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What game(s) do you love that you never see brought up in conversation?
I was playing Motorstorm: Arctic Edge emulated on my Vita and realized I have literally never seen it brought up or discussed online.
Motorstorm is a dead franchise, but the console games I occasionally see talk of but never the psp version. I think it did a great job of capturing the feel of the game on the go and has a banger soundtrack too. I played it a ton back in high school on my psp and still boot it up from time to time for a quick hit of adrenaline fueled racing.
I'm sure others have similar games, maybe it's a "bad" game that you love or just an oldie lost to time.
I think the words "Monster Rancher" and "Bomberman" have been uttered maybe 20 times in the last decade, but the GBA games were a fun and memorable part of my childhood.
Love bomberman. Was always rubbish at it so the memories are mostly of watching my friends duke it out till the end. What a great party game. I still (mentally) shout "BY HUDSON" with the bee voice for no reason when I think about bomberman.
Oh wow, I remember reading about monster rancher as a kid, I thought the idea of using CD's to unlock new monsters was so cool and futuristic. Had no idea there was a GBA version, though that comes as no surprise considering the insane number of games made for it.
Bomberman is fun, but only in short bursts. At least when talking about "Classic" bomberman; I know there were some weird platforms that got released around the turn of the century. And Jun Chikuma's soundtrack is iconic.
It's one of my dreams to play 10-player Saturn Bomberman at one point. I'll probably die immediately, but I still want to play.
There was this bomberman browser MMO that was released years back. Bombermine i think it was called? They had to change their name because trademarks. Anyway I remember it being fun, then checking them out again a couple years later and it sucked because the usual happened.
Atomic Bomberman on LAN/dialup was probably my most exposure to Bomberman and I LOVED it. The frantic pace and cheeky quips were peak 90s « extreme ».
But which monster rancher games specifically ? One of my favorite parts was putting the different CDs to get new monsters.
Advance 1 and 2 before I discovered the internet, so I wasn't able to know the disc codes and get the best monsters asap.
I played a lot of the 4 player competitive QBasic Bomberman port (everyone on the same keyboard!) when I was a kid. It was really good!
I see your Monster Rancher and raise Jade Cocoon, a PS1-era monster collector/fighter/breeder where fusing monsters together would result in a child that inherited a mix of the physical characteristics and elemental affinities of the parents. It's been over 2 decades and I've yet to find a game that satisfies the same itch in regards to like... selectively breeding a weird-looking critter. Games like this one and later the Creatures series are what kicked off my eventual obsession with genetics.
I haven't played Jade Cocoon, I'll be honest. But the most balls to the walls genetic juggling I've ever played was Petz 4 and 5 with mods. The mods are wild and their modded genetics were for most of the pets also what they passed onto the pups and kittens.
IIRC I once had a "fish" breed with Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas and it was a very cute eldritch horror baby.
Here is a nice page laying out the history and wanting to mod dogz breeds into horses: https://seeingstars.site/
With pictures of how the animals looked like in-game!
I played a demo of this when I was young and I was completely blown away by the gameplay as well as the visuals and the overall quality of the production.
Years later I finally got a full copy and tried playing it and I just couldn't deal with the gameplay loop. I don't know what changed, but it was completely out of my tastes.
My friend group used to play the PS3 version of Bomberman every Friday night. We'd even dance if we won the match.
Also, fuck blue bomber!
Bomberman's problem is that the games were consistently fun but never great. And it went from console releases to being relegated to handhelds and smaller downloadable releeases... to being kind of dead until they made Super Bomberman R.
I started playing "Battle for Wesnoth" and find it terrific! It's a Turn Based Strategy game based on a fantasy setting. Types of clans include Elves, Humans, Orcs, Undead, and a few others I have not discovered yet. The mechanics is very in depth with very different play styles depending on the clan. The AI is very challenging but the difficulty level can be changed. Note that even on an easy difficulty, first timers will find quite tough situations and this comes from a guy who is quite experienced in strategy games. There are multiple campaigns and each campaign has quite interesting and intriguing stories too. The game also supports user submitted campaigns and stories.
Best part of it, imo, is that it does not require much of a modern or a decently configured PC. Any PC should be able to run it. Next best thing is that it's Open Source and in the Arch repos.
I must admit though, I completed only one campaign so far (they can be quite lengthy) and 20% my way through another.
Before this I have played strategy games like: Civ 4, Warcraft III, Diablo II, CnC Tiberium Wars, Red Alert and Valkyria Chronicles.
Recently, it got added to Steam as well: https://store.steampowered.com/app/599390/battle_for_wesnoth/
Official page: https://wesnoth.org/
I have a love/hate relationship with Battle for Wesnoth. It’s a charming game. The art style is so nicely done, retro graphics without falling on the lazily-overused 8-bit style. Classic TBT/RPG vibes, with some innovative mechanics. For one, there’s a day-night cycle, where some units gain bonuses at night and penalties in the day, and others vice-versa. This can create a push-pull rhythm and really interesting tactical thinking. You might be looking for defensive terrain for your day units to hole up before going on the offensive when dawn breaks. And so forth.
And as you mentioned, the accessibility – technologically speaking. I had an old laptop I “resurrected” by installing Linux Mint. It was my first time with a Linux distro (other than Android), and I didn’t feel up to configuring emulators yet, so I wanted a game I could install straight from a repo through the package manager (for non-Linux users, think “app store”). Wesnoth fit the bill perfectly.
The only major gripe I have is the relationship between the difficulty curve and the progression system in the campaigns. You carry over (a limited number of) your most-experienced units from one scenario to the next, including story-centric characters. You can be ticking along, advancing through the story, then suddenly hit a wall. You thought you’d been doing well, but get to a scenario where your guys are woefully under-leveled and outclassed.
You don’t want to restart the entire campaign, so you revert to a save three episodes back. It should be recoverable from there. Replay a few missions that you’d already won easily, but now with a new focus, you’re shuffling units around on the front line to make sure experience gain is as concentrated as possible among a small cadre. You get back to the previously-unwinnable battle and this time you’ve got the edge. Then you get to the next scenario and find that the composition of units you’ve developed are totally unsuited to the enemies you’re up against, to the extent of being utterly unwinnable and the whole campaign needs a do-over.
It does kill the enjoyment after a couple of runs, when you’re stressing that even when you’re winning, you could be inadvertently dooming your save and wasting 4 hours. It’s not designed to be a roguelike, but it can feel like one.
On the other hand, writing all that almost made me want to play it again. Make of that what you will.
You are absolutely right with your difficulty gripes. The hitting a wall on the next level feels all too familiar. To top it off, every single unit under your control feels very valuable, and even more so when you roll back to a previous save and they each now have a role to play. You may choose some to be sacrificial so that some particular units make it to the next episode (with more experience).
Another edge to leveling up of units is that some can even evolve into either of two or three choices. For example, your regular ranged unit could either evolve into one that has increased damage
and range, but also into one that gains a new ability, like stealth, for example. And often times you are not sure which one to select until you have played the next episode...The day/night mechanism you point out is excellent and makes the gameplay have more edge. That reminds me, the terrain on which your unit, vs your opponent units stand is also very impactful. Your unit might be standing on the edge of a cliff (a high ground) thus having more damage and awareness over enemy units reaching you. But the enemy has a better chance to surround you from more sides and overwhelm you.
The gameplay does get quite intense and every single move, especially of the enemy's, feels quite thrilling. Easily makes a free time slot of an hour consume like 4 hours. The thrill, however, is another driving factor to get back into the game every now and then.
Edit: Just remembered that "range" here is a bit different and that it does not increase.
I played the absolute SHIT out of this game for years. Every now and then I get a hankering to play, but the randomness bothers me now.
The modding scene is on point though. If you're looking for a solid, moddable, multiplayer (or single player!) game then this is it.
I actually played that one a long time ago on my iPod touch of all things. I was looking for free games and was shocked to find one so well done with no in app purchases, a truly free game. I sucked at it but still played a fair amount, like you said the game is very hard. Didn't know it was on steam now, I'm definitely gonna download it.
That's quite the testimony for this game! Woah
Thats one of those nice things with opensource games, people like to port them to everything. Thats why we got doom on quite literally everything with a computer chip.
I've toyed with this on and off over the years without playing a ton of it. I have a friend who loves this game and played it a ton as a kid as it was free and ran on the few computers they had at his church so he'd play multiplayer with the other kids there.
I recently picked it back up as I don't have as much time for games and needed something I could put down at the drop of a hat. I've really enjoyed it so far and look forward to playing through more campaigns as the first one was short and well done.
It being free is a huge plus! I wish they had built in play by email support.
Wow, never thought turn-based games could be played by email! That sounds excellent! It seems even the Civilization supports it too!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Play-by-email_video_games
I enjoy the format since it lets you take your time and play when you're able. I was playing a good amount of Advance Wars by Web but don't have any friends who are interested in playing that so I keep looking for other games to try out.
Trackmania
It's a good, really popular game but only in and around France. With Twitch streamers and Trackmania 2020 it's gotten more popular though.
I love Trackmania games, I just don't want to pay all the money to get them all tbh. There's noting quite like them out these days.
All you really need is the newest one (called TrackMania, often referred to as “2020”). If you really want a different environment too, then also pick up TrackMania 2: Canyon.
2020 is a re-release of the most popular environment called “Stadium” which has been the main TrackMania feature since Nations Forever. Canyon, meanwhile, is the other environment that got the most traction among players (though I have no idea if it still has a solid player base). The other environments and releases are neat to play around with if you really like the series, but they’re not nearly as fun and don’t have nearly as big a draw as Stadium and Canyon.
I've got Canyon already, so I'll look back into the newest one!
Thanks for this. As a speed runner, I came across Trackmania from, I believe, a famous Norwegian YouTuber from the community that would tell great stories of world record progressions and how they came to be. I actually forgot about that until I saw your comment so thanks for that.
Awesome looking game.
I think this was on Gamepass or something ages ago, because I distinctly remember playing it a few times years ago and enjoying it a lot. I liked the track builder. I'm going to put it on my list of games to play now that you've mentioned it.
I don't hear enough people talk about Noita, probably for good reason.
On the surface (and the first maybe 20 to 100 hours of playing the game depending on your skill level and a bit of luck) you'll find it's a rouge lite, terrarialike with a kinda neat physics system and slightly over complicated wand building mechanic.
But then things start to click, you notice things as you play, maybe you try some stuff to see what happens and it becomes more and more obvious the game has incredible, incredible depth.
You just need to look at the developers behind it to see the pedigree. You've got the developers behind The Swapper, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Baba is You and Envriomental Station Alpha in there (three developers).
I'd recommend Noita to anyone who likes solving technical puzzles, has some patience and doesn't know anything about it, because it is a joy to play and learn it's secrets.
Otherwise, games like Starsector don't get talked about enough because it's not on Steam.
I played a game called Starbase by the developers of Trine when it came out. A space MMO where the ship building was like using CAD. That was a ride before the game imploded and I'd love to see people talk about that retrospectively.
I could ramble for a long time around weird, unknown games, but we'd end up with a hell of a wall of text. Maybe next time!
I've played Noita. I heard amazing things about it. I thought the concept was pretty neat. But I regreted the decision about 20 minutes later after dying about 50 times or so.
Noita becomes vastly more fun with cheats. Last I played, there was a little intuitive cheat gui made as a mod for the game. I would use it to give myself little buffs when I felt like the game was dealing me a bad hand, as it often did. A little extra health here, an extra powerful wand there. Made the experience so much more enjoyable. I think the vanilla game is way too punishing.
I'd say Noita's biggest flaw isn't that it's too hard, it's that it doesn't give the player enough information to let them be better at the game themselves.
I understand why you (and many others) use cheats but the game is very carefully crafted in such a way there's likely a way to navigate around the exact frustrations you're facing in gane.
I won't go into spoilers because I think it would ruin the experience of others reading, but for health, there's many, many hidden pickups you can beeline for if you need health. Also it's very easy get health from some more weird sources with a little setup.
As for strongs wands, the wand system should have a tutorial. There's too many extremely tightly bound systems
going on to expect the causal player to work them all out for themselves. It's actually really simple to make something out of nothing, and even in the 1 in maybe 50 run case the game gives you total junk, it's about knowing where to go to find better drops.
My point is, if you cheat, you never have any reason to go and explore to fix the intended issues with the game. They are all "flaws" for a reason, because they are all puzzles to solve. It might sound like I'm saying "you've not played the game enough or explored enough" and that's not quite true. Noita is unique, it has mind boggling depth to it's systems and the game itself is tied in very tightly to them.
It's unfortunate, but I understand why. It's extremely frustrating early in the game when none of the games systems or enemies are made clear and it's all on you to take it on the chin as a learning experience.
I think they could have done a better job to ease the player into the game a little. But what you get is Noita from the start and they are pretty unapologetic about it for a good reason.
Noita was probably the biggest gaming surprise for me.
I initially bought it, because of its obvious gimmick, the 'sand'-physics, where every pixel is simulated. I thought it's probably a neat little game.
But then it felt really good to play, just an excellent feeling to control the games protagonist. And the music, sound effects and atmosphere were great.
Then I discovered 'wand building', where you can chain different spells in a wand, and they often synergize or have unexpected effects. And I slowly realized that there's a myriad of effects, and I could build wands that literally blew up large parts of the games' environment (typically me included).
Then there's an alchemy system, I could eat stuff, see weird psychedelic effects and unexpected things would happen.
And Noita went on and on to surprise with mechanics, with perks, with enemies and bosses, with levels that seemed to be endlessly huge. When I finally had my first 'win', I searched a bit around what I could do now, and I learned that I basically just finished the 'tutorial', and that I maybe saw ten percent of what the game has to offer. It's insane.
And in the beginning it's hard, yes. But a lot of the perceived unfairness comes down to learning how to play and what not to do. Also the ways the game kills you are often hilarious. It's full of slapstick deaths and can be a weird rube goldberg death machine.
But yes, Noita is very much a roguelike/roguelite, and the learning curve by a lot of deaths is just part of its nature. It's definitely possible to get (mostly) good runs after a while though.
Spoiler for two helpful videos
There were two things about the game I learned from videos, that were very helpful to get better and that are chainsaw wands and re-entering the 'holy mountain'(explained in the first three minutes).
I always wanted to write this post, because I had such a great time with the game. Glad you brought Noita up!
I have Noita on my wishlist for ages but I'm always a bit intimidated by it and this thread isn't helping. I've played other "hard" roguelites, it's mostly just being in the right mood for it I think.
Love Starsector, it's such a joy and I hope they ever consider it to be ready enough to go to steam.
Well since you mentioned it, Environmental Station Alpha is, to me, the best Metroidvania and not nearly enough people know about it
why for good reason? it seems like a good game!
Noita is extremely punishing, especially for new players.
The physics engine and gameplay loop are tightly bound. You'll create a wand that shoots lighting bolts, be very happy with the results, killing enemies off the screen, then drop into a pool of water and the highly charged wand will arc through the water and electrocute you to death.
That's a normal day in Noita. Someone who enjoys Noita will laugh that off, think it's a cool interaction, try again and remember that interaction. Quite a lot of people will (understandably) get fustrated when that happens dozens of times with various interactions which are never explained as the game expects you to work out everything for yourself.
For the blind Noita player, I'd recommend going in with no knowledge and giving it a go, but if you get fustrated or want to give up, ask in the Noita discord for help instead (they have a non-spoiler section) as they can normally hint you in the right direction. If you Google or check the wiki you are gonna get yourself right into spoilers.
Edit: Reading my own post, there's more to it than just the poor start. A lot of players will get past the initial learning curve and get to the stage where they can make their way reliably about half way through the game and die somewhere on the way down, ususally to something "dumb" or just attrition and being greedy.
A lot of these players will eventually win the game, get the achievement and uninstall Noita. Some will uninstall it way before they win because they are sick of going down over and over and dying so close to the end. Either way, they'll uninstall it and maybe never think about the game again, which is a shame because I honestly think that the core game of "go down and beat the boss" is ~30% of Noita's content, but the vast majority will never know, because it's never advertised unless you go digging yourself.
It's also incredibly hard and punishing, even by roguelite standards. I own it but only play it with a (built-in iirc) mod that gives me randomized powers at the start of the game.
For me, it's The Sexy Brutale. The game released in 2017, and despite getting recommended by Totalbiscuit, and getting a 10/10 from Jim Sterling, I literally never see it mentioned.
It's a beautiful time travel murder mystery puzzle game, the soundtrack is incredible, the characters and setting are amazing, and the story is one that hit very close to home. I don't exaggerate when I say this game is my heart and soul. I've gifted it to over thirty people at this point.
I highly, highly recommend it if you want an amazing experience.
Also, listen to this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP8RxMnqt94
This game was on my to play list since it's release and I finally got around to playing it last month. I think the concept is Amazing but I wish it was a little less linear, I don't mind having to do the objectives in the set order but I wish there was a little more freedom in exploring, at the start it feels like you're going to have to find out which order to rescue people and go from there but I got frustrated because I had to do it in such a specific order. It would've been nice to have a bit more variety of which order to save people.
I'd love to see a sequel to this game but since it released in 2017 I don't think we'll ever get one. It felt to me like one of those games that missed it's potential, It was very good but it was missing a few things that I think could've been fixed in a sequel that would be a massive hit.
I would definitely recommenced it to anyone thinking about checking it out despite it's flaws, it's a great concept and doesn't overstay it's welcome.
I’ve seen this get recommended as a standout hidden gem for a while now, but I never got around to playing it. Your comment inspired me to start, and I’m happy to say I’m thoroughly enjoying it! The game is very smartly designed, and I like how it slowly eases you in to its mechanics in the first few cases. I just finished with the third.
I know the looping, learn-more-each-restart concept gets compared to Outer Wilds a lot, but it actually also reminds me of one of my favorite old point-and-click adventure games called The Last Express (which probably deserves a top-level post from me in this thread). The concept is similar: it’s a murder mystery where you’re on a train that moves in pseudo-real-time, with all of the passengers going about their schedules independent of your player actions. You can meet up with people or eavesdrop on conversations, as well as sneak into compartments and whatnot.
The game is designed around hitting early endings in the game or finding out new information and then reversing time to act on the knowledge you now have as a result. It’s not nearly as tightly done as The Sexy Brutale (granted, it’s also two decades older), but the concept is very similar.
I keep meaning to play it. I've owned it for I don't know how long now, but just haven't gotten around to playing it for some reason.
Can I ask why it hit close to home? I played it a couple years back (pretty sure someone on here gifted it to me, matter of fact). I appreciate all the care, polish, and originality that went into it, but it was just a solid 7/10 for me, it never grabbed me like that.
Sure, let's see if I can figure out how to do spoilers here.
Spoilers for the end of the game
I lost a close friend twenty years ago. She basically just dropped dead at school from a brain aneurysm, nobody had any idea it was going to happen. Her death kicked off a lot of mental health problems for me, and I blamed myself a lot for not being there. It's been twenty years and I still think about her every day.
Lucas coming to terms with what happened and forgiving himself just enough to move on helped me. The final speech by Eleanor could have been spoken to me.
"Goodbye, my love. Whatever I am, I'm always here. Visit if you want. But don't stay too long. It's time to make new memories. Time to live the life you still have.
Time to move on, old man."
And I did. The thought of her doesn't consume me any more. I've been to therapy, I've managed to let go, a little. She's still a major part of my life, I don't think that will ever change. But... I can handle it in a healthier manner. I needed those words, before I could start the healing process. I've made progress.
The game isn't for everyone. It has its flaws, and if I had any idea how to code, I'd love to make a patch for it. I doubt it'll ever get a sequel, seeing how it did, and that Cavalier Games doesn't seem to be doing anything new. I reached out to the devs years ago to try to get larger versions of the artwork, because I wanted the portraits up in my home, but sadly they responded once and then didn't reply again.
But to me, it was the perfect game at the perfect time, and remains my heart and soul to this day.
Maybe it's because adventure games really fell off in popularity, but I never hear anyone talk about The Longest Journey (or the sequel games Dreamfall and Dreamfall: Chapters). Kind of surprising given how much praise it got at the time. It takes place across two parallel worlds - a futuristic cyberpunk version of earth, where the protagonist is from, and a fantasy world of magic. You've got space colonies, talking animals, shady megacorps, a power-hungry alchemist, and bureaucratic red tape. Truly everything you could ever want.
It's still one of my favorite games and gets replayed ever couple years. Great story, compelling world and characters. The graphics are super old now (though I've heard there's an HD mod out there somewhere), and some of the puzzles are a bit out there, but it's still well worth a play through for anyone that's a fan of adventure games and fantasy/sci-fi. I also recommend clicking on everything, there's a lot of world building dialogue in there.
Ooh if you are an adventure game lover I'd like to introduce you to AGS!
It's an engine for old-school point and click adventure games from which a lot of fun, amateur adventure games have been made!
Highlights include remakes of the original King's Quest series.
I also enjoyed the Trilby series made with the same engine
5 Days A Stranger
7 Days A Skeptic
Trilby's Notes
There are a bunch of other good ones but those are the ones I remember liking a lot. The games are old, but I believe they work with windows 10/11
Trilby's Notes is actually one of my favorite adventure games. I wish there were more graphical games that used a text parser. There's also a fourth game in the series, 6 Days a Sacrifice.
Also all the Wadjet Eye games are made in AGS, and are some of the best adventure games you can play.
Yes! I'd forgotten about 6 Days a Sacrifice. Thanks for the suggestion, though, I just looked at Shardlight and it looks fantastic! I'll have to add it to my log after I finish Tears of the Kingdom. :)
Oh, this is exciting, thank you! Great to see an active community is still making adventure games.
TLJ was a happy place for me, I played through it twice. The first time sporadically because I would drop it when I got stuck on puzzles. Then I'd forget the story and come in again and not know what I was doing, reacclimate then get stuck again. Second time I committed to sticking with it and swallowed my pride and used walk-throughs when I got stuck. It is a fun world to explore, and April's sense of humor made interacting with everything rewarding and fun. The game certainly lives up to its name though, I don't know if I could do another playthrough now and be able to keep up with remembering everything going on. I remember for all the twists and turns and hours of play though it still didn't overstay its welcome. I played Dreamfall as well, and while the engine and graphics and interactivity were all improved technically, it was missing a lot of the charm of the original.
The first one really is the star of the three, but definitely requires some dedicated time. I enjoyed the other two a lot as well, but tend to agree they leaned a little more into the gaming trends of their time and had a bit less pizzazz for it.
I still want to play The Longest Journey, but every time I've tried it's been a buggy mess that hasn't allowed me to get very far, and for some reason there were never any community fixes to get things working.
For some reason (which is almost certainly budget), practically every adventure game from that era is a buggy mess that only barely works, if at all.
That's a shame, compatibility with current tech is one of the big drawbacks to games as a medium. For what it's worth, when I grabbed the steam link one of the top reviews mentioned a fix for some glitches, not sure if it's one you've tried but may be worth a look sometime.
I completely forgot about this last night, but a while back I came across ScummVM as a potential way to play older games. Haven't tried it yet, but that may help with TLJ and other older adventure games that have trouble with modern systems - they listed TLJ as supported and have a a wiki page for it here.
Nice! I knew they had experimental support for it a while back but it was really buggy at the time. That was quite a while back so it's probably much better these days.
I gotta see if I have a copy of it on GOG or Steam now! I remember playing The Longest Journey when it came out. Nobody else in my circle knew it even cared about adventure games in general.
Other than Monkey Island, adventure games generally get no love. I hope you have it! The other two continue the story if you haven't tried them, and Dreamfall: Chapters was 2017 so it's got a little less of the obvious polygon action going on graphics wise.
For any point and click adventure fans, I really recommend the Deponia series. Some truly creative puzzles and its laugh out loud funny. It kind of does this thing where the protagonist is your standard point and click main character. Stealing everything that's not nailed down and fully acknowledges how terrible it would be to have someone like this around.
Excellent, always on the look out for games with a good sense of humor - thanks for the recommendation!
Front Mission 3.
It's a tactical strategy game in a similar vein as Final Fantasy Tactics. I sunk like ... 250 hours into that game. There were two separate storylines that diverge at a very early, seemingly-inconsequential point in the first hour of the game, and a very early interpretation of the future of the internet - the careful navigation of which could lead to a secret super-weapon of sorts, made available earlier than usual.
With Front Mission 1 and 2 getting remasters/rereleases, it's a matter of time until they get to Front Mission 3. I'm looking forward to it.
The Front Mission games are pretty good (with the obvious exception of Front Mission Evolved), but when it comes to customizable mech-piloting strategy RPGs I'm still really upset that (Armodyne)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tBwaVMUrMo] never left Japan. Especially since I'm an Omiya Soft fanboy. Fun fact; Omiya soft also worked on Front Mission: Gun Hazard.
I've been meaning to checkout the remasters, I'm a fan of strategy games, especially turn based, but had never heard of the series till they remade them. I've always enjoyed a good mech game too.
Something about FM3 hit me at just the right time. I don't recall having ever played FM4, and I purchased FM1 when it was re-released on the DS ... but played only an hour or two of it, tops.
Now that the series is being re-released and remastered, I'm curious to give it another go - but I'm also a husband, a father, and a working professional ... so ... yeah, not much time left for it.
I adored FM3. I'm playing though FM1 remake right now and it's saying the desire.... for now. It's also hard! Armored Core will tide me over on the mecha front, but it's just a waiting game for mr to finally play though FM3 to completion with the inevitable remake
I bought a DS Front Mission game when I was in Japan. I had this idea that I would work on my language skills by playing through it. I went so fat as to translate the instruction book, but the game just had too much text. It's a shame because it looked really cool.
Custom Robo. I have never heard of anyone talk about this game outside of my friend group.
Custom Robo was originally on the GameCube with another game released on the original DS. The main gameplay was a top-down style arena fighter, similar to Power Stones. You played with these miniature robots thst you would customize with different parts and weapons.
Outside of the arena, the gameplay was similar to Pokémon. Walk around, talk to people, battle others, get more parts, get stuck in plot. If the arena combat was replaced with a turn-style combat, you'd think it was a Pokémon knockoff.
Overall, the combat was very fun. I wish it continued, as I felt like they were barely scratching the surface of a potentially amazing franchise.
I still recommend it to people. I have a physical copy of both games that I love to fire up for some multiplayer fun when people visit.
God, Arena was such a gem on the DS. I had seen the GameCube version in magazines, so when I saw Arena in stores kid-me jumped on it. The story mode was so awesome, the dioramas and the illegal parts and afterdark exploration, oh man! Not to mention the multiplayer was so awesome, having that type of combat in a handheld just blew my mind.
I wish it'd continued too, friend. Not sure why it didn't, it was such a good game.
That was a really robust game for a DS title, too - solid 3D gameplay on a platform that didn't try to really focus on that and a great post-game if I remember right. It was like Battle Network where everything after the story is more fun than the plot since the difficulty ramped up.
I'd kill for a new one, even just a remaster of the GC game.
My friend had Custom Robo on the Gamecube and we would spend whole nights playing together as kids! He let me borrow it and I remember beating the campaign and really enjoying it.
I actually went to replay it and got halfway through during college but didn't get around to finishing it. One thing I did differently was explicitly talk to everyone I could each day and it was fun seeing the small side stories that were happening in the background. I still remember there being a girl who kept going on dates with different guys at the park each day lol
I think I finally found a ROM that works for me to play through it ever so slowly on my phone when I have time.
Amazing game and I wish I had a copy of it. I plan to get my old Wii and Gamecube from my parents' house at some point and maybe I'll be able to hunt down a physical copy of it.
Im so glad to see this here; so many great memories playing this game whilst I stayed at my nans and she fed us every hour with treats! Im holding out for a Switch remaster, since they keep reviving oldschool obscure titles to fill up their SwitchOnline catalogue.
Yeah I remember that. It was some weird medabot like game.
I played the DS game back in the day. Good fun, fairly difficult, and some good variety in robot parts you could set up to customize your bot.
Outside of the small high school circle I played it with I've also never heard anyone even acknowledge its existence.
I wouldn't say it was lost to time, easily lost in the shuffle of the other great games in the series, but I don't hear Mega Man Legends brought up often enough. I spent a lot of my childhood playing the various Mega Man games, but Legends has to be my favorite. I think it hit at the right time and offered me countless hours of enjoyment (especially the kick the can Zenny cheat which turned Mega Man's armor black.)
I kicked dogs/people until my armor turned black in that game when I was little lol!
I feel like there was something mean you could do to Roll to turn your armor black too.
Mega Man is one of those series I've always wanted to get into but never got around to it, tried playing the original NES versions in the legacy collection but didn't enjoy it much so I'll probably skip ahead to later ones or try one of the spin-offs like Legends or the Battle Network games once they get cheaper.
Those first couple mega man games were some of the first things I played when I spun up a RetroPie. I remembered them fondly, and was looking forward to all the cool mechanics with the different weapons.
It didn't take long to get to a spot where the clunky, finicky jump mechanics sucked most of the fun out of the experience, man those games were rough.
Citizen Kane is considered by many critics to be the greatest film of all time. But watching it today, it's not all that great because the industry built on the foundation it laid. It was absolutely revolutionary, but the wild departures that made it great are now a staple of filmmaking, so they seem unremarkable to a modern viewer.
The same thing applies to games. Playing Wolfenstein 3D, Metroid, or Mega Man today makes them feel clunky.
Though the hardest games to go back to are PS1 games. They were clunky AND they tried going for photorealism way before they were ready, so the visuals have aged horribly along with the gameplay whereas the 8 and 16-bit games had art direction that knew how limited the visuals were.
Link to the Past, Crono Trigger, and Super Metroid still look nice because they worked within their limitations.
Oh my god. This is a blast from the past. Played this when it came out. I was little so I don't remember much. Besides kicking the can for money in that one market.
MML1&2 definitely helped define my childhood. I still maintain they’re better Zelda games than OoT and MM, and I will die on this hill
I will forever lament the lack of mega man legends 3 in my life.
Caves of Qud
Bioforge
Wing Commander: Privateer
Any SSI Gold Box Engine RPG
I love Caves of Qud, I absolutely suck at it but I just enjoy the setting so much. Wing Commander is one of those series I'm sure I'll love but haven't gotten to yet.
I've also looked at those gold box games since a bunch of dnd ones got released recently but honestly don't think they're for me. I play a lot of old games and enjoy them but one of the few things I've never seemed to like are dos era rpgs.
It holds a special place on my heart because I played a ton of it when it was just a hobby project the developer was posting on the Something Awful forums. I was so surprised to suddenly see it on steam one day.
I was just asking my friends about a Privateer game. Apparently Everspace 2 might scratch that itch.
The Dig, Full Throttle and Afterlife. LucasArts games aren't talked about as much anymore but even when Monkey Island was at its peak all I ever saw was that and Loom. But the three I mentioned - which I only bought because they were in a collection that included the first two MI games - were great fun. Full Throttle was a humorous adventure game, The Dig had a more serious, sci-fi tone. Afterlife was a heaven and hell Sim and had the best sound effects and music, as well as a "helper" from each realm that interacted with each other as you worked.
Also, Creatures. It was the first game I played that had mods, and the modding community was excellent - friendly, enthusiastic, collaborative, and very invested in making the game better or different in so many different ways. It was always a janky game, but because the maker chose to open it up for other people to play with, it grew a very passionate fanbase.
I loved The Dig! It was really charming with creative puzzles and an engaging story. I played through it several times and then even read the book because I loved the game so much. The game was better, haha.
I think I played Full Throttle because it came with my CD-ROM. You know, back when you had to add those separately to your computer if you wanted to upgrade it?
I think I still occasionally get "Damn. Let me try that again." in my head occasionally to this day.
Xenogears and Star Ocean 2 are probably my two favorite games of all time.
Star Ocean is somewhat popular, but I NEVER hear people talk about Xenogears
Oh you have clearly never talked to me, because I spent probably years worth of my time talking and thinking about Xenogears. It's such a captivating and interesting concept! And the thing about it was that they were originally planning on it being a multimedia franchise (thus the weird-looking anime cutscenes in the game), so there was actually a lot that didn't make it into the game. That second disc that people consider to be rushed may have not even originally been planned on being part of the game in the first place.
So I see you...are a man...of the SEA!!!
I had no idea about the multimedia franchise, but I can totally see it. You could do a lot in that world. Secret countries, fraudulent religions, giant fighting robots...
Xenogears is one of my all time favorties! However…. about ten years ago I went back to play it and unfortunately found it basically unplayable with modern knowledge of game design and graphics. I decided to put it down and just hold on to the great memories from my childhood.
Can't say I had a similar experience.
Maybe it's because I was raised on nes and Atari the old school graphics and gameplay don't bother me...
Now you boot up a DVD in a bd player on a 1080 120hz tv...yeah, get that crap outta here.
I've never played a Star Ocean but saw that 2 is getting a remake so was considering picking it up eventually, the scifi/fantasy mashup isn't done too much anymore and has me curious.
I've never played it but I know the Xenoblade games are spiritual successors to Xenogears and I enjoyed those so I should probably add it to my backlog.
Xenoblade isn't really a spiritual successor. The first game wasn't even going to be called that originally; it was changed late in production.
Xenosaga is the spiritual successor. It actually meshes in fairly nicely with the timeline of Xenogears, even if it's not officially in the same universe. Though to be fair, that's pretty easy when the timeline is measured in terms of thousands of years.
Hopefully SO2 is just getting an update on the graphics and not a stupid remake changing everything that made the game awesome.
I'm pretty sure xenogears is on the PSN...at least it was when I was still using the PS3...haven't looked on my 5
It looks like it is getting some gameplay changes from what I read, hopefully only ones that change things for the better. I definitely prefer my remakes to be as close to the original as possible just with modern qol stuff like fastforward and quicksave.
Xenogears looks like it's locked to the ps3/psp/vita so that'd be one to just emulate, thankfully I got way too many devices to do that on.
That's unfortunate. You might want to consider sailing the seven seas before you snag the remake. (I have no qualms on pirating this one since I have two physical copies)
I have no problem playing older games so maybe I'll do just that, would probably make me appreciate the remake more if they get it right.
Yeah buddy.
Personal recommendation. Start the game as Claude. You'll be able to recruit Ashton and Precis. If you start as Rena you can get Dias.(I think Ashton is better)
Either way you'll have Rena and Claude as PCs. The minute you unlock Ripper Blast on Claude use it exclusively to level it up as fast as possible. It's OP
I don't talk Star Ocean because... Of, well, everything after the third main game.
Yeah, 1, 2, and 3 are great but, man, The Last Hope? Couldn't stand it. After seeing the negativity surrounding 5 and 6, I'm waiting for a deep sale but I can't bring myself to get excited about any of them anymore.
Xenogears is usually mentioned anytime someone mentions Xenoblade though, which I see far more often.
The think you have to consider with The Last Hope is that it was made in a time when literally every big JRPG just absolutely sucked. Even Final Fantasy sucked! I'd actually say that depending on how you look at it, it was actually the least bad of the games that were coming out at the time. Except for maybe Eternal Sonata.
I played the remake that came out a while ago and I actually found it to be not as bad as I remembered. It actually looks really nice, too. Now I'm kind of wanting to try playing Infinite Undiscovery again, but I seriously doubt that we'll see it rereleased again.
The Divine Force was pretty good too, I think. But I didn't get to play it very much because it came out at an inconvenient time (and to be frank, I was also kind of burnt out on the series too - my husband bought it).
Maybe it was coming off of Blue Dragon (talk about dragging on, that one) by the end of TLH I was honestly bored. Edge was such an unengaging character to me and I've honestly kind of brain dumped everything of that game except for Edge whining all the time and that stupid alternative world he felt so bad about.
I keep wanting to pick it up on PC (it's only $8USD) but I'm finishing Xenoblade 3 and then I've got Persona 5 and Fire Emblem on my 'next up', I just don't think I can sign myself up for a second round of SO4. Moreso considering the SMRPG remake, since I'm gonna have to play that six hundred times and everything.
But, Star Ocean will always hold a place in my heart for the unofficial translation of First Departure and my later realization on the PSP that I did not play the official translation.
1, 2 and three were legit. 2 is the GOAT of course.
In all my years on Reddit I rarely saw xenogears mentioned unless I was the one doing the mentioning...and I lived on that damned site
Do more people talk about Xenogears or Xenosaga, I wonder? I actually think I see a lot more people mention Xenosaga with new Xenoblade title releases (possibly due to the more obvious callbacks like the Zohar). But Xenogears is typically a lot more cult-hit-ish than Saga that I've seen. Obligatory "where the hell is the Gears/Saga remaster/remake" comment here.
It's also funny that you mention Star Ocean because I looked at the new remaster coming out and my reaction was, WHERE THE HELL IS THE STAR OCEAN 3 REMAKE
(I loved SO2 as well! But I really, really, really have a strong nostalgia lean for 3)
Also editing to add another tri-Ace game: Valkyrie Profile is my personal game that I wish more people knew about and loved.
Honestly the graphics are new enough I'm totally ok with the game as is. I had another playthrough somewhat recently. (Though that game with graphics that could strain my ps5 or rx6900xt would be baller)
Very true! I think the only thing keeping me back from revisiting it as-is is general "can't deal with these old school JRPG foibles anymore" sentiment. I don't even remember a single specific dungeon from that game but I definitely remember vehemently hating a few from back when I was young enough to replay JRPGs multiple times lmao.
I do, however, miss tackling the superbosses...
I kinda know what you mean, but my first console was nes, so the first 15 or 20 years of my gaming "career" has been with old shitty graphics and gameplay
Just wondering, I heard about the remake for Star Ocean 2 coming out and it looks really interesting. Never played Star Ocean and don't know much about it; do you need to play the first one to understand it?
In no way shape or form... though I recently played the first one. It's on the PSN and quite good, though 2 is the best in the franchise. 3 is a banger as well
Phantasy Star Online would be another game I don't hear talked about a ton. I played it some as a kid (we didn't own a copy and borrowed it from a friend). But we would walk across the street to our older neighbor's house and see him play it online with people on his Dreamcast which was so crazy cool to see at the time.
I had a friend who was a huge fan of it as a kid and would play it with his brother and dad split-screen since they didn't have the Gamecube Ethernet setup. We ended up playing on a private Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst server on PC on and off for a few years which was a ton of fun. I've been tempted to go in and get it booted up again for nostalgia but it probably won't be the same since he and I are no longer friends.
Seemed like such a cool title at the time and is still a fun game to play even now, but I've only seen it brought up rarely. It was also the reason the Gamecube controller which has a full keyboard was created so people could chat.
It's interesting you mention PSO because PSO2 has seen quite a bit of action over the past few years.
I played a bit of PSO2 when it first came out with the friend I mentioned and we had to use a fan translation patch to have it be somewhat playable.
We ended up stopping playing it when the patch kept breaking when the game would update and decided to wait until it came out in English. We stopped being friends before that happened and I ended up moving on to other things in life.
I think I miss more of the (somewhat bittersweet) nostalgia that PSO would offer if I were to go back and play it than wanting to see how much PSO2 has improved on the formula.
PSO2 never coming out outside of Japan (until really late in it's life) really urked me, especially because of how successful it was and how many English-speaking players there were. I'm glad that it's finally released, but now I'm irritated because they won't get their anti-cheat working on the Steam Deck, which is how I play most of my games nowadays. My gaming PC is basically out of commission, and my work computer is a Mac - which also can't run the game.
Mystical Ninja/Ganbare Goemon. It gets a bit risqué as the series goes on, and I think that has something to do with its modern localization efforts (by which I mean, there have been none), but it's a childhood favorite for sure.
I think I rented the N64 version. Did it have a mech that sang its own theme song ever time it appeared.
Yes! That's one of them! The robot you're referring to is Impact! He's a huge movie star in America ;)
That game was (very reasonably) censored for the English version, but it's fun for sure. Another game has bunny nazis. I dunno. Goemon's weird.
Mystical Ninja Goemon! That really brings me back. My uncle gifted me a copy for the N64, but I didn’t have some expansion pack or save slot controller addon thing that was required to save your game.
Because I could only play in one sitting I think I never got past Mount Fuji, or some early temple then, I should go back and emulate it to finish it off…
I also recommend the N64 sequel, Goemon's Great Adventure. It's even better, imo, and this time it's a 3D sidescroller!
It's got to be Turok for me, in particular Turok Evolution My friend had it for his PS2 and we'd play after school - Split screen co-op shooting dinosaurs! Savage craic
Definitely one of my all time favourites and I rarely, if ever, hear anyone mention the series!
Maybe it's from being a kid around that time, but I remember Turok being what we played after Goldeneye got boring. Was definitely a gem that's in need of a revival!
My main memory of Turok is the FoV being so low that when you did 4 player split screen you could barely tell what was going on around you.
I spy an Irish person! Whereabouts are you? I did a semester in Dublin years ago and miss your country terribly.
In real life, nobody around me knows Morrowind and Final Fantasy X. I love these two games yet I hae no one to talk about them with.
Now, yeah, but these were some of the highest profile games when they came out. FFX got a greatest hits rerelease and Morrowind was the game that got TES on the mainstream map (probably because it appeared on consoles for the first time with the Xbox release).
Final Fantasy X is my favorite and I'm also in your shoes-- I appear to be the only fan in my circle.
This is so bad to be the only one around to know that unbelievably powerful and emotional story. It's the best experience I ever had in a video game.
See? I told you you're gonna cry!
Time to search youtube for people getting emotionally wrecked by video game again, I guess.
And the music was just perfect.
I keep hoping Skywind will finally release so maybe Morrowind will catch eyes again. I played the absolute end out of that, including messing around with the module creation kit to build my own Telvanni tower. It's hard to find games with the kind of really alien environments Morrowind did-- the silt striders, jungle towns, ashfall areas, Dwemer ruins, and the Telvanni mushroom wilds, all just fantastic. And questing like that-- deep, narrative, multipart-- has gotten more common but it felt pretty unique at the time.
Ooh, I love Morrowind! The races were fun, the moddability was awesome, the alien feel was really cool, the worldbuilding was excellent. It was buggy but worth it. I really enjoyed sneaking around and obtaining powerful treasure before I was a high enough level to really handle the critters in an area. I loved all of the stuff you could find, the books, the resources, etc... I loved being able to craft spells and enchant things. It's my favorite TES game.
What was your favorite race to play and did you have a character with particular habits?
I had an argonian that was a master of sneaking. She would typically free every slave, took over house Telvanni, and collected as many blue light candles as I could find and put them all over the character's Telvanni tower. That character's home was full of blue light and books.
I had other playthroughs and other characters but that one had the most specific quirks in how I played it.
I'vehad many characters through the years. Always started the game played for a while and then eventually stopped. Rinse and repeat... I have finished main quest only once, expansions never. I have always built melee character, kind of brute/tank (so likely Nord most of the time). It was always good aligned character going with House Redoran and Mages and Fighters guilds helping others.
I got Steam Deck and promised myself that I will give the game proper playthrough, probably going for Bosmer archer/stealth type for the first time ever.
Are you always a Redoran? I found it fun to try different playthrough styles over different characters. I think I joined Hlallu at one point but that house really didn't leave the impression on me that Redoran and Telvanni did. I do have trouble playing an evil aligned character though, I don't want to attack non aggressive NPCs. Taking the candles is about as evil as I wanted to play. I tried vampire and werewolf. The game does a good job at making those curses without mods to change how they play.
I hope you can use the console on the deck, some story quests can get stuck. I remember having to use the console on occasion to force a quest to start when the triggers didn't work or a sequence stopped partway through.
Yoi can use console, just map the button to ie. R5 (even temporarily) or invoke software keyboard. I will play OpenMW anyway, so there should be less bugs.
I played Hlaalu once, I remember even having the fortress (or whatever it's called) built. But since I started and haven't finished the game so many times, my memories are all blurry.
Where's your uniform?
So many factions to join, some conflicting/disliking others.
Morrowind was an education for me. Although I had played « open world » games before, this was the first that felt truly open. There were always multiple ways to solve quests so you could really lean into your character strengths without grinding.
I remember using stealth to sneak past dozens of monsters and a sword that froze my opponents to take down this bad guy in a cave that my friend had not been able to beat with straight combat and the feeling was amazing.
I have never figured out sneaking in Morrowind. I also haven't ever build a character with high snak in he first place... And we all know that you really suck at anything if you don't have skill level high enough, be it casting, hitting in combat or sneaking. I still hae to give Morrowind proper time it needs. I will though. I got Steam Deck in May last year and first thing I played was Oblivion - clocked over 200 hours in one playthrough completing nearly 100% of quests. I plan to invest time in Morrowind juat like that.
I feel like nobody played Morrowind on PC when it came out except absolute diehards and then later enthusiasts for older RPGs once it got released on Steam, GOG etc.
At the time when it came out, I played it on Xbox and everybody I know who had an Xbox also played it. Then Oblivion was a whole different level where it had a ton of hype and everybody with a 360 at launch was waiting for that game (it launched 6 months later).
I knew a lot of friends who had PS1s/PS2s and were really into Final Fantasy back in the day, but nobody seems to really care about it now. The enthusiasm just seemed to completely fall off between X and XII because the wait was so long.
Flat Out 2: Ultimate Carnage. A decade ago or so, my friends and I would get together for all night sessions of playing through the mini games included in this racer. I doubt most of us even knew the main game was a driving game, as we only passed the controller between us to perfect the angles we would launch people out of our car to skip like a stone across a pool or into a giant dart board.
It’s still a part of our group’s vocabulary to this day, as any time one of us goes above and beyond at something, we’ll say they “Thunderdunked the 10” in reference to the most difficult stunt to pull off in the basketball challenge.
I think after this game was made, the rights to the series were sold to a trash studio who made two terrible asset-flipped games before the series was retired. What a shame, as I think I’d give anything for one more night with my friends drinking beer and ragdolling our way through a gauntlet of challenges to see who the best is
I remember playing a demo for one of the Flat Out games a long time ago but was too into Burnout and Need for Speed to get another racer.
Those older games were just full of fun party/coop modes, which is something sorely lacking in modern gaming, even when poorly implemented or forced in those sort of game modes bring back lots of memories.
Shame how a once good series was unceremoniously killed off when a studio tried to cash in on it's name, a fate shared by a number of classics.
Radiata Stories. It was a JRPG on PS2 that had a remarkably dense cast of characters. The main city was filled with 100+ people with daily schedules who you could follow around and talk to, or even recruit to your party. In order to recruit a citizen, you had to fulfill some sort of condition, which in some cases was as easy as talking to them multiple times, but could also involve an elaborate questline. It was a really cool system. The story was also genuinely funny at points, and the music was catchy as hell.
Radiata Stories is a seriously underrated gem. It’s also a technical marvel on the PS2. But I never hear about this game even from Tri-Ace fans. I don’t remember seeing any kind of advertisements or reviews anywhere. It feels like it was some kind of fever dream.
Nice, I scrolled down here from the comment bringing up Star Ocean. I adored many of tri-Ace's JRPGs, including Radiata Stories. It's actually an interesting game to look back on in the context of both modern critically acclaimed open world RPGs, and JRPGs released in the 15+ years since. I've always disliked that there are obvious compromises in most "lived-in" feeling worlds, where it's obvious which wandering NPCs are just throwaway generic models that exist to make a city or town look packed visually, when Radiata had so many unique models for all its recruitable characters all going about their unique daily schedules. Kind of makes me sad that there hasn't really been many games that fall under the niche of, actual expansive roster to interact with, as opposed to making a larger physical space for the player to explore.
Here are a few that hold a special place in my heart.
General Chaos
Kid Chameleon
Tenchu
General Chaos has a hilarious cartoony portrayal of war with really engaging gameplay that was easy to pick up and led to many laugh out loud moments.
Kid Chamleon’s mask system was ahead of it’s time. It’s on the level of Zombies Ate My Neighbors but since it was a genesis only game i think it gets forgotten.
Tenchu did stealth right. I thought it was far more enjoyable than Metal Gear Solid in terms of stealth gameplay but never gets much credit.
I'm a huge Tenchu fan from day 1. I've played nearly all games in the franchise except the DS and XBOX360 games. I still occasionally play the PS1, PS2, and PSP games on the Vita. I'll probably get around to playing the 360 game on the SteamDeck, though I understand it's not that good...
Of them all, I think Kurenai/Fatal Shadows is my favorite. San/Wrath of Heaven/Return from Darkness is good, too. I've played these on both the PS2 and the Japanese ports on the PSP (pretty good ports, though there is no English localization).
Though flawed, Tenchu 2/Birth of the Assassins is a towering accomplishment with sprawling levels and a surprisingly deep level editor.
PSP's Time of the Assassins was at its core a fantastic level editor, though it was marred by the extremely short draw distance and lack of cohesive narrative.
PSP's Shadow Assassins was an interesting effort introducing a radical change in the gameplay and controversial plot; It's probably my least favorite Tenchu game, though a good ninja game overall.
And of course Tenchu 1 was a singular stealth game when it was released. It's simple game design was both its strength and weakness. Unencumbered by the odd gameplay turns and structured level design found in Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu was basically a sandbox allowing the player to determine the best route to complete the level's objectives and the best way to deploy stealth kills and items along the way. I put so many hours into this game...
Tenchu 1 was my jam growing up. I completely agree that they did stealth gameplay right. Splinter Cell was the only other game that I felt did stealth gameplay right as well.
Battle Engine Aquila. I have yet to meet someone in IRL that has heard of it.
The gameplay was simply mindblowing back in 2003. I don't know how it didn't manage to gain some sort of notoriety. Such a shame.
Looks interesting, I see the game is actually on steam and has split screen with remote play together. Might pick it up and rope a friend into playing it.
Guns, Gore and Cannoli. It's made by a small studio and you can clearly see that it's a labour of love
Looks like I've actually played the devs most recent game, Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef. I enjoyed it a lot so I should go back and try what inspired it.
Back in PS1 days it was insanely easy to get bootleg games from shady malls, and I played a ton of truly bizzare and niche games straight from Japan.
What I always miss the most:
Bishi Bashi - a series of arcade inspired games that's just a mix of silliness of all types, played using Green Red Blue buttons only. Some of them were like, button mashs, red light green light, move a cursor left-mid-right to catch falling burger parts, using these clumsy buttons to swat cockroaches....
Tomarunner is a foot race racing game, where the gimmick is that you gotta use these turning left or right bars, or vertical bars to speed around corners or go up or down the course. There's presumably a story? I never managed to beat the rose queen ("o-hohoho~~") to see the ending (???). There are also some sort of blue-shell mechanics and playable characters stats and abilities. Flying boxes are there to trip you up while they mutter 'jyama-jyama....."
Weird fishing games....bikini mahjong.....middle aged people and people in suits mahjong (which is even weirder).....tiny platformers, one where you have a fishing rod and that's how you get around and beat up fish in your path.....
Another game I loved that I don't hear about:
Another Worldby Éric Chahi. - with graphics and 3D cinematics that were well ahead of its 1991 time. Watch the opening.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hINx381I27A
I loved Paper Beasts by Chahi. It’s basically a puzzle game on a weird alien planet populated by… paper animals. Wonderful visuals and interesting mechanics. I suggest playing it in VR for the immersion, if you can, but there’s also a standard version (the “Folded Edition”).
Paper Beasts
That sounds like such a cool experience, being able to play games that most people wouldn't even know existed, trying to figure out how to do stuff without a translation. Kinda reminds me of watching the late night Cinematech(NSFW) on G4, with all these weird trailers for Japan only games I'll never play. Felt like a window into a whole other world.
I'm aware of Another World solely due to how amazing it looks, crazy how a game made in 1991 can hold up today.
If you can hunt down a copy of Work Time Fun, it was a north american English localised PSP game that had a variety of different nonsense mini games. Playing without reading any of the instructions and you get pretty close to a mini experience like that :)
Thanks for the video link - I'll watch it at home.
I feel like Bethesda's RPGs don't come up except on the internet. I also feel like many people have played more than Skyrim and just don't talk about it, and I'm always surprised when somebody knows what one of them is. I have a soft spot for them after picking them up a couple years ago (and I mean everything from Morrowind to Fallout 4). Some people don't like the way they play, but I started playing them in 2020 because I remember a few short hours (not joking, less than 10 total across them) on Morrowind and Oblivion as a kid and found nothing played quite like them.
Traditional style roguelikes need more love I think. When most people say "roguelike" they mean some sort of action rpg usually with some sort of random dungeon/drop mechanic, but I think there's plenty out there most people would enjoy from folks who craft the "traditional" experience of turn-based, permadeath, and no/limited metaprogression (I actually think metaprogression is a nice mechanic on traditional roguelikes). Caves of Qud came up, Jupiter Hell is an amazing one, Desktop Dungeons and Sproggiwood are also great, less hardcore, but rewarding in a healthy snack sort of way. HyperRogue is also a great one, built around a non-euclidean world space. The last three I mentioned play like more of a chess game where you have to think about where you go relative to the enemy's attacks and capabilities, which is an intresting, still loyal-to-the-tradition game mechanic. I actually don't try to push the hardcore ones like CoQ or Tales of Maj'Eyal because of how punishing they can be, but will recommend them once somebody has decided they want to go old-school.
Adding Cogmind to this list. It's such a unique experience that it's maybe one of my top 10 games of all time.
Let me tell you about Daggerfall, which is the second game in the Elder Scrolls, which holds up well (kind of) especially with the Daggerfall Unity, which puts the game into the Unity engine (GOG has it for free (Steam just has the regular vanilla for free), which makes installing much simpler to do). I think a lot of people are shocked that Skyrim is the 5th game in that series, part of the reason is that Bethesda had simplified the combat in Skyrim. Skyrim does not have the behind the scenes dice roll that determined if your attack landed or not. They got rid of the mouse directional movements to determine which way your melee weapon was going. Oh and Daggerfall is a lot harder to start because it starts you in a dungeon and the skeleton at the end is difficult to fight. Or how about the first Elder Scrolls game Arena, which is also free on Steam and on GOG. Or if you want something that is more obscure how about the Elder Scroll game for the N-Gage, Elder Scrolls: Shadowkey.
Morrowind started it all for me the dialog and lore was so rich in that game. Speaking of rogue type games one of my favorites that never gets mentioned or hardly even recognized is Nethack . Countless hours I have sunk into that came and being one of the original rogue type games you'd think it would get a little more love.
Very few people like or care about the games that I love the most. To be fair, many of them are old and some of them are just generally seen as bad.
One of my favorite newer games is Iconoclasts. It has, hands down, the absolute best worldbuilding and plot of any relatively short platformer adventure game, as well as some seriously silky smooth gameplay. I long to have a conversation about the guy you leave behind or the bird at the end and what it means in the scheme of things. But for the life of me I can't get anyone interested enough to play it.
Alone in the Dark - the one by Eden Games - was talked about quite a lot for a while before and after it's launch because it was supposed to be a technical marvel and was released a buggy embarassing mess. And I'm sure that sucked for most people but most don't know that the PS3 version was delayed for a while and as a result actually has a lot of bugfixes and improvements (which is why it was released with the subtitle Inferno - which doesn't actually make much sense to me, honestly). I played that version and as a result I had a much better experience with it, but by the time I was able to get a hold of it, everyone else had moved on. It actually is really technically impressive from a gameplay perspective. Still buggy, but it's so different from everything else that it's really refreshing and interesting. Plus you can't go wrong with a soundtrack by Olivier Derivier.
Speaking of Derivier, he basically cut his video game teeth with another series of games that nobody talks about, literally called Obscure. More people tend to know about the second game in the series because it got a more notable PSP re-release also known as Obscure: The Aftermath. The first game is basically an unlicensed adaptation of Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty, and it's most notable for it's use of a flashlight mechanic long before Alan Wake (and it actually does it better, IMHO). Though to me the best part of the game is the music. They're apparently cult classics now, but I've never seen anyone talk about them ever.
Don't even get me started on Visual Novels. Echo is an incredible work of literature that talks about topics that rarely or even never get talked about. But I'll leave it at that for now.
Every time you mention Iconoclasts you remind me to finish watching a let's play I have bookmarked somewhere. I can't remember the story at all really but I did like the look of the game itself, it seemed like there was a lot in there.
As far as Echo, I've seen a few things with that title. Do you mean the anthropomorphic horror VN?
That’s the one.
Admittedly the story of Echo hit me so hard because there are parts of it that eerily matched my childhood, but it is very good even if you don’t have that background. The way the overall lore is explained in bits and pieces is particularly great.
I’m glad to see I convinced someone to at least look into Iconoclasts! I would tell you to skip the gameplay and read the story but there is a surprising amount of lore and foreshadowing in the backgrounds.
From Dust
It's a puzzle game at it's heart but you move villagers to safe spots by changing the terrain so they avoid natural calamity. It's basic but has a rich lore...from the wiki link for those interested...
From Dust is a god video game, designed by Éric Chahi and developed by Ubisoft Montpellier. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live Arcade in 2011. Described as a spiritual successor to Populous, the game revolves around The Breath, which was summoned by a tribe to help them seek and recover their lost knowledge. In the game, players, controlling a cursor, can manipulate matter such as lava, soil, and water. Players can help the tribespeople to overcome challenges including finding different totems and overcoming natural disasters. In addition to the story mode, the game features a Challenge mode which offers a shorter, but harder experience.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Dust
I enjoyed playing that, my only complaint was that it felt too short for me. I remember finishing it really quick.
It is a small game but I found that I could get a lot out of each level by attempting to stay on it and not transport as long as possible.
As a kid, I absolutely loved Space Station: Silicon Valley, and it almost feels like vaporware for how little people seem to be aware of it. It was so charming.
agreed! I was very happy to see Nitro Rad review it a few years back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quAucYAFU64
Oh wow, I literally JUST commented this game, too. It's effectively a ghost; did anyone even play it?
I remember it being pretty difficult as a kid.
Radio General is really cool but I suspect everyone can list a hundred obscure indie games in here. I’ll take a random slice of my library:
Hardspace Shipbreaker, Brothers In Arms (whole franchise), Cook Serve Delicious, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Evil Genius, Fract, Sunless Sea, This War of Mine…okay so that’s just a small kinda random snapshot of a few games in my Steam library I like a lot and don’t feel like they get talked about all too much outside certain circles.
FRACT OSC was very interesting. It's been a long while since I've played it so I can't remember too many specifics, but I remember being frustrated with it in places (I think I got lost?). The game itself was thoroughly compelling though, so I stuck with it. I'm glad I did, because the ending "payoff" of the game was spectacular. Very clever and very novel.
Yeah I'm glad it caught my eye when I was scanning my library so I could mention it. Very cool little puzzle game with a unique payoff and anyone who is musically inclined should try it out.
Navigating a space and solving puzzles is pretty frustrating in my experience. There's nothing like just getting lost while trying to solve them.
However, I still think it's worth playing as we both said.
The Zero Escape trilogy of games they are a hybrid between an escape room simulator and visual novel. I'm not usually a big fan of Visual Novels but I enjoy Phoenix Wright and Visual Novels that have small amounts of gameplay to break up the reading. I would say the Zero Escape trilogy is the visual novel series for people who don't like visual novels. The focus of the game is about the mystery and unraveling it slowly as you play, I found most visual novels have a big focus on romance and relationships which this didn't. The third game is a little different from the first two and plays and looks like a Telltale/Choose your own adventure game, but it is still a solid entry.
It's hard to talk about this trilogy without spoiling it because it's so story heavy, but the premise of the first game '9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors' is that nine people wake up on a sinking ship and are told by a mysterious figure they have to find a door with number 9 painted on it to escape before the ship sinks.
As it's a visual novel you'll spend a lot of time reading, but every numbered room you enter is a puzzle escape room which breaks up the reading. The closet comparisons I can think of are Pheonix Wright or Danganronpa which are visual novels with gameplay elements. The puzzles are usually quite difficult but fair and fun to figure out, I felt they got a bit convoluted towards the end of the game but I still thought that overall the puzzles were mostly well made.
The story absolutely blew me away and I liked that it used it's medium as a video game to tell it's story. I can't emphasis enough how good the story of his trilogy is. It ties the Nier franchise for my favourite video game stories ever.
The game is non linear and you can take different routes through the story which have big reveals and plot twists, but depending on which other routes you have completed first this information can either be revelations or make no sense and leave you with even more mysteries to figure out. It's all dependent on what knowledge you as the player has acquired so far.
All three games in the trilogy are great and if you think the concept sounds interesting I would highly recommend playing them or at least trying the first game.
You aught to spend more time in VN communities. The Zero Escape series is probably the second most popular VN series in English speaking countries. The first would be Danganronpa.
Ironically I just read an article ranking the top 15 DS games, and this one was I think number 2. I remember a ton of buzz when it came out. I might have to give it a try if it got a steam release.
That article was just posted here from Destructoid and it was #1, in fact.
Going to reiterate that 999 should absolutely be played on the DS, not the trilogy release.
Having played it more recently... I enjoyed it, but I'm admittedly not a huge VN fan and it didn't really manage to transcend the genre and overcome that. I haven't played the sequels, only the first game.
These games were a lot. According to Steam, it took me 73 hours to get through them. I do enjoy puzzle solving, and the narrative happens to overlap a certain "genre" I quite like, which helped. But it was still work! All the plot twists!
I love Yonder but have never met anyone who has played it. It's super cute and has elements from a variety of games - you can do little side missions, you can farm (including animals you befriend and take home), collect resources to craft items, and find hidden cats and sprites. There's no way to die, no enemies, just a peaceful and extensive world to explore. Might be a bit boring for some though lol
Ooh, I picked that one up on steam but haven't gotten to it yet. I was just trying to determine what I want to play next. With your vote for it being peaceful I think I'll give it a try! Sometimes it's nice and just play something mostly stress free!
What can you do with the hidden cats? Can you pet them? What is your favorite thing to do in the game?
I believe the cats are used for a couple of achievements I think? Not sure, I haven't collected enough, they're hard to find! I'm very much a casual player and I like that you can pick it up and put it down without forgetting where you're at. I love that there's heaps to do, as I often get bored of one thing and like to move to another. I played Skyrim essentially to skip around picking flowers and this is the same vibe
I wish you could pet them. I do hope they show up around your home area once you have collected them. I do like that they are a scavenger hunt. I hear you on being able to pick up a game and put it down when needed. Life is busy and it's hard to find time especially with work and chores. I value that as well and typically don't play games I can't pause. Thanks for more detail and I'm looking forward to playing it in between chores!
Ooh, that's a use for skyrim I haven't tried yet. With so many mods out there now days I wonder if there is one that makes it a peaceful place so skipping around and picking flowers would not have things trying to eat you while you do so.
I bought Yonder for my wife - she isn't much of a gamer but she likes The Sims and Animal Crossing a lot, she saw a Sims streamer try Yonder and mentioned it to me so I picked it up.
She seemed to enjoy it quite a bit but eventually got bored of it and didn't finish. I tried it out and to be honest I found it a bit boring, but it's just not the kind of game for me. You described it accurately and I think anybody looking for something chill and peaceful should at least check it out. Didn't click with me but it's perfect for somebody.
It's a really old game, but Wild Arms was a really good RPG with a lot of puzzle elements. Think of it as a mix between Chrono Cross and Link to the Past.
It's been too long since I played that one. I'll have to see if I still have a copy around. I don't remember much about it but I remember liking it.
I thouroughly enjoyed Gunpoint when I played through it initially. I'll have to go back through and try for all the achievements.
Abzu.
Think Journey but under water (I believe it is the same artist). It has the amazing Austin Wintory that composed the music. Just like in journey, he finds a great way to make music sound grand but fit the mood the player is in and the scenario the devs are trying to put across.
The art style has a lovely charm to it and makes exploring the levels really beautiful and charming.
I played this on release and really enjoyed it! Giant Squid are a studio founded by ex-Journey devs who left thatgamecompany, including Austin Wintory. How do you feel about their other game, The Pathless? It has the same artistic and musical grandiosity, but also puzzle solving and... eagle petting?
I'm rarely in gamers forums, so I'm probably not qualified to speak to this, but one of my favorite old games is Anachronox, and it doesn't come up in regular forums often at all, even in gaming nostalgia threads.
I bought it again on GOG, and played through a couple of months ago. I found two new areas that I hadn't know of before, though I only got to play one of them, due to who I chose as my three characters in an earlier section of the game.
Game play isn't great, and the fighting is tiresome, but the story and dialog are so good, I hardly notice. Anachronox is witty throughout, and the ending is a shock. Wish they had made a sequel, but that never happened.
I actually own that on GOG, haven't played it yet but I just thought it looked cool. I got a soft spot for games that may not be good mechanically but get by on the world/story/vibes.
I honestly have a number of games on GOG that are similar, I buy them cause they're a dollar and look cool, then they get added onto my ever increasing backlog pile.
I absolutely loved that game back when it first came out and remember it fondly (though haven’t went back lately to see how much it’s aged).
I own that on GOG too. I tried playing it a few years back but couldn't get past the first fight. I gave up after that because I don't have the patience for old mechanics anymore. But I really wanted to like it!
Man, that tropical themed Motorstorm on the PS3 was the best...
My choice is probably Chu Chu Rocket on the Dreamcast. Multiplayer action/puzzle game about directing space mice away from cat monsters. Crazy fun and even had pretty solid online in 1999!
The Dreamcast is honestly full of forgotten and cult classic games, fitting that the system falls under the same category. I've always wanted to own one whenever I get my own place I want to start collecting some of those classic consoles and a Dreamcast is at the top of that list.
Totally. Make sure to pick up Jet Set Radio while you're at it. Great game.
I’ve got a lot of great memories on the Dreamcast - my parents still have it at their house. It was a big family Christmas present when I was 11 or 12. We had this one weird games called Pen Pen Tri-icelon that I randomly think about all the time. But definitely some treasures on there like the aforementioned ChuChu Rocket, Skies of Arcadia, Samba de Amigo (looking forward to that sequel on Switch next month), Sonic Adventure, and a bunch of others. I hit GameStop near the end of life for the system and scooped up most of the major games. Feeling all nostalgic now.
If you want the true cult classics, you should probably look at the 3DO or the Japanese Saturn games that never went overseas.
Was looking for Chu Chu Rocket. We played that at my friends house when we drank in College in the early '00s.
My all time favorite game (so far) is Evolve, an asymmetric 4v1 "hunting" style game that is long dead. The game itself was fantastic, from my point of view. 4 hunters in first person view tracking/hunting a huge monster in third person view. The monster could easily defeat one or two hunters, and the game required teamwork to effectively track the monster but then be able to group and use team-tactics to fight it. Unfortunately, the publishers pushed a bunch of day zero pay-to-play DLC into the game which more or less sealed its fate as dead on launch. But before it died, man, some of my best gaming memories.
This was such a fun game. It's incredible how mismanaged the purchases were. I think it had a mini rival where they went with a more standard battle pass setup, but it was just too late.
I watched a ton of GhostRobo vids on Evolve from early access through to release, as it seemed he was the main youtuber really passionate about the game. Always thought it was a great concept and it looked like a lot of fun, but in addition to the content decisions I think it had been in beta for so long that it lost momentum by the time it finally hit 1.0 and people had just moved on to other stuff.
Elite Dangerous.
It feels as though outside of places specifically dedicated to it like r/elitedangerous and the games official forums Elite rarely ever gets mentioned. It makes sense to me I suppose, it's not really that interesting to people who aren't super into space sims and can be off-putting to newcomers. Still, I wish it got more recognition as I think it's a great game.
E:D had a of potential but the dev kinda squandered it IMO. They burned me when they killed console development anyway.
I feel similarly. Elite was very fun to me personally but at points felt more like a tech demo. There wasn't enough there past the ship traversal and combat. Even though those felt great there wasn't any intrinsic motivation. It lacked an end goal or anything to work toward unfortunately.
I liked the stark realism and the immersive aspects but yeah, mile-wide, inch-deep ocean and all that.
If I want to play a space game where there is…content, I turn to the X series of games. Then there is also my old mistress, Eve Online. I can never touch that seductress again though…
ED was the one I was playing before my current obsession (Guild Wars 2), but I left it for one main reason: Lack of win conditions or endgame, which, for me, meant lack of any sense of achievement or victory, lack of dopamine, whatever you want to call it. I don't want to play a game where there aren't set goalposts, or win conditions.
I spent a lot of time with a group, and would help out with hauling, combat, moving the needles in that political game mode, but then I asked myself "to what end are we doing this?" You could literally do it for all eternity and never reach a "we finally won" moment.
Oh man, I loved playing Ksenia. Was probably not that good with her, but still.
Oh man! Awesomenauts is a gem that got mined part way out of the rock but was never fully excavated. Really takes the core concepts of the MOBA and makes it something that is just fun. Though I can't really talk, as I have variously mained Yuri, Scoop, Skree, and Yoolip, so my variety of "fun" iis generally making the other team miserable. I think my favorite memory of the game has to be ending up solo-queuing against SlowWolf, Weazel, and FourCourtJester (I hope I spelled those correctly), three well-known (at the time) members of the Awesomenauts community. My team got trounced, but the experience was a ton of fun!
Last thing I'll bring up is that the OST still rocks, even today. Each character theme, killing spree, and level song has so much personality to it, that I'll sometimes just put the whole thing on shuffle while I do whatever. My favorite track is One Happy Galaxy, for what it's worth.
Oh this brings me back, I got it after hearing about it from Total Biscuit back in the day and was never brave enough to play it online. But boy did I have a good time just playing against bots! I stopped playing shortly before it went free to play.
My favorite game is SOMA, it's a horror game made by the same studio as Amnesia, the story had me questioning what it really means to be classified as a "person" I'll leave it at that cuz if anyone is reading this and wants to play it, go in blind, I've already said too much.
There's an old DS game- specifically a JRPG- called Sands of Destruction. But I also know why I'll never hear about it.
First, I didn't even know that a game existed, and I only learned about it because of an anime series that did a LOT of cliche things for the time period it was released in. Second... well, it's part of a gigantic cluster of pretty typical old-school JRPGs. It's turned-based, very little actual customization... personally, these are things I enjoy. But it makes it just another run-of-the-mill JRPG. Also on this is Legend of Mimana, but this had a worse fate: it was released for the PSP.
Oh man, imageEpoch games are famous for taking really good ideas and turning them into really mediocre games. Sands of Destruction had a scenario by Masato Kato - the guy famous for writing Chrono Trigger - and I remember the game just being a long slog. It was originally supposed to be set in a world where humans were kept for food, and I feel that taking that aspect out really gimped the entire thing.
I actually liked the anime better than the game.
I'm kind of torn on this.
On one hand, the anime is short- 12 hours, so potentially less than 6 hours all together. Unfortunately, it also uses one of the most frustrating pacings that was very popular for a long, long time (not sure if it's still popular): the MC is useless/underpowered compared to his companions for 11 out of 12 episodes... But at least in this case, the last episode is almost worth the watch.
Meanwhile, I am personally enjoying the game- still haven't beaten it yet- but there are a lot of puzzles that take waaaay too long, and I'd be lost without online guides.
I had forgotten about this one. Now that you have reminded me about it, the beast people vs humans was interesting. Overall I remember enjoying the game and that many of the beast people were jerks. I would have preferred a somewhat different ending but I'm not the writer. I wasn't aware it had an anime associated with it. I wonder if that's easy to find online or not. I'll have to look later
The anime has a slightly different name, because it kept the original Japanese name.
The game is Sands of Destruction in English, but the original Japanese name- and the anime- is World Destruction.
Alpha Protocol and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Alpha Protocol has tremendous freedom, and the story adjusts with you in really cool ways. It's one of the very few games that make you feel the impact of your choices over time.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is probably my favorite 4X game. It has a lot of soul in the project. It has deep mechanics that are different per faction. The voice acting is great.
I've always wanted to try Alpha Protocol. I only really know it by reputation. Whenever someone would say Deus Ex was their favourite game and ask for recommendations, it was always one of the first suggestions.
They're making a sequel, so maybe it did better than I thought it did, but I adore The Talos Principle. I didn't finish it the first time I played it, but I remember being annoyed at the reading aspects of it, and just wanting to hit the puzzles. But I went back and gave it another shot later, and this time, I read everything I could get my hands on. The story is fantastic, and it adds impact to what you're trying to do. I love this game, not just because the puzzles are good and fun, but because it is a great story.
TTP gets quite a lot of love I would think. I regularly see it mentioned among great first-person puzzlers, or just thoughtful games worth playing.
I had great memories playing Streak on PS1 with friends and recently same friend bought it while we were hanging out. It wasn’t that great and I’m puzzled to how my nostalgia and mind have altered that experience.
I've been there, there are some games that I happily let sit in my nostalgia because I don't want to ruin them.
Starsiege: Tribes as well as Tribes 2.
Possibly the best FPS titles ever made.
Man I miss the movement from that game. Moving so fast you can barely control yourself, fling yourself into the enemy flag and you're gone and captured the flag but they even realize what happened. Closest to that feeling was Titanfall 2 but just not as good.
Drakengard.
A cool action RPG from the studio that made the Nier series, and also tangentially in the same universe. It had multiple weapon types and move sets, dragon combat, magic, multiple endings and paths through the story, and a weird part where you have to fight giant babies.
It’s the game that taught me to love unga-bunga with a Greatsword.
Unfortunately it hasn’t aged super well and feels clunky these days, but I’d love a remaster or remake.
I tried so hard to like Drakengard. From what I played the story was really interesting. But that gameplay was just so bad. It feels like it was a miracle that a sequel was ever made. I could stand the stiff combat and bad dragon controls if only it weren’t so repetitive.
The sequel was supposed to improve the gameplay but I had read that it didn’t have the same creative staff behind it, which turned me off the idea of playing it because the art and story were the good parts of the first game.
Then they made Nier which is a sequel of sorts to Drakengard and the gameplay was actually pretty decent. Not great, but acceptable. A lot of people hated it but I disagree.
But then they made Drackengard 3 and the gameplay was bad for entirely different reasons.
I loved Nier and Nier automata. And I desperately wanted to love Drackengard 1 and 3. But to be honest, I kind of wish that Yoko Taro wrote books instead.
It's kind of funny that the Final Fantasy 14 crossover raids with Yoko Taro/the Nier Automata team ended up leaning really hard into the franchise's Drakengard origins. Like, sure Automata was well known at this point, the Replicant remaster hadn't released yet but people generally knew OG Nier was a thing that existed, but people who knew about its relation to Drakengard 1, much less the existence of Drakengard 2 and 3? Imagine my shock when they straight up add a Seed of Resurrection as a plot point in the FF14 raid story, or the fact that one of the bosses in the raids - conveniently even shaped like a flower - sends out song rings as one of its attacks.
The amount of Drakengard in the raids made me think they were possibly working on reworking the original with more palatable gameplay after the Replicant release. ...But now that I think about it, Drakengard kind of has some... interesting plot points that I'm not sure would do too well in the mainstream (thinking mainly about the blind guy).
To be fair, the things in that game weren’t exactly acceptable in its time either. We just didn’t hear much backlash because it wasn’t popular enough.
True, it'd only be iffy since Automata's success has put much more of a spotlight on that creative team's projects lmao.
The series is popular but apparently I’m the only one that loved the N64/ps1 3D castlevanias. I only played one as a kid but I played the rest in college on emulator. They were clunky sure but at the time they were pretty unique (at least to me, I could only play the games my friends had).
Everyone calls Dark Souls 1 a Zelda game but I think it’s what those 3D castlevanias could have been. I feel lucky that it’s become a popular genre.
I don't think I know anyone else that played it, but one of my favorite NES games was Deja Vu. I loved the old timey detective, film noir feel.
I’ve played it!
I think it’s better on computers though.
ICOM had a whole series of games like this with different themes and stories. On the Mac they called it their Macventure series. I think they called the Amiga versions Amigaventure.
Deja Vu, its sequel, and the horror counterpart The Uninvited are all currently available for PC on Steam. They come bundled as both the ported B&W original, and an updated, colorized version. I've tried them, and they run well!
That's awesome, I'll have to check that out. I heard there was a sequel but never played it.
Infra is a puzzle/adventure/walking sim that i absolutely never hear be mentioned. it was made by a small finnish dev a few years ago, entirely on the Source engine, and you’re a civil engineer on a field inspection of sorts, but then you end up going deeper and deeper into the underlying infrastructure of the city and you end up unravelling a very cool story.
the main draw for me is the ambience, there’s just no game quite like it, the level design is amazing because it really feels like you’re going through the least-explored places in a city, and i guess it really tickles my the part of my inner self that yearns for urban exploration :) also you get to take pictures of everything!~
i really recommend it to everyone who likes exploration and a good sense of place in games. it’s a really impressive game for such a small team. if i have anything bad to say, is that the voice acting can be a little hit-or-miss, but it doesn’t detract from the experience, at least for me.
I stumbled into a stream of someone playing Silent Hunter III and was impressed by the - supposedly rather toggleable - complexity. It sounded like they had been commanding this one particular sub for awhile, progressing through years of WW2. I was vaguely aware sub simulators were out there, but all I had seen was surface level missions without much real depth to them. It looks like there remains a decent modding community around it and the flexible complexity sounds like it's not super difficult to get acquainted with, so I might pick this up before the Steam sale ends.
Gotta be Custom Robo Arena for the DS. Was such a cool concept and if it had been taken seriously couldve been a worthwhile alternative to Pokemon.
Gotcha Force for Gamecube, you create teams of "gotcha borgs" and fight other borgs similar to Custom Robo or Gundam VS (same creators as Gotcha Force). the borg abilities and strengths differ greatly from one another as you could have a cowboy with 150hp vs a dragon with 1500hp, but every borg has a cost and you have to create your team within a budget (the dragon costing vastly more gotcha "energy") so that team would have less units available. it also has co-op and versus ( + online via Gotcha Force Balanced) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKAhcBplyq8
Not sure if anyone ever plays Nexuiz, but I make a habit of installing this game on my all my Linux computers. It's like a quake/unreal game and quite fun too.
Speaking of the Vita there was Killzone Mercenary which is my favorite shooter of all time and I think compares with desktop and console shooters on story and gameplay. Focus on a “score” is so 1980s but there is something transgressive and addictive about getting paid for each and every kill and getting paid more for stylish kills. I don’t think there’s been a portable shooter that comes close since.
The Vita also had a Joan of Arc game which was a strategy RPG a lot like Fire Emblem that I thought was exceptionally good. (I think it was a port of a PSP game.). For that matter, Hyperdevotion Noire was another great SRPG for the Vita that I think is out on Steam.
The Suffering was released in 2004. I was a freshman in high school at the time, and my buddy and I rented it from Blockbuster for the weekend. This game was our first journey into horror style games, and it had a lasting effect. I seldom, if ever, see it mentioned, but this was one of the best games I played.
Space Station 13 could fit in really well here.
I've been playing it since 2013 or so, it's an online multiplayer game built in the BYOND Engine and I'll be straight up, it doesn't look great.
However, please don't let that put you off, there's a fantastic game here where no two rounds are the same.
The defining feature of Space Station 13 is its emphasis on player roles. At the beginning of each round, players choose or are assigned a specific role on the station, such as a medical doctor, engineer, security officer, captain, chef, clown, or scientist to name just a few. Each role has unique responsibilities, equipment, and abilities that are crucial to the smooth functioning of the station.
Players are free and are expected to work together with their fellow crewmates to complete tasks and keep the station running smoothly, but some players will be given an antagonist role at the start of the round such as a Traitor, a Syndicate Officer (villainous death squad), Space Wizard, or a Changeling (think John Carpenters The Thing). These traitors have objectives to achieve such as killing specific people, killing "x" number of people, stealing the Captains access card, destroying the Space Station and they can choose to cause chaos and disrupt the work of others to achieve these objectives.
The game has a variety of different game modes and win conditions, ranging from simple survival to complex conspiracies and political intrigue.
Best of all, it's completely free to play.
If you fancy giving it a go the controls are a bit obtuse and the learning curve is quite high so I'd suggest playing as an assistant for your first few rounds to get used to the game and then maybe move on to Cargo Tech, or Botanist, before moving onto bigger roles such as Medical Doctor, Engineer, Security Officer and Captain.
A really weird one: the Hamtaro games. I've mentioned before that as I get older, I appreciate them more and more. Most games based on a TV show will be a platformer or mini-games, just cheap money grabs, but the Hamtaro games, particularly the first two, had a LOT of effort put into them.
The first two use Ham-chat, a type of slang, as the primary mechanic. You can use it to respond to characters or perform actions, talking to characters to learn more words and solving little problems and puzzles. What I like is that you can play at your own pace, and it doesn't necessarily lock progression behind skill. (Well, besides the bowling mini-game you need to play in the first one to win a prize for Cappy.) I haven't really encountered any other games like them.
Also, the settings are just fun. You're a tiny hamster, and the first game in particular reflects that by having most of the settings be human-sized like an elementary school or a supermarket. Second game has more hamster-sized locations, but they're still fun!
The Age of Decadence
It's an old style RPG that reminds me of playing a tabletop game with a good GM. The story telling is great! The game world isn't static, it won't wait for you. There are many, many paths to take depending on your choices and it's a rather unforgiving world. Do something dumb and you might die or take too long to do a quest that sounds time sensitive and you will fail it. It isn't the challenge I like so much as between the story and less static world feels more alive and real than other games.
It's not really dynamic as everything is preprogrammed, but it feels like a taste of it. I can't wait for AI to lead to creating truly dynamic game worlds. :-)
I don't see the Breath of Fire series mentioned often. My favorite was Breath of Fire 3. Turn based and with the ability to turn into so many kinds of dragons, I really loved exploring that one. I enjoyed the cat people, the shapeshifter dragon, the gargoyle, so many memorable characters and things to do. I like that the dragons were feared but were actually peaceful. I liked the weird creatures that said "moof" instead of moo. That's one I definitely want to replay on occasion.
My favorite video game is an old GBA game called Golden Sun and it's sequel, Golden Sun:The Lost Age.
It's just a really good quintessential example of an RPG. There's monsters, there's magic, there's cute little elemental creatures who you collect to help you in battle, it's just a good time.
The fact that it hasn't gotten much recognition might be a good thing, it hasn't been remade and has a very timely charm of its era.
Golden Sun is a lauded video game! It's considered to be the best RPG for the GBA, and it had a third sequel for the DS (that nobody talks of... for good reason. It's not bad, it's just not good).
I would also like to see a new sequel or even a remake, but Camelot is too busy making Mario sports games these days. And no, I'm not bitter about that at all.
Dark Dawn is a great example to show how the mediocrity of modern gaming progressed.
Early gaming was pretty constrained so you had to try your best to be creative to make things look good. The pixel art work in The Lost Age is just incredible when you think about how it was designed to run on GBA hardware but could still make animations like Judgement. The fact that you can see how the sprites were just moving around static 2d images made it seem more impressive, not less.
Dark Dawn just doesn't have that expertise, and it shows. There's nothing wrong with it, by the standards of the DS, but it looks and plays kinda amateurish. Stuff is slower than it should be. Graphics don't look like they were made by artists. There's a couple cool things, but when you look at Crystalux vs Catastrophe, one just feels like it was done by a master and one feels like it was done by someone just getting the hang of it.
I can't possibly disagree with you more!
It's been a while since I played Dark Dawn, so I looked up a Lets Play and the visuals actually blew me away. Everything felt like the same style of the two GBA titles but much better realized. The transition to 3D was actually handled pretty fantastically; if you compare what the backs of the characters look like in battles, Dark Dawn is significantly more detailed and interesting. But that's not the only visual improvement; literally everything is put together in much higher quality. And you can't really complain that the style is much different because it's largely the same people working on all three titles.
I think more than anything our expectations had changed, and the biggest reason why it didn't sell well is just because people were expecting too much out of it.
But like I said, I haven't played it for a while, so there may be problems with the story and gameplay that I'm forgetting.
Fair enough, maybe it was just me. I just really feel it lacked something the original two had.
Future Cop. It had such an interesting multiplayer game type. It was a tower defense and 3rd person mec/car shooter. Always wanted a remake/reboot of it.
Looks interesting, as a fan of Robocop and mechs I'm surprised this game passed me by. I'll definitely check it out, should be easy since it seems to be abandonware, will probably just have to do some tinkering to get it to work.
I played it recently on the steam deck through a ps1 emulator. I think the hardest part was finding a download for the iso.
There was a SNES platformer called Dino City. It's loosely based off a movie I've never seen. It was one of the first SNES games I ever played and for me it was basically a launch title. It's not the most ground breaking game but it's solid, with a few cool ideas and I'd call it one of the string playformers on the system. I've literally never seen another copy of the game or met someone who's played it or even heard of it.
https://youtu.be/NwNsrmcsBCM
Dino City had achieved some level of notoriety due to the popularity of this video. I never heard of it prior to this though.
Incubation: Battle Isle Phase 4. Its called Incubation: Time is Running Out in English. I assume that's because the Battle Isle series was never too successful outside of Germany.
It's a turn-based tactics game that feels like a puzzler a lot of the time. Basically you're stuck on a planet with hostile aliens and try to escape. It's pretty much like modern XCom games and permadeath is a thing. The base game is not too hard, but the expansion is super tough. One of my proudest gaming achievements is that I played through the base game and the expansion without quick saving and without losing a solider.
Man, I loved this game when I was a kid. I replayed it two or three years ago and it's still fun. I guess that's because turn-based tactics games are allowed to look old/bad. So feel free to check it out. Also, there's a spiritual successor to the Battle Isle games called Battle Worlds: Kronos. That one is amazing as well. However, it's more like the other Battle Isle games which are hexagonal SciFi war games.
Oh man I played incubation!! I think I just had a PC Gamer demo disk with the first handful of levels.
That game was dope. It definitely had a different feel than Xcom. More fast pace where half the time you were just trying to hold back enemies and trying to find a spare turn to reload or let your gun cool down from overheating.
Is there a starting point in that series you'd recommend? Also are you able to save at any time?
It looks interesting and up my alley! I just need games that I can pick up and put down at a moments notice with me having kids.
I really loved Battle Isle 3. But it's a very video heavy game like Command & Conquery... and the videos are very cringy. Edit: Oh, and yes, as far as I remember you can safe anytime and there's a quicksave system. And yeah kids are the number one reason to enjoy turn-based games even more :D
Slay by Sean O'Conner. A simple strategy game that I saw originally as a random youtube video. I found it had an Android app and it has been well worth the few dollars I spent on it.
I wouldn't call it my favorite game of all time but it's a great little game to play during a break. Once I got the hang of it it isn't too hard but there are occasional maps that cause me trouble and take a few attempts to beat.
I've never seen anyone talk about it outside of that one Youtube video.
Octahedron was developed by an electronic music producer, and that influence shines through. It's a refreshingly unique take on the platforming genre with impressive, neon-soaked art direction and a killer soundtrack. It's not a rhythm game but the world pulses along in time with the music, so there's often an intuitive tempo and flow to playing. It can also get fiendishly difficult later on if you want the challenge. It's one of my favorite games; it's made me excited to see how people who aren't traditional game designers can bring their non-video game passions and expertise into games in the future.
Also, the soundtrack is amazing. Did I mention the soundtrack? It's fantastic, and even better while playing.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/323380/The_Magic_Circle/
Is way too unknown and deserves more attention. It can be very meta and surreal with a weird sense of humour, so isn't for everyone, but I loved it.
E.V.O. for SNES. Way ahead of it's time. I used to write the serial code down at my local Blockbuster just to get my saved monsters back when eating green crystals
Recoil. Older PC game where you play as a futuristic tank. I played it a little as a kid, then rediscovered it years later and still had fun.
Hunchback. It was on a cassette tape for the amstrad for me. I played that game for hours and hours in my 6-10 yrs old. Simple green screen to play it on too and no save function so you always started at lv1 every day. For so so many reasons I miss those simpler days.
I never see anyone mention Space Station Silicon Valley, but it was such a weird game; it's crazy it's never mentioned.
My mind immediately went to Monolith. Only ~1500 reviews on Steam and it's a crying shame given the amount of polish and love that has gone into it over the years. It's basically a top-down more retro-aesthetic Enter the Gungeon. A "true roguelike" in that your character doesn't get any stronger between runs, you just get better at the game (there is a shop where you can buy new unlocks to find within the run itself, but you never start with anything new). It's a little more bullet-hell than Gungeon with a focus on tighter screens and faster-paced movement but it plays similarly enough that fans of Gungeon will definitely enjoy it all the same.
I love the aesthetic, it uses the pixel visuals brilliantly. Plus, the music is track after track of certified bangers, incredible chiptunes that don't get old. The game is complete (well beyond its 1.0 release in 2017), but is still actively being updated by the developers. Speaking of the devs, they recently decided to add the DLC to the base game for free moving forward because it's generally agreed that the DLC content includes enough QoL improvements that it ought to be part of the base game.
It's actually an interesting time to get into the game because, depending on when you see my comment, the devs are in the process of changing its name to "Star of Providence" due to their concerns about a copyright on the word "Monolith." So, whether you click the above link and see "Monolith" or "Star of Providence," they are the same game, and I highly recommend you check it out!
The Splinter Cell games. I know the last game wasn't as well loved, but I enjoyed the hell out of Blacklist and have been quietly awaiting another game in the series...
Spore. I feel like it's one that a lot of people have at least heard of and know the basic concept of, but that almost never gets actually mentioned except in a "remember that weird old game?" context. It's a shame, too; for all of its many flaws, Spore is an incredibly charming and unique if overly simple game. It's not something I'm going to play for hours every day or anything, but I've had a lot of fun with it through the years, and making up backstories and lore for all my creatures is what got me interested in worldbuilding/spec evo when I was younger.
Also, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. Adorable old DS game that's part minigame collection and part deckbuilder. By no means particularly mechanically deep, but it's adorable and I love chocobos, so I love this game. The music is great, too.
I bought Spore on release day and I'm still pretty salty about how different the actual game was from a lot of the hype. I'm not saying it was bad, but the game they were promising earlier in development was so much cooler.
Spore was a lot of fun! My favorite part was the creature stage so I often would play though repeatedly and create all sorts of creatures without moving on to the civilization stage. I thought that being able to save the creatures as a picture that the game could recreate them from was really cool. I've been watching the development of Elysian Eclipse lately, which appears to be trying to be another spore type of game. I'd be up for playing a similar game and hoping for it to have some features I wished for in Spore.
Chocobo tales sounds cute. I didn't get to try that one. There were so many fun games on the DS!
Little Big Adventure 1 & 2.
Absolutely insane GOAT of a game around when it released, kinda archaic now but still a lovely experience.
Interestingly enough, I can't even find copies of it consistently on NA ebay, so probably has something to do with it.
A game that I don't see mentioned at all is Tetris 2. It is more similar to Dr. Mario than the original Tetris game and was very addicting to play. The strategy lay in attacking the shining blocks so that all of the same color disappeared. Different from laying lines of blocks to evaporate a row as in the first Tetris. Great way to pass the time until you got to a level where too close to the top of the screen and game over-ed.
I haven't seen it nominated yet, so I'll give a shout-out to Copy Kitty. It takes the idea of combining powers seen in Kirby 64 and cranks it up to 11, with the main character combining up to 3 powers to create explosive light shows of action. These powers have limited energy, so you'll probably have to refuel them with energy dropped from enemies, but this is no trouble. With most bosses, they'll drop their power about 2/3rds of the way through their health bar, and you get to finish the fight walloping them with their own ability. At least on normal, it's not too challenging, but man is it fun regardless. I'd say the devs had a great eye for spectacle, despite the rather amateurish art style. Definitely worth a play... Oh also, it does have another character to play as, who's very different (and more challenging), and each has their own storyline, both of which differ on hard mode.
First for me is Obsidian, an old PC game from the 90's with puzzles, exploration and FMV cut-scenes. It's the story of a pair of scientists who are exploring a bizarre crystalline structure which appeared overnight in the woods. It's been ages since I played it, but I remember the puzzles being some of the best and most difficult I've ever encountered.
Second is Roundabout - a weird little game I played on the PS4, where you are Giorgio, a silent limo driver. Not only is she the greatest chauffeur of all time, piloting a limo that never stops spinning like a demented top, but she also solves the personal problems of her passengers, without ever having to say a word. You control the madly spinning limo to pick up and deliver passengers, collect hats for your car, and you get to watch charming live-action cutscenes with wacky characters, and somehow it works!
Ultimate Spider-Man deserves a lot more love. Everyone goes on about Spider-Man 2 but honestly I think Ultimate is better. The story is great, the graphics are timeless, and I think the swinging animations are better.
And you fight Wolverine in a bar as Venom.
One game I still pour one out and have a moment of silence for is Atlas Reactor. It was a 4v4 turn-based moba where each turn everyone queued up their actions at once and the actions played out over 3 phases. It was team death match style and had a very cool and varied cast of characters. There was even solid lore!
Sadly the game died because they "didn't have the money to keep the servers open". Which is probably true because it was an f2p game with poorly executed monetization and absolutely no marketing. By poorly executed monetization I mean they didn't do enough. The cosmetics were earnable ingame and they didn't put out a lot of cosmetics, characters, or other content.
The devs later tried to put out a single player roguelike in the Atlas universe but that also flopped for several reasons. Little to no hype or marketing(fucking again), it was always online, and the gameplay loop wasn't "cult hit that markets itself" level.
Oh and another game I never see mentioned anywhere is an old game by EA Phenomic, Battleforge. It was a, and I quote, "MMOCCRTSG". Which sounds dumb but it was a magnificent blend of rts and card game that was in an mmoish package due to coop being a large part of the game in addition to pvp and an auction house. This story has a little happier ending since Skylords Reborn is a community project that didn't let the flame die out as it were.
One game that seems really overlooked is Medal of Honor, the PS1 game. People know the name and the games, but every conversation starts with Allied Assault from the get go and it's like the first 2 games never existed.
Not gonna lie, it's clunky and playing it without dual shock controller at the time was really difficult but you had the option of playing with a very modern fps controller layout. The darkness of the levels (probably imposed by hardware limitations), the style of every single part of the menus, the stellar music, that game had and amazing atmosphere. For me it feels like what a Spielberg videogame would be like, probably because he was involved in it.
I have strong memories of that game and its sequel Medal of Honor: Underground. Until Josh Strife Plays made a video about it (Link here) most of the videos I found just referred to them as a footnote in a story about the fall of the Medal of Honor franchise.
Many PS1 games have seen a resurgence in interest (like Tenchu or Gran Turismo 2) but I think Medal of Honor is a very influential game that has been overlooked.