked it up, used invincibility to get past that boss, turned it off, and fell in love with the rest of the game like everyone else
No shame on playing games on story mode or "easy".
It's more important to me I enjoy the game than impress an invisible audience with playing on normal or hard.
Plus typically the only difference is how much damage you do or take.
So you spend less time fighting enemies. And more time progressing the games story. Which is what I play for.
I've heard a few people say they put this game down cause of the difficulty.
I'm like....then lower the difficulty settings? Why not?
This is actually my all time favorite game. I'm so excited for the 2nd one. I'm trying not to get my hopes up or I'll be disappointed. But. I am looking forward to it.
Inscryption, I went in expecting a short card based escape room with a lil bit of meta story. I found so much more, by the end the risk investment was great!
What an incredible game. I went in totally blind so I had no idea what to expect. I definitely did NOT expect to love the actual card game itself as much as I did. It opened my mind up to trying other card games.
I really enjoyed it but I found the pay off of all the meta stuff to be a bit lacking. The first section though was some of the best atmospheric game I have ever played. I especially didn't appreciate needing to watch a couple of YouTube videos to "finish the story". I did appreciate what it was trying to do and the first part of the game with Leshy was truly excellent.
More people gotta play his other masterpiece, “The Hex”! Another game where you get wayyy more than you… eh, I don’t wanna spoil anything. Anyone reading this who liked Inscryption, go play The Hex now. Don’t watch the trailer, the weird art style will make sense like 20 minutes into the game. It’s incredible.
Super excited for Pony Island 2 mayyyybe this year!
Saints Row the third. It hit a few right spots with me that GTA never could
Also Darksiders. I got it as a preorder bonus for Space Marine 1 and i ended playing it was more. Really like the universe.
2 and 3 are solid games that do their own thing. Shit goes sideways after that though, too much lsd or something. Lost its unique identity in the silliness.
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.
Botw it was my first zelda game I played, never expected myself to enjoy the game that much.
BOTW to me is like what an 8 year old's imagination saw Zelda 1 as on NES, but fully realised.
Can confirm. Played Zelda 1 when I was 8 and it felt way more epic than the graphics could muster at the time.
I got pretty annoyed at the chorus of “People only say they like it because of the Zelda title”. I hadn’t cared about Zelda for decades at that point. It was just a well-done, well-paced open world game that I found myself openly devoting dozens of hours to.
There's a bunch of Zelda fan camps as I see it. One of them only wants more OOT design philosophy* clones with a handful of bigger elaborate dungeons with mostly linear progression and are worried Nintendo will never return to that blueprint after the success of BOTW/TOTK is what I gather. One of my friends is in that camp but he's mature enough to admit open world Zelda is good just not for him.
I came here looking for this answer. I'm actually replaying it right now on my Steam Deck via Cemu and having a ton of fun. It was also my first Zelda game and I had zero expectations. It just blew me away and it still does all these years later.
Most recently, Slay the Princess. It's a VN, and I typically do not play VNs, but wow. It's actually quite amazing and I can't actually tell you why because it'd spoil it.
I get pleasantly surprised all the time though, since I like to use a randomizer to choose my next game sometimes. I think one of the other experiences was the Rusty Lake games. I got them in a bundle and since it was a puzzler, I had my friend join me in comms and it was... very strange. But we will use references from those games as insider nods to one another.
I love slay the princess, such a great game and a great story. A good one for video games as art.
If you haven't done so yet, the next time you start the game, stay in the start menu for a while
:)
:o
Time to do another run later tonight, too, I suppose... lol. Thanks!
Hollow Knight and by extension, Elden Ring.
I was always rather nervous to play Souls games, and these games are challenging as hell.
I’m not very far in either game — having just beaten the first boss in HK and I just beat Margit in Elden Ring.
But god, that rush when you beat a boss in either game is amazing. Took me about 8 tries to beat Margit and I was so excited when I won.
I can see why people love this genre now.
Careful! Elden Ring is a dangerous gateway drug.... :V Join us junkies at [email protected]
Hehe yeah, I was always put off on souls games because people described them as being hard, then when there wasn't alot of choice early on in VR games, I picked up a souls-like since it was the closest I could get to a long-form rpg at the time. And it wasn't that hard at all, but people were still complaining about how hard it was all the time... so I tried other souls games on desktop, and they were fine too. So I picked up the actual dark souls... this is what people were complaining about? It's like, not even megaman difficulty?
That was when I learned that it's a good thing there wasn't much internet yet back when I was playing megaman games, or I might have never tried them either. And also it turns out I like "hard" games, to me that is like the whole point of games. If you finish something first try, then you didn't get better at anything.
God of War 2018. I had never played any of the GOW games and I tried this one on a whim.
I fell in love with it immediately.
the binding of issac, looked lame at first, but i put 500+ hours on it
One of my friends played flash version and tried to influence us to play it too. We were all like "Shooting tears to dig in poop and find items? Nah, pass.
Then I stumbled upon a streamer who was playing Rebirth sometimes. Got myself a copy. Turns out the game is fucking epic.
Back in the day Morrowind on a Twilight disc. I'm not into fantasy at all, but that game took me for a spin that lasted many years.
Morrowind for me, too. It came with a video card my parents gave me, along with Ghost Recon and Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. I remember thinking, "I don't know about this elf game, but Ghost Recon and Duke Nukem are cool." And then Morrowind just absolutely blew my mind.
I only bought it on Steam a couple years ago; I was still playing that original CD copy until then. It's why all of my gaming PCs have still had CD drives.
I played it for a bit and it just seemed like a collection game. Fun but no depth. Did I miss out on something important?
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
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.
The Walking Dead (Telltale's version). I expected zombies, and a bit of action and tension from trying to escape them and survive. What I didn't expect was the emotional rollercoaster, and the genuine emotional reaction it got from me. One of the most powerful gaming experiences I've had.
Similarly, The Wolf Among US was a pretty fun story. Could have gone without the quick time events though, but I really enjoyed the Fairy Tale characters on the big city environment.
One of the quick time events in Wolf Among Us is my favorite gaming moment.
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler Beast attacks you thinking Belle is cheating on him, doesn’t listen to reason. Quick time events to defend yourself turn into quick time events to kick his ass. The game keeps going “Press A! Hell yeah, punched him in the head. Tap X for a flurry of blows!” That’s your only guidance, no paragon or renegade binary choice how to handle it.
If you nail all of the quick time prompts, you beat him nearly to death and Belle is horrified. Or, if you are thinking critically, you can opt to purposefully fail the prompts and stop as soon as the fight leaves him. You would think you’re failing based off of the prompts and noises, but he’s not a puddle of blood and you didn’t lose your sanity, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a much better outcome. :::
I liked it the first time I played it, but then I decided to play it again to choose different things and realized the horrible truth that it's all magicians choice. Who do you save A or B? You choose A then A survives and B dies and A is angry that you let B died, you choose B then you fail to save them but A saves themselves so A survives and B dies and A is angry that you tried to save B instead of them. It doesn't matter much what you choose, the game will do the same.
That's ok. I knew it wouldn't hit the same the second time around, even if the choices were meaningful, so I never went back to it. It remains perfect in my memory
If you liked deciphering script, check out Chants of Sennar. I played it with my gf who doesn't game much but we loved it.
Played the demo. Liked it but haven’t gotten around to buying it.
Animal Well had some code breaking I enjoyed.
Wuthering Waves.
It's a gacha game so I went into it not expecting much, I was just looking for an action combat game with a party of characters and as it was "free" I figured why not give it a shot.
I'm 39 and have been playing games my entire life (probably wayyy too much) and yet this gacha game somehow is literally my favorite game I've ever played... I cried like 4 times during the story and side stories, everything (except the gacha) is amazing. The art, the music, the gameplay, I love it all. I was never expecting to love a gacha game so much lol
I feel the same way about Genshin Impact. But I stopped playing it because the daily FOMO was real.
That Phrolova quest was so peak. The music was so good.
I haven’t played the story since 3.0 launch, but that was an experience.
You should definitely go through to 3.1
The story quest before this most recent one hurt, like I'm still sad weeks later. That was definitely one of the 4 times I cried playing the story lol
I want to, but I’ve been playing Pokémon ROMhacks to celebrate Pokémon week haha.
BG3. Never played the first two, and I find some games like that have bad writing (like every bit of dialog feeling like it's overstaying it's welcome, being way to chatty and/or dull). I think I saw Cohh playing it (pretty sure that was my introduction to him) and I was blown away by the early access writing and mechanics. I bought the early access right away and was enthralled in it's writing, the plot, the dynamic choices based on class, race, or deity choice, and the music. There used to be a lady sitting next to the waterfall in the grove that had a whole sob story and a music box. Seeing the thralls on the nautiloid and the implications of what it all meant... I was really sad the release was so different. Still very good, but wasn't as good. But as it stands it is one of the few games I've actually completed, and I think it's the only game I've actually completed multiple times. Needless to say I'm very looking forward to Divinity.
Then Expedition 33. When I first saw gameplay I really thought it was just another Persona clone. I thought that due to the menu layout in combat. Day it released, saw some gameplay and decided to take a risk and bought it. Before I even left for the expedition... I already told my friends it was GOTY, it just dethroned KCD2.
BG3 was my answer as well. I DNFed the Divinity games because they felt tedious; like I was being punished for every unresearched action. BG3 just had such great sound, gameplay, and character development that I couldn’t put it down.
Yeah, trying to work my way through DoS1 right now... I can see some of the DNA for sure, but I really need the NPC's to just shut up half the time. Some of the combat isn't as well-balanced. I've been told DoS2 is way better. But if I draw a regression line from DoS1 to BG3 and use that for expectations for the upcoming game... really hopeful!
I do not play VNs, nor am i interested in them (i despise fan service), but i randomly played Katawa Shoujo a long time ago and it was such a sweet little game that i really fell in love with it.
Sometimes, i listen to the music to revisit that world.
I learned so many things about myself with that game. Mistakes I would have made in real relationships had I not been taught by a game that it was actually "the bad ending". I thought I was helping, but I was hurting.
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.
Neon White. I got it free recently on PS Plus and just fired it up to see what it was like. I ended up getting all the A ranks on every level and got all of the hidden items. The soundtrack also slaps
Symphony of the Night
I had dismissed it even it originally came out because it wasn't 3D, but it kept coming up on top lists of PSX games and so I decided to give it a try a few years ago. Countless playthroughs later and it's probably one of my too ten games.
There's just so many little details to learn and tons of charm and style. The randomizer means I can replay it again and again and it's still a fresh experience only made better by my knowledge of the game.
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.
elden ring. was expecting to quit at any point because of how bitching it could be. ended up getting through it between sorcery and tasty cheese.
This I was hyped for but it was much better than I thought.
To add to this for me - breath of the wild and the Witcher 3
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.
Planet Crafter. I may have hyper-fixated on it for a good few weeks to finish it. I don't know why, but it was very addicting to me.
Also, not a game, but the Mekanism mod for Minecraft. Trying to setup automated resource production in as little space as possible is a very fun challenge. Plus the annoying sounds from each running machine is very satisfying to hear together.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I don't consider myself a Metroidvania fan at all but both Ori games are so good.
The biggest surprise were the Death Stranding games. I had no idea it would scratch itches I didn't know I had.
My favorite bit of that game is, after two games of developing tons of movement abilities in the air, including various forms of extra jumps…
::: spoiler Gameplay spoilers …the final phase of the final boss literally destroys the only platform, making it so you fight the final phase of their healthbar entirely in the air, against a constant rain of projectiles. :::
You should spoiler-tag that last bit for those who haven't played it yet.
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.
Half Life 2 was cool, but very slow paced at times. The episodes had much better pacing IMO.
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?
Halo 5.
Imo the ranking of the main line games is:
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.
Against the Storm.
Its a 'roguelike' colony builder where you're basically starting a colony as quick as you can, then once it starts to get established and run well, you leave and move onto the next one.
I was thinking it was something closer to a city builder where you're managing something from start to finish and didn't expect to like the roguelike aspect but I think it works well.
Its just got a neat little art style, a bunch of fantasy races with particular quirks, strange biomes with pros/cons, and has a bunch of lore tidbits sprinkled throughout.
Was surprised by this one too. "What the hell is a roguelike city builder!?" But it was so well done, from the art style to the wonderful music and the prestige system kept it challenging. Great game!
It's on my wishlist and on a good sale right now. Guess it's time to finally grab it.
Imma reverse you, I wanted to like tunic but I found all the manuals in the wrong order and had an awful time my first play through :(
However, there’s Deaths Door which is just like it in a lot of ways, and I loved it so fucking much. That one came out of the blue for me
Death's Door was fun, but not nearly as creative and fresh as TUNIC. The puzzles in that game can never be repeated without being obvious. And I'm not talking about the language. You don't need to decipher the language at all to complete the game.
Final Fantasy XV
I'm a huge FF fan, but felt there was a dip after the golden era of 7-10. 13 was middling for me, 14 was an MMO which is not my area of interest.
FF15 took a long time to come out. And then we find out that you are manually controlling the main character like a hack'n'slash. It just no longer sparked that joyous wonder.
I waited ages before I got a PS4 and then got the Royal Edition. Slowly as I played it a fell in love with the characters. They are flawed, thrust into a journey they didn't get to choose, and instead of a toxic male fantasy it was a story about brothers, fathers and sons, about love, loss, and sacrifice.
I bawled my eyes out at the ending. The game definitely suffers from feeling like it's not quite a finished product, but the characters are the star of the show.
Try XVI if you've not yet. I think it's a marked improvement on action combat in FF, if you found to love XV you'll adore XVI in my opinion.
I'm playing 16 now.
It's ok. The battle is a touch better, but honestly if you're going to do a DMC mimicry do it all the way. I'm pretty disappointed that a game about collecting different eikons has zero elemental stat effects. I'm vaguely enjoying it but so far it's ranking pretty low on the list of FFs that I'm emotionally attached to.
Yeah to me the combat is both fun and disappointing because it could've been way better. But the story, characters and acting kept me going. Ended up 100%ing and done all of the boring (gameplay wise) side quests just because they did so much with story and character progression.
For me with XV after the first third, I had pretty much fully checked out when it came to its story and gameplay, but for XVI the story kept me going strong the whole way. Even as a die hard VII fan, Clive has easily become my favourite FF character, and it's Cid is the best Cid by a country mile in my opinion. Both voice actors absolutely killed it and elevate the characters so much.
I suppose it didn't help that I played Stranger of Paradise first, which has a very fun and varied battle system. If that feeling of battle was in ff16 I think I'd rank it much higher.
Oh yeah sadly the combat, as cool as it can be at times, is it's greatest weakness, it just needed more combo options or allowed you to have all eikons at once
Tainted grail Fall of Avalon.
Detroit: Become Human. I skipped it it when it was released and totally never played it. Recently I got it on discount and tried it out. Even my wife is extremely invested in the story and she doesn't even play games.
Psychonauts. I just saw a few times this game on some top game lists and decided to try. Man, this game fucking rocks! Also, Psychonauts 2 is also epic and Compton's level should be made into a standalone game! What an epic imagination devs at Double fine have!
Rust. I was there during Beta. Me and one my friend had fun. But once Garry had remade it to what it is today, we tried to play with more people. I hate the game but it is also so much fun with friends.
Heavy modded Minecraft. Once only vanilla payer, my friends finally convinced me to play TPPI with them. Never going back to vanilla.
There’s a great video on YouTube of a speedrunner doing Psychonauts in front of a room full of the devs, at least some of whom are a bit drunk
I have watched both Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2 speedruns. Second one was fun cause they only had this game released for a year. So speedrunner was rubbing their bugs all over their faces during that. Hilarious watch it was.
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.
Animal Crossing New Horizons
At first, my partner got it for herself. I figured I'd maybe watch a bit, maybe do something else.
I am now something of an expert on flower breeding, bug catching and determining if art is real.
Deep Rock Galactic. Even after a few years, I still regularly play this one with a group of friends.
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
Promise Mascot Agency has me entranced at the moment, I can't put it down. I love zooming around in a Kei Truck drowning in financial despair trying to desperately keep my ailng Yakuza family afloat while also helping reject mascots (species, not a costume) and our agency (and some bored gods mistaken as mascots) in a corrupt town while also trying to help a giant living severed toe win an election against the vile mayor. While also trying to figure out why Yakuza are cursed to die if they stay there for too long. Bunch of shadowy ghosts all over...watching me...
Combat is card based by recruiting helpful citizens, cats, cosplaying heroes, etc from the town but combat is actually just trying to help mascots recover from something comically/socially embarassing while on a job like getting stuck wedged in a door frame or knocking boxes over. Yep.
It"s a little grindy/repetitive especially "combat" scenarios once you've seen them all, but that's a consequence of a very limited development budget I think.
Overall it's crack cocaine / 10 for me and didn't expect to get so attached going in almost blind. It scratches a sort of Deadly Premonition kinda itch, but this game is technically much better/competently made.
Ghostwire: Tokyo
I got it free on Epic. I was in a slump without anything I was excited to play so I fired it up. Loved exploring Tokyo. The quests were great. Gameplay was fun. Main story kept me interested. Looked awesome. Was really pleasantly surprised by it.
Adastra. I am not that into VNs (I prefer actual games with more player agency and this particular VN has basicslly no choices to make; it is purely a story) but this one got me to check out the developer's other VNs and they are all hella good (especially Circles and Echo which actually have multiple story lines based on your choices).
Now I am waiting for the sequel, Khemia, to finish being written. I've played through what there is twice (the first time being before the first chapter was completely rewritten) and I am finding it very hard to be patient and wait for the whole thing.
Old-school example: Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. I didn't know much about it other than it was an RPG when I got it, but I enjoyed it more than it probably deserved, given all the problems it has.
Newer example: Dragon Quest Builders 2. I don't like Minecraft at all, but DQB2 was like crack to me. I even platinumed it, which I very rarely do. Very sad that there's no announced DQB3.
Vampire Survivors. The premise and gameplay are simple, but it is highly um.. replayable.
Teardown
I assumed it would be more of a sandbox with a singleplayer campaign for the sake of it but it was very well flushed out. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
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.
Since i follow a lot of big games i normally can figure out what i would like since i am easy to please. I can only think of one game that i picked up that got me hooked and surprised me which was Cat Quest. I probably am thinking about it because im now playing the 3rd one which was free on psn for members.
Hehe yeah, such simple games, and yet me and my sister are there day 1 for every release.
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!
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
Hadies.
I dont typically like rougelikes in any form. But the story, gameplay loop, and music is some of the best.
Hadies 2 just made everything better.
Stray
Same, I started the game...then could not put it down.
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!
Minecraft.
I didnt grow up with it and non of my friends had played it. I always thought it was a kids game. During covid a friend started a server and I joined in. I was surprised by the depth of the game and just how much there was to do.
Alien isolation.
I was expecting to like it. I like survival horror. I like games with a focus on story.
But damn that game was way better than it had any right to be for when it came out.
And I loved the art direction. I felt like I was in the movies. It was so good.
The Alien was fairly unpredictable. Always kept me on my toes.
Timberborn. I’m pretty into *-builder games, and I thought this would be cute and simplistic and my kid could watch and play and love it. But I’m in so deep now, great game. Can’t put it down. Plan to learn to mod it.
Pippistrello and the Cursed Yo Yo. A top-down metroidvania with Startopics combat? Oh, maybe fun. That game was excellent, cool combat mechanics that kept expanding. Only like 2 or 3 tedious battles in the whole thing.
Tunic fucking rules but I put it down for too long and now I have no idea what I was doing. I don’t wanna start over!
Jedi: Survivor. The game maintained a high price and performs terribly on PC, so I wasn’t so interested. But the story is pretty darn good, especially for a premise of “The Empire is winning, and we’re basically spitting in the wind. What’s the point of resisting?”
I admit to falling bait to some of the cameos, but they were pretty well executed.
Treasure made a game in the 16-bit era when they were relatively unknown. For the McDonald’s franchise. It is way better than it has any right to be.
That's because almost everything that Treasure does (did) is gold. Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier, Radiant Silvergun, Bangai O, Sin and Punishment, Ikaruga. I think more than any other developer their games are just pure, no-frills fun. No collectibles, no grind, just rewarding and complex action gameplay.
Yep. I have most of their stuff as a result. Never could get my hands on Radiant Silvergun. It’s rare to see someone else that knows anything at all about them..
mckids?
No, mckids is a NES game. I played it when I was little and remember enjoying it. It had a gravity mechanic that was unique. AVGN did an episode on it.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
I usually don't have the patience for VNs with minimal gameplay, but the atmosphere, soundtrack and the general mood of the game got me hooked.
Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2.
Also was surprised at how much I enjoyed goofing around over the past year or 2 in Fortnite with my good friends… ended up being a semi-weekly poker night type thing with people I don’t live anywhere close to anymore.
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
X-COM Enemy Unknown weirdly enough. Turn based strategy was not my cup of tea until then. X-COM sucked me in to the point where is go to work, go home, play X-COM until two in the morning, sleep and start the cycle again for about four days.
Peripetia and Echo Point Nova are both sooooooo good.
It's not that deep, but I thought Ultrakill wasn't something I'd enjoy. Now I don't enjoy any shooter that isn't like Ultrakill
I think I got Virgo vs the Zodiac as part of a bundle, and it's not the type of game I usually play. But it ended up being pretty fun, had great music, and was interesting enough to make me want to play through multiple times to see the other endings.
I never finished Tunic, I got stuck on some relatively simple fight and it put me right off it. Always vowed to come back but I havent yet.
I loved how it took me back to being 3 years old though playing my dads Nintendo. Can sort of work out what the manual is telling me based on pictures, but cant read the language.
Added to wishlist, looks really cool