Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.
Rise of Nations. It’s like Civilization but as a real-time strategy game and I really enjoy it. Microsoft actually released an updated edition in 2014 which was good of them but I basically never hear anyone actually talk about it which sucks because it’s such a cool game. The single-player Conquer the World campaigns are also cool, and have some elements reminiscent of the classic Risk board game.
There’s also Star Trek: Bridge Commander, which is often mentioned in discussions of “what Star Trek games were good?” but not much outside of that context. It strikes a perfect balance between having starship combat that really feels like you’re commanding a ship with a lot of mass behind it and actually being fun and easy for an average person to pick up and play (which is where stuff like the X Universe games fall down). There are tons of “space fighter” games out there but I’ve never really seen anything that captures space capital ship combat as well as Bridge Commander.
My Summer Car. It’s probably still #1 for play time on Steam for me. I bought a whole-ass racing wheel setup just for that game.
Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.
Highly recommend.
American McGee’s Alice and the much later sequel which is my favourite game of all time - Alice: Madness Returns.
The aesthetic, the puzzles, the sound design, the voice acting, the political statements underlying the narrative, Alice’s outfits, the collectibles hidden in obscure places, the different art styles for each world level. I just love it! I mean sure, the combat mechanics are not as complex as some games but they fit nicely into Alice in Wonderland lore and if you up the difficulty settings it can be more challenging.
I’m also really enjoying Inscryption at the moment. A puzzle/card game interweaved with an escape the room horror story.
Legend of Dragoon for PS1. It has the single best timed-input RPG combat system of any game ever. Think Mario RPG but way better.
GUST OF WIND DANCE!
Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I’m genuinely surprised more people aren’t talking about Jade Empire.
It’s a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!
I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!
Jade empire was legit. i’m really surprised that there haven’t been any other kung fu type rpgs since.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
Or maybe some could make SF6 story mode X Jade Empire.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
I hadn’t even thought about that but you’re right. What a wonderful thought.
It’s also kind of surprising no effort has been done to remaster Jade Empire since that is such a popular cash grab these days. But maybe the brand strength of the IP is just that low?
Any love for the Monkey Island series here?
I’ve never played one of the games but have heard thousands talk about them so I wouldn’t say that counts.
I’ll take it.
So let me ask you this. Have you heard of Loom™? It’s the latest masterpiece in fantasy storytelling from LucasFilm’s™ Brian Moriarty™.
How appropriate, you fight like a cow!
You never heard anybody to talk about Monkey Island? Seriously?
Subbed!
Puzzle Pirates was a MMO in the early to mid 00’s. Each task on board the ship had a puzzle mini game associated with it. Sailing was sort of like Dr. Mario, pumping out the bilge was a match 3 game, loading the canons was sort of like Chu-Chu Rocket. The thing I liked about it was that your character’s ability to preform a duty had nothing to do with what gear you had equipped or how many skill points you had in a stat (there were none), it was all about how well you, as a player, could play the particular mini game.
In battle, sailors would generate movement tokens to allow the captain to maneuver the ship, gunners would reload the canons after they’d been fired, carpenters would repair any damage you’ve taken, while the bilge pumpers would keep the ship from foundering. Once you closed in and grappled the enemy ship, everyone would participate in a Super Puzzle Fighter-like sword fighting game; defeat the enemy crew to pillage their hold.
Planetside 2 - someone else already mentioned it here, but it’s the only game in it’s genre and nothing else really comes close to what it offers (persistent 1v1v1 +300 player battles across infantry, land, air, and sea). It’s been kicking for over a decade now and I’m not sure what could replace it if or when it finally kicks it. It’s truly singular, and responsible for some of my fondest memories in gaming. It’s also free!
Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.
Black and White, it was a god simulator on PC in 2001. You interact with your villagers and the world as a floating hand, casting spells to raise faith in villages or throwing rocks to smite as necessary. You also got a giant pet that you could train to do your bidding.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)
One Must Fall 2097, an awesome robot fighting game for DOS, which is quite different from every other fighting game, because in this one you have to select both pilots and the robots, and each pilot and robot have their own specialities and back stories, so it makes for a lot more interesting gameplay compared to other games in this genre.
Whoooooooa, now you’re really taking me back. I only had the Shareware version, so the full version with all the fighters was something I lusted after for ages, but never actually got. Megarace is another one from this era that stands out, though I don’t think it was a particularly great game.
I can still remember every special move and destruction. And how to select Nova outside tournament. Completed the tournament on Heavy Metal, but it’s hard only in the beginning.
There are custom tournaments and a open source remake project https://www.openomf.org/
You know that killer soundtrack right?
One day Kenny Chou was browsing the internet and randomly thought “I wonder if anyone remembers that game I did the music for?” and was surprised to find his OMF2097 music has a huge following.
To celebrate he re-constructed the main theme in modern tools here: https://youtu.be/UvlVaQl7kEk
That’s awesome! Cheers for the link! I loved the theme song so much that I made up random lyrics for it as a kid and used to sing it all the time. People used to ask me what was that song that I was singing and I’d tell them all about the game and rope them into it lol.
Man, I haven’t played it in decades, and I can still remember the soundtrack. Great game! I can count on one hand the number of fighting games that I’ve bothered to learn all the moves for, and OMF might have been the first. Just had the shareware version for years, then happened upon a licensed copy in an old box of 3.5" disks. Good times.
Crimson Skies for OG Xbox. It’s pirates in planes dogfighting, we need a remake badly.
The prequel that only came out on PC was really good, too. But the Xbox version was better for sure.
Always been more of a console guy so I didn’t even know there was a prequel!
Mine is definitely Freelancer. The game by Chris Roberts that actually got finished by firing him.
I love that game, the story is engaging and the characters are likeable.
I’m probably just seeing it with nostalgia but I like to play it until this day. I installed it on my Steam Deck and gave it a go. It was awesome.
