I watched a YouTube video about this topic today and thought it was the perfect idea for a post here. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s games you played in the past that you’re still stuck thinking about, or games that taught you a lesson that you’ve held on to.
I’m going to start. For me, the two games that perfectly exemplify the idea of a game that sticks with you are Sekiro and BioShock. I have a feeling Dark Souls will be a popular choice but I think Sekiro did it more for me personally.
Starting with Sekiro, I honestly think it’s the closest to perfect I’ve ever seen in a video game, at least for a first playthrough. It’s fun, challenging, rewarding, thoughtfully made, beautiful to look at, it’s got great voice acting, memorable characters, and I honestly can only think of two mini bosses that bring the whole game very slightly down. Every other aspect is a 10/10 from me. Not to mention the combat is the best combat of any game I’ve ever played. Personally, this game is the purist example of a game that forces you to get good at it, and does the best job at teaching perseverance. In the rest of the Souls games, you can upgrade your weapon, get a new weapon, use buffs, summon NPCs or another player to help, if you’re getting stuck. With Sekiro on the other hand, you need to get good. Above any other game, this one showed me just how well hard work can pay off. I feel about this game the same way video essayists feel about Dark Souls. If you know, you know.
Moving on to BioShock, this one really taught me the value of a good story, and showed me that video games truly are art. It helped that the game itself is a ton of fun to play, but on top of that the writing is just phenomenal. I’m assuming most people on here have played this one so I won’t get too into it, and in case you haven’t, most of what I’d be gushing about would spoil the whole game anyway, so I’m just leaving it short, but yeah. This game is the finest example of video games being an art form.
What about you guys? What has stuck with you the hardest? I’ve got more games I could talk about but I’d love to see discussion from you.
Dreamfall Chapters was the first game where I stopped and thought for 15 minutes about a choice I needed to make, and its implications.
Life is Strange, LiS: Before The Storm, and LiS: True Colors, hve a special place in my heart for their deeply engrossing and moving stories, and for really getting me to care about the characters and their fates.
The first Witcher game was one that drew me in so much that I immediately started a second playthrough upon finishing the first. I have never done that with any other game.
Hardspace: Shipbreakers stuck with me for being such an excellent melange of complex puzzle, industrial accident simulator, and poignant satire on the state of labour in late stage capitalism.
I loved The Longest Journey series. Beautiful games. Not without flaws, but beautiful and thoughtfully written.
Rollercoaster Tycoon. What was a silly little game which we got for free out of a cereal box is now a main stay on any computer I own. Runs on everything and has aged incredibility well.
Shoutout to OpenRCT2 for modernizing it, even if the original games run fine as is
I think Final Fantasy 7 and 10. the worlds were so well build. And in current times of terror, climate crisis, wars, so many topics were in the games.
As other games i mention Limbo, Ori and Hollow Knight. The have a really great athmosphere. Just thinking about these games, makes me remember of the feeling playing them.
And the biggest game in my list is Elden Ring. So many wow things in there. And the shear amount of content … Just blew my mind.
My big three are Outer Wilds which at this point barely needs mentioning, Disco Elysium which seems to be getting more famous by the day, and Hollow Knight.
Outer wilds is an exploration game, and if the other comments haven’t been clear, that’s all I’m saying.
Disco Elysium is an unbelievably dense police procedural set in a unique setting, it can also be fantastic to explore without hearing much beforehand but unlike outer wilds, you don’t really need to beat yourself up for looking up the occasional piece of lore.
Hollow Knight is a souls-like metroidvania, so it’s ticking the Sekiro / Dark Souls box well.
I got about 90% through the game with only a rough understanding of the lore before ending up watching video essays about it and I was absolutely blown away. I don’t think the lore is overly difficult to find, and isn’t that complicated, but like FromSoft’s games, it’s not always delivered in a way that you naturally pick it up.
I play a lot of games with the “media literacy” part of my brain firmly switched off, because often games handhold you through the storytelling. With Disco Elysium, you know from the getgo that it’s a pay attention kind of game, but Hollow Knight, it sort of feels like a storyless flash game, and sometimes key lore is delivered in a beautiful set piece or creature design, so I only realised I should have been paying attention when it was too late to catch up.
I got no less enjoyment from it by catching up on the lore later though, these three games are absolutely my top three.
My final bonus suggestion is to bash out all the supergiant games in order, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre and Hades all hit the marks for me to sometimes just stop in awe and let myself get chills, although less tban the three above. I also think Pyre is one of the most overlooked games of all time.
I never played Outer Wilds and I don’t know anything about it, but I absolutely love Disco Elysium and Hollow Knight. I might check out Outer Wilds since I agree with your write ups with the other 2.
Thanks for the rec.
Super Metroid - the atmosphere in the beginning of the game was something else when I started it the first time. The rain, the music… As a kid I was just mesmerized.
Gradius - being too fast is not always the best.
Factorio - planning goes a long way. Even if you think you planned for enough space for your construction it will never be enough as you probably need to make it larger later on.
Psychonauts has had a profound effect on how I view the world and people. Honestly, both games, but moreso the first one.
Gotta agree with others that mentioned The Outer Wilds. I haven’t stopped thinking about that game in some capacity since I played it and the second (part? Game? DLC?) about 6 months ago. I never looked up anything before or during play, but loved reading all about it after finishing them.
It bears repeating…Do not read/watch anything about this game online. The best way to experience it is through discovery and I wish I could wipe the experience from my memory just to experience it again!
Other notable mentions are…
- Dead Space for it’s integrated menus and systems that never take you out of the game.
- Prey (the Indigenous People one) for the unique story.
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent for the story, voice acting, and fear.
There are other games to mention, but my kid just came in and broke my train of thought.
Heres a weirder one no one else has mentioned yet: I’ve heard art described as a way to express and emotion, and I really felt that with Hotline Miami. Its not done through the story or setting (in fact, the intentional ignorance there adds to it) but rather the contrest between the hyper-violent trance as you play through a level, and then the sudden cut of the music as you quietly walk past the mountains of bloodied corpses back to your car. I feel that shift, when you first notice it, really emphasises the pointless brutally of it far more so than many much more heavy-handed attempts in other games.
Gris and Subnautica. For different reasons, they made me feel things I didn’t think I could feel while playing video games anymore.
No game has ever affected me as much as Outer Wilds. Out of every life changing piece of art I’ve ever experienced, whether it be film, television, music, literature, or videogames, this is the first and only time I’ve ever gotten chills by the end.
The story isn’t super deep and it isn’t necessarily profound – it’s not really a belief-changer, outside of, perhaps, your idea of what a videogame is – but the experience itself is beautiful and rewarding and I’m not sure it can be recaptured.
Also for anyone looking to play it, don’t read anything about it! Not even the Steam description! It’s best experienced completely blind.
Same.
The story isn’t super deep and it isn’t necessarily profound – it’s not really a belief-changer, outside of, perhaps, your idea of what a videogame is – but the experience itself is beautiful and rewarding and I’m not sure it can be recaptured.
Spoilers for Outer Wilds ahead
I had an interesting discussion about this game with a friend who didn’t feel anything after finishing Outer Wilds. We came to the conclusion that while the “concept” of Outer Wilds is incredibly sad/beautiful, not everyone feels something for concepts and ideas.
For example, my friend is a serious cry baby when characters he knows well die in games/shows/movies. We barely know anything about the Outer Wilds universe, its inhabitants or even our protagonist, so there’s nothing sad about individual characters perishing.
Yet you, I and many others deeply connected with a story about the volatility of the universe and life itself and how everything has to come to an end.
(DLC spoilers ahead)
The same applies to the DLC, there is nothing inherently sad about either of us perishing. We barely know anything about the stranger, the owlks, the prisoner or our protagonist. But the idea of both of us being dead inside of a simulation, drifting through space on a dying vessel in a dying universe is a heart breaking thought to me.
As disappointed as I was that not everyone seems to experience these emotions, it for sure is interesting.
::spoiler
What Remains of Edith Finch was the first game to make me cry. I think I played it when I was around 12, and it just kinda broke me for a few days, particularly Walter’s story. Just an entire game of people trying and failing to escape their fate. The narration is pitch perfect. Edith sounds so real, and so tired.
Personally I have to mention The Talos Principle and its sequel. It has helped me formulate a kind of philosophy of mind that I couldn’t entirely grasp before. It’s also just an absolute masterpiece of a puzzle game. If you’ve played portal, you’ll enjoy Talos too most likely.
I asked this once on the Talos Principle subreddit and got absolutely wrecked for asking in the first place awhile back, I’ll try again here:
If I like puzzle games but do not enjoy philosophy, would I enjoy the Talos Principle?
In the game, you’ll find various philosophical texts. These are entirely optional and serve as a kind of background set and things to think about. So you can just not read them if you don’t want to or find them boring. I’m guessing when you say you don’t enjoy philosophy, you’d find it boring to read those texts, so just skip them.
You’ll also find snippets of other texts that aren’t philosophical that give clues to the story. These can also be skipped but you’ll miss out on a significant chunk of the story then. There are other story bits that require no reading so you’ll still get an idea of it and might still get the gist mostly.
But you can play just the puzzles and not worry about the philosophical background or the story at all. They actually deliberately designed the game this way so that you can enjoy the puzzles alone if that’s your jam 🙂. The puzzles are very good so even if you just want some good puzzles, I’d still recommend it.
Thank you so much! This was a very helpful comment.
No problem 😇
Also the second one is lighter on the reading and has more character dialog and such, so definitely play that too!
Some games have already been posted, so I’ll share two games that really stuck with me:
- Life is Strange
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
I could mention Persona 5 Royal, but it’s such a hugely popular game so there’s no need to elaborate.
Life is Strange took me on a mystery journey, and I felt such nostalgia for my early days as a teenager. It’s an old game, but I won’t spoil it here. I’ll give a small plot. You’re Max Caufield, and you’ve returned to Arcadia Bay and see your old best friend, Chloe Price, whom you haven’t spoken to in years. She gets into some crazy stuff and Chloe is about to be shot by another student, but Max intervenes and discovers she has the power to rewind time, allowing her to save Chloe’s life. There’s an underlying mystery in Arcadia Bay where another young girl mysteriously disappeared, and Max and Chloe team up to try to find her.
Hellblade allowed me to experience what psychosis is like, through the lens of the main character, Senua. This game is unforgettable. Senua needs to save her lover, without letting the rot that’s festering inside her to consume her. That’s all I’ll say about this gem.
Life is Strange’s writing is trope-y and often not that great, and my neurospicy ass doesn’t even relate with pretty much any of the nostalgic tropes about teenagehood (as far as I’m concerned these were the worst years of my life, by far, and any piece of media that wants to make me relive them is very unlikely to make its way onto my computer).
However the game manages to more than make up for all of that with an enthralling story that fully immerses the player with compelling gameplay, meaningful choice-based storytelling, great artistic vision, and ground-breaking character acting. The whole thing is expertly calibrated to deliver emotional gut-punch after emotional gut-punch.
Hellblade is just straight-up amazing and the Melinda Juergens’ character acting is hauntingly raw and poignant.
Seeing Max again in the new life is strange game brought me back to High School as a teenager. I don’t think seeing a game trailer has done something like that for me ever.
I really gotta play Life Is Strange. I started playing it a looong time ago but didn’t get very far into it at all before I put it down- I don’t honestly remember why.
I think “What Remains of Edith Finch” traumatized me to this day.
That game was extremely relatable for people with mentall illness. The game essentially asks the question of whether you can escape your fate from genetic mental illness. In the game, most members of the Finch family suffered from “a curse.” But it was it fairly obvious that the curse was mentall illness.
God, that game is so good.
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Would you kindly play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Excellent game play, especially going in blind. The music is one of the best game soundtracks ever. The writing is compelling, and you get to play as everyone’s favorite broody vampire, Alucard.
Strange, after reading your comment I get a very strong urge, almost need, to play that game. It’s almost like I don’t have a choice not to. Weird. Anyway, I’ll definitely play it soon
