Some games, no matter how good they are, struggle to find an audience. It's always a shame when you know a game is a classic, but people just won't play it. In that spirit, here are some games the editors of TheGamer think you should try at least once.
else Heart.Break()
Andy Kelly, Features Editor
I wish more people would play else Heart.Break(). It's a very weird adventure game set in a world where bits have replaced atoms, where you can hack the very fabric of reality and bend it to your will. You can pull up the code of objects around you and edit them to change how they function. To give one arbitrary example, the game has a life simulation element with a real-time clock, meaning you have to sleep occasionally. But if you're too busy to go back to your hotel, just hack a cup of coffee to increase its caffeine content by 500% and you'll be up all night. That's just one of thousands of totally emergent, player-created ways to manipulate the game's big, detailed, systems-driven world through hacking—which is used for both solving puzzles and causing general mischief. It looks and sounds incredible too, with a beautifully stylish, offbeat art style and a killer soundtrack by El Huervo, whose music you may have also heard in Hotline Miami.
SOMA
Amanda Hurych, Evergreen Content Lead
People like to go on about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but I wish more people gave that amount of attention to Frictional Games’ other indie horror title, Soma. I’m a sucker for narrative-driven, walking simulator-type games like Tacoma and What Remains of Edith Finch. Soma harnesses my predilection for that genre perfectly with healthy helpings of science fiction and philosophy that still have me reeling long after the game's conclusion. I’ve played so many story-heavy games at this point in my life that it is rare I actually feel something afterward. That sounds awful, I know, but how else am I supposed to handle an oversaturation of emotional plots? To this day, I remember how I felt after finishing Soma, and the ending is so jaw-droppingly engrossing that I want as many people as possible to pick their jaws up from the floor just as I did.
Sable
Justin Reeve, News Editor
I love exploration. What got me into gaming in the first place was wondering what incredible things might be hiding beyond this room or behind that door. Games that manage to capture this feeling of discovery are truly sublime. This would be why I can’t recommend Sable enough. I’ve been saying this ever since the game came out, but I think that a lot of people forgot about this one in favor of the bigger releases towards the end of last year, so I’ll just come right out and say it again. Do yourself a solid and pick up Sable. The game has absolutely no combat, so there’s nothing stopping you from just enjoying its world. Ride your bike. Take in the tunes. I promise tha🐓t you won’t regret spending some time with Sable.
Jurassic World Evolution 2
Helen Ashcroft, Evergreen Editor
I always knew that I would make a great Dinosaur Supervisor and last year my most anticipated game was Jurassic World Evolution 2, which I’m still playing for hours at a time. It was 🀅released in November 2021 at an unfortunate time, sandwiched between larger titles which dominated headlines. Jurassic World Evolution 2 seemed to fall off the map and it needs to be put back on there. Quite simply it takes everything that was great about the first game, removes some annoyances, adds in new ways to play and delivers an incredibly immersive and enjoyable experience. If you love sim, building,꧒ or management games, it’s a great mix of all three. Also, did I mention the dinosaurs? It has those as well, so many dinosaurs, including aquatic and flying species. How can anyone resist?
Umurangi Generation
Stacey Henley, Editor-in-Chief
Umurangi Generation is one of my favourite games, and nobody besides me seems to ever bring it up. On the surface, it’s a photography sim all about learning different lenses and editing techniques, but it’s actually a commentary on fascism, climate change, and the alienation of youth set against the backdrop of a kaiju invasion of New Zealand. Why is no one playing this game? Even as a simple photography sim, it’s one of the best in the genre, but with such intelligent and searing political commentary, it goes far deeper than that. If you’re one of seven people who have played Umurangi, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:check𝔉 out my interview with the develo𓄧per, where he descri🐎bes why Doomguy is a fascist and says “fuck Donald Trump”ꦑ.
Hunt: Showdown
James Troughton, News / Photo Editor
You arrive in a desolate western swamp overrun with the undead, some bearing metal stapled to their chests, spikes protruding from their shoulders, gnawing at you while you try to sus out clues so you can take down the local monsters. You find a dimly lit, rundown warehouse with nothing but the sound of scurrying footsteps inviting you in - there’s a giant spider hanging from the ceiling. All you’ve got is a rusty pistol that can fire two rounds before you gotta clean out the barrel. It’s thrilling, but the infected are the least of your troubles. Other players need to kill these monsters too or they can’t leave - you’re in a battle royale with cowboy hats and grunting Clint Eastwood types. Sounds great, eh? Hunt: Showdown is great, but not enough people are playing it.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Issy van der Velde, News Editor
I need more people to play Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. Written by acclaimed sci-fi screen writer and director Alex Garland - 28 Days Later, Ex Machina - and acted by Andy Serkis and Lindsey Shaw, this Western adaptation of a 16th century Chinese novel, Journey to the West, was overshadowed by 2010’s crowded line-up - Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption, and God of War 3 to name a few. Set in a robot post-apocalypse, Enslaved follows the journey of✅ Monkey (Serkis) and Tripitaka (Shaw) as they try and find a mythical sanctuary in a world that’s out to kill them. The visuals were great for their time, and while they don’t hold up quite as well today, the story and performances certainly do, making this a title worth playing. It sold less than a million units, meaning a sequel was scrapped, and let me tell you, I feel robbed. The story of two unlikely companions slowly forging a strong bond has been done a lot, but Enslaved hits every beat perfectly, and crafts an engaging and intriguing world around it. Please play this game. If you do, Ninja Theory may make a sequel once they’re done with Hellblade 2.
Spelunky
George Foster, News / Evergreen Editor
It feels strange to request that more people play one of the highest-rated indie games of all time, but I can’t overstate how fantastic Spelunky and Spelunky 2 are, and how overlooked they can be because of their infamous difficulty. Are they really that hard? Oh dear god yes, they're some of the most precise and difficult roguelikes out there, with very little in the way of player progression. Still, that difficulty is part of their massive charm and a big reason why they're so beloved. Spelunky is all about learning every intricacy of its design and exploiting it to high heaven. You want to play games with me Spelunky? How about I master the arrow trap and make you look like a twat instead, how's that sound?
Ahem, sorry, clearly some unresolved issues here. Anyway, please play Spelunky, it's worth every second of watching yourself get impaled by something you couldn't even see.
Return of the Obra Dinn
Meg Pelliccio, Lead Guides Editor
Return of the Obra Dinn has you step into the role of an insurance inspector tasked with unravelling the mystery behind a ghost ship in 1807. Your Memento Mortem pocket watch gives you a glimpse into a person’s death should you find their corpse, which leads to a chain of flashbacks where you need to uncover the fate of all 60 crewmen. It’s unique in both style and gameplay, tells an incredible story, and you just won’t get the same experience elsewhere. It’s best played going in blind, without using any guides — which I realise is an ironic statement coming from me 🦩— but you get more satisfaction from solving the mystery yourself. This is one of my all time favourite puzzle games and I can’t recommend it enough.
The Bouncer
Lu-Hai Liang, News Editor
It seems few people now recall Square’s first game for the PS2, which arrived via a wake of hype. The graphics looked outstanding, for the time, and it seemed like this was truly the next-gen. Yet when The Bouncer launched in Europe, reviews were not kind. And they were quite right. It was a middling game with many, many cutscenes. The Bouncer was a kind of playable action movie and you had the choice of a few bouncers to play as, whose roles just involved beating up roomfuls of faceless goons. The combat was extremely repetitive and the story was about some android trying to take over the world. Of course, there’s a little romance along the way. (From this distance, I’m not even sure more people should play The Bouncer. In fact, maybe it’s better to forget I wrote any of this.) But it might be wortℱh seeking out this 21-year-old game since in quite a few ways it was ahead of its time.
Cruelty Squad
Harry Alston, Lead Specialist
Cruelty Squad was one of the weirdest indie games to release last year. It’s a high-octane depression rollercoaster through a world that wants you to go away. Its characters hate you, the mechanics hate you, and the jarring music makes your ears bleed. The game also leapt into my top☂ 10 games of 2021. Play it. If you don’t, you’re, to quote one of the many assholes in the game, “a piece of piss.” Oh, and don’t forget to check the fish stocks—pretty sure fish is at an all-time high.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Rhiannon Bevan, Lead News Editor
Hey so, we all like Kotor, right? So what if I told you there was a game just like Kotor, but even better? For all the love that the BioWare classic gets, it makes no sense to me that so many people overlook its sequel - especially when it was developed by the legends behind N🎐ew Vegas, Obsidian. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords (daft name, I know) is the best Star Wars story ever told. It’𝓡s an inverse of all the tropes we usually get, and a fantastic exploration into the failings of the Jedi. And controversial take, but Jedi Exile > Revan. Play it now, please. I need them to do a fancy remake of this one too.
This War of Mine
Damien Lykins, Evergreen Content Lead
I’m going to unabashedly cheat and go with two options here. The first one I want to scream about is an oft-overlo🔥oked indie horror jaunt called Lone Survivor. Think in terms of a side scrolling 16-bit Silent Hill with an amazing soundtrack and you’ll land somewhere in the ballpark. It’s surreal, introspective, unsettling, and bizarre in all the right ways. Next, I really want to talk about This War of Mine, because I feel like that’s an important title that never got the spotlight it needed. 11 bit studios certainly has a way of crafting harrowingly human experiences, I have to say. TWoM’s subversion of military fetishism has you guiding a beleaguered band of day-to-day civilians trying to eke their way out of a wartime situation within a medium that tends to consistently bombard us with the opposite end of it. I haven’t actually played the game in years, but my first run through it has left an impression on me that I can recall with near-perfect clarity even today.
BlazBlue: Central Fiction
Axel Nicolás Bosso, Evergreen Editor
My real answer to this week's Big Question is any fighting game in history. While the genre is increasing its popularity thanks to its diverse catalog and some of the latest titles appealing to a wider audience (Guilty Gear Strive, DragonBall FighterZ), it still "scares" a lot of gamers. And it's understandable: more often than not, fighting games require dozens and dozens of hours only for understanding what your character does and how the hell do they do that. It's a test of will and endurance that not everyone wants to deal with. However, once you're "in the zone", it's one of the most rewarding and satisfying experiences you can have — even more than the ones associated with Soulslikes.
Why BlazBue: Central Fiction then? It might not be the best entry for new players by any means due to its steep learning curve, but it's one of the most impressive, fun, robust, full of options fighting games with cool-looking characters out there. Also, BlazBlue never gained the popularity of its "older brother", Guilty Gear, so please, give some love to the series that has been fantastically evolving since its debut in 2008.
