Let’s hear about some games you maybe were told were not worth your time, or had bad reviews but you managed to love regardless.
I’ll go first. I’m not embarrased to admit that I played the shit out of Elder Scrolls Blades (the easily forgettable Skyrim-esque mobile game). I had to wait for it to release on Switch which had the benifit of the shitty timers being gone by then.
Once I started to think of it as a kind of advanced ‘Swords and Sandles’ type game I was hooked.
Genshin Impact.
Listen. I understand that the entire thing was hyped up upon release. It was, after all, a gamechanger for mobile gacha games. We went from turn-based games to things like Honkai Star Rail and Tower of Fantasy and of course, Genshin Impact. Honkai Impact 3rd existed, but it wasn’t quite the same as these ones.
However. Despite the hype, there was a problem that made me reluctant to play it.
I really suck at gacha games. Every gacha game before then I would drop within what, 6 days? I love the characters, love the story, hate the game.
So imagine my surprise when I logged into my settings the other day and found out that oh, It’s now been over 500 days logged, lmao. I’ve taken breaks from it once in a while, but I haven’t quit it yet. What have I become?
I feel you… especially that last part, heh. I originally started playing it on its release to keep my friend company - he’s really into the anime aesthetic, I am not. I have never even played a gacha game in my life.
Something about Genshin is just so strangely charming, though. I cannot stress enough how much I love the music and the latest region especially has been such a wonderful audio-visual experience, which is probably what makes me stick around. There are few characters I genuinely enjoy from a writing/design perspective that not having to chase the gacha is a bonus, but it certainly makes the ones I pick all the more special to me. :)
Something I also appreciate is that Mihoyo/Hoyoverse is constantly making updates on a 6 week basis. 6 weeks! One could argue that quality of life and new features suffer for it, but I think it’s impressive that they manage to keep a game stable and mostly problem-free on such a tight schedule. And the orchestras they make happen are wonderful. For all its shortcomings, I am… positively surprised.
Honestly I super agree, I got into Genshin so I could have something to play during the texas freeze and I’m glad it sucked me in during that time because it’s SUPER fun – the story isn’t remarkable all the time, but it’s cool getting a serialized narrative through the form of a game like that. I’m really glad I got into it, even if hoyoverse doesn’t seem interested in adding more endgame content at all
Judging by the trailers I thought “INFRA” was going to be a short first person exploration puzzler type of deal. Take photos of damaged structures, explore abandoned buildings, marvel at the graphical excellence of 2020s gaming, that kinda thing. It had rave reviews, but I chose to go in blind in terms of story.
Turns out, it’s an over 30 hour puzzle adventure game with an ARG, pretty deep lore, comedy elements, horror elements, open exploration, collectibles, secret areas, easter eggs, etc. Most of it is pretty standard “walking simulator” gameplay, and part of the middle chapters can feel like a serious slog walking through tunnel after tunnel, but I found myself consistently surprised and even awed by the crazy environments the developers managed to create. The puzzles can also be seriously difficult at times, usually requiring some pretty good logical skills or even prior knowledge of how engineering and physics works. (although there is that one electrical wiring puzzle at the end of chapter 6/7 or whatever that has everybody stumped no matter their education level)
Real Civil Engineer (RCE) did a playthrough of the full game. What’s great is watching him point out all the times when the game correctly or incorrectly flags safety violations, as well as commenting on all the things that a safe engineer would never do.
I’ve never heard of INFRA but it sounds like something I would enjoy, thanks for the recommendation!
You’re welcome! Fair warning it is a game developed by a Finnish development studio and the localization efforts aren’t… great, which means the voice acting is a bit “hammy” and doesn’t sound super natural. But you’ll get used to it, the main character ends up sounding inadvertently hilarious
Elex had some really rough reviews, and didn’t exactly have me chomping at the bit to try it. A while back I noticed it was included in my PS+ subscription, so I gave it a shot out of curiosity.
It’s actually pretty great. The beginning of the game is really hard (tip - get a companion ASAP, as they are substantially better than you at first), which is kind of refreshing to be honest to have a game where you’re told ‘you have lost your power and are weak’ and you actually are. But as you level up and get used to the systems, you gradually become an absolute monster on the battlefield. There’s nothing more satisfying in a game than returning to a monster that once killed you if it even looked at you, and being able to beat the crap out of it now.
I also felt it did “post apocalyptic world’ very well. Where most games of the type take the approach of making a world that looks like the world was destroyed a month before you set off on your adventure, Elex takes a different approach of showing a mixed world of areas that are well on their way to recovery, and areas where the land itself is so damaged it’s unlikely to ever recover, and a few places in between. It works, at least it did for me.
The game is not perfect by any means, there is a level of jank that can be both charming and annoying, but it’s a very solid adventure that at least dares to try to be different than the top games in its genre. Definitely worth a try for fans of RPGs, open world games, or adventure games.
Another great game. Didn’t expect it to be that entertaining but there I was spending considerable amounts of time deciding which faction to pick because they are all fun.
Will buy Elex II at some point.
I liked how the choice of what faction to join was a legitimately tough choice. Too many games are like “Do you want to join the Puppy Huggers or the Puppy Punchers?”. In Elex they’re all much more grey than black and white.
Vampyr. On release a lot of people and reviews said it was clunky and not very good, it has a 72 on Opencritic and 55% of critics did not recommend it. It also got a lot of negative reviews from the community.
Well I think those people were high, it was one of my favorite games of that year! It’s not a perfect game by any means but it was a ton of fun. Great atmosphere, great gameplay, good story… I never really got the hate.
A fellow Vampyr enjoyer in the wild! I played the game without killing anyone (which is considered the “boring” way of playing) and still had a great time.
Same here. I didn’t harm anyone and went for the true ending, which was actually difficult because I was playing on hard mode, and not killing anyone means you’re always underpowered.
SaGa (the series in general). Always heard it was the obtuse bastard child in the RPG family. The series has tried a lot of interesting things and while most games in the series are flawed, they are all really interesting in spite of themselves.
Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky had poor reviews on IGN so I decided to give it a shot and it became one of my favorite games of all time.
Blasphemous. I was told by some that it was a very shallow game with boring lore, and that it only succeeded cause it was marketed at a basically Platformer Dark Souls.
Not true. There is a lot of lore I find really interesting, the map is much larger than I originally thought, there are tons of secrets and hidden passages, and it’s pulled all the best parts from Metroid, Castlevania and Dark Souls and combined them into a very well polished game.
Currently going for a 100% completion run before 2 comes out.
The first Knack on PS4. It has okay to low review, tons of meme but I bought and played it. To my surprise it’s actually pretty deep in terms of fighting mob mechanism at higher difficulties. Example, some of the AI can work together and bait your action, then another will follow up to hit you. Those behavior won’t show up in easier difficulty cause you just delete them so quickly with your power/punches/slams. With higher difficulty the order of how you approach multiple enemies in an area becomes it’s own action-puzzle game. It can still have some extra polish but still exceeded my expectation.(no I haven’t played knack 2 yet.)
lol, I should’ve copied over my knack review etc from reddit.
My buddy worked at Sony and I got one of the first PS4s, he gave me Knack and Killzone for it. I played Knack way more than Killzone. What a great game. I wanted to play Knack 2 but I also haven’t.
EDF 4 was one of my big ones. Bought it after seeing the strangely high steam reviews. Turns out it pretty much captures the feeling of that fun game that you played on your friend’s PS2 after school on Friday. Something about chucking increasingly large explosives at piles of giant ants really just does it for me.
EDF! EDF! EDF!
I think Halo 5 is one of the best Halo games, in terms of both single player and multiplayer. Fight me
I would but they never released it on PC still lol
All I know is that the campaign is apparantly trash and halo 5 multiplayer being alright. I know competitive players enjoyed it and it had the best forge possiblities during that era.
I thought “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion” was a game trying a little too hard to be quirky, with an attention-grabbing title and little depth beyond one or two jokes.
That game… went places. Places I did not expect.
It’s not a remarkable game, but watch dog legions was nowhere near as bad as the original reaction made it out to be. Better than 2 I think, I didn’t like The protagonist in 2
I got that game for free with my gpu and had a lot of fun playing a demented hacker grandma causing mischief.
couldn’t tell you what the story was about though
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. It was a short game that was more story than game so I was hesitant that I wouldn’t like it. I played through it in vr and it became my favourite game to date.
To anyone who wants to play it, whether it’s flatscreen or vr, you must have a good pair of headphones to fully appreciate it.
Spec Ops: The Line looked like yet another generic first person shooter, but it is full of surprises and gets deep in a way I never expected. Highly recommend it, and go in as spoiler-free as possible.
The Walking Dead Season 1. I knew it was good but I didn’t realize how good
