For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Sorry in advance to people who hate talking about it but Dark Souls is a very paradoxical experience It can:
- Help you learn patience and awareness
- Help you learn not to stress over losses
- Help you learn that people have different experiences of enjoyment and understand your scope of interest in games.
I think that only works if you already have that in the first place though (and you already have enough mechanical skill to get anywhere in those games fast enough to get hooked)
Have made the mistake of introducing people who don’t really play videogames to games like Celeste before thinking it’ll help them improve but it only ends in frustration
Those first two are so true. I got around to Elden Ring recently, and I realized that losses I’ve taken and not sweated and how meticulously and carefully I approach each situation have been influenced by all the games that came before. I’m (relatively) kicking the crap out of it because I know how to play Souls games now because the series has been teaching me these exact things all along. I’ve offed quite a few bosses first try, and damn it feels good. It’s such a great series for giving you a sense of power through perseverance and awareness, rather than just grinding up the XP to trivialize everything like most other RPGs. Miyazaki really did strike gold with the formula. I hope there are way more Souls games coming in the future.
I failed hard at DS then, except for the last item on your list. I remember a friend who was really into it recommended it so much. I found it so ridiculously difficult I lost interest too quickly. But, I don’t have a problem if others enjoy it
Maybe give it another try sometime, I had the same initial reaction years ago, finally gave it a bigger shot after reading some basic tips and tricks, they’re such good and rewarding games imo
Bethesda games taught me to save at every opportunity
On the other hand, that taught me to use more than just quicksave. Too many instances of saving just before I die, setting me back hours.
quicksave
Literally every couple steps.
getting incredibly good at Quake back in the day made me good at basically any first person shooter game that you put in front of me
Also, the first time using a mouse for look/steer-ing. Before that (e.g. Doom 1/2 etc.) you just used the arrow keys.
Sekiro
Many games come down to finding some unbreakable combo of buttons or abilities and when you have that figured out you steamroll the game. To successfully finish Sekiro, you must be patient. Learn when to let your enemy attack, so that they leave themselves open or provide you with a chance to parry.
There’s no leveling up to get so strong you can thrash any boss, like in other souls games. You just have to learn the game mechanics and get good.
Sekiro really is the “Get Gud” of FromSoft games
I’m in the same boat. I had a PS1 when I was a kid and didn’t rediscover video games until a few years ago in my early 30s. I definitely appreciate games more as a form of self expression as an adult.
I definitely appreciate games more as a form of self expression
If Enderal isn’t already on your radar, I can’t give that game a high enough recommendation.
Basically an indie dev crew broke skyrim down to its most basic assets, then rebuilt a completely new game using them. AND IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD. Completely new lore / game universe (has nothing at all to do with elder scrolls, tamriel, etc), new voice acting, terrain, music, you name it.
Steers away from common story tropes to the point that there isn’t really an antagonist in the traditional sense - but it uses concepts, emotions, philosophies, etc as the driving force for the main story line and some of the larger quest chains.
This game is an absolute passion project by the devs, which is something we don’t see often now-a-days.
Note: link above is to the version that uses Skyrim SE’s assets (the 2016 re-release). If you have the original version of skyrim, use this link instead. If you own a different version of Skyrim, there might be a compatible version of Enderal here: https://sureai.net/games/enderal/
Fair warning: the children NPC voice acting is even worse than the kids in Skyrim. The TAI (toggle AI) command can shut them up without breaking them.
Fair warning 2: they redid combat. The OP shit in Skyrim, like the sneaky archer build, will get your ass beat to a pulp in Enderal. Make a save when you get to the point where you can spend some talent points, experiment with a few styles, and go from there.
a little bit like that for me. Early on, I always loved pvp. The question was which mmorpg would be worthwhile to me to invest the thousands of hours to grind a character. I didn’t want to end up grinding up and hating the game, which would be a huge waste of time. Studying all the candidates, I realised I wanted some key elements which would assure enjoyability:
- It had to have a commitment to RvR open team pvp;
- The devs had to show that commitment, preferably playing the game themselves regularly;
- It had to have combat abilities like my favourtie pvp game, NWN from 2002, which meant tab targeting; and
- The game had to prioritise gameplay and fun pvp balance, over gfx.
Only after finding an mmo meeting all the the above, did I slowly play the game and over time, realised that a solid RvR open pvp game actually taught a player about real life and its challenges. How to win, how to lose, how to have the right attitude to challenges, how to endure tough times, succeed during good times, what it meant to defeat an opponent, what it meant to die in battle, and so on. Hence, I have been playing Champions of Regnum for more than a decade, and still love the game.
Not that it’s much of a benefit today as RTS games are barely nonexistent. But StarCraft 2 taught me all about macro management. Spending them resources and building an economy.
Yeah, learning to perform a macro cycle while doing other stuff is really useful. I sometimes play AoE2 with friends, and I’m not very good at it, but if there’s one thing I can do, it’s spamming trash units in the late game.
Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament. In my opinion, these are still two of the greatest games of all time. You don’t get better because your character or weapon is better. You get better because you put in the practice. you improve your reflexes. You learn the arena. Every player starts every match on an even playing field. Every frag feels like an accomplishment.
I appreciate that modern shooters are trying to do something different with every iteration. But stuff like call of duty, overwatch, or destiny never captures that magic. In many ways, they felt more like slot machines.
Halo got close, but I always felt it was too slow. And also, I felt Tribes was the better series for online play that felt similar. 
Have you tried Diabotical
I did. I feel like it overpromised it underdelivered. Mostly, I’m not too thrilled about the character and weapon designs. There’s a lot of UI elements that were taken right from Overwatch. 
It’s certainly not bad. Just not what I crave.
Totally fair, the movement and customizable UI is great, but yes, some other areas were not so great. And the player base is just not big enough.
Yeah. I think there’s a lot of room for a Arena FPS Revival, especially for console players who are sick of the monetization and slot-machine point mechanics from games like Call of Duty.
I think the Quake 2 Remaster sales and rave reviews say plenty to that. There’s decent online play too.
Quake 3 Remaster could be perfect for the 25 year anniversary next year.
But who knows.
I would love quake 3 remastered, that was so much fun back in the day
WoW increased my typing speed and accuracy as without voip, its essential to communicate effectively.
Same. I wouldn’t stop talking during combat so I was typing full sentences in that one second global cooldown.
+1 for wow for typing and also it was the game that taught me to think about the enemy’s habilities and how my abilities should be used in a particular way effectively against them.
Hades. I used to hate hard games. Hades taught me to get good.
I stll hate hard games, luckily Hades is not among them.
Portal was my first FPS on a computer. Got me to practice using mouse and keyboard and now I can’t imagine playing an FPS with a controller
When I was a kid it took me 2-3 weeks to beat the Flight School mission series in GTA: San Andreas, and although I hated nearly every minute of it I did become a better video game flier.
Battlefield 3 was my flight teacher. I could whip any chopper around after playing that game.
This dates me somewhat, but trials maps in UT2004 helped me develop a lot of precision and fast fingers.
It was a multiplayer FPS, but it had cool mobility like double-tap dodges, double jumps, wallkicks, and crouch jumps. And they could be combined in many ways, so there were platforming levels of varying levels of difficulty. Diagonal dodge-doublejump with a wallkick at the very end to get onto a platform that’s like 4 inches square, type of thing.
Hello nostalgia.
I clocked a good 2000 hours in UT2004 between 2004 and 2008. Most of those were in trials and race maps.
That was almost 20 years ago. Damn.
I befriended one of the guys who made some of the first trials maps for Unreal, Eric. I believe he went by Pixelscope? He went on to work on Killing Floor, if I recall correctly. He also got me into making levels, modding and 3D modelling.
Here I am, twenty years later, making a living as a VR developer. UT2004 not only made me a better gamer, it made me a game developer.
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
No one gonna say it?? No one?
Fine.
Cuphead
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (PS2).
You either learned, or you quitted.
