For me it’s first person puzzle games. I can think of maybe a dozen off the top of my head that came out in the last decade. I especially enjoy when they’re open world. The ability to just quit a puzzle that’s stumped you and go try something else for a little bit is incredibly refreshing.
Games that are made for the sake of making the game insread of being made to squeeze as much retention and money out of you as possible
Now thats a style that is becoming increasingly rare
I contend that there are more games out there now that are made for the sake of making them than ever before. It’s just that fewer and fewer of these games are AAA titles. The indy scene is really what are making these games nowadays.
That or modding. Modded Minecraft is done purely because someone wanted to have the functionality of magic wands or engineering or resource processing in their lego game. It’s completely unmonetized and gets extremely involved very fast. I fondly remember my nuclear reactor exploding and having to work around the irradiated zone. Good times.
the indie scene may be greater for that but is also filled with the same money making trite and on top of that constantly copying each other and barely doing anything new.
Just follow a YouTuber with similar tastes and play the indie games they play. AAA is creatively dead
Thank you but I trust youtubers opinions as much as a gaming “journalist” which is to say, not at all
- Willing to paint an entire swath of people with a broad, negative brush
- Unwilling to spend any effort finding media you might actually enjoy.
The problem might not be with the industry.
Youtubers are inheritor by the virtue of their existence just are a little to biased like the gaming magazines, I also find text much easier digestable than 2,5 minutes of invideo ads, sponsors selfplugs, like button smashing.or whatever else they want to subject me to
I spend far more effort trying to find gold than one really should have, there shouldnt be a need to spend so much time
Take a genuine hard look at this industry, an industry full with exploitation, lootboxes, micro and macrotransactions, the same 5 ideas ad naseum, where for every cuphead you have 10 slendermans, (thats just the tip of the iceberg)
you mean to tell me in THAT industry its ne with the problem? Cause thats a fair assassment and ill support whatever conclusion you may or may not draw
I have hundreds of games in my steam library with no in game purchases or lootboxes which I have enjoyed for between 50 and 2000 hours each. If you really have that much trouble finding games you can enjoy playing, then you need to change your habits.
I think it’s more that, in absence of a gaming social circle, games discovery in the indie scene is hard. So, the easiest way for a lot of us is to find a gaming content creator who played games we like and play whatever they’re playing.
There’s a YouTube streamer I’ve been following for over a decade and every single game he plays is a 5/5 for me. At least ½ of my gaming is just games from his channel. It’s super easy; I don’t even watch him on Twitch much, but I can scan his recent broadcasts for gaming suggestions, and watch him play for like 30 minutes to figure out if it’s for me.
Simulation games, like the ones Maxis used to make (other than SimCity). SimEarth, SimAnt, SimTower, etc. Those were educational and fun.
I also once played a simulation game that realistically simulated running a shipping business where you shipped things by boat, sailing your fleet from port to port, dropping off your cargo and loading new cargo, giving the occasional bribe, etc. while avoiding bankruptcy. I think it was called “Port of Call.” It was made a long time ago, and I haven’t played anything quite like it since then.
Yes, I totally agree with this. I would play these games so much growing up. Especially SimLife.
I like sim games where you feel like you’re experimenting with a scenario, not just trying to get the highest score or some win condition.
Good RTSes. Last great one I played was Company of Heroes.
Used to play a lot of RTS, both single and multiplayer. The last one I bought was the new AoE game. It did scratch a bit of the itch, but on the whole was a letdown. Before that it was Iron Harvest, which was visually pleasing but clunky. I am still looking for an RTS I can really get lost in.
Any recommendations?
I’ve been playing Beyond All Reason, a free RTS that’s like Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. The game handles 8v8 team games quite well, I’ve never played on such large teams in a RTS game, it’s fun.
I’ll go check that out, but I recall I wasn’t fond of the economy generation in Supreme Commander.
The economy is similar, but it’s a little easier than sup com. Energy to metal converters are cheap and if you balance them right you wont waste metal or energy.
Thanks, if it’s a little easier it might just be enough.
Rhythm Games like Guitar Hero, Band Hero and DJ Hero. Those were fun.
There are still plenty of them: DJMAX, Muse Dash, Spin Rhythm, Hatsune Miku Project Diva, Beatmania. Also there are tons of them on mobile.
You might be surprised to hear that Konami, famed for focusing casino machines, was actually mistranslated on also focusing on arcade machines. There’s still a whole rhythmgame scene, but unfortunately it’s mostly centered around Japan. That’s where DDR, beatmania, Gitadora (the series Guitar Hero/Rockband ripped off) are, including newer series like DanceRush and Maimai and whatnot. If you ever visit the higherscale independent arcades, you might find some unsanctioned imports with some even emulating the online functionality (with gacha, ofc…). Otherwise, your only hope in the states is Round1, which host official imports, and D&B which only has DDR.
To add on to the other commenter, check out Osu!, ADOFAI, Rhythm Doctor, Hifi Rush, and a whole bunch of apps if you don’t want arcades.
Check out Clone Hero! I’m away from my computer, but there are archives that let you import all of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero songs. You can use/mod old controllers or even 3D print your own.
Stealth games. The last one for me was MGS5, I loved it even with its shaky story line. Hitman is really nice but it feels more like a puzzle game if that makes sense.
I concur. Hitman can be a somewhat true stealth game but the design steers you away from “free form” stealth with its mission stories. I like the idea but the puzzles are too small, few short steps to the goal.
I hope for Metal Gear Delta to succeed, not only because I have a soft spot for MGS3 but also to revive the genre.
Have you played Mike Bithell’s Volume?
No I did not, thanks I’ll look into it!
3D Platformers. We get maybe one or two every few years, and most of them are usually pretty short. last big one was probably A Hat in Time. if y’all know more beyond that let me know. just grabbed Koa and the 5 Pirates of Mara.
so desperate for one i’m considering learning how to make 3D games so i can make my own lol
I assume you’ve played or heard of Yooka-Laylee. There’s also Clive n Wrench. Neither of those are great though.
I haven’t heard of Koa before, but it looks interesting. I’ll have to check it out.
But I really want a new Banjo game, however I doubt that ever happens at this point. I recently started working on my own Banjo clone in the Godot game engine because I don’t see anyone making the kind of game I’m looking for.
There definitely is a lack of actually good ones in the modern era. Poi and Grow Home are some good ones you may not have heard of.
I liked the point and click games when they were 2d hand drawn and not (3d) rendered. It seems to be a thing that has now been lost to time.
submachine?
Interesting! Not exactly what I would think of but this seems right up my alley. Thank you!
Wadjet Eye still makes them, no? There’s still a few, they’re not totally gone. I always keep an eye out for them on Steam.
First-person shooters, the way they were made in the 6th and 7th gens. A campaign, probably co-op, probably with split-screen or LAN, with some versus multiplayer that repurposed some slightly-remixed locations from the campaign that you can play with approximately 4-8 players. That’s all you need. Sometimes we still get some great FPS campaigns, like Half-Life: Alyx, but I haven’t really gotten the kind of co-op or versus multiplayer I’ve been looking for for over a decade. Not everything needs to be a live service. It can be a flash in the pan multiplayer that’s so good that you break it out when you have a few friends over or in a Discord call. Not every multiplayer FPS needs to be an e-sport with an online population of tens of thousands of players to matchmake with in ranked.
I also don’t really get racing games for me anymore. Star Wars: Episode One Racer, Burnout Revenge, and F-Zero GX truly spoke to me, and there were a few others that were close, but for the most part, if your racing game isn’t basically Mario Kart or full of real licensed cars in real places, it doesn’t get made. And the ones that aren’t Mario Kart don’t usually get split-screen multiplayer either, which is a must-have for me. I did get Trail Out in the recent past, which is very good, and there’s that game Aero GPX on the horizon to potentially give me my F-Zero fix, but the actual racing games I’m looking for are so few and far between.
Fortunately, this list used to be much longer, and all the other holdouts, like Advance Wars-esque tactics games, Resident Evil 1-esque survival horror games, Commandos-esque stealth tactics games, and a few others have all gotten their itches scratched.
What’s a 6th and 7th gen? I think I’m too PCMR to understand that
6th is GameCube/Xbox/PS2. 7th is 360/PS3.
But that was when shooters were getting worse the fastest. It’s when we started getting chest-high walls everywhere, regenerating health, auto aim, and a general slow down of the action.
I mean, a lot of my favorites were slower than Quake for sure. Faster isn’t automatically better. Regenerating health was preferable to health packs, but we also had the likes of Doom 2016 to show that it didn’t have to just be one or the other. Games like Halo 2 and 3, Call of Duty 2, 4, and Modern Warfare 2 (the first time), the Timesplitters games, the 007 games of that era (Agent Under Fire with moon gravity and Q Claw is some of the most fun you’ll have with three friends on the same couch), Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Crysis, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2; and getting into third person shooters that were of a similar design philosophy, Metal Arms, Gears of War 1-3, and the much better Star Wars Battlefronts than the ones EA put out with basically the same titles.
As for the antigrav racers you mentioned, have you checked out BallisticNG? It leans more towards Wipeout than F-Zero, but even as a huge GX fan (and looking forward to Aero GPX myself) I’ve really enjoyed it. I believe it does have splitscreen as well, though I haven’t tried it personally.
It couldn’t hurt to try it out, but I always liked F-Zero more than Wipeout. At least it looks to be as fast as F-Zero.
It’s got a variety of speed settings that increase in difficulty, and it absolutely gets fast enough for anyone lol. I like it a lot more than the actual wipeout games I’ve tried even though its mechanics are more styled after that.
Grid-based, dungeon crawler RPG (a mouthful, I know). The most recent titles in this genre I remember are the Mary Skelter trilogy, but the first game is about 10 years old already.
Gridders my beloved. This curator on steam might be of use.
Hi there! I saw someone mentioning this game on Cohost and was reminded of this old-ass post of yours
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1768650/Path_of_the_Abyss/
I’m not sure if there’s an english version yet (Its still in Early Access) but I think that’s your type of game?
I don’t mind necro as long as it isn’t obvious spam, so don’t worry. =D
(besides, Reddit also had a lot of this, where pertinent replies would only appear a long time after the posts were made)But thanks! The game looks pretty interesting, going by the promotional materials, and the store page also mentions it has both English and Japanese, so likely at least texts will be translated.
Like Myst? I love those. Have you tried The Witness?
Yes the witness and the Talos principle are two of my favorites
Quern - Undying Thoughts tickled that genre for me. As did Haven Moon and The Eyes of Ara.
The tribes series, or z-axis games, where you are able to move up and down as well as the traditional x-y movement you see in virtually all games. Usually set as shooters, they are fast paced movement games that have a huge skill curve which is why they aren’t made that often. Super fun when you get the hang of it though
Example
https://youtu.be/xOK3n8j7czAFor me are mystery and clue games such as Myst and 7th Guest. The scenery and thought of adventure that these titles used to bring as very rare and although Goragoa was quite recent, it was far too short.
Oh man, I remember 7th Guest that game was so cool - a video game with live action cut scenes! That was the same genre as Rama (1996)
Sandbox MMORPGs, like Eve Online or Ultima Online. The vast majority of MMORPGs since at least WoW (potentially even before that with games like Dark Ages of Camelot, etc) have been Theme Park MMOs. Which are fun; I’ve played plenty and still do play them. But I think the sandbox is more fun. Certainly has more possibilites.
Outlands is breathing some new life into UO.
Oh yeah? I haven’t played UO since 2003/2004, and I’ve largely stayed away from the free shards. Just had boring experiences in the past. But I might give this a try. Idk why, but I’ve been itching to check it out again. thanks!
Yeah I basically did the same thing. Got the itch about 7 months ago. Managed to get my original UO account back (you can open a support ticket and they’ll ask for info regarding the original, it was pretty painless) and messed around on Atlantic, the only really populated server. It’s just meh. They added so many stats to weapons it’s overwhelming and most are garbage. It’s so obnoxious having to look over each item to see if it’s worth anything. Also the classic and enhanced clients suck pretty bad.
Outlands is definitely the most polished and unique free shard. Check out their wiki, it goes over skill changes and lists some templates for starting out. Their custom ClassicUO client is excellent and has Razor built in. The one thing that may turn you off is it’s mostly open PVP once you leave Shelter Island. There is a sanctuary dungeon that rotates each week that doesn’t allow murderers in but it has reduced XP and gold.
I love this thread, so many people are recommending games to each other. Nice to see.
My answer is games like Skyrim where it’s a sandbox but you can pick up different quests. I know there’s a proper name for them but it escapes me.
I know there’s GTA which is a similar type but I want a more twee fantasy vibe
Open world RPG? They are probably the most common single player AAA experience released these days. Bethesda does work in a bit of “immersive sim” qualities to their games though, which is often what makes them feel so sand-boxy.
Music games that are based around a story, like Parappa the Rapper/Um Jammer Lammy, Gitaroo Man 🎵💖
Gitaroo Man is fantastic. We need more games where you can defeat enemies using the power of your rock.
Brutal Legend also, although not the same genre by a long shot.
