For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
spoiler
I knew it was an English cipher from the beginning. Nobody ever goes full conlang, as much as I would love that. I got as far as deducing it was phonemic, as the same glyphs kept appearing before cleartext words, which I assumed were “a/an” and “the”, and the way “the” was written made me think it was two glyphs, one for the <th> and one for <e>. The last thing I got before giving up and looking it up online was one of hte ghosts standing next to the well in the village and repeating the same word three times. Of course he’s saying “well well well”.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vampire Survivors. The premise and gameplay are simple, but it is highly um… replayable.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Halo 3’s writing is a huge step down from 2 and the gameplay suffers from still trying to make dual wielding work. I wasn’t sad when later games went back to holding one weapon at a time. Brute ranks are also nearly impossible for me to tell apart. What do you think is the actual worst Halo?
What do you think is the actual worst Halo?
Halo 5.
Imo the ranking of the main line games is:
- Halo 2
- Halo Infinite
- Halo 1
- Halo 4
- Halo 3
- Halo 5
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.
Stray
Same, I started the game…then could not put it down.
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.
