here we go: this is definitely my favorite game i’ve ever played. Maybe it just stands out as the first metroidvania that I really sunk my teeth into, but I think Hollow Knight is truly something special and, judging by the hype for Silksong, I know a lot of folks agree with me. The gorgeous hand-drawn art and hauntingly-beautiful soundtrack create a striking first impression. The initially-depressive atmosphere shifts to new moods throughout the game. The nuanced combat is reminiscent of Dark Souls, maybe the best game to make that translation to 2D. The “badge” system is a clever and streamlined upgrade system that lets the player shift playstyles almost on-the-fly.
And my favorite part: THE MAP (by which i mean both the game world and the map system)!!! Omg I know a Metroidvania is made or ruined by its map, and so all well-regarded Metroidvanias have a pretty good map. Simply put, Hollow Knight is just a cut above all of them. Like all Metroidvanias, the map does the cool thing where paths are locked off to you until you get new abilities that act as “keys” to open up new areas. Hollow Knight differs in that the game starts off linear, and then two abilities you get within the first few hours act as the keys to open up almost the entire game world. So as soon as you get your legs under you and you are getting the hang of the combat, you can turn around and go almost anywhere you want as long as you are down for the challenge. Accordingly, almost every player of this game has a pretty different experience, which is really unique for non-roguelike.
Regarding the map system itself: unlike most Metroidvanias, the map does not automatically fill in as you go. Instead, you don’t get any map for a new area until you find the traveling mapmaker NPC. Once you find him, you can buy his rough, incomplete map of the area, which is nonetheless invaluable. Once you buy the pen upgrade from the shop in town, you can fill out the unfinished map with areas that you have explored. However, the map only updates when you rest at benches (save points), so you still have to keep a mental map while you are exploring. And the pen does not work in an area until you find the mapmaker NPC (little ghost needs a piece of paper to draw on). The devs play with this - in some areas the NPC is pretty close to the entrance, but in others he is pretty deep into the area, so again you have to keep up a mental map for longer. And finally, the map does not show where you the player are on it unless you equip a specific one-slot badge (some badges take up more slots). Some players are frustrated by this, but it helps if you view that slot as like a bonus slot. Once you memorize an area, you can take that badge off to get a little extra power for a boss fight. In “exploration” mode, having that badge equipped makes you feel just a little less powerful, which adds to the tension.
Which segues into my final point: this game makes you feel like an adventurer exploring a forgotten kingdom, in a way that I have never felt in any other game, not even Dark Souls. The extremely open-ended design and MASSIVE game world mean that you the player will be constantly discovering new areas, even dozens of hours into the game. It just keeps surprising you over and over. This is why I like the map system described above. Many are turned off by the friction that the devs added to the map - they could have just given you an auto-updating map like every other Metroidvania. But the friction adds to the feeling that you are an explorer in a hostile land, and the tension you feel when you are exploring a new area without a map is unparalled. In Dark Souls, there are parts where you can choose where to go, but the game overall is pretty linear, so it rarely feels like you the player are driving the exploration. That sense of exploration, and the layers-upon-layers of mystery within the story, are why Hollow Knight remains my fave of all time to this day.
Side note: I suspect Elden Ring would give a similar feeling, given that it is Souls + open-world exploration. However, I have not played Elden Ring yet personally (i’m a patient gamer down to my bones). For folks that have played both: Are there similarities in Elden Ring’s sense of exploration? Is there any intentional friction in the map system? Or did From go with an auto-updating map like most games?
Regarding Elden Ring, I would argue it does the sense of exploration better than Hollow Knight, but only by a small degree. For every area, there’s no map at the start, and the entire map’s size is obscured since it only shows what you’ve traveled through. It gets bigger as you go, but it’s still obscured by a fog of war for areas that fit inside the map, but you don’t have a map fragment for. You can see on the map where you can obtain the fragment, but not how to get there. Most times you can just cut a straight line to it, but sometimes it’s a pain.
All that said, the thing it does better than Hollow Knight for exploration is a limitation of Hollow Knight’s map system. It’s split into different rooms, and each room has finite entrances and exits. Because you fill out the map through exploration, you’re going to know what you have and haven’t found.
Because Elden Ring gives you the entirety of the map, it’s both helpful and not. You can figure out (mostly) how to get from point A to point B, and you have markers for everywhere you’ve been. There’s two minor issues with that, though. It’s a 2D map for a 3D world, which means you end up with some locations not being properly shown, because they’re underneath cliffs. The second is that the map does almost nothing to show what places of interest there are. You have large buildings shown, but that excludes all the catacombs (dungeon areas) you can visit. There are areas on the map that are right there, but due to the topography you have no idea how to get there. Going by the map alone means you’re going to miss out on a solid amount of the content available.
It’s because the map is so limiting that it feels so good. You’re able to use it to figure where places are in directional relation, but you still have to look yourself to try and uncover areas. My first run, I prided myself on uncovering everything. I searched high and low, inspected the map to make sure I went to every corner, and really made sure I knew what was out there, and it felt amazing in terms of how much content there was and how much exploration you could do. I started a second run when the DLC came out, and found an area that, somehow, I had entirely missed. It took over a hundred and forty hours of searching, really searching, to get what I thought was complete, and it still wasn’t. It was a fantastic feeling on my second run.
Hollow Knight’s map is excellent. The gameplay is excellent, the exploration is rewarding and challenging. But the issue it has is that it only has those two dimensions to work with. Elden Ring really works to emphasize that third dimension when scouring for secrets.
Thank you for your write up! This has me WAY more interested in Elden Ring than I was before. I like Dark Souls a lot, but part of it is my investment in the lore. It’s not that I expect Elden Ring lore to be worse in any way, but it’ll be a new world to relearn so I have to work myself up to it. Reading your take has me way more excited to dig into it!
Love your write up. I feel similarly, and many many randomizer runs (Archipelago.gg is great for it), speedruns, and classic playthroughs later I still find the atmosphere and music incredible
I just replayed the entire series over the last couple of months. The first one is the highlight of the series and laid the groundwork not only for the sequels, but pretty much founded the genre of immersive sims all by itself. This type of game is the rare lightning in a bottle that many have failed to capture since and it really hasn’t aged much since it came out over 20 years ago. Sure, the voice lines are cheesy, the AI is outdated and there are some pretty wacky characters in this otherwise serious game, but it all fits together extremely well and has a certain charm to it.
I don’t think there are any “bad” Deus Ex games, but the sequel Invisible War is definitely the weakest installment. It leans too much into the whole B-Movie theme and, with the exception of the last chapter, suffers from lackluster writing and forgettable characters. The gameplay itself is still fun but overall severely limited due to the hardware constraints of the Original Xbox.
Human Revolution did well to separate itself from the first title while staying true to the core gameplay and I do love the aesthetics that they went for. The story is very solid and I’d say there are more ways to approach a mission than the first game had. Adam Jensen is also a well-written character and a worthy replacement for JC Denton. The only thing I didn’t really like was the new melee system.
Finally, Mankind Divided turned out to be the most “Deus Ex” we’ve gotten since the first game came out. It’s a brilliant game through and through and I can’t really think of even minor criticism. It’s basically what the first game was, just all grown up. Even the DLCs are among the best missions in the whole series.
It’s so sad to see the great path this series was on before it was ultimately cancelled again. I felt like they had finally perfected the formula. And now we’re most likely stuck with the open ending of Mankind Divided for the foreseeable future.
Top-tier writeup. The original will always hold a special place in my heart but Mankind Divided was an excellent modern interpretation of similar systems of gameplay.
If you’re actually curious about PC-VR, get a used headset for cheap and dual boot. Activate Windows with a tool instead of a license. Linus Torvalds won’t come to your house and disembowel you for getting a taste of the dark side. Maybe play a flatscreen game or two that’s not running on Linux yet (or ever) while you’re at it.
I think everyone should see Google Earth VR at least once, for example. It’s an astonishing experience. Like with Half-Life 2, it’s a totally different thing compared to looking at it on a screen. Scale is the big factor and it’s so perfect in regards to both, you will catch yourself trying to touch virtual objects, lean on virtual walls, duck under virtual obstacles. Hardware requirements, just like with HL-2 VR, are very low, so the barrier of entry is practically nil. I first experienced it on a GTX 960, which is most likely surpassed by integrated graphics by now.
I’ll preface this by warning you that the below text is far too long, contains far too many parentheses and plenty of very personal opinions on the subject. It’s also more of a slightly edited flow of consciousness thing, so the structure isn’t the best.
Index is a costly high-end device for enthusiasts: Complex to set up, requiring external laser emitters being placed high up in the room and ensuring coverage of the play area; depending on your room’s layout and what you’re playing with the headset, you need to purchase additional emitters. Sitting for example is fine with two, as is if you’re mainly facing only two directions - but if you’re moving around a lot, you’ll want at least one more lighthouse. I wouldn’t really want to use this kind of system with less than three base stations. As you can see from this issue alone, it’s very much not a plug in and play kind of device, since even once you’ve figured out the hardware side, you’ll still spend a not insignificant amount of time configuring the software, often for individual games. The high refresh rate also means that hardware requirements are not exactly low (since you really do not want frame rate drops in VR - it’s 144 Hz or bust with this device, unless you like to lose the contents of your stomach in an unpleasant fashion) and the screens are starting to show their age in terms of color accuracy. While this is still one of the best options out there due to the groudbreaking controllers alone (which were tailor-made for HL Alyx), I wouldn’t recommend it as a first VR headeset, unless you take apart every device you’re using. Also keep in mind that it’s frequently sold without the necessary accessories second-hand, which might make it appear deceptively cheap. Always buy a VR headset with controllers and (if it requires them) base stations, since both are much harder to find on their own.
Look for a headset with inside-out tracking (which means no external cameras, sensors or emitters). [Edit: This advice turns out to be problematic in hindsight.] These are easier to set up and provide 90% of the experience at a fraction of the cost and complexity, with the added bonus of being quickly able to set up the headset in almost any location. Even then, the tracking will impress you.
In the past, I frequently recommended WMR headsets, since these are cheap on the used market, have excellent high-res displays (some even OLED), yet low hardware requirements and are extremely easy to set up. Five minutes from unboxing to working roomscale that will blow your socks off, at the most. Tracking is excellent for the headset and good enough for the controllers, but not outstanding - and the controllers don’t support fancy finger tracking due to their age. The problem is that Microsoft has sunsetted them after years of neglect, with the latest version of Windows already dropping support, so while I’ll continue to use my Samsung Odyssey Plus and it’s fantastic OLED screens for as long as it’s working (I configured Windows to only download security updates and ignore the feature update that would render it inoperable, staying with version 23H2, which should give me time until November of 2025), I can’t really recommend this platform to others anymore.
I have to admit, I haven’t paid that much attention to VR hardware since I bought the Samsung, because I’m really only an occasional VR user and it’s perfect for this. VR supplements normal gaming, but it’s not a replacement, in my eyes at least. VR gaming is a fundamentally different experience, since you are moving around, yet are essentially in a closed-off environment, which can be difficult if you have other people around you. It’s also much more of a commitment. You need to make space, put on a headset, make sure controllers are charged (and the headset itself if it’s not wired), inform people living with you not to burst into the room, since it can result in either accidents or heart attacks or both (I’m only slightly exaggerating, but you do NOT want to suddenly get touched when you are fully immersed).
Facebook is effectively dominating the market thanks to having invested astonishing sums of money into it (at least compared to prior to the LLM boom), to the point that some people think that “Quest” is a term for all VR headsets (Kleenex problem) or aren’t even aware of any alternatives. The Quest 3 in its two main variants (and storage subvariants) is a competent piece of hardware, no doubt, capable of both decent standalone VR (best for media consumption and exclusives) and PCVR, with good screens and solid controllers at a highly competitive (= highly subsidized dumping) price. Even the older Quest 2 still holds up and remains well supported for now. The problem is that you’re inviting a Facebook device littered with cameras and microphones into your home, a device that needs to create a 3D scan of your room in order for its inside-out tracking to function. Sure, Microsoft isn’t exactly clean in this regard either and their headsets required this as well, they at least never abused this highly invasive capability of their hardware standard (probably because they, unlike Facebook, didn’t build the devices and only licensed the tech to manufacturers). While you are not required to create a Facebook account to use their headsets anymore (you can just have a separate Quest account only for VR), I have no doubts they are doing whatever they want with the data they are collecting, regardless of user agreements and laws. It’s also worth mentioning that Facebook/Meta are just as guilty of ending support of older hardware, with the first Quest being essentially a paperweight at this point.
What else is there? The Pico 4 Ultra is the most relevant competitor to the Quest, with hardware that can more than keep up, no Facebook data-leeching (instead it’s ByteDance of TikTok fame data-leeching - I can’t decide what’s worse…) and the same ability to function both in standalone mode and tethered to a PC. You aren’t getting those juicy exclusives though and there is no cheaper option like the Quest S, nor as much of a thriving second-hand market. If privacy is of concern, it’s just as nightmarish and since it’s no better of a deal while lacking interesting games, it’s a pass. If you’re in the US, they aren’t selling it to you anyway.
I started this comment out by recommending you to pick an inside-out headset, but the problem is that there aren’t many options left now that the WMR ecosystem is dead. As good as the Meta headsets are, they are primarily standalone headsets and by nature compromised when used with PCs (higher hardware requirements, compression reducing image quality, stability issues). The old Oculus headsets are all using cameras for tracking, so that’s a no as well with Facebook owning the company.
This leaves us back where we began. Maybe you actually have to use a headset with external tracking if this privacy issue I’m basing most of my dilemma is a priority in your eyes (without knowing whether you actually care, although in this community the chance is fairly high). If you’re fine with complex hardware and software, the tracking tech that the Valve Index is based on was first brought to market with the HTC Vive, developed jointly by Valve and HTC. Its screens and controllers are outdated, but still functional and it’s not expensive used. The Vive Pro has what looks like OLED displays that are identical in terms of specs to my Samsung, which makes it easy to recommend as a sort of in-between, if you’re fine with not having the latest controllers - which you could source from the Valve Index, but at that point, you’re not saving any money anymore.
Playstation VR2 remains an option. It’s PC compatible through an official adapter, but limited in terms of features (the neat stuff like eye-tracking remains console-exclusive) and too expensive unless you already have it for console. Pimax is another high-end alternative, but support isn’t exactly the best.
To be honest, I can’t really provide the best advice other than passing my confusion and frustration over to you. I apologize, but I hope that at least some of this is helpful.
Thanks so much for your detailed thoughts! I really appreciate it, and it helped me confirm that the Index isn’t for me, and I’m not keen on the Quest 3 either. Your take on the setup complexities and privacy issues was super helpful. Thanks again!
I can’t think of another game that I like so much and enjoy playing so little. I will spend countless hours creating families and houses and then five minutes playing the actual game before I’m like “oh, right, I hate this” and then I start making another family.
The thing that helped me felt very counterintuitive, but I ended up just picking one family member as a ‘main’ character, and letting the rest run on their own.
My instinct is always to try and micro-manage everyone in the household, which gets stressful quickly. If I focus on one person and let the rest just generate their own stories I tend to last a lot longer.
I loved the building, but I find the other half of the gameplay quite boring. Some of the more focused games i thought were a bit better, but it’s been quite some time since I’ve played them.
I loved the building, but I find the other half of the gameplay quite boring.
i would spend hours using cheats to create the perfect house for the sims family and then lose interest within 30 minutes of letting the family do its thing.
i would rinse and repeat with each house becoming more elaborate and strange each time; they should make a game that focuses on that aspect of it more
Have you seen any of the youtube previews of Paralives? I’m very curious if the building in that title will be better. They have a couple features that seem really nice
I absolutely adored the Urbz game for DS. Pretty sure it’s the same game as the GBA version, but it had an added post-game minigame. I loved maxing out friendships and having bonus areas to decorate!
I played GTA from GTA 1 to GTA 4. I have always been more interested by the story and the atmosphere rather than the free roaming.
What I can say about them:
1 and 2 : a shock. Being so mean and bad was cathartic for me, it was really mind blowing as I am a “too nice” guy
GTA 3 : a revolution. Discovering the game on the PS2 of a friend, I was drooling over the beautiful 3D models, the music, everything. I had to wait a bunch of time to get it on PC though.
Vice City : wonderful atmosphere, the colours, the music. The story over the top. My favourite.
San Andreas: not bad. The missions were interesting, but I felt no connection with the “boys in the hood” atmosphere. At the time, I listened very few hip hop so the whole gangsta rap hype was not interesting to me.
GTA 4: I liked the settings, “russian immigrants”. The campaign was cool. However all the rest felt a chore… The mandatory mini games with the gangster calling you every 10 minutes and being angry if I don’t go bowling with him was ridiculous.
Then I gave up GTA all together. To be frank, I was a bit fed up with the American settings. Always the same street, atmosphere, culture… On the other hand, other games like Sleeping Dogs were a breath of fresh air. You really feel in another environment, and something as simple as driving left on the road is a great change.
I am playing sleeping dogs right now and really enjoying it! Runs very well on Steam Deck too.
The driving left on the road is proving to be a tougher hurdle than expected though, I find myself crashing into opposing drivers more frequently than desired :).
I feel like it's rare to encounter another person that doesn't love San Andreas. It was fine, I guess, but I really didn't find the setting compelling. The kitchen sink approach to game mechanics didn't help either.
Why isn’t the lady who’s been training all her life to fight monsters in my grounded low fantasy game made to look like she comes from the place it is set, the same as my ones in Stellar Blade!?!?!
Because of the lore I know why we fight Maliketh. But also because of the lore I don’t know why we fight Maliketh instead of just asking for Destined Death.
As someone still playing through vanilla Elden Ring, none of that means anything to me. And if my first 80h are any indication, I’ll finish the game and still have no idea.
That is the beauty of these games; you only get told the story if you go looking for it. You can still play the entire game and even all the extra content and not have a single thing straight told to you that’s out of your control. Every time I go and play something else, the biggest frustration for me is that I’m just there for the game part, but it takes control away a lot just to give me half an hour of exposition to a story I’m not paying attention to.
This might be a shit complaint on my part because these games are specifically for those type of people but I’m playing ff14 atm and they fuggin make me go across the world to talk to someone through a cut scene then make me go across the world again to rinse and repeat and that’s the game. I understand repetition is to be expected in mmo questing, I played wow for 17 years but at least for wow there’s some actual world exploration to be done to some degree and it isn’t usually forcing you to cross the world constantly. Ff14 doesn’t even have proper world exploration, they have teleport stones everywhere so you don’t truly get to see what’s up beyond following the quest lines. Glam, posing and rp saves that game.
I’m usually that person as well. BG3 was the first game in probably 8 years that hooked me on the story. If I sprinted through it, I would have probably saved like 80% of the time I spent playing it, but I enjoyed it. Maybe I’m simple, to me it felt like the decisions mattered.
Super Mario Land also gave birth to Wario as an enemy and then eventually his own gameboy Spin-off Warioland (subheaded as ‘Super Mario Land 3’), which went on to have more installments than Super Mario Land itself!
Wario is one of Nintendo’s best characters and deeply underutilized (along with Waluigi).
I remember my first time finding the ceiling path in the Pyramids in SML1. I just decided to try to see if I could jump up to the ceiling tiles, skip passed the enemies.
It blew my little mind when it worked. I could do that. Where else could I do that‽ The entire game just changed! I lost hours trying to make the stupidest jumps, just to see if I had found another one.
Hmm…440 hours on Steam…probably another 125 on the Switch…
I love this game. It’s so cozy and comfortable. I found SDV after my divorce just when it had originally released and I was drawn into the cute world and how much character oozes from every corner. Every person you meet has something going on or you can just be a weird hermit building out your farm in peace. There’s enough of a story to propel you forward but never overbearing and it gets out of the way when it’s “done”.
As time has gone on from my first playthrough, I’ll typically dive back in when the itch strikes or a new content update comes along. The last few playthroughs I’ve done a lot to mod the game and introduce new things into the world to discover, some of which just feels indistinguishable from the official content and others that just help reduce barriers that I want to skip over (like fishing).
Stardew Valley is a game I will likely always go back to. I’m sure it will eventually eclipse my current most played game (Team Fortress 2 @ ~800 hours). I’ve tried other games like it and while they’re fun, none seem to have the staying power that Stardew has over me. While I will absolutely check out his next game, I’m hoping Stardew Valley never really stops being updated over the years.
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