Ask Lemmy

Beyond Good and Evil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia_(1981_video_game)

Sauerbraten FOSS FPS, available in your repo. Single player racemaps are fun. Get to the podium in the quickest time.

Try these servers:

-Racing#1 2021 [rev]-

or

Racing Reloaded

--//--

0AD FLOSS RTS, also available in your repo.

Excellent theming and challenges.

Flashback.
I played it on SNES, but it was on a few consoles. I heard they are making a sequel so that's cool. It's science fiction with flavours of total recall, they live, and running man. I just really enjoyed the prince of Persia style gameplay but cyberpunk.

Parasite Eve
More specifically number 2, because the first one never officially came to pal regions. It's like resident evil but SciFi/body horror. The third game was shit because they lost the rights to the novel it was originally based on. If there's any game sequel that I wish for it would be a proper PE3.

Druidstone! It's a really great indie tactical RPG. Very fun and I never hear anyone talk about it.

Some more recent ones:

• Hammerfight (2009)
• Brigador (2016)
• CrossCode (2018)

I rarely see any Ys game referenced. It's gotten a bit bigger, but still a super underrated series.

The Saboteur by Pandemic as well.

Field Commander on PSP.

The original Overlord game (with the minions).

Fahrenheit/ Indigo Prophecy, an early David Cage/ Quantic Dream game from the same people who made Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human

I haven't played it in forever so I'm not sure how well it holds up (if at all) and I also have a love/hate relationship with it.

It has one of the single worst/ cheap levels of any game I have ever played*, and in the very last level the story really shits the bed. On the other hand it was doing things at the time that I still haven't seen in other games. (I haven't gotten around to playing his other games so he might be doing similar things in them). In terms of attempting to evolve the way stories are told in games it was truly groundbreaking and unique for its time.

I still have fond memories of playing it despite it's flaws. I'd say it's worth playing for anyone interested in a older game that does some really interesting things from a story telling perspective and/or people who are fans of the later games and are curious to see where it started. As long as you can make it through the QTE level with your sanity intact and are prepared for the story to get stupid right at the end- it's worth a playthrough imo

*Even though I hate the level, the concept behind it is actually pretty cool. A malevolent force tries to kill the player character by throwing his apartment at him. The problem is it's a 4 1/2 minute QTE sequence that requires precise timing and you can't mess up even one time or you have to start the entire thing over from the beginning. You also have plenty of time to wonder why the force never varies it's strategy of throwing one object at a time. Good idea, terrible execution.

An old game that never really took off, Orbz.

I was one of the best players in the world while it lasted.

Simple little game, you're a ball and you throw yourself at stars. The more you hit in a row without missing, the better your combo and score.

Essentially pong, but you play the ball, and it's on a landscape rather than somewhere you fall off and die.

I made a few levels for it.

Another was Triptych, which my friends and I called jelly tetris. Imagine tetris but the bits are springy and bounce a bit. It was a blast. Both were commercial games available on Linux at the time, early 2000s.

I think I'd have to say La-Mulana.

Rhythm Doctor.

There's a bunch on the PS1 that got lost in the mix.

Ape Escape was really fun and novel, it was the first mandatory dual-stick release, and it did initially sell really well! It got two sequels on the PS2 but then drifted into spin-offs and party games. It's been two decades since the last proper installment.

Tomba! is delightful nonsense, a 2D adventure platformer that presented non-linear quests and tight controls. It's a cult-classic and the digital Special Edition on PS5 looks like it was done well.

Now for something truly forgotten: Running Wild. It's a kart racer but instead of karts it's a bunch of furries in a footrace. The announcer yells a lot, some of the character designs are lazy stereotypes, the graphics are muddy, but the track design is solid and it really feels fast when you get going. Very rewarding to learn the best lines and get into a clean flow.

Balrum

Beautiful isometric game inspired by 80's and 90's CRPGs.

Still no love for my babe Cubivore. Shit slaps

also Frolf. I miss the gamecube era :(

The Finals.

I love it, it's also among one of the most popular games right now.

Never see anyone talking about it.

The Adventures of Lolo - a puzzle game on the NES. There were 1 or 2 sequels depending on how you count and they were fun too.

It’s a puzzle game with fairly simple mechanics but surprising complexity and difficulty. I beat both US versions and designed levels for a knockoff but have never met anyone in person that has heard of it.

Revenge of the Mutant Camels - highlight 1: "Ninety-foot high, neutronium shielded, laser-spitting, death camels". Hightlight 2: Almost 40 years after its first release, in 2021 Jeff Minter fixed a bug on collision detection in the Commodore 64 version.
Impossible Mission - highlight: "Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!"
Deuteros - highlight: the way the game world unfolded and opened up
Syndicate - highlight: abusing the Persuadertron
Shadow Hearts - highlight: the Judgement Ring

I love the little known MMO Dofus. Ive been playing it on and if for almost 20 years now. Lots of very different classes, gathering and manufacturing, and a very lovely art style. The combat is grid & turn based, kind-of like Final Fantasy tactics.

Patricks parabox. The ultimate sokoban IMO

Strife - last commercial release (at least until a recent retro game using it) of the Doom Engine. Picked it up for £3.50 or something about '97.

Think Hexen but plot, charming pixel-comic art, and some potentially frustrating boss fights and rpg lite elements.
Lots of fun, and does interesting stuff. I quote the voice acting quite a lot, but no one notices.

Shadow Tactics Desperados III The Thaumaturge

Hellnight/Dark Messiah

It's a relatively obscure PS1 game in the horror genre.

The main thing that made it relatively unique among the horror game of the PS1 era is its lack of action mechanics. It’s essentially a horror dungeon crawler without action mechanics. You can run away or sneak past the invincible enemy, or if you gain a companion, the enemy kills your companion allowing you to run away when caught.

It is pretty different from the other horror games from the PS1 era, which made it relatively disappointing for those expecting it to be similar to the likes of Resident Evil or even Silent Hill.

Kinetica - a racing game where the 'vehicles' are people in mechanical suits that make them look like sexy mecha, racing to old techno

Bloody Roar - a series of fighting games where you fight as people who can suddenly shift into other forms, some recognizable animals and some abstract, and with the ability in some arenas to kick people through walls or over ledges into new arenas

Forsaken - 3D hover vehicle battles

Tiny Tank - a game where you play as a sweary AI tank

Megaman Legends 1 and 2 - Megaman as a 3d adventure game with a storyline and characters

Gitaroo Man - a rhythm game I enjoyed, later imitated by some others

Shadow of the Colossus - more known but not cared for these days. A game in which there are only boss battles. A subtly told story. Part of the ICO universe.

Titan Souls - One boy, one bow, one arrow that can be magically recalled to the bow, and giant stone destroyers that he must conquer with nothing more. Kind of a 2D Shadow of the Colossus

BPM: Bullets Per Minute - everyone has the idea for a rhythm FPS. This is the only one that does a good job of it.

Receiver - a game in which you don't just hit R to reload, but have to go through the full manual of arms, dropping the clip, holstering the weapon, loading each round into the clip, drawing the weapon, seating the clip, racking the round, checking the chamber to make sure it fed correctly, aiming, firing, clearing the jam, all while worrying about killer robots.

Valley - a movement game that has such an amazing feeling of freedom in its movement

Tunnet - lovecraftian network technician game