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Notes -
Piggybacking off of my last comment, are there others who feel that modern games seem not to be as fun as games from late 90s to late 2000s? This may be nostalgia talking, but people around me game less than they did, and most games they play are MMO ones, as opposed to campaign-focused ones like Half-Life.
I have not played a whole lot of modern games, but their gameplay does not seem to be that big of an improvement over things I have seen before. In many cases, modern shooters feel quite slow compared to arena shooters like unreal tournament or Quake. I was looking at games to play and very caught my eye beyond the new doom games.
I have to question the usefulness of such a broad question. Even talking about 90s games is very broad. In my youth, I played on an iMac G3 and played tons of shareware titles that probably most 90s gamers have never heard of.
These days, my addictive personality becomes apparent even with modern games. Escape From Tarkov, Dark Souls Remastered, Caves of Qud, and Katana Zero all made me noticeably tank my own health in my lust to play them as much as possible. Just yesterday, I was reminiscing that I really liked Max Payne 3. These are all games that aren't exactly new, but they do fall outside of the late 90s to late 2000s parameters. I think there's tons of good stuff out there, it just needs to be found and played to death.
I would love suggestions. My current to-play list includes
My malaise also stems from the fact that the IPs that I liked from the 2010s are either dead or should be dead. Assassin's Creed stopped being fun post Brotherhood, Far Cry got worse. The popular AAA summer blockbuster sorta games feel quite familiar, I wish we could experience breakthroughs in how the games felt.
The jumps from Wolfenstein to Doom, from Doom to Quake and from Quake to Quake 3 were pretty large. You could polish Arkham Asylum graphically, and a guy who has never played it would not find it old or clunky like you would have found Half Life after having played Vanquish.
Maybe I'll never recreate the rush of pizza, coke and old vide games with my cousin from 18 years ago. Welp
Edit - forgot to add immersive sims and some others I forgot
If you have Metal Gear Rising & DmC on your list, I'm guessing you've already played the actual Devil May Cry games? If not, 3, 4, 1, and 5 are all much better than DmC IMHO. DmC isn't nearly as bad as its reputation and has a pretty solid combat system, but it definitely wasn't as good as those actual DMC games, with a severe lack of boss fights and has atrocious art design and writing. I'd also recommend Bayonetta if you haven't played that one. Ninja Gaiden Sigma from the Master Collection is worth checking out as well, though the style of combat is quite a bit different from DMC. I wish I could recommend Sigma 2 or the recently released Black 2, but both are severely gimped versions of the game that took away the craziness that was so fun about the OG Ninja Gaiden 2.
I have not, I fear that the non-reboot stuff is better, so playing the worse game first would at least let me enjoy that, though a good chance I never get through this list either given that I just don't care about games as much now given my turbulent life is currently. I fired up Quake Live yesterday and an hour went by in a flash. I had fun despite like a 1/25 kd.
Devil May Cry series seemed to be much more fun than the God of War games, will check out others you mentioned too. Bayonetta is highly rated.
If you haven't played God of War, you definitely should play them. The original games, I can't speak for the new ones as they don't interest me. The God of War trilogy is a masterclass in keeping things fun the whole way through. Penny Arcade observed (back when GoW 2 came out) that the stuff it gives you in the first level is the sort of fun that most games don't give you until the last level. Just really great games, and everyone should play them.
My favorite was gow2, I just did not like it as much story wise since greek gods are still gods, so I never recomemnd that game lol. I would say that I really liked the combat there which is why devil may cry and Metal gear rising tempt me.
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