I’m currently playing through the ace attorney series, couch party w my fiancee. We’re having a blast, but there’s absolutely no doing this a second time. The nature of the games is such that you can’t really progress in any of the cases without having asked every question of every witness, gathered every piece of evidence and explored every relevant branch in cross-examination, so by the time you finish a case there’s just nothing left to go over a second time.
Axiom Verge 1 is a great metroidvania. I also tried 2, but it didn’t click with me at all. Cave Story is great as well. Dead Cells, but that’s more of a rogue lite game. Binding of Isaac is also one of my favorites, but it’s a top down rogue like.
Outer Wilds. not only is it a fantastic game, but the entire premise and gameplay is centred around discovering the world. theres no progression, the story is all diagetic and not quest-bound or anything, and once you know the world you cant really discover it any more (unless you forget)
OneShot is very much based on its story and immersion. Contrary to the title’s implication, there’s not so much potential for risk during play, even if it’s themed that way, but it does feel like any efforts to repeat the game would ruin some of the immersive thoughts present.
Baba is You - simplistic graphically, but immensely satisfying mechanically. Amazing puzzle game.
Celeste - gorgeous graphics and buttery smooth controls, a platformer that is encouraging and supportive all the way through but ranges from “easy as pie” to “hard as nails” as you progress. One of the most satisfying games to complete every level for. One of the best soundtracks ever. Trans rights!
Fez - another simple-ish at face value platformer game, but this time with puzzles as the main thread instead of action. Super satisfying puzzles and an amazing soundtrack.
Omori - an RPG which eventually deals with some heavy subject matter but does so tastefully and maturely. It’s a splendid story either way you spin it, and lots of fun.
Undertale - same as above, but shorter and more “punchy”. One of the best soundtracks in gaming, and a cast of characters you’ll come to feel like your family. It’s quite subversive for the genre, so it’s a fun experience. It has an episodic sister game Deltarune which is still in the works.
Void Stranger - a block-pushing styled game, but incredibly subversive for the genre. Gorgeous visuals, great soundtrack, and some truly mindbending puzzles. It gets super hard, but it’s also super satisfying to beat.
Stardew Valley - cozy farming game, really just oozing passion and love from the developer(s). Lots to do, many unique people to meet and things to see. Pretty graphics and stunning soundtrack. Fall in love with an NPC, marry them if you want. Or don’t do any of that. Make your own fun in this one, there’s a bunch of aspects to get into.
Citizen Sleeper - not technically 2d but may as well be. A gripping, beautiful sci-fi story, told in a tabletop RPG style. You won’t be able to help falling in love with the rag-tag character cast, and shedding a few tears along the way. It’s very down to earth but makes me long for the stars at the same time.
Ori and the Blind Forest/Ori and the Will of the Wisps - a drop dead gorgeous, lovingly crafted metroidvania with one of the best soundtracks you could ever ask for. Platforming is gorgeously refined, and the sequel improves upon the first game in many ways.
Hollow Knight - I could copy paste the majority of the Ori blurb here, however this game has a deeper focus on the deep, winding, sprawling exploration, and combat aspects. Gripping soundtrack and stunning stylised visuals. You will, however, join the wait for Silksong with the rest of us, which drives many people mad!
I definitely recommend Baba Is You and FEZ as well. Similarly to FEZ there is a mobile game Monument Valley (and Monument Valley 2) which I adore. It’s spendier in $/time, but I find is highly worth it.
Bastion isn’t a 2D game, but I’d like to recommend it while I’m at it, it’s play is perhaps close enough, and it’s stunning.
For me pretty much every single linear / story type game. Even great ones I sometimes attempted to have another run but would immediately get bored and ended up quitting. They just don't really offer anything to me to make it worth it. Even a lot of New Game Plus modes aren't cutting it, because they're typically just some extra items or abilities.
Hmm, tough question since a lot of them I played personally years ago as I eventually began EA & Ubisoft, which have some of the more commonly known franchises here and the feelings I have towards them unfortunately also tainted their games and the experiences I had with them. And I also generally got much more into more open ended / non linear type of genres like sandbox, open world or 4X games.
I guess I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn quite a bit, I also love TLoU Part 1 & 2, even though Part 2 is probably the heaviest story game I've seen (not played since there's no PC port yet but I watched stupid amounts of Let's Plays at this point), a little underdog / hidden gem is probably CrossCode, which was a complete surprise hit for me and one of those games that I will always try to sell whenever I can get the opportunity for it.
Agreed. I feel the same of most story games. My favs such as: The last of us, God of War, Spiderman, Midnight Suns, FF7R, FF16, Like a Dragon, Days Gone, new Ratchet and Clank. The games don’t really offer anything new upon replay so I consider them one-and-dones.
Midnight Suns was like that for me. The tactical combat was interesting and could have had replay value, but all the chores and conversations you have to do to progress the story made this a “no way” for a second playthrough. Absolutely worth it to go through once though, if you are into turn based combat games and marvel characters.
I stalled out on playing this. I loved the combat aspect, but the chores and conversations feel too much like… well, chores. I just wanna fuck up some bad guys, not watch my character watch a movie with a Marvel character!
Yeah I almost gave up too, it did become a bit of a slog in the middle with all the back and forth collecting shit and chatting everyone up. Definitely has some pacing issues.
Danganronpa, honestly any of them. Once you know the story, who the killers are, and the twists, it quickly loses it’s charm. The only way afterwards is to watch other people play it for the first time.
Phoenix Wright comes to mind since I’m just watching someone else play the games I don’t have because there’s not much player agency so watching it is as good as playing it 🤷🏻♂️
Sometimes you can still replay them for the same reason you’d re-read a book (like to catch things you missed the first time around). It’s not as common and a different kind of replayability though
I would say something like ICO is the latter kind for me. It is focused on the gameplay, but the gameplay is the same exact thing from the first moment to the last and you can find all the secrets in the levels themselves pretty easy the first time through (since the rooms ain’t that big there’s not much room to hide things), the only reason to replay it multiple times is for the special weapons you can get; which are more like skins than actual weapons, except for the energy sword that OHKOs everything. But you only get that after like, 5 or 7 completions I think? It wasn’t worth it. By the time you get it, a normal person would be totally over playing the game lol
I think Dark Souls and Elden Ring and such would be the same for me, if not for the PvP multiplayer. Other games copying that style without any multiplayer at all, I have so far only played once and then never touched again. But I keep coming back to the ones with PvP to make new builds and fight other players. And because of how you obtain items, making an entirely new character means playing through the entire game, or at least a good deal of it. Currently building a dude to be ready for Shadow of the Erdtree and seeing just how low level I can beat Mogh at. So far it’s been 60. 😄
Deathloop’s story basically means that you’re replaying the game because you failed your previous attempt at escaping. You can play it more than once, the game encourages you to, and I kinda want to, but I never did because I already won. In a lot of games replays are basically just “fresh starts” and here, they are part of the story, and ironically, that’s what’s stopping me.
Also… A big part of playing Death Loop was figuring out the proper order to kill everybody. … and sadly, there’s only one order that will work. So once you know the order, a big part of the challenge is eliminated.
It would have been really cool if the game selected a random ordering for your character at new game start and each target’s vulnerable timing changes accordingly. Something similar to how some of Dishonored’s missions could have multiple solutions.
… but I get why they didn’t. Dishonored had mission variants just switch up some text which is relatively cheap compared to having fully different behaviors and speech and so on that would need to be created just for the tiny set of players that not only finish but replay a game.
As someone who played through Dishonored 1,2 and all their respective DLCs multiple times, I was sad that Death Loop didn’t have the same level of repayablity baked into the overarching structure, but I still quite enjoyed the game itself. I just finished it once and moved on.
I don’t mind that there’s only one winning order too much. Could be cool to have more options but I’m okay with that design choice. Like you said, it’s a lot of effort for not a lot of players. I could still vary the gameplay during the missions and that’s good enough. Besides, I enjoyed the world and the characters more than in any other Arkane game, maybe on par with Prey, can’t put one above the other.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne