Super Puzzle Fighter II: Turbo. Easily the most fun and competent puzzle game I have ever played. It is especially great with 2 players.
So here’s a dumb Puzzle Fighter story. When I was 18, many years ago now, my girlfriend at the time, my best friend and his girlfriend at the time went camping near a little lakeside resort town.
It was the last day of our trip, we’d been extremely frugal and so we all still had some spending money left. The girls wanted to go clothes shopping, my buddy and I weren’t as interested in that but we’re trying to be cool so we tagged along. Except, on a covered section of boardwalk we passed a 2-player Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo machine. The girls just left us behind, laughing that the boardwalk was a straight line and we could catch up.
3 hours later, we were both broke and my buddy had to borrow gas money from his girlfriend to get us home. The girls had ducked into a little café and also lost track of time. That was a 50 cent machine and we must have put over 50 bucks a piece into it. We just stood there, getting better and better in perfect lockstep, trading wins and getting more competitive for an entire afternoon, oblivious to the whole world.
That was a great trip. God, nostalgia like that makes me feel old.
I never got to experience it on an arcade cabinet. My first exposure to it was emulated on my original xbox. My friend and I played that game for many hours every weekend for months, and then some! I believe it was available on PSN for a while as well. Such a great game.
Anything named Turbo must be good
Quake Champions is pretty great, surprised it’s not at least a little bigger
I’m content with OpenArena, so Quake 3 with open source graphics so you can install and play it anywhere. What does champions do that I’m missing out on?
I’m not familiar with Open Arena so hard for my to say a lot, but QC def feels way more modern than the other Quake’s in a way I appreciate a lot.
The graphics, audio, cosmetics, etc are all awesome. SyncError is also an excellent map designer and I love the maps he releases
FTL with Multiverse Mod
Its essentially FTL 2.0
FTL is already underrated. And most people who do play just stops playing because it can get boring quickly. But Multiverse essentially bring more life to the game. Make the game like 50 times more fun.
I don’t think it really helps when everbody calls it FTL instead of Faster Than Light. How would anyone be able to learn about the game when nobody calls it by its name?
The game is literally called “FTL: Faster Than Light”. If you search for “ftl game”, all the search results are about this game. This is a non-issue.
Whoops
For me, FTL is one of those games that gets exponentially more fun the better you are at it. It can be difficult to get over that initial hump.
Yes, this so much!
The installation guide is not good, and it’s annoying on Fedora since it’s blocked by SELinux, but it’s worth it for the amazing experience. Such a good expansion for an amazing game.
I want a game that has the primary gameplay loop of FTL, but with a choose your path role playing game like Fallout behind it instead of a roguelike.
As Yahtzee Croshaw says, it has the most Star Trek “Target their weapons systems! Damage control to the engine room! Transfer power to the shields!” effect, but I kinda wish you were more able to choose where you want to explore, have a little more agency in quests…
Most quests in FTL follow the format of:
A space thing is happening! Do you:
- Send in a crewmate to help (50/50 chance of succeeding and getting a reward, or failing and taking damage/losing a crewmate)
- With them luck and fly away (guaranteed nothing happens)
- (blue text) use special equipment (guaranteed chance of a nice reward, if you have the equipment/resource/type of crew aboard)
So you don’t have a lot of agency in the kinds of quests you want to explore. A lot of beginner quests happen to you a lot (how many times have we all done the giant alien spiders one) and in a lot of cases you don’t have the blue text options available, so you get to choose “do nothing” or flip a coin. And then you have to face the ship at the end, which a lot of the builds that are kicking ass up to that point just can’t face the end boss.
I want a longer term roleplaying game under these primary mechanics.
RS isnt really popular outside millennials groups, although it’s declining a lot last few years
Ah, yes, Republika Srbska. The most dangerous game.
Wait…
Runescape?
star trek online and champions online. they were pretty reasonable for free to play mmo’s and the costuming was amazing.
Shoot Shoot Mega Pack is extremely underrated imo. It’s a really fun 2D shooter +party game, and it only has 13 reviews on steam.
I thought Slice & Dice was going to take Steam by storm but it kinda just came and went. Amazing little roguelike dice battler
The biggest factor for me was that it just felt better on a handheld platform. I put dozens of hours into that game on my android
Me and my girlfriend are big fans of Doomsday Paradise, a rouge like dating sim
Laser tag.
It’s really dropped off as a sport over the last thirty years. I think kids get the same rush from video games these days.
Airsoft has grown massively. While it is more of a whole day event, it fills that same niche but better in many ways.
Most lazertag places I remember seeing were inside or connected to arcades, and those really aren’t a thing for kids these days either so it makes sense the lazertag places aren’t as widespread as they used to be. If you’re specifically going to travel to just do lazertag, you’ll probably just travel to do airsoft or paintball.
I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don’t play on a schedule that works for me. It’s really frustrating.
omg my dad used to take me to laser tag so much when I was a teenager lol. it was fun
last time I played neither my gun nor vest was working right, major bummer
It’s still big for kids. At least one kid per class did a laser tag birthday every year throughout elementary school.
Blazertag in Austin, Texas has been open for ever.
I played laser tag once and it was so incredibly underwhelming. I thought you’d see the laser in the air and I didn’t see that. I much prefer airsoft. You’d probably have more fun playing airsoft with tracer rounds in the dark
Uh… every laser tag I’ve ever been to (even the cheap ones) had a visible beam as you shot.
I probably went to one of the only ones where you couldn’t
Iirc, the beams need to have smoke machines or foggers or something running in the arena to be visible. The machines where you went might have just been off.
Yeah there weren’t smoke machines that was probably it.
I think it was the cost. We would go do it but it was a bit pricier than seeing a movie or bowling or hanging at an arcade. Was great though. Super fun and great exercise. Our photon had coin operated guns above the arena so you could not just try and sit and snipe. I remember this guy who was so rediculously good at the game he beat my friends and I and his team was a bunch of kids.
I think it was the cost.
It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena’s schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up… or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.
I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a “rocket launcher” with a little radio thing in the “rocket” to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.
I actually had the consumer ones. both the original and an updated one. Both on clearances (and pretty cheap). Played with my friends but it was not the same as playing together against another group of friends or random people that got grouped together.
There is outdoor laser tag now. I also haven’t tried this, but apparently with a couple of Quest headsets you can play laser tag in VR in a large enough space.
For video games, Full Spectrum Warrior.
It’s got a unique third person-ish view where the player swaps between different fire teams or special units, and orders them. It looks like a third person shooter but is just a real time ground level tactical game. It’s demanding but fun. It’s the kind of game that Brothers In Arms, old school Ghost Recon, or Doorkickers players would love. I don’t know why nobody really remembers it or why somebody hasn’t made a spiritual successor.
Like, from 20 years ago? I mean I loved that game too, and playing it in Iraq made it all kinda silly surreal in a fun sort of way. OK, yes, I second this!
Aotenjo Infinite Hands is like Balatro for mahjong. Strongly recommend it
Would chess count?
I mean chess is not not popular by any stretch of the mind, a lot of people around the world are playing it every single day and that won’t go away anytime soon, but I’m always surprised to see so much more excitement going on around a new version of This or That video game that people will play for a little while before switching to a newer version than for chess. Despite its apparent simplicity (and lack of visual effects), chess has remained a challenge for the smartest among us, and will keep on being so no matter how much better computers can be playing it.
Yeah but it doesn’t have tech trees or fog of war
tech tree:
pawn -> queen
pawn -> rook
pawn -> knight
pawn -> bishop
Someone should inform the devs there is no reason to pick anything but queen and knight.
google en passant
I mean when promoting.
Yeah, ‘google en passant’ is an r/AnarchyChess joke.
Unless you are in on it, in which case damn, you’re stone cold.
In theory, you can always promote to a rook just to show off. I have no idea if it’s considered a bad mannered move.
Ah I see. Thanks for explaining. I wasn’t in on it heh.
Chess has taken over a significant portion of my gaming time since getting into it a couple of years ago.
It’s a beautifully deep game, and it’s refreshing to be able to pour time into something with staying power that people of every age play all over the world.
It’s a beautifully deep game, and it’s refreshing to be able to pour time into something with staying power that people of every age play all over the world.
So much this :)
Have you tried the demo for Passant?
I’m the furthest away as anyone can be from a pro chess player, but this game really revived my passion for chess. Somehow all people want to play is blitz or tournaments. There’s little interest in variations. It’s like amongst the chess scene having fun became taboo. It’s a serious game for serious people who only want to defeat others. And it is so tiring. Oh look, another London system game, how titillating.
It’s a board game, I know why people enjoy competition and all, but I find competition drains games from anything interesting to me. I just want it to be fun and intellectually stimulating. Bring variations and quirky rules back, make it interesting to lose. Level the playing field so we can all participate and have fun instead of everyone just trying to play optimally like little machines.
Have you seen The Rookery? It’s a well-made chess roguelite that has become my comfort game lately. It was made by the same devs who made https://www.drawbackchess.com/.
Also thanks for the heads up. I’m off to play the demo right away.
The Legend of Alan D’ar, it was for me the first co-op rpg I’d ever played. My brother and I couldn’t out our controllers down. Sadly all you ever hear about it IF anything is how much people hated it.
Cattle Country, a completely unique stardew-esque game set in the wild west. It feels way more in depth and polished than Stardew, and you can be attacked by random wildlife and even outlaws lol
For video games, Ostranauts. It’s the perfect space survival sim IMO. You wake up on an industrial salvage station and get a ship. Then you fly to derelict ships and scrap them for money and parts. Build up your own ship and travel farther and farther out. It’s jank as fuck to learn but once you get it down it’s the type of game where you put on music then just go for hours and hours. It’s early access and a lot is changing but the core gameplay loop is so addicting already.
For tabletop games, Infinity. It’s the best miniatures skirmish game I’ve ever played. The rules are deep but tight. The number of minis you put on the table is just right to me. List building is the best of any game I ever played. The rules are free. The app is free. The miniatures are the best out of any wargame I’ve ever played. It’s just a shame that people are so locked into Games Workshop that they don’t see other games as an option. Like I had a couple friends get hardcore into it but never more than that. And at the height of it’s popularity at our store we had one of the best players on the East coast play in a tournament. That was a sight to behold. Like I’m not a tourney player at all for any game. Watching the number 1 east coast player do his thing was the most inspired I ever was to become a tournament player.
Ostranauts still needs time to cook but there’s nothing quite like getting your first torch lit, nearly starving during the trip to Venus and then spending days stuck in a crash couch while your earther pilot supervises the burn that nearly kills you. Definitely room to grow.
