And also the concept of your collection of souls being recoverable from your last point of death.
I know the “death bag” mechanic had been done before, but the disappearing cache is a core element of Soulslike gameplay that has been repeated so many times since then. It adds a sense of urgency and FOMO to the recovery of your stuff. If you die again, it’s gone for good.
I just got 100% on Nier Automata, and I only loved it more as I played it more. Usually I hate any grinding in any game and will either skip any content that requires grinding, use mods to bypass it, or just put down the game and move on to another one. But the whole game just felt so damn good. I could just walk around for hours doing nothing because the movement felt so good.
There was quite a bit of grinding, but I didn’t find any of it too bad. I got 100% in about 50 hours, which is my sweet spot. Any longer and I feel like the game is dragging on.
I generally am pretty chill. But RDR2 is the single single best game Rockstar will ever make. It’s a top 5 of all time. Story and gameplay. World building. Just all of it.
It’s a retribution by the mob because of what he did in the first game. I’ll put it in spoilers just in case:
Mafia 1 spoilersThe whole premise of the first game is that Tommy talks to the police to get out of crime life. He ends up testifying against the Salieri family, receives lower sentence and enters witness protection program with his family.
I mean, I’m pretty sure you’d be able to see it from everywhere in Australia, so I bet many of them would be like “WTF?” But they’ll be dead soon. Fuckin’ kangaroos.
Am I the only one who loves the Switch? That the joycons come off and even have their own shoulder buttons is so cool. You can just set it on a table and play some multiplayer Mario Kart, heck yes. And they snap into the ring fit circle thingie! Neat! And the Pro controller is great all around.
Shout out to the DS Lite. Loved that thing. Gotta have the thumb strap to play that Metroid multiplayer FPS.
Worst: TI-84. How the hell they still charging over $100 for this thing, when it has less processing power than a Palm Pilot? Seriously the CPU is from 1976. Yeah Bubble Bobble and Block Dude are great, but the Zelda port runs awful.
Xenogears - My favorite RPG, a little rough in the later acts because of publisher shenanigans, but the story is still good and the gameplay, other than turn based being uncommon now still holds up. (Nier Automata is one of the few more recent games that taps on some of the feelings and concepts Xenogears has in spades)
Worms Armageddon - Less common suggestion, but a fantastically fun game to play with multiple people, even with one controller, since you can pass it around by turn.
Quake 1 - despite my two turn based suggestions FPS is my favorite genre. Quake 1 blends things like lovecraftian and body horror into the environment. And the re-release Bethesda has done is really well done.
Doom 1 + 2 - just for the history lesson. Also has a re-release now that makes it much more playable. Still fun too.
Planescape Torment - You’ll want to be a particular person for this one. I don’t have the patience for isometric rpgs like this one, but the story is great.
Diablo 2 - Pinnacle of isometric action RPG. Wasn’t my cup of tea but if you like the genre, it’ll be a winner.
Day of the Tentacle - point and click adventure, but fun and not quite as obtuse as a lot of them. Will make you think still and the evil tentacle is funny imo. Remaster available on steam too.
Freddy Pharkis Frontier Pharmacist - Another point and click, this one is a selfish add, I mostly add it because I played it a lot and liked it. It may not be the pinnacle of anything, but I found it fun.
Half-Life 1 and 2 - fantastic and fun both. They tap into some things that other FPS still today can’t touch. Really fantastic games.
Vagrant Story - It’s hard. It won’t hold your hand. But it is a good story and interesting leveling/armor/weapon system.
Solstice - NES wizard game. It’s a fun and somewhat difficult dungeon crawler/platformer.
Sonic 1,2,3 - Classics.
Chrono Trigger - Classic RPG
Final Fantasy 6 and 7 - Classic RPGs
Age of Empires / Age of Mythology - Great Real-Time Strategy
Thief - The original games have some clunk to them but they are still fun.
Descent - Probably my favorite 6DOF game.
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - probably the best of the Heroes games. Good fun turn based adventure game.
The Incredible Machine - A puzzle game where you figure out logical components, I played the Incredible Toon Machine a lot as a kid which is a cartoonish version.
System Shock - Another classic game. I haven’t actually played the original, but am playing the remake. You cN look at both and decide what you’d prefer.
Lemmings - another unique puzzle game. Save the lemmings from themselves, they will walk to their doom.
Yakuza - The series is great and I’d recommend the remakes over the original. Starting on zero isn’t required (It’s a newer prequel) but it’s a good start. The games are all similar in play, so take breaks between them. And the best parts are all the side stories. Seriously, all the fun is there imo. Main story is fun but side stories are more of a draw to me and generally hilarious.
Elder Scrolls III - New TES games are still fun, but they lost a lot of the soul the series had and it gets worse every time. Still fun for what they are, but Morrowind was a unique gem. Fair warning though, it does have it’s rough edges.
A few newer ones because I can’t tell where to cut things off lol:
STALKER - FPS, a bit buggy, but really excellent game. Especially with difficulty mods added. Blends in spookiness, the feeling of being alone, and fun action. Part 2 is set to drop within the next year or so. The invasion of Ukraine has made dev difficult and slower.
FEAR - FPS, this first game is still good fun, the sequels aren’t worth the piss I would take on them.
Mirror’s Edge - The first one is fantastic, just don’t focus on fighting (you’re a runner not a fighter). The first and best First Person Runner game. I replayed it not long ago and still loved it.
Portal - Unique, fun, funny.
Metro 2033 - start of an excellent series. Loved the games, and then the books.
OK I should stop. In general I would suggest playing the remastered versions of any of these games. Many of the originals are victims of their times and did they best they could with what they had while defining what made a game good. The older the game the more likelihood you’ll run into immersion breaking or game ruining designs. We had to tolerate that to find the gems in the rough. You don’t have to do that.
Most good platformers from the 80s and 90s still hold up: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, the Donkey Kong Country Games…
The Atari 2600 was before my time, but I bought one at a flea market when I was a kid and was actually impressed by how fun a lot of those games were: Laser Blast, Outlaw, Warlords, and Missile Command, to name a few. The problem is that the hardware is pretty important to the experience. The responsivemess (or lack thereof) of those old controllers is part of the design, so I’m not sure they’d emulate well.
Once you get into the early 3D era, it’s hard for me to say what’s actually good and what’s nostalgia. I love Goldeneye, and it revolutionized the FPS, but it’s probably a pretty bad experience if you didn’t grow up on it. I’m pretty sure Mario 64 is still a legitimately good; it seems like it was still well received on the Switch, and it’s core mechanics have remained basically the same through Sunshine, the Galaxy games, and Odyssey. I think Legend of Zelda: OoT is still legitimately good, but it’s hard to tell. I certainly still enjoy playing it, and it think it’s worthwhile just to see the origins of Z-Targeting, but I’m sure it does feel dated. Either way, you should play the N64 version of Majora’s Mask for sure. It’s still the strangest, darkest Zelda game, and the 3DS version was shit.
Finally, most turn-based RPGs are going to hold up, but I want to make special mention of Pokémon Gold, Silver, and (especially) Crystal. It’s become trendy in the last few years to say these games are actually bad because of a bad level curve, a bad post game, and some other assorted complaints. The level curve criticism is fair, but the post game is great, and most of the other issues are just people who are upset it didn’t follow some of the conventions set by later games. I could say a lot about it, especially if I got into it’s connectivity with RBY, Stadium, and Stadium 2, but I’ll just say it’s still one of the highlights of the franchise, and a contender for greatest sequel of all time. Every fan of the Pokémon should play Crystal at least once.
This will probably get buried but I got a few of em for ya.
Syndicate Wars: Game was mind blowing for the time it was released.
Black and White 1/2: I know, more Peter Molyneaux. Everything else has been mentioned.
Jade Cocoon 1: Not 2. One was extremely unique and you won’t find another game like it. It’s the coolest monster merging game I’ve seen and has an endless dungeon.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: It’s old but not old. Went open source and has been developed over some time by the community. It’s much more newbie friendly these days.
Warlords Battlecry 3: Holy cow the races, persistent hero progression in an RTS. It’s age shows though.
That’s all I can pull of the top of my head right now that I haven’t seen mentioned, though I didn’t skim every single comment.
Edit: Just remembered Tyrian existed. Oldschool Schmup that had a good SP campaign and multiplayer.
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