Best single game is probably Portal. The pacing, storytelling, innovation, sound, all are top notch even 20+ years later. Graphics aren’t phenomenal, but don’t need to be. The challenges and easter eggs made it a blast to 100%.
I felt that Portal 2’s difficulty curve was a little off but was perfect other than that. It was too easy for most of the game and then ramped up to what I consider to be a good difficulty level later on.
Difficulty balance is especially hard for puzzle games, I guess. You can get a good estimate with lots of testing (ha!) with many participants, but even then you or me personally can be outliers.
I’m on the fence about which is better. Portal 2 is an improvement, but also has its flaws.
Part of the reason I would argue Portal 1 was better is because it was so unexpected. I went in expecting “interesting puzzle game” which it is, but I did not expect to also get “excellent humor with strange horror vibes and incredibly good personality.”
If someone didn’t know what a Glados was I think the first one is better. I also recognize that many people who have never played Portal are well aware of Glados.
I dunno. Frankly they’re both absolutely pantheon, legendary games that deliver a near-perfect gaming experience, but I feel like Portal 1 delivered a kind of tighter package where Portal 2 meanders just a little bit, and while Wheatley is still brilliant I’m not sure I he hit the same way or struck the same tone as GlaDOS. But we’re talking about like nanometers of difference in quality here either way as both games are goddamn stellar.
I play almost every genre (minimal interest in sports games, admittedly), and my favorite changes all the time. But in general, here are some of my all-time top games:
Final Fantasy Tactics
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (people who think BL2 is better than TPS are wrong)
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (people who think BL2 is better than TPS are wrong)
Are you Australian by chance? I have a lot of complaints about TPS, but then after watching some taskmaster Australia I had a theory; I wonder if there is some fundamental difference in preferred pacing that causes those to fall flat for other audiences? In dialog, humor, events, etc.
I know people like to look down on it here but it’s trully an amazing theme park metaverse experience.
I don’t have much time for it these days but just playing couple of hours every week is such a joyful experience. There’s just so much to do in the game, great writing, legendary characters, great people playing it. True metaverse experience everyone has been chasing lately.
Transport Tycoon was fantastic and thanks to OpenTTD I still play it from time to time.
Gothic 2 is by far the best Action RPG of all time. Witcher 3 comes close, but still fails to surpass it in so many places.
Banished always gets me with it’s atmosphere. It feels cozy but at the same time you are close to complete annihilation. Oxygen not included hits the same mark, but also has a distinctive art style and humor to it which I love.
Stanley Parable (and it’s Deluxe edition) never fails to make me laugh. But it can get tedious sometimes…
I am not sure if this qualifies for this community or not, but I think ttrpg.network would be happy to have you if you have not posted on that instance yet.
I am still a Lemmy noob and didn’t grasp all the instance/community points yet. This community is kinda about physical games as well so I gave it a shot. But thanks for pointing out that instance, seems to be a lot of related stuff and would be more appropriate for sure!
Six of these so far, and considering how happy they make me, I don’t expect I’ll slow down any time soon! Just glad people find these as interesting to read as I do writing them!
This might be a dumb idea, but I may buy this game just to make up for all the baseless hate it’s been hit by. Maybe just to avoid shareholder claims of “See, people prefer historical accuracy. Hence black people are banned in all future games.”
I haven’t really even tracked much of Ubisoft games for a while, and I recognize usually they’re pretty mindless open world fun - personally I’m often fine with that.
The black samurai dude is already prevalent in Japanese pop culture. The folks going around saying that’s the problem are just confused and dumb. There’s no real issue there The issue lies in how things are portrayed that make the game look not distinctly Japanese, but more western “Asia wonderland”. I lived in Japan for over 10 years, I have Japanese family, so I pick up on some of this. It definitely gives the vibe of a Canadian studio did as much “Japan” ™ as they possibly could without having to actually go there or consult genuine professionals on cultural nuance or visual identity.
I say this as someone who has only seen promotional materials and not the game itself, though. So the game itself could prove me wrong. And I don’t care if you enjoy the game or not, I’m just sharing why it kind of turns me off.
I have to say for me, I know this won’t be everybody, my favorites are going to be the ones that change the way I felt about gaming, not necessarily ones that I would want to play again.
In fact, I have found that going back to some of the seminal games, or the ones that were most impactful to me, hurt my feelings because they were from a time… Where let’s be real, technical limitations made a lot of very basic quality of life things nearly unavailable.
I think the 1st that changed the way I felt about gaming was Ultima 4 - they had flushed out the systems of the earlier three, which were pretty primitive, and made morality, all kinds of wonderful internal game systems, relationships, secrets, optional paths, total exploration. 5 and 6 were games that I explored and played molecularly because they were just a joy for me as well.
Another one I talk about a lot is a game called Squares Deluxe which the developer thankfully changed as freeware a few years ago. So anybody with DOSBox can download it and play it legally, and in my view, it’s the best shape packing game ever made - there are so many amazing mechanics, and if you play Extreme mode and get a great run going, it can be the most thrilling experience!
How can I forget the very first game I played in arcades which was Atari Warlords at Fiesta Foods! I was bedazzled by the cabinet and I had to have a teenager explain to me what it was! I went flying home and explained what I saw to my mother and she was incredulous, and she took me back to play!
Runestone Keeper. I know that really if you distill it down, you’re kind of playing a probability-based card / slot machine game. But play your choice is broad, and I love the fact that the entire playfield changes with every move potentially. Yes you can get screwed over, yes you can have amazing runs, but it’s that unpredictability that keeps me salivating. I can’t actually recommend anybody play this outside of steam version because the app one keeps changing - I’ve bought it a few times and I keep losing my license/progress when they change publisher agreements, to hell with that noise!
bin.pol.social
Aktywne