I watched a YouTube video about this topic today and thought it was the perfect idea for a post here. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s games you played in the past that you’re still stuck thinking about, or games that taught you a lesson that you’ve held on to.
I’m going to start. For me, the two games that perfectly exemplify the idea of a game that sticks with you are Sekiro and BioShock. I have a feeling Dark Souls will be a popular choice but I think Sekiro did it more for me personally.
Starting with Sekiro, I honestly think it’s the closest to perfect I’ve ever seen in a video game, at least for a first playthrough. It’s fun, challenging, rewarding, thoughtfully made, beautiful to look at, it’s got great voice acting, memorable characters, and I honestly can only think of two mini bosses that bring the whole game very slightly down. Every other aspect is a 10/10 from me. Not to mention the combat is the best combat of any game I’ve ever played. Personally, this game is the purist example of a game that forces you to get good at it, and does the best job at teaching perseverance. In the rest of the Souls games, you can upgrade your weapon, get a new weapon, use buffs, summon NPCs or another player to help, if you’re getting stuck. With Sekiro on the other hand, you need to get good. Above any other game, this one showed me just how well hard work can pay off. I feel about this game the same way video essayists feel about Dark Souls. If you know, you know.
Moving on to BioShock, this one really taught me the value of a good story, and showed me that video games truly are art. It helped that the game itself is a ton of fun to play, but on top of that the writing is just phenomenal. I’m assuming most people on here have played this one so I won’t get too into it, and in case you haven’t, most of what I’d be gushing about would spoil the whole game anyway, so I’m just leaving it short, but yeah. This game is the finest example of video games being an art form.
What about you guys? What has stuck with you the hardest? I’ve got more games I could talk about but I’d love to see discussion from you.
My game time is limited so I play what I hope to be most impactful. My list is chock full of unforgettable experiences:
- Control
- RDR2
- Uncharted
- Dead Space
- God of War
- Ori and The Will of the Wisps
- Disco Elysium
- The Artful Escape
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Gris
The first three I’d say there was life before and then life after. The rest, I wouldn’t want to miss if I had a redo in life.
Rollercoaster Tycoon. What was a silly little game which we got for free out of a cereal box is now a main stay on any computer I own. Runs on everything and has aged incredibility well.
Shoutout to OpenRCT2 for modernizing it, even if the original games run fine as is
Nier Automata
The Last of Us
Undertale
Prey 2017
Heres a weirder one no one else has mentioned yet: I’ve heard art described as a way to express and emotion, and I really felt that with Hotline Miami. Its not done through the story or setting (in fact, the intentional ignorance there adds to it) but rather the contrest between the hyper-violent trance as you play through a level, and then the sudden cut of the music as you quietly walk past the mountains of bloodied corpses back to your car. I feel that shift, when you first notice it, really emphasises the pointless brutally of it far more so than many much more heavy-handed attempts in other games.
SOMA. Duplicating consciousness across multiple bodies and the branching off of one particular conscious mind to carry the narrative while the others were left behind was a fascinating concept for a game to engage with. Plus the atmosphere was a sublime nightmare.
- Limbo
- The Long Dark
- What remains of Edith Finch
- Subnautica
- Ape Out
- Fire Watch
- Prey
- Hitman 1,2,3
There’s nothing like a great story married to good gameplay and simple yet beautiful and effecting visuals. I guess also a small but skilled team of developers with common focus.
No game has ever affected me as much as Outer Wilds. Out of every life changing piece of art I’ve ever experienced, whether it be film, television, music, literature, or videogames, this is the first and only time I’ve ever gotten chills by the end.
The story isn’t super deep and it isn’t necessarily profound – it’s not really a belief-changer, outside of, perhaps, your idea of what a videogame is – but the experience itself is beautiful and rewarding and I’m not sure it can be recaptured.
Also for anyone looking to play it, don’t read anything about it! Not even the Steam description! It’s best experienced completely blind.
Games that play with metanarratives stick with me:
- Beginner’s Guide
- The Stanley Parable (Ultra Deluxe especially)
- Break The Game really stuck with me the ending especially.
Damn! Your list made me remember that I missed Superliminal.
Which led me to Stanley’s Parable, which I hated. I maintain that I totally missed something despite a few playthroughs to “the end” but it seems to have just gone over my head.
*Break the Game is $2 during the Summer Sale. Definitely trying it.
Which end? The main story is just a narrative device, in fact you shouldn’t really obey the narrator at all. Calling any end “The End” doesn’t make sense in the context of the game, really. Unless you just broke out of the mind control facility three times then called it quits? That end is supposed to be non enticing so that you try literally anything else before putting it down. I think the going insane end sticks with me the most. Although the game dev commentary in the recent release is fun.
Some games have already been posted, so I’ll share two games that really stuck with me:
- Life is Strange
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
I could mention Persona 5 Royal, but it’s such a hugely popular game so there’s no need to elaborate.
Life is Strange took me on a mystery journey, and I felt such nostalgia for my early days as a teenager. It’s an old game, but I won’t spoil it here. I’ll give a small plot. You’re Max Caufield, and you’ve returned to Arcadia Bay and see your old best friend, Chloe Price, whom you haven’t spoken to in years. She gets into some crazy stuff and Chloe is about to be shot by another student, but Max intervenes and discovers she has the power to rewind time, allowing her to save Chloe’s life. There’s an underlying mystery in Arcadia Bay where another young girl mysteriously disappeared, and Max and Chloe team up to try to find her.
Hellblade allowed me to experience what psychosis is like, through the lens of the main character, Senua. This game is unforgettable. Senua needs to save her lover, without letting the rot that’s festering inside her to consume her. That’s all I’ll say about this gem.
I really gotta play Life Is Strange. I started playing it a looong time ago but didn’t get very far into it at all before I put it down- I don’t honestly remember why.
Life is Strange’s writing is trope-y and often not that great, and my neurospicy ass doesn’t even relate with pretty much any of the nostalgic tropes about teenagehood (as far as I’m concerned these were the worst years of my life, by far, and any piece of media that wants to make me relive them is very unlikely to make its way onto my computer).
However the game manages to more than make up for all of that with an enthralling story that fully immerses the player with compelling gameplay, meaningful choice-based storytelling, great artistic vision, and ground-breaking character acting. The whole thing is expertly calibrated to deliver emotional gut-punch after emotional gut-punch.
Hellblade is just straight-up amazing and the Melinda Juergens’ character acting is hauntingly raw and poignant.
I think “What Remains of Edith Finch” traumatized me to this day.
That game was extremely relatable for people with mentall illness. The game essentially asks the question of whether you can escape your fate from genetic mental illness. In the game, most members of the Finch family suffered from “a curse.” But it was it fairly obvious that the curse was mentall illness.
