No worries. There are lots of kinds of games we used to get a lot of back in the day, but their successors or spiritual successors don’t get the kind of attention or marketing that the industry giants do. Often times, if you miss a certain kind of game, just start searching for “modern games like X”, and you’ll probably find it.
I started playing at the end of 2015. I saw the game go through a bunch of different forms. The people pulling higher tier weapons into lower tier bots were mostly doing all-in strategies around that weapon, because they didn’t have enough budget left for much else, IIRC. But it was going to be mathematically impossible to support to 10 tiers of 10v10 matches as the game went on anyway, and it became a really fun competitive game with no tiers in early 2017. Then they went for some kind of half-assed return to tiers at the end of 2018 that made no one happy.
The presence of tiers at all was what bothered me. The version I liked most did have light and heavy blocks with tradeoffs so you could have that depth without wreaking havoc on matchmaking by splitting your player base into 10 different pools.
The loot boxes came along with the beginning of the changes that really spoke to me. Not the loot boxes themselves, but the pivot away from grinding for objectively better parts and toward a flatter structure where everything had its use case. Of course, it sucks that neither of us can play either of those versions anymore.
Two of my favorites are Vagante and Streets of Rogue. Vagante is a great challenge with all sorts of build variety and interesting choices to make along the way. Streets of Rogue is comedy and chaos. Both are a great time either single player or in co-op, either local or online.
The new C&C is Tempest Rising. The new Neverwinter Nights has a variety of answers, from Baldur’s Gate 3 to Solasta to Pillars of Eternity, depending on what you’re looking for. Commandos has spawned an entire genre at this point; not only is there a new Commandos coming soon that looks good, we just had a series of three and a half games from the sadly-now-defunct Mimimi that all fit the bill, as well as that game Sumerian Six just last year.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll check it out. I’ve got Phantom Fury from this past year, and even with a ton of criticism heaped toward it, it was still in the ballpark of what I wanted to scratch this itch.
Games of that era were frequently made a dozen or so people in 18 months. Whether that passes some arbitrary line in the sand for what counts as “indie” or not, I don’t much care; it’s just a market segment that’s been left behind by AAA that I’m waiting for someone to pick up the mantle on. Most genres that AAA have left behind have been filled by now, but FPS games that fit the mold of what we got between ~1998 and ~2016 are still an itch I need scratched. From what I can see on the horizon, there’s Fallen Aces in early access that I’d like to see once it’s 1.0, Core Decay going for a Deus Ex sort of thing, and then Mouse: P.I. for Hire, but I’d still like to see the full package with co-op and deathmatch modes like we got back in the day.
I can only speak for the games I’m most familiar with, and apparently that same problem exists with how these nominees are chosen too, just like the Keighleys. For a second, I thought perhaps the people suggesting the nominees had not heard of Indika, because Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was nominated for narrative and Indika was not. The fighting game category doesn’t hold up very well either, because while the Khaos Reigns expansion is a bit of a stretch, Underdogs is even more of a stretch. Sure, maybe the people submitting nominees haven’t heard of Diesel Legacy (which would be my pick for fighting game of the year), but could you at least be aware of Rivals of Aether II? They didn’t even get Under Night on the list!
They wanted to release it 6 months ago, rumor has it. But they postponed it to shore up supply to meet launch demand, give extra development time to its key launch games, or to squeeze the last bit of juice out of the Switch 1 – or some combination of those things.
The Switch 2 will do just fine, better even, compared to its next closest competition.