Feel free to replace “friends” with “anyone you know in real life” or even online groups you trust or are close with.
“They”:
and my own personal experience; most games I have bought in the past 10 years have been off of recommendations from r/gamingsuggestions before Reddit went to crap and Lemmy came into existence; and even moreso when it is a personal friend recommending things to me.
Mods, feel free to nuke if this feels too close to advertising or better-suited for !videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip (my own community); I mean it more as a discussion piece but I don’t run the place.
EDIT: The “not” in the title is optional; I’m asking about both successful and failed recommendations.
Dragon’s Age Origins. Had a friend tell me how it was their favorite franchise and that specifically was the best game, such amazing lore, gameplay, etc.
Couldn’t even make it past the first quest before I hung it out.
I enjoyed it but the character arc resolutions were extremely rushed.
I never made it out of the first zone. I was honestly shocked by how little I cared for it considering I made it through Jade Empire, but Origins just felt like Knights of the Old Republic and that game bored me too.
I’m your reverse. Friends with some big Dragon Age fans, they wanted me to join, it worked for me too! The Dragon Age train crashed when I had to free up space on my PC for more important real life things sadly, but when I finish that I’d like to finish my playthrough and maybe replay with fight-skipping cheats, or hit up the rest of the series.
I got several, I’ve found that some people really think about what I like in a game and nail a recommendation and some people just recommend things they liked, regardless how I feel on them.
The big ones would be Breath of the Wild and Helldivers 2.
Assuming the (not) is optional, I loved both Soma and Subnaitica. Two great recommendations
The not was absolutely intended as optional! I’m wondering if other people are seeing it as required judging by the count of responses talking about negative experiences I got…
I hate Mario. The physics of the game sucks.
The Witcher 3 felt very sloppy to me, controls wise. I felt like combat had me sliding all over the place. Blocking, parrying, and dodging didn’t feel satisfying or responsive.
Just couldn’t get into it at all because of it.
I ended up running around and talking to everyone I could, then realize there’s a ton of combat stuff to do and nobody else to talk to and I just turned it off
Maybe you’d prefer Monster Hunter or Elden Ring combat.
I love elden Ring! I’ve played through and beaten it several times.
I got it for free, installed it and got into the tutorial. There I soon realized that the combat system wasn’t my bag.
I’m not a console gamer, so the day Horizon Zero Dawn was released, I bought Mass Effect: Andromeda. It was meh.
When Horizon came to PC and I played through it for the first time, I was stunned: the graphics, story, and gameplay were so much better than Andromeda’s. I’m still not a console gamer, but Horizon had me considering a PS4 (and later 5) for a while there.
I legit got a used ps4 for to play WipEout Omega, Gravity Rush 1/2, Horizon ZD (also later FW), God of War (also later Ragnarok).
All four are some of my most beloved games. For the hundred bucks I paid for it, amazing deal.
Still waiting for Omega and Gravity Rush to come to PC…
Seriously, the Wipeout games are incredible. I’ve been thinking about buying another ps4 for that game alone… Sony is doing that ip such a disservice.
Have you played Ballistic.NG and Redout 2?
Redout 2 has the most insane track layouts, hull management, and handling. It’s divisive, but I think that a lot of the hate the game gets is from people who pick it up as their first AG racer.
I set up !ballisticng@sopuli.xyz. I’ve maxed out my skills, and currently working up the speed classes again, but with double speed turned on.
Also, get that PS4. Omega (or rather 2048 which is included) is IMO the best WipEout ever made. The way the ships in 2048 handle always feels barely controlled, and it adds so much to the sense of speed. The airbrakes on my favorite the Pirhana Speed, are the most violent in the game (save the prototype) and using them you get thrown around sideways, and you just have to learn to deal with it.
Redout 2 was a disappointment for me. I love the first game, it struck a balance between speed a technicality. (Basically a merging of WipEout and F-Zero). Redout 2 went too far into speed, with wider more sweeping tracks, rather than twisty and narrow with the occasional full hairpin. New tracks stopped being interesting very quickly with little to learn. It also has a worse soundtrack IMO.
Thats Not a very high bar that andromeda set though
I was at peace with the final result of the ME3 clusterfuck and wanted to give ‘em the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake.
Last of Us.
When the first one came out everyone was ranting and raving over it so I picked it up for my PS3. Granted the beginning of the game was an absolute gut punch and I thought I was hooked, I was not. I found the rest of the game so damn boring. I didn’t like the story, I felt it was forced fed to the player, and honestly I just never bothered finishing it. for me it wasn’t fun.
Hotline Miami. Frustrating and tedious.
I generally don’t take gaming recommendations from people I know because I’ve been burned too many times.
KotoR. It doesn’t matter how great the story or characters are if I have to grind terrible gameplay to get to them.
Upvoting because this fits the thread perfectly, but a little bit of me died inside reading this, you heathen lol ;)
These days I feel like an outlier saying I love kotor combat. It’s like Disgaea games to me. The joy is watching the animations and building your character to see big damage happen and/or make your character a defensive/health monster. Like on rare occasion I’ll play an ARPG like Victor Vran solely just to mow down monsters at ease. That’s the joy by the end of kotor 2. In the academy just force jump mowing down enemies
Yeah! I really like the combat in KotOR. It’s like a normal turn based CRPG, but faster.
I wish more games adopted kotors combat. To me its the perfect casual streamlining of a turn based CRPG. It feels faster to me than traditional real time with pause games. Talk about kotor remakes and how the combat has to change.
To me the only need in modernization of the combat is adding more cool animations to cycle through and more abilities that possibly chain together animations that react a bit with each other. That’s the mainstream hook, cool animations you wouldn’t get with real time combat. Uncharted 4 sold huge numbers and that’s not very heavy on gameplay mechanics. It’s a spectacle. Kotor style combat can be a spectacle without being a QTE and cutscene battles festival
I agree combat shouldn’t change with a remake. However, how the player interacts with it I think should, at least for PC. The UI/UX is not great, and we’ve figured out better ways to do things since then, even for controllers.
On the other hand, the graphics can be ASCII if the gameplay and story are good enough.
OMG, it’s so boring 🫠 I got like halfway through and concluded nothing could make me keep going.
Did you at least do the Sith planet? Thats where the game peaked other than the finale.
Everyone kept praising Baldur’s Gate 3. I even watched gameplay of it.
It was buggy on the supposed release, especially with a quest that had been part of the beta FOR YEARS rendering itself incompleltable and stealing my items in the process.
Then I got sucked into a party wipe, and a fight I had beaten earlier suddenly became an impassable slogfest.
$90 AUD for 3 hours of gameplay and a piss poor character creator. Because orcs had fuckall compared to the other races.
I am never trusting popular opinion again.
Dark Souls
It’s not for me, honestly. I want to feel freedom from a game, but Souls-like games make me feel trapped.
Interesting. How far in did you get? I think maybe if you looked up a getting started guide you might be able to assuage that trapped feeling, because Dark Souls and Elden Ring manage to feel like some of the most “free” games in my experience. But there’s definitely a crushing learning curve.
If I looked up a getting started guide, I’d feel constrained by its arcane instructions. “Go this way, take the third door, but DON’T talk to that NPC yet…”
Fun games are open to the player exploring, without massively disproportionate punishment for it.
I mean, dying in Dark Souls just isn’t very punishing at all. Idk, not every game is for every person, after all.
That is…ABSOLUTELY false.
People frequently point to the idea that if you collect an item like a Soul of Lost X, or a weapon, and then die, you get to keep the item. But the game also has consumable items used to make tons of options easier within the world. Things that enhance your weapon temporarily, give an extra health boost, or give you souls. Players that use these without making much use of them, or even misuse them due to nebulously archaic descriptions, will have nothing given back to them later on, making a venture even harder than the first few go’s.
Plus, you’re likely not to get as many level ups due to lost souls, meaning you’re going to get even more of a difficulty ramp than other players.
I’m sorry - it’s just juvenile the way people who obsess over this game will defend every issue with “it’s not for every person” - especially when indie devs that have TWEAKED the formula, and FIXED the issues, end up making for very fun games. No one is playing them and complaining “Man, I wish I’d accidentally spent an hour going the wrong way at the start!”
Undertale was zero fun. Interesting story and I liked the graphics and music but the combat got extremely annoying, and I say this as someone who plays 8 bit (heck even 4 bit) combat games. I quit it.
I often watch other people play games and they look like a lot of fun but then I buy them and try playing them myself and don’t like them. For example:
Kerbal Space Program
Baldur’s Gate 3
King of Dragon Pass
Subnautica
It sounds like you may not like slow or self-guided games. That’s fine though. I’m curious, do you like The Outer Wilds?
Man, this is nearly every mainstream game for me: Fortnite, Minecraft, RDR, GTA, God of War (2018), Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Valve’s The Orange Box, Insomnia’s Spiderman, any From Software game except maybe Bloodborne, and I could keep going.
And I’m not saying any of these games are bad, they just never grab me enough to want to beat them or play them for extended periods, so I concluded they’re not for me.
If it’s not for the immense joy I get out of Japanese action games, fighting games, and shmups, I’d probably not touch video games at all.
I don’t have a term for it but it sounds like you fall into a specific group of gamers. They enjoy gaming but they thrive on the difficulty curve. The curve is the draw no matter what it’s wrapped in.
Fighting games, easy to pick up, unbelievably hard to master.
Shmups: easy to pick up but unbelievably hard to master.
Certain rage games like Bennet Fodey or the Trials series or musical games like DDR which, again, have a crazy difficulty curve.
I’m in the same boat although I do enjoy the other games. They just aren’t nearly as good as people hype them up to be if not outright bad. In my experience, it is entirely the difficulty curve that drives our obsessions with these types of games.
Btw everyone check out expedition 33. It’s the only game that should even be considered for goty and it’s not even close. Don’t @ me.
I was the main marketer for “weird, different games” to my friends, back in school. I was the one that first found out about Harvest Moon on PSX and recommended it to another friend, he loved it - mind you, this was back in 2004. In 2006, I got 3 into World of Warcraft, I even printed a “beginners’ guide” I made myself just to help them understand the game.
Two games that I experimented from word of mouth were Tibia and Ragnarok Online. The former I gave up the same day - there were like 10 players for each rat in the sewers, the respawn took forever and you were supposed to grind them until you reached level 7, which would take over a week of real playtime at that rate.
RO was an interesting situation, the dude who first started it was bragging about having lots of hours to play, when I disdainfully replied “Why pay when you can just play for free”? He didn’t like the reply, but we didn’t get along anyway, so I took every chance to jab him, and he did the same to me. Anyhoo, I went online, looked around for a private server and started playing, free of charge. The others didn’t join in.During school and college, none of my friends were interested in RTS or even turn-based strategy games. I already knew about Civilization thanks to my dad. In the internet years, I always lurked around some talks about strategy games and that’s where I found Supreme Commander, which is still one of my favorites. Total Annihilation is still on my “to-play” list.
Time for some more word of mouth (potentially): have you tried Beyond all Reason? It’s more or less a modern open source remake of Total Annihilation. Runs like a dream even with tens of AI players and tens of thousands of units in-game.
Compared to SupCom I would say there is more unit diversity but less wacky experimentals, and the commander unit cannot be upgraded. There are currently only 2 factions, that basically map to UEF and Cybran from SupCom (or rather SupCom derived those two from the 2 in Total Annihilation). The dev team is currently working on a third faction that, from the previews, seems to me to be a mashup of the Aeon and Seraphim from SupCom: Forged Alliance.
I have, both it and Zero-K ;)
