My point is that I described the same distress you’re describing using the same terminology you did. I didn’t accuse you of anything, I just strongly disagreed with your takeaway that this story describes something positive.
“It’s okay to fail” seems like it would have been a more valuable life lesson than “it feels good to beat a really hard video game” and it concerns me that you’re so okay with the amount of trauma this entertainment product caused him.
The fact that you’re sharing this story of years of repeated meltdowns caused by a video game and calling it an example of games being beneficial is pretty surreal.
Andromeda has the biggest difference I’ve ever seen between low graphics settings and high ones. I wonder if the lack of recognition for its beautiful environments isn’t mainly that they just weren’t beautiful on most people’s systems.
The ammo system rewarded you with ammo for the opposite color of beam you were using, so you are actually totally free to ignore the power beam most of the time without running into supply issues. Even when you wanted to only use one color, like the light beam when you’re on Dark Aether, use the one you don’t want in combat to shoot crates and plants and stuff to farm good ammo for the fights.
It’s less that they’re easy to get without buying them with real money and more that they’re supposed to be acquired slowly and, when relevant, used sparingly.
My frustration with the discourse is that so many who see the game’s general lack of convenience see that through the filter of these microtransactions and assume ill intent on part of the actual game design when really it’s just genuinely idiosyncratic like the original was.
The truth is, if you’re the sort to be tempted by these purchases in the first place then you’re not the sort of person who would enjoy the game even if you do buy them. I don’t know whether that makes them better or worse, honestly, but if you buy the game it at least doesn’t rub your nose in them like Assassin’s Creed.
Games that I’m confident the average person would love:
Burnout (3 and/or Revenge)
Tony Hawk’s Underground (definitely 1 and not 2)
Shadow of the Colossus (I’m otherwise avoiding games with HD versions for modern platforms but I specifically think this game is weirdly better with PS2-level graphics and performance)
Ultimate Spider-Man (Spider-Man 2 had better swinging but I think this is the stronger overall package)
Games with a more niche appeal but, dammit, I want you to play them anyways:
Steambot Chronicles
Shadow of Destiny
Games that felt like a big deal at the time but I haven’t actually played since I was a kid so take with a grain of salt:
Evergrace
Way of the Samurai (1 and/or 2)
Stuntman
Def Jam Vendetta & Fight for NY
Mercenaries 1
NBA Street (2 was my favorite but all three were great)
NFL Street (only played 1, presumably 2 and 3 are also great)
A game I know is bad but I want you to play it so that the voice clips will be burned into your brain also:
West of Loathing. The RPG stuff is great and the comedy is great but really the main strength is I just enjoy reading its dialogue. The vocabulary and sentence construction have a real sincerity for the setting contrasted against the silliness of the rest of it that makes both parts hit harder.
Similarly, the first three Monkey Island games which achieve that same injection of the heartfelt into the wacky by way of their gorgeous art and music.
But as far as the joy of just doing something it’s hard to beat the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, to just be dropped into a level and be told “do cool stuff for a while”.
I feel like these conversations get dominated by games with the fewest explicit flaws rather than the ones that have the most to offer but it’s my firm belief that no piece of art can be truly great which is not also kind of annoying. Not because annoyingness is inherent to greatness but because greatness and annoyingness are both the products of an underlying willingness to take creative risks.
So in that spirit, my answer is Steambot Chronicles.
I actually totally sympathize with that critic from your clip and don’t think there’s anything dishonest or otherwise cognitively dissonant about that review. There’s nothing I can spend more time complaining about than something I really enjoy because I naturally fixate on things that stand out about a given experience and the flaws are what stands out in something that’s overall very good.
I would never in a million years rate that particular game a 9.1/10 but that’s just me and the critic valuing different aspects of design different amounts.
I’ve absolutely died as a result of bad dialogue choices but that’s just role playing; sometimes something you might choose to do can only logically result in your death and I, for one, am happy to be given that choice. I’ve straight up deleted a character profile with lots of progress because there was no in-character way not to do the thing that would kill me in dialogue. That game over is just that character’s canonical ending as far as I’m concerned. He couldn’t not shit-talk that god, that god couldn’t not erase him from existence out of spite. If the game had not provided me with an option to shit-talk the god, I would have been annoyed that none of the dialogue options were true to my character.
That’s why the phrasing was “from the caste of people” in the clarification. It was just a cultural difference: his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t.
When he is briefly enslaved, it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to, it’s because he was that kind of person and simply hadn’t been treated that way before.