Which games blow your mind, but only if you know nothing about them in advance?
Best examples I can think of are:
- Outer Wilds
- Doki Doki Literature Club
- The Stanley Parable
What are yours?
(please no spoilers)
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Subnautica.
Survival. But you’re in the middle of an ocean. Good luck!
The way the game drip feeds you information. I love it!
Undertale, but at this point you’d have to have lived in a cave for the last decade to not know most of the spoilers by now.
Well, apparently I have!
The only thing I’ve heard about Undertale so far is that it is supposed to be good.That’s all Ive heard too. I tried playing it but the combat was weird. Kinda boring to me so I never advanced further.
Same. Fehlt like a very early game experiment.
It gets good by the end but yeah if you don’t mesh with it early on it can be hard to get into and want to finish it.
Yeah that happened to me. Never finished it and wonder why it’s so loved.
Yeah I almost had that happen with me but I think I ended up watching someone play it. Still kind of regret it but at the same time probably wouldn’t have finished it on my own otherwise and I atleast have Deltarune to look forward to now.
Yeah I didn’t really get it. I did play Everhood though and that was much better.
Undertale is such a bolt of lightning. It both depends on its player having experience with traditional JRPG and having no fucking clue what it is. But when the conditions line up, as it did for many people at release, it was such a master fully crafted experience. But even the slightest amount of “it’s good because…” really siphons part of the experience away.
Spoiler: There are high jinks, low jinks, dangers, puzzles, capers, japers, being captured, and other sorts of fun activities in this game.
Guess I live in a cave then. I have even had the game on steam for ages now. The graphics are just too much of a turn off for me to ever play it.
I have heard the name but don’t know what it’s about, I’ll look into it. Thanks !
I’ll look into it.
No, don’t!
Or at least don’t do anymore than choose your preferred platform and then buy it. Its available on Windows, Linux, Mac, PS, Xbox and Switch but not on Android or iOS.
Its a couple of bucks on steam at the moment, included in PSN if you do that, or full price everywhere else.
hop just got it. Thanks for the recommendation. Let’s see what this is all about 😁
Tbh, I played it for a few hours, didn’t like it and don’t understand all the fuss about it. Does it get good later?
I was at a point, where I was going through a cave with a castle in the background (it was a few years ago), it was probably some kind of riddle, but I couldn’t be bothered.
Is it worth going forward or did I see enough to just say “it’s not my kind of game”?
Control
Yeah, got it for free on epic, assumed it was a game on dictatorship for reason… What a trip it turned out to be
It’s on sale on Steam for $7, just got it!
Great combat, graat atmosphere, great story. Definitely worth your time.
- Disco Elysium
- Return of the Obra Dinn
- House Of The Dying Sun
- FEAR
- Limbo
- Oxenfree
I disagree with FEAR simply because I’d say to play it on the hardest difficulty and go balls to the wall because the AI will fuck you over if it gets the chance; and the longer you take to clear a room, the more time the AI has to organize and execute a plan. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve seen plenty of people get stuck on FEAR because they tried to play it like a cover shooter, I’d fully agree with you.
Honestly, fair assessment. Well said.
Can you send me the link to FEAR? In steam there are a lot of games with this name lol.
Ok thx, this one is actually available in gog too, and for cheaper. Gonna check it out. (Costed me 0.2$, but there is regional pricing here).
Heck yes. Enjoy. Say hit to Alma for me.
Yes! Return of the Obra Dinn 100%. You can still watch other people play it on YouTube later and have a blast seeing them figure things out. And read Lucas Pope’s excellent devblog later as well.
I am super intimidated Return of the Obra Dinn. But it looks so cool, and I feel like it uses a lot of lateral thinking and makes you smarter for playing it.
No need to be intimidated. Just pick it up in a sale. Definitely a brain teaser but there are spoiler reduced guides out there in case you get stuck. But you should be able to finish the game even without guidance.
You should go into Nier: Automata thinking it’s a game about a hot chick fighting a bunch of robots. The only spoiler you should know is that the end isn’t the end, and you need to play it again.
You should go into Spec Ops: the Line thinking it’s a game about a cool special forces team fighting a bunch of terrorists or something. The only spoiler you should know is that it’s supposed to feel like a generic third person shooter.
Haha I stopped playing Nier Automata after finishing it once. Yeah, yeah I heard it’s not the end, but the gameplay really isn’t good enough to go through it again. Right now I’d give it a 7/10, but if you force me to do it all again I am going down to 3/10. I think it feels incredibly cheap to do this gimmick.
For you, a little extra spoiler: the next ending also isn’t the end, there’s a lot more. I will admit that playing the second run is a big grindy at first, but it quickly differentiates itself from your first run by the time you get to the first boss. Also, in the second run, the side quests are crucial.
An extra-extra spoiler: there’s a lot to dig your teeth into, philosophically, that makes the whole rigmarole worth it.
I love Nier! I’m thought the second play through would be a slog, but they kept it really interesting imo. And starting it up for a third time was wild. Even starting that game is part of the game mechanic, it’s so neat!
I would have to disagree about the second playthrough; I found it to be a very large slog. The third and subsequent playthroughs were amazing though.
To each their own! I enjoyed playing as
spoiler
9S
But I’m glad you like the other playthroughs!
Oh I enjoyed the gameplay. But the actual story of the second play through was a slog until about 75% of the way through.
I bought it expecting like a Devil May Cry or maybe Souls… then the game started and I noped the hell out. It’s weird and I did not like it at all.
Tunic.
The one thing I think is worth “spoiling” just to save you some pain:
Tap for spoiler
If you find a room with a bunch of curtains and bells, it is NOT A PUZZLE!
I also second Outer Wilds.
i bounced off tunic super hard. i love the puzzle aspects, the cryptic manual pages, and figuring things out, but the combat was way too brutal, even on the easier setting. the bigger white ghost enemies at the very start killed me so many times i no longer want to go back to it.
I’ve gotta remember what those ghosts are.
I’ve slowly acclimated to Soulslikes since Tunic, and a common theme is that they make you think you need to be pressing more buttons, when they’re often teaching specialized bits of patience. In Tunic’s case, a lot of people expend their stamina too quickly.
Still don’t like FromSoft’s games
i thought that too, and tried studying their movements, but they attacked faster than i could even press the button.
Understandable. It got pretty frustrating for me too at various points. I’m kinda bad at this kind of combat in general. Most of what motivates me to push through it in games like Dark Souls or Tunic is being interested in the world. But sometimes not even that’s enough.
it’s especially wild in a cutesy game like tunic where it just bodies you ten minutes in. it made me feel like i had been tricked.
I didn’t have too much trouble up until the first real boss. Thankfully there was a save point pretty close by so I just threw myself at it more times than I’d like to admit.
The game throws big bosses at you at a time when you won’t have range weapons, and expects you to dodge these big sweeping attacks that would be more appropriate fighting with ranged weapons. And by the time you get a ranged weapon, it’s too late, and they’ve raised the stakes again for future bosses to the point that having a ranged weapon isn’t even an advantage.
I was forced to reduce the difficulty just for the bosses. All of the other enemies were mostly fine.
Try playing Environmental Station Alpha. Super cutesy robot, absolutely unfair difficulty for a Metroidvania. Which is a shame, because there’s an interesting story and gameplay buried in that difficulty, and I love Metroidvanias.
I switched that to easy mode at one of the mid game bosses, and I still struggled. The combat is way too tough for what it is.
I thought the reward for the puzzles was not good enough, either. When you play Outer Wilds, you figure things out, unlock a wonderful story, and learn tricks for other puzzles. When you play Tunic, you (eventually) figure things out and get a bad ending for a game that barely reveals anything, story-wise.
I also thought that requiring a web app or a bunch of paperwork to figure out the language was far too inconvenient for a game made in the 21st century. They borrowed the wrong lessons from Fez.
Journey. You can get it on PlayStation, iOS, steam (on sale for $5 atm) and epic. It is 2-3 hours short and not very challenging, but it does look absolutely stunning and has a very beautiful gameplay mechanic that you better find out for yourself. IMO it is one of the best games of all time and one that really demonstrates what the medium is capable of.
spoiler
Gosh this one makes me cry every time
I wish someone had told me what Journey was about so I could have avoided it. I went in blind and didn’t enjoy it at all. It was a cool concept but it wasn’t for me.
That is odd that nobody could tell this wouldn’t be for you @[email protected]
Thank you for this. Just recently picked up and played through twice Gris and Neva. Even though they’re short as well I really find myself loving the visuals, gameplay and the atmosphere created by these games.
Inscryption
Damn, was I surprised as a fan of older TCGs and videogame TCGs.
Was gonna mention this one soooooo good
Inside. Made by the same company as Limbo, but Inside is much more “don’t look up a single thing”
Thanks for the recommendation. Just bought both for $3 lol
Sweet deal!!
Limbo was alright for me, but Inside blew my mind. So if Limbo doesn’t float your boat, don’t stop there!
have a great time !! Inside is fantastic
I’m surprised no one mentioned Spec Ops: The Line yet
Minesweeper
I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but your comment is so true it hurts. When you first figure out how minesweeper works, your mind is blown away.
Subnautica. Just bopping along, in my cute little submarine.
I had no background and nearly shat myself at a moment you can probably guess lol
A moment? I had a few during my first playthrough. PD, RL, W, T, DL. And many moments of forgetting to keep an eye on that oxygen meter lol.
Soma
Thanks, just bought it.
One of my all-time favorites. If you don’t like horror games, don’t let that stop you. It’s too important a story to pass up, and worse-case, you can turn off some of the scary elements of the game. It’s really a sci-fi masterpiece first, and a horror game second.
I’m gonna go with Skyrim, the more unoptimized and aimless your playthrough is, the more fun you’ll have.
Just started playing Skyrim for the first time last week.
My character is optimized for ending fights before they begin – by liquifying the opponent’s noggin’ with one swing of her 2-handed warhammer.
Other than that, she travels the world collecting ingredients to cook, brew and smith stuff with.
I suspect that’s not an optimal build, but it’s fun.Perfect, I wouldn’t change a thing.
The Long Dark
Getting lost in the snowy wilderness I so much fun. I have many “oh shit” moments that kinda don’t happen once you learn the maps and improve.
I’ve had that one in my library since it originally came out and I’ve been wanting to play it ever since, but haven’t found time. I understand they’ve added quite a bit since the early days!
Yeah it’s changed a lot over the years but is such a unique experience I recommend it to everyone.
They still haven’t released all the story mode chapters but survival mode is by far the best way to play.
I have been thinking about some old survival game that I used to play that doesn’t exist anymore recently, maybe it’s time I give The Long Dark some real playtime!
Oh, the story mode is not finished yet? Any idea if they have a goal date?
They are on to the last episode now but it’s all overdue by like 5 years at this point so who knows.
Seems like just about all games end up overdue by years (or sometimes a decade) these days.
