Mario Kart Wii is very cool, it has some of the best tracks and very fun physics. And I know it’s been a bit of joke online, but the wheel style motion controls were actually fine too.
Though I understand why they toned down the tricks and nerfed bikes in 7 and 8. They were fun, but a bit much.
I’ve played several Shiren games (1 on DS, 3 on Wii, 5 and 6 on Switch) and I recommend Shiren 6 (Mystery Dungeons of Serpentcoil Island).
5 kinda went too far from its roguelike roots and feels too grindy, with too many ways to escape safely, especially easy ways to undo your death indefinitely.
6 is a lot more fun to me and makes good runs and crazy builds more special again.
For a very good introduction to the series, if you can play it, the port of Shiren 1 on DS is great and already has a lot of what makes those games fun. There is also a rom hack translation for the original on Super Famicom (that one only existed in Japanese), but I’ve not played that one much.
Not sure which game you’re thinking about, there are lots of shitty Christian shovelware from that era, but Konami’s Noah’s Ark has nothing to do with it. And very little to do with the biblical story really.
I had that game on the NES (and I’m not in a Christian or religious family at all).
It’s a real game, the arcade-y kind that tries to kill you all the time. It’s quite hard.
Can’t watch now so not sure what’s in the video, but Lands of Lore 2 was quite fancy.
Had a parchment scroll-like UI with animated burning transitions, did creepy chants at you to test stereo sound.
Funny thing, it tested your CD-ROM drive speed too (it used to matter). Of course on a modern PC, you’d have the whole game on your (much faster) hard drive and simulate an optical drive with DOSBox or something. The installer runs its test and literally says : “Wow, your drive is fast!”
I’d say LoZ: Echoes of Wisdom tried to be like this, unfortunately it’s a bit bland. Might be worth checking if you haven’t yet though.
For something I enjoyed more, CrossCode is a fun top-down action RPG, but it’s more of a sci-fi/fantasy thing and a bit more on the action side. It does have extensive dungeons with lots of puzzles though (often relying on switches, timing, movable blocks and clever ways to use your ball-shooting weapon).
We had the original. The logical puzzles are quite clever. My sisters and I got a bit obsessed with it and completed it together.
Yes, you can complete it, by bringing ALL the possible combinations to the village. That’s 625, and you can save 16 on each trip, if you don’t lose any on the way.
There’s a short congratulations video if you save them all. I was honestly surprised they made one, given the commitment it required.
I’m not sure why there hasn’t been a business simulator where you could live up the glamorous, extremely vicious, exploitative, and horrible life of a movie studio owner in Old Hollywood.
The Movies, 2005.
Technically not just old Hollywood, it goes through the 20th century with technological advances and world events that change movie trends.
Since it’s a business management game from Bullfrog Lionhead, it did have some grit to it, though mostly sarcastic rather than very dark.
I welcome new takes on this though, the movies didn’t age well in some aspects (aspect ratio most notably, ah ah ). I know of Blockbuster Inc that tried to remake that already but the reviews are not great. I’ll try this one.
Not single-player, but snipperclips is good, relaxed puzzle fun.
Goals are visual and easy to understand, each player controls a shape and they can cut each other to try and fit a predefined “hole” together. There are some physics puzzles based on cutting your shape in clever ways too.
Mistakes have no consequence and often lead to funny interactions. You can’t really lose, you just reset your shape and try again.
One of the first VR games I played was No Man’s Sky, on base PS4. Very low res and frame rate, teleport movement possible on foot but obviously not while flying spaceships. And I may have tried spinning a bit (that’s a good trick).
Got very sick, very fast.
Nowadays I’m mostly fine playing continuous movement, even relatively fast-paced one. Tunnel effect helps, when it’s available.
The only problems are on badly designed games (like those with forced, unpredictable “cinematic” camera movement, don’t do that in VR for fuck’s sake).
I play a lot of rhythm games, and I do play a lot of Beat Saber specifically now. Ragnarock and Pistol Whip (well this one is rhythm-adjacent) are two other VR music games I enjoy.
But I’ve never had a worse case of sore arms than back when I played Donkey Konga on the gamecube for the first time. I was hooked and played for hours. I didn’t notice anything while playing, but my arms were killing me for the whole night after that .