Final Fantasy XI, both getting access to Sea and finishing the last chapter of Chains of Promathia, when it was still fairly uncommon to have progressed that far in that expansion.
A weird one that I’ve not seen mentioned: the intro to Battlefield 1. It is really well crafted and was emotional in a way I’ve never felt from a war FPS.
The multiple unavoidable deaths and brief epitaph shown on screen, before hot swapping to the next soldier felt poignant. Really hit me with the pointlessness and futility of WWI, the plight of the common soldier and the sheer scale of death.
Man, I miss these pure arcade football games. Feels a bit like FIFA circa early 2000s, although a lot more fast-paced, no commentary, and no offsides. I would have said FIFA Street, but this sticks with the general rules, stays eleven-aside, and without super powers (although you do get some crazy screamers from outside the box and knocking in a bicycle kick feels ridiculously fun).
A little bit like Redcard in terms of silliness, though it’s been a couple of decades since I played that.
Also, bonus for having women’s teams and leagues/cups. Only about four (maybe five, I’ve forgotten) cups/leagues in total, but that’s just a touch less than FC 24 which has two women’s tournaments and five leagues.
When I saw the “store”, I was immediately all, “oh, fuck no” only to realize we’re doing good ol’ PS2-era stuff where you actually unlock things by playing (earn coins from games, buy random shit).
Now I need to try the other one I bought, Kopatino All-Stars Soccer. Looks wild with all the powers and gameplay modifiers and what have you.
Edit: Lol, Kopatino is basically a “cute” version of Redcard. No rules, foul the fuck out of everyone because no cards, score crazy goals. Powers can also result in some funny scenarios. Turns out you can teleport yourself with the ball directly into the opposing goal net because why the fuck not.
All that said, I can see myself getting a bit bored of these because I get the sense that they’re geared heavily toward multiplayer (offline included). They do have a shit ton of stuff to do, though, even single player, so who knows. Probably best for short sessions here and there, rather than longterm.
Probably an obvious one, but Life is Strange was a pretty emotionally fraught game to play through. Everyone’s probably aware, but it is filled with choices that determine lots of different small outcomes as well as the main ending. So after I finished it, I spent the evening watching streamers react to the ending and sniffling along with them.
Personal story about that, a good friend passed away unexpectedly right before the pandemic, and his wife asked for my help finding some things on his computer. He was a great guy, big burly dude not known for being overly-sentimental but a wonderful imagination/DM. As I was going through stuff she was reminiscing about him. So we opened his Steam library and he had 2 games installed. Fortnite and every chapter of LiS. She had no idea what that game was, but imagining him secretly huddled over his laptop, guiding Max & Chloe along just broke me.
Another game that drew me in instantly was Hellblade: Sennua’s Sacrifice. Seeing the character’s backstory in the first couple of scenes and knowing that this was a story game dealing with mental health and loss was major, and I was immediately motivated to help her get through the healing process.
LIS holds a special place in my heart, it was the very first character focused game I played/actually paid attention to while playing. Really beautiful game.
I’m a pretty emotional dude. I tear up at a lot of things, happy and sad. But, there are very few things in this life that have caused me to totally break down, ugly crying. The ending to “To the Moon” is one of them. Too visceral a reminder of saying goodbye to people I’ve loved very much.
There’s a lot of context needed to understand why anyone would cry playing through HI3 though. I’ll give a high level summary here, but I highly encourage people to play it, even if it’s a gacha game. You can really ignore the gacha and just play the game for the main story. Do be warned that the story isn’t something suitable for kids — it can be quite a bit too heavy for them.
The theme of self-sacrifice is covered quite extensively, with the main character being the centrepiece of the theme. There’s also deep self-loathe, with an eventual self-acceptance, also from the MC. Mix that all in with some sense of duty.
There’s also a tragedy, but from the tragedy, a narrow path to hope was born. The people in the tragedy mostly hoped only for a simple life, or to live their lives atoning for their sins, but circumstances forced them to become warriors against a great, unstoppable force of destruction. As if to make things harder to swallow, their digital clones that survived into the future have to experience yet another tragedy that would eventually destroy all of them, and the player will see this through. Yet, in the second tragedy, these clones further sowed the seeds of hope for the future.
Chinese company or not, HoYo has pumped out a lot of very human stories that I think deserves attention and praise. Genshin Impact has also started to go down a similar path.
In Enderal (an absolutely amazing, totally free game that runs on the Skyrim engine - if you own Skyrim you owe it to yourself to play Enderal), at the end of Esme’s questline, sitting on top of the lighthouse and discussing the events of her story.
Esme quest spoilersIf you’ve ever had a loved one who struggled with mental illness or depression, and you just couldn’t help them, it hits like a ton of bricks
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