I was pretty emotionally stunted and depressed as a teenager and had trouble crying even when I wanted to (it’s a horrible feeling, physically) so Earthbound and Mother 3 were therapeutic
This game was memorable and phenomenal. However, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I’d known the massive spoiler in your comment. It looks like you tried to tag it or something, but it’s still showing up in plain text on lemmy.
Dear Esther stuck with me in a profound way. It was my gateway to a whole new genre. It broke my brain a little, as i initially tried to explore every nook and cranny of the boundaries of each area. The game grinds to a halt if you play that way. To any newcomer, just stay on or near the paths, and let the story unfold. There are no hidden chests or discoverables - just an incredible narration through memories and questions, and a chilling ost.
Removed. Apologies, I didn’t know it was visible, my client listed it as hidden text. I guess lemmy still needs to work on standardizing text formatting :/
Thanks a ton. I saw some other comments with spoilers flagged that were working, but they weren’t indented in block quotes, if it helps. I suck at markdown stuff, so that’s the best I can guess for troubleshooting.
I’ve tried some other games to try find a similar experience to Esther, but the quality of DE has proven to be rather rare.
What Remains of Edith Finch was similarly evocative, in many ways. I want to try The Unfinished Swan at some point, as a follow-up.
Leviathan was one that couldn’t click with me. I hate blaming the voice acting, because he certainly had the chops, so I’m guessing he wasn’t directed to be a sympathetic narrator, so much. I won’t say more, but I think they were just going in a different direction/vibe in that game.
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.
League of legends. Top picked teemo. Mid was saying that he couldn’t speak because of chat ban. Jungler went afk after dying to wolves. Bot yelled at me all game for his feeding.
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.
There have actually been a lot of games that have made me cry over they years. Some of the ones I remember are:
Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, 3 and Peace Walker
Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, BBS, Re:Coded and 358/2 days
Final Fantasy 10 and (obviously) Crisis Core
Castlevania Order of Ecclesia
I’m pretty sure there are more but I can’t really remember any others. I’ve kind of always been very sensitive to emotional things, so a lot of games get at least a tear or two but the ones I mentioned were games that I remember being wrecked after playing.
There are so many seens in Metal Gear that tear me up. MGS1 has my favorite moment, in the bad ending with Otacon and Snake, but Sniper Wolf’s scene is brutal to me too.
One of the biggest ones that permanently etched in my mind from childhood is the ending to Metropolis, especially when that one Ray Charles song comes on.
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.
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.
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