For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
spoiler
I knew it was an English cipher from the beginning. Nobody ever goes full conlang, as much as I would love that. I got as far as deducing it was phonemic, as the same glyphs kept appearing before cleartext words, which I assumed were “a/an” and “the”, and the way “the” was written made me think it was two glyphs, one for the <th> and one for <e>. The last thing I got before giving up and looking it up online was one of hte ghosts standing next to the well in the village and repeating the same word three times. Of course he’s saying “well well well”.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
Gris
I was looking for a game to play with my daughter and I saw it included in the Apple Arcade subscription.
…. I don’t remember ugly bawling like that at the end of a game. Truly a work of art.
Deep Rock Galactic. Even after a few years, I still regularly play this one with a group of friends.
Dwarf Fortress.
And, I mean pre-steam release.
The ASCII graphics, controls and everything about it were not appealing to me. I started playing it because of the Boatmurdered story and some friends trying to recreate that. We started playing and rotating fortresses on a random Friday night.
And once things started to click? I put way too much time into it. I’d eventually mod it and make it easier to play but I put many many hours into it.
I wouldeventually put the game down after that initial burst and then years later the steam release came, making it much more enjoyable and well… A couple thousand hours later I still keep going back to it.
Arc Raiders and Helldivers 2.
Also was surprised at how much I enjoyed goofing around over the past year or 2 in Fortnite with my good friends… ended up being a semi-weekly poker night type thing with people I don’t live anywhere close to anymore.
Outer wilds, went in blind (as you should) was not disappointed.
I went in to this blind and ended up quitting after a couple hours because there was no save ability and the checkpoint system was useless.
I learned months later, from my son-in-law, that it’s a time-loop game. Tried it again with this knowledge and had a MUCH better experience.
So, my advice is to go in 99% blind. The player should know it’s a time-loop game before they start.
I have become an Outer Wilds evangelist. One of my favorite games hands down.
Detroit: Become Human. I skipped it it when it was released and totally never played it. Recently I got it on discount and tried it out. Even my wife is extremely invested in the story and she doesn’t even play games.
Psychonauts. I just saw a few times this game on some top game lists and decided to try. Man, this game fucking rocks! Also, Psychonauts 2 is also epic and Compton’s level should be made into a standalone game! What an epic imagination devs at Double fine have!
Rust. I was there during Beta. Me and one my friend had fun. But once Garry had remade it to what it is today, we tried to play with more people. I hate the game but it is also so much fun with friends.
Heavy modded Minecraft. Once only vanilla payer, my friends finally convinced me to play TPPI with them. Never going back to vanilla.
There’s a great video on YouTube of a speedrunner doing Psychonauts in front of a room full of the devs, at least some of whom are a bit drunk
I have watched both Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2 speedruns. Second one was fun cause they only had this game released for a year. So speedrunner was rubbing their bugs all over their faces during that. Hilarious watch it was.
Minecraft.
I didnt grow up with it and non of my friends had played it. I always thought it was a kids game. During covid a friend started a server and I joined in. I was surprised by the depth of the game and just how much there was to do.
Hellblade. Senua’s sacrifice
I don’t particularly like “medieval” games. Which I thought this was. It isn’t. But I played it because I heard somewhere it was a psychological game. It is.
It also was cheap when I bought it. Like $10.
I really like it. I ended up watching all the dev log videos on it. I have a background in psychology and was rather impressed by how many things in the game are based on the perception distortions common in schizophrenia.
Like the mask thing is part of that too. The pattern matching from perspectives. Seeing faces in trees or rocks (paraedolia). That’s all part of the condition.
The story itself was also very good and it is a personal story of her journey.
However that said. Hellblade 2 was awful in every way that made the first one good. Bad puzzles. No real personal journey. Story was garbage. And very little player autonomy. No exploration. Fixed speeds and at the start of every single enemy encounter, the enemy, a man, beats the piss out of you.
Almost to the point it felt exploitive, and for people who like watching men beat up women.
Sad to see the 2nd so terrible. But the first is brilliant. It’s also the perfect length. Not too long.
Treasure made a game in the 16-bit era when they were relatively unknown. For the McDonald’s franchise. It is way better than it has any right to be.
That’s because almost everything that Treasure does (did) is gold. Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier, Radiant Silvergun, Bangai O, Sin and Punishment, Ikaruga. I think more than any other developer their games are just pure, no-frills fun. No collectibles, no grind, just rewarding and complex action gameplay.
Animal Crossing New Horizons
At first, my partner got it for herself. I figured I’d maybe watch a bit, maybe do something else.
I am now something of an expert on flower breeding, bug catching and determining if art is real.
Peripetia and Echo Point Nova are both sooooooo good.
Talos Principle 2. It’s a solid chamber puzzle game like Portal, but the philosophy audio logs were so good that they shifted my real world views into a less nihilistic place.
They just released an updated version of the first one. Few extra puzzles and some other updates. I bought it recently. Haven’t played it or the 2nd one. (But plan to). But just letting you know. It might be worth checking out.
Thanks!
My biggest complaint with TP2 is that, between the two games, they added forced TAA like so many other games. TAA introduces blurring that drives me into a rage. The original came out before all that and was great, so I’m not super excited to try the modified version, though I might grab it just to support them a little more.
What is TAA. ? I’m not sure what that is. Do you mean motion blurring or depth of field blurring ?
Temporal Anti-Aliasing. It’s a cheap and effective way to get rid of the jagged edges of a rendered image, but temporal effects like TAA and all of the other tools derived from it, like a lot of other AA options and most frame generation techniques, introduce blurring and shadow smearing.
I tried posting a three second clip from TP2 showing it clearly, but Voyager didn’t seem to like it. This post is an extreme example, but you can see it in most modern AAA games. Cyberpunk had it bad (another game I adore).
Ohhhh. Yes. I do know what you are talking about. I just forgot that abbreviation . I think the more modern ant aliasing “type” is called something else. I feel like there are multiple options on a lot of games (on steam at least) ??
Yeah I really don’t like the jagged edges. It’s Pretty common in all switch games. But if the resolution is already low and then you apply a basic blur fix , it just makes the resolution look even lower and a loss of details.
So there are trade offs. And there are more sophisticated ways to resolve the jagged edges that are less destructive to the quality.
I’ve not seen the motion fade effect before ,(the video you sent) but that would give me terrible motion sickness.
I’m not sure if this feature has been updated in the new version of the game. But maybe.
I watched a video about a month ago where a review went into depth on the changes. Made by someone who had played the original. They said it fixed a lot of things players had been complaining about.
Teardown
I assumed it would be more of a sandbox with a singleplayer campaign for the sake of it but it was very well flushed out. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Alien isolation.
I was expecting to like it. I like survival horror. I like games with a focus on story.
But damn that game was way better than it had any right to be for when it came out.
And I loved the art direction. I felt like I was in the movies. It was so good.
The Alien was fairly unpredictable. Always kept me on my toes.
The saboteur
Picked it up randomly back in the day with 0 expectations . I loved playing this game. The way it uses black and white to express the despair of ww2 France , slowly transforming to colour as you destroy nazi infrastructure and the tide of the war changes is so satisfying .
It’s tremendously fun and the aesthetic was amazing. I think I got it for free, and I’ve never met anyone else who has played it!
I went back and played it on my ps3 during the pandemic, I thought it really held up. So disappointed there won’t be any more of them.
That is a shame.
