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 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 :<)
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
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!
ITT: a bunch of games that are fucking awesome and i’d absolutely recommend them to others
Maybe hexbear filters towards personalities that are fine with jank?
I know jank wouldn’t put me off and some of my favourite games are like playing with spreadsheets lol
Real talk I like some big shiny AAA games once in a while. Like I really enjoyed Baldurs Gate 3 but If I had to chose between something like Baldurs Gate 3 and Dominions I would take Dominions every time.
World of Tanks.
The premise is 15v15 tank battles, simple enough. You must penetrate the enemies’ armour to inflict damage. Easy.
The core issue is that each tank can carry regular shells and shells that do the same damage and just simply have higher nominal penetration, but cost more in-game currency.
Like how the fuck does that make sense.
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Death Stranding, Overwatch, Monster Hunter 3U.
Death Stranding because I’m not going to subject anyone to Kojima’s brand of technobabble and self-fellation combined with a (admittedly fairly deep mechanically) walking simulator.
Overwatch because an FPS/MOBA combination has to be doing some actual damage to my psyche, and also it’s just a hard sell to start with because of obvious reasons.
MH3U because it’s only available on the 3DS and Wii U and it’s the last really slow MH of the pre-World MHs. On 3DS it has no online play, and the Wii U servers have been taken down. It’s the last MH before they introduced the mobility additions and improvements from 4 that made combat more fluid and fast, and before World introduced the system that basically finds the monster for you, as well as making mat gathering much more easy and less tedious.
EDIT: ooh for something that’s more ‘obscure jank’ I just remembered I LOVED Phantom Breaker on the 360. It was a fighting game by 5pb/Mages that had a split style system. You had to choose between ‘Quick’ and ‘Hard’ where one was fast/felt more rushdown-y and the other was slower/felt more defensive. The game was super flashy because you would constantly clash, and meter built really fast WHILE ALSO CARRYING OVER BETWEEN ROUNDS which led to wild round start set-ups. This clip from will it kill is from the newer version but it’s fucking hilarious.
FYI 3U servers have not gone down on Wii U (I played hours ago) and I’d be down to play it if you’re interested sometime soon before the April 8th Nintendo network shutdown on Wii U (Pretendo + other work will hopefully replace it after that)
This offer also stands for MHG, MHDos, MHFU/2G, and 4U
Oh, I must have misread. That’s good to hear then.
Unfortunately I don’t have a Wii U, I played through 3U mostly solo on the 3ds, but thank you for the invite.
Everquest 1 and BDO
Nostalgia for EQ1 is so strong but unless you got friends trying to get into an old-style mmorpg now is painful
BDO because I actually love the combat style and gameplay but the k-mmorpg inspired upgrade system is just maddening also fuck microtransactions
Kileak: The DNA Imperative (a PS1 game i’ve played emulated on DuckStation)
its a real-time FPS dungeon crawler where you in a mech (power armor? kinda hard to tell, but i think its a small mech more than a armor suit) explore a tunnel complex full of cybernetic combat drones.
the gameplay is kinda wack, you have to shoot like 30 or 40 shots (in single shot with the base weapon, a lot of rapid button mashing if you want to survive) at basically every enemy to kill them, the other weapons are super hard to find ammo for, and the tank controls in first person are pretty wild (in a fun way. you can move diagonally super fast for some reason. controls remind me of armored core 2), but it has such a sense of atmosphere its like one of those haunted PS1 videogames. Its basically like a slower paced Doom clone with more simplistic level architecture, most levels are linear corridors with some 90 degree turns and 4x4 and 6x6 rooms spread around. theres no jump or crouch or anything, just forward, back, strafe buttons with either L1/2 or R1/2 buttons, and you can’t look up or down except by holding R1 and L1 to look up and R2 and L2 to look down at pre-defined angles. it doesnt matter since the game has aim assist, the crosshair moves to lock onto the enemy nearest the center/closest to you (not sure which).
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
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.
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!
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
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.
Cuphead
It is infuriating and I wouldn’t wish the frustration on anyone
