Alternate title: what’s your favorite obscure jank?
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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.
best 99 cents I ever spent
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 :<)
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
Probably Everquest. It set the tone for what mmoprgs were to become but now it’s nothing more than an antiquated time sink.
To that end, Ultima Online for me. Absolutely blew me away as a child, but it’s impossible to recommend now.
Bank guards vendor buy
Kal Vas Flam
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
hell yeah, it was amazing, but so short lived
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The combat is absolutely fantastic, I’ve tried Mordhau but its just not the same. Unfortunately its almost entirely dead, there’s only one server left in the US and it’s only populated in the evenings (not even every night). It’s also full of chuds, the chat is literally toxic waste.
Have tried Chiv2?
Mordhau is basically a chanboard in chat, not worth the learning curve
Chivalry 2 may be the best sequel I’ve played in a decade. Took nothing good away, added more good.
Cuphead
It is infuriating and I wouldn’t wish the frustration on anyone
Dungeon crawl:stone soup
Some of my favorite memories are from that game but I can’t recommend people wade into the awful pile they’ve made it into. Every successive update seems to be devs fishing things out of the soup because it detracts from the stone.
I’m gonna check this out, thanks!
Not obscure but … League of Legends
Mobas literally have some of the best gameplay of any games out there but the player base and overall culture around the game prevents me from recommending it to people
I do really enjoy League of Legends, it’s just the people that make me scared to ever play again. I need a version that exclusively has a nice and loving playerbase that are just playing for fun and not for getting angry at my incompetence.
i have a good group that I play with. They’re not commies unfortunately but you’d be welcome to play with us if you wanna give it another go
I mean hey, if you really mean it, I would be down to have a go with fun peeps.
Same here for Dota 2.
An insufferable playerbase combined with thousands of obscure mechanics, details and interactions makes it basically impenetrable as a casual game for someone to try it out. I got 4k hours in it and too many of them were filled with negative emotions towards myself or others.
It’s unfortunately also the best competitive game ever made, both for playing and watching.
As a league player I have one major question for you, how is blink dagger a thing and how do you balance something like that?
I’m not a avid league player, but as far as I know Flash has been mandatory in competitive on like 99% of champs for pretty much most of leagues existence.
Blink is just a different approach on the topic of instant movement skills.
Flash is free and has no downsides, but is rather short and has a long ass cooldown.
Blink Dagger is fairly expensive, can be disabled through player damage, gives zero stats but has long range and a reasonably short cooldown.
Both fundamentally shape their game for the better, because without them the game would be a lot slower and less spectacular. Probably 80-90% of all “greatest highlights of dota” scenes feature a blink and I presume it’s vice versa in league.
It just seems so busted haha
I guess I can kind of see what you’re saying though
Marvel vs Capcom 3. It’s a sick fighting game but it is also totally fucking psychopathic. I put over 10k hours in that mfer and going back and looking at how ungodly fast and fucked up it is makes me wonder how the fuck I managed to play it at a high level. Playing competitively is unbelievably fuckedd up.
What team did you run?
Mostly Wesker Magneto Doom and MODOK Magneto Doom.
Dabbled with about everyone though. Wish fighting games were still that open ended.
Modok/mag/doom sounds wild. Ive mained team nemo for the longest but recently made verb/raccoon/strange for fun
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.
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
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.
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.
One of my favorite games is Antimatter Dimensions. It’s an incremental/idle game. It’s kind of amazing. But trying to explain to someone what an idler is is pointless and most people who are familiar just think it’s a Cookie Cutter clone. But it’s not.
It does vertical prestige layers but like each layer, the mechanic of the first part is built on the entire previous layer, then the second part takes what you’ve built up to and flips it on its head a bit. This continues for several currencies that are used for various things. In December of 2022, the Reality Update™️ was released and once you get to that prestige layer the game turns into a completely diffeent thing. like if you have ADHD or enjoy Factorio but hate all the walking, I seriously recommend it to those people but if you don’t fall into that group, it’s probably not for you and I can see it getting marked up as the dumbest game you’ve ever played.
Antimatter Dimensions is one of my favorite games but just don’t. And if it does click with you, it sort of sneaks itself into your daily routine. Check in for 30 mins in the AM and do some purchasing, consult the guide. Maybe let it idle through a time wall. Plan prestige challenges in the evening after work. Might let it run all night and check in these three things I’m grinding for next morning, etc. like it doesn’t consume your life but it becomes part of you.
Don’t play it lol.
Downloading it now because I recently quit Adventure Capitalist due to glitches ruining the game
It’s gonna be less flashy and quite a bit different than Adventure Capitalist but if you are used to incremental games you should be fine.
Just poke around and fill bars, buy some automaters, try a few challenges and if you like it, the subreddit should have a link to the discord. Last I checked there was a redux version of the The Guide™️ after the original got taken down by the author but the discord is super well maintained and each prestige layer has its own channel with pinned posts for just about anything you need to help along the way.
The game is gonna seem simple at first but as it unfolds it gets pretty big so having those pins is really nice to have. The game has a surprising amount of content for being a incremental.
Hope you like it!
Well I’m about to do my 2nd eternity. Thanks for ruining my life <3
Wait til Reality lol
Huh, maybe I played before that update but I remember finishing it in like a few months.
Fallen London. Some of the best writing in any game, DEEP LORE, with the greatest secret ending I’ve ever played all in a F2P browser game. But it’s a real time investment
This is the game that launched Sunless Seas and Sunless Skies if you’ve played those
I’ve heard about this game because of a certain plotline that ruins the game apparently. Kinda wanna try it to see that plotline
You destroy your character slowly and completely in a process the game repeatedly warns you will not at all be worth it. It’s so great. You have to go NORTH
Have you done it? Don’t want any spoilers, but do you know if it’s actually not worth doing? I’m okay with a bad ending, just not a BAD ending if you know what I mean
I have done it. Whether it’s worth it is kind of hard to say. The lore you get is not worth the sacrifice, although it is cool (this is not a spoiler, since the game repeatedly tells you as much). But as an experience it was very fulfilling in its own way.
I had an endgame character that I had played for like three years before he went NORTH. I think the more attached you are the harder and more fulfilling the storyline is.
Are you able to play almost the whole game without going into it? The way you describe it, it sounds like I can still experience most of the game before going north and ruining everything.
Yep. It’s completely optional thing
Mine probably has to be Unturned. I love the game, and it’s free so the jank is really forgivable. But it was originally a Roblox game before the developer made it a full game.
Shining Force! A TTRPG from 1992. The music and character design are really about a decade ahead of everything else that was available then. If you level one of your characters up to lv 10, you can “evolve” them into a different sprite that lets them wield better gear. This was my comfort game growing up, and was remastered for GBA in 2004. If you like it, don’t play the prequel, only the sequel.
The cover art rules
The differences in Japanese and Western box art in the 90s is interesting to me.
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
Black & White is the only good molyneux game
I liked Fable 3 and that is probably my most gulagable opinion.
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:
