First-person shooters, the way they were made in the 6th and 7th gens. A campaign, probably co-op, probably with split-screen or LAN, with some versus multiplayer that repurposed some slightly-remixed locations from the campaign that you can play with approximately 4-8 players. That's all you need. Sometimes we still get some great FPS campaigns, like Half-Life: Alyx, but I haven't really gotten the kind of co-op or versus multiplayer I've been looking for for over a decade. Not everything needs to be a live service. It can be a flash in the pan multiplayer that's so good that you break it out when you have a few friends over or in a Discord call. Not every multiplayer FPS needs to be an e-sport with an online population of tens of thousands of players to matchmake with in ranked.
I also don't really get racing games for me anymore. Star Wars: Episode One Racer, Burnout Revenge, and F-Zero GX truly spoke to me, and there were a few others that were close, but for the most part, if your racing game isn't basically Mario Kart or full of real licensed cars in real places, it doesn't get made. And the ones that aren't Mario Kart don't usually get split-screen multiplayer either, which is a must-have for me. I did get Trail Out in the recent past, which is very good, and there's that game Aero GPX on the horizon to potentially give me my F-Zero fix, but the actual racing games I'm looking for are so few and far between.
Fortunately, this list used to be much longer, and all the other holdouts, like Advance Wars-esque tactics games, Resident Evil 1-esque survival horror games, Commandos-esque stealth tactics games, and a few others have all gotten their itches scratched.
But that was when shooters were getting worse the fastest. It's when we started getting chest-high walls everywhere, regenerating health, auto aim, and a general slow down of the action.
I mean, a lot of my favorites were slower than Quake for sure. Faster isn't automatically better. Regenerating health was preferable to health packs, but we also had the likes of Doom 2016 to show that it didn't have to just be one or the other. Games like Halo 2 and 3, Call of Duty 2, 4, and Modern Warfare 2 (the first time), the Timesplitters games, the 007 games of that era (Agent Under Fire with moon gravity and Q Claw is some of the most fun you'll have with three friends on the same couch), Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Crysis, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2; and getting into third person shooters that were of a similar design philosophy, Metal Arms, Gears of War 1-3, and the much better Star Wars Battlefronts than the ones EA put out with basically the same titles.
As for the antigrav racers you mentioned, have you checked out BallisticNG? It leans more towards Wipeout than F-Zero, but even as a huge GX fan (and looking forward to Aero GPX myself) I’ve really enjoyed it. I believe it does have splitscreen as well, though I haven’t tried it personally.
It’s got a variety of speed settings that increase in difficulty, and it absolutely gets fast enough for anyone lol. I like it a lot more than the actual wipeout games I’ve tried even though its mechanics are more styled after that.
Seems weird to me that a platform starved for content and engagement would limit one of its largest forms of content to only be allowed on 1 day per week. 🤷♂️
Memes tend to not be a great discussion starter. If there is an overwhelming amount of memes, interactions and discussions can easily be buried and socially discouraged as a result.
That’s fair. I spent probably 15 years on that other site lurking some really fantastic conversations in the comments, but it’s hard to find any posts here with more than a few comments. I’d much prefer active comment sections, but I’d settle for memes. I get where you’re coming from, hopefully this will help the conversations.
I blocked the user who flooded the community with shitposting, I prefer no content rather than shitty, low quality content
I left plenty of subreddits because that kind of content was rampant and it was hard to find actual quality content, because those posts were buried in shitty memes
The usage of “content” and “engagement” in this post is genuinely depressing. People clearly want to have conversations and discussions, not feed an algorithm machine.
So the gimmick is like, there’s a lot of deceptive mobile ads that show simple but satisfying puzzle games, like unjamming a traffic jam or pulling pins the right order to let a guy free, butthen when you click on it, it’s some totally unrelated trashfire of a game. The irony is that a lot of people would actually like to play the games shown in the ads, but they’re entirely made up to trick you.
Until now; this game is a collection of the made-up games that appear in cell phone ads.
Open up retroarch and apply the following as settings for a game:
adjustment filter to mirror the screen, I think it’s in an image adjustment folder but can’t check which one at the moment
swap left and right in the controls (in-game remap, not the menu controls)
Mirror mode! On any game! As long as you don’t care about text, it’s a fun way to add replay value. Great for platformers like Donkey Kong Country 2, Mario, etc.
If you really want a mindfuck, play a top down game like Zelda Link to the Past with the above but ALSO top down inverted too. I do that with the ALTTP randomizer sometimes.
Edit: hang on, I got Yoshi’s Story at launch and I 100% remember the ultimate aim of the game is to actually get all the melons. It’s not an alternative mode really, it’s the actual goal for 100%. At least, it’s how I played it in 1998.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. Getting ONLY the green melons on each stage has always been the goal to get 100%. I remember vividly filling up the records screen and even posting a results photo to N64 Magazine.
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. Getting ONLY the green melons on each stage has always been the goal to get 100%. I remember vividly filling up the records screen and even sending a results photo in the post to N64 Magazine back in 1998.
I’ll try and dig up the issue that confirms the goal is to get the green melons. It’s hard mode yes, but it’s not exactly a hidden goal. Yoshi’s Story is very intentionally vague on providing any instructions or written goals to the player, but the instruction manual and guides do.
Edit: here we go. Instruction manual scan, page 18. Specifically tells you to collect all melons for the best score. It was always there and the game guides of the day made it very, very clear. <a href="">https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_N64/Manual/formated/Yoshi-s_Story_-1998-_Nintendo.pdf</a>
Edit edit: this is a sore point for me as there are a lot of traumatic memories being bought back now of getting to 29 melons then accidentally eating a banana and having to start over! Was a fucking pain in the arse and I remember spending hours and hours on it.
I play a lot of vr, although some of the games may feel like “proof of concept” as in they are very limited, unlike Half life Alyx, Boneworks or Walking dead saints and sinners that look a lot more like proper fully fledged works. This post could be a little lengthy, some are full pc games translated really well into vr and some are original.
My favorite game is beat saber, it is a simple rithym game were you slash blocks with lightsabers, thing is, once you download mods and start engaging withe leaderboards, the game changes completely. The skill ceiling is insane and since the gae is physical you feel awesome moving around. (Just don’t play around someone it may be extremely cringe)
Then any of the racing simulators are a great fit, project cars 2, assetto corsa with mods (the original) is really good to this day, dirt rally 2 is insane, you actually feel a sense of speed and at least for dirt rally I feel I drive better (maybe a bit slower lol).
Phasmophobia, it’s kind of a puzzle game where you try to discover which kind of ghost is haunting a place, try to get some friends to play even if they don’t have a vr since most people play on desktop, it’s up to 4 people coop and really fun, you are not a ghost hunter, more like a ghost detective.
If you are into space exploration, elite dangerous is probably the most beautiful. No man sky is a ñot more game like but much more fun IMO.
Blade and sorcery, this is a physics based sword game with a huge variety and mods. The game is still in early access (At least from ehat I remember), but it has progressed a lot and is in active development, despite that it could perfectly be considered a finished product.
Tetris Effect, it’s the same game but VR makes the environments even more beautiful (if you smoke weed seriously try this out, sorry to be that guy but it completely changes this experience, if not the game is still great)
Into the radious, this is probably the most inmersive survival vr game out there, it’s stalker but vr. Some of the things that make it great is for example that you have a compass and map and you have to track your position phisically, you have a backpack but there are no slots, you just put things there and they remain wherever you left them and when you need them in a hurry you will have such a mess over there it will be really difficult to take what you need. Combat is intense and exploration is suspenseful.
Lastly, please don’t underestimate vr chat, it is that popular for a reason although it’s not really a “game”.
There are a few more games but they are either proof of concept, too early on early access or just plain poets of good pc games but that aren’t especial on vr.
This might feel like a “demo game” to some people, also it’s from 2016~ which is an era that didn’t produce that many diverse and interesting vr titles, but this one feels really good.
It’s an arcade shooter where robots have gone crazy and you have to kill them, the action and combat is fast, you can grab and dismantle robots in melee. One thing though is that like many of the games of that era, this game is teleportation movement based (like half life alyx when you play on the default mode) which is a bit annoying, at least for me.
I played the hell out of Subnautica a few years ago. I loved it, and it’s one of the few recent games I played up until the end, even though I spent 90% of my time just exploring and not worrying too much about the main quest.
That said, back then the VR experience for the game was considered pretty bad - like a pasted-on layer that was largely ignored by the devs. If that has changed, I might think about getting a headset.
I cannot wait to one day be able to play Subnautica in VR. Wanting it makes me feel psychotic though because that games scares the shit bejeezus right off my socks.
This is such a hard question to answer without more information. There are a literal ton of mechanically good games with minimal/no story across a massive variety of genres. What are you into? Surely your interests run deeper than “don’t make me read, don’t show me a movie”.
I’d start to look into rogue-lites; games that kill you rapidly are less inclined to lore-dump before they get to it, instead either hiding the story around the game world, or giving you snippets between runs. Dead Cells, Bullets Per Minute, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Rogue Legacy, Into the Breach, Enter the Gungeon. That should cover a wide birth of genres, anyway.
Be more specific and we can give you far better recommendations.
Rogue-lites are probably a good suggestion, considering I played and enjoyed Bullets Per Minute and Rogue Legacy. Also Dead Cells is probably one of my favourite. If there’s at least some form of progression then I think I’ll like it so I’ll look into the others you mentioned. Thanks.
If you liked Bullets Per Minute, pick up Metal: Hellsinger. Not a roguelite, but a very well-structured single-player story-minimal (~10-15 second voiced introductions to each level, occasionally a 1-2 minute, voiced cutscene between stages) game. It’s more like Doom - set arenas, with set encounters across varying difficulties - with a more refined, BPM-style “shoot on the beat” system. And it sports an insanely good original soundtrack with guest vocalists from across the spectrum of metal.
The gameplay loop uses getting to interact with the characters and to advance the various subplots as part of your reward/consolation at the end of each run. I’d call that story-heavy.
I did this for the Witness - it really helped to think out some of the puzzles if scribbled possible solutions down. Oh and Obra Dinn to an extent - mostly things like ‘I saw this guy hanging around in this memory - could he be X’?
Yeah, I did this for the witness sort of. If I got stuck on a puzzle and was finishing up a session, I’d take a photo and then draw over the top of it as I went about my day, so I’d come back to the game with a solution.
I want a Persona game but with the characters in college instead of highschool.
Maybe Shin Megami Tensei has older characters? But the problem is the vibe is so different. A lot of anime/manga with older characters go for a completely different tone. The friendship and family theme heart of the Persona games, and the hopefulness, is essential to me. I just want some of that hope for but targeted at adults for once.
Imo “adult” aimed media often has a real problem with conflating maturity with misery and sex. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way because it’s gotta be part of why so many adults still read YA books and play games with precocious teenage protagonists.
Ive seen so many posts by people who trashed the game after not even getting to the start of the time loop, calling it a bad walking sim with nothing to do.
Modern games have programmed people to be incurious and intellectually lazy
I agree that a lot of modern games hold the hand too much, but I found Outer Wilds to be the opposite for me, too obtuse and open to get a grip on the gameplay loop. If you dig that, more power to you, for me it was too much.
I tried outer wilds on gamepass. I went in blind knowing absolutely nothing. At first I thought the graphics made it look like a generic unity indie game. I didn’t like how the jumping worked. I was so close to closing the game but I figured “I haven’t even gotten past the tutorial. I should at least give it a try.”
Oh man. The second you complete the tutorial and you are set free to play I had the best “oh holy shit” moment I’ve had in years. It’s still not everyone’s cup of tea but I absolutely loved it. I hope they make a second.
I gave it the honest try myself and just didn’t have fun. I went to a couple different planets, died in some weird gravity reversing situation a couple times, died to the loop a few times, etc. It was neat but wasn’t for me. I can see how people would get really into it though.
Same. I tried once, bounced off because I just hated how the ship flew. Gave it another honest shot recently, found a couple of the explorers but really wasn’t enjoying it. Ended up watching the rest in a Let’s Play. Honestly not a bad way to experience it if the gameplay is just not vibing with you.
It’s surprising because “ancient progenitor civilization” is one of my favourite tropes in media, but this one really just did not do it for me.
You have one “frame” where you just do everything: read the player input, do whatever actions, calculate collisions and physics and whatever, and draw everything when all those calculations are done.
Then you move on to the next frame and do everything again. Everything lines up all the time and always happen in the same order. Simple, quick, and consistent.
To decouple calculations and framerate, you don’t know when the game will try to draw something. It might be in the middle of when you’re calculating collisions, or moving the units, or calculating physics. Or you might end up doing multiple calculations while the GPU is slow and can’t draw anything.
So you have to add an extra layer in between, probably saved to some memory somewhere. Now every time the GPU draws something, it has to access that memory. Every time you calculate something, you also access that memory. Let’s hope they DON’T try to read and write on the same spot at the same time, that could cause bugs. And so much memory access, you’ve basically doubled your memory bandwidth requirements.
It’s complicated, more resource intensive, and introduces potential bugs.
And not just easier, but cheaper. On lower end platforms it’s expensive to do floating point calculations all over the place because you don’t know how long it’s been since the last frame. If you can assume the frame rate, you can get a lot of performance back too.
Wait until they are 12 (-ish) and they decide you are uncool
Otherwise, you’re doing what I ended up doing. There was a long span that, I just… never played games because I was too busy. I regret that a bit because it’s a thing that makes me happy and even if I’m “Dad”, I’m still a person that deserves some time for “me”.
This more or less. My wife games too. We went through periods where we probably gamed too much and had to correct that behavior (house was becoming a mess and kids ignored school too much)
For us it put a decent amount of pressure on our marriage for a while until we admitted that gaming needed to take a backseat to life in general. Its hard. I grew up with gaming and both my wife and I were 8+ hours a day of MMO before kids. But life demanded we become adults for a while and be responsible.
My kids are finally on the older side where their demands on my time is lower. I still don’t game much before dinner and most house chores are done. I try to game with them a bit after dinner and then I get about 1.5 to 2 hours to play a few League of Legends games (yes, I know i hate myself) if I don’t want to ruin my sleep.
Battlebit has replaced Mordhau (for now) as my brainless relaxation game. The FPS mechanics are surprisingly solid and it’s just good, chaotic fun. I do think the netcode feels a little last-gen, but you’re not playing this game to be a CS:GO master.
It looks pretty fun! I’ll look more into it but I l’ll probably buy it! My main problem is that I read somewhere that they are planning to use faceit and I use linux and as far as I now faceit doesn’t work on linux.
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