Man, TimeSplitters 2 is the goat. Still play it every now and then. Some levels weren’t that great, but the characters, multiplayer aspect and just the overall “goofyness” of the game really make it stand out
Play what you enjoy. The old games can look better because you skip through to the best ones over the last 50+ years. Many were buggy, had terrible controls or were just boring. You’re probably not wasting your time on those.
Thimbleweed Park seems to fit your criteria. One of the reviews even compares it to Twin Peaks. It’s a point and click murder mystery adventure game with where you have to switch between 5 characters.
It’s been years since I’ve played but I think the setting was in a fake Northwest Pacific town.
Fun fact, the names in the phone book and the titles/stories of the books in the library came from Kickstarter backers. Some of the books were pretty funny.
The PS2 was still being produced until PS4 was introduced, and its last game was released even after the production ended in 2013 (Nov 2013, but still…)
PS1 and PS2 were both masters of their generations. The OG Xbox was just really “Halo box” back then, and GameCube was awesome, but not as strong as PS2.
The GameCube was stronger than the ps2 it was just limited by the disc format. Compare Resident Evil 4 on the two. The GameCube version had hair physics for Leon and the cutscenes were rendered in real time, while they had to pre-render them on ps2 (which also made alternate costumes better on GameCube since Leon would wear them during cutscenes)
I can give so many but you'll have to narrow down your preferences a bit ^^
I've recently been playing Remnant 2, Songs of Syx, Age of Darkness, dotAGE, Helldivers, Valheim, Against the Storm... all really impressive and amazing games made by (relatively) small studios or AA developers with a passion for games. If you're completely new to the indie scene you probably can't go wrong with Hades, Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Terraria
Hero’s Hour is a pixel art game that’s about building an army. Really solid indie game! Also a fan of Revita, it’s a roguelike but done very well and is mostly unique.
People that have this opinion often only play AAA games. There are a lot of indie games that channel old-school game energy and improve upon them. Shovel Knight for example is a lot better than old platformers wish they were. A Hat in Time is a ton of fun compared to the vast majority of PS2/Gamecube 3D platformers. Hollow Knight is better than any Metroid game (I know a lot of people would disagree, though).
Hollow Knight is pretty different than metroid games and I’m not sure I’d directly compare them. I’m the only person I know that doesn’t like Hollow Knight and it seems like the departures it makes from the classic metroidvania formula that put me off it are part of the reason other people like it
Nah, you have a point. There are a bunch of "2D soulslikes" that get advertised as "Metroidvanias", and I wish we had better language to split that difference, because there's a big conceptual shift between the "parry and dodge" souls style and the genuine Metroid/Castlevania style of movement and aggression. It feels very different and honestly the last time something scratched that itch it was Bloodstained.
So yeah, Hollow Kinght is a very well made game, but it's not what I'm looking for every time I fire up one of the DSvanias for yet another run.
Cassette Beasts kicks the ever loving shit out of Pokemon across the board, modern or retro.
Retro games weren’t better than modern games as a “full-stop” statement. They tended to be bug-ridden messes, but there was still a heart and soul behind them that tends to be missing in the AAA industry. Continuing on the Pokemon example Red/Blue were an absolute mess. I mean, moves and items that were supposed to massively increase critical hit rate massively decreased them instead. Stat calculations were all over the place. Hell, the ghost-psychic interaction just straight didn’t function as intended. It was a mess, and yet for some reason, it’s touted as “better” than the modern Pokemon games.
Plus, not all big studio games are soulless cash grabs of releases, either. Hi-Fi Rush is my favorite game of 2023 by a huge margin, and was a Bethesda published game. Sure, the dev studio was “smaller” compared to Ubisoft or Activison, but I wouldn’t call the game indie - it was AAA in polish and scale. I’m currently really enjoying Unicorn Overlord, getting major Ogre Battle 64 vibes from it, and playing a lot of Monster Hunter Rise thanks to a Steam sale. These games slap, and have all the depth and passion of games of old without alI of the horrible jank we dealt with in the pre-internet “no such thing as a post-release patch” world.
It’s easy to see the yearly Call of Duty, Pokemon, generic EA sports, and obligatory Ubisoft open world games release and think “man, AAA gaming sucks”, but they’re honestly a very tiny portion of the conversation.
EDIT: I take everything back, Bethesda just closed the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush. AAA gaming is a cancer that needs to be surgically extracted.
Still on New Vegas, but going to take a bit of a break.
Last time I played (over a decade ago, at this point), I only did the Dead Money DLC. So, over the last couple of days, I’ve been doing some of the other DLC and ignoring much of the main quest.
Old World Blues was super fun (and reminded me of Outer Worlds a lot; I wonder if they took inspiration for OW from their earlier work here), but it kind of took a fair amount of energy out of me.
I probably should have taken a break there, but decided to try Honest Hearts. I really didn’t enjoy it, but at least it wasn’t too long.
After that, I realised I’m burning way out here, so I’m going to get back to the game in a few days.
I think OWB is many people’s favourite, and Honest Hearts is certainly the weakest DLC. It does have some cool lore and story bits to it though, and the environmental storytelling with the survivalist is very neat. And I think Joshua Graham is a great character.
I hope you come back and do Lonesome Road too, I absolutely love it and think the level design and environments are outstanding.
Yeah, I enjoyed the whole background narrative with the Survivalist, and there’s some great loot as well, but I think maybe I was a bit burned out and having a bad day because I just couldn’t really get into it.
Thinking back, it seems like my only real issue with it was just navigating the map. Maybe I was just tripped up by the sudden change in landscape and didn’t adjust well to it.
Could also be that I just finished OWB and the immediate change in tone and pace gave me a bit of narrative whiplash. Lol, probably should have done some more stuff in between instead of rushing it.
Anyway, a nice break should do me well. Then I can come back with fresher eyes and appreciate the little things without feeling too overwhelmed.
Despite the weak story, Stellar Blade offers an enjoyable and exciting experience of action, adventure and science fiction. Smooth and attractive gameplay, varied combat moves and stunning graphics make this game one of the best action titles of the year, which we strongly recommend you to experience
I’ve got an amazing group of online friends, and we’ve been doing a big mix of Content warning, DnD with rotating DM’s, and of course a shit load of helldivers!
Dragon’s Dogma 2 succeeded in taking the principles of the series to an advanced stage of creativity, but it suffered from an imbalance between the elements of exploration and the way the missions were presented, in addition to some problems with the plot. savisgame.com/13664/dragons-dogma-2-review/
Depends on the game. As great as retro games are, I could never give up newer indie titles like Baba Is You or Brok The Investigator, which would be much shorter games or have other problems if they were made for consoles pre-internet games download days.
Though I will say that retro games like Sonic 1 & 2 on Genesis or Ratchet and Clank on PS2 are pretty much infinitely better than the triple AAA slop they’re throwing at us today.
Especially when we have companies (like sweet baby inc.) forcing characters to be changed to Mary Sue’s all because we need inclusivity. I have no problems with inclusivity at all, but I have a major problem with poorly written characters in games that have absolutely nothing going for them besides being perfect.
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Aktywne