Alternate title: what’s your favorite obscure jank?
Black and White and Black and White 2 (The Lionhead god simulator games, not the Pokemon games)
They were extremely cutting edge for their time but are VERY jank and cheesy and I'm not sure modern gamers would like them.
OOOOOOOOH WE'VE THIS NOTION THAT WE'D QUITE LIKE TO SAIL THE OCEAN
Lmao I barely remember someone showing me these they're kinda sick
I played the shit out of 2 as a kid and have been looking for it ever since. I have a very specific memory of attacking a town with my army, and my giant creature was having a kaiju fight with theirs in the middle of it all. He kicked the giant wolf backwards into a house, collapsing it instantly.
Expansion where you fight the death god with skeleton soldiers was pretty dope too
OOOOOOOOH WE'VE THIS NOTION THAT WE'D QUITE LIKE TO SAIL THE OCEAN
Well that sure unlocked a memory.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
My favorite jank? GTA: San Andreas Multi Player.
Its a mod for GTA:SA that allows better multiplayer action than GTA online does.
Ive been playing it since around 2007 or 08. I like to roleplay as a homeless dude from Blueberry who goes around quoting Carl Marks at everyone. It’s pretty fun, and I’ve been doing it enough that im known around one particular server for doing it.GTA:SAMP isn’t really obscure, but at this point it’s old as fuck, and nobody really talking about it anymore.
Would you be ok with sharing a server you play in? I had no clue there was a MP server. It sounds awesome.
Im at work currently. Ill be off in a few hours and will post a couple i frequent.
My IG name is Abe_Froman. The Sausage King of Chicago.
I used to play GTASAMP! I had no idea it was still going, that's cool. I might try dig it out again.
Map games
But i dont "love" them
I "love" them in the same way a flagellant "loves" his whip
Its inaccurate because i have more hours while i was sailing the high seas
I got an emberassing amount of Total War clocked.
1k in WH2
1.4k in Attila
750 in WH1
500 in Three Kingdoms
400 in Shogun 2
250 in Rome remastered
33 in WH3 lmfao
Not counted is a couple hundred hours in the classic total wars before steam and considering I got them pirated
But total war is actually fun. I have seen 5,000 of paradox alone. Genuinely upsetting shit
1.4k in Attila
Attila really was a fcking legend. The reversed start of collapsing empire and the actual need to supplicate before the might of the Huns 😭
Easily my favorite, really. Something about the punishing difficulty of it all, a proper challenge to start basically every game.
Funny enough it was usually a task to try and beat Attila myself before he ground his armies away fighting everyone else.
I managed 600 EU4, 150 Victoria 3, 150 EU3, 200 CK2. But then I actually do love 'em.
I look back on the time I wasted on FPS games like I was an alcoholic or something serious so, idk, go with god or something
THEN I DO IT WITH YOUR BLESSING. Time to raise another country to Socialist glory and start the global revolution again! Maybe I'll have a command economy and deliberately crash global grain prices.. That'd make 'em all dependent on me..
Cities Skylines is a game I could play for many hours and have no idea why I’m doing it
Deadly Premonition. It has a cast of very charming and surprisingly well written characters alongside a fascinating mindfuck of a story that is very much unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Heavily inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the closest I've seen another piece of media come to recapturing its dreamy, surreal vibes. Has a cult following despite being an absolutely shit game by all reasonable metrics. The combat is atrocious, it's unfathomably buggy, you're forced to drive between locations in a janky ass car, and the driving is like pulling teeth. It's really quite an unpleasant game to play for many reasons, and that's if you even get the game to run; the PC port is basically unplayable and requires a fuckton of fiddling on newer systems. Despite all that, it's an experience I remember very fondly. Just don't know if I'll be booting it up for another run in the next decade.
Came here for this one. In nearly every aspect of what makes up a video game, it absolutely fails. The combat was a last minute addition to appeal to western audiences in the Call of Duty heyday and it's awful. The exploration is miserable. The music is eclectic and the cues are strangely mistimed in several instances. Visually, the game is ugly to look at with very stiff animations. The voice acting is approaching Resident Evil 1 in terms of quality. Despite all of that, the story was so moving, that I was in tears at the end and I can't help but have fond memories for it.
ohh that sounds right up my alley. I saw it's only a few bucks on steam, but the port sounds pretty bad. Do you have any recommendations for the best way to play on PC? One thing that comes to mind is emulating the 360 version, but I'm not enough of a gamer to know how that works or if that would be better lol
It's definitely possible to get the PC game running with some patience.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Deadly_Premonition:_The_Director%27s_Cut
PCGW has a good page on most of the PC version's critical issues and candidate fixes, and as you can probably see, there are quite a few. Getting it running in the first place was the hardest part for me. Once you get it running, just refer to the wiki now and then to watch for problematic points in the game and how to best avoid crashes.
As for emulation, I have no idea. I do know that the console versions are supposed to be quite messy themselves, though, so I would guess it won't be a much better experience.
Fallout New Vegas (pure vanilla with not a single mod aka the console editions and the broken PC ports).
It's sometimes hard to recommend FNV to other people due to the fact that the only way to really enjoy the game is using the Viva New Vegas modlist.
I'm never reinstalling Windows so I have to pray that MO2 gets ported to Linux sooner rather than later because I personally despise hacking with WINE prefixes/organizing esps/ESM files myself. Also the fact that
- Mods are distributed through a proprietary network
shitholeservice called Nexus Mods - I own a copy of the game on Steam unfortunately and I know how much I despise interfacing with that program.
- There's so many mods to install goddamn
I disagree with almost everything you said, but I’m glad you said it because I have shit taste.
Have you tried SteamTinkerLaunch? I use Vortex through it, but supposedly it has MO2 support
I'd highly recommend it - pretty much one click for a lot of annoying things with compatibility. If you run out of Flatpaks it's a bit of extra leg work but still pretty simple.
Well, here's some good news: https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer/
I've tried this before and I hadn't managed to get it to work, but I'm going to try again this week on my Bazzite machine.
For what it's worth, that script worked for me perfectly out of the box a couple months ago on Debian. This was after spending many hours trying and failing to get MO2 or Vortex running through Protontricks, Steam Tinker Launch, and Lutris.
I used an older version for Skyrim on Fedora, just had to rename main.exe to whatever launcher exe steam uses to launch the game and replace the original
- Mods are distributed through a proprietary network
I couldn't recommend most people play MGS 1 or 2 in the current year, but they are amazing works of art.
I wish more people could experience those games in full, but yeah...
I would recommend them. They still hold up. I didn't play them until maybe 4 years ago and they were amazing.
MGS Sons of Liberty still holds up great, and if you can find MGS: Twin Snakes on Gamecube you can play a remaster of MGS 1 with the camera and first person views of MGS2. Recommend.
i try not to talk about video games with someone who can't appreciate anything made before 2008. we didn't always have an entire stick to control the camera with, Jared! submit yourself to the artistic vision!
Oof, I felt this one. I work with a guy who won't play anything older than five years old (I think the oldest game he'll play is like RDR2?), and I've played games all the way back from the DOS era.
I don't know if those games aren't good as recommendations because I personally played the first three (and maybe a few others outside the numbered series?) a while after MGS 5 was already out.
Of course I can't play MGS 5 because I haven't played MGS 4 yet, and I can't play MGS 4 because EVERY other game got rereleased for PC EXCEPT for MGS 4.....
You can definitely play MGS5/V before playing 4, if you've played 3 you'll have 60% of the context needed. Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes make up the last 39%. IIRC the only context you'll get from playing 4 is a few things involving the Les Enfants Terribles project.
EDIT: Thinking on it, if anything playing MGS4 after V might actually enhance your enjoyment of the series as it was fully meant to be a bookend to the series.
For a lot of these jankier old games, I usually recommend watching a long play on YouTube. No commentary and usually done by someone who knows the game well enough to get through efficiently
For the MGS series though there's a lot missed out by not playing yourself, for example if you don't know a thing about psycho mantis, his ability to tell you your save games or to make your controller move across the ground (for those who didn't understand how the vibration in the controller worked) it was pretty awesome. Additionally MGS 3 for example, if you play the entire game without killing anyone (for example using the tranq gun), there's a boss fight where you're supposed to encounter the ghosts of the people you killed but won't if you hadn't killed anyone. The MGS series specifically is just chock full of little things you'd miss out on if you just watch a long play.
ITT: a bunch of games that are fucking awesome and i'd absolutely recommend them to others
I know jank wouldn't put me off and some of my favourite games are like playing with spreadsheets lol
Dwarf Fortress, I'd recommend it but only to someone I know had some interest, especially if they want to play the ascii version. Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead would be another. They're pretty hardcore, Aurora 4x and Dominions would also be hard to get people into unless they had some interest
I think Dwarf Fortress's Steam release, for all its issues, has made it a lot more accessible to a casual audience, especially in the wake of the great success of games like Rimworld. That said, it's still quite an undertaking to pick up and learn. Cataclysm has definitely always been a hard sell to others, though. Usually, their interest wanes as soon as they look up a screenshot. On the rare occasions that I've convinced someone to boot it up, they've just walked into the sight range of a mi-go or something and immediately died and lost interest. There's so much to talk about when it comes to both of them, but no one to talk about them with :(
Are archery militias fully-working again in DF? I think that was going to be part of the adventure mode patch changes, but don't remember the specifics.
If you mean the thing about them refusing to pick up ammo, yeah, it was fixed a bit ago. They can still be a little fiddly, but it isn't a nightmare getting an archery squad working like it was before.
dominions is great. I've been tempted to write a MA Asphodel AAR about a carrion dragon making the world into its grave, and what a lively grave!
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
gameplay is excellent, probably still the best fps/rpg hybrid, especially if you love kicking enemies off of/into things, but the story is extremely generic
god i loved that game. did you do the pvp servers when it first came out? so much fun
There's an old rogue-lite called Castle of the Winds from ages ago in all its 16 bit glory
It had magic item modifiers (damage, hit rating, stat boosts), actual tile based graphics instead of letters like Rogue, and a little bit of a storyline. Still turn-based, random dungeons, classic roguelike features but with a save feature and safe towns with merchants it was more forgiving.
Fuck yes. Took me years but one month I sat down and finished it and It's an erernal triumph for me.
I think I did the same thing in college. Kid me had no idea what I was doing. Adult me maxed intelligence and blasted everything that moved with spells.
Castle of the Winds is tons of fun, I remember getting part one on an old demo disc and replaying it constantly when I was a kid. Not the most complex or detailed game of its kind, but the sprite work is still fresh in my mind an embarrassing number of years later
Hell yeah. I grew up with the shareware version, too. It's a pain in the ass to get it to work on a modern OS, unfortunately.
Piranha Bytes Gothic and Gothic 2 are some of the best RPGs ever produced in my view. The atmosphere, the sense of progression and danger, the way every single item and enemy is curated and placed in the world with care and thought, the way the game doesn't hold your hand and characters actually behave like human beings - including the player. All wonderful.
Unfortunately, the graphics were ugly as shit for 2001-02 and the combat is unbelievably janky. A large part of the game's difficulty curve comes from how fiddly and frustrating the combat is. So, it is really hard to recommend.
The gothic remaster should be coming out eventually, I think it’s in dev hell currently.
Gothic 1 and 2 as a remaster with all the QoL stuff added would honestly be amazing. Didn't know they were planning on even do a remaster.
The demo is still on steam last I checked. It’s a short vertical slice of the intro.
I just checked and I don't see it on their page. But holy shit does it look good! Gonna wishlist it and hope for the best. I have a few games on my list that I'm hopeful for them getting out of dev hell anyway. Looking at you, Memory of a Broken Dimension.
Gothic won me over when I went into someone's house looking for loot and they beat the shit out of me and took all my stuff. Also, the terrible voice acting is so charming.
Came here to post this. I agree that they are some of the best RPGs of all time.
I think the graphics still hold up because they fit the atmosphere so well. The only reason why it's hard to recommend is the combat system.
Have you played Risen 1 from the same devs? It's probably my favourite game of all time. Also, I've heard that "The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos" mod is great.
Archolos is very good - it adds a lot while sticking close to the OG Gothic experience. My biggest objection to it is that as of right now it is only available with Polish voices, and I miss the crappy EN voice acting of the originals :( but that's hardly fair given the amount of work that went into it. If you have the time, and love Gothic 1-2, you should definitely give it a shot.
I played Risen 1 and 2 a long time ago and recall them scratching some of the same itch, albeit not quite as good. Just saw there was a third entry which I never played
Easy answer is E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy.
It's a janky mess built on the source engine. The plot is downright incomprehensible. Gameplay mechanics aren't properly taught to the player, leaving you to work out how everything works (my legs are ok). The maps vary massively in terms of quality (the tutorial area for example has an optional side path that is just an incredibly long empty corridor that takes, like, twice as long to cross than the path you're railroaded towards to reach the same destination). It's basically an unlicensed WH40K game so it's got my dislike of Warhammer to work against to win me over.
Despite this, I have a huge soft spot for the game. It's one of the comfort games I boot up and play when I'm sick and sad.
I love that game! I accidentally killed myself so many times learning how to play it.
God it's such a terrible game I love it and will play it again soon.
Many of my favorite games are like this lmao
I still have a spare copy of that game if anyone wants it.
There was a short steam sale back in the day where a four-pack was about two dollars, so I bought enough for every steam friend I had in the hope that somebody would enjoy it enough to give co-op a go (alas :<)
Old School RuneScape. It's bigger than ever and just had their winter summit where they announced a bunch of stuff coming down the pipeline. It's decades of work by different people piled on top of each other to make this world where you interact with all the resources to qualify to complete quests. The name of the game is self-motivation instead of following a path that's laid out for you. In that way, people have made these breathtakingly beautiful accounts and projects like fighting the hardest boss in the game having access to only a restricted capacity to navigate around the game map to collect supplies and gear.
The gameplay itself, however, is akin to having a double wide chest in Minecraft and clicking around your inventory for 12 hours. Then you have the requisite herblore level for a quest which is a click and point adventure where you talk to people and solve a puzzle for them. Then you have access to another training method which is 15% faster than what you were doing. Then you only spend 22 hours instead of 25 grinding out requirements for the quest you actually wanted to do in the first place. Every breakthrough moment allows you to do an even longer grind than you had just completed to get the breakthrough.
Short answer: Elex, what if Bethesda was both far more ambitious and also far less talented.
Long answer: I’ve been playing Quasimorph recently. It’s a bit like a turn based extraction shooter where you control a single mercenary clone (IN SPACE) and do missions for different factions in a sort of mount and blade style of reputation balancing (or not balancing). Your clone levels up, you can select from different builds, you choose your load outs and missions. If you die you lose the gear and leveled clone you sent (or the fresh meat who valiantly died in recon by fire).
The graphics are somewhat charming in that Gameboy Aliens game industrial sort of way. The music is actually strong, but that’s incredibly subjective.
It’s niche, it’s hard, it’s unfinished, and updates are slow but steady.
I can’t imagine the target audience being large, and I don’t expect the mechanics to change or expand overly much. For what it is, it’s fine unless you are the rare sort who wanted to play a combination of the original XCOM, Caves of Qud, and Escape from Tarkov. So I enjoy it very much, but I don’t recommend it to people unless they’re willing to potentially waste their time on something weird.
Dragon's Dogma isn't obscure but it fits enough.
One of the very best RPG combat systems with a god tier magic system put in a paper-thin world. The leveling up is shitty and requires playing as different classes because your own class has such shit stats that leveling up is useless. Getting any real enjoyment out of the game is a 20 hour slog to get to the end-game stuff.
I remember everyone losing their shit when they revealed you could climb the monsters. It felt the like future of action rpgs.
It is honestly still one of the best in terms of fantasy action combat. And the sequel is coming out soon!
