Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(

    • hstde@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I played the second one ages ago. Nothing more creepy than being a bit of a dick to you people and have a voice whisper your name late at night.

      (For those who don’t know: the game would read your username and if it was in the database of soundfiles it would play that whisper at random, but long intervals.)

    • TEKUMS@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Noclip did a doc about it recently (https://youtu.be/GtNvEna6bxc). I remember seeing it for the first time at a buddies place growing up, but I didn’t have a strong enough computer to run it. I did though when black and white 2 came out and it was awesome! I feel the only thing comparable to it currently is the Anno series, no spells or anything but just city management and stuff.

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    1 year ago

    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.

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      1 year ago

      One of the only puzzle games that made me think I’m dumb and give up. It’s fantastic

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      1 year ago

      Every time you solve a puzzle, you feel like you’re cheating and that can’t be the intended solution. It’s such a tough game

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        1 year ago

        Initially looks just a simple twist on Sokoban, but the game mechanic just keeps going deeper and deeper and blowing your mind.

        I could do that?

        I COULD DO THAT?!

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      I’m not a gamer but I do enjoy Real Civil Engineer’s youtube channel, he’s played Baba Is You a few times.

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    1 year ago

    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.

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    1 year ago

    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!

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      1 year ago

      Jade empire was legit. i’m really surprised that there haven’t been any other kung fu type rpgs since.

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      1 year ago

      In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.

      Or maybe some could make SF6 story mode X Jade Empire.

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        1 year ago

        In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.

        I hadn’t even thought about that but you’re right. What a wonderful thought.

        It’s also kind of surprising no effort has been done to remaster Jade Empire since that is such a popular cash grab these days. But maybe the brand strength of the IP is just that low?

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    1 year ago

    MDK. Sure, it was arguably “popular” when it launched, but is largely forgotten in videogame lore. There’s not even talks of a remake.

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      1 year ago

      There’s been multiple talks of remakes and two remasters of MDK2. They can’t remake 1 due to the rights being in dispute.

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    1 year ago

    Star Wars Republic Commando! Every now and then people talk about it, but it is a shame it isn’t mentioned more. I actually just replayed it, I’d almost say it holds up today with the remaster mod and the rc patch. There is also a very cool mod called “slightly remastered” which adds stuff like 3rd person scripted animations and scripted kill cams, it makes you feel like a badass! Aside from that, I’m also surprised nobody in the boomer shooter enjoyer crowd talks about Cube 2: Sauerbraten, which is a very fast paced arena shooter. The only server that is consistently active uses one shot rifles that have enough recoil to do trick jumps, very fun to hop on for a few hours

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    1 year ago

    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.

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      I used to watch a streamer play My Summer Car whenever I could. I love the games that are just their own thing.

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    1 year ago

    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.

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      Whoooooooa, now you’re really taking me back. I only had the Shareware version, so the full version with all the fighters was something I lusted after for ages, but never actually got. Megarace is another one from this era that stands out, though I don’t think it was a particularly great game.

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      I can still remember every special move and destruction. And how to select Nova outside tournament. Completed the tournament on Heavy Metal, but it’s hard only in the beginning.

      There are custom tournaments and a open source remake project https://www.openomf.org/

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      1 year ago

      You know that killer soundtrack right?

      One day Kenny Chou was browsing the internet and randomly thought “I wonder if anyone remembers that game I did the music for?” and was surprised to find his OMF2097 music has a huge following.

      To celebrate he re-constructed the main theme in modern tools here: https://youtu.be/UvlVaQl7kEk

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        That’s awesome! Cheers for the link! I loved the theme song so much that I made up random lyrics for it as a kid and used to sing it all the time. People used to ask me what was that song that I was singing and I’d tell them all about the game and rope them into it lol.

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    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.

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      Wait, did they fire Chris Roberts before finishing Freelancer? I never knew.

      Freelancer was the first game I clocked over 500 hours on in online play. So many fond memories.

      Edit: OK, read up on it. They absolutely did. I never new Chris Roberts was such a Chris Roberts all the way back in 1999.

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      I wonder if the Discovery mod/community is still going. It was an rp focussed mod, but added a ton of shit to the game, including piloting bigger ships.

      Really fun game, hasn’t quite been another game that scratches the same itch as freelancer.

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      1 year ago

      Holy shit, blast from the past. Haven’t thought about that game for ages. Where did you find it?

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        1 year ago

        To be fair, I have an installation disk and just copied the installed files and some patches to the deck. You need some special fonts I think. Other than that, it has no copy protection so it runs fine without a disk.

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      The prequel that only came out on PC was really good, too. But the Xbox version was better for sure.

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    1 year ago

    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!

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        1 year ago

        Yeah! It’s a relatively small player base these days, but you can always find fights during the evenings.

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          relatively small player base these days, but you can always find fights during the evenings.

          Sounds familiar, lol.

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    Hard to settle on just one. In no order:

    • ChuChu Rocket (Dreamcast): insanely fun and manic couch multiplayer game
    • A10 Tank Killer II: Silent Thunder (PC): the soundtrack alone justifies the time to play this aging flight sim
    • Virtual On (Arcade): this was ported to Saturn and the port is good, but the giant arcade machine is where it’s really at with dual twin stick cockpits
    • Mario Paint (SNES): Really fun non-game from a time when non-games were uncommon on home consoles. I have hundreds of hours into this
    • Dungeon Keeper (PC): darkly comedic evil dungeon lord management sim. I will never forgive EA for what they did to Bullfrog and subsequently the DK franchise. There have been many attempted homages and clones but none have captured the magic.
    • Super Tennis (SNES): an actually fun tennis game
    • Super Play Action Football (SNES): football game with a unique isometric view
    • Hank Parker’s Super Black Bass 2 (SNES): super fun fishing sim. I wish there were games like this today that took fishing more seriously and less arcadey.
    • Brain Age (DS): a genuine sensation in its heyday and largely forgotten now. Really showed off the potential of the DS
    • Cel Damage (GameCube): twisted metal with zany little cel shaded cartoon characters. Never got the respect it deserved and probably never will since they butchered the game’s balance with the HD re-release
    • Fontasia@kbin.social
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      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.)

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        Holy crap there was an HD re-release? I am not even sure which one I actually played. I think it was just TIM 3.0 from 1995