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.
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
SOMA. Duplicating consciousness across multiple bodies and the branching off of one particular conscious mind to carry the narrative while the others were left behind was a fascinating concept for a game to engage with. Plus the atmosphere was a sublime nightmare.
The discussion between Catherine and Simon on the elevator is my favorite dialogue in any game. Not just are the voice actors amazing but a common sci-fi trope is presented from a much darker view than usual.
(Spoilers for SOMA ahead; go play the game, it only costs 5 bucks on sale)
That’s what I came here to say as well. It’s so well done and it hits in such a profound way.
Have you read any of the short stories on the game’s website? I highly recommend it. Catherine’s is so sad and it really gives a ton of insight into what she went through.
This game has lived rent-free in my brain ever since playing it. Not always in a good way either, it’s some genuine existential horror.
The ethical explorations are interesting too, such as the implications of repeatedly booting up a personality to extract information from it.
For me its Subnautica because the progression works so well. I’ve tried lots of survival games and sandbox games with similar progression afterwards, but none of them had the same impact on me. It’s also because of the genre - Sci-fi on an alien planet, discovering what actually happened, and all that baked into some real satisfying gaming loop. Also, without spoilers, the end sequence always makes me emotional, regardless of how many times I’ve played it. It just speaks to me on a personal level.
There was so much thought put into that game. While I couldn’t work it out for myself, with the help of guides I worked it out. The sense of peril and discovery was wonderful.
Subnautica is the perfect mesh of several things that work fantastically. It is a good survival game but with it’s upgrade and discovery based exploration limitations, it’s closer to a metroidvania than it is to Minecraft. The thing it does so well is sneak this past you, it’s a mystery driven metroidvania where the downtime is a resource gathering, based building game.
The closest game I can think of of that tried the same mystery metroidvania approach is The Forest, but this feels like one of the many many games from the post Minecraft and DayZ boom that has a certain scrappiness to it that somehow Subnautica absolutely sidesteps, and it’s all from just being a really well made game. The vibrant and often tranquil art style that lends itself to awe inspiring locations, and the level design and overall plot support eachother so well.
That said, I’m not in love with the amount of resources. A 4*8 gridded inventory puts me off a game from a worry of it to getting too grindy, and subnautica is a “I need to build another storeroom” kind of game. With a full survival game like Minecraft, which is endless and about exploration and progress alone, I know my storage will be unweildy and I can forgive it, but I’d have appreciated Subnautica finding a way to require less mindless resource hunting / busywork unless itnwas optional base cosmetics or the like.
My game time is limited so I play what I hope to be most impactful. My list is chock full of unforgettable experiences:
- Control
- RDR2
- Uncharted
- Dead Space
- God of War
- Ori and The Will of the Wisps
- Disco Elysium
- The Artful Escape
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Gris
The first three I’d say there was life before and then life after. The rest, I wouldn’t want to miss if I had a redo in life.
Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 both could’ve made it for me too, but for the sake of the post I only wanted to do two games so other people could suggest some. I absolutely agree with your picks
Another vote for outer wilds. Its weird how often it pops into my head.
Games that play with metanarratives stick with me:
- Beginner’s Guide
- The Stanley Parable (Ultra Deluxe especially)
- Break The Game really stuck with me the ending especially.
Damn! Your list made me remember that I missed Superliminal.
Which led me to Stanley’s Parable, which I hated. I maintain that I totally missed something despite a few playthroughs to “the end” but it seems to have just gone over my head.
*Break the Game is $2 during the Summer Sale. Definitely trying it.
Which end? The main story is just a narrative device, in fact you shouldn’t really obey the narrator at all. Calling any end “The End” doesn’t make sense in the context of the game, really. Unless you just broke out of the mind control facility three times then called it quits? That end is supposed to be non enticing so that you try literally anything else before putting it down. I think the going insane end sticks with me the most. Although the game dev commentary in the recent release is fun.
You should play Slay the Princess if you haven’t. It’ll be up your alley and it’s fucking good
Thanks for the rec. It’s on sale on GOG so I nabbed it!
I hope you thoroughly enjoy it like I did!
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.
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.
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 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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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.
I will forever rave about CrossCode, an indy game I found on gamejolt in 2016. It’s a top-down JRPG with great action, a cool parkour mechanic, and really pretty pixel art. It officially released in 2018, and it’s one of my favorite games of all time.
Added. This looks like it would be fun on the Deck and checks out at ProtonDB
It’s on sale right now, I’ve added it to my cart. Looks really interesting
I love this game. Number 1 game I’ve ever played. Sooooo good. I love thr characters so much
Outer Wilds.
This is definitely my answer as well. Really wish I could wipe my memory and experience it again, I’ve never played a game quite like it. That first bombshell they drop after 20 mins in (IFYKYK) absolutely blew me away
- Limbo
- The Long Dark
- What remains of Edith Finch
- Subnautica
- Ape Out
- Fire Watch
- Prey
- Hitman 1,2,3
There’s nothing like a great story married to good gameplay and simple yet beautiful and effecting visuals. I guess also a small but skilled team of developers with common focus.
I’m so glad someone mentioned Limbo. Have you played Inside? It’s my preference between the two. They’re both A+ games though in my books
Yes inside is… something more than limbo, a story without words but you can tell exactly what’s going on. So sad too.
What is it about the Long Dark that’s stuck with you?
The art style is good especially the varying weather and sky effects, and changes in music to accompany it. So many different areas and places to explore. The challenges are punishing but amazing when you succeed - something about being on the edge of death and pulling yourself back at the last second.
I’m waiting for the last episode of the story mode to release.
Gris and Subnautica. For different reasons, they made me feel things I didn’t think I could feel while playing video games anymore.
Nier Automata
The Last of Us
Undertale
Prey 2017
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
