Some small niche games that I grew up with, that I am playing again with my Steam Deck:
God Hand - A third person beat em up that is funny, and really good. Full of flavor. Complete flop.
Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy - A third person shooter with psionic powers used as its main selling point. Good dumb fun on the PS2.
Spyhunter & Spyhunter 2 - A shockingly good reboot of Spyhunter by Midway games, where you have a car that transforms its mode depending on the mission. Part racing game, part spy game.
I-Ninja - A 3d action platformer that has Billy West as the lead, a ninja who accidentally killed his Master and now has to get him back and collect bullshit trinkets. Clearly more “just dumb fun” than anything serious.
007: Nightfire - The best James Bond game ever made. Better than Goldeneye. Plays like its an original movie, with solid gameplay, and I spent as many hours on the local multiplayer as I did with Halo. I didn’t see that, but I wanted to share that I love that game.
Evil Dead A Fistful of Bootstick - Still need to play more to see if it holds up, but its an original story featuring Bruce Campbell voice acting.
I’ll recommend Kinetica. It’s a one-of-a-kind racing game where you race through gravity-defying tracks as a person in a kind of iron-man negligee with wheels while listening to old-school techno.
Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games ever, battling entities big enough that you run around on top of them, subtle storytelling, an enormous map for the time it was made, and fairly large even by modern standards.
The Tenchu games are also good: ninja stealth assassination.
Dark Cloud 2 is a kind of fun game. Smack your way through dungeons with a wrench and use the bits to build villages for your allies.
Bloody Roar is a favorite for fighting games. Fight to BIOS energy then transform into a wilder form, like a mole, a bear, etc. and you can kick people through the edges of the arenas into new areas to fight.
Devil May Cry is a classic.
Ratchet and Clank, classic.
Time Splitters is reminiscent of even older games.
Space Station 14. I can’t get enough. Even just sticking to botany, the depth and complexity of what can be achieved feels limitless, let alone botanist+syndicate agent where I can buy “gatfruit” seeds and grow revolvers inside fruit.
Hands down the most fun multiplayer gaming I’ve ever enjoyed.
I’m bias, but Sly Raccoon is such a great series. I thoroughly enjoyed it growing up. I see you have Sly2 in your image. I would suggest starting with the first game and move up from there.
The original Yakuza 1 and 2, though I’d recommend the Restored mods for each because the localizations (especially Y1’s dub) were notoriously awful. Hilarious at first, but that wears off fast. (Though it is so funny to me how Y7 dub Kiryu’s VA is the original VA from Y1, you’d think they would’ve wanted to forget that ever happened LOL)
When I first played the series I played the remakes first, and after going back and playing the originals I understood why so many series vets weren’t happy with the remakes. Y2 especially has some of the best feeling combat in the franchise.
I got Cult of the Lamb in the steam sale. Now playing it couch coop with my wife. It's been a lot of fun so far. Less frustrating than Don't Starve Together.
Don't Starve Together is local split screen. Cult of the Lamb is local coop without split screen. The dungeons are divided in rooms and split screen isn't necessary. It just zooms out enough that you're both on screen. Except in camp. There you need to stay somewhat together or you go off screen.
Finally started the Forza Horizon 5 DLC. First up, Rally Adventure. The DLC adds a new, small, but densely filled map (at least more densely than the base game). The new races also get a new game mode, a proper Rally mode (as you’d expect from the name). It’s just you alone on the track, trying to make it to the finish as fast as possible, while an NPC reads pacenotes to you.
As someone who doesn’t play normal rally racing games or watches real life ones, it’s fine. The game also asks you if you want to disable the visual racing line, which I did. That makes it a lot harder, since you can’t just immediately tell when you’re supposed to break, but with the rewind or just trying the race over and over again, it’s manageable. I also constantly switch cars, so I don’t get a consistent feel on how a specific car handles.
Then I also started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I wanted to get to this before all the GOTY-talk at the end of the year. I’m in Act 1, dunno how early, because I’m just running around, exploring everything, ignoring the main quest as much as possible. As you do in RPGs.
The game plays well, it’s pretty responsive, and hitting those parries feels good. The story is intriguing so far, but I haven’t seen a lot of it. Performance has also been fine for me, but I do have a pretty powerful PC.
A few annoying things are, every time you pick up an item on the ground a character has to comment on it, and there are not a lot of different voice lines, so that gets kinda annoying. Then certain parts of the game, like the cutscenes, are filled with pretty ugly post-processing effects. You can disable that stuff for normal gameplay, but then a cutscene plays that has just super heavy depth of field, chromatic aberration, weird artifacts around character outlines (that might be tied to the DOF), it’s weird. These are pretty minor complaints.
Also, in a fight it’s like Super Mario RPG, where you can hit specific keys at the correct time to deal extra damage or for the dodge/parry to avoid any damage. Hitting the offensive buttons is not much of a problem, but the game does some stylish camera angles and shakes a bit, which can make it difficult to time button presses for the defensive moves. There are options to disable these, but the camera shake option doesn’t seem to affect combat, and if you disable the camera movement option the battles look so much duller, with just a terrible, static angle. I think I just have to get used to it. It also doesn’t affect every enemy, some are definitely worse than others.
Still, I’m having fun, just gotta play more of the game.
Right now? I’m thinking of maybe doing another playthrough of Silent Hill 2’s remake. I want to try and finally beat Resident Evil 2 though, and I want to get another playthrough of Alan Wake II in as well. If I have extra time I want to try one of the Amnesia games as well
It depends on whether piracy is in the mix. If it is, that opens up assorted unofficially translated games. Super Robot Wars: Original Generations, for instance, if you are into strategy mecha games.
Metal Saga might appeal if you are into sandbox RPGs and a lover of tanks. Also, dogs with rocket launchers on their back.
I'm currently playing The Forever Winter... and it is BRUTALLY difficult. Gorgeous game and worldbuilding though. It's in Alpha so things are very much in flux but I just can't seem to put this dystopian nightmare down.
Ooh I remember hearing about that game last year. I was intrigued by the appeal of the premise of like, playing a bit part character in the universe so to speak. The idea of the “real conflict” happening between massively powerful factions and creatures in the background while you scuttle in their shadow felt very interesting.
Slogging through Cronos: The New Dawn, probably around the 60% mark now, maybe a bit more? I’m at the Hospital area, which I think is the final main area out of three. I have a lot of things to say about this game, and not too many of them are positive sadly. I’m really on the verge of dropping it and have actually taken a break from it today playing other games.
And it’s a shame because Cronos does have its qualities. It’s beautiful to look at, both visually stunning and with environments displaying immaculate art direction. The atmosphere is on point, and both the alternate-reality Poland with its brutalist nightmare architecture and the sci-fi future tech is fantastically realized - with the caveat that the “Travellers” the protagonist belongs to might be a tad derivative of Bioshock Big Daddies.
Where the game falls flat, sadly is the gameplay. First of all it’s a survival horror with a heavy emphasis on survival and a very weak “horror”. The game is not really particularly scary, even accounting for the occasional cheap jump scare. Instead it’s an absolutely gruelling action slog where the real horror is inventory management and ammunition scarcity. And this would have been fine if the action gameplay was good, but it’s just… boring, stale and uninspired.
The enemies are just the blandest garden variety zombies you can imagine, the touted “merge” mechanic feels cosmetic at best and doesn’t factor in as much as you’d think and without a dodge button a lot of the fights are just running around kiting and waiting for a chance to charge up a shot and repeat. Most enemies are slow enough that it doesn’t even feel particularly thrilling, you’re not really in danger and are just waiting for them to go into an animation you can punish.
On top of that the ammo scarcity is so ridiculous that I often feel compelled to reload my last save if I miss more than two shots in a fight as I don’t want to risk getting soft locked. I know I’m not a god gamer and my aim isn’t the best, but it feels too harsh. And yes, I’m charging every shot to conserve ammo already.
On top of that the body-burning mechanic combined with the restrictions on flamethrower fuel dispensers leads to repeated situations of running back-and-forth between bodies and a dispenser for like 10 minutes straight, which feels like an enormously unfun waste of time and just adds to the endless tedium and frustration the game delivers constantly.
And it’s a shame because the story is actually kinda intriguing. It’s what’s kept me going this far. I do like the world building, the mysterious “Collective” you belong to has me interested still and when the story delves into some more philosophical musings occasionally I am enjoying myself. It could still all fall flat though, as this is a time travel story and those often devolve into timey-wimey messes full of plot holes that fall apart under close inspection. But so far I’m still wanting to see how it ends.
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