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?
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.
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
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.
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.
Both Azure Dreams and BOF IV were great. Haven’t heard mention of them in years
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!
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.
I still play Doom 1 & 2 most days. Nothing matches it for speed of play. Doom is fast.
Doom 2016 is a good game too, but I’m it lacks speed.
Same. Project Brutality makes the old Doom games quite enjoyable as well. It’s a bit edgy but it’s kind of a mix of modern Doom with the old ones. It’s the perfect kind of game to just turn your brain off and shoot some demons without having it be too difficult.
Doom Eternal is too much of a dance to play, you have to swap weapons all the time and carefully juggle ammo, chainsaw, dashes and a bunch of other buttons to play optimally.
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 have that edition and can’t for the life of me get my xbox controller to work with it. I swear I’ve tried ALL of the solutions people give and just gave up in the end.
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!
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.
I’ll try that, never heard about it! Steam input is an option in steam on windows, I guess it’s the same deal? Thanks for the xpadder thing, it will come in handy for sure.
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.
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.
- OpenTTD
- Puzzle Pirates
- Mario Golf on GBA
- Bike or Die, Space Traders, and Fish Tycoon on Palm
There’s always Diablo 1.
But my favorite is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, which was made by some of the people who created Fallout and has a LOT in common with it. It’s an open world, a combination of classic fantasy with elves, dwarves, and halflings with a rising steampunk technology that competes with magic. There are many schools of magic and technology, as well as social, stealth, and combat skills. The graphics are very crude by today’s standards, but the gameplay is outstanding.
You know, I never tried Diablo 1 even though I grew up religiously playing Diablo 2. Also love the original fallout games, I definitely need to make time for this.
Diablo 1 has the same gameplay as the other games but in terms of scope and concept it’s much more self contained, it’s a different experience. Good game, but d2 is what the sequels have all tried to recreate, so it will feel quite different.
Thanks for the warning, but I don’t mind different; different can be good. I’m excited to see the beginnings of my childhood game, I think it’ll be worth the patience. Though, having a hard time finding it, it’s not on the blizzard downloads list. I’mma do more digging tho, it’s gotta be out there somewhere.
Unfortunately some of my favorite games are no longer around in a playable state.
I friggin loved Atlas Reactor but it shutdown in 2019. Another all time favorite, which is still around but does not have the community to keep it feeling alive is: Shattered Galaxy.
Other games I think deserve to be in the all time best games of all time list are:
- Heroes of Might and Magic 3
- StarCraft Brood Wars
- Dota2
- Civ5
- Diablo 2
Mischief Makers for n64! its a puzzle platformer by treasure, its controls are a little unintiutive at first, but the games grappling/boost mechanics are so much fun once you get it down.
also, SHAKE SHAKE!
This game is actually a bit before my time since it was released two years before I was born, but the original XCOM game (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown) is still one of my favorite games of all time. And it’s just gotten better over the years with fixes and modding through OpenXcom.
I like the modern Firaxis games a lot too, and Xenonauts even moreso, but nothing has quite hit the same as the OG.
All the old MechWarrior games, starting with MechWarrior 2. That was my childhood. PGI didn’t have what it takes to recapture that with MechWarrior Online or MechWarrior 5.
Shout out to Half-Life 1 and Team Fortress Classic (1.5). THAT was my teenage years. I played an insurmountable amount of TFC, adminned a couple servers, and took zero interest in TF2, because it just wasn’t the same without concs, throwable frag nades, etc.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was a gamechanger though. That released when I was in college. Fell in love with the hopeless atmosphere, good gunplay, and the eurojank. I still play the various S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods to this day and am eagerly awaiting the release of number 2 (slated for December, but we will see. Devs have been through a lot).I played the first STALKER at uni as well and loved it. Along with Red Orchestra that a mate was a play tester for.
All games paled in comparison to how much time I sunk into WoW between 2006 and 2011 though.
I know a lot of people that played WoW back then, and their experiences were largely the same. I didn’t get much into MMOs beyond Guild Wars 1 at that time. Final Fantasy XIV was good for a time, but Elder Scrolls Online blew me away after they basically redid the game. That was obviously much later in life, though, and that’s a very different framework of MMORPG than classic WoW and its early expansions.
Civilization III. Still undoubtedly the best from me, every subsequent change to the series has been negative.
