Games

In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.

Planetside 2 - someone else already mentioned it here, but it's the only game in it's genre and nothing else really comes close to what it offers (persistent 1v1v1 +300 player battles across infantry, land, air, and sea). It's been kicking for over a decade now and I'm not sure what could replace it if or when it finally kicks it. It's truly singular, and responsible for some of my fondest memories in gaming. It's also free!

Black and White, it was a god simulator on PC in 2001. You interact with your villagers and the world as a floating hand, casting spells to raise faith in villages or throwing rocks to smite as necessary. You also got a giant pet that you could train to do your bidding.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)

Mine is definitely Freelancer. The game by Chris Roberts that actually got finished by firing him.

I love that game, the story is engaging and the characters are likeable.

I'm probably just seeing it with nostalgia but I like to play it until this day. I installed it on my Steam Deck and gave it a go. It was awesome.

Any love for the Monkey Island series here?

Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I'm genuinely surprised more people aren't talking about Jade Empire.

It's a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!

I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!

The legend of dragoon has to be one of my favorite jrpgs and I would love for it to get a remake/remaster. Sadly it seems like Sony doesn't care about it tho so I'm not hopeful

My Summer Car. It's probably still #1 for play time on Steam for me. I bought a whole-ass racing wheel setup just for that game.

Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.

Highly recommend.

Mindustry. Played it on and off for years, abosultely love the game. Way too good consider the fact that it's free, and when I picked it up I expected to get a couple of hours of fun out of it. But at this point it has lasted years. And with the occasional update, I think it will last even longer.

It's not that nobody talks about it, but i think it isn't talked about enough; Control.

Mine would be tunic , It feels like top down old school Zelda but puzzles that will blow your mind when you get the context. If you haven't played tunic before don't watch any review just buy the game and play it.

This is a 10/10 game where I wish to forget about it to play this again.

All of the games in the Tribes series, my personal favorites being Tribes Ascend and Aerial Assault. Tribes had a play style similar to Halo but with a movement more like Unreal along with a touch of 'surfing' over land and some jetpacks. They're all great fun and still fun for me to play today. IIRC, the last game's official online servers are no longer active, but there is a community following for Tribes Ascend that helps keep the game alive and updated, look up TribesLauncherSharp and TAMods for more info if interested. I backed up the disc I have for Tribes Aerial Assault to an ISO and it works great in PCSX2. With 1080p/4K rendering, extra graphics options, wide-screen patches, and controller customization it's way easier to play than originally on composite CRT with a Dualshock.

Shadowrun for the Genesis, I never hear anyone mention it and it was a great game. I've played it recently and it still holds up. EDIT: I'm adding a Sierra PC game called Shivers, it was kinda like horror Myst. I loved it so much and no one ever mentions like it was never released.

I really enjoyed Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64. It turns out there was a bug in the original game so you could never complete it 100%. A couple years ago, I purchased an Everdrive (https://krikzz.com/our-products/cartridges/ed64x7.html) so I could patch the ROM and play on original hardware. Pair this with some new wireless controllers and it's the perfect experience.

A really old game called Fat Princess - it was a wonderful multiplayer real time strategy kind of thing, with a beautiful community for quite a few years. Despite the name, it was one of the best games I've ever played!

If you were on there and recognise my screen name, yes it is me!

Rise of Nations. It's like Civilization but as a real-time strategy game and I really enjoy it. Microsoft actually released an updated edition in 2014 which was good of them but I basically never hear anyone actually talk about it which sucks because it's such a cool game. The single-player Conquer the World campaigns are also cool, and have some elements reminiscent of the classic Risk board game.

There's also Star Trek: Bridge Commander, which is often mentioned in discussions of "what Star Trek games were good?" but not much outside of that context. It strikes a perfect balance between having starship combat that really feels like you're commanding a ship with a lot of mass behind it and actually being fun and easy for an average person to pick up and play (which is where stuff like the X Universe games fall down). There are tons of "space fighter" games out there but I've never really seen anything that captures space capital ship combat as well as Bridge Commander.

Heroes of the Storm. It's not getting any updates anymore but as long as the servers are up, I'll still play it.

FTL: Faster Than Light, a pixel sci fi rouge like where you manage a ship and crew jumping point to point on a mission through space. I keep coming back to it and it's always fun. There's an amazing mod community that I'll just starting to explore as well

I rarely hear people talk about it but whenever I do, it's nothing but love.

American McGee’s Alice and the much later sequel which is my favourite game of all time - Alice: Madness Returns.

The aesthetic, the puzzles, the sound design, the voice acting, the political statements underlying the narrative, Alice’s outfits, the collectibles hidden in obscure places, the different art styles for each world level. I just love it! I mean sure, the combat mechanics are not as complex as some games but they fit nicely into Alice in Wonderland lore and if you up the difficulty settings it can be more challenging.

I’m also really enjoying Inscryption at the moment. A puzzle/card game interweaved with an escape the room horror story.

Hard to settle on just one. In no order:

• ChuChu Rocket (Dreamcast): insanely fun and manic couch multiplayer game
• A10 Tank Killer II: Silent Thunder (PC): the soundtrack alone justifies the time to play this aging flight sim
• Virtual On (Arcade): this was ported to Saturn and the port is good, but the giant arcade machine is where it's really at with dual twin stick cockpits
• Mario Paint (SNES): Really fun non-game from a time when non-games were uncommon on home consoles. I have hundreds of hours into this
• Dungeon Keeper (PC): darkly comedic evil dungeon lord management sim. I will never forgive EA for what they did to Bullfrog and subsequently the DK franchise. There have been many attempted homages and clones but none have captured the magic.
• Super Tennis (SNES): an actually fun tennis game
• Super Play Action Football (SNES): football game with a unique isometric view
• Hank Parker's Super Black Bass 2 (SNES): super fun fishing sim. I wish there were games like this today that took fishing more seriously and less arcadey.
• Brain Age (DS): a genuine sensation in its heyday and largely forgotten now. Really showed off the potential of the DS
• Cel Damage (GameCube): twisted metal with zany little cel shaded cartoon characters. Never got the respect it deserved and probably never will since they butchered the game's balance with the HD re-release

Legend of Dragoon for PS1. It has the single best timed-input RPG combat system of any game ever. Think Mario RPG but way better.

GUST OF WIND DANCE!

CrossCode. It's an SNES-style action RPG with very fun combat, 2D-Zelda-like puzzles, and a genuinely charming well-written story that was made in HTML5 and JavaScript for some reason. It is genuinely my favorite game of all time. I habitually proselyte this game to friends, but check it out for the love of God

Planetside 2. Been playing for a decade. One of the best games and only one in its genre of MMOFPS. I don’t know what I will play when it dies. It’s the one and only thing I play and enjoy now. Nothing else is fun.

Starport GE. Amazing little game. Played tons of it. It’s been almost 18 years of it. Played hardcore for atleast a decade before life got in the way and winded down now. My brother manages the account and activity now. Still alive but barely. It’s a game of strategy and alliances and carefully managing a galaxy to control it all. Make friends make enemies. There’s been dozens of people that have come and gone over the years through it. Due to its small player size. We all knew each other very well and were acquainted. You don’t like someone you decide to go to war with them start taking all their colonies. The game has no alliance mechanism or war mechanism. It’s all on you to decide what to make of it.

I know everyone here got many favorite and probably wonderful games but who here has played only 2 games with more than a decade of dedication to each?

Crimson Skies for OG Xbox. It’s pirates in planes dogfighting, we need a remake badly.

One Must Fall 2097, an awesome robot fighting game for DOS, which is quite different from every other fighting game, because in this one you have to select both pilots and the robots, and each pilot and robot have their own specialities and back stories, so it makes for a lot more interesting gameplay compared to other games in this genre.

MDK. Sure, it was arguably "popular" when it launched, but is largely forgotten in videogame lore. There's not even talks of a remake.

The Thief and Tenchu series need more love.

I used to consider Thief/Tenchu/Hitman to be the core stealth games but currently only Hitman is still being made :/

I was surprised that I haven't heard more about Returnal, because it's a really good game. It's difficult sure, but so are lots of popular games. It has great music, really fun gameplay and mechanics, and an interesting story with cool vibes. I thought it would get repetitive after a while due to the death mechanic but in actuality it honestly was addicting to play.

Similarly I don't hear nearly enough about Control despite it being a phenomenal game, but I do at least hear more about Control than Returnal.

Anno? It doesn’t have any mobile ver anymore. We used to download jar files back in nokia days.

Awesomenauts. The coolest 2D platforming MOBA. The gameplay is super fun and has a surprising amount of depth. Unfortunetly the devs have almost abandoned it and the playerbase is small (still active tho) but it's still one of my favorite games ever.

Furi, A boss rush gamers wet dream. Trims the fat of an action hack/slash game. Simple combat to understand and hard to master. The soundtrack simply slaps too with an electronic symphony backing your carnage as you tear apart the bosses. I highly recommend checking in out as it frequently goes on sale for quite cheap.

Micro machines was beautiful. The closest I've got to reliving the pure mayhem was probably Mashed (I think) for Xbox.

Archon, it's a chess game with monsters instead of typical pieces, and they fight when you take a space. I played it on a Commodore 64.

Yoku's Island Express. The idea of a metroidvania where the entire map is a giant pinball board is beyond genius.

Patapon 1-3 on the psp. It's been so long since I played it but I still say the little beats when I'm doing idle tasks. Pon-pon-pata-pon

Puzzle Pirates was a MMO in the early to mid 00’s. Each task on board the ship had a puzzle mini game associated with it. Sailing was sort of like Dr. Mario, pumping out the bilge was a match 3 game, loading the canons was sort of like Chu-Chu Rocket. The thing I liked about it was that your character’s ability to preform a duty had nothing to do with what gear you had equipped or how many skill points you had in a stat (there were none), it was all about how well you, as a player, could play the particular mini game.

In battle, sailors would generate movement tokens to allow the captain to maneuver the ship, gunners would reload the canons after they’d been fired, carpenters would repair any damage you’ve taken, while the bilge pumpers would keep the ship from foundering. Once you closed in and grappled the enemy ship, everyone would participate in a Super Puzzle Fighter-like sword fighting game; defeat the enemy crew to pillage their hold.

Original War. A very unique RTS about American and Russians fighting over a precious resource billions years in the past. It has an interesting story with memorable characters and branching choices. The game still looks decent, especially the between missions cutscenes didn't age badly because of the style of presentation. One thing that's rather hit or miss is voice acting, at least in English. There are two campaigns so you get to see both sides, skirmish mode, map editor and quite a number of mods. Some interesting mechanics like vehicle and building customisation. You can build not only combat vehicles with various weapon systems but also utility vehicles like trucks to haul resources and cranes to help with construction. You can pick propulsion method, tracks/wheels, size and if it's manned or unmanned, and each choice has some upsides and downsides.

The thing that stands out the most is that it's the only rts I can think of where you actually care for the life of your soliders. Due to the setting, there's no way to recruit new people, so losing anyone hurts, and you will be grateful for unmanned vehicles, trained primates and others methods that reduce the risk to your soldiers.

Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.

Oh boy. I played General Chaos for the Sega Genesis religiously when I was younger.

Alundra. It's basically the PS1's own Zelda title, with a bit of Terranigma DNA mixed in. I played it as a kid and remember being blown away by the plot, and unlike a lot of other games I played back then, this one mostly held up when I replayed it as an adult.

People bring up Journey a lot but another game by that same company called Flower. It's a short, simple game that I will never forget, a beautiful masterpiece.

Sayonara Wild hearts. It's such an underrated original and stylish game. It oozes charm, and surprised me again and again. The music alone is something I listen to still.

Snowboard Kids 2 for the N64. One of my top 3 favorite Mario Karts.

Armagetron Advanced, which is a 3d multiplayer Tron clone, though you can also face off against bots. Fun as hell with friends and the customization options keeps things interesting.