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So this gets asked here from time to time, and frustratingly for me, it gets filled with highly upvoted mention of trailblazer games; games that raised the bar or set the trend in some way or in some cases created whole new generes. (examples include Halo, HalfLife 1, Starcraft, etc.) I get it. These are good games, popular and highly respected, but they are not what I would call "ahead of their time". To be ahead of it's time, the game simply needs to introduce concepts or elements that are not imediately picked-up. It does not even need be good or remarkable - it just needs to have elements that are so new and unusual that it goes unappreciated and forgotten. Here are three examples of games that I consider ahead of their time...

The Outfoxies: a totally different take on the arcade fighter game (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc.) that became the inspiration for Super Smash Bros. many years later. The message at the start of each match "Kill your oppenent by any means available" meant the player could use whatever was lying around in the unusual and sometimes comical settings. A knife, a pipe, a gun, a grenade, frying pan, a pot of hot soup, or an electric eel tank (and so many more!) were all options!

Warrior of Rome II: a pseudo RTS for the Sega Genesis that had a window interface and strong focus on unit management. Units got stronger and became specialized with experience, so the player needed to track unit progress and plan how to use them to be successful. I have never seen this feature fully re-implemted in any RTS I have played since.

Populous The Begining: A 3D sequel to the original Populous with deformable terrain and a novel, intuitive order & message queue, way back in 1998!

So, tell me what other forgotten (or soon to be forgotten) games that are out there that were so innovative that few people realize what they witnessed?

Forcing co-op players to take part in the game's garbage PvP just doesn't make much sense to me, it's less fun for all parties involved. The person being invaded is just trying to progress through the game and most likely has no interest in fighting other players, while the invader is stuck having to fight people that don't want to fight them. What's the point of that?

It would be much better if invasions were entirely opt-in, though that still wouldn't change the fact that From Software is genuinely one of the worst developers in the entire industry at making multiplayer games. They should not be making people play PvP when they're either unwilling or unable to make an even mediocre, let alone good, netcode. That's not even getting into how horrendously balanced and generally janky the combat of their titles are when it comes to PvP.

Might be a pick not everyone agrees on, but in my case, Detroit Become Human had me still thinking about it after I finished - maybe because I got a bad ending lol

But seriously. Which game has touched you in such a manner that you couldnt stop thinking about it?

First step : Inquisition not having decent M&KB UI, yes, I am that ancient of a fan.

First step b: Inquisition shallow but time consuming side quests.

Second step : postponing Dreadwolf for... Andromeda.

Third step : publish Andromeda. Tired face is not the issue as much as boring characters, boring story, gated gameworld.

Fourth step : fire BioWare veterans, callously and foolishly.

Result : Veilguard.

When Mass Effect came out, I thought - Wow, this game open the way for more games in the style of narrative RPGs, where there would be epic adventures in space, with alien companions. New cultures, new discoveries. I'm waiting it. But Mass Effect ended, and new IPs like them did not appear. I've been fed up fantasy for a long time, and I'm not interested in old-school RPG games with lots of races, classes, and a very detailed character editor. I just want to log into the game, create a character from the presets, and go on a journey through space, learning new and unseen things, interacting with alien companions, and making decisions that change the narrative. Apparently, humanity is simply not ready for one more game like Mass Effect, and that's why no one is willing to repeat and improve their formula.

This game was announced at The Game Awards in 2022 but i never seen anything else on it. Did it never release or did the game not gain alot of traction?

For those who don't know, an Autobattler is a genre of game where you place units on a battlefield and they fight for you. The mechanics involve picking up multiple copies of the same unit, which combine to upgrade the unit's stats and ability. Units also have tags, and making your team out of units with the same tags gives them extra stats, unique abilities, or special interactions. It started out with Dota Auto Chess, then League of Legends made their own version with the very popular Team Fight Tactics, and now there are many more games in that genre, like Mechabellum and games like Backpack Battles can also be considered an Autobattler.

The gameplay loop and mechanics just scream Pokemon to me. You collect multiple copies of a Pokemon to evolve them into their next stage. And you could create a team of all grass types to get the grass bonus, fire types to get fire, etc. As many Pokemon have multiple types, this easily allows a team to have the capability to switch in different directions as needed. Throw in the Type Advantages and Weaknesses and you'd have a very an easy to play game with reasonably deep mechanics. With the breadth of the Pokemon roster, they could easily keep the game fresh by combining different Regions for each season.

And it's not like Pokemon can't make games outside of their "traditional" game structure, Pokemon Unite is their attempt to enter the Moba space, they could definitely do the same for a Pokemon Autobattler. In fact, I'd argue that the Autobattler structure fits Pokemon far more than a Moba one does.

I was playing TFT today and it just hit me how much the mechanics fit into the Pokemon structure. Has anyone heard any rumors of this being made or am I alone in thinking it would be a perfect fit?

Does anyone with small hands have experience with different controllers and could recommend some that worked for them long term? I heard good things about 8bitdo and Nacon

Hi, so I'm looking for some chill games I can play with my wheel.

I tried Snowrunner but it honestly just infuriates me. The controls are annoying and getting stuck is even more so. Also tried Dirt Rally 2.0 but I'm honestly just confused on what to even do. I recall the game having some kind of option where I could see wether I had the correct speed and which line to follow, but I couldn't find it.

I'm honestly overwhelmed by both of these games. I'm looking for something where I can race around without too much fiddling in menues and maybe not hyperrealistic to the level where one wrong move makes me crash somewhere.

Any genre is fine

Gamers always go back to the game after finishing a video game adaptation show. When Fallout, The Witcher, or The Last of Us was released, people returned to play Fallout 4, The Witcher, and The Last of Us games.

A lot of games give you AI squadmates or companions that help you fight but more times than not they aren't very powerful. A major reason for this is probably that the game wants you to be the overwhelming instrument of progression but sometimes its a bit silly at how ineffective your AI teammates can be.

What is a game where you felt like the AI was very useful, a game that impressed you with what they could do?

I just played Black Ops 6 campaign on gamepass and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a LOT until raiding of palace mission - but after that it got weird and I was not a huge fan of it (don't want to go into spoilers here). Even then overall it was very fun with awesome gunplay and action. The last Call of Duty game I played was Modern Warfare 2 when I was a kid and remember enjoying the heck out of it. Recently I enjoyed Cyberpunk and its combat a LOT. Phantom Liberty was 10/10 for me with its amazing spy/political story and big action set pieces - definitely among my most favorite gaming experiences.

What are some of your favorite games of this style? I am looking forward to play more such games where you are some spy or soldier or assassin etc. The game should have great gun play at the center, serivceable story, and some good set pieces. Ideally no fantasy/weird elements - just pure humans that die when I headshot them lol - no zombies or horror elements.

Basically it should feel like I am playing a character in Die hard or Mission Impossible or Rambo etc.

So I recently started playing persona 3 reload and I'm almost finished (in mid January rn), but I genuinely love the game, does anyone have any recommendations for a turnbased game like it cause I want to play more of that kinda genre.

(Ignoring the other games by the same dev cause imma play those too).

All these years I've seen a plethora of posts, videos etc. online, either serious or humorous ones, about EA being greedy as hell while putting the lowest effort possible. I always thought that people were just being overdramatic or said all that so they can make their joke. But yesterday I realized that behind all the memes, articles there was truth to be found. And they weren't just true, they were VERY true.

I had bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition during the Steam Summer Sale for 6€, installed it, but didn't try it until yesterday (the same thing I do with most of my Steam games to be honest). The second I clicked "play" and realized I was being directed to the EA app, I didn't particularly like it but I didn't think much of it. I started to think much of it when my game turned out be unplayable though.

It just said "preparing game" on the EA app for a while and then shut down. No big deal, I'll just close Steam and the EA app and try again. Didn't work. Tried it many times, it just didn't work. I went ahead and restarted my PC, but it also didn't work. I verified integrity of the game files and there was no problem with them. I then tried to launch the game via the EA app, the same "preparing game" and shut down combo. Same thing happened when I tried to launch it directly via the Launcher in the game files.

Now it really started to piss me off. I just wanted to play the game I had already paid for, nothing more but also nothing less. I searched online for possible solutions. I deleted the registries of the game in Registry Editor, it didn't work, I used Task Manager to close any EA related app before launching the game, it didn't work. I went as far as installing the discontinued Origin with a patch called Fuck Off EA App (which I totally relate to) because it makes it actually usable and it doesn't force you to install the EA app as it would normally do. Then, I started the game using the Launcher found in the game files and I finally managed to launch it! But after closing the game I couldn't get it to work anymore, it was a one time thing. I was getting mad, it had been an hour and a half up until that point.

I decided to take a look at EA's forums but they didn't help me at all. Since I was already on EA's website though, I thought "why not use their support page?". So after some digging I managed to create a case about my problem (they even made it difficult for me to create a case compared to other game companies' support pages I had used in the past), with little faith in them helping me. After a few minutes, a "specialist" replied to me in the most generic way possible, even though I had explained what my problem was. I tried to write back to him but my case had been paused for some reason and it didn't allow me to resume it. When I pressed "resume" it redirected me to another page, where I received a notification about my current case, and when I clicked on it, it prompted me to resume the case, and it was just an infinite loop. I still haven't figured out what's wrong with the game.

All in all, 6€ isn't going to put a dent in my wallet. But I paid for Mass Effect and I can't even play it. It isn't even my fault, EA doesn't let me play a game on the platform I used to buy it, and instead they make me use their platform that isn't even half good, it's straight up terrible. That is 100% on them. Likewise, their support page is also really not user friendly. I never had problems with EA before, and other games like NFS Heat, which I own Steam, run properly on the EA app. That's why I always doubted the fact that EA sucks. I spent money and several hours of my life trying to figure out the problem they themselves have caused. I apologize for doubting you all.

Hello everyone,

After a first post about my thinking about switching to an oled monitor while staying at 27inch, i have come to wonder wether i should switch to a 34inch oled monitor (i have thus made a second post to not confuse the 2 issues)

I have enough space on my desktop for 34in but not more, and i primarily use my computer for gaming.

I play all kinds of games (though with far less free time than before, as a father of 2), but i mostly play solo games, sometimes coopérative multiplayer but never compétitive (solo games are better when your baby can wake up at anytime in the night, forcing you to drop everything in a second).

I would like your feedback on 34inch monitor, do you have any regret, did you come back to smaller screens, or is it only pros ?

A few exemples of the games i play : Elden Ring, Age of Empires 2 remaster, diablo 4, Hades...

Thank you !

What are your people’s favorite key binds to change when you can?

For me it’s changing the interact key from e/f to my thumb mouse button.

If it’s a factory game, like Captain of Industry, I use it, the thumb button, for the copy building button.

Preferably turn based games.

I bought the game on release for ps5 and gave up 60% into main story due to boredom & frustration. Recently I decided to give the game another go. I'm enjoying it a bit more, yes I still have frustrations and criticism with parkour, responsiveness & fluidity, but it seems improved. I want to see the main story through.

Every time in combat I parry & it's the same thing, the enemy is stunned and a icon for a button press to "kill" comes on, using R1. It's the same loop & same animation! I have seen videos of various combat finishers that have variety & far more satisfying, how the hell do I pull this off? It's very mundane & frustrating, I avoid combat specifically as to not get annoyed. Every other AC game has had various finisher animations that were satisfying & no problem, it just happens. They were extremely varied & satisfying.

Side note, any advice if I should change my controller mapping & if so please share.

Final thing, obviously parkour & many other things could be far better & deeper in this game, but why did Ubisoft decide against mixing & matching gear pieces, sets for body parts!?

Having a think about games I've played (specifically open-world), and how the storyline/main quests often create a sense of urgency that ultimately would make it a bit odd for your character to just spend ages wandering about doing other things.

However, there are also moments where it would make (at least) some sense for your character to do something else, and was wondering if there was a term for this sort of moment in a game?

Additionally, what moment(s) do you think it is in games you've played?

My first ever open world game was probably GTA VC. And then came World of Warcraft, which, unlike GTA, had the first "huge unlimited" world.

My partner and I love couche games, specifically It takes two, Overcooked 2 and A, way out. We would like more similar recommendations on Xbox.

Can you guess what is popular in my house at the moment lol