m76

I'm not a fan of dragging things out to the bitter end. Games that are only loosely connected to each other can last a long time, like GTA or Assassin's Creed, but otherwise I don't think doing more than one or two sequels is wise.

Doom
It is impossible to imagine the modern gaming landscape without Doom. The game popularized the first person shooter genre, greatly expanding upon the blueprint that was set with id's previous Hovertank 3D, Catacomb 3D, Wolfenstein 3D and Spear Of Destiny games. It also was the first FPS that truly invented multiplayer modes such as deathmatch and team deathmatch. Its importance cannot be understated. Without Doom a few of the other games on this list would not exist. Most importantly, Doom was also a game to popularize modding as people eventually got to work on modding the game, a practice that nowadays is commonplace.
Quake
Up until Quake, most shooters relied on 2.5D engines that used tricks to simulate a 3D environment, and often relied on 2D sprites for objects in the game world (the exception being games like Blood and Shadow Warrior which used voxels to simulate 3D objects). Quake brought the FPS genre firmly into true 3D with fully 3D environments and objects. Its codebase was used for a ton of other games, and parts of it is even used in games we play today. Like Doom before it, Quake also became a popular platform for modding and creating custom content. Team Fortress started out as a Quake mod as the most popular example.
Half-Life
Half-Life wasn't groundbreaking in its story or gameplay. In fact, it wasn't much more than a rethread of Doom and Quake. Rather, it was groundbreaking in the way it told its story. Unlike previous games that would present the story in cutscenes or, in the case of Doom and Quake, barely have any story at all, it presented the story through the eyes of its protagonist. Half-Life never left the perspective of Gordon Freeman. Every second of the game was experienced through him with the events unfolding around you as you played. This way of storytelling went on to become the norm in FPS's and its reliance on scripted events became the basis for stuff like Call Of Duty and Battlefield. Half-Life also presented a seamless narrative in that levels were interconnected, making you feel like you were exploring a larger world and not just single levels. While still fairly linear, this approach gave the game some scope similar to games like Super Metroid.
Deus Ex
Games like Thief, System Shock and System Shock 2 were critical darlings but never really mainstream hits. Warren Spector definitely changed this trend with Deus Ex, a cyberpunk amalgamation of his previous ideas. Deus Ex was like nothing before it. It mixed the RPG elements and environmental storytelling of System Shock with a fairly epic cyberpunk story that blended real life conspiracies with a fictional near future. The most groundbreaking idea in Deus Ex however was consequences. Everything you did in Deus Ex had a consequence later on, affecting how people reacted to you and how missions played out. It also featured entirely open ended gameplay, giving the player tools to tackle missions how they saw fit. It was a huge hit, becoming Game of the Year when it released. To this day it remains a favourite among gamers.
Command & Conquer
The RTS genre undoubtedly reached its peak in the 90's with the release of Command & Conquer, a strategy game taking place in a near future where united nations ally against the Brotherhood of NOD, both aiming to seize control over a new alien resource, Tiberium. C&C featured some extremely high polish for its time, telling its story through FMV's that utilized real actors and featuring some of the best music of the decade. The modern combat setting undoubtedly went on to influence a lot of other games such as the Call of Duty Modern Warfare series.
System Shock
While not any mainstream success, System Shock was so ahead of its time that playing it nowadays feels almost anachronistic. It was undoubtedly one of the first FPS's that utilized environmental storytelling, telling its story through terminals and videos you'd find exploring the environment. It also was more of a survival horror game, before Resident Evil was even a thing, in that resources were sparse and you're often outnumbered and facing a terrifying enemy.
Space Invaders
A simple concept, you move from left to right, taking cover and shooting badguys. Even today most shooters still rely on concepts that Space Invaders invented. Its gameplay also inspired games like Galaga and had numerous arcade clones in the 80's. Easily one of the most groundbreaking arcade games of the space age.
Legend Of Zelda
A lot of modern games would probably not exist without Zelda. While it did not exactly invent the idea of exploring an open world (games like Adventure on Atari 2600 and several DND games on PC more or less did that years before it), it did help bring that open ended gameplay to the mainstream in a bigger way and popularized it. It's not so much fun to play today without a guide, with all the cryptic shit going on but it's needless to say it was an important game.

To me, grinding can only be fun if the gameplay itself is rewarding. Take dark souls for example, farming souls and titanite chunks from those giants in Anor Londo presents an interesting challenge each time you do it, which keeps it interesting. Mindlessly clicking things over and over with 0 risk of dying is the absolute worst thing a game can do.

I guess it's good for paralyzed people who have no other way of interacting with a game. But I don't think it would be much fun for general audiences.

Make the rules clear
Since games aren't full on reality simulators, the player can't know what can and can't be done in the game, unless the game makes it clear Feedback
Always tell the player in no uncertain terms when they did something right, if you don't give the player proper feedback they might flipflop between methods despite already finding the good one but they moved on due to lack of clear feedback Don't change the rules
The rules of solving the same type of puzzle should stay the same throughout the entire game Allow all possible logical solutions
If an environment based puzzle can have multiple solutions to it, be sure to accept all possible solutions as valid
there were times when I got stuck in games because I found an alternate solution to a puzzle, but the designer had a specific one in mind Don't make the player remember clues
This is more of a convenience rule, but I hate it when games force the player to remember things, what if I didn't play the game for a week between finding one of the clues and trying to solve a puzzle?

Outriders is just as bad a game as avengers imo. They should stick to things they do right, like Tomb Raider and DeusEx, just don't turn those into multiplayer abominations. Of course you can't continuously monetize a single player game, unless you put in real work.

If there are no witnesses it's inadmissable either way. This seems like an attempt at misdirection. Whoever is behind this is either really stupid or has other motives.

I loved this game, the hacks at machinegames actually stole every good idea they put in wolfenstein the new order from this game. Some of the peps at machinegames used to work at Starbreeze studio that developed this game.
It was actually a very faithful adaptation, it is a prequel to Pitch Black telling the story of how riddick got his eyes and how he escaped from the most secure prison ever.

The EU is just a bunch of bureaucrats playing at running the world, they have no real power. It's a sunday club for EU politicians, where they get together and frown at each other. No real change comes from the EU. Every member state has it's own separate systems for everything. Regardless of that there are good things that come out of the EU, like free trade. Getting cut off from that will be a blow to the UK economy. I used to order a lot of stuff from the UK personally. But if I have to pay taxes and customs from now on I'll simply take my money elsewhere. Same goes for travel. Rolling obstacles in front of that (beyond that of the obvious) can only negatively affect tourism for the UK.

I'd do anything to save a beloved character as long as it does not involve the deaths of hapless innocents.
But games rarely give you this choice. The only case I can think of is in Splinter Cell Double Agent, where saving a character is only possible by letting a terrorist attack go through unimpeded.

Of course I'm not saying that they should not be allowed to do it. They can do whatever they wish, just don't paint me as the bad guy if I say I'm not buying that product then.
The political agendas in games are almost always related to daily US politics. Since I'm not from the united states I have no stake in it. I don't want neo-liberal, nor alt-right agendas pushed in my entertainment. It's not my fault that 99.9% of the time the agenda falls on the regressive liberal side. If they were pushing conservative agendas I'd be equally upset about it.  There should be no your politics or my politics in games to begin with. The only politics in games should be the politics of the fictional universe it is set in. If they can fit real world political themes into the fictional universe seamlessly that's all and good. But putting up BLM banners in the game's menu is not. If the developers were putting up pro life or pro-religion banners that would bother me equally.
But that's exactly the problem. Attempting social or political commentary that does not fit within the game's theme is what antagonizes people. Including me.
They know most gamers are not interested in that agenda, yet they push it anyway. They also disregard that a game is a worldwide platform, so the majority of their audience has absolutely no interest in it.

When using a video game to push a real world political agenda like Fortnite did, it has no place because 1) most of the people who play these games typically use them to get away from stuff like this 2) Videogames are supposed to be fun and there's nothing fun about a political agenda-driven that's imposing its beliefs on its players. 3) It isn't part of the story or theme of the game and when you just suddenly start pushing it, it becomes bothersome. This is the mistake that Battlefield 5 made and it flopped horrendously. Videogames were based on creativity at least back in the days but most modern videogames lack exactly that - Having said that, I do support "creative" freedom over politics.

Had they spent half of that cash to fund development of new IPs or their existing IPs like unreal, they'd have actually won loyal customers Instead of those who just go for the free games.

I don't think gaming is a particularly expensive hobby. I have many other hobbies and I can safely say all of them are more expensive than gaming.

It's more keep escapism in games. I don't want to see dreary average or ugly characters in games. I see enough average people in real life thank you very much.
They can make all characters as ugly as they want, if that's the way they want to exercise their creative freedom. I'm not encroaching on their right to make games with ugly people. But don't call me names, when I refuse to buy such products. And especially don't suggest that I just want to whack off on games.  I can appreciate beautiful people without wanting to put my manpart in them.  I prefer good looking men over ugly men as well, despite not being sexually interested in them. Or trans people or gay characters. But you and I both know very well that many of these game designers do it just to spite the fans. And then go on to call them toxic manbabies on twitter when they complain about making characters dreary and bland.
You are going for the hyperbole. There is a huge difference between making Asari faces look completely average and unremarkable against lore, and bikini armor.
 
It is obvious when it is political and when it isn't. That's the difference between say The Last of Us II which wants to accurately represent people after a zombie apocalypse. And Mortal Kombat 11, that is a completely nonsensical fantasy to begin with, but suddenly they are concerned with how much skin fighters show, but for some reason they only cover up female fighters and not male ones. Yeah, right, I don't buy the realism and practicality excuse they given for one second. I believe that is 100% percent a political decision in line with 3rd wave feminism that ironically hates attractive females and the men who show them attention.
Just because some people who speak about de-politicizing games do it for wrong reasons doesn't mean the issue doesn't exist. It pisses me off too, when people claim the Last of Us 2 is political. Representation alone is not political.  The whole game is built around ambiguity and some people cannot see that even when it dances on their nose.
 
Everybody wants fleshed out and comlpex characters, you are not alone in that. It's very presumptuous to assume others just want bikini armor and no personality.
in the end video games are an outlet to do things we would not do in real life. And some devs are trying to deprive us from doing just that. Because they assume they are better than us and want to teach us a moral lesson. But our morals are all and well, we know the difference between a game that in unreal and the real world which is real. Having female characters in a fantasy fighting game show skin doesn't make me respect women in the real world any less.

Probably not what you were expecting, but I always thought Cyberia was a very atmospheric game, mainly thanks to the excellent BGM and sound design.
Also L.A. Noire
And Alien Isolation
 

All the time, I love to find off limits places. Like in GTA3 the intro cinematic takes place in a city block that is part of the main gamee map just detached from it.
On another note, I just recently discovered a ton of secret places in the countyside map of Mafia, the original game. As someone ported the whole map into BeamNg, and with no limitations or boundaries present you can go anywhere on the map, and surprisingly there are several setpieces on the countryside map that are probably part of cutscenes from the game.

Bioshock Infinite comes to mind first. The baptism scene was especially painful to endure. But also there are other places where the game doesn't just force you to do something, it will even force you to look at a certain direction.
Or FarCry5, might be an open world game, but in terms of storytelling and progression it's as set in stone and linear as can be. You can see what's coming from a 1000 miles in it multiple times, yet there is nothing you can do to avoid it.
I was also annoyed with skyrim when you need to complete the whole shout ritual, I always wished there was an option to just reject the teachings.
But of course the worst kind are forced failures, where the game will make the player work for a goal only to yank it out of your grasp, with no chance of redemption, that's by far the most frustrating thing a game can do. For example Cyberpunk 2077 is guilty of this on multiple levels: (Spoilers bellow)
 
you are betrayed and shot by dexter deshawn, and the game doesn't even let you take revenge, and at the end you are left with a big nothing sandwitch the whole game is about survival, but you are still going to die in some way no matter which ending you chose.
 

First time playing Legend of Kyrandia on PC, coming from the C64 the color palette seemed amazing, and the hand painted backgrounds were so beautiful. I never actually finished the game because I did not understand the text, but the graphics was enough to be in awe. Playing Need For Speed for the first time. It was the first racing game that had convincing enough graphics to actually feel real instead of just a "dumb" game. Not playing a game, but the actual anticipation of the release of Red Alert with some of my friends. We were enthralled by the C&C franchise. When I found the secret MJ12 base under hell's kitchen in DeusEx, and it was just the tip of the iceberg. Playing Star Trek Voyager Elite force truly was magical, the whole game felt like you were starring in your own personal episode of the TV show. Max Payne 2, it was the first time a videogame made me actually care about fictional characters The highpoint of the GTA franchise to me was Vice City, just having fun and listening to flash fm or wave. Mass Effect after you leave the citadel and get command of the Normandy and realize you can go to any planet you want. It was the first time I felt true freedom in a game Getting lost in the world of Oblivion, it felt so huge and so many interesting places to explore. When I realized there is a huge underground city in Skyrim Beyond Two Souls is still the most intimate experience I had with a videogame, where I felt responsible for the main character. It's a real emotional roller coaster. Playing Train Simulator during the holiday season in 2013, I don't know why but it felt magical, I particularly remember one scenario taking the baldwin centipede through the horseshoe curve supposedly on christmas eve.

On my first play through of games I always tend to miss a lot of content, because I go for full immersion. I do what makes sense in terms of the story. But if the game is good enough I'll start it again and do a more comprehensive run.
When a game tries to force you to do something I always go out of my way to not do it. That's where bad game design will reveal itself. Because if the game is not prepared for the player going their own way I count that as bad design.

I'm a fan of ridiculous solutions, especially in open world action games. Like approaching places from directions that were never intended, or defeating higher level enemies by ludicrous ai exploits. I don't know why is it fun, when normally I always prefer realism in games.

System Shock 2
DeusEx
Mass Effect 1
Max Payne
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Portal
I don't think I've ever seen anyone outright hating these games.

Same thing I always do - why on Earth is a game trying to lead me down some generic path? It's especially more noticeable in modern games - games are supposed to be for the game to play in any manner they want.

On my first play through of games I always tend to miss a lot of content, because I go for full immersion. I do what makes sense in terms of the story. But if the game is good enough I'll start it again and do a more comprehensive run.
When a game tries to force you to do something I always go out of my way to not do it. That's where bad game design will reveal itself. Because if the game is not prepared for the player going their own way I count that as bad design.

it definitely has spoilers.