What games can you recommend that didn't get the appreciation that they deserved?
I’ve been recently been thinking about Arkane Studio’s Prey which is a immersive sim, with a pretty good rogue like dlc, that probably has one of the strongest hooks of any game I’ve played. If you liked Halflife, System Shock, or Deus Ex it’s definitely worth a play.
Are there any titles that might not have been commercially successful that you feel everyone should give a shot?
Hardspace Shipbreaker. You’re a wage slave (literally) in a space dock, taking apart ships and throwing the bits into the right bins. Doesn’t sound super fun, but it is. 1) You’re chopping up ships but you get to use LASERS!!! and the energy grappling hook. So satisfying. 2) The physics is 90% spot on. You’re in 3d, but it’s not purely inertial. There’s a dampening field that slows things down, so it doesn’t get too outta hand. There are a couple of other quirks, but they’re not hugely impacting. 3) The soundtrack is perfect. It’s a very bluesy, banjo style for a very bluecollar type job. 4) The voice acting is amazing. Every line from Weaver is just perfect. You hate Hal with a passion (you’re supposed to). The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
I’ve played it thru twice. The first time as-is, but the 2nd time I shut off the “15 minute shifts” option. I think that breaks things up too much. I think open-shift is better. I bought the vinyl soundtrack. I’m not a huge fan of vinyl, but this is the right style of music that would benefit from it.
I remeber playing Jedi fallen order and seeing ships being broken down like that during the opening mission. I thought that I would rather be doing that and then hardspace showed up on steam a few days later. It’s been on my wish list for way too long, definitely going to pick it up for my next game
I’ve just recently said that on Lemmy - I said to a friend I wanted a game where you broke down and scrapped star wars ships, and they pointed me towards this game. It was recently on sale so I picked it up. It’s been an absolute blast and exactly what I was looking for (though I still wish I could do it with SW ships). I also agree about the shift timer, so thankfully there’s an option for that.
The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
Which annoyingly, is the reason I bounced off the game. Breaking down ships is fun. That’s literally the whole reason I want to play the game. The story wants me to hate playing the game and won’t let me play until I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
Capitalism is pretty bad, so it didn’t bother me. It was refreshing to hear it in a narrative. Game devs don’t usually get to say stuff like that, so it was nice.
Yeah, but you don’t need to tell me that in an unskippable cutscene (the fact that it’s unskippable is the part I have an issue with) and ironically, the gameplay is so compelling that I absolutely do not mind just wasting my life away toiling under these ridiculous work conditions.
Edit: Let’s be real here, the game didn’t need a story. Just set me up with a ridiculous amount of debt and let me just break down ship after ship. They could have just added more ships and systems than make a story that people actively would work against.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues. For example the cyberpunk genre is an indictment of many things including the reckless pursuit of technology and corporate super powers. Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
That’s not to disparage 2077 just an acknowledgement of the reality of triple A game development. They’re making products most of the time rather than art. Their worms can still be enjoyable but rarely get to make scathing statements.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues.
Lol, seek to resolve issues? They’re not the government. They’re art. Art critiques things and suggests people to change things. It came write laws.
Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
The devs and writers don’t make the business decisions. Wish they did, they’d have a better product, imo. The marketing is done by someone else who the devs, usually, have no control over.
From my perspective producing art can be pivotal in impacting change, good or bad by swaying public sentiment. I’m not claiming that they can pull out the old quill and ink and pen up some statues, but that voicing distaste is the first step in enacting change.
Voicing thought alone doesn’t impact change, but neither does enacting laws, you also require enforcement. But laws enforced without public support don’t last forever.
On the last paragraph I think we had a disconnect, I had assumed you said devs in reference to an entire studio. But it seems you were strictly speaking about the individual of that occupation in a larger studio.
It still is a little lib-ish. The game goes to great lengths at showing Silverhand (and anyone blaming capitalism) as being a bit too harsh or off their rocker, with V explicitly mocking his leftist opinions in dialogue many times (replaying the game, once during an elevator ride, another after dealing with the chapel in pacifica). The game is very on the nose about blaming corporations but spares the rod when talking about the system.
Underappreciated for sure, but to be fair, it’s super repetitive. If they’d added a secondary component or loop where you could black market trade or participate in the economy of the game some how to drown out the monotony of breaking the same ships over and over, I’d have played it more.
For me right now, Shadows of Doubt. It is an early access game and it’s got a fair bit of jank, but it’s crazy how unique it is. It had a week or so of popularity and then it fell off. The devs just released an update for it too!
If you like the immersive sim genre, might I also recommend Cruelty Squad and Gloomwood. Those two have very unique aesthetics and really cool mechanics.
I'm not sure how successful it was, but there's a fun horror (mostly) walking sim called Apsulov: End of Gods. It's based on Norse mythology and has a refreshing take on Loki, especially if you're tired of everything Marvel has put out. The visuals are great too.
There's another one called Close to the Sun that's essentially, "what would happen if Nikola Tesla built a giant fucking cruise ship for the world's smartest minds at the time and then everything goes wrong?". The story is really interesting, and I've been hoping for a sequel.
I don't think Murdered: Soul Suspect did very well from what I remember when it came out, but I had a ton of fun playing that game. They could have done way more as far as mechanics go, and some aspects are pretty cheesy, but I'm a sucker for detective games and trying to piece together information.
Speaking of which, The Painscreek Killings is so good. You play as a reporter who's tasked with invesigating a cold case in a tiny abandoned town. I really liked this one because there is absolutely no hand holding when it comes to playing detective. You absolutely have to figure everything out yourself. Back when I used to stream, I had a regular viewer tell me it was their favorite game that I played, because listening to me trying to figure out the story and my next step was like listening to one of those old crime radio shows. It's one of the few games I wish I could play again for the first time, since I know the outcome now and how everything fits together. The developer is supposed to be making another similar game, so I'm eager to see how that goes.
The year this was being shown at E3, I got my best friend in as my ‘photographer’ for the show under a press pass, and set up a bunch of private gameplay demos of games (by this point nothing interesting was shown on the show floor anymore).
When we went to our appointment at the Square Enix booth, they immediately ushered us into a room with nothing but two Japanese guys, and were like “ok, go ahead and ask your questions.”
Apparently they thought we’d sat through an earlier gameplay demo which they never set up, and we were suddenly sitting with the game director and their translator for a half hour interview about a title I hadn’t even seen or knew anything about - and an interview conducted through a translator on top of that (and I’d intentionally been trying to avoid ending up in interviews in the first place).
It was one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had in life, and very much reminded me of the times I’d be in a book discussion in high school for a reading assignment I hadn’t done, frantically grabbing on to any thread that seemed legit and running with it.
Yeah, completely different markets. My friend bought the wrong one and for months he wouldn’t try outer wilds because it “wasn’t his sort of game” when it totally was.
the PC version is pretty fucked in the “feel great” department. the engine itself renders frames at arbitrary framerates just fine, but the animations (including the camera) only update at up to 60 FPS, with no in-game option to cap the frame rate to that animation rate. vsync doesn’t work properly with high refresh rates, and external framerate limiters aren’t able to get a good match. it’s borderline impossible to get this game to feel smooth with proper frame pacing, even with a vrr display.
best i could get was to use external tools to force the game to set my monitor to 60 hz, then turn on vsync in game, but this added a ton of input lag
Seems to me like Outer Wilds outshone Outer Worlds if anything. I never hear anyone talking of Outer Worlds anymore, but Outer Wilds is still brought up as one of the greatest indie games out there.
Mannnn. Outer Wilds is so freaking good. I had put it off for a while, but then last year I decided to go through it. It managed to be the perfect game at the perfect time. Raw intrigue and fascination turned into somehow helping me cope with the loss of my sister and dad who I had lost very recently at the time.
I love the outer worlds, it has such a unique style to it, very much fallout humor in space with a little bit of arcanum thrown in for good measure. IMHO outer worlds > Starfield, when I saw that neon was just one long hallway with a few neon lights and signs, I knew what I was getting into and just stopped playing. Starfield has no identity, it’s bland, space combat is annoying at best, and it’s just an unoptimized mess. Outer worlds is unique, and when I see it I know exactly what it is, I can’t say the same for Starfield.
Agreed on the holy trinity. But even though you’re devout to the holy trinity, sometimes there are temptations.
Illusion of Gaia is that cool friend you haven’t seen in a long time who shows up, and you bond and reminisce like you haven’t been separated at all. Then you discover Illusion of Gaia has friends you haven’t met, and they roll together in a cool club called The Soul Blazer Trilogy.
My favorite thing about Illusion of Gaia has to be the fact that the manual contained a complete walkthrough of the game, at least in the North American release. Unless it was the same energy as “the dumb Americans (who invented the genre and introduced it to the East) don’t understand RPGs, so we’ll make Mystic Quest really simple and dumbed down for them” I don’t know why they did that.
Also, I was like 13 when I got my used copy of Soul Blazer…is there a more melancholy game on the SNES?
Wildermyth is a lovely combination of storytelling and tactical combat. My only significant gripe is that I want more of it: More tales, more character customization… just more. (Although I now see that a cosmetic pack is available; I’ll have to check it out.)
Gigantic caught my attention when I was looking for an Overwatch alternative, because of the art and the praise from fans. I wish development hadn’t shut down before I had a chance to play it. (I hear there’s an unofficial client and server out there somewhere, though, so maybe I’ll get to at least try the work-in-progress that was never finished.)
Wildermyth is just so endearing I loved my time with it.
Taking the same character through each campaign was pretty fun like I was making a serialised demi-god: Doofus and the mountain horde, Doofus and the ancient threat etc. Because characters age though the campaign, it has interesting implications in the world lore. Like we’re an archivist document the various legends of Doofus, acknowledging where they contradict and maybe speculating on how the differences in each culture’s legend of Doofus reflects back.
Downside is I optimised the fun out of the combat in always having Doofus at the center of the strategy, each encounter then played out the same.
Eternal Darkness is one of my favourite GameCube games. I feel like it might be long enough ago that they could do a remake with modern sanity effects.
And Halo Reach is my favourite Halo game, loved it.
Nightdive Studios (they, among other titles, remastered System Shock, which has received pretty good reviews) wanted to remaster Eternal Darkness, but Nintendo - who owns Eternal Darkness - doesn't want that to happen.
Also, the original developers of Eternal Darkness want to create a spiritual sequel, but that seems to be... an eternal project. Check out Shadow of the Eternals, if you want to follow that project. There's a gameplay video from like 2013 or 2014.
They have tried twice. And yes, they still want to make it happen. But last time I heard the team made a game they need to support for few years (some kind of online game), so it's going to take some time before they can try again.
Obligatory: Roguelike (well, Roguelite but that starts getting into the berlin bullshit). Rogue is a class in tabletop RPGs and a historic game. Rouge is a bunny rabbit in sonic and a kind of makeup.
That aside, here are a few off the top of my head:
Distance: Mostly a “beat the clock” style racing game in the vein of trackmania, although the synchronous MP with collision is a great time at a party. But it also has a weirdly good singleplayer campaign with both a narrative and some solid mechanics and set pieces. Also a ridiculous steam workshop presence
Tales of Maj’Eyal probably doesn’t belong here as I think it has been ridiculously successful for a game made by a small team and consistently comes up in discussions by anyone who is aware of what “the berlin interpretation” is. But it feels like it is almost completely ignored in the overall cultural zeitgeist when roguelikes/lites comes up. Which is a shame since TOME is very much a roguelike (technically lite, but… meh) with some solid design concepts. The vast majority of runs feel like they were “worth it” and even the early leveling has enough variety and wrenches that it feels less like you lost an hour of your life when you wipe and more like you get to do the Sand Worm again. Some of the unlocks are complete bullshit (although, I want to say the special magic trees were just made “free” because everyone hated it?), but it is generally the kind of game where you can work toward something with every run.
UFO: Aftermath/Aftershock (fuck Afterlight). Back in the dark ages between Silent Storm (WOOO) and the 2012 nu-XCOM, there were a lot of eurojank games in the genre. And while I don’t think UFO Aftermath was “good”, I do think it was competent. But mostly? It is probably the best Stargate SG1 game ever made. Because the devs were trying to cash in on that Jagged Alliance craze and made the human weapons stage a lot longer. So you might find yourself in an endgame with a few G36s backing up your plasma rifles as you fend off the obligatory base invasion. Aftershock, and especially Afterlight, lost a lot of this charm (because they are years later timeline wise) but were still fun
Silent Storm. Sorry, Silent Mother Fucking Storm, if we want to be specific. Alternate history WW2 where you play as a special organization for the Allies or Axis that are investigating a third party who have the potential to turn the war itself and blah blah blah. Mostly it is probably one of the best balanced JA2 style AP-based strategy games out there (just… get a save editor because the leveling/training is broken) with an emphasis on line of sight, trajectories, and full destruction of terrain. The kind of game where you might spend six “turns” getting your scout into position so that you can have your sniper plug a person from behind a wall, your machine gunner unload on people sleeping in a barracks, and your grenadier to… make the guard tower not exist anymore. All without ever directly targeting an enemy because you are fully operating based on magic radio commands or whatever. Again, this probably doesn’t belong here since anyone who liked JA2 back in the day was talking about this but it more or less fell off the face of the earth in favor of nu-XCOM. And I feel like the genre would be pretty revolutionized if people remembered this existed.
Thanks for pointing out the rogue typo, I use swipe texting on my phone so I occasionally get stuff wrong and I tend not to proof read as much as I aught to. Either way it’s fixed now.
Visual novels absolutely count, their different format allows them to tell stories in unique ways. This post is for everyone who wants an opportunity to share the titles they never get to talk about.
Hmm, I don’t think so, maybe there are hints from one game to another as in easter eggs, as Hotel Dusk and Last Window are made by the same company, but I haven’t seen anything related to that.
I will get the remake as well just to support this and see more of Kyle Hyde! (And I have never played Another Code games, so that would be interesting as well).
“A Robot Named Fight is a Metroidvania roguelike focused on exploration and item collection. Explore a different, procedurally-generated labyrinth each time you play and discover randomized power-ups to traverse obstacles, find secrets and explode meat beasts.”
It’s such a good game, almost everything is perfect IMO, I have over 200 hours in it and still go back to it every now and then. The lone developer also made the source code public a while ago, so there are mods, forks, spinoffs etc. being worked on.
Definitely didn’t get the appreciation it deserved on launch. I seem to remember it was launched right after that year’s Battlefield and right before that year’s CoD. Terrible decision. It definitely stood the test of time though and is very highly regarded now.
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