Puzzle Pirates, frankly. Made by people who knew what they were doing, were extremely talented, independent, although eventually tried to hook onto Sega as publisher, almost killed the game and then re-purchased the game from Sega to continue as “re-indie” devs. Still going to this day with a stable player base of a few hundred. The game itself is very clearly hand-crafted and every one of the (few) developers left their mark on it. Feels completed and polished.
A videogame that was made with complete love and devotion to the medium, made with talent and sincerity, and is a pinnacle of everything it stands, something that will stand the test of time…
And nobody mentioned Stardew Valley? I spent too long looking for it and didn’t find a single mention of it. Absolute mastery of its genre, an incredible amount of dedication spent by the developer listening to the fans, and I can’t imagine it not still holding up 10 years from now, or even 20 years from now.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is great, I love it, but there were so many performance issues with the game even with top tier hardware, and the game was borderline unplayable for others due to these issues. I have a little bias since my save didn’t sync across devices with the steam cloud and I have to start all over. Love the game, but I just can’t believe Stardew Valley isn’t even mentioned.
Terraria I feel would be closer as stardew valley is a one man job. Terraria grew as a vision that hasn’t really strayed beyond, but every update instead chisels the stone more. It is a game that took castlevania/mario inspirations and honed it into a perfect conception of 2d sidescrollers but with a liberty. (Akin to stardew being the first real open farming sim)
Redigit did amazing on the original SMBX fangame. Basically took the concept, and removed constraints. You can see the differences in development ethos as new people came on and really created a diverse game. It is so groundbreaking in their conformity that most can only compare to Minecraft, something essentially extradimensional to terraria.
Imagine being so baller you get compared to a game that puts you in control of shaping the world around you. When terraria is a game that predominantly shapes you around the world. Eventually even adding lore to these shapes it forms out of you.
Are you the summoner? The fisher? The knight? The archer? The farmer?
You will be all at some point in your journey of improvement. You will don every hat and for it you will be able to reflect back on your next life and proceed with new knowledge. The Belmont’s curse is never over, and this is our only solace.
I kinda feel like Stardew is incomplete, I want to know more about the world, the lore. I also wish that I could have more time in a day to complete what I set out to do.
Not every game needs an endless depth of lore that only those without jobs or have other things that fill up their days can dive into. Stardew Valley is a farming simulator, it doesn’t need hundreds or thousands of years of history for you to study up on, and thank the dieties it doesn’t. It meets the prompt provided in the original post.
Not bagging on people who enjoy deep lore in games, you do you, but I only get about 1-3 hours a week to play so that shit is not for me anymore. I need a game I can very easily pick up, get some shit done, and be okay putting it back down again before not too much time is up.
You can add layers to the lore; Minecraft as the first layer, Mass Effect as the second and Warhammer 40k as last. It takes as much time as the last though. But it doesn’t go the extent of all of those. I think Mass Effect did pretty well in that regard
You might be interested to know that concernedape’s new game haunted chocolatier will be set in the same world.
Half life and half life 2
Minecraft
Minecraft before the Microsoft acquisition.
I don’t really know Minecraft before the acquisition. Is it really that much different?
Secret Friday updates used to drop with new features that weren’t documented and just got to explore and find them.
I remember updating singleplayer to find cacti added and placing a bunch under a railway tunnel to stop mobs. (They updated the physics to break them when adjacent to another block patch or two later)
- Removed Herobrine
Neato. Thank you!
Microsoft has continued improving the Java Minecraft. I can’t see a reason to complain.
Mass Effect. I know some will disagree, the third game has a lot of glaring issues, and EA really fucked up the ending, but as far as a fully fleshed out story and universe with a multitude of unique and independently structured species, characters, and cultures I think it’s one of the best. The writing and possible story outcomes and decisions that vastly and permanently affect the story from the first to the third game are insane.
We don’t talk about Andromeda anymore… (And such a fucking lost chance at continuing the franchise) I agree. At the time of release, it sucked all your choices where concentrated to three at most. Actually it still sucks. Buy the whole experience from 1 to 3… It takes space in my mind you know. Its the peak of escapism for me. 3 should have been a lesson to learn from going forward with the franchise… But EA mauled all of it… The worst part is, with such strong connection to the world, lore and characters you can’t just make a “spiritual successor”. The same formula wouldn’t work without preexisting lore.
I agree, it’s all or nothing with Mass Effect, you have to play all three games, especially with the third one because that game is trash if you haven’t imported a save from the previous games, it simply does not stand on it’s own like 2 does. Andromeda had a lot of amazing gameplay mechanics that I felt were a big upgrade from the Shepard saga, but every other aspect of that game was just so awful that I can’t even think of it as canon to the original series. They could have done some cool shit with it, but instead we just got a castrated rip off version of the original trilogy story, but with less species and absolutely no consequences for your decisions, and crew interactions were utter bullshit, everything lead to the exact same thing. Fuck EA. The online co-op stuff was pretty dope, though.
Neither of these are popular enough to be on the scale of LoTR, but in terms of atmosphere and detail:
Hollow Knight - my absolute favorite thing about it is each NPC has its own voiced language recorded, babbling in the background as you read the dialogue.
Subnautica (the first one) - shitting myself with each new experience is something I’ll always cherish. Highly recommend just playing without looking into the gameplay or plot. Has elements of exploring, resource gathering, base building, psychological horror (not graphic, just tense scenarios), sneaking.
Good one! My favorite single player RPG for sure
Ocarina of Time. I’m biased because of nostalgia, but I genuinely think it’s the best game ever created. It took everything that was great about the SNES classic A Link To the Past, brought it into 3D as an early N64 game, and improved literally everything. The atmosphere, the gameplay, the story, the time mechanic, the music… It’s not perfect, in fact these days it’s trivial to break many things in it with glitches, but I think it’s absolutely the best.
The first Halo trilogy takes the cake for me
YESS
Terraria! That game is great and aged like fine wine
Came to say Terraria.
Played it in 2017.
Then tried to play it in 2022 and was blown away with what was added.
FALLOUT NEW VEGAS! (Side note) Oh boy, a new list of games to play as I scroll through these comments.
Came here to say this, that game is a masterpiece. By far one of my favorite games.
Outer Wilds is this game.
Factorio
Cold Waters if you’re hankering for some hot sub on sub action.
Without a doubt the Witcher games, and Baldur’s Gate 3. Probably Dragon Age too, but I haven’t played those.
Just a side note I wouldn’t necessarily put Witcher 1 on the same pedestal as witcher 2 and 3. You could enjoy it, thematically and story wise it’s spot on Witcher, but it’s pretty klunky mechanically speaking and really shows its age. 2 and 3 are Fantastic in every way though. I hear they’re potentially remaking 1 and I’m all for it if it’s in a style similar to 2 or 3.
I am very much looking forward to that remake.
Nah, Witcher 2’s combat was an improvement, but still bad enough I know multiple people who gave up due to seemingly impossible fights.
I remember having a lot of trouble with letho specifically
I did love Witcher 2. Played through twice. Besides the combat everything else was spectacular at the time.
Even Witcher 3 controls are quite janky. Especially with a controller. I played W3 after playing Uncharted 4 and the difference in character control was staggering. Felt like several generations behind Uncharted’s controls. Took me several days to get used to Witcher 3’s system.
It is absolutely janky in its controls. I have run around in circles before, trying to inspect something on the ground, and Im quite certain there was never any testing done at all for Roach, certainly not for the 7 1/2 minutes she takes to amble over to you when called, or approaching intersections, or mounted combat. But I do still today love the regular combat, and the world and story are staggering.
Yep tried to play Withcer 3 several times and gave up because of the ultra janky controls. I work in the industry and I just don’t understand how control schemes can still be so shitty when other games have nailed it as far back as N64. That’s not even counting how much I despise the overall industry shift towards prioritizing flowery character animations over player input, so your character always feels like there is a huge lag between player input and onscreen actions because your character is still doing the 4th twirl on his sword strike from the button you pushed 8 buttons ago…
In my opinion all characters in games should be as responsive as a fighting game when it comes to input and onscreen actions. I think the Ninja Giaden series nailed this down perfectly, compared to this level of responsiveness pretty much every modern game I’ve played feels like the characters are underwater.
I haven’t played the recent ninja gaiden games, but to me they seem more like hack n slash style games akin to Devil May Cry, which isn’t a bad thing by any means but I don’t know if that makes sense for the world that The Witcher is set in. Please correct me if I’m wrong there, as my only experience was a demo of Ninja Gaiden Black on 360 a decade ago.
What are your thoughts on a Dark Souls style of combat for the witcher?
It’s for sure more in the hack and slash style of game play, which I can understand doesn’t fit into the witcher world that well. I just feel there is a balance to be had. I have not played the any of the dark souls series yet but I have played Sekiro, and while I think for my preference it could be a bit more responsive, I feel it achieved a good balance and is very playable.
I haven’t played Sekiro yet, but it’s built from the bones of the Souls games and shares a lot of the controls just like Eldin Ring. I’d say the only major difference is you don’t have as heavy of an emphasis on parry/counter timing (although it’s still there) and stealth isn’t built into the games (although you can slowly walk up behind enemies).
To me, I think that style of combat is “grounded” enough to fit well into The Witcher. Geralt is faster and stronger than normal humans, but not extremely so and some noteworthy humans have given him a run for his money or whooped his ass outright. I think Soils Style combat could do a good job of representing that.
I do think they finally got a handle on player control with Cyberpunk, so i hope Witcher 4 inherits that for 3rd person control.
I can see what you’re saying, I may be looking back with rose tinted glasses. I don’t know what the best control scheme would be, but I feel like if it felt like a Dynasty Warriors hack n slash it wouldn’t feel right. Maybe something more akin to Dark Souls?
