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.
One of the only puzzle games that made me think I'm dumb and give up. It's fantastic
Fantastic game. If anyone is interested, you can download the original concept version of the game that the dev made for a Game Jam. It kinda acts like a free 20 min demo for the full version. You can find the download link here.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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)
Crimson Skies for OG Xbox. It’s pirates in planes dogfighting, we need a remake badly.
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.
Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.
Thank you for reminding me of The Incredible Machine! I am going to add its two sequels that most people have never heard of, TIM: Contraptions (essentially a HD re-release of the first game in a new engine.) and TIM: Even More e Contraptions (What would now be sold as DLC.)
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.
Mine is Dark Cloud. It was a PS2 launch title (or near enough to it) that was sort of a PlayStation answer to the Zelda franchise. Along with the original Spyro trilogy, Dark Cloud was by far my most-played game back in the day. It had an absolute banger of a soundtrack and a few pieces of really interesting unique gameplay including an RPG element where the primary progression system was not in your characters, but in upgrading your weapons, and a city-builder where you have to place all the people in each village near or away from various other elements in the village to meet their needs.
I almost never hear anyone talking about Dark Cloud, but extremely randomly one of the like four Twitch streamers I actually watch (all of whom are Age of Empires streamers, because that's basically all I watch these days) happens to play its soundtrack frequently on her stream as background music. So that's been really fun.
Hard to settle on just one. In no order:
Mine would be tunic , It feels like top down old school Zelda but puzzles that will blow your mind when you get the context. If you haven't played tunic before don't watch any review just buy the game and play it.
This is a 10/10 game where I wish to forget about it to play this again.
CrossCode. It's an SNES-style action RPG with very fun combat, 2D-Zelda-like puzzles, and a genuinely charming well-written story that was made in HTML5 and JavaScript for some reason. It is genuinely my favorite game of all time. I habitually proselyte this game to friends, but check it out for the love of God
While we're on the subject of DS classics, here's an even more obscure one: Over the Hedge.
While admittedly it never quite got the time in the oven it deserved, being a release tie-in with the movie and put out alongside all the console versions, this one in particular was something special. It's a third-person over the shoulder perspective stealth game with tank controls, sneaking into the hilariously well-protected homes of humans to steal their junk food. And if that wasn't enough, it had you managing two characters in real-time by swapping back and forth between them, using their varying strengths to defeat the ridiculous laser alarm systems and traps along the way. It's slow paced and relatively simple, and I used to have a blast finding ways to completely break the game because the devs didn't have enough time to iron out all the kinks entirely, but it never quite got the attention it deserves for being such a unique labor of love.
I have to give it massive props for having so much creative heart when a tie-in for a mediocre animated movie has no right to be that good. The developers saw the opportunity to make something that put its source material to good work instead of just another hack-and-slash romp (like the console tie-ins were) or a minigame collection (like the later DS game (???) was) and their dedication to the craft of game development really shines through some of the jank involved in its presentation and sometimes wonky physics. By now, a unique take on a stealth game is nothing all that special, but at the time this was one that really grabbed me.
The legend of dragoon has to be one of my favorite jrpgs and I would love for it to get a remake/remaster. Sadly it seems like Sony doesn't care about it tho so I'm not hopeful
Yoku's Island Express. The idea of a metroidvania where the entire map is a giant pinball board is beyond genius.
Mindustry. Played it on and off for years, abosultely love the game. Way too good consider the fact that it's free, and when I picked it up I expected to get a couple of hours of fun out of it. But at this point it has lasted years. And with the occasional update, I think it will last even longer.
Shadowrun for the Genesis, I never hear anyone mention it and it was a great game. I've played it recently and it still holds up. EDIT: I'm adding a Sierra PC game called Shivers, it was kinda like horror Myst. I loved it so much and no one ever mentions like it was never released.
I never see anyone talk about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch but it's one of my favorite games of all time. The Studio Ghibli collab makes it ooze charm.
Vectorman for Sega Genesis is one of my favorite games on the console but whenever it's brought up it is almost exclusively known as just another obscure mascot platformer and it's even been declared a knockoff of DKC just because both use pre rendered graphics. The sequel is also good.
It's not that nobody talks about it, but i think it isn't talked about enough; Control.
Let's see what I can come up with (and see if I can remember the names correctly!):
Any other console I either didn't own (Genesis, Gamegear, PS3, etc) or just couldn't think of anything that really stood out as a hidden gem (PSP, PSV) or are more current and also don't really have anything that ranks (PS4, PS5).
A really old game called Fat Princess - it was a wonderful multiplayer real time strategy kind of thing, with a beautiful community for quite a few years. Despite the name, it was one of the best games I've ever played!
If you were on there and recognise my screen name, yes it is me!
Planetside 2. Been playing for a decade. One of the best games and only one in its genre of MMOFPS. I don’t know what I will play when it dies. It’s the one and only thing I play and enjoy now. Nothing else is fun.
Starport GE. Amazing little game. Played tons of it. It’s been almost 18 years of it. Played hardcore for atleast a decade before life got in the way and winded down now. My brother manages the account and activity now. Still alive but barely. It’s a game of strategy and alliances and carefully managing a galaxy to control it all. Make friends make enemies. There’s been dozens of people that have come and gone over the years through it. Due to its small player size. We all knew each other very well and were acquainted. You don’t like someone you decide to go to war with them start taking all their colonies. The game has no alliance mechanism or war mechanism. It’s all on you to decide what to make of it.
I know everyone here got many favorite and probably wonderful games but who here has played only 2 games with more than a decade of dedication to each?
CrossCode is one of my absolute favorite games, yet I hardly see it talked about in larger circles. It's an action RPG with some zelda-like dungeons and a very fluid and satisfying combat system. Highly recommend it!
All of the games in the Tribes series, my personal favorites being Tribes Ascend and Aerial Assault. Tribes had a play style similar to Halo but with a movement more like Unreal along with a touch of 'surfing' over land and some jetpacks. They're all great fun and still fun for me to play today. IIRC, the last game's official online servers are no longer active, but there is a community following for Tribes Ascend that helps keep the game alive and updated, look up TribesLauncherSharp and TAMods for more info if interested. I backed up the disc I have for Tribes Aerial Assault to an ISO and it works great in PCSX2. With 1080p/4K rendering, extra graphics options, wide-screen patches, and controller customization it's way easier to play than originally on composite CRT with a Dualshock.
I really enjoyed Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64. It turns out there was a bug in the original game so you could never complete it 100%. A couple years ago, I purchased an Everdrive (https://krikzz.com/our-products/cartridges/ed64x7.html) so I could patch the ROM and play on original hardware. Pair this with some new wireless controllers and it's the perfect experience.
Heroes of the Storm. It's not getting any updates anymore but as long as the servers are up, I'll still play it.
Redneck Rampage was silly and fun.
I don't see anyone talking about CrossCode, but it's such an amazing game. And it's on sale right now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/
Profound story, excellent sound design, amazing soundtrack, insanely well designed combat system. It's just an incredible game. It has more content, depth, and attention to detail than most AAA games these days.
If you're picking it up, get the DLC as well! It's not just DLC, it's the conclusion of the game's story!
FTL: Faster Than Light, a pixel sci fi rouge like where you manage a ship and crew jumping point to point on a mission through space. I keep coming back to it and it's always fun. There's an amazing mod community that I'll just starting to explore as well
I rarely hear people talk about it but whenever I do, it's nothing but love.
Golden Sun. They were the best RPG games I've ever played and never get the love they deserve. Don't know why, I've never played a game that struck me like those 2 games did.
The first few Advance Wars games too, Advance Wars and Golden Sun were a huge part of my childhood.
Fallen London; a text-based, story-driven ongoing browser game about an alternate-history London that was traded by Queen Victoria in exchange for her husband being spared death and literally carried by a cloud of bats to a massive underground cavern where Hell is just a train journey away.
It's a niche game in a niche genre, but damn I love the writing and setting so much. Sunless Sea is set in the same world, if anyone has played that too!
Tomba! It was a really bizarre PS1 game that I was hooked on when I was 9 or 10. You play as pink-haired boy fighting some evil pigs by throwing them into their respective evil pig bags. Trippy as hell.
Not much nostalgia for Jet Force Gemini, a Rare third person shooter where you adventure through missions, each having secret routes to find using guns/keys you slowly unlock. The game had a bit too much completionist vibe to get to finish it, but was exciting as a kid.
On the 3DS, I also liked Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D. Basically RE’s best arena mode expanded out with perks on a game you could play mobile, and online. I still hope to see more of that type of experience.
Nobody ever brings up Strife even when talking about old shooters as it is. Strife is, by far, the best Doom engine game that exists.
Full Spectrum Warrior.
A real time, over-the-shoulder, squad management tactical game.
Imagine Brothers In Arms style tactical command and contextual actions from AI squad members, mixed with a modern setting, mixed with pulling the player out of actually doing any shooting and putting them entirely in the role of command, and give it high lethality and a requirement to save all friendly wounded AI squad members (wounded ones have to be carried back to a medical tent).
Really unique couple of games that nobody has iterated on.
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