This could be a gaming series that is very popular but for some reason or another doesn't resonate with you, or maybe a weird one-off within a genre that you love. What aspects didn't resonate with you and what could have been done differently that would made it easier to like the game?

I've been looking lately for something new to read/watch/listen to/play and I've been chasing a particular feeling that some of my favorite works have given me in the past.

It's something that's hard to describe succinctly, so it's not exactly easy to just google search for something, and usually just telling people I like x thing gets me y recommendation which is maybe a similar style or genre but doesn't really elicit the particular feeling that I'm after.

I figure other folks might have a similar problem, so I thought it might be fun to have a thread for requests for works that make you feel a certain way, regardless of genre or medium.

I'll start mine in the comments and other folks feel free to ask for requests as top-level comments as well!

I’ve missed a lot of the older mmos growing up like Everquest and dark age of Camelot. What are some good older mmos to play that can still be enjoyed either as a single player or coop experience with friends that still have online and supported servers? Doesn’t have to have a massive player base or anything, it can even have just a few thousand players. I would also like to avoid WoW, I’ve had a fair amount of time in it and don’t have any desire to go back.

For the purposes of the question, I want to ignore official remasters/rereleases since those are essentially separate, newer full releases. I'm interested in old, original games. Titles that you can "manually remaster" yourself with mods are fine, since you're still playing the "original" game to some extent.

Also, "regularly" in the title doesn't have to mean daily/weekly and can instead be "once every couple of years".

• What keeps you coming back to them?
• Is your love for the games strictly nostalgia-based, or could an unacquainted newcomer still find similar value in them?
• If there are any modern games that try to scratch the same itch, do they succeed or fail?
• Would you want an official remaster of the game (if one isn't already available)?

"Wrong" here can be intentional or unintentional. Maybe you completely missed that a character had a certain ability and got through the entire game without knowing there was so much more you could be doing! Instead, maybe you specifically challenged yourself to get through the game without using that ability, seeing if you were up to the challenge! Maybe you activated cheats to cruise through on easy mode, or maybe you accidentally activated a cheat and had no idea that the game wasn't supposed to be that easy (ask me about my FF7 playthrough).

"Wrong" can also be however you decide to interpret it: counter to the developer's intentions, exploiting the game engine, uncovering a loophole in the game's systems, pursuing your own goals instead of the game's goals, etc. It's not meant to be a moralistic judgment by any means (play any game however you want!) but more just an identifier that you went against the game's standard norms and expectations.

Tell us what you did "wrong", why you did it that way, and what the outcomes were. Did it make the game more fun or exciting? Did it ruin the game for you?

I keep seeing a lot of complaints surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 that it's not a particularly good RPG, because the story is pretty linear and the player choice doesn't really amount to much. I'm not yet done with the game so I don't know how accurate that assessment is. But either way, with my limited knowledge of programming and game design, I assume that doing this sort of thing well is a significant technical challenge.
What are some games that rise to this challenge and make the most of player choice and branching story?

I recently played through 2013's Tomb Raider and it was a delight -- a wonderful reboot that modernized a series whose originals I loved but that are quite dated by today's standards.

In the game, Lara, the main character, is in peril constantly, and she is driven into worse and worse situations in an effort to save her crewmates and friend. The narrative of the game demands immediate action -- any dawdling risks all of the characters' lives.

Of course, we know that games' timelines aren't necessarily time-driven but character-driven, so it is trivial for Lara to stop at any point in the game and not advance the story. The killers who are prepared to murder your friends will patiently wait around as long as necessary. Furthermore, the game gives you plenty of reason to do so! There are collectibles to find and story and lore bits scattered about the levels that you have to go out of your way to encounter. Finding these gets you more XP and resources which unlock skills and weapons that make the game easier. The game lets you fast travel back and forth to different areas as needed, and I spent a good amount of time at the story's height of tension not resolving that tension by advancing to the climax but by ignoring it and scouring the island for all the things I missed instead.

I use Tomb Raider as an example here, but I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples where the game directly incentivize actions that outright subvert its story. What I find interesting is that, on paper, I should care about this discrepancy, but in practice I really don't. In fact it's customary for me to do this in nearly every game I play, as I find that I like "checklisting" and cleaning things up rather than advancing the plot (of course -- do I actually like that, or do I merely like that I get rewards for doing so?).

I don't have a singular question to ask but instead have some jumping off points for discussion:

• Is this undermining of narrative tension an actual issue, or is it just part of the suspension of disbelief embedded into the medium of gaming?
• Have you felt that particular games were made worse due to this issue? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What games are counterexamples -- games whose narrative tension is not undercut by their gameplay? What makes them work? Does that aspect benefit the game, or would the game be roughly the same (or better) without it?
• If you consider this an issue, does the "responsibility" for it lie with the developer of the game for incentivizing gameplay counter to narrative, or does the "responsibility" lie with the player for ruining their enjoyment of the narrative by pursuing other goals?

Also, don't feel limited by these questions or my choice of game and feel free to address anything else relevant to this idea that you feel is important or relevant.

I was curious how many people on here enjoy listening to game soundtracks outside of the game. I personally love when a game has a great soundtrack as it really adds to the atmosphere and overall immersion in the game. I also like collecting physical copies of them as well.

If you do, which ones are your favorite? Personally I love Shin Megami Tensei, Final Fantasy, and Blazblue soundtracks the most.

I’ve been playing Bayonetta on and off for a bit of time, and now that I’m near the end of it (just started Requiem), the genre kinda grew on me, which surprised me quite a bit.

I see loads of games being thrown in the same bag:

• Bayonetta
• Devil May Cry
• Darksiders
• Ninja Gaiden
• No More Heroes
• God of War
• several Warriors/Musou games
• etc. etc.

So I was wondering what makes any specific game in the general genre distinct and special, and wanted to discuss in this thread.

My experience with this genre is limited as the Switch is my first ever console, but I will share what little experience I have in a comment.

P.S. I hope this thread will be a bit more lively than my previous try with the Different types of 3D platformers thread.

I asked in another thread about the best games you played this year, which is a question that tends to surface highly polished and often highly familiar gaming experiences.

This thread isn't about "best" but about the most interesting -- games that did something different or odd or tried something new. They didn't have to necessarily succeed at that, and they can be very rough around the edges or even outright bad -- what matters is that they went out of their way to offer something very much their own.

Maybe it's a random itch.io find; maybe it's a minor title from a long forgotten console; maybe it's a dev project your friend asked you to play test. Whatever it is, you think it's neat, and you never see it mentioned anywhere.

Tell us about the game -- what is it? Why is it noteworthy? Do you think it deserves more recognition than it's gotten? Why do you think it's as hidden away as it is?

Note that this question is touched upon here, but only for very large, expansive mods.

Also, I don't play a lot of games and have never installed a mod (and most mobile games don't allow it anyway and none on console) so this is mostly based on how much I like the concept of the mod and the footage I've seen of it, which is obviously to be taken with a grain of salt and is gonna be a lot different from a list from someone who actually plays the game with the mod. This list will also be biased towards well known mods and won't be expansive for the same reason.

KSP

Principia

Kerbal space program simplifies gravity by only doing calculations for one body generating gravity, meaning Lagrange points don't exist and orbits are generally simplified. This mod changes that, and not just for your ship, it does for the planets too.

RSS (Real Solar System) mod

Title. Basically it recreates the real solar system in Kerbal space program since KSP has it's own system with it's own planets. Usually followed by Realism Overhaul (a mod with includes real rockets because the KSP system is 10 times smaller for playability) and Realistic progression (a mod that makes all those rockets disponible in the game's tech tree and would probably be high on this list.)

Outer planets mod

Basically a mod that adds Saturn, Uranus and Neptune analogues to the game, and some of their associated satellites, while still being relatively original. (note that they do add a pluto analogue but the stock game already has a pluto analogue. It's turned into an Enceladus analogue around the Saturn analogue.)

Honorable mentions:

10x Kerbol system, because it scales up all the celestial bodies in the game to a realistic size without needing to change the rest of the game.

Tilt' em!, for adding axial tilt into the game, something that is moderately important to orbital mechanics (if your planet is inclined relative to the rest of the solar system, your orbit might need to align with the solar system instead of the planet to reduce inclination in interplanetary space.

Admittedly the game probably has to have a devlog of some form, otherwise this question is synonymous with "what games are you waiting for?", which is far too generic a question.

The game I'm most interested in is Songs of the Eons (itch.io, most active), which wants to be like Dwarf Fortress but a grand strategy game (main post, for context). Obviously they've noted that such a project will have Dwarf Fortress esque development, so waiting is very much in order.

There's also Hyperbolica (trailer) which I've posted about here somewhat.

There's also Hytale, Creeper World 4 and to an extent KSP 2, which I like but don't follow that regularly, for not much reason TBH.

I'd probably also follow Deltarune but Toby doesn't seem to really do dev updates too often.

So are there any games that you're following as they're developed?