I love the outer worlds, it has such a unique style to it, very much fallout humor in space with a little bit of arcanum thrown in for good measure. IMHO outer worlds > Starfield, when I saw that neon was just one long hallway with a few neon lights and signs, I knew what I was getting into and just stopped playing. Starfield has no identity, it’s bland, space combat is annoying at best, and it’s just an unoptimized mess. Outer worlds is unique, and when I see it I know exactly what it is, I can’t say the same for Starfield.
Not necessarily, but there's some correlation. Games widely praised either are quality games or they resonate with their audience in some particular way, which can be itself an indication of value. Conversely a game that is widely panned might have some significant flaws or be lacking in some fundamental way.
Sure, there is always the odd Garfield Kart meme and some controversy skewing that. But because lists of reviews are easily available on the store page you can look at what is it that the other customers are praising or criticizing, and make your mind based on whether you see merits in these opinions.
Overall, even if you don't trust popular opinion, it's still a very useful tool. Frankly, often more useful than mainstream game reviews that tend to be overly lenient with triple-A publishers, and neglect indies.
An individual review does not matter too much (unless it has good text), but an overall score can give a hint. In example if a game gets a lot of flag from the users of recent reviews, than something is going on. It's always good to have a way of user reviews alongside the media outlets. You can even see if the game got for free (on paid games) and how long the guy played it at the time of writing the review. And it should incentivize developers to work on the game. Better than having nothing, like on Epic Games. User/Player opinions are not welcome there at all.
Obligatory: Roguelike (well, Roguelite but that starts getting into the berlin bullshit). Rogue is a class in tabletop RPGs and a historic game. Rouge is a bunny rabbit in sonic and a kind of makeup.
That aside, here are a few off the top of my head:
Distance: Mostly a “beat the clock” style racing game in the vein of trackmania, although the synchronous MP with collision is a great time at a party. But it also has a weirdly good singleplayer campaign with both a narrative and some solid mechanics and set pieces. Also a ridiculous steam workshop presence
Tales of Maj’Eyal probably doesn’t belong here as I think it has been ridiculously successful for a game made by a small team and consistently comes up in discussions by anyone who is aware of what “the berlin interpretation” is. But it feels like it is almost completely ignored in the overall cultural zeitgeist when roguelikes/lites comes up. Which is a shame since TOME is very much a roguelike (technically lite, but… meh) with some solid design concepts. The vast majority of runs feel like they were “worth it” and even the early leveling has enough variety and wrenches that it feels less like you lost an hour of your life when you wipe and more like you get to do the Sand Worm again. Some of the unlocks are complete bullshit (although, I want to say the special magic trees were just made “free” because everyone hated it?), but it is generally the kind of game where you can work toward something with every run.
UFO: Aftermath/Aftershock (fuck Afterlight). Back in the dark ages between Silent Storm (WOOO) and the 2012 nu-XCOM, there were a lot of eurojank games in the genre. And while I don’t think UFO Aftermath was “good”, I do think it was competent. But mostly? It is probably the best Stargate SG1 game ever made. Because the devs were trying to cash in on that Jagged Alliance craze and made the human weapons stage a lot longer. So you might find yourself in an endgame with a few G36s backing up your plasma rifles as you fend off the obligatory base invasion. Aftershock, and especially Afterlight, lost a lot of this charm (because they are years later timeline wise) but were still fun
Silent Storm. Sorry, Silent Mother Fucking Storm, if we want to be specific. Alternate history WW2 where you play as a special organization for the Allies or Axis that are investigating a third party who have the potential to turn the war itself and blah blah blah. Mostly it is probably one of the best balanced JA2 style AP-based strategy games out there (just… get a save editor because the leveling/training is broken) with an emphasis on line of sight, trajectories, and full destruction of terrain. The kind of game where you might spend six “turns” getting your scout into position so that you can have your sniper plug a person from behind a wall, your machine gunner unload on people sleeping in a barracks, and your grenadier to… make the guard tower not exist anymore. All without ever directly targeting an enemy because you are fully operating based on magic radio commands or whatever. Again, this probably doesn’t belong here since anyone who liked JA2 back in the day was talking about this but it more or less fell off the face of the earth in favor of nu-XCOM. And I feel like the genre would be pretty revolutionized if people remembered this existed.
Thanks for pointing out the rogue typo, I use swipe texting on my phone so I occasionally get stuff wrong and I tend not to proof read as much as I aught to. Either way it’s fixed now.
NOVA DRIFT is easily the best SHMUP if have played in my life and it´s on a 60% discount right now. From the tight controls to the artstyle and the gameplay, everything about this game is perfect and the dev is listening to the community.
I really wanted to enjoy doom 3, but even 20 years later I haven’t finished the main campaign. Too many cheap jumpscares and the switching to the flashlight just to see, really put me off in the end. However, it was a pretty game for the time.
Amnesia is great, I haven’t finished that one either but it’s the good kind of horror, much more creepy and slow-burning.
Mad Max for me. Story and stealth is better in DG, but the driving, vehicle combat and hand-to-hand combat is sooo much better in MM.
The car is basically a second character you upgrade throughout the game.
DG for me was too … Last of us-esque, without the memorable characters. Just an ok cover shooter with lots of stealth plus a vehicle, which was not very fun to drive or care about.
The combat is basically AC/Arkham/Shadow of Mordor, but holy shit do the animations make it satisfying. There's this gritty desperate quality to it I haven't seen anywhere else.
Days Gone is much better than Mad Max, which was still a good game. It’s a shame Days Gone launched with so many problems because the final product is so so good. Yeah the story is a just ok and the acting can be hammy and a little uneven. But the gameplay is great and I actually enjoyed the story.
Warframe. Always coming back to Warframe. It’s just too fun making my murdermachines look pretty, and there’s always something new to work toward. The game also runs incredibly well for how good it looks and how much is going on at once, I should NOT be able to run it at max settings 4k at 60fps with a mid-range gaming PC.
Plus it’s really fun getting those big red damage numbers on enemies with the right builds, and I still haven’t played another game with a movement system as fun as this one.
I’ve also been having fun with Armored Core VI, minus the out of place bosses. They definitely just put them in to be like “Look! We have the FromSoft™ bosses!” I ended up making a cheese build to effectively skip them. The actual mech combat parts are really fun though, and I love trying all the different kinds of loadouts! Runs well on a Steam Deck too which is always good.
It has extremely durable armor, capable of withstanding seven nuclear missiles. Its main weapons are the Gauss cannons mounted on either arm, its secondary weapon is an Annihilator-type laser mounted on its head and its third weapons are two Starburst rocket launchers mounted on its back that are used as effective anti-air weapons. A single Krogoth can destroy a sizable ARM base if it isn’t well defended.
TA is just a gem. I like how the base game is pretty moderate unit-wise. And then they just said “fuck it” and added whatever cool shot they (probably always) wanted.
And the soundtrack kicks ass, “March unto death” being my favorite.
I always felt like the arm got the short end in the expansion. they just never got anything to parallel the krogoth.
their static artillery being shorter range also always hurt them in my vs cpu games. though the vulcan was pretty awesome of you could somehow generate enough energy to sustain its RoF.
BotW and TotK are a very different type of game from OoT. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of environmental mechanics to learn as well as how to find and use different types of weapons due to weapon durability. It’s a much more open ended game than OoT where exploration is much more of a focus, whereas OoT is more story focused and has a more specific order to do things (which isn’t 100% set in stone, as the whole Spirit vs Shadow Temple debate proves) that’s still more straightforward than the newer games. I like both types of games, especially for both OoT and BotW/TotK being gaming masterpieces for their time, and the three of them are my top 3 Zelda games for sure. But if you don’t like one or more of them that’s perfectly fine. Not every game will appeal to everyone.
Fun fact, Spirit and Shadow aren’t the only temples in that game you can do out of order. You can do the Fire Temple first, as there is only one chest that requires arrows and it doesn’t have anything crazy important in it. Water Temple can also be cleared without arrows, but you do have to get a bit more creative with some non-intuitive jumps and either saving and resetting or using a warp song to go back to the dungeon entrance without raising the water level in order to do that. Spirit Temple does require arrows but nothing else from the other dungeons is required so you could do it as early as your second dungeon. Even then I think you can abuse invincibility frames to skip an eye switch and I can’t remember anything else that required arrows in there. Shadow Temple is the most restrictive, but only because you have to clear Forest, Fire, and Water in order to gain access to it. Once you’re actually in the dungeon you’ll find that arrows are the only item from the other dungeons you actually have to use to beat it.
Best, funniest local multiplayer game I've found. Also playable online. Up to 4 players. Goofy physics-based fighting game in which you control a jellyish humanoid and control arms individually to fight. It creates some really hilarious moments as you're both dangling off a billboard, holding onto each other in a big cluster, etc... The trailer.
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