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Re: Loss of Surprise in games.

Anyway, I felt like raising my post count today, because apparently Negative can write lists of videogames that are cool and good and not have them get deleted by BerkaZerka, BUT I CAN'T. And I am very upset and I just have to challenge this notion by Cracked-ing it up. Here goes:

Ever had the feeling before that there's a world of magnificent, magical shit out there, and it's up to you to explore it? Of course not, because you are an insect whose purpose is to serve only the many in the future and you will only perform that task marginally, providing no lasting impact to the cold uncaring planet you're about to die on.

But still, remember that feeling you got in your youth when you felt like the devs really did think of everything, and there was nothing you couldn't do, no nook or cranny you couldn't explore, and if you got just an inch further in the game, you'd find another item or weapon or whathaveyou that would completely turn the game on its head? That elusive mew under the truck in Pokemon, or the mysterious fifth sword in Ocarina of Time.

Okay, maybe you've never heard that one, but it was a fairly popular rumor at my Elementary school, that there was a freakin' two-handed scimitar at the end that shot lightning, because the most powerful sword in the first Zelda was a freakin' scimitar that worked in much the same way, so some jackass who never actually completed the game until he was about 18 formulated the theory that there was another sword that came after the master sword, which caused a whole sort of club to form around people who claimed to have found it and other kids who were still struggling to find it.

Anyway, that feeling you get when you're exploring a game, where you're imagining all kinds of possibilities that probably aren't in the game, but are still believable enough, that feeling of mystery, wonder, and unending novelty, that's the kind of feeling I'm talking about when you play these games.

This sense of wonder you get from all games, though, sort of deteriorates at a rapid pace when you take into account your usual video game design tropes and structure. Of course nothing of import's going to be in this hole you're trying to explore, because there's no reason to ever go there other than of your own accord, so putting something game-changing there that you need or that the game devs want people to discover would be douchey game design, right?

That means that I won't be putting games on this list that I felt were vast and mysterious as a kid out of nostalgia, because, given savviness of traditional gameplay and design, it's actually fairly straightforward and the game is fairly limited. Instead, I'll only be suggesting games that require exploration and in-depth learning as part of the experience, and games where mystery and not knowing what happens next plays very heavily into what's going on. For those of you guys who want to dive into the deep end and follow your own bubbles back to the top, I reccommend all this shit.

(And, I mean, obviously don't go looking up everything, just buy or download it at your leisure. A few of these games are freely available these days.)

11. Silent Hill 2

This game is still the best in the whole series. Might’ve been different if Hills actually became a game, but unfortunately, that never happened, and we’re left with only two truly spooky games out of the whole damn thing. Now, the reason this is last is because every goddamn thing about it has been spoiled by the internet, and all the monsters are basically meme cancer at this point as opposed to new and original threats with their own unique presence.

If you possibly can, go in blind and stay as blind as possible. Forget you ever saw triangle man in the first place. It’s a creepy-as-shit game with a big world and a lot of cool and interesting shit, that’ll have you wondering what’s next even during the credits sequence. I’m not going to say it’s a masterpiece or any of that weeb shit, but it is damn cool, enjoyable, and it’s mysterious and intriguing as hell if you don’t have any what’s going on from the outside, just like Late-Tween me did when he played it the first time.

Kind of an honorable mention more than anything, but that’s what last place usually amounts to in a top 11 list.

10. From Software's Soulsborne games:

Ever since Demons Souls, there's only ever really been one From Software Game. It's the grand cult explosion that brought From Software out of the era where it made ballbustingly hard King’s Field clones into the era where it made only Dark Souls, and that’s great depending on you look at it. Now, if there’s one thing Dark Souls is about, it’s learning and exploration. There’s never any one way to play any of the games. The diversity in loadouts is insane, every weapon is different, everything has a limitted and strategic levelling system, and how your build grows is largely dependant on how you manage to survive from the beginning.

But I’m not here to talk about structure. I’m here to talk about childish wonder! And for all its nihilistic attitude and dark plot, It’s a very, very childish-wonder-filled game. I’m serious. Now, think about the first time you played Dark Souls, set aside all the shit that you already looked up on the internet that ruined it for you.

Notice how there’s no definite order to anything that’s happening. Very rarely will you have to have a specific item to unlock an area. Yeah, there’s always one or two ways of getting items that’ll make it easier to do the other areas, but pretend you’re a new player who doesn’t know that. You can do whatever nearby dungeon you want. There’s never just one area available to you. If you’re willing to deal with nearly impossible foes as a fact of the game, you can just go ahead and do it.

You don’t have to wait until you have a suitably blunt weapon and some anti-magic armors to take on Heide’s Tower or whatever it was called. You’re perfectly free to grind your way through with the shit you have right at the beginning instead of coming back later. You’re never screwed over in a cutscene. You technically could’ve beat all of Demon’s Souls the first time around, without even finding that magical afterlife tutorial place.

Enemies are designed to surprise and scare you if you’ve never actually seen them before. Memes aside, I bet you never actually expected to get your ass handed to you by a pack of fucking shrooms before. Nobody expected that jester fucker in Dark Souls 3 to run up and stab them in the back. Bosses constantly exploit and play with the rules you’ve been given over the course of the game. Whenever you find a new foe, if your first reaction isn’t pants-shitting fear of its incredible size and impenetrable-looking armor, it’s ‘Ooh! I wonder what this one does?’

You have to learn, explore, and adapt, and you’ll die A LOT in the process. For a game without any really explicit puzzle-solving, the game itself is sort of a puzzle. You never really know what’s going to happen, and figuring it out is all part of the adventure. It leaves you wondering what’s up ahead, and what it’ll look like, despite all the recurring themes (and bosses) throughout the games.

Everything from the nonstandard control scheme, to the minimal tutorials and complex combos, to the massive and nebulous storyline attached to every little thing in your inventory, just oozes mystery and unfamiliarity, and in turn demands discovery and learning. Hell, their level design is famously enticing. Big castles, mountains, towers and forests form lavish, distant backdrops, and odds are you’ll end up going to every one of those places.

Dark Souls is a very modernised and structured exploration experience. If you’re up for just playing a game to explore its world, but you’d still prefer to have the contemporary conventions of game design and competition pointing you in some direction, you’ll arguably have the least frustrating time with this. If you’ve never played Dark Souls and you’re wondering which one’s going to give you the best Souls experience, my advice is to stop googling and comparing them right the fuck now, and buy the one that you know the least about, because that’s the one that’s going to give you the best Dark Souls experience. You’re in no risk of running out of places to go until you reach the end, (Even then, you probably didn’t go everywhere yet.) and you’ll only get stuck if you meet a difficult challenge, not an obscure riddle or puzzle with no clear answers.

9. Legend of Zelda I:

The argument could be made that Dark Souls is a better executed version of everything this game was trying to do, but that doesn’t change that this game still has the same effect of piquing your curiosity and keeping you hooked on not knowing what to do next. In fact, the reason this game gets further on the list in the first place has to do with the fact that, unlike the Souls games, it’s really not at the forefront of our pop culture anymore.

It isn’t on the front page of gaming channels or in youtube suggestions these days. While a plethora of information on the game is available, including complete and detailed walkthroughs, it’s just harder to end up having the details and surprises spoiled for you. Or, if they have been spoiled for you, you’ve had quite a lot of time to forget everything.

Since it’s a lot more possible to go in blind these days, I highly recommend you try it out. Never look up a walkthrough, just explore the hundreds of screens and use anything on everything. The game’s surprisingly complex for an NES title, and unlike most games, you really do have to search every nook and cranny for little bits that really are game-changing and provide you with the means to proceed.

The game is fairly open-ended, you’re never really railroaded into completing the dungeons in any one order, there’s really only a “first stage” of accessible dungeons, and a second one that you use the items from the previous dungeons to get to. Nothing you get in one dungeon is going to have any guaranteed use in the next one, or in its own dungeon, for that matter, much like the tools and equipment you’d bring on a real adventure. Everything does come in handy at some point, however, in some interesting ways more often than not.

The theme of the game is exploration, and things are obscure because you’re supposed to explore and consult with people on the same stage of exploration that you’re on. Remember, this game was made before the internet had all the answers in a time when gamers still socialised in real life. Miyamoto designed the game to get kids talking about it and building a community around figuring out how the fuck to beat this game.

So, in the spirit of childlike wonderment, if you’ve never actually played the game before, maybe find some friends who’ve never actually played the game, grab an emulator (Nintendo can’t catch ALL of us!) and make a discord chat or something. It’s a good, engrossing way to spend a few day’s worth of gameplay sessions that you could’ve spent getting pissed off at all the unhelpful retards on TF2 trying to get a killstreak.

8. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

For all its faults, the first game is probably the best starting point for the aspiring STALKER, and I still recommend that you go into this game with as little outside info as possible. Just make sure you download the mod overhaul that fixes all the more horrendous bugs and fills in everything the game was missing. Sure, it may be cheating, but it’s not really a complete game without the overhaul mod, in the same way that Vampire game isn’t anything to cream yourself over, but with the overhaul mods that followed, it became a damn good time that developed a huge cult following.

Stalker is a game based on various Strugatsky novels. Mainly Roadside Picnic, the book from which the term “STALKER” is taken, and where the concept of a government-forbidden zone full of scientific anomalies comes from. Except, of course, instead of aliens, the monsters and scientific glitches came from the Chernobyl explosion.

STALKER is an deep and engrossing sci-fi setting with an overwhelmingly awesome atmosphere. You get a real sense of community and loneliness, rebuilding and abandonment, levity and abject horror, as you journey through caves, grounded boats, and burnt-out factories searching for magic items you can sell to the local bartender or use personally despite the cancer risk. There’s a reason there’s such a tight-knit community of Sleebs with their cheeki breeki memes around this game. It’s a good game, and it’s a big game. One that’s thoroughly pleasant to get lost in… Well, depending on how you define pleasant...

7. Dwarf Fortress

This picture above is Dwarf Fortress. I know it may not look very fun to newfag millenial scum like you, but holy shit is it fun. You must understand that in Dwarf Fortress, unlike other games, fun is not an intuitive process. In fact, fun is one of the least intuitive processes in all of time. Fun is obtained after the long and arduous process of learning how to parse everything that’s going on in all those letters and numbers up there. There’s a river, a bridge, a bit of a forest, a hall of statues, and even a bloody battle going on.

Now, I still have no idea about the majority of the other shit that’s happening on the screen, but I can sort of figure it out. Keep at it a few weeks, and you probably will, too. There is limitless fun to be had with this game, in the traditional sense, and also in the sense of the Dwarf Fortress Philosophy.

Playing Dwarf Fortress, you learn to appreciate all the little things in life. You learn how to laugh at yourself. You learn how to laugh at your stupid human errors. You learn that losing is fun. A so-called unwinnable condition is merely the ultimate challenge. The inevitable doom of your entire civilization is not an unfavorable outcome to be prevented and shunned, it is your Ragnarok. And whether it comes sooner or later, you are to embrace it with open arms and share your epic on the nearest forums.

The community is insane. Everything from exploring the best ways to exploit and profiteer on natural resources (And your fellow species…) to constantly evolving sports and dynamic martial arts systems. With incredibly complex combat and physics systems, and it generates enormous, tolkeinian fantasy worlds for you to play in.

Not only is Dwarf Fortress a source of infinite childlike wonder once you really learn how to play, but it’s also one of the only games whose mechanics are complex enough to warrant exploration themselves. Not only that, but, since you are more often than not the unseen dictator of a Dwarven Settlement, it’s actually one of the few enormous, wonderous worlds you can infinitely explore without it actually centering around one lone explorer in a big new world.

Granted, the world is very big and very new, but you play as many, many explorers, each with their own little moments of badass and hilarity. The dwarves even carve procedurally generated political satire! Dwarf Fortress is just one of those games that, despite me being a jaded teenager, can still preserve a feeling of discovery and childlike wonder in me no matter how much of it is spoiled on the internet, and despite the fact that I’ve been consistently playing it (or struggling to play it) for almost a year now.

6. Betrayer:

This is the point in the list where the joys of exploration start to overtake the joys of other types of gameplay. Not that this doesn’t have its fun moments, or that the games up ahead aren’t fun to play from a non-exploratory perspective, but this is where eyeing up your surroundings and talking to what few NPCs you find will take a front seat to action and or even intuitiveness.

That’s not to say that there won’t be moments in this or the other games where you don’t know what to do or aren’t doing “action”-ey things, but Betrayer and the games after this certainly will have a few moments like that. Sometimes only a few, sometimes a helluva lot. Case in point: Betrayer, a game entirely about the long, confused leadup to the Aha moment that makes you feel like you’re a little bit closer to getting back up to speed with whatever the hell happened here.

There is a plot, but no objectives leading you there, and practically nothing establishing it from the beginning. There are NPCs, but it’s hard to find them. There is some pretty good combat, but your enemies are a hivemind, each individually better equipped than you are. So, what else is there to do but put your Sherlock caps on and GIT GUD?

That’s Betrayer in a nutshell, and that’s why I love it. It’s an a very intriguing game that drops you so far in the deep end that you wake up on the goddamn ocean coast in the goddamn 1700s. You have to figure everything out, from the most perplexing plot shit to the infinitely less perplexing controls and economy mechanics.

There will be vast expanses of game that feel like you’re avoiding the action and where nothing makes sense, but that’s eventually followed by a time of kicking ass and learning things about the setting. Such is the cycle of Betrayer, and it doesn’t come easy. This is a very love it/hate it game, without much middle ground, but if you feel the need to dive into something without knowing much about it, you might wanna take a shot at Betrayer.

5. O.D.T. Escape Or Die Trying

This is one of those games that’s a little fast and loose with the “WHAT THE FUCK” moments. It’s got all the turn-of-the-century cheese you’d expect out of an obscure PS1 game, and all the surrealism you’d expect out of a steampunk survival game.

It’s not quite ‘Victorians with jolly good mustaches’ steampunk, it rather leans toward the technological side of the biological/machine scale of the H.R. Giger aesthetics that were prevalent at the time, but you can see plenty of Verne and Alien influences working side by side throughout the game. The design offers a vast and colorful array of adversaries, enemies, and hazards, and a vast and colorful array of options for dealing with them.

It’s pretty open-ended, especially by the standards of the linear plot-hyping era it came out of, to the point where you’ll miss the entire tutorial section if you’re not careful. Pretty much your only directive and explanation is “Find Captain Macguffin”. it’s still pretty impressive for its time, has great atmosphere, and it always feels like you’re feeling your way around a pretty big, bizarrely psychedelic world.

I won’t explain too much further. Not because there’s any big lore worth spoiling, but really because that’s about all there is to say about it. The fun is in the game itself, and to keep on describing the gameplay and stuff would sort of put it in a box that I don’t think would add anything to your experience. If you can get it running on emulator, or you have a backwards-compatible playstation system, I’d definitely recommend picking it up.

Just remember to experiment with the controls and movement styles a lot, early on because it sure as hell never directly teaches you this stuff in-game, and it only gets less forgiving after the tutorial. Even  some walkthrough guys make the erroneous assumption that you can’t climb down from a ledge. I had to watch a Let’s Play to learn how to stop breaking my goddamn legs.

4.Pathologic

Imagine Deadly Premonition, except not a cringey, boring, repetittive, hand-holding, David-Lynch-Ripping-Off piece of dickcheese. And instead of being about a ghost-addled detective, (Spoilers, I guess?) it’s about a mushroom-tripping Lovecraftian mindfuck.

Icepick Lodge is a studio that’s great at making dark games which are obscure and inscrutable at first and incredibly poetic and fleshed out when scrutinized. The game starts out like a stereotypical Russian novel, the setting is grim, the atmosphere is uncomfortable, cynical even, and every person, place, and thing has a symbolic nickname that they’re usually addressed by for the entire game.

I can’t get much into the plot for fear of spoiling the experience, but essentially you’re trying to deal with a city that’s about to get eaten by a horrifying plague, either saving it or yourself. You go around talking to various surreal and eccentric people in an overworld environment, uncovering a bizarre and ultimately mindfucking plot. And I mean ultimately mindfucking.

It’s tough to get right the first time, and you can easily fall into an unwinnable scenario if you don’t use your time and actions right, but some fun mechanics swimming around in a sea of trial and error is Icepick in a nutshell. Be patient, and be open-minded, and keep prodding at anything you think might be a lead. You learn something new and interesting with every death and successful campaign. It’s entirely worth checking out. I’d recommend the HD remake they came out with just recently if you’re not one for acquired tastes, since the translation from Russian sounds more like cohesive English and less like Betaband’s poetry.

Also know that, despite the weird visuals, Pathologic isn’t really a horror game. If it is, it’s very slow-burning, and the point of the spooky aspects is to make the viewer intrigued and/or uncomfortable, but not frightened. It’s more of an Art Game than a gameplay game, and while you can kick ass and chew bubblegum, the game was really not designed for that. Don’t let that stop you from doing that, though! Try everything, because that’s how you move forward in Pathologic!

2. Zerahypt:

This is the kind of game you just sit with during a rainy day or a dark autumn afternoon. It’s the kind of game you just sit there figuring out for it’s own sake, and it’s fun that way. There’s no inherent narrative, no quest or great imperative to do whatever you can do. The world is whatever you make it out to be, and you just mess around with shit.

The vehicles are like the weapons in Painkiller, there’s roughly one million of them, and each one has their own little aesthetic, feel, and application. What weapons there are also have their own punch, and the world is sparsely populated by a colorful cast of NPCs and factions.

Whether you’re mining crystals, exploring the vast expanse of interactive universe ahead of you, or just running around trying to see what you can kill, it’s an interesting experience. You can really enjoy the solitude of the icy cliffs and desert mesas at your leisure, and the quirkiness of the various vehicles, the protagonist, the NPCs, and the developer are all readily apparent in their own little ways. The game is peaceful and enjoyable for its own sake, and that’s all it needs to be, but there’s oodles of lore, spookiness and action potential just underneath the surface if you need active adventure. In some cases, it literally is beneath the surface of the planet-platform thing.

For a brief explanation, Zerahypt is an Interactive Story Universe. (Yes, apparently it’s a genre?) made by a single lazy bnasterd, and based on a little sci-fi cosmology he’s been building since he was a kid. It’s amazingly polished and has a surprising amount of lore behind it. SYRSA even still updates it sometimes, which is a marvel for projects this old. Your avatar in this game is Pirizuka, a chipper little snyffer who is more or less a professional tourist. From a certain point of view, it’s your job to mess around with everything and discover the world around you. And with a universe this charming, you’ll probably be all too happy to oblige. Definitely download this if you have no money and feel like you have nothing to do. Because you do have something to do at all times. Namely, play Zerahypt.

1. The Void:

Hey! It’s Icepick Lodge again! Because a lot of the gameplay is HEAVILY contingent on mystery and discovery, and explanation of any kind would likely turn this from a unique experience into more of a droll experience with little mental struggle and satisfaction when you think you’ve figured it out. I’ll refrain from actually getting into describing the game outside of technical gameplay.

It’d be like playing a game about Vampires, and watching the priest do all these bizarre things to fight them off, by swinging wooden swords at them, crowing like a rooster, and telling little boys to piss on the carpet, before herding them (the vampires) up with post-it-notes and rustling them off in a line. If you didn’t have any cultural context to it, this would be an utterly insane and new experience. It would be hilarious and terrifying at the same time. Gradually learning that this hypothetical game was about Chinese vampires, and this was how they worked, would be an interesting and satisfying experience that I wouldn’t want to rob you of.

So, because this game is a bit like the aforementioned Jiangshi game, I’ll just say what I’ve said before: Icepick is really good at creating dark, incredibly fleshed out worlds. You discover new things every time you play, and even though there’s a certain way of doing things, the learning process is the point of the game, not the direct narrative. I will say that this game, like Pathologic, errs on the side of “Art Game” more than “Gameplay Game”, so if you’re there for nail-biting action and surreal horror, know that this is really more of a resource-management game with weird-ass imagery. Exploration and maintenance is the ends and the means of The Void.

TL;DR:

Go fuck yourself, you scrolly bastard! I put pretty pictures up and everything!

Where's number three?

Shhh... We don't talk about #3.

Yes we do, it's Steve.

"Negative can write lists of videogames that are cool and good and not have them get deleted by BerkaZerka, BUT I CAN'T."

Wait, when did this happen? I'm always deleting most of Negative's retarded posts.

I'm just having a jape about how I used to go on long, Fording rants about certain games here that Berka cleaned out because they were repeatedly necroed derailment fodder, and Negative made a thread about his favorite games that stayed on-topic and had a real subject. I have two game threads like this which still exist, which were posted before, so it's just a moot point.

Oh, yeah, Morrowind was actually number 3, but I was being a lazy shithead sure that everything that could really be said about Morrowind had already been said by everyone, so I just skipped over it and forgot to put anything there denoting its place or anything.

What's your opinion on Silent Hill 3?

I don't hate it, like some vocal minorities/majorities do, but it does feel like it's just not as good. I'm more upset with the games that came after, which sort of feel like they're missing the point, and that faceless monsters do a proper spookum make. I mean, all the Silent Hill games are visually interesting and engaging in some way, I won't argue that there are any bad ones, but the first two were probably the best, and had the better atmosphere.

That's odd, three has always been my favorite out of the bunch.

To its credit, it does more for the lore of the series by itself than the first two games, if only because it was tying everything together, but the fact that it directly and completely explains the cult, and, as best it can, explains what's going on, gives the world a set of rules. And that, by extension, gives the Silent Hill anomaly a sense of limitation that it never really had before.

The worst thing someone can have in an experience meant to create horror is a knowledge of what's going on, or the knowledge that the thing they're up against has weakness or limitation. That's why The Ring was only scary the first time when they didn't know shit about it and were investigating, trying to establish rules. That's what H.P. Lovecraft was tapping into by subjecting Mankind to uncaring, unknowable forces that had no real limitation, not even death. Limitations are why we're no longer scared when we have stakes, holy water, silver bullets, and whathaveyou.

Because the story of 3 is a lot more about discovering the cult, who know about Silent Hill and how it works, and starting to piece together Silent Hill and how it works, it's just not as scary. This goes in contrast to the first two, which were more focussed on tantalising snippets about Silent Hill and the cult, and focused more on coming to terms with increasingly fucked up situations, which was a scarier format imho.

That, and there's the whole feeling of being completely alone when you play the game, even when monsters are around. They don't feel real. This isolation compounds with the increasing, inundating sense of dread that only gets worse over the course of the game, until you reach the spoiler zone and realize what really happened to James and fam.

SH3 never really has that atmosphere, particularly because the monsters always feel like an organic, animal presence rather than particularly aggressive automatons, so while it feels like you're in danger if they're after you, you never really feel like you're isolated and in danger. The fact that Pyramid Head is the only monster in the game that feels like a living and malevolent thing heightens the impact, whereas SH3 sports all living, "Look how intimidating I am" monsters, all the time, making the bosses and bigger horrors empty and meaningless, because they're just like the 'regular' monsters but with bigger health bars.

And that's all fine, I guess, because it speaks better to the character that the Hill is tormenting, but it never really captures the same atmosphere. The design choices don't really hit all the same notes, and despite being an okay game, it feels like it's missing the point.

Now I'm just curious about what you have to say about The Room :P

The Room one was kind of fun. Like, fun in the gameplay sense of the word, not in the sense that I was particularly thrilled or spooked. It was well designed in the sense that it made me want to solve the puzzles and look at the surreal monsters and settings. The prison area and hospital were particularly cool and dreamlike, and I wanted to explore those too just to see what was in them

That's fine enough for any game, but when "That design looks weirdly cool!" and "I wonder what happens next!" replace "That design looks wrong!" and "I'm not sure I want to continue!" you haven't really made a horror game, more of an Adult Swim miniseries with a big budget and no attempts at humor. So, it was pretty terrible at being a Silent Hill game, but at the same time it was a pretty good game on its own.

Yeah, Team Silent was pretty incredible. Have you ever played the Siren games by any chance? Those games are quite good as well.

Siren was pretty spooky. There were some moments that fell flat but felt like they should've been climactic, (Like when the mom became a tank-baby) but that was a really subjective thing that probably would've been terrifying if I were in a different mood that day. Overall, the whole game was something to lose sleep over. I've been wanting to play the first game for a long time, because the old graphics make the game look much more gross and sketchy, but I hear it's more frustrating than Blood Curse, which probably detracts from it.

As a person who literally reads game reviews every breakfast and dinner, I must say this was professional grade writing and critique (barring the waste of time referring to memes early on). This was a great list, and despite following games for a decade and a half now, I didn't know more than half of this list, so bravo on that count as well.

A couple of other games that exist in this vein: Monument Valley, Grow Up/Home, 80 Days, Rimworld, (maybe) The Beginner's Guide, Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, Else Heart.Break(), Gone Home, Her Story, Sleeping Dogs (kinda), Rocket League (for its surprisingly deep mechanics), Switchcars (the vehicles), Undertale, and The Witcher 3

I like what Grow Up did, but I think, in the mood of this thread, Grow Home was a little better because it focussed less on new parts and more on new plants and new zones. Gone Home and Her Story sort of do it, but it dissipates a little bit faster than most games for me.

The same thing goes with Undertale, since the gameplay feels mostly like a process you're just undergoing in order to read the next part of a story, since the choice that determined which story you're going to read you already made at the beginning of the game. Undertale would've been the same experience if it were a webcomic with a daily puzzle section and you have to do a tedious bullet-hell segment in order to turn the page. That, and the graphics are at that weird little place where you can tell what's going on, but it' not at all very visually impressive. I mean, everything is very stylized and looks good, but since you can tell pretty much what everything is, you don't fill in the blanks, so that visual aspect of exploration also feels uninspiring.

Which is weird, because if you play a game with worse graphics, like a Roguelike or a dungeon in Dwarf Fortress, everything suddenly looks freakin' awesome because you have to imagine where you are and what's going on. But Undertale falls into that weird gray area where the world looks simplified enough to appeal to the eye and fill in the blanks, but not enough details or weirdness that something looks particularly interesting. You can tell that the guy who made everything is used to designing characters and backgrounds, but nothing really noteworthy from a game environmental standpoint. Nothing looks bad, and the characters are interesting, but the environments are nothing special. 

There's nothing much to see in Undertale, only people to see, and then bits of cutlery you never see. The only things you'll find are items that make the "gameplay" incrementally less tedious in some playthroughs, or different characters to talk to/murder. Exploration can only serve to find more plot that you missed. because that's really the only fun part/selling point of the game.

As such, I really never felt at all excited to walk around and explore the world of Undertale. If being one of those invisible-enemy JRPGs that punish you for taking steps isn't enough, it's also a bullet hell. I guess it's a storytelling medium, sort of. The attacks all speak to the character you're fighting, and vaguely explain what the enemy is doing. Rob me of the only merit JRPG combat had. which was imagining how the combat took place, and replaced it with a genre of video game that I thoroughly dislike in an attempt to refresh the bullshit. Which I guess is fine, JRPG combat is an unappealing enough thing that it usually needs to be reworked to be interesting, but this took it in the wrong direction, and combined it with another uninteresting game mechanic that needs to be reworked to be interesting. It literally Frankensteined two wrongs together to make a right that never fucking showed up.

Oh, yeah, the little social gimmicks were really charming, and would've been much more fun, engaging, and interesting if it were tackled as more of a CYOA or something other than two shit gameplay genres that don't add up into a better one. If the game were just walking around solving puzzles and having "conversations", I'd be just as all over it as the stereotypical fan is, but it isn't, and in general it just feels disconnected and shitty. However, that also sort of removes the sense of conflict, attack, and danger that was present in the real game, so that'd probably rob the story of something very valuable. I'm sure there's a different minigame he could've used that didn't make me hate it so much, but as it stands, the gameplay has always been a big roadblock in the way of my enjoyment and curiosity.

It sort of feels like he knows this too, (Or I'm just projecting my feelings onto the game) as the consequence for wasting a turn or picking an option out of order is playing the bullet hell game again. Granted, that's the natural progression of combat or lack thereof, and of course the opportunity to take damage is the natural "Punishment", but when the act of avoiding it is this dull and distracting, it starts to feel like the minigame itself knows how shit it is and it's actively trying to keep you from enjoying the new puzzles and character quirks ahead of you. Which I guess is a good way to turn kids off of violence.

I feel like most of the video games where I felt a sense of adventurous wonder would be mostly old games.

Not that newer ones don't to some degree. I mean most Bethesda games still excel at the whole exploration thing, but probably due to the fact of being old now, it's not so much I have a sense of childlike wonder as it is "Well this place is out of the way, hopefully there is some good loot hidden here."

Can Fallout: New Vegas be #3?

I never really got that kind of vibe from NV, at least not as much as I did with Morrowind, which was the original Number 3 before I renumbered everything and absolutely forgot to put it there.

The big difference is mainly because Fallout is supposed to work a little more like our world than our world. It's not as surreal and weird as Tamriel is, and you can sort of figure out what everything is. That prison colony looks like a prison colony, that trailer park bandit camp looks like a trailer park bandit camp, and those raiders look like raiders. There aren't as many monsters, and those that do exist don't really appear very often. There's no magic, everything is explained by technology, which is utterly under control by those who make it. Nature, which is usually a wild card, has little, if any say in any of the design or plot.

I like New Vegas a lot, and I do prefer it over Morrowind as a game, but it's just too familiar to compete with the more or less entirely new worlds in the Elder Scrolls universe in terms of evoking that feeling of curiousity and discovery.

Well, all I know about Morrowind is the Skyrim DLC, so I can't really say anything about it. But from what I've seen, the landscape looks pretty basic. Volcano island with some castles and demonic cults. Pretty cool altogether.

But Fallout... I mean, sure, it all looks familiar (<cough>"FamousLandmarks"</cough>) if a bit futuristic, but you can't say that it doesn't just make you want to explore absolutely everything. Especially with Wild Wasteland.

I mean, town run entirely by super mutants, A Vault filled with raiders/plants/interesting lore in general, A casino that eats people, et cetera.

And the DLC's, too. Zion looks amazing, as does the Divide but in a more tragic way. You never know what to expect from the Big MT. And as much as I dislike Dead Money, the Sierra Madre is very surprising and eye opening.

And if not NV, then 1 or 2. Exploration is literally the only way to get around.

Morrowind is a lot more funkalicious than Skyrim would have you believe. Lots of Alice-in-Wonderland vibes. Psychedelic architecture in both nature and masonry, some of the houses/towers/fortifications are just trees that look like something straight out of the original Spyro trilogy, and a skybox that looks the way Saint Pepsi sounds.

I'll admit, wasteland architecture does look inventive and cool, but it's not very foreign, and it doesn't feel like you're discovering anything. a building is a building is a building is a building and ruins, while interesting in shape, do not offer much in terms of aesthetics. The lore is very interesting, and that's a good reason to explore, but since it's science-fiction and it it focuses more on offering a gritty and intricate portrait of various warring factions than offering us a diverse and colorful array of factions and creatures to stumble upon and piss around with.

I liked Dead Money, specifically because it was a very bizarre, trippy experience, and on the contrary, Big MT was an absolute cancerous mess that physically looked like diarrhea and was filled with enemies whose difficulty was cheaply padded by their overlong health bars. There were just enough open spaces between areas to make the trek seem long and boring, but there were also just enough crevasses to make enemies hide and block your fucking fast travel all the time. If you went one way, it was a cramped obstacle course full of undying goons. If you went another way, it was a slow, winding walk full of unchallenging trash monsters. It's like Big Mountain pulled out every stop it had to make me hate exploring it, which is a big deal in a Fallout game.

And yeah, when the majority of everything can be explained away with radiation and virus, it just doesn't feel the same. True, exploration is a key and fun part of Fallout, but for very different reasons than in the Elder Scrolls. In Fallout, you want to know the story. You're like a forensic analyst, but the whole world is the murder victim, and it's your job to figure out the story. In the Elder Scrolls, you live in a magical, colorful world, and you have to go about discovering it and creating your own story, which is very different. Elder Scrolls taps into your inner adventurer, whereas Fallout's exploration is more about catharsis and morbid curiousity.

  I really liked those Soul Blazer games? The Illusion of Gaia was so beautiful and I played it a million times. I could go anywhere! And the puzzles were fun. But Terranigma man...The world was in my tiny, sort of brown hands. I helped birds fly and grass grow. I taught people how to speak. I met a dog named Rocket. The music in that game is amazing, and I think that sacrificing extra characters for more Ark frames was an awesome choice. The animation is beautiful. I love them Krysta bubbles. And going far and wide, but still having a tiny demon and box to return to always felt good to me.

  Also I like Earthbound. "WEEE KNOOOW!" says someone, far away... But that game really gave me what I wanted, and what I wanted was to press L on everything . Ness had a thought on about every trash can, signpost and protractor in that game, and boy, did I love it. There are a million goofy NPC's and familiar places to visit. There are also scary, dark places to visit, and places that walk that fine line between a wacky good time and everything is going to hell. Mother 3 does that a lot as well. I'm just endlessly charmed by the familiarity of the art and emotion.

  Oh, and before I forget...Radiant Historia. Beautiful. Time traveling, staying awake at night, trying to figure out how to make the thing do the thing without turning everyone to sand was amazing. Being a human sacrifice was not.

Omg, I absolutely adore the whole Soul Blazer series. Terranigma was my favourite and rather tragic, yes. (Even if Ark's sprite looked like Crono from Chrono Trigger). I played partway through Radiant Historia myself.

I know Dwarf Fortress has been mentioned on here already, but the roguelikes like Ancient Domains of Mystery and Angband are still some of my favourites. Still playing Sword of Telengard to this day. And nobody will agree with me here, but I enjoy Daggerfall's dungeons a lot, up to when the RNG actively starts hating you and starts generating Daedra Lords when you're only at Level 3.

>Nobody will agree with me here

KID DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW LONG I HAVE WAITED FOR THE DAY THIS OPINION WAS SHARED

Ooh, you're into Daggerfall too? Cause I'm playing it right now, I  spent 3 hours in one dungeon and came out with 11,000 gold. It was heavier than all of my equipment combined. Everyone in town hates me (no matter what town it is), I've fallen through the floor twice already, and I've pickpocketed 17 rats.

Beautiful.

Really, Daggerfall is the greatest. If the character building menu in any of the other games were even half as complex and diverse as Daggerfall, we'd all have a much better time. There's not a single build or weapon style I can name that isn't practical if you get the right stats behind it.

Ever had a speed and agility/climbing that was so high that you flew up the stairs the wrong way, turned around and broke both your legs?

I haven't gotten quite that far yet. I keep restarting actually, keep on wanting to try out lots of different characters. Although the speed/agility thing makes me think of the Scrolls of Icarian Flight from Morrowind. Oh yes, that one.

However, my first run in Daggerfall DID have me accidentally turn into a werewolf (most of my characters seem to get that, I have to be extra careful every time I run into a werewolf). Bam, almost all my stats shoot up to maximum. It was a cakewalk after that.

Oh, and I've just managed to join the Thieves Guild for the first time ever. Finally. I always missed out on them for some reason. Most of the members still treat me with absolute derision even though I've gained some ranks now - I think maybe I'm unlucky enough that all the working-class NPCs detest me. It actually feels like I'm being a thief, too, unlike some later games (*cough*skyrim*cough*)

I admit Daggerfall did take some getting used to when I first played it. Especially the maps, lol. The combat felt a bit wonky too. But once you get past all that and learn to read the map and know which quests not to take, it becomes amazing.

I'll never forget that quest about the child kidnapped by orcs which was a complete sham and sent me to a completely empty dungeon with no kidnapped child and no orcs. I cleared the entire dungeon over 4 hours or so before giving up. Two seconds after I exit the dungeon, I get a letter saying "BOOO there was no kidnapping after all, the dungeon was empty, you can go home now" and hated that NPC forever.

Also, I think I just did a merchant quest which apparently lowers your reputation regardless of whether you complete it successsfully or not. I'm still learning new things about this game every day, hell I've barely even started the main quest.

Skyrim doesn't do stealth well in general, but there are certain moments where thievery feels authentic...

Namely, breaking into someone's house and cleaning the place out before they come home. Pickpocketting, shoplifting, and other things that generally involve negotiating your way around cognizant people doesn't go well at all. But I guess that's a hint of realism, since the best way to be unseen is to be where people are not.

Oh, and yeah, I love the kidnapping man. That feels like the most realistic thing that's ever happened in a video game about a fantasy adventurer, and it gives you a nice insight about how weird this is and how people must see you like a sort of Don-Quixote-type madman. A not-so-heavily-armed "adventurer" with no known skills would probably get trolled quite a bit by villagers back then, at least before he gained the reputation of being a badass of some kind. 

I mean, walking for literal miles town to town to do everyone's chores, for a living really is a silly concept. I'm surprised pranks and social ostracism against that one weirdo who goes around running everyone's errands, looking for things some rich person dropped in a ravine, and beating up people for money isn't a more common occurrence. It's hardly a noble profession the protagonist gets involved with, he's everybody's thing-fetcher. I don't get why even the jaded peasants regard the criminal drifters that are the Elder Scrolls Protagonists with any sense of real respect or importance, because they really don't have a reason to.

Hell, the main questline is the only thing guaranteeing you'll actually end up doing anything important at all, and in Daggerfall, that's not even a given. You're just a political correspondent who had a very, very bad day, and you can actually completely fail this quest and just have to live in this new place for the rest of your days. That one quest really shattered everything I thought I knew about fantasy storytelling, and suddenly I realized society made actual sense in this game and that people don't often hold the romantic notions associated with adventurers.

Which makes it even worse in later games, where even if you're a complete edgy shit to everyone you come across, people still blindly hand you world-endingly important tasks and talk to you like you're some sort of legendary being. The amount of Jarls who welcome me into their cities like I'm some sort of friendly-looking person worth their time, even when I've done nothing in public but get obscenely drunk and punch some chick in a tavern, is simply insane.

The nobles are polite to me. A random, landless stranger with no job or contribution in their society. Even when I technically have a price on my head for setting fire to livestock or stealing a cheese. In real medieval times, you get publically shamed or beat up (possibly to death) in the streets for that kind of thing. Even in a fantasy setting with "Modern values" people would at least stop talking to you because you're the maniac who attacked the family cow with a torch and then took a bite out of some general store cheese and left without paying.

But no, in Skyrim, it's "Hello stranger! Welcome to Riften!". It's no wonder the city is practically owned by the mead mafia, people just accept strange, violent randos as a part of their day-to-day existence! If you went to a real landowner's place in medieval times and tried to initiate a conversation, they'd be like, "Yeah, some other time, stranger. Unless you've got a proposition of some sort, I have peasants and servants who have important questions and logistical issues I need to get a handle on, so please ask them if you can do anything useful."

Lol, I could rant about Skyrim's flaws until the cows come home even though I love it for other things. You know the first town, Riverwood? (more like a hamlet) There's a drunk guy outside the inn, and if you give him just one bottle of wine or ale...then he'll like you, and therefore allow you to take almost everything from Delphine's inn. Not steal. Legally take. I stole a bottle of wine from the inn, went outside and gave it to him, and then I was allowed to take every item inside there (including food and a few potions and money bags) except for this one dagger...I think. It doesn't make sense.

I recently did a Daggerfall quest about getting a shopkeeper a present for his sister's birthday. I'd never done it before and thought it was quite sweet and gave me a nice feel-good feeling. I did get suspicious that he gave me a time limit of a month.

That's when I checked the wiki and realised that if you actually try to search for the sister and show her the present, there's a chance it could be an ingredient to poison her. Suddenly the whole thing seemed a lot more sinister. The game doesn't even give you any clues about this either. Because I'd done so many of Skyrim's "fetch me an item, here's some gold" I wasn't even expecting this.

And for the political system, I've just finished Sentinel's first quest and realised the other Sentinel quests required me to go up a few levels. I couldn't be bothered, so headed over to do Wayrest's first quest indeed. That's my character, becoming a possible double agent for no reason than boredom.

You know, I just realised that most of the nobles are polite to my current character whereas the peasants aren't. I must have done something there.

Oh, Riften. I have not gone back to that place for a long, long time. The instant you set foot inside, you're approached by a bunch of bullies who threaten you, all of whom are invincible. The Thieves Guild in there are also invincible and just as irritating. (Especially Brynjolf. I can't get to the marketplace without him constantly hassling me to join the guild!) There's even an NPC at the entrance (Mjoll the Lioness, I think) who tells you about her goal to purge the Thieves Guild and make Riften a better place. I don't know why they put that in...because nothing ever comes of it.

I was thinking about adding my 11 to this list, but it's starting to turn into a tangent. Not sure if 2 long ass rants about various games that inspire adventurous wonderment is too much for this thread and I should make a new one.

Do it. I have a feeling it would be a very interesting list.

Do it. I mean, I've reached the points in Dark Souls, Morrowind, Pathologic, Stalker, Betrayer, Legend of Zelda, and ODT that they don't really stimulate adventurous wonderment so much because I know where everything is and what's going on. So that's basically most of the games there that don't do what I say they do for me anymore. More have been suggested here, but since I'm Sent, lists and rants that serve to this end are highly encouraged.