Undertale. That was the game that really changed my life. I never did complete the bad ending route because that game is my comfort game, and it made me want to be friends with the world. I was kind of a jerk in middle school and highschool, but Undertale, which I played in my Junior year made me feel so guilty about who I was being. I think it also saved me from going down the rightwing extremist pipeline because of how much it touched me. I thank Undertale for making my life better.
Deltarune also means so much to me.
I don’t know if it changed my life, but my god it was cathartic - Celeste. I’ve cried while listening to the soundtrack and I’ve cried while playing it. Like, actual sobbing. Having a positively-represented trans character in media, especially in a game as popular and highly-rated as Celeste, means so much to me.
Outer Wilds. Unfortunately I can’t elaborate without spoiling it.
It was segmented so it wasn’t really at the ending for battlefield one but the beginning that has fucked me up for a long time. The game opens to a black screen, utter silence, and a description prints out of how wide and brutal the first world world war was. The last text that appears on the screen was, “What you are about to experience is front line combat. You are not expected to survive.”
What they were describing was that they didn’t expect you to play one character and that you should be dying to respawn in a new section of the map with new features. This was the most accurate depiction of the war possible, even if it was just meant to describe the mechanics of the level. It went further! Every time you died they showed a real name of a real soldier that lost their life in the war and their birth and death date. Most of these ages are under the age of 24.
After the final death, it plays a cut scene where two soldiers are pointing rifles at each other and they both break down and chose not to kill each other…I believe all of this gameplay and the cut scene are being played off as a PTSD nightmare he’s having while recovering in a hospital…one of those ‘stare at a blank wall and rethink how fucking good our lives are’ moments. Also a deviation to the standard which is having a good guy-winner/bad guy-loser. They instead opted for the “we’re all losing because of this” realization…I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like it again.
Disco Elysium
Outer Wilds. A game that genuinely made me reflect on my place in the universe.
I bought and learned to play guitar (poorly), just so I could play that song (poorly).
I learned a little piano to play the <redacted> theme.
I truly think it’s the best game ever made.
Man I really wanted to like this game but I found the goddamn mazes on the sand planet too frustrating. Stumble around, get lost, the window closes, die, respawn and start completely over.
Thank you. I found the time limit really frustrating as I like to take my time with things and could never really get anywhere because I kept dying before I could make any progress.
The controls will not click with my head. 6 times I’ve picked up this game and tried for several hours a piece
Are you using a gamepad? I couldn’t get it on PC until I plugged in my my controller.
A truly phenomenal game. I’m so curious what that team will do next.
The DLC ending is one of the saddest I have seen in any game.
Just finished the DLC last night and got all the achievements. I started some new mods for it too because I don’t want it to be over.
Cyberpunk 2077.
It’s one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and “get” the moral of the story, which is usually “misuse of technology is bad”.
But it’s another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you’ve spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I’d always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Johnny Silverhand was right.
The first time I played through it, it didn’t really sink in. When I got to the ending where
Spoiler
You you give up Songbird in exchange for your cure and you find that they are able to heal you only by removing your cybernetics
I booted the game back up the next day, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue with my character. It felt like I finally got them out of that world. I didn’t pick it back up again for another month and started with a fresh character because of how hard it sunk in.
Silksong
Your mind has been corrupted !
Whoops. Been a minute since I played lol
That shit is straight Art. Top 3 personally.
And the other 2?
That’s exactly why I think the game has value despite being a mediocre experience as a game. Adam Something did a video recently on how terrible it is, and while he’s not strictly wrong, he missed a deeper point. Yes, the traffic modeling is terrible. It’s terrible in many of the same ways that real traffic is terrible. That doesn’t make for a good game, but it does make a different point.
Also, if you want to ride motorcycles, that game is worth a play for traveling around on one. Not because the physics of the game motorcycles are good–they’re shit–but because it can teach you how to learn to avoid target fixation. Car pulls out in front of you and your eyes will naturally focus on the car. Then you will just as naturally hit the car. If you learn to dart your eyes to the side, you will tend to miss it. Very valuable skill for actual riding. They accidentally made a target fixation trainer.
mediocre experience as a game
Wtf
That used to be a more popular sentiment but somehow CDPR manages to get a bunch of goodwill and the ‘labor of love’ award after… fixing all the bugs that still existed in their botched releae.
I have to agree with Frezik too. At least for me, the graphics and storyline are top notch but the gameplay and other mechanics are pretty average. And the open world is stunning to traverse but you realize if you explore a bit more deeply that it’s pretty dead and there’s not much to discover.
I literally had to delete an account because I made a comment on reddit before I left about how I didn’t think cyberpunk has ever really lived up to the hype despite what people say about it now.
Mile wide, inch deep
it’s not apathy though. their greed is directly and indirectly responsible for this. fixing things would mean they would be poorer.
it’s even more angering.
Yeah, I first finished with the ending where >!I’m gliding to somewhere beautiful with the woman I love. !<
Right after that, I did the one where >!I sign myself off to the corpo, so my physical body is about to be destroyed, and I just walk there as a cow to a butcher. !<
That hit hard. Especially listening to the same messages from different people: “haven’t heard of you, I hope you are in a good place!” I was depressed for a couple days since, until I did a third ending where >!I give a kid my guitar. !<
This is what I call “choices matter”! Many endings, which have their own missions that lead to some actual changes and bend the narrative, not just several pre-made cutscenes.What I especially love about the endings is that there isn’t any “good” ending in the game. Some are worse than others, but there’s never a net positive for V. No matter what, there is a human cost to victory. Night City would never allow some lowly merc to have a happy ending. Arguably, the “third option” can be seen as the “best” ending, as it costs the fewest amount of lives. But holy shit, the voicemails you get in that ending are heartbreaking.
Also, I think this is just an Mbin issue, but the spoiler tags don’t work if there’s a space before the closing tag.
I think “the sun” variation where you take Rogue with you is the best ending. It’s still sad, but you do get to realize your dreams and do crazy awesome merc shit in the Path of Glory epilogue.
For me the best and canonical ending is the secret ending and letting Johnny take the body. Mostly because I tend to play a solo tank build and that building is a joke even on very hard. Also because johnny is V’s bro by the end so i give him the body. Makes no sense to just waste some preem 'ganic material like that by letting V just die.
For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.
Yeah, they’ve all got serious drawbacks at best. The most terrible ending is the Phantom Liberty one where you take Reed’s help, imo. You literally squeak out with nothing more than your life, and you’re a shell of your former self.
I think Temperance was the first ending I got, but I’ve played it so many times it’s hard to remember now, haha.
The Tower is bad, but The Devil may be worse. Once you know what Yorinobu is up to, the one ending where he’s stopped before he can pull it off is pretty bad.
Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:
::: spoiler Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
:::
And hopefully work like:
Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.
in Lemmy Sync they work
That formatting is what Reddit uses and Sync still has the code to process it.
Braid.
The game itself is brilliant. The story and message within is heartfelt, heartbreaking, and un-apologetically autobiographical. Up until that point, I knew gaming was a good storytelling medium, but not for something this moving.
Frontier: First Encounters (Elite3), (and Pioneer Space Sim (still playing)). – Found my safe space via such game. I go out into space, for my safe space. Life changing.
Soul Calibur. – I discovered it’s like chess, and there are depths to excellence. And, I don’t know how causal/influenced by it that I ended up basically looking like my fave character from it. LOL. Deep metaphors and synchronicities in it too. Life changing.
Diablo 2: Lord Of Destruction. – Ate up a huge chunk of my life. [Eventually] Learned the empty dopamine addiction hole’s to be avoided. Basically the game that stopped me being “a gamer” (as if I ever really were ~ was just a diablo2 addict). Found hanging out in the arcane sanctuary, the atmosphere, helped me sleep. n_n Life changing.
Minetest (now called “Luanti”). – Designed my house in it. LOL. Life changing.
Games, books and movies don’t change your life. At most it makes you think about something a little deeper. A little longer.
Life events change your life. A child. Death. Life. Love. Hate. War. Hope. Loss. Peace. Safety. Destruction. And money. Or lack of.
The most impactful game I played, which story I still really remember after 25 years? Homeworld. Hiigara. Our home.
System Shock 2 - The only game to have truly scared me. This was one of the first games that I played when I switched to PC gaming since my HP Pavillion at the time couldn’t play a lot of the newer games. The rest was history
Deus Ex - This game still informs much of my world view
Thief 1 and 2 - While SS2 scared me in absolute terms, Thief gave me a sense of dread and isolation coupled with amazing stealth mechanics
Skyrim - My gateway to RPGs
GTA 4 - SA was my introduction to the series and, while I enjoyed very much, 4 was just blew me away.
Planescape: Torment - The most beautifully crafted RPG ever
Fallout 2 - I’ll be honest: I only played and beat the first two Fallouts just this year but, man, do I wish I played them sooner. FO2 in particular change my relationship with the series.
Half-Life 2. It brought me into PC gaming, as well as introducing me to Garry’s Mod, a relatively simple sandbox tool for creativity, complete with a wide array of assets to use.
I also really appreciate its moody world design that doesn’t often explain things directly to you.
I actually found Lemmings to be a game that changed my life. I played it just before I became a professional programmer. Solving Lemmings puzzles is not exactly like programming, but it does teach you that there is a solution and if you just keep persistently trying different shit, you will eventually solve the problem. Also, it actually helps to be high as a kite all the time.
I’m getting old so there have been a few.
Super Mario World (SNES) - my first video game and the reason I eventually wanted to learn about computers
Final Fantasy VIII - my parents accidentally bought this for me instead of VII that I asked for. It was not a good impact, it was during formative years of my life and I looked up to the broody/loner main character and tried to emulate him, but in real life that just made me act an asshole and be lonely
World of Warcraft - this was probably an addiction and took too much of my college life. Haven’t played an MMO since I quit. Still reminisce about it.
SimCity 4 - forced me to think about systems, which I think indirectly shaped my career path
Kerbal Space Program - made orbital mechanics intuitive and made me interested in all things space