For games as a whole, I will go way back to Medal of Honor: Frontline. All the Medal of Honor games are about war (mostly WW2) but this one really stuck with me for its depiction of storming the beach on D-Day. You really did have to sprint from cover to cover where there was barely any while soldiers around you get mowed down by MGs from the bunkers ahead. It was intense and one wrong move would have you annihilated. There’s definitely a long list of military shooters depicting battlefields where you work your way through from cover to cover, but this one was one of the earliest I can think of that did it well, depicted a real battle, and really drove home the absolute insanity of the situation those soldiers went through.
On the complete opposite end there’s always the dynasty warriors games where you melee fight through battlefields full of soldiers, but those are ridiculous for being completely unrealistic in the process. However, they do all retell the classic stories of real battles that took place between the ancient Chinese battles, and for the ones I played pretty much every level involved navigating a huge battlefield to turn the tide between two armies clashing as you went.
Oh hahaha I know them. Yeah they suck, havent released anything good since like… Fallout 3? Maybe Doom 2016? I do mix uo the dev and the publisher in this case but wow the latest fallout games and starfield were utterly tragic
Finding time for them has become more difficult. The kids dont typically play great games. Its fun to play some things with them but by the 3rd lego game I was done, its so repetitive. I keep playing stuff like that to entertain them, not really to entertain me. Playing more adult games requires setting up a separate space or waiting for kiddos to be in bed, and man I’m too old to stay up so late. I still enjoy them and haven’t grown out of them completely, but in a sense I sort of have just because of competing responsibilities that win the fight for my time.
Populous The Beginning! I never played the other populous games but I have some very fond memories of this one. As a kid I just loved using spells to reshape the worlds and mess with the enemy AI. Dropping a volcano in the middle of their village and watching them go nuts was always so much fun.
Tunic was shockingly good. Looks like its for little kids but there is a lot of surprises and neat puzzles tucked away in there. Absolutely worth checking that out
I guess I don’t care because I never traded in this game, but this seems like a major step backwards after 7 years. For many people I used to play with trading was a major part of their gameplay loop, I used to give my loot boxes to my friends routinely because I was too lazy to do it. I will hazard a guess that this is purposefully pissing off remaining fans and a sequel will be announced soon.