I think that Tetris is probably the oldest game that I’ll play some implementation of occasionally. I don’t know if I’d call it my favorite, but it’s aged very gracefully over the decades.
Shit, even Star Trek: Online does what Starfield promised better, and it’s basically just another dime a dozen MMOs with a high profile licensed IP behind it.
For the most part, it’s either going to be missing a few things you’re looking for, or will offer everything but not actually be good/finished (such as with Star Citizen or anything ever made by Derek Smart, and why none of those are in the above list).
I’ve had my eyes on the X series for a long time. But they’re “fly around in your ship and do stuff” games and not “fly around and walk around” games, right? I’ve also heard there’s no learning curve, more of a learning wall.
You’re right, Star Trek Online is close to my ideal game. If only it weren’t a janky MMO…
I looked at Derek Smart’s games. I don’t think I’m cut out for this. But they kinda reminded of a GDC talk by Jeff Vogel where he talks about how he makes a living by making these niche isometric RPGs.
What about it being a janky MMO takes it away from being your ideal game though?
Quite a bit, I think. It being an MMO has some practical consequences, namely the fact that I can’t play it offline and the monetization of the game. It also influences the game mechanics: For example, STO’s combat uses tabbed targeting¹. I like tabbed targeting² but I don’t think it’s the peak of combat systems; a different combat system could/would make the game more engaging and enjoyable.
I can look at the individual parts of the game. There STO shines. But when I look at STO as a one compact package, it doesn’t.
¹ It also has a shooter mode but I remember it being janky as hell.
² I’d actually love to see a sort of “offline MMO” which would use tabbed targeting.
I just use Djipi’s 3DS Experience + Skilar’s Art Plus Link. V4 just came out and it covers seemingly everything. It also seems more authentic and fun to make a proper desktop icon to launch the game if you haven’t tried that.
It’s loosely in the same genre but you may like Rebel Galaxy. It takes a slightly different approach to space combat making it closer to naval warfare. Very enjoyable soundtrack.
Love this game! Just reinstalled yesterday after years to start a replay of it. I just hope if they make a third they go back to this style (more capital/naval ship feeling) and not the smaller fighter style the second one adopted.
Wreckfest has been big for the last week or so. The only reason why I picked it up again in the first place (after having only played about an hour of it before, mostly on the Steam Deck) was that I got a new controller (from 8bitdo), more or less replacing my worn out Xbone controller, and the idea was that I wanted to test it properly with a proper racing game - and proper racing it is! Hard and punishing, but not really unfair. I’ve been a fan of Finish developer Bugbear ever since the first Flatout (which this is a clear spiritual successor to), so it’s not exactly surprising that it finally clicked with me.
Driving physics in particular are sublime. Even with just a controller, you can feel the mass of the vehicle shifting around, you notice tires losing grip as springs are decompressed on top of a hill. Add to that the second best crash physics after BeamNG and delightfully aggressive AI drivers and the end result is pure carnage. There is some frustration (most races are decided in the first three corners and a single mistake can eliminate any chance of victory at the second highest and highest difficulty), later races are getting too long (since it’s not particularly interesting to lead for five laps after having basically won the race in the first lap) and the gameplay surrounding the races themselves is bare-bones to say the least, with a very basic campaign, upgrade and leveling system and some live service (ultra)lite challenges sprinkled on top, but it does the job.
There are destruction derbies (fun, but laughably easy, all of them) and wacky events like racing a tiny three wheeler against a field of school buses, but the majority of those are really more fun in theory than actually playing them, since most of these unusual vehicles are just slow, fragile and control purely. Worst example so far: RV racing. Nothing fun or interesting about that and the Top Gear segment they copied this from wasn’t exactly a high point in the series either. Normal racing is downright exhilarating though at the best of times, when you just edge out a victory on a slippery, brilliantly designed dirt track, worn out tires barely holding on, opponents trying to spin you out in every corner. I hope there’s more of that in the upcoming sequel. I have not tried the multiplayer yet, but I might in the future. Graphics are excellent - save for the complete lack of driver animations - and there’s a banging soundtrack that would be perfect if it had less screamo, but that’s just my taste. The soundtrack doesn’t quite reach the same heights as Flatout 1 and 2’s, but it’s close.
This really applies to the whole game. It’s not just nostalgia, since I replayed both relatively recently. Wreckfest has better driving physics than its predecessors (or really most other racing games), but that’s about it. The wackiness is more grounded, with plausible or almost plausible and no strictly unrealistic events that involve the driver being hurled into targets anymore, but this also means that, since there is really no “innovation” outside of ultra-basic leveling and daily events compared to the predecessors that it feels like they didn’t really have any ideas and were just doing it by the numbers. Bugbear are masters at the craft of designing tracks, vehicles and the physics that tie it all together, but outside of the immediate racing action, there really is nothing of note there. A campaign system that was below average 21 years ago is now hopelessly outdated. I’m not saying that they should try and make a dirty, ratty version of Forza Horizon with more of those lovely banged up real cars that handle so brilliantly, but… - okay, they totally should, that would be amazing! Anyway, 10/10 racing, 6/10 other events, 3/10 surrounding stuff for a weighed average of 7.99999/10. Don’t check if my math is correct.
Okay, and I also played a few more hours of Balatro (more hours than Wreckfest, I mean), because, well, I was forced to. Yup. I didn’t do it willingly, I swear! Is there a “Balatro players anonymous”? Asking for a friend.
The controller I mentioned (8BitDo Ultimate 2C Wired) is great, by the way. It’s a simple wired-only thing (there’s also a Bluetooth variant) that closely mimics the Xbone controller, except for two additional small shoulder buttons that I haven’t found any use for yet, as well as a turbo and remap feature that allegedly works without any software (don’t care about either, so I haven’t tried them). PC and Android only, just FYI. It has the best sticks and triggers I’ve ever used (both Hall effect, so I hope they’ll last) and the buttons and d-pad are also outstanding, despite this thing costing less than half as much as a first party controller. It feels exactly as solid as an original controller, even down to the plastic making the same noises at precisely the same level of grip strength when some hick from outta town spins ya out in the last corner of tha race for some goddarn reason, which is one hell of an achievement for the price. I’ve already had a Super Famicon style Bluetooth controller from the same company for a few years, so I knew their stuff was high quality. The only aspect about it that might put some people off is that for some reason, it’s only available in bright, almost garish pastel colors, but I quickly got over that. There is a branded Black Myth Wukong version with more muted colors, but it didn’t mention having vibration on any of the spec sheets on any site, so I avoided that one.
Everspace 2 (first one was a rogue like, you don’t need to play it to enjoy the sequel)
Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (also a sequel, the first one doesn’t have a Y axys so you may not like it)
Chorus
All three are a lot of fun, neither are AAA games so they lack a bit of polish but aren’t vanilla as hell either. I enjoyed each one better than Starfield but neither as much as ME 1-3.
Cowboys in space is not my favourite trope, but I’ve heard good things about the first Rebel Galaxy. How was the switch from 2D combat to 3D combat in the sequel? (And is the story any good?)
The Outer Worlds is pretty much what Starfield could and should have been and was made by Obsidian, the developers behind a ton of other great games such as (in chronological order, with the best of all games ever bolded)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Neverwinter Nights 2
Fallout New Vegas
Pillars of Eternity
Tyranny
Pillars of Eternity 2
There’s even a sequel to it coming out some time this year so you don’t run as much of a risk of running out of game any time soon!
Hard disagree. They’re both equally boring as shit, but Starfield at least had decent ship flying/building mechanics. What did outer worlds have? Nothing.
It did? Outer Worlds was just an over-exaggerated parody of capitalism, Starfield at least had some somewhat-believable world building in terms of how the tech progressed, how/why did humans start to live among the stars, conflict between different religions or factions, the xenomorph threat...
Like I'm not saying any of these were done well, but it did have decent worldbuilding and some neat ideas, it was just the execution that sucked. OW might have some better parts than SF, like companion writing (although it was pretty cliched and cheesy there too) so I'm really surprised you use world building as your example lol
im just salty about starfields world building shouldve chosen different example
OWs world building was fine. nothing special, just fine. there were stupid things but they were either a joke or there to back up a point (“we moved this dangerous animal to this planet to make a deodorant and now its killing us” 👈 this shit is supposed to be funny and anti corporation. does it work? dunno, its stupid, might be funny to someone, its fine, little cringe )
starfields world building just grinds my gears. when there are stupid things, they are there because someone at bethesda thinks its coool as heck or didnt think it through. fucking space cowbois. fucking colony war. why add mechs into your world and ban them? why artificially limit the number of star systems the nations can control?
Totally agree the dlc really made it one if those “it gets good after x hours” sorta things; All different vibes for the dlcs too. The raider one was lonely but it felt like it was supposed to be.
Thank you! Felt like I was I playing a different game than everyone else.
Everyone mocked Starfield’s Neon for being Discount Cyberpunk. But at least they played it as straight as they could. Like, I could believe people live there and had a life.
It felt like Outer Worlds kept trying to make jokes about how cruel capitalism is versus tell a real story. Like, “Oh boy time to go increase shareholder value!” Or “I love Space nuts. I have to say that or I die.” Like wtf, where’s the subtlety?
It’s not Borderlands 3 bad, no where near it. But it’s pretty bad.
In this genre of “big space games”, The Outer Worlds stands near to Mass effect, because it follows “the Bioware formula” pretty closely: The player and a group of followers visit several semi-open worlds, where they look for a MacGuffin related to the main story while solving local problems. (I’ll write a short essay about the Bioware formula someday…)
The Outer Worlds was a good game (not great) and I look forward to the sequel. I’ve played most Obsidian games and I wish they wrote more sci-fi.
Starfield was much better than Outer Worlds IMO. I enjoyed my time with Starfield, it’s not perfect of course. I’ve tried to get through Outer Worlds three times but it’s just not fun, I also strongly dislike New Vegas. Just ok writing doesn’t make up for shitty gameplay.
Perhaps Starsector? It’s a top-down sandbox rpg. I personally find the lore and world-building interesting. Has great mechanics, and you can really get into the nitty-gritty when it comes to ship and fleet builds, you can basically do anything you want, whether you want to do solo stuff or form an empire. It also has a fantastic modding community.
Came here to suggest it and here it is, the newest comment! The modding scene is insane, too, for such a relatively small and unknown game.
I love Starsector. I just wish it was written in something more performant than fuckin’ Java. But, if it were, there probably wouldn’t be the mods for it there are today.
One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing a quest line of my own. Honest.
Yeah, Starsector is probably my favourite lesser known game. There’s a mod/tool called “Mikohime Java 24” that’s supposed to help a lot with the performance, but I haven’t had a chance to test it myself. Would be great to see another quest line, if I had the skills I’d love to make a mod myself lol.
Against the Storm is a Rogue-lite City Builder, which sounds like 2 things that shouldn’t go together but works surprisingly well. It has a generous demo on Steam that lets you freely play up to level 6 or something in the standard biome, so give it a try
Shape-Hero Factory is a Rogue-lite Factory Builder. Another weird combination that is surprisingly effective. It’s in Early Access so there’s a lot of features that are still planned, but you can do full runs and go up to I think Ascension 6. It had a demo during nextfest, not sure if the demo is still there.
Okay but really I agree that Starfield is a mess. The thing is, nobody else has really delivered on the whole package yet. Ground and space combat, trading, and a narrative.
Mass effect and Freelancer gave two different sides of the coin and I think they’re the next closest.
+1 for that. One of the best space sims, despite its age, and my first contact with actual zero-g dogfighting (boost, turn off engine, rotate ship to try and hit the enemy)
I can’t believe (actually I can) that Microsoft didn’t base starfield’s space mechanics (and overall everything else) from Freelancer. The template to improve upon was right there.
Considering all the problems Bethesda had with simply making space work at all, I’m not surprised they didn’t even try to look into better games to copy from
Lots, but only a few that are worth a damn. I’ve come to call them “Han Solo Simulators”.
Its a genre that seems to attract a lot of half baked game designers. Make a big universe sandbox where you fly a spaceship to space stations and planets and moons and trade stuff and do pirate shit or anti-pirate shit. Lots of people have this idea, only a few make anything good out of it. Doesn’t seem like it can go wrong, and yet . . .
Battlecruiser 3000 AD is a particularly infamous case of 90s Internet lore. By all accounts, it did eventually patch the game up enough to be decent, but it took years to get there. At release, the game’s installer would crash for most people. However good it might have ended up, the Internet drama was better than the game ever could be. Look up “Derek Smart” if you’re interested.
The X series is one I want to like, but it’s been really buggy for me. Like rage quit when it destroys my progress kind of buggy. I haven’t played X4, though.
No Man’s Sky was an infamous mess at launch. Unlike Battlecruiser 3000 AD, it did eventually change its reputation, but it was a long, hard road. I played it a few years ago and found it uninteresting, but basically playable.
And then there’s Star Citizen. I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyway, the Elite series is probably the most successful for single player or smaller multiplayer, and Eve: Online for massively multiplayer.
For those who fondly remember FTL and think they got everything out of it; I highly, HIGHLY, recommend getting the Multiverse mod. It’s essentially FTL 2 and adds an absolutely insane amount of content. Seriously, it’s like 10x bigger than the base game. Dozens of new ships and equipment, several new races, hundreds of new events, new paths, new victory conditions. It is amazing and has really breathed new life into such an awesome game.
Definitely do! If anything, I’m underselling just how much content it adds. It’s even set a few decades after the base game so it really is like a full sequel.
I’m thrilled that Into the Breach is available on Android, massively disappointed that I cannot purchase it. But at least that means patched APKs exist…
They annoyingly have some proprietary licensing. Cozy Grove 2 was Netflix only. I only have it because my spouse’s comfort show is on Netflix, otherwise it’s going to be gone
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