Hollow Knight is a total work of art.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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The first title that jumps to my mind, especially when you contextualize it around "restoring faith", is Satisfactory. It's been a very entertaining and challenging game, but also the development team has been exactly what one (typically) wants from a dev team. They've been very transparent about issues, their process, etc. Their interactions with the fan-base have been frequent and open throughout the years of development. Good game + good company. Worth consideration if you like a good factory builder.
Very down to earth people. Telling us they want to go outside in the summer so they won't be working for a bit was a bit of a stab at us basement dwellers
I love indie games - here's my favorites list!
Terraria
Deep rock galactic
Factorio
Dwarf Fortress
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (free and open source - check it out!)
Stardew Valley
Starbound
Rimworld (I much prefer dwarf fortress, but I found this first and got a few hundred hours in it too)
Battlebit remastered
Just to jump onto this comment: Factorio just released a major expansion this week.
In a similar vibe, Satisfactory just left early access a few weeks ago.
Satisfactory just left early access
Fuckin Josh man. He is hilarious and terrifying.
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Balatro - Even if roguelike isn't your thing, try it
Alan Wake 1/2 & Control- if you love creepy atmosphere
Superliminal - unique 1st person puzzle, think portal vibe
Bastion - 1st game from Supergiant, best smash-em-up I've ever played
Anything Supergiant for that matter
Bastion is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, both art-wise and theme-wise. The entire end of the game was just chills and tears for me.
Second for Alan Wake/Control Universe games. Quantum Break is fun too and also by Remedy, and more action adventure.
Here are 6 good games I wholeheartedly recommend:
- Baldurs Gate 3, speaks for itself.
- Disco Elysium, elevates the whole medium to art
- Hifi Rush, innovation and entertainment
- Snowrunner, ok this one’s just for me.
- The Outer Wilds, very interesting, go in spoiler free
- Return of the Obra Din, puzzle game like nothing you’ve played before
Baba is you, great little puzzle game
If you haven't played it, "Stardew Valley" is, like, ruin-your-life good. And I think part of what makes it so faith assuring and life uplifting is that it was made by one dude who has continuously (for YEARS) released huge, free updates for the game. He's awesome. It feels good supporting him and recommending such a great game to people. :-)
I was going to immediately mention Hollow Knight but I see someone already did. Second thought: Tunic. It's been a long time since a game hit me as hard as those two.
For pure fun addictive gaming: Factorio is absolutely nuts. 2D survival craft platforming action: Terraria is still king.
For space empire building check out X4: Foundations, after almost 10 years under development it's absolutely amazing (but a huge timesink haha)
Oh and if you're into semi-hard-scifi basebuilding you could give Stationeers a look. Sunk quite some hours into that one.
The learning cliff of the X games is pretty intense but totally worth it. I made it through and just look at me now! I, err.. wasn't going to do anything better with those hundreds of hours anyway.
Cyberpunk 2077. It was hated on release but it really has made a comeback after 2.0 was released.
I think cyberpunk really puts so many triple A titles to shame when it comes to the quality of the characters and quests.
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- Katana ZERO
- Hades
- Satisfactory
Factorio. The new dlc hooked me into a 5h gaming session at one eve. I cant remember when i did that the last time in my life. Probably with 15? But be warned, the game isn't called cracktorio without reason.
I've recently gotten hooked on the Yakuza series. The whole series goes on an aggressive sale pretty regularly on Steam. I'd recommend starting with Yakuza 0.
The best thing about Yakuza is that it welcomes many different approaches so you can go have crazy absurd fun, intense cinematic story driven drama, mindless collectible and challenges...
I think it's perfect to rediscover what fun in videogame is.
Try rimworld! You don't need any of the dlcs for the first couple of successful runs. Just the base game takes you to I would say 85-90% of the experience (ideology is a good upgrade for later). Side effects include, playing too long into the night, dreaming about the game during your sleep and day dreaming about it during whatever else you doing until you get back to playing.
Baldurs Gate. There is so much content. I’m 150 hours in the game, I play split screen coop with my wife. We each have our characters customized to how we like it. It’s AAA quality. Came at a AAA price, but it’s absolutely worth it.
And I say this as a FPS/simulation gamer. Totally different genre but they’ve made this game accessible to all. It’s the only game I’ve ever purchased at full price and my steam account is 12 years old.
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"Return of the Obra Dinn" is the best Detective-type game I have ever played. Pure inductive, yet always logical reasoning. The setting of an Victorian ship, the 1-Bit artystyle, excellent ost and memorable story really elevate this recommendation to a must-play.
On something from this decade, Balatro is great if you like cards and rouge-likes. But it's been so popular I don't think anyone interested hasn't heard of it yet.
Oh, and as others have pointed out and I'd hate myself for not mentioning it, Tunic is great as well. It's a love-letter to the instruction book, and makes one really feel like playing an old game and relying on an instruction book, while not being all that great at reading, like some may remember from their childhood. But with modern game design and what others call Dark-soul mechanics (idk, I have never played a Fromsoft game).
I take it from your exasperation that you want a game to “just be good already”, from the very start. So I’ll exclude anything that takes too much thought or investment to start having a good time.
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Tunic
- Pacific Drive
- Gorogoa
- Hardspace: Shipbreaker
- Hand of Fate 2
- FTL
- Styx: Shards of Darkness
- House of the Dying Sun
- Hitman Go and Lara Craft Go
- VVVVVV
Dave the Diver and Dredge come to mind.
Seconded. Just beat dredge the other day and MAN, what a different kind of gameplay, but I found it really interesting.
The last campfire, disco Elysium, hue
Ooh I notice nobody has mentioned Wasteland 3 - it totally slipped under my radar, it is a fastastic RPG, with a fun story and good combat! :) It's what I'd love fallout to be :)
Let’s go with A Monster’s Expedition Through Puzzling Exhibitions!
Humanity has died through hubris and climate change, and Human Englandland is all flooded. Now it’s the age of monsters! And one monster is touring the now-outdoors old Human Englandland museum, which is an archipelago cause flooding and such. All the bridges washed out, but there’s convenient trees! Let’s go see the museum.
Pushing logs from trees into adjacent water is the point of the game, but it has some of the simplest yet best mechanics about it that I’ve seen in a long time.
GreedFall. Old school RPG that flew completely under my radar. It has a 00s Bioware feel to it, before the dark times. The graphics aren't perfect, etc., but it's a really fun game with a decent story (so far).
Animal Well and Outer Wilds come to mind.
Stardew valley is just fantastic and still receiving free updates.
Grim dawn is an amazing diablo2 style arpg. The dual class system means it has huge replayability. Still getting updates and very reasonably priced dlcs.
Kenshi is a unique gaming experience. If you can get past the jankiness it's an amazing open world squad game with no story or objectives as such. The story of your characters emerges from the things that happen as you play. Like getting enslaved etc.
Roguelite:
FTL - Faster Than Light
Dead Cells
Nova Drift
Hades
RPG:
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Disco Elysium (pirate this game, it was "stolen" from the devs, they wont see the money if you buy this game anyway)
Those are some of my all time favorite, superb quality, labor of love titles. Are you also interested in couch coop games?
OldSchool RuneScape restored my faith in the industry. RuneScape was ruined by microtransactions, but Jagex grew an enormous pair of balls and released an older version of the game and started fresh without any of the bullshit.
To this day it's my favorite RPG. I could write a truly ridiculous amount about why I love it, but I recommend just playing it for yourself.
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Horizon Zero Dawn is my all time favorite game (a remastered version is coming out next week so might be a great time to jump in). Celeste is a 2D platformer and also really great. Been having fun with Zelda ToTK and Astrobot as well.
I loved HZD so much on PS4, it is a great world, really good sci-fi story and awesome character progression. It feels so good to easily take down machines that you struggle with at the beginning, it never gets old to tear off parts and weapons to use against them. The DLC for it was a great addition.
Needless to say I jumped into Horizon Forbidden West as soon as it was released, and it did not live up to my expectations! The second go around everything feels so forced, I gave up midway through.
Solid recommendations throughout this thread…
Well said! And now on PS5 it plays so great at a smooth 60 fps, amazing stuff. I frequently start the game just to wander around and fight the machines. At ultra hard it can still be quite challenging even after all these hours.
The remaster seems to be really well done as well according to early reviews, so looking forward to putting even more hours into it :-) hope they made the inventory management better as that is basically my only issue with the original.
I do agree the first has the better vibe and story but I think you'd still enjoy finishing Forbidden West and the Burning Shores DLC. The ending was interesting and if you stopped halfway through you might not even have seen some of the new enemies yet! How far did you get?
Hey! I wanted to tell you that I came back to HFW after all due to your comment. I had logged 48 hours on it before I left, but was only 30% complete according to the PS5 dashboard.
I found that I liked the atmosphere, but it is definitely a slow game most of the time. So much filler dialogue between characters, puzzles are instantly spoiled by Aloy talking to herself way too soon before you’ve had a chance to work through them (God of War Ragnarok is also guilty of this).
And then there is the fact that Aloy will constantly put her life at risk at the slightest opportunity given by a stranger, even though story-wise she is literally the only one who can fix the Earth.
That being said I play the game in a particular way, I go through all missions (main or side) in the order of their level, and I tend to prefer the stealth approach to most fights. So this does slow down the game quite a bit. I think I am halfway through?
The overall vibe is really nice though, I might make it to the end this time. I’ve even put Burning Shores on my wish list!
Cheers!
Hey thanks for the response! Glad to hear it :) definitely agree about the puzzles being spoiled by Aloy, really weird how they implemented that without even an option to turn it off. I also thought it was strange how she gladly risks her life with the amount of stuff she's trying to handle already, but it does make for a more interesting game I think. Overall the side quests are a bit more interesting and fleshed out than in zero dawn. Also the stash is a really welcome addition compared to the first one.
I think we play in a similar way, at least on a first playthrough I play like that. I also play the game without fast travel but that's not for everyone :) hope you make it to the end! It definitely has me excited for Horizon 3.
I got the Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster last week as well, it's really well done for a remaster and I'm enjoying a full new playthrough. On the way to Meridian now.
I need to hunt down HZD out of storage, looks like the disc must be in the drive to get the upgrade pricing for the remaster.
No fast travel, now that is some dedication :) I know it usually pays off to walk everywhere especially in the beginning (at the very least you pick up resources that you’ll need anyway), but sometimes I just don’t want to.
On Android (and probably other systems), Death Road to Canada is fun, funny, challenging, and comes with no BS.
Viewfinder if you enjoy Portal style games
I mainly like PvP games and I am really enjoying Valve’s Deadlock
Just be sure to switch your A and D keys from rotate to strafe
Play the 1st and 2nd GTA games for free.
Minetest - I think they might have changed the name of this game recently, not sure.
STALKER 2 comes out soon by the way
Play the 2nd elder scrolls game for free!
Map is as big as europe! It's been ported to unity and it looks a ton better then the OG version. There are yet more graphic overhaul mods you can add like this guy did
Mechwarrior 5: Clans
Its been fantastic. Loved the hell out of it and cant wait for more.
The Clan Invasion hasnt been in a MW game since the mid-90s. And those Clan Mechs are B-E-A-Utiful in a modern engine like Unity.
Baldurs Gate 3
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