"I wasted many of my teen age years on these video games and all I made was this lousy topic"

This would have done a nice article but since it has nothing to do with Metal.. a topic fits much better.

So, I thought I would submit to the list-craze lately, but for games instead of music ! These games are somehow relatively old, if you do not give a damn about graphics and like interesting game stories/atmosphere, this list is for you. I apologize for the small descriptions, if I could write an article about each and every one of these I would (probably not but...)


Penumbra : Overture / Black Plague

The creepiest game I have played. Penumbra is a horror adventure game that puts you in the shoes of Philip, who goes to the Antarctic looking for his lost father, only to find much worse... This game has been heavily influenced by a movie called "The Thing" and the Cthulu mythos.

Bad Mojo

A unique jewel in video games. Bad Mojo literally sucks you in and let you discover what a derelict house would be as a cockroach. The story is inspired from Kafka's The Metamorphosis. There is no complicated controls to learn, you are a cockroach, you can only move, so all the riddles are solved through movement, not to mention they are logical so no "use fish on air balloon to make explosive pizza" kind of riddles.

Sanitarium

Ah... another adventure game. In this one you explore the delusions of a med student and fight your way to consciousness. If the concept of Ayreon's The Human Equation intrigued you, this game bears slight resemblance to it, only much darker and weirder.

Arcanum : of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

PC Role Playing game, by the makers of Fallout. If you can bear with the bugs and the horrible movement sprites, this RPG has everything to please someone looking for games where you choices REALLY influence what happens in the game. Among the best I have ever played.

Arx Fatalis

Many...many hours wasted on this "French touch" (as in you can even cook in it) video game in 2003... The spiritual successor to Ultima Underworld II, Arx Fatalis is an action RPG mixed with an amazingly eerie atmosphere that rewards players who like exploration.. The fighting system is not the best, but one can get used to it.

Planescape Torment

This one is so awesome I won't even write about it. This is serious roleplaying with everything a pc-rpg whore can dream of. The total amount of dialogues in this game apparently is as much as one volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Probably the only RPG where fighting is almost secondary.

Battlezone

A perfect mix between Real Time Strategy and First Person Shooter. Highly recommended, if you can actually make it run on a new computer.

I hope some of you will waste hours of their precious youth on some of these games...

Planescape: Torment. Of course I played this one, the planescape setting's mood is soooooooo well done, and the game itself is awesome.
Oh, and liked Arcanum too, but I've never been able to finish it.

I didnt played a single game from that list...

Too bad you are missing some masterpieces.

Adding some, that also deserve it easily :

Primordia


Hotline Miami 2, Attention, ONLY if you are patient and do not get frustrated easily.


Last for now but certainely not least... (and it's time they remake this...) - Xenogears.

Mmm, Xenogears. I think I may have spent more time thinking about the plot of that game than any other. A faithful remake with the second disc getting the expansion it deserves would be phenomenal. Would recommend getting hold of the Xenosaga games if possible. Not as immense as -gears but the story is still heads and tails above most other JRPGs. The second one is a bit of a chore to play though. In the end I just cheated my way through the games using codes on the PS2 emulator for PC, worth it for the story, not so much the combat.

That Primordia looks fantastic. I vaguely recall seeing it before but never followed it up. Is it quite puzzle-oriented? I'm a bit terrible when it comes to the puzzle aspect of adventure games.

Currently debating with myself whether or not to play the beta of Torment: Tides of Numenera, or wait for the full thing. Will probably immerse myself in XCOM 2 before deciding though.

Written by Guest on 04.02.2016 at 21:20

Mmm, Xenogears. I think I may have spent more time thinking about the plot of that game than any other. A faithful remake with the second disc getting the expansion it deserves would be phenomenal. Would recommend getting hold of the Xenosaga games if possible. Not as immense as -gears but the story is still heads and tails above most other JRPGs. The second one is a bit of a chore to play though. In the end I just cheated my way through the games using codes on the PS2 emulator for PC, worth it for the story, not so much the combat.

That Primordia looks fantastic. I vaguely recall seeing it before but never followed it up. Is it quite puzzle-oriented? I'm a bit terrible when it comes to the puzzle aspect of adventure games.

Currently debating with myself whether or not to play the beta of Torment: Tides of Numenera, or wait for the full thing. Will probably immerse myself in XCOM 2 before deciding though.

Exactly my thoughts for the Xenogears remake, that second disc suffered way too much... and yes the story is one of the "widest" shall I say, that I've played - Will get Xenosaga someday.

I would personally wait for the full clean release of Torment Numenera, then wait some more for patches lol. Better to leave the bug finding / savegame corruption chores to the enthusiastic, serious and engaged backers..
The gameplay videos seems exactly how it is supposed to be, plus Mark Morgan's tracks are a definite win.

Primordia, play it with your eyes closed... since you know already Planescape Torment you'll appreciate some inside jokes too. The "technical" puzzles are quite rare (I only recall one, which was quite fun in fact), the rest is basically common sense / logic based problem solving. That's what I like about these new adventure games, they don't have some of those old school "use rubber duck on cassette tape to make eletric monkey" kind of puzzles.

I wish they made a Steam version of Arcanum just for my convenience. I've heard such conflicting things about it, but it scores very highly (in the top 5 I think) in RPG Codex votings for all-time best RPG. So many games on my to-play list (including Penumbra and Arx Fatalis) that I couldn't be bothered to get it from GOG.

Written by ylside on 05.02.2016 at 00:58

Exactly my thoughts for the Xenogears remake, that second disc suffered way too much... and yes the story is one of the "widest" shall I say, that I've played - Will get Xenosaga someday.

I would personally wait for the full clean release of Torment Numenera, then wait some more for patches lol. Better to leave the bug finding / savegame corruption chores to the enthusiastic, serious and engaged backers..
The gameplay videos seems exactly how it is supposed to be, plus Mark Morgan's tracks are a definite win.

Primordia, play it with your eyes closed... since you know already Planescape Torment you'll appreciate some inside jokes too. The "technical" puzzles are quite rare (I only recall one, which was quite fun in fact), the rest is basically common sense / logic based problem solving. That's what I like about these new adventure games, they don't have some of those old school "use rubber duck on cassette tape to make eletric monkey" kind of puzzles.

Well I can always cheat if I get stuck, I'm pretty impatient, especially if I want to advance the story which seems to be Primordia's strongest point.

And yeah, I will probably leave Torment for the time being, it looks quite rough around the edges. I don't really want to go through the glitches of Planescape again. Oy.

Written by IronAngel on 05.02.2016 at 10:15

I wish they made a Steam version of Arcanum just for my convenience. I've heard such conflicting things about it, but it scores very highly (in the top 5 I think) in RPG Codex votings for all-time best RPG. So many games on my to-play list (including Penumbra and Arx Fatalis) that I couldn't be bothered to get it from GOG.

Arcanum is a rough gem, it certainly deserves its place. It's quests are so diverse and original... reaally well made. Fighting is frustrating sometime but as you can see with many rankings etc, it's still at the top of the lists...

Arx Fatalis is quite special and needs the right mood somehow to play it (I never could play it with sunlight / light coming in, at least for me ). Don't know if you played Ultima Underworld before ?

Written by ylside on 05.02.2016 at 14:22

Arx Fatalis is quite special and needs the right mood somehow to play it (I never could play it with sunlight / light coming in, at least for me ). Don't know if you played Ultima Underworld before ?

I haven't, but it's on my "classics to catch up on" list, too. (I wasn't much of a PC gamer as a kid, had a Playstation, so the last few years have been a project to go through all the 90s and early 00s gems I missed.) I do like difficult dungeon crawlers, though, so I imagine it's up my alley.

I've made some tentative lists myself, but given how many games I still have to play and how the list changes after every few games, it's seemed like a futile effort. I think it might contain Deus Ex, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Mount & Blade: Warband, Crusader Kings II, Morrowind, Fallout 2, Thief: The Dark Project, Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy IX, KotOR (2?), possibly something like Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Dark Souls and the Infinity Engine games. Dunno, it changes a lot.