Ask Lemmy

Subnautica, I thought it was just minecraft under water, which sounded ok. Didn't expect it to have a story, absolutely didn't expect it to have an interesting story. The audio logs had some charming characters, ham and cheese had me cracking up whilst trying not to die. BUT, the exact moment I realized this game was special was the translated message you get after getting your arm poked, suddenly hours of environmental story telling snap into place as you realize what is about to happen. 11/10 would buy again.

Horizon Zero Dawn - From what I saw from the marketing seemed just odd. Relatively primitive looking humans fighting animal shaped robots. It just looked a bit too gimmicky. Several years after it's initial release I saw that it was on sale and gave it a shot. I was genuinely surprised by the depth of the story. It was much more emotionally impactful than I expected and the story now feels almost prescient.

These three jump out at me. I went blind on all three.

• Portal 2 - I genuinely had no idea what it was about when I started, and I certainly did not expect comedy.
• Titanfall 2 - Bought it on release because I wanted a solo FPS game. Amazing. I wish I could experience it for the first time again.
• Spiritfarer - I cried. A lot.

Control. I've always had a fondness for SCP-related stuff so when I saw Control on sale for $3 or $4 it was an instant mindless purchase. Bored a few days later I decided to give it a go, and then I went and beat the entire game and the DLC. Great power fantasy, great lore, great voice acting, fun moment to moment gameplay balanced between exploring, upgrading, story beats, and boss fights. Also ties in to their other games like Alan Wake; I haven't played that one, but I've strongly considered it just because of Control and wanting more of that universe.

Inscryption, I went in expecting a short card based escape room with a lil bit of meta story. I found so much more, by the end the risk investment was great!

Saints Row the third. It hit a few right spots with me that GTA never could

Also Darksiders. I got it as a preorder bonus for Space Marine 1 and i ended playing it was more. Really like the universe.

Outer wilds, went in blind (as you should) was not disappointed.

Botw it was my first zelda game I played, never expected myself to enjoy the game that much.

Most recently, Slay the Princess. It's a VN, and I typically do not play VNs, but wow. It's actually quite amazing and I can't actually tell you why because it'd spoil it.

I get pleasantly surprised all the time though, since I like to use a randomizer to choose my next game sometimes. I think one of the other experiences was the Rusty Lake games. I got them in a bundle and since it was a puzzler, I had my friend join me in comms and it was... very strange. But we will use references from those games as insider nods to one another.

Hollow Knight and by extension, Elden Ring.

I was always rather nervous to play Souls games, and these games are challenging as hell.

I’m not very far in either game — having just beaten the first boss in HK and I just beat Margit in Elden Ring.

But god, that rush when you beat a boss in either game is amazing. Took me about 8 tries to beat Margit and I was so excited when I won.

I can see why people love this genre now.

God of War 2018. I had never played any of the GOW games and I tried this one on a whim.

I fell in love with it immediately.

Slime rancher and slime rancher 2 were shockingly wonderful experiences. Completely different than my typical type of game. Usually I just play M rated open world RPGs.

the binding of issac, looked lame at first, but i put 500+ hours on it

Back in the day Morrowind on a Twilight disc. I'm not into fantasy at all, but that game took me for a spin that lasted many years.

Hellblade. Senua's sacrifice

I don't particularly like "medieval" games. Which I thought this was. It isn't. But I played it because I heard somewhere it was a psychological game. It is.

It also was cheap when I bought it. Like $10.

I really like it. I ended up watching all the dev log videos on it. I have a background in psychology and was rather impressed by how many things in the game are based on the perception distortions common in schizophrenia.

Like the mask thing is part of that too. The pattern matching from perspectives. Seeing faces in trees or rocks (paraedolia). That's all part of the condition.

The story itself was also very good and it is a personal story of her journey.

However that said. Hellblade 2 was awful in every way that made the first one good. Bad puzzles. No real personal journey. Story was garbage. And very little player autonomy. No exploration. Fixed speeds and at the start of every single enemy encounter, the enemy, a man, beats the piss out of you.

Almost to the point it felt exploitive, and for people who like watching men beat up women.

Sad to see the 2nd so terrible. But the first is brilliant. It's also the perfect length. Not too long.

If you liked deciphering script, check out Chants of Sennar. I played it with my gf who doesn't game much but we loved it.

• Slay the Spire. I have played quite a few roguelikes before StS but I never played much card-based games at all, due to me never playing boardgames or TCGs... so this was obviously a new experience for me. Almost 1000 hours on record now with the game, cleared A20H with every base game character (and did A20H on almost every Packmaster pack)... which should speak for itself
• Dancerush Stardom, that funny shuffle game. This is Konami's attempt at making a beginner- and normie-friendly rhythm game... which never quite caught on (aside from random YouTube recordings having several million views). I wasn't particularly fit & never knew about this game before at all, so it was a pleasant surprise to me that I liked it so much. I have 5-star cleared many of the hardest songs in this game so

Wuthering Waves.

It's a gacha game so I went into it not expecting much, I was just looking for an action combat game with a party of characters and as it was "free" I figured why not give it a shot.

I'm 39 and have been playing games my entire life (probably wayyy too much) and yet this gacha game somehow is literally my favorite game I've ever played... I cried like 4 times during the story and side stories, everything (except the gacha) is amazing. The art, the music, the gameplay, I love it all. I was never expecting to love a gacha game so much lol

The Walking Dead (Telltale's version). I expected zombies, and a bit of action and tension from trying to escape them and survive. What I didn't expect was the emotional rollercoaster, and the genuine emotional reaction it got from me. One of the most powerful gaming experiences I've had.

Talos Principle 2. It’s a solid chamber puzzle game like Portal, but the philosophy audio logs were so good that they shifted my real world views into a less nihilistic place.

BG3. Never played the first two, and I find some games like that have bad writing (like every bit of dialog feeling like it's overstaying it's welcome, being way to chatty and/or dull). I think I saw Cohh playing it (pretty sure that was my introduction to him) and I was blown away by the early access writing and mechanics. I bought the early access right away and was enthralled in it's writing, the plot, the dynamic choices based on class, race, or deity choice, and the music. There used to be a lady sitting next to the waterfall in the grove that had a whole sob story and a music box. Seeing the thralls on the nautiloid and the implications of what it all meant... I was really sad the release was so different. Still very good, but wasn't as good. But as it stands it is one of the few games I've actually completed, and I think it's the only game I've actually completed multiple times. Needless to say I'm very looking forward to Divinity.

Then Expedition 33. When I first saw gameplay I really thought it was just another Persona clone. I thought that due to the menu layout in combat. Day it released, saw some gameplay and decided to take a risk and bought it. Before I even left for the expedition... I already told my friends it was GOTY, it just dethroned KCD2.

Neon White. I got it free recently on PS Plus and just fired it up to see what it was like. I ended up getting all the A ranks on every level and got all of the hidden items. The soundtrack also slaps

The saboteur

Picked it up randomly back in the day with 0 expectations . I loved playing this game. The way it uses black and white to express the despair of ww2 France , slowly transforming to colour as you destroy nazi infrastructure and the tide of the war changes is so satisfying .

I do not play VNs, nor am i interested in them (i despise fan service), but i randomly played Katawa Shoujo a long time ago and it was such a sweet little game that i really fell in love with it.
Sometimes, i listen to the music to revisit that world.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 1 and 2

I had an odd, roundabout way to getting into these games. Last year KCD2 showed up on GOTY lists, and it's a series I just hadn't paid any attention to. But over the holiday break, I noticed I had a copy of KCD1 on Epic because they give away free games during the holidays, and I just happened to get it at some point (probably years ago).

So on a whim I downloaded it and tried it out, and damn was it good. Right up my alley. I'm a little sad I played it before this new patch dropped a recently.

So I blasted through KCD1 so I could get into KCD2, and that's where I am currently, 100 hours into the story and still happily trucking along.

These are some of the best open world RPGs BY FAR. There's no magic, no dragons, no bullshit. Henry isn't a superhero. He's just a guy. But it all feels so good. You want to go down huge dialog trees because it's all interesting. The only bad part about these games are that you want to play for hours at a time and often can't because real life exists.

Symphony of the Night

I had dismissed it even it originally came out because it wasn't 3D, but it kept coming up on top lists of PSX games and so I decided to give it a try a few years ago. Countless playthroughs later and it's probably one of my too ten games.

There's just so many little details to learn and tons of charm and style. The randomizer means I can replay it again and again and it's still a fresh experience only made better by my knowledge of the game.

Planet Crafter. I may have hyper-fixated on it for a good few weeks to finish it. I don't know why, but it was very addicting to me.

Also, not a game, but the Mekanism mod for Minecraft. Trying to setup automated resource production in as little space as possible is a very fun challenge. Plus the annoying sounds from each running machine is very satisfying to hear together.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I don't consider myself a Metroidvania fan at all but both Ori games are so good.

The biggest surprise were the Death Stranding games. I had no idea it would scratch itches I didn't know I had.

Dwarf Fortress.

And, I mean pre-steam release.

The ASCII graphics, controls and everything about it were not appealing to me. I started playing it because of the Boatmurdered story and some friends trying to recreate that. We started playing and rotating fortresses on a random Friday night.

And once things started to click? I put way too much time into it. I'd eventually mod it and make it easier to play but I put many many hours into it.

I wouldeventually put the game down after that initial burst and then years later the steam release came, making it much more enjoyable and well... A couple thousand hours later I still keep going back to it.

elden ring. was expecting to quit at any point because of how bitching it could be. ended up getting through it between sorcery and tasty cheese.

A bit of an odd choice, but Half Life 2's episodes.

I really didn't like the base game, it was a huge disappointment after playing the first one imo. So I expected the episodes to be just more of the same, but they turned out to be so much better than what I expected.

For anyone wondering how I could not like base HL2, I also think of Halo 3 as being the second worst Halo. I have some odd stances like that.

Against the Storm.

Its a 'roguelike' colony builder where you're basically starting a colony as quick as you can, then once it starts to get established and run well, you leave and move onto the next one.

I was thinking it was something closer to a city builder where you're managing something from start to finish and didn't expect to like the roguelike aspect but I think it works well.

Its just got a neat little art style, a bunch of fantasy races with particular quirks, strange biomes with pros/cons, and has a bunch of lore tidbits sprinkled throughout.