Video games that restored your faith in the medium

Dark Souls.

A beacon of light in an era when almost all major releases became homogenised dumbed down shite. It was so bad last gen that I ended up taking a break from gaming for a couple of years other than some casual fifa matches with mates. Dark Souls brought me back.

Things have been a lot better this gen though it must be said.

I guess Spider-Man fits this for me.

Bloodborne made me believe again.

It's not like I had lost faith at that point, but I kind of gave up playing for a while and had a gaming low - and then I popped in 'Kirby's Epic Yarn' and it simply won me over. It was such a pleasure from beginning to end: very playful, visually creative a great soundtrack - and I had just fun to jump through this game and see what the developers came up with. I felt like a small child walking into a shop full of colorful candy. Never forgot the experience!

I remember being kinda cool on games in 2011/2012 but Persona 4 threw me right back in

Spec Ops: The Line was a game I went into very blind

i really liked the older Spec OPs games, and played a lot of other shooters since then and leading up to The Line

i preordered it hoping for a simple shooter with cool sand physics that I could pick up whenever I wanted and could just break down when I needed

i have only played through it twice

turns out i like games that can surprise me, and the best way to experience that is to blindly play a lot of varying games, sometimes with or without buzz surrounding them

What Remains of Edith Finch was just sublime. Made me feel like there was a way forward and that it just might be wonderful.

Witcher 3.

Just when I thought the RPG genre was beyond repair from western devs..

And also God of War, it was just awesome in terms of narrative and with some added badass gameplay

Astrobot. Can't wait to see what next gen VR can bring.

They have a way to go but Kingdom Come Deliverance did a stunning job

There are a ton of such instances for me, but the three that stand out are:

DOOM (the original)... I was already super impressed by Catacombs and Wolfenstein, but DOOM introduced me to a type of gameplay experience I could only dream of.

Morrowind... My experience with computer RPGs was pretty limited at the time, and I wasn't a fan of Arena/Daggerfall. But boy did Morrowind suck me in, and the scope just blew my mind.

Demon's Souls... I have to admit I was pretty bored with video games in general when DS launched, but early buzz just sounded to intriguing. When I finally got my hands on it I just couldn't believe that someone was making games like this, and I loved it.

Before bloodborne I pretty much lost faith in the next gen consoles, we had trash games coming in from left and right. Then bloodborne came and shit got real.
Also the last guardian, so glad that this game exists.

Bloodborne and Dark Souls .

Hopefully DMCV next

Currently waiting for it.

It gets hated on around here, but The Walking Dead reinvigorating the adventure genre, showing A/AA can tell great moving stories too, without being bogged down by superfluous systems and 40h+ requirements that destroy any semblance of pacing of AAA games, was such a shot in the arm I and the industry needed.

Breath of the Wild was a revelation too, after all the other open world games had killed exploration dead with their achievement lists, minimaps and linear mission markers.

Demons Souls blew me away at a time when gaming became mundane for me. Playing nothing like it before, late at night just inching further in scared of losing progress or souls, i hadn't experienced that feeling of rea consequence in a longtime.

Also, in this era of increasingly anti consumer behavior, God Of War genuinely surprised me, especially with the lack of information before release and hesitation because of the change in gameplay. Then the cryptic tweets before reviews dropped, it all made for a very exciting time in gaming.

Years ago it was Dark Souls. During those years i felt games were starting to be too easy, too simple, too cinematic and no meaningful content. DS showed me i could still enjoy games.

I stopped playing new games for several years during the early 2000s. I was a SEGA kid during the 'console war', matured to PC point-and-click adventure games in my teens and always loved 2D art styles. All of this stuff went out of style in the 2000s and so my gaming life was mostly composed of emulation and abandonware. The last truly great contemporary game I played at that time was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the PC and I had no interest in Xbox, Gamecube or the PS2.

Fast forward to 2009, I've finished off my undergraduate degree and have a little more free time to muck about on the Internet. In an online community, I find out about a game called Ace Attorney. It's a game where you play a lawyer and solve puzzles, it features a 2D anime art style and it's for the very affordable DS handheld. I am completely sucked in. And it's this game that makes me want to investigate what modern gaming is like in 2009. This is when I find out about indie titles and try out games that have a lot of tropes from adventure games like Bioshock and Uncharted 2. It gets crazier the following year when Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out plus incredible indie titles like VVVVVV. I was so hooked I went back and tried to catch up with all those amazing titles I missed in the early 2000s - Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Cave Story.... and it's all thanks to Ace Attorney.

Around the time Siege came out I was desperate for a new game that I could play all around the clock for a long long time. The idea of playing most games old and new stopped appealing to me for the most part. I would play some Halo 5 and Halo 2 on PC but that was about it. Siege saved me from this drought I faced. Siege kept me much busier than any game has. The only game I've been able to play daily and still have tons of fun for 3 years straight.

I've found that there have always been stuff worth playing, even through droughts, so my faith never needed restoring. However, I did feel that I missed playing traditional RPGs when I played Dragon Quest XI. It reinvigorated my interest for the genre. Not that it's fantastic or anything, it's just a very solid, old-school game in a genre that is trying, perhaps a bit too hard, to reinvent itself.

Back to back NieR Automata and Breath of the Wild did that for me.

Tetris Effect also gave me a little one.

Back in the day Supee Mario Galaxy 2 did that for me.

Super Mario Bros.
I thought i was done with video games consoles after the Atari crash-induced drought, but nintendo with its marvelous console NES and the blast that was Super Mario Bros. opened my eyes and restored my faith.
It has not faded ever since, there has always been niche games for me to clung onto when the trends of high budget titles were abysmally exploitative or creatively poor.

Uncharted 4.

The cinematic charm of this action adventure came at the perfect time. I love the work ND put into this because it respected my passion for why I play video games.

Somewhere in the beginning when you take control and you find yourself in a pretend shoot out in the attic walking through 9 years of history, from that very moment I realize I'm about to play the very best this medium has to offer me. And I gladly excepted.

Uncharted 2.

It was the reason I bought a PS3 in 2010 and got back into gaming after skipping almost the entire PS2 generation.

Dark Souls 1. I've never had such a pure gameplay experience since Max Payne in 2001. Its one of those games where the gameplay is king and truly shines over EVERYTHING in the game. Made me believe and change my mind that Gameplay indeed is superior to story in video games before that i mostly belived that Story can make a game good/bad regardless how shitty the gameplay of it is.

Celeste for me. Perfect gameplay and a really well done story that actually made me give a shit.

GAVE ME HOPE!

Undertale restored my faith in exceptionally well-written game characters.

Bloodborne restored my faith in mystery and lore in action games.

P.T. restored my faith in horror in an everyday setting.

From 2013 when the likes of Journey and The Last of Us blew me away as well as the sheer sense of joy that The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and Super Mario 3D World provided to 2015, I don't think I enjoyed playing games...

Granted, I only had an Xbox One at the time, but it wasn't until late 2015 when I bought my first ever PlayStation console and a certain game called 'Bloodborne' that I felt like my faith in games had been restored.

It took nearly two years of twiddling my thumbs until I felt a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm towards video games again, all thanks to Bloodborne.

Souls games and Bloodborne, so much gameplay freedom here, no handholding bullshit, no moronic tutorial, no objective marker or hints. Everything there is gamepaly. Gameplay, gameplay and gameplay. You have access to all the gameplay mechanics the moment you start the game.

There's no ''you can run in this game but only after the turorial ok?'' or ''you can backstab in this game but only after that first stealth mission, it's locked for now'', everything you can control in this game, you can control from the very beginning.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. It brought me back into gaming when Pokemon Pearl almost made leave it entirely.

Final Fantasy XV for me.

It made me gaming on console again after years of dissapointment in playing game on mobile, i spent so many money and time only for the game being canceled after running for about 3 years. I hope i don't make the same mistake when diablo immortal released :P

I don't know if it's the result of having limited time to play games nowadays but I've never had a problem finding games that continue to affirm my belief in this medium.

That said, I found that Nier Automata prevented me from completely swearing off traditional storytelling in Japanese jrpg or action games because I had pretty much lost all hope in a modern jrpg to be able to tell me a half-decently written story.

Undertale and Celeste existing, Hitman's return (and a sequel even!) and Smash Bros rosters.
Proof that there are people who legitimately care about their craft and the celebration of their and the medium's legacy.

Blade Wolf said:

Souls games and Bloodborne, so much gameplay freedom here, no handholding bullshit, no moronic tutorial, no objective marker or hints. Everything there is gamepaly. Gameplay, gameplay and gameplay. You have access to all the gameplay mechanics the moment you start the game.

There's no ''you can run in this game but only after the turorial ok?'' or ''you can backstab in this game but only after that first stealth mission, it's locked for now'', everything you can control in this game, you can control from the very beginning.

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Yup, and yet it manages to be so subtly curated. Each encounter is specifically designed to challenge you differently, and yet never once do you feel locked into place.

I think it's because the game will encourage you to do things, but never arbitrarily force you to. Enemies play by the same rules you do (well...there were a number of infinite stamina enemies in DS2 that were seriously absurd). It walked that balance between curated and free so well. It's astonishing. Bloodborne did the same thing, a bit more curated in order to tell its tale, and nailed it as well.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations. I have a dizzy memory as to why I liked it so much, but I remember when . It really taught me the meaning of friendship. Got me real bad.

Transistor said:

I was suffering such a gaming drought until Demon's Souls came out and reinvigorated my love of the hobby

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Same here. From a tacky sea of brown-grey mulch -> a minimal, elegant, genuine interactive challenge.

Chettlar said:

Yup, and yet it manages to be so subtly curated. Each encounter is specifically designed to challenge you differently, and yet never once do you feel locked into place.

I think it's because the game will encourage you to do things, but never arbitrarily force you to. Enemies play by the same rules you do (well...there were a number of infinite stamina enemies in DS2 that were seriously absurd). It walked that balance between curated and free so well. It's astonishing. Bloodborne did the same thing, a bit more curated in order to tell its tale, and nailed it as well.

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Absolutely. Souls games are the best example that you do not need constant narration and handholding to keep player's attention on screen.

There're many people who don't like Souls games but there're almost no people who gets bored or distracted while playing it, the game did a fantastic job of letting playing want to pay attention, whether they are enjoying or not.

Demon's Souls, a genuinely new and innovative experience that wasn't afraid to be challenging or even obtuse at parts at a time when games were starting to become more homogenized and less complex for the sake of mass appeal

Blade Wolf said:

Absolutely. Souls games are the best example that you do not need constant narration and handholding to keep player's attention on screen.

There're many people who don't like Souls games but there're almost no people who gets bored or distracted while playing it, the game did a fantastic job of letting playing want to pay attention, whether they are enjoying or not.

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That's a really good point. The game does exactly what it intends to do.

Which actually raises the whole topic of like, how difficulty doesn't just necessarily make things harder. It can change how you feel about the game's narrative, it can engage you more, etc. but that's probably a whole nother conversation.

Mauricio_Magus said:

Bloodborne made me believe again.

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Also twisted metal ps3

And spelunky

Witcher 3's expansions. CDPR proved that even in the modern times some developers can create massive expansions of very high quality and price them fairly, without trying to milk the customers which was sadly becoming the norm by that time.

Chettlar said:

That's a really good point. The game does exactly what it intends to do.

Which actually raises the whole topic of like, how difficulty doesn't just necessarily make things harder. It can change how you feel about the game's narrative, it can engage you more, etc. but that's probably a whole nother conversation.

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Yeah, I would love to have that conversation but we'll be here for hours on end.

Another point I would like to make is that too many AA & AAA developers are trying to mimic the gameplay of Souls but not the game design philosophy. It's a damn shame.

Noogy said:

There are a ton of such instances for me, but the three that stand out are:

DOOM (the original)... I was already super impressed by Catacombs and Wolfenstein, but DOOM introduced me to a type of gameplay experience I could only dream of.

Morrowind... My experience with computer RPGs was pretty limited at the time, and I wasn't a fan of Arena/Daggerfall. But boy did Morrowind suck me in, and the scope just blew my mind.

Demon's Souls... I have to admit I was pretty bored with video games in general when DS launched, but early buzz just sounded to intriguing. When I finally got my hands on it I just couldn't believe that someone was making games like this, and I loved it.

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These 3 all did it for me too .

I'd add Halo 1. Shooting the Banshee out of the Sky right after landing on the ring world was a literal jaw drop moment. Ship and body crashing just in front of me felt like such a massive step forward in world simulation .

Blade Wolf said:

Yeah, I would love to have that conversation but we'll be here for hours on end.

Another point I would like to make is that too many AA & AAA developers are trying to mimic the gameplay of Souls but not the game design philosophy. It's a damn shame.

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Yup. Completely agree. I think we see that a lot in other games too.

"Halo is sci-fi? We have to make sci fi games now!" Which like, sort of worked, but we didn't really get any good Halo-likes out of that.

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are the stuff dreams are made of.

Into the Breach was also one of the more recent examples.

ELEX restored my faith, not just in video games, but in the whole of humanity.

A small one, maybe, but as I've been a bit fatigued with gaming recently I've picked back up with Split Second and I'm loving it. It's really one of the best racers I've played, and importantly (for me) very fun in single-player mode.

If you get a chance, it's on Xbox One BC and it's awesome. It's also on Steam but with a disappointing PC port unfortunately (still enjoyable though).