A bit of a weird title, but basically what’s a game that’s more than a year old but still considered “modern” that you love? There’s no real strict definition for modern, I’d just like to see some discussion around great games that aren’t quite classics yet (but probably will be one day).
The nature of this community typically attracts discussion around decade-old games (which is what I mostly play too), but I’d like to see some newer (but not too new) games on this post.
I have just gotten into baldurs gate 3 and holy shit it has consumed my soul.
… Which is kinda fitting considering the themes of the game
Minecraft believe it or not. Every few years I come back and install a mod pack and it’s like an entirely new game almost. Plus I love the factory and automation mods. The game just never seems to die.
Pretty stoked for the upcoming Vault Hunters “vanilla” mod.
Subnautica
Kerbal Space Program
Recently got Mad Max from GOG. It’s pretty great for Open World car combat and Arkham style brawling. It also runs great. Too bad it didn’t get more attention.
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Trine 5 was probably the best Trine to date. It‘s almost a year old, but already discounted to 15ish bucks in sales. Took a friend and I 20 hours to platinum and we had so much fun cheesing the puzzles and doing stupid stuff. I wish there just was no combat in the game tbh, it‘s just there to gatekeep you from having fun with the puzzles lol. I also wish there had been more achievements related to playing a level in a specific way that you gotta figure out. There‘s one for crossing all rivers in a specific map without touching water, and one where you gotta beat any map without destroying boxes. These two were a lotta fun to do.
I was also obsessed with HITMAN (Jan 2022 according to Steam, was a year exclusive to EGS IIRC). Now it‘s just some crappy liveservice-esque thing, but when they actually did new maps and stuff I had tons of fun walking around the crazy detailed levels and looking for small npc skits the devs put in there, doing looney toons banana peel assassinations etc. Agent 47 being that unfeeling killing robot trying to destroy the world controlling illuminati makes all the slapstick so much funnier.
Dude they made another trine??? Damn I’ve gotta get that into my library. Some of the most fun co-op I’ve ever done was trine, trine 2 and trine 3. Hopefully 5 took a lot of “don’t do that”'s from trine 4.
That’s so funny, I was thinking “they made more than two??”
Not sure what you disliked about 4, but we had tons of fun with 5. The combat‘s meh but IMO it‘s always been.
Calling HITMAN a crappy live service thing is hardly fair. True, the always online part feels really unnecessary, but beyond that it is a stellar single player game with the best Hitman gameplay of the last two decades, a large selection of excellent maps with variants and extra missions, as well as a really impressive rogue-like mode added later for free.
The elusive targets and seasonal content can be completely ignored, and the game would still be a major milestone in modern singleplayer games.
I’m not saying it’s a bad game, it’s easily in the top 10 favorite games of mine (I meant to refer to liveservice as a concept as crappy, not the game). I was just trying to say it was a better franchise when they actually made new games with new maps. Now they‘re done with HITMAN as far as I understand so no HITMAN 4 for the foreseeable future. They even went ahead and rebranded HITMAN 3 to HITMAN WORLD OF ASSASSINATION to further emphasize that this is gonna be an everturning wheel now in their minds. I‘d much prefer a HITMAN 4 with fresh maps, fresh ideas, and a fresh spy thriller story. This HITMAN‘s still the best game in the series IMO and getting the map packs gives new players insane amounts of content. However, HITMAN 4 should be in the making by now, not this liveservice stuff.
IIRC they are making a James Bond game, so here‘s hoping that that‘ll give me more of this kinda gameplay.
Anyone who hasn‘t experienced HITMAN, however, should definitely get the game with the map packs on top and play the whole thing, they‘re in for a treat.
No Man’s Sky dragged me back in again recently. There’s an expedition going on for another few weeks that was lots of fun. I’ve also started a permadeath save that I’m really enjoying.
Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin
Waited for the steam release and played through it almost fully with a friend in co-op, all DLC’s included. My GOTY last year. Fantastic gameplay (shoutouts to Team Ninja), with a story that starts off as a shitpost but evolves into (in my opinion) something really beautiful, I can only recommend this game to any Final Fantasy fan. Having played through FF1 is not required, but makes it a little bit more fun. Best protagonist.
Cataclysm DDA, if it counts. There’s usually a lot of time between stable releases, and by the time they come out, it usually feels like a completely different game.
CDDA, takes awhile to get comfortable with the controls, but it does scratch a certain itch once one can get setup and start to test one’s luck in search of the good stuff.
One has to make their own objectives for it though otherwise one can sort of just get to a point and not know what to do. But getting to a point where you can just walk into a city and be the most dangerous thing there does have a certain charm to it considering the journey getting there. It certainly rewards exploring though as one can find all sorts of craziness hidden away waiting to be found.
I’m not sure if this counts because it’s >10 years old, but also still developed:
Europa Universis IV
It’s like this game was built exactly for what I like most in games.
But for something more in the spirit of your question, I’ll go with Manifold Garden. I love M. C. Escher, and this feels like a puzzle game in one of his worlds.
I wouldn’t expect to see EU4 here, but I must vouch for it—once it clicks it is engaging, thrilling, and addictive. I just wish there was a better way to get all the dlc. And a better UI lol
For DLC, I just bought 1-2 at a time and treated it like a new game each time. I now have most of them, and I’ve always waited at least a year before buying a DLC to get it for 50% off.
I think the UI is fine, though it seems EUV is coming out soon, so the UI will likely be completely reworked. If you’re thinking about jumping in, I recommend waiting for EUV since EUIV will likely be steeply discounted (just like CK2 was when CK3 was released).
The Hex! By Daniel Mullins, of “Inscryption” game. The Hex is HORRIBLY overlooked because of its graphics, but they’re not… really… its graphics? It’s a marvel of creative game design and I love it so much. The graphics make sense almost immediately when playing. MORE PEOPLE PEAS PLAY THE HEX it is so good
Hot take for me: I thought going into Inscryption was going to be a pure deck builder game with a goal of beating the first guy. Then I really enjoyed the deck building in the 2d zone, and wanted so much more of that, but after beating the game, it has next to no replay ability. It turns very ARG centric and to get the whole story required going outside of the game into the “real world” (internet) to learn the rest of the story. It never stuck with me, or striked me right. It felt like I was being led on and thrown into something I didn’t really care about.
I know that they added an infinite mode, but I think that’s just in the first zone, not all of them. .
In any case, the game was just ok, since it’s not the Slay the Spire esque card builder I thought it’d be.
I really liked it, precisely because it wasn’t a Slay the Spire-esque game all the way through. I got tired of STS after beating it a few times, whereas Inscryption felt like the perfect length and held my attention throughout.
That said, I don’t look for replayability. In fact I prefer games to not be replayable because that pushes devs to make that experience really good. It’s really easy to cop out on “replayability” if you don’t have good world building or story, and a lot of indie games do just that (i.e. it’s easier to add more cards, classes, etc than a memorable story).
Everyone has different tastes. For me, Inscryption was right on the money. I got far fewer hours vs STS, but I came away far more satisfied.
Kids these days want endless
…CoNtEnT
It baffles me
Fair point
Counterpoint: y’aint gotta play forever, you can just play a game and dig it
Multicounterpoint: the hex, but if you want forever games and battle passes and dailies and loot boxes and quests and achievements and new things added all the time for dopamine it might not be your thing
Quick edit: I didn’t arg anything
Oh I get it. Standalone, it’s great. It’s just not what I thought it was. I bought it for one reason, was surprised that it wasn’t what I thought I’d be receiving as a consumer, reflecting, I’d definitely say it’s a good game.
Battle passes/ dailies / loot boxes aren’t really my thing either. I do love roguelikes and the idea of “runs” and it being a sandbox to play in to experiment with builds.
Noita, for example, is probably one of my favorite games of all time. (Also a game I recommend everyone to play and give a good college try.)
Superliminal, very well done puzzler with a good narrator.
LOOOOOVED that game. Had such a fun time playing it. 100% with you on that.
I keep coming back to Insurgency: Sandstorm’s PVE modes. Man, what a underrated shooter!
I wish it had some better AI enemies, though.
Am I thinking of that game with the awesome scope mechanics? That game has PVE modes?
Love the scope mechanics! And yes!
Grim Dawn.
