And what specifically makes it special, appealing, or interesting to you?
Master Of Orion. Both the original, it’s sequel and the modern remake. It’s nice to play something with different pacing from other games. And the random outcomes from AI throughout the game’s progression keeps things spicy from playthrough to playthrough.
Pretty much any of the Zachtronics games. Shenzen I/O, ExaPunks, Opus Magnum, and Last Call BBS are all fun “puzzle” games for programmers and people with programmer brains.
Metroid other m. Far from best game in the series, a lot easier than the other games, but i found the presentation really fun.
The dodging and kill moves i found satisfying and the boss fights were. The cut scenes were a bit too long buy i enjoyed the game
Yeah, this really is a game that the story killed. The gameplay is tight and fun, and overall it’s a fun experiment in the series that was ruined by the creator of the series completely misunderstanding why people like Samus as a character.
Well part of my unpopular opinion is that the story isn’t that bad. To me the flashbacks arent so bad, it makes sense that samus was rebellious, she was young at the time and going through a phase but it also explains why she is a rogue hunter.
The part that is annoying is the present timeline where samus has completely abandoned the rebelliousness and will risk her own life in order to not disobey orders from someone who A) isn’t her commanding officer and B) she disobeyed in the past
any arena shooter in the style of Quake, Halo, or Unreal Tournament. It’s a shame they aren’t more popular
Most of the Dark Pictures Anthology games have pretty mediocre ratings, but at this point my friends and I look forward to each release. It’s like a 10 hour long horror movie night. They’re just long enough to start right after lunch on a sat, and play late into the night, passing the controller around.
Their last release The Devil In Me is rated around 5/10, yet it might be my favorite one to date. It’s not uncommon for them to have a rocky release with bugs, so sometimes we give them a few months to patch it up. But honestly, one of the best local coop experiences I’ve had. Definitely recommend if you have some friends over.
I’ve always believed that Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts deserves way more love than it got. I can understand it may have been just a the wrong time (and not what fans were hoping for with a BK revival at the time) but the core vehicle building gameplay and physics are so much fun to play around with.
I’ve beaten the game a few times over now, and each time I try to challenge myself to make wilder vehicles than before. Or sometimes avoid making a vehicle entirely and attempting to make some sort of contraption machine. The music is some incredible work from Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland, bringing in a more modern but still very Banjo sound to the game.
I think now with the game being nearly 15 years behind us now, if you have GamePass please do yourself a favor and give it a try with an open mind! It may not be for everyone, but the building mechanics were pretty ahead of their time for 2008! You may just find a new favorite game :)
They really did this game dirty by teasing it as Banjo-Kazooie 3. Probably the biggest reason why it failed, even though it was a pretty cool game.
Would really love a PC version of it as well.
Totally agree. I figured all of Rare Replay would have come to PC by now but maybe someday…
Every game releases on PC at some point, whether through emulation or not is up to the developers/publishers. :D
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The game was a commercial and critical bomb, but it’s the only cover shooter I’ve ever enjoyed. It’s just such an unrelentingly visceral, disorienting, harsh game, with one of the main aesthetic gimmicks being that it emulates the look and feel of a late 2000s amateur video. It’s hard to describe without seeing it in action, but it was audacious as shit for what was meant to be a big budget, AAA title.
I appreciate overwatch, because the sequel cured my videogame addiction (it’s so much worse)
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I enjoyed Spore when I was a kid. It was legit fun evolving and designing your creature.
Spore was really cool… Until space stage which was just too boring!
I was extremely invested in spore pre release and with how much was cut, it could never live up to my expectations…
I played SO much spore back in the day. I even created a sort of OC in the game with a whole backstory and cast of characters and everything. Totally just had a blast from the past looking at my creations on the “sporepedia” (it still exists!)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
It was a kinda janky 3D Action Adventure from around 2000. Back then it had really beautiful and colorful graphics. I remember playing it on my first “real” PC and being amazed by how it looked.
It also stands out to me for being actually funny and comitting to being a comedy game.
I loved this game! The humour was my favourite part - very dry and very British. A fun shooter with a lot of variety. Amazing soundtrack by Jeremy Soule. I found the game very difficult, though - I doubt I ever got close to finishing it. How about you?
When I first played it I didn’t get very far into it. But I came back to it a few years later and finished it. The Multiplayer was also suprisingly fun on LAN-parties.
Nobody ever says this but Halo Infinite isn’t that bad if you ignore the battlepass
I liked Balan Wonderworld. i didn’t love it, but i certainly don’t understand the hate- I haven’t ran into any bugs, some of the powers were neat, the music was phenomenal, and the simple controls were a selling point for me. it was like playing a new Dreamcast game in 2023 for better or for worse, another Billy Hatcher or something.
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3D platformers are seeing a bit of a resurgence on the indie level at least which is pretty exciting. In particular I’d recommend the Spark the Electric Jester series (although the 1st is 2D) and Lunistice in particular
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I wouldn’t call this unpopular because it’s disliked, just unknown to a lot of people because I don’t think it was marketed much in the US. One of my all time favorite games is Dragon Quest Builders 2. It’s got just the right difficulty for me where it’s mostly easy with a few challenging boss fights that might take a few tries to master. It’s got a nice balance between questing, building, and farming. It’s a bit silly, but it gets to be cute and endearing. I love the graphics. You’re building in 3D with blocks like Minecraft but it’s actually pretty, Minecraft was always too ugly for me to get into it.
I only know about this game because Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games were my boyfriend’s favorite growing up and it’s still his favorite series.
I lost myself for awhile in that game, I completely rebuild my main island.
My only gripe was the unskippable dialog. When the big bad would do his overspeech it was so, so painful. They needed to at least put in a text speed option.
The dialog is painfully slow. I agree on that.
I started to play this on game pass recently, and it did feel like it had a lot of potential, but at least at first I was frustrated that it kept telling me to build to very specific plans. Less “Create whatever shit you want” and more “here is an outline, put these blocks exactly where I tell you or you can’t progress.”
Does the building system open up later on / did I just give up in a really long tutorial?
In the story there are major structures that have to be built to specifications (and plenty of minor ones early on), though for the major ones you just have to supply materials and villagers will complete them for you if you don’t feel like trying to match a huge blueprint block by block. There are other parts of the game where you have lots of leeway and get general requests for things like a certain type of kitchen or bedroom that tell you what furniture and decorations are needed to create that room, but it’s up to you to build it as large or small as you want and embellish it and you can use any type of blocks you want for the walls and flooring if you’ve got a preferred aesthetic in mind. There are also whole islands where it’s just free form build whatever you like. At the end game you can buy materials instead of gathering them yourself if you want and just build to your heart’s content. You also get some better building tools as the story progresses.
Vintage Story. It’s a minecraft-mod turned game that focuses on slow progression through the ages. You need to survive winters and they just had a lore update recently. I play it with my SO and it’s definitely a slower paced game, but the progression feels more rewarding.
That sounds awesome tbh
Salt and Sanctuary (more for it being unpopular vs bad hivemind).
I love Metroidvanias, but combined with Souls-like elements makes for a very fun concoction. This one in particular I have so much fun exploring. The story telling and world building adds to the mystery and the fun of unraveling the story. It has a very good variety of enemies/bosses/items. It also oozes so much atmosphere. One of the better Metroidvanias (I played a fair number of them).
Another one is Dark Souls 2. I get it being disliked; can’t be helped as it had a lot of departures from the first. But out of all 3, this one I played x3 as much. I absolutely love the sheer variety of locations (it’s ridiculous); exploration is super fun and rewarding.
Completely agree on Dark Souls 2, I’ve played almost all of the Souls games, yet I keep finding myself coming back to Dark Souls 2, I’m not sure what it is about the game, because there are definitely things I don’t like about it (Mainly adaptability and hollowfication reducing your health) but it’s still easily my most replayed Souls game. I especially love the early game, where you have 4 different paths you can take from Majula, it lets me leave if I am struggling with an area and come back to it later after playing a different path for a while
I’ve been meaning to play salt and sanctuary for a while, but haven’t done it yet. I might pick that game up next time my bank account is a bit more full, because that sounds right up my alley
I also keep wanting to come back to DS2 for the long journey with so many cool locations.
Salt and Sanctuary really holds a special place for me. The atmosphere is absolutely top notch; we’re talking Hollow Knight levels in my opinion. The map design is also phenomenal along with tons of secrets and shortcuts. Not sure if the recent patch fixed it, but the combat is kinda unbalanced from what I recall. Heavy armor is more or less useless so you might as well go fashion-souls. And 2-handed strength weapons are king.
Idk where the DS2 hate came from, before DS3 released i remember DS2 being quite well regarded, i put in well over 300 or so hours just replaying the game over and over again trying to create OP builds and beating the game as fast as i could. while DS3 felt super polished with a really impressive map design, it just wasn’t as fun as DS2 for me.
I think most of the hate was from the initial release. At this point blatant hate is undeserved and it might be a meme at this point or a bandwagon to hop on where everyone knows “DS2 bad”.
Is Salt and Sanctuary not a popular game? It’s one of the better and well reviewed 2D souls-likes. Salt and Sacrifice did get dunked on for being Epic exclusive and worse than Salt and Sanctuary though.
I love Metroidvanias
Give Ender Lilies a try if you didn’t play it yet by the way. Really good Metroidvania and one of my favorites (besides the obvious ones like Hollow Knight and Ori).
It’s the impression I get, I rarely hear it discussed or people just haven’t heard of it when Hollow Knight comes up.
I actually gave Ender Lilies a shot. I have to admit it didn’t grab me for some reason. I don’t remember what problem I had with it exactly. BUT it does have a phenomenal soundtrack (Awakening, North).
Have you played Aquaria? I should’ve mentioned this one instead (slipped my mind) because it feels even more obscure than Salt and Sanctuary.
Have you played Aquaria?
Nope, but I do have it in my Steam library for some reason so I’m gonna check it out soon.
