Just as with books, movies, plays etc the past holds a treasure trove of amazing experiences. Unless you have a lot more free time than I do it’s unlikely you’ve played anywhere near the majority of the classics. Let’s get out those pink sunnies and compare notes on some of our favourite releases.

I’ve recently been going back in time a little on the retro pi and looking at console games I never had.

  • I have to say Chrono Trigger blew me away with it’s stunning art, puzzles with surprisingly little moon logic, and beautiful music.

  • Mario golf on the SNES is very simple but for tired evenings cuddling on the couch it’s been a winner in our household.

  • The n64 Zelda games are surprisingly great too although that awkward period of 3d had some unusual controls. Even the gameboy ones are a blast although the water temple in oracle of ages it a bit frustrating.

  • Heroes of might and magic 2 and 3 hold a special place in my heart and I can still dump hours into skirmishing with those (32167 for when hom2 gets too frustrating amiright?)

  • I loved neverwinter knights as a kid but recently tried to check it out again and just… idk the magic wasn’t there. I think now I’d rather just play some actual ttrpgs instead of sprawling CRPGs

PS1 is a mystery box to me so I’d love to hear some recommendations from that old thing. All I ever played on it was time crisis at my mates house (which was and is soooo coool, RIP lightguns).

What about you folks? What games hold a special place in your heart? or what have you checked out for the first time recently and found it’s actually pretty good?

  • I just picked up Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (the original, not the Remaster) again. Installed it on my Steam Deck along with DSFix after a year or so of scrolling past it and seeing the “unsupported” icon. Looked it up on ProtonDB and apparently it works just fine.

    What a game. The level design is still unmatched imo

      • I still have never beat it, so I’m going to try to do that on Steam Deck.

        Sekiro is prob my favorite FromSoftware game. The rush I get when I finally learn the attack patterns of a boss that previously seemed impossible, and beat it by flawlessly parrying every single one of their moves, is still unmatched in my gaming experience. It’s like a beautiful dance. Might even be my favorite game, period.

      •  prole   ( @prole@beehaw.org ) 
        link
        fedilink
        1
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Have you tried something like xpadder where it just maps the keyboard keys used in the game to your controller buttons? I’ve had to use that from time to time way back with older games before controller support got better. Not ideal, but seems to work usually when all else fails.

        I’m not sure if/how it works exactly since I mostly do my “PC” gaming on Steam Deck these days, but if it’s possible to use Steam Input on Windows, you may be able to do something similar right in Steam.

          • Nice, I’m glad I could be of some help. Let me know if you get it to work.

            Steam Input is amazing, it’s one of my favorite features of the Steam Deck that nobody really talks about. The amount of customization you can do for controller layouts for individual games is incredible. You can even create radial menus if you want.

      • I had the same problem with elden ring… turns out if I unplugged my Nintendo Wii IR sensor from my pc it allowed the Xbox controller to work.

        Guessing it’s something to do with detecting a certain peripheral as player one but I honestly have no idea!

    • Couldn’t agree more, even as a very casual fan of the Souls games! There’s a lot of things I think later Souls games got better, though that take is probably controversial, but what I think DS1 undeniably nailed is the level design.

      The way the different areas all interconnected so seemlessly is a feat of level design. Not every individual area was perfect (some weren’t even good cough cough Blighttown cough) but the overall design of the whole game still holds up so well.