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.

  •  Mandy   ( @Mandy@beehaw.org ) 
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    551 year ago

    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.

      •  Mandy   ( @Mandy@beehaw.org ) 
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        71 year ago

        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.

          •  Mandy   ( @Mandy@beehaw.org ) 
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            11 year ago

            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 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.

            • 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’ve been thinking about the disappearance of God games. I think they didn’t disappear, but they evolved so much that we don’t recognize them anymore.

      I feel some moved into the direction that we now call “simulators”, like RimWorld, the Sims, Two Point Hospital, and more. In my mind, the big difference between the God games of old and those new games is that in the older games your role as the player was explicitly defined, where in the new games it’s not. In the old games, you were “playing the role of a god in that realm”. The new games don’t bother to tell you “who” you are in this setting. You’re just the player, get on with it, play the game.

      I feel like other God games moved in the direction of top down colony builders, like Against the Storm or Frostpunk. And again, I think the big difference between those games and something like Populous is that your role as the player doesn’t have an explicit name in the game world. You’re not a “God”. But most of the rest of the trappings are there, I think.

      What do you think?

      • Erhh…I guess?

        But when I think of a God game I really mean a game where you literally play as a god and can do god stuff.

        In all of your examples the player either controls what each character does or just whoever is is command of the colony. You can’t do miracles and supernatural stuff at the click of a button, you don’t control nature itself, your character is a human like anyone else.

    • 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.

    •  Domiku   ( @Domiku@beehaw.org ) 
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      21 year ago

      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.

  • Old Bioware stuff, aka action RPG games that put importance to story, lore, companions, and my not-so-guilty pleasure: romance.

    I have a lot of emotions about the upcoming DA: Dreadwold.

  • 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.

  • MUDs. Text based (generally RPG) games with incredibly immersive story telling, near infinite levels of character customization, and many even feature ways for players to build on the world itself.

    I’m surprised it’s not more popular amongst D&D enthusiasts.

    In its hey day, people spent thousands of dollars just to boost their characters on massive for-profit MUDs like those created by Iron Realms. But smaller MUDs like Ancient Anguish were just as quality.

    Sadly they’re going extinct. Only a few MUDs are still actively maintained.

  •  mint   ( @mint@beehaw.org ) 
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    161 year ago

    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

    • Hat in Time is probably the last big indie 3d platformer, but I’d say Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a decent 3d platformer, unless you meant collectathon style 3d platformer a la what Rare made on the N64 etc. since you mentioned Hat.

    • 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.

  • The First Person Stealth Sim genre (Thief, Dishonored, etc) has been getting very little love in the last few years. Sadly the Arkane games don’t embrace it anymore; while great Prey was borderline as you really couldn’t control the stealth in many sections, and Deathloop and Red Rain are primarily short action games.

    • Have you played the two most recent deus ex games? HR is my personal favorite but I liked MD more for its atmosphere and level design. Both are primarily 1st person but switch to 3rd person when using cover.

      • I have, though even MD is getting on for 7 years old now. I don’t think that the series lived up to it’s roots in either title. I found myself feeling very constrained by them; I don’t necessarily mind if I have to play a character (Corvo is great as a Tabula Rasa) but Adam Jensen and his backstory are so fundamentally unlikeable.

    • Although they’re somewhat different the modern Hitman trilogy scratches this same itch for me (especially turning some of the guidance in the UI off and exploring the levels yourself, they’re actually designed well for that). Gloomwood is in early access but is shaping up really well and is inspired by classic Thief.

  • 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.

          • 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.

  • Turn based strategy. As others have said, RTS’es, as well, but TBS. Yes, Civ series isn’t dead, but everything else seems to be. Master of Magic (1994) is literally one of my favorite games of all time (none of the sequels or successors measure up). Colonization, also 1994, (warning, MANY ethical issues) had a great logistic and economic model… (Just ignore eeeeeeverything about the white-washing of history/slavery/indentured servitude/genocide.) Alpha Centauri. Maybe I’m just old.

  • 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.