The New Video Game Recommendation Thread v2.0

[ozzzy189]

Horizon shift and the uridium alike hyper sentinel are about 80p each on the ps4 at the moment. Both good retro fun, especially horizon. Check em out!

[F-ZeroOne]

"Streets of Rage 4."

Buy it.

That is all.

[Misfit]

"Streets of Rage 4."

Buy it.

That is all.

No. Subscribe to Gamepass and get it ‘free’.

But agreed it’s very nice.

It turns out I also had the Xbox 360 Sega collection of the 3 Megadrive games and that was updated yesterday too so it appeared next to the newly downloaded SoR4 on my Xbox. So after a quick test of 4 I played SoR2 for the first time in probably 30 years...

[Portland]

It's at my price point on pass...

[everklear]

Weekend project.
Entirely too much time spent, but it's the sort of thing I find enjoyable from time-to-time.

If TodaysForgotten ever drops back in and takes offense, I will apologize then.
What I've done it clean up his document and format it to my liking, and then comb through this thread and add things.

[SuperMappy]

Has anyone played Spiritfarer? Is it a puzzle game? A platformer? RPG? It doesn't look like a FPS, however it does look interesting.

[venusian]

I've done about 4-5 hours on it, maybe more. It's lovely. Cute but not cloying.

But also ALL trivial busywork. I've built gardens, watered them, cooked (always need to do cooking), fished (over and over again), cut planks, weaved, etc etc. It's all timed stick waggling, not much gameplay to speak of.

And I've been rewarded with a bigger boat and more NPCs to fish for, cook for, grow plants for. It's all a bit demanding for little emotional pay-off. I can't say that I like any of the characters so find it hard to imaging being sad to see any of them go. Haven't picked it up for a couple of months now.

[venusian]

To answer your question more directly: it's mobile/casual style game with a tiny bit of creativity. No RPG stats, no shooting, no puzzling puzzles.

[gilesgoat]

Ok "MAYBE DO NOT GET THIS GAME" ( actually you can get it is free now ) .. "The Witness" ( for PS4, free on the PSN store ) ..

SO I heard about this game .. it's free "why not ?" .. the graphic is VERY pretty VERY relaxing .. kinda of game almost "I don't give a crap about the game I just want to wander around" .. well kinda ..

So "OH finally a puzzle game WITHOUT time limits, bring it on !" ..

.. BUT .. then you really start playing it ..

THIS GAME IS AN *ABSOLUTE TOTAL BASTARD INCREDIBLY HARD GAME* !!!

It starts "easy enough" .. you start to learn "some basic mechanics" .. but then "the whole essence of this game" seems that "as soon as you learn something the rules are immediately thrown out of the window", as in "you just learn that you have to do X but now NO, you have to to do the OPPOSITE of X and/or SOMETHING TOTALLY ELSE".

The other "rule" you'll find "very soon" is NOT about "solve the puzzle", you DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE PUZZLE IS !!

Also despite it claims that "you can do the puzzles in *ANY* order" I can swear that is *NOT COMPLETELY TRUE* I did met some puzzles so far that if you do not sort out a certain puzzle FIRST there's ABSOLUTELY NO WAY ( unless cheating/you know already what to do ) that you will EVER complete the other puzzle !

So the "you can do them in ANY order", NOT totally true.

Also this game is really "mental" and "NOT made for MY mind", should I be really stuck in a place like that with those puzzles to solve I'd be stuck there "for eternity" because "unless I completely re-program my mind some other way my mind just does not work like that" ..

The thing is "you are presented with something" and you start studying this something .. only that very soon you'll find out that "the info you need to solve that something you will *NOT* find it in that something alone, you'll have to check "N other weird things" to try to grasp what that something really is/means".

About that, or you really need to spend fuckload of time all around that island ( to find clues I missed I have NO IDEA where to find them ) or "some of the puzzles are very badly hinted" ( or better to say NOT hinted at all ) about "ok WHAT are you supposed to do here ??".

Like "I put you in front of a dot, a triangle, a circle" .. and that's it .. NO EXPLANATIONS/hints of any sorts ... and it's like "ok and now ?".

Some of the puzzles in the opininon of me and Yak as well are really "badly constructed" in the sense that "even if you know exactly what you have to do it's really really bad at the point of 'yes but I still don't get what they want me to do' because I don't have any indication of when I am doing it right".

The more you go on the more the puzzles gets weirder and weirder requiring "lot of too much out of the box thinking" .. in the sense of "the puzzle you see really it's not the puzzle at all so you will NOT get ANY info from there".

SOME of the puzzles are really lovely, satisfying, well constructed .. other are just "YOU ARE FUCKING JOKING ? HOW ON EARTH I AM SUPPOSED TO EVEN *THINK* ABOUT THAT ??!" ..

Like "in the example above" let's say it COULD be a thing like "the circle is a lake, the triangle is a mountain, the dot it the moon" .. "the moon goes above the mountain and the lake under it" .. but so far some puzzles I've seen are MUCH WORSE than that !!!!

So yeah VERY PRETTY GRAPHICS .. as "par" as how much BASTARD this game is !

NOT exactly a game to chill out, after little while your brain will be FUMING !!

[venusian]

I hated The Witness. Can't understand the fuss around it. It's socks.

[WiteWulf]

I enjoyed The Witness to start off with but found the difficulty curve was ridiculous and soon got so stuck that even following walk-through I had no idea of the logic behind the solutions to some puzzles. I'm nowhere near finishing it as a consequence.

[Misfit]

I hated The Witness. Can't understand the fuss around it. It's socks.

I'm with you on this.

Really don't get the love it got.

[Whiteball]

I hated The Witness. Can't understand the fuss around it. It's socks.

I'm with you on this.

Really don't get the love it got.

Me too. I didn't get the fuss over Braid either though to be honest.

[rowan]

Ok "MAYBE DO NOT GET THIS GAME" ( actually you can get it is free now ) .. "The Witness" ( for PS4, free on the PSN store ) ..

SO I heard about this game .. it's free "why not ?" .. the graphic is VERY pretty VERY relaxing .. kinda of game almost "I don't give a crap about the game I just want to wander around" .. well kinda ..

So "OH finally a puzzle game WITHOUT time limits, bring it on !" ..

.. BUT .. then you really start playing it ..

THIS GAME IS AN *ABSOLUTE TOTAL BASTARD INCREDIBLY HARD GAME* !!!

I'm really really glad that I realised I was probably going to find exactly the same when I saw some recommendations or videos of it & thought "looks nice but no way"

However, may I recommend The Talos Principle as something that ticks all the boxes of what you thought you'd get above.
I did worry that I'd soon find that too hard and I put off getting it for ages until it was in a pretty good sale.

Whilst I can't anywhere near do all the stars [they are "mega hard optional" kind of puzzles], I found the difficulty was pretty OK all the way through and I soon found myself feeling bad I didn't pay full price as it would have easily been worth it.
That said, I dusted it down the other day, hoping it'd been "long enough" to enjoy another play through but almost immediately found "yeah, umm, no I can remember too much from 1st time and without any new backstory as well, I'm not interested".

Anyway, maybe give it a shot giles.

[gilesgoat]

The MAIN problem with "The Witness" IMHO is that "the puzzle rules are too obscure", puzzles ARE quite difficult even if you know precisely what you should have done !

TWO puzzles in particular seems to be "particularly obscure" and to date I have NOT found *ANY* clue whatsoever around that would have told me "how the rule works" nor that I could have figure it out.

The "Tetris Blocks" puzzles are particularly weird because first you think "I have to someway replicate the shape" .. and it kinda works .. except that very soon "becomes impossible" then you start thinking "ok what's the NEW rule" .. and turns out "the orientation can be completely arbitrary as long as the shape is respected" .. but THEN .. "the rule changes again" and again you'll find yourself in "this cannot be completed" territory !

And I have NOT found anywhere ( except consulting 'the internet' ) a clue that tells "no actually as long as it CONTAINS ALL the SHAPE(s) WITHOUT overlapping" it's still fine .. and even knowing this I can GUARANTEE you MANY puzzles you will NOT be able to figure out "what is the PRECISE shape they want".

Then there's the "sun burst" ( as they call them ) .. Nowhere I have found anything that says "they must be in group of 2" and "but if different colours are in the same group does not matter as long as there are no more than 2" .. now with the first part, you can complete quite some puzzles but then you'll reach another point of "this is impossible to be done" and you are fucked up thinking "ok what is the NEW rule I am missing now ??".

Ah yes and "that puzzle with the little bit" .. "the one that allows you to remove ONE rule" so like "this is the puzzle with rule X", but cannot be completed no matter what, but this piece allows me to "cheat one rule" AS LONG AS the piece is CONTIGUOUS to that "little bit" ..

ARE YOU INSANE ???!!

Not to mention puzzles that show you a thing "but that in reality it's all rotated/reflected/shifted" and you need to figure out what's the correct orientation, puzzles that "swap" you the entrance with the exit, puzzles that are "wrong" and you need to figure out "why they are wrong where is the right" and "a bit too many things" that require "absolutely totally banana bonkers reasoning" to figure out what.

Let's say "if you show me a problem here to be solved, I am *NOT* inclined to think that 'oh yes but before to solve it I need to take a 50 miles trip around an island, check the solar eclipse at a particular day, then jump three times in a row, open and close a door twice, say hello to a bird and honk a horn and then go back and check the problem again' .. " I am more like "ok I am going to spend the next N hours looking at the problem you showed me trying to sort it out and never be able to find a solution because the SOLUTION is NOT THERE AND/OR THE PROBLEM ITSELF IS NOT THAT ONE BUT THE TOUR AROUND THE ISLAND !!! " ..

Yes it's "a bit too weird for its own good!"

Still SOME problems "once you understood the mechanics" are quite "repetitive" .. like the Sun Temple once you know what to do you can do it all quite quick, "the trick is the same" over and over.

So the trees, so other things.

Fact is maybe you find 20 puzzles like that and then the 21th goes "completely out bananas" and you don't know what to do next !