Games you've changed your mind about

[sser]

Dark Souls' influence is mainly seen in dodge-roll bullshit - the aforementioned Star Wars game but also Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. Dark Souls was definitely the game that popularised this in the modern era, even if it didn't invent it.

I fucking hate it, it always looks like insane anime shit. Ohoho you can't touch me because I'm rolling!!

Souls' has seen a lot of influence in the Metroidvania genre, supplanting Symphony with more fundamental skill-intensive mechanics and resource balancing.


A big "change of mind" game for me was, weirdly Left4Dead 2. I remember playing the first Left4Dead's demo and immediately being like this is the most fun thing I've ever played. When they announced L4D2 though I was very, very skeptical and in the camp of Valve taking advantage of players. But it turned out to be a great game in its own right and worthy of sequel-status.

Another would be Blood Bowl, which I took for a basic boardgame w/ football aesthetic. Dropped 30ish hours into BB1, but never really got hooked. Later, though... I got majorly into it and started playing in leagues and unlocking the true depth and complexities of it. I don't know if it's my most played game ever (that's probably still Civ2 or Civ4), but it's gotta be knocking on the door by this point.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I used to not like Pokemon games until my car was in the shop and I had an appointment at the bank some 8 miles away. So, I downloaded Pokemon Go for something to do on the walk. Then I grabbed Let's Go, Pikachu in a second hand bin, and beat it. It was pretty decent. I didn't like Sword & Shield much when they came out, but went back to Shield recently. I beat Shining Pearl. I beat Scarlet. I've played several of the Nintendo DS and 3DS era games, and have played several ROM Hacks. I want to say Radical Red is the definitive Pokemon game since it has all the Pokemon from Gen 1 through 9, pretty much every quality of life feature that official games have had and dropped for some reason(DexNav needs to be in every Pokemon game), and so on. The problem is that the developer of Radical Red thinks that every event in the game needs to have a level cap on the progression of the player's pokemon. Meaning that if you're working towards a level 14 gym, your pokemon stop leveling at 16, which is stupid. If I want to grind up levels in order to steam roll a gym, that should be my time and my choice.

I also didn't like Duke Nukem 3D when it came out, but that's mainly because I really, really liked Doom/Doom II. I pretty much had everything released on CD-ROM that had "Doom" written on the label, including those map packs like "Master Levels for Doom" and "D2ZONE!". I thought Duke Nukem 3D was just a silly clone of Doom. I then moved on to Quake and QuakeWorld TeamFortress. As I got older, I revisited it and realized what people saw in it back in the day. The mish-mash of play arena mapping with the attempt to make it "real world" really works in that game. The amount of interaction you can do with the environment was kind of shocking given when Duke Nukem 3D was released really makes the "real world" attempt work. The monsters also work and have a pretty crazy design. The very first map of the game works as an excellent hook for the rest of the game.

 

[octavius]

Never played Duke Nukem 3D back in the days, but loved it when I played it some five years ago. But unlike for example Doom I quickly got tired of it after playing a number of user-made WADs.

 

[Cologno]

Dark Souls' influence is mainly seen in dodge-roll bullshit - the aforementioned Star Wars game but also Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. Dark Souls was definitely the game that popularised this in the modern era, even if it didn't invent it.

I fucking hate it, it always looks like insane anime shit. Ohoho you can't touch me because I'm rolling!!

Yeah, you cheesed it cuz you suck. I get it, it works, but developers included it as like....I don't know, wheelchair mode of play so sucky players could feel included, too. Not be condescending, nothing wrong with enjoying a game you know you suck at on the barest of required difficulties or taking the proffered tricycle mode. The game is worth playing however you can. But damn, don't make up fake criticisms about the game when it just comes down - you sucked, simply didn't like the game and couldn't be assed to git gud. Quit goofin' yourself, cholo.

 

[Lemming42]

It's a central mechanic to these games. It's what they're built around.

What's next. "Ahaha, you had to resort to hiding in the shadows to beat Thief, did you?"
"Ah, I see you used guns to beat Half-Life - nothing wrong with that as such, I suppose not everyone's up for the crowbar-only run."
"Hmm! Had to use rolling mode to beat Sonic the Hedgehog, eh? Nothing wrong with that... of course, the true way to play is to walk everywhere and also play with a blindfold on and punch yourself in the nuts IRL every thirteen seconds."

 

[Ivan]

I tried Morrowind to "get it" but I think ppl just put up with its ass combat b/c of the time in which it was released. Plus I think running consumes stamina too. That shit is just cancer. I could never stomach more than the few opening hours of it.

Gothic - I was perplexed by its controls at first, but I fell in love. Same with Thief. I liked it during its opening level, but then just fell madly in love with its world and mechanics. It was prob one of the first games where I wanted to play all the fan missions I could find.

 

[cpmartins]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R
At first I was like, what is this janky shit? The guns keep jamming and I get killed with one burst from these fuckers under a bridge.
But after a couple years I went back, and I was like:

 

[Ivan]

STALKER

 

[n0denz]

The list is too long for me because I used to put way more stock in reviews and opinion pieces, but the standout for me is Witcher 1. I watched the Zero Punctuation video which painted it as unnecessarily complex. I stayed away from it for that reason for awhile and started it begrudgingly because Witcher 2 looked fun only to be surprised by how much I enjoyed it and how underwhelming Witcher 2 felt.

 

[NecroLord]

I used to not like Pokemon games until my car was in the shop and I had an appointment at the bank some 8 miles away. So, I downloaded Pokemon Go for something to do on the walk. Then I grabbed Let's Go, Pikachu in a second hand bin, and beat it. It was pretty decent. I didn't like Sword & Shield much when they came out, but went back to Shield recently. I beat Shining Pearl. I beat Scarlet. I've played several of the Nintendo DS and 3DS era games, and have played several ROM Hacks. I want to say Radical Red is the definitive Pokemon game since it has all the Pokemon from Gen 1 through 9, pretty much every quality of life feature that official games have had and dropped for some reason(DexNav needs to be in every Pokemon game), and so on. The problem is that the developer of Radical Red thinks that every event in the game needs to have a level cap on the progression of the player's pokemon. Meaning that if you're working towards a level 14 gym, your pokemon stop leveling at 16, which is stupid. If I want to grind up levels in order to steam roll a gym, that should be my time and my choice.

I also didn't like Duke Nukem 3D when it came out, but that's mainly because I really, really liked Doom/Doom II. I pretty much had everything released on CD-ROM that had "Doom" written on the label, including those map packs like "Master Levels for Doom" and "D2ZONE!". I thought Duke Nukem 3D was just a silly clone of Doom. I then moved on to Quake and QuakeWorld TeamFortress. As I got older, I revisited it and realized what people saw in it back in the day. The mish-mash of play arena mapping with the attempt to make it "real world" really works in that game. The amount of interaction you can do with the environment was kind of shocking given when Duke Nukem 3D was released really makes the "real world" attempt work. The monsters also work and have a pretty crazy design. The very first map of the game works as an excellent hook for the rest of the game.

Build Engine was really cool when it came to the destructible environments.
Explosions all over the place like in some kind of Michael Bay flick.

 

[Ash]

Never played Duke Nukem 3D back in the days, but loved it when I played it some five years ago. But unlike for example Doom I quickly got tired of it after playing a number of user-made WADs.

That isn't reflective of the game as much as it is the mapping community. The base game has very good level design. From the selection of user-made maps I played, not quite the case. Here and there. meanwhile Doom's mappers absolutely KILL IT. The gold standard of homebrew FPS mapping and a community that champions that quality, makes sure the good is highlighted and the crap efforts goes unseen. Shame the same is not true for other games.
Doom absolutely does have arguably/definitely better gameplay in the fundamentals*, but younger you is not wrong about the game - Duke Nukem 3D fucking rocks.

Duke 3D suffers from hitscanner mainstay enemies (Pig Cop, Enforcer, Battlelord), the ever-maligned suicide drones, the arsenal has a few hiccups (shrinker gun is gimmicky and is just used to turn the higher tier enemies into pancakes, trivializing those encounters), the likes of the freezethrower doesn't have shit on the plasma rifle, enemy projectiles are small and hard to see. These blunders aside it iterated upon Doom exceptionally well and is a stone cold classic.

So yeah, when returning to Duke 3D, you just play the base game for the most part. Particularly with Duke Plus and PSX Soundtrack mods installed for the most monocled experience, then move on to other games.

 

[Saldrone]

Medal of Honor Allied Assault now feels like a watered down Return to Castle Wolfenstein

 

[ind33d]

in retrospect Disco is absolutely worse than Starfield

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

From the selection of user-made maps I played, not quite the case. Here and there. meanwhile Doom's mappers absolutely KILL IT.

It's much easier to make Doom WADs than maps for Duke Nukem 3D. There were a half a dozen Doom map editing programs back before Windows 95 was a thing. If you didn't like one, you had options. Browsing through USENET's Doom newsgroups, there wasn't one particular stand out WAD editor, most of them were good enough to where authors got to pick their favorites and just use those. While there were a good share of shitty Doom/Doom 2 maps, there were enough people making Doom maps with really friendly editors that there was a surplus of cream on that crop.

Duke 3D suffers from hitscanner mainstay enemies (Pig Cop, Enforcer, Battlelord)

This is one of those things that I think people have only recently come to hate. And yeah, there's pretty good reason to hate hitscanners. I don't remember anyone complaining about them, though, until technology caught up and made hitscanners mostly extinct. I think back in the day, people just accepted that's how you had to do things because plotting bullet paths and such weren't feasible with 486DX2/66s and a 9600baud HR Robotics modem or with QuakeWorld running on a Pentium 150MHz and a 14.4kbps modem.

(shrinker gun is gimmicky and is just used to turn the higher tier enemies into pancakes, trivializing those encounters)

But this is always good for a laugh.

These blunders aside it iterated upon Doom exceptionally well and is a stone cold classic.

The really amazing part of both Doom/Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D coming out fairly close together, and Quake a year later after Duke Nukem 3D, is that the market didn't saturate at the time. Despite being sandwiched between Doom 2 and Quake, Duke Nukem 3D still sold well enough to fund the quagmire of development that was Duke Nukem 3D for a decade until the money started running out. Flash forward to a few years ago, and you see Call of Duty/Battlefield/etc. all getting yearly releases with very little meaningful differences between the bunch and very little improvements over last year's model. It's actually nice that the AAA publishers imploded their market because I never could stand those games and now you see more traditional FPS games flourishing.

 

[schru]

It was Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which came out only three months apart—the full versions, that is.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It was Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which came out only three months apart—the full versions, that is.

Wow, you're right. I thought Duke got to enjoy a full year before Quake. But really, that just goes to show how open that market was back then considering they were unopposed Genre King for only three months and still made enough money to fund DNF for a decade before the money ran out.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I remember trying the first Call of Duty and thinking it was pretty good. Looked good too, Quake 3 engine if i remember. Then i tried the sequel and it had some wierd regen mechanic and i got bored half-way through and never touched the series again.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It was Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which came out only three months apart—the full versions, that is.

Wow, you're right. I thought Duke got to enjoy a full year before Quake. But really, that just goes to show how open that market was back then considering they were unopposed Genre King for only three months and still made enough money to fund DNF for a decade before the money ran out.

There was a buffer for us because Quake was unplayable on most of our scrub systems. There was only one kid that could play it in our group and we had to download the demo on a 26k dial up and shove it on floppy disks to carry it at his house. We all played the demo there but i think it took like nine months before i got the full game.

 

[Multidirectional]

I remember trying the first Call of Duty and thinking it was pretty good. Looked good too, Quake 3 engine if i remember. Then i tried the sequel and it had some wierd regen mechanic and i got bored half-way through and never touched the series again.

And after CoD 2 suddenly all new FPS games had to have health regen. Lots of hiding behind cover when screen is pulsating red, how fun. I actually finished the first CoD back then on highest difficulty on first playthrough, which meant no medkits for entire mission. Lots of save abusing but it was still tough as fuck to me, that short game ended up being pretty long with how much I died. Regen in CoD 2 after that felt very weird.

 

[Ash]

The really amazing part of both Doom/Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D coming out fairly close together, and Quake a year later after Duke Nukem 3D, is that the market didn't saturate at the time.

We, very luckily, got a boatload of great FPS in the late 90s. No saturation, most sold well enough. Once it became about money, graphics, multiplayer and realism, it was over. 24 years of FPS later and there is still not a single game remotely close to those old standards outside of indies. Not even one. In the last 5 years or so FPS isn't even made at all outside of multiplayer shooters. RIP.

This is one of those things that I think people have only recently come to hate. And yeah, there's pretty good reason to hate hitscanners. I don't remember anyone complaining about them, though, until technology caught up and made hitscanners mostly extinct. I think back in the day, people just accepted that's how you had to do things because plotting bullet paths and such weren't feasible with 486DX2/66s and a 9600baud HR Robotics modem or with QuakeWorld running on a Pentium 150MHz and a 14.4kbps modem.

Not quite sure you're making sense here. Doom, Quake, Unreal and many others are predominantly projectile and melee-based. It was only Nukem 3D and Blood that sadly opted for hitscanners as their most common encounters. As for the awareness of them not being so good (fine, good even in very reserved moderation), this was all new stuff at the time, there was endless great games to play, I had ZERO interest in talking on the internet with so much gaming awesomeness to play. Now I have played most classics, 10x over, with mods, on many platforms I mostly just talk because there is nothing left to play in their wake with permanent withdrawal symptoms lol.

 

[NecroLord]

The really amazing part of both Doom/Doom 2 and Duke Nukem 3D coming out fairly close together, and Quake a year later after Duke Nukem 3D, is that the market didn't saturate at the time.

We, very luckily, got a boatload of great FPS in the late 90s. No saturation, most sold well enough. Once it became about money, graphics, multiplayer and realism, it was over. 24 years of FPS later and there is still not a single game remotely close to those old standards outside of indies. Not even one. In the last 5 years or so FPS isn't even made at all outside of multiplayer shooters. RIP.

This is one of those things that I think people have only recently come to hate. And yeah, there's pretty good reason to hate hitscanners. I don't remember anyone complaining about them, though, until technology caught up and made hitscanners mostly extinct. I think back in the day, people just accepted that's how you had to do things because plotting bullet paths and such weren't feasible with 486DX2/66s and a 9600baud HR Robotics modem or with QuakeWorld running on a Pentium 150MHz and a 14.4kbps modem.

Not quite sure you're making sense here. Doom, Quake, Unreal and many others are predominantly projectile and melee-based. It was only Nukem 3D and Blood that sadly opted for hitscanners as their most common encounters. As for the awareness of them not being so good (fine, good even in very reserved moderation), this was all new stuff at the time, there was endless great games to play, I had ZERO interest in talking on the internet with so much gaming awesomeness to play. Now I have played most classics, 10x over, with mods, on many platforms I mostly just talk because there is nothing left to play in their wake with permanent withdrawal symptoms lol.

Blood cultists...

 

[rubinstein]

system shock 2. i needed three attempts to finish it, i just couldnt get into it at first. in third attempt i decided to play melee psi build and i loved it. maybe because at some point before that run i finished thief and it helped me get used to the quirks of dark engine. last year i beat the game the second time with the most basic guns build and it was ok, melee psi is way more fun though.
my favourite soundtrack in vidya by far

 

[NecroLord]

system shock 2. i needed three attempts to finish it, i just couldnt get into it at first. in third attempt i decided to play melee psi build and i loved it. maybe because at some point before that run i finished thief and it helped me get used to the quirks of dark engine. last year i beat the game the second time with the most basic guns build and it was ok, melee psi is way more fun though.
my favourite soundtrack in vidya by far

In Dark engine you really have to get used to the jumping and vaulting.
"Down in the Bonehoard" will make you learn. You might fall off to your death a couple of times though.
First Person platforming, am I right?

 

[Ash]

system shock 2. i needed three attempts to finish it, i just couldnt get into it at first.

Why? I was falling in love in the TRAINING.

First Person platforming, am I right?

Nothing wrong with it. Get good!

I tried Morrowind to "get it" but I think ppl just put up with its ass combat b/c of the time in which it was released. P

Nope. The micromanagement of skills, stamina, willpower, health, magicka, running away etc is FAR more interesting and strategic than standing next to each other hammering left click and that's it in Oblivion/Skyrim. Dying Light or Dark Messiah is how you should do first person melee if you're going to make it action-oriented, else make it abstract number crunching like Morrowind/Ultima Underworld. Anything but braindead oblivion/skyrim.

 

[Reality]

Symphony of the night - used to love, then at some point (portrait of ruin) i realized i liked classic vania better and that igavania were basically 1 playthrough only games for me.

Age of Mythology - loved this im highschool and thought the asymmetry was a step up from AoE but lots of things about it annoy me now , with super tanky workers and renewable resources being most important.

World of Tanks - bad first experience bounced off ... When I came back I was strict about ONLY playing in platoon... Having 1 guaranteed competent person in voice chat with you makes all the difference even if their are still impossible games every so often, it's enough to at least accomplish killsissipns before going down.