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.
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I have to say Chrono Trigger blew me away with it’s stunning art, puzzles with surprisingly little moon logic, and beautiful music.
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Mario golf on the SNES is very simple but for tired evenings cuddling on the couch it’s been a winner in our household.
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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.
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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?)
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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?
Not a unique opinion, but Portal is probably the closest thing to a perfect game. Nothing feels unnecessary, and every part of it (story, gameplay, visuals) is not only good on its own, but also work together to make the game better than the sum of its parts.
Portal 2’s also great but suffers from a lot of fluff imo. The analogy I like to use is Portal 2 is like a big feast of really good food, while Portal 1 is just one small dish, but it’s the best version of that dish you’ve ever tasted.
Ever played the game it’s based on, Narbacular Drop? It’s a great little indie Portal game with much sillier puzzle-solving because you can shoot portals through portals in it. It’s what got the devs hired by Valve. You can download it for free: https://www.digipen.edu/showcase/student-games/narbacular-drop
Morrowind. It was such a magical experience to play it. The world was mysterious and beautiful. I fondly remember the first night as I walked to Balmora. I gazed at the starry sky and at that point the game had me. The game was difficult - you had to find quest locations by mere descriptions of them. As a result you got lost in the game a lot - both metaphorically and literally.
I still play Morrowind! So happy to see this comment here so I didn’t have to type it first lol
With Tamriel Rebuilt it’s like a whole new game! The preceding elder scrolls games lose that TTRPG feel that I love about Morrowind. Once you understand it’s all based on dice rolls (using a d100 not a d20) the skills and combat make much more sense to somebody looking at it with a modern lense. OpenMW is a must for modern systems for anybody looking to dip their toes in though (it replaces the original engine). With OpenMW I’m up to ~200 mods with exceptional frame rates. The original engine with a lesser setup only gets like 13 fps outside lol
Morrowind was a life changer for my 17 year old self. I still love the outlandish look and feel of that game. It looks so franco-belgian comic book inspired. Like playing a Moebius open world game!
If you liked Morrowind, I suggest you give Kingdom Come: Deliverance a try! While still not quite the same as Morrowind, it’s the first game since that came close to the same sense of wonderment.
But yeah, even after all these years I get goosebumps and a slight sense of wanderlust and amazement as soon as I hear the drums of the Morrowind OST drums kick in.
Are you me? I could not describe it better.
Some other mentions for me would be: Heroes of Might and Magic 1-3, Diablo 2, Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, and of course Duke Nukem 3D.
And plenty others I forgot right now.
Final Fantasy Tactics(PS1) remains my favorite game to this day. I really liked messing with the various classes and abilities, and it’s a rock-solid tactics game, to boot. Couple that with amazing music and a great political story, and you’ve got a classic.
TG Cid is hilariously broken, though.
FFT has an active modding scene, too. Lots of rom hacks are still being made for the PS1 and PSP versions of the game.
One of my all-time favourites is Freelancer, 2003. Just a really fun arcade space sandbox with an engaging campaign and great multiplayer and modding scene.
Nothing that came after had scratched that immersive space arcade itch.
Everspace 2 does in terms of story and combat, but feels empty of life. Freelancer always had npcs flying around all around you, chattering away on the radio.
Freelancer was basically a modernized Wing Commander: Privateer IIRC. Both are games I was a huge fan of, and I’m constantly looking for the next fix in that genre. Starfield is looking to be mighty appealing!
“Hey, you’re new around here aren’t you?”
The game would have been at least 7 times funnier if Trent had an actual Leeds accent.
I haven’t played this game since 2004 but I remember every single bar I visited, now matter how many times I’d been there, always said the same thing lol.
My response to this will look like a who’s who of Dreamcast games. The Dreamcast was the first console I bought myself, so I have lots of fond memories.
- Soulcalibur I & II
- Sega NFL 2K1 (and I was NOT a sports game person)
- Shenmue I & II
- Jet Set Radio
- Phantasy Star On-Line
- Quake III arena
- Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2
- Hydro Thunder
- Fur Fighters
No Skies of Arcadia!?
I love Sonic adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, too!
The Dreamcast just hit different! It just oozed cool and is still such an interesting system even looking back today!
Power Stone was a great, weird arena fighting game. Love its aesthetics, Jack especially. I wanna be a mummy spider with knife-arms.
I’m going to go waaay back to a gem of a '90s CRPG: Betrayal at Krondor.
The main quest-line was engaging, the combat was cool, and the puzzle boxes were fun, but I remember being blown away by the size of the world. You could wander for literally hours, exploring new terrain, and discovering additional characters and bonus quest-lines. Its world was expansive and immersive, and it felt alive, like nothing else playable on a 386sx ever had been before.
The next time I felt that sense of aliveness - but better - in a video game was about a decade later, when I took my first Wyvern ride in World of Warcraft, and realized that everything I was seeing below me was really happening. This wasn’t a teleport: if you saw someone fighting something down below you, it was because another player was really fighting something down there. Mind-blowing!
you know I’ve read the book but never played the game (I don’t recommend the book. My god Raymond e. fiest was sexist as hell)
I remember trying to read the books, inspired by the game, and not being able to get through them. I’d like to think that I recognized the sexism, at whatever-teen I was at the time, but I doubt that.
I suspect they’re not very well written? There were so many poorly-written fantasy books around in the eighties; my buddy and I referred to them collectively as “Cheap Tolkien Knock-offs”.
“Any good?”, I’d ask. “Nah. CTK,” he’d reply. Sometimes I’d read them anyway, but not unless everything else was checked out of the library.
I remember buying Betrayal at Krondor back in middle school simply because it came bundled with the book. I loved both reading and gaming, so it was a win-win for me.
Just in case you didn’t know that game is available from GOG!
Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, all of these still hold up, and are totally worth a play even if you never played them back in their day.
Also, Alpha Centauri has SUCH a great narrative. Each faction has a strong identity, each leader has a fitting personality, the whole package is great.
It really deserves a remake to update the controls and UI, it still plays really well if you can get past that though.
I loved the bullet time in OG Max Payne game (2001).
I was addicted to EverQuest since I started playing it in 2001 for at least 10 years. They don’t call it “EverCrack” for nothing. No matter how I feel about it now, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
I also played PlanetSide MMOFPS for at least 4 years since it released back in 2003, and it was so great. I hear both good and bad things about its successor, PlanetSide 2, but haven’t tried it for the fear of it ruining my nostalgia of the original.
Starsiege: Tribes was an awesome game too. I was a beta tester for that one way back in '98, in the days before broadband was a thing. I still have an installation CD hand-signed by the devs that they had to ship to all the testers, because downloading 500+ MB over dial-up was not feasible.
Earthsiege 2 was the game for which I went out to CompUSA and bought a joystick that had swivel function (MS SideWinder 3D Pro).
- Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2
- Baldur’s Gate 2
- Chrono Trigger
- Ocarina of Time
- Mario 64
- Super Mario RPG
- Alpha Centauri
- Goldeneye
- Diablo 2
- Half Life 2
- Morrowind
- Old WoW
- Mass Effect
- Halo
- Unreal Tournament (the original)
No spoilers please but I’m finally sitting down to playthrough and beat the original Deus Ex. Installed GMDX mod and have been having a blast so far!
Oh you are in for a treat! I’m thrilled for you.
All I will say is experiment. Follow that “huh I wonder if?” relentlessly.
Definitely. It’s starting to fall into the “They thought of everything!” levels of ways to solve puzzles and beat missions. I love how my character’s personality seems to be driven by the sub missions I do and don’t do. Very cool game so far.
For me it was metal gear solid 3 snake eater. I thought it was the perfection of the metal gear formula. I’m exited to see its remaster.
Soldier of Fortune. I will remember that whistle darn it!
But I lived through the golden era of arena shooters such as Quake III and UT2K4 which was amazing, but most of all the whole FPS genre was really ramping up to new heights every month back then with HL2/CoD and mods such as Counter Strike, Garry’s Mod and the like.
Oh man, I remember when Soldier of Fortune came out. It was the first FPS (that I was aware of at least) that had dismemberment. I remember my mind become completely blown after shooting a guy’s legs off with a shotgun.
Nowadays, it’s nothing special, but back then it was insane.
I played Max Payne and its sequal recently and I was surprised how well they held up. The gameplay and level design kept it consistently fun
The first game definitely shows its age, but is fun nevertheless. The second game, though, has always surprised me how amazingly it has held up.
Fantastic games.
Beyond Good & Evil, 2003. It’s been so long since I played it, I don’t remember much other than it was a sandbox and it had some neat mechanics and cute characters and I loved it. The closing credits musical sequence is magical, too.
I think I rented it for the gamecube but never played much. Apparently it’s famously good! I’ll have to check it out.
One of the first games I played that was translated in Dutch with good voiceovers! Loved it and made me more open to localized games.
Had a partner want to practice hacking a 3ds before they closed the shop so I can play PS1 games. The first one I put on that mofo is Azure Dreams, my first and probably favorite dungeon crawler roguelike with a city builder. Also Breath of Fire IV is one of my absolute favorite games ever.
I haven’t even heard of either of these so I’m definitely going to have to check them out!
I definitely think they are loads of fun but they both have amazing soundtracks, too! Breath of Fire IV still brings me to tears!
Both Azure Dreams and BOF IV were great. Haven’t heard mention of them in years