For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
spoiler
I knew it was an English cipher from the beginning. Nobody ever goes full conlang, as much as I would love that. I got as far as deducing it was phonemic, as the same glyphs kept appearing before cleartext words, which I assumed were “a/an” and “the”, and the way “the” was written made me think it was two glyphs, one for the <th> and one for <e>. The last thing I got before giving up and looking it up online was one of hte ghosts standing next to the well in the village and repeating the same word three times. Of course he’s saying “well well well”.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
Horizon Zero Dawn - From what I saw from the marketing seemed just odd. Relatively primitive looking humans fighting animal shaped robots. It just looked a bit too gimmicky. Several years after it’s initial release I saw that it was on sale and gave it a shot. I was genuinely surprised by the depth of the story. It was much more emotionally impactful than I expected and the story now feels almost prescient.
This is the one I was going to say - I got it second hand somewhere, on a whim because I had a voucher to spend. Had never even heard of it before, but boy oh boy, what an amazing decision that turned out to be!
Funny you mention HZD, I just fired it back up a couple weeks ago and completed the main story last weekend.
I had the opposite experience. I was looking forward to it and disliked it. I still haven’t completed it yet.
If you don’t mind me asking, what specifically didn’t you like about the game?
I found it a bit confusing. It wasn’t really explained what the optional weapons were. I found a few guides online but really hoped the game would guide a bit better. Also the fact that you need to blow bits off the enemies to make them weaker wasn’t fully explained.
Also didn’t really gel with the story. I put it on easy to make progress and got bored.
Not saying it’s a bad game. Just not for me.
Fair enough. There were a lot of weapons and variations of the weapons and I’d agree that some things weren’t explained well or at all. But for me part of the fun was experimenting and figuring out what worked and what didn’t.
As for the story, it really didn’t click for me either until later in the game when the how and why of that world became clearer. Prior to that it felt like just another derivative (post-post-)post-apocalyptic story. But from that point on I was fully invested, which made the ending all the more impactful for me.
Maybe I’ll give it another go. And if I can find this thread again in 5 years when I finish it… I’ll let you know :)
Thanks for the feedback.
This game was a real rollercoaster for me. I had low expectations for HZD and became obsessed with completing it. I was then totally hyped for HFW and gave up halfway through, utterly disapointed.
Haven’t played the sequel yet. Waiting to get it on sale if/when it shows up on GOG. That said, I don’t have big expectations. Sequels rarely live up to the original.
I, on the other hand from the person above, really like both games. I don’t really know why some folks hated Forbidden West. Even if it is a little “worse” than the first game (and I don’t really subscribe to that), that still makes it one of the best action/adventure games out there. I ended up getting the platinum in both games by the end.
I agree with you. I don’t get the hate. I preferred the first one but that’s not because of anything wrong with the second one. Both really good games.
Yeah I was similarly VERY skeptical by the premise but was pleasantly surprised when I discovered what was actually going on.
These three jump out at me. I went blind on all three.
- Portal 2 - I genuinely had no idea what it was about when I started, and I certainly did not expect comedy.
- Titanfall 2 - Bought it on release because I wanted a solo FPS game. Amazing. I wish I could experience it for the first time again.
- Spiritfarer - I cried. A lot.
Outer wilds, went in blind (as you should) was not disappointed.
I have become an Outer Wilds evangelist. One of my favorite games hands down.
I went in to this blind and ended up quitting after a couple hours because there was no save ability and the checkpoint system was useless.
I learned months later, from my son-in-law, that it’s a time-loop game. Tried it again with this knowledge and had a MUCH better experience.
So, my advice is to go in 99% blind. The player should know it’s a time-loop game before they start.
Most recently, Slay the Princess. It’s a VN, and I typically do not play VNs, but wow. It’s actually quite amazing and I can’t actually tell you why because it’d spoil it.
I get pleasantly surprised all the time though, since I like to use a randomizer to choose my next game sometimes. I think one of the other experiences was the Rusty Lake games. I got them in a bundle and since it was a puzzler, I had my friend join me in comms and it was… very strange. But we will use references from those games as insider nods to one another.
I love slay the princess, such a great game and a great story. A good one for video games as art.
If you haven’t done so yet, the next time you start the game, stay in the start menu for a while
:)
:o
Time to do another run later tonight, too, I suppose… lol. Thanks!
Botw it was my first zelda game I played, never expected myself to enjoy the game that much.
I got pretty annoyed at the chorus of “People only say they like it because of the Zelda title”. I hadn’t cared about Zelda for decades at that point. It was just a well-done, well-paced open world game that I found myself openly devoting dozens of hours to.
I came here looking for this answer. I’m actually replaying it right now on my Steam Deck via Cemu and having a ton of fun. It was also my first Zelda game and I had zero expectations. It just blew me away and it still does all these years later.
Hollow Knight and by extension, Elden Ring.
I was always rather nervous to play Souls games, and these games are challenging as hell.
I’m not very far in either game — having just beaten the first boss in HK and I just beat Margit in Elden Ring.
But god, that rush when you beat a boss in either game is amazing. Took me about 8 tries to beat Margit and I was so excited when I won.
I can see why people love this genre now.
Hehe yeah, I was always put off on souls games because people described them as being hard, then when there wasn’t alot of choice early on in VR games, I picked up a souls-like since it was the closest I could get to a long-form rpg at the time. And it wasn’t that hard at all, but people were still complaining about how hard it was all the time… so I tried other souls games on desktop, and they were fine too. So I picked up the actual dark souls… this is what people were complaining about? It’s like, not even megaman difficulty?
That was when I learned that it’s a good thing there wasn’t much internet yet back when I was playing megaman games, or I might have never tried them either. And also it turns out I like “hard” games, to me that is like the whole point of games. If you finish something first try, then you didn’t get better at anything.
Slime rancher and slime rancher 2 were shockingly wonderful experiences. Completely different than my typical type of game. Usually I just play M rated open world RPGs.
I played it for a bit and it just seemed like a collection game. Fun but no depth. Did I miss out on something important?
Hellblade. Senua’s sacrifice
I don’t particularly like “medieval” games. Which I thought this was. It isn’t. But I played it because I heard somewhere it was a psychological game. It is.
It also was cheap when I bought it. Like $10.
I really like it. I ended up watching all the dev log videos on it. I have a background in psychology and was rather impressed by how many things in the game are based on the perception distortions common in schizophrenia.
Like the mask thing is part of that too. The pattern matching from perspectives. Seeing faces in trees or rocks (paraedolia). That’s all part of the condition.
The story itself was also very good and it is a personal story of her journey.
However that said. Hellblade 2 was awful in every way that made the first one good. Bad puzzles. No real personal journey. Story was garbage. And very little player autonomy. No exploration. Fixed speeds and at the start of every single enemy encounter, the enemy, a man, beats the piss out of you.
Almost to the point it felt exploitive, and for people who like watching men beat up women.
Sad to see the 2nd so terrible. But the first is brilliant. It’s also the perfect length. Not too long.
The first game was a trip. Played it in a pitch black room with noise canceling headphones. It’s wild how quickly I got used to hearing Senua’s voices. World felt empty when I stopped playing. I still go back and listen to that one cutscene every couple months
- Slay the Spire. I have played quite a few roguelikes before StS but I never played much card-based games at all, due to me never playing boardgames or TCGs… so this was obviously a new experience for me. Almost 1000 hours on record now with the game, cleared A20H with every base game character (and did A20H on almost every Packmaster pack)… which should speak for itself
- Dancerush Stardom, that funny shuffle game. This is Konami’s attempt at making a beginner- and normie-friendly rhythm game… which never quite caught on (aside from random YouTube recordings having several million views). I wasn’t particularly fit & never knew about this game before at all, so it was a pleasant surprise to me that I liked it so much. I have 5-star cleared many of the hardest songs in this game so
I do not play VNs, nor am i interested in them (i despise fan service), but i randomly played Katawa Shoujo a long time ago and it was such a sweet little game that i really fell in love with it.
Sometimes, i listen to the music to revisit that world.I learned so many things about myself with that game. Mistakes I would have made in real relationships had I not been taught by a game that it was actually “the bad ending”. I thought I was helping, but I was hurting.
the binding of issac, looked lame at first, but i put 500+ hours on it
One of my friends played flash version and tried to influence us to play it too. We were all like "Shooting tears to dig in poop and find items? Nah, pass.
Then I stumbled upon a streamer who was playing Rebirth sometimes. Got myself a copy. Turns out the game is fucking epic.
Talos Principle 2. It’s a solid chamber puzzle game like Portal, but the philosophy audio logs were so good that they shifted my real world views into a less nihilistic place.
They just released an updated version of the first one. Few extra puzzles and some other updates. I bought it recently. Haven’t played it or the 2nd one. (But plan to). But just letting you know. It might be worth checking out.
Thanks!
My biggest complaint with TP2 is that, between the two games, they added forced TAA like so many other games. TAA introduces blurring that drives me into a rage. The original came out before all that and was great, so I’m not super excited to try the modified version, though I might grab it just to support them a little more.
What is TAA. ? I’m not sure what that is. Do you mean motion blurring or depth of field blurring ?
Temporal Anti-Aliasing. It’s a cheap and effective way to get rid of the jagged edges of a rendered image, but temporal effects like TAA and all of the other tools derived from it, like a lot of other AA options and most frame generation techniques, introduce blurring and shadow smearing.
I tried posting a three second clip from TP2 showing it clearly, but Voyager didn’t seem to like it. This post is an extreme example, but you can see it in most modern AAA games. Cyberpunk had it bad (another game I adore).
Ohhhh. Yes. I do know what you are talking about. I just forgot that abbreviation . I think the more modern ant aliasing “type” is called something else. I feel like there are multiple options on a lot of games (on steam at least) ??
Yeah I really don’t like the jagged edges. It’s Pretty common in all switch games. But if the resolution is already low and then you apply a basic blur fix , it just makes the resolution look even lower and a loss of details.
So there are trade offs. And there are more sophisticated ways to resolve the jagged edges that are less destructive to the quality.
I’ve not seen the motion fade effect before ,(the video you sent) but that would give me terrible motion sickness.
I’m not sure if this feature has been updated in the new version of the game. But maybe.
I watched a video about a month ago where a review went into depth on the changes. Made by someone who had played the original. They said it fixed a lot of things players had been complaining about.
Neon White. I got it free recently on PS Plus and just fired it up to see what it was like. I ended up getting all the A ranks on every level and got all of the hidden items. The soundtrack also slaps
BG3. Never played the first two, and I find some games like that have bad writing (like every bit of dialog feeling like it’s overstaying it’s welcome, being way to chatty and/or dull). I think I saw Cohh playing it (pretty sure that was my introduction to him) and I was blown away by the early access writing and mechanics. I bought the early access right away and was enthralled in it’s writing, the plot, the dynamic choices based on class, race, or deity choice, and the music. There used to be a lady sitting next to the waterfall in the grove that had a whole sob story and a music box. Seeing the thralls on the nautiloid and the implications of what it all meant… I was really sad the release was so different. Still very good, but wasn’t as good. But as it stands it is one of the few games I’ve actually completed, and I think it’s the only game I’ve actually completed multiple times. Needless to say I’m very looking forward to Divinity.
Then Expedition 33. When I first saw gameplay I really thought it was just another Persona clone. I thought that due to the menu layout in combat. Day it released, saw some gameplay and decided to take a risk and bought it. Before I even left for the expedition… I already told my friends it was GOTY, it just dethroned KCD2.
BG3 was my answer as well. I DNFed the Divinity games because they felt tedious; like I was being punished for every unresearched action. BG3 just had such great sound, gameplay, and character development that I couldn’t put it down.
Yeah, trying to work my way through DoS1 right now… I can see some of the DNA for sure, but I really need the NPC’s to just shut up half the time. Some of the combat isn’t as well-balanced. I’ve been told DoS2 is way better. But if I draw a regression line from DoS1 to BG3 and use that for expectations for the upcoming game… really hopeful!
Wuthering Waves.
It’s a gacha game so I went into it not expecting much, I was just looking for an action combat game with a party of characters and as it was “free” I figured why not give it a shot.
I’m 39 and have been playing games my entire life (probably wayyy too much) and yet this gacha game somehow is literally my favorite game I’ve ever played… I cried like 4 times during the story and side stories, everything (except the gacha) is amazing. The art, the music, the gameplay, I love it all. I was never expecting to love a gacha game so much lol
That Phrolova quest was so peak. The music was so good.
I haven’t played the story since 3.0 launch, but that was an experience.
You should definitely go through to 3.1
The story quest before this most recent one hurt, like I’m still sad weeks later. That was definitely one of the 4 times I cried playing the story lol
I want to, but I’ve been playing Pokémon ROMhacks to celebrate Pokémon week haha.
