You just described the original Jak trilogy.
Missile Command is one of the darkest games out there.
Disco Elysium vibes
1982: You are General Custer and trying to rape an American Indian woman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer’s_Revenge
I personally don’t mind games being like they are now so long as the story and gameplay together make the game enjoyable. It’s why I, for the most part, avoid online games.
Also, I don’t know about the antihero part, but the downtrodden hero trying to survive in a dystopian world immediately made me think of Brok The Investigator.
Alternately, videogames now: I have a farm and it’s the nicest farm of them all, and all the chickens have names and are demonstrably happy. Also I moonlight as an interior decorator for all my friends with whom I have deep personal relationships.
Just saying, we may be playing different types of games here.
Also alternative: you must build the factory. The factory/factory/Dyson Sphere must grow. Watch out for hostiles.
To add, a lot of those games have you being an employee of an intergalactic megacorp where it’s clear you’re a cog in the machine.
Alternate videogames:
The demons have taken everything. A rotting carcass fished from the city river signals the beginning of its true downfall. Someone is to blame, whether it be a literal demon, or the ones we call neighbors. This mystery will be my last singular devotion.
But the real challenge is going to be gathering clues inbetween watering my crops, researching new plants to grow, and crafting tools using a system of over 8000 materials.
What did Tom Nook do?
There’s also more games being made now than there ever have been. People have a lot of choices.
The big AAA blockbusters do tend to aim for a different demographic than they did in the 80s, though. Probably largely because so many people who were kids in the 80s and 90s still play games.
I don’t know what people mean by “the big AAA blockbusters” anymore. I mean, the biggest console around is the Switch, the biggest games on Switch are a kart racer and a laid back cozy town sim. This year’s big action game from Nintendo is Zelda but now it’s also Minecraft (or Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, more accurately). Their latest blockbuster is a 2D Mario platformer cashing in on the hype for the billion dollar Mario animated movie by having every level be a musical showstopper. The biggest PS5 “AAA blockbuster” is a Spider-Man game. The big triple-A story this year was everybody shunning Fallout-but-Star-Trek for Dungeons-And-Dragons-But-Everybody-Is-Horny, and both games are huge productions with ridiculous budgets and insane amounts of content.
I don’t know what demographic all that is supposed to be for. Is that one demographic? I don’t think that’s one demographic beyond “humans who like it when they can see the money on their screen while playing their games”.
Or I am a truck driver making delivery across the country, and attending to my island.
We definitely playing different games.
Or I am a truck driver making delivery across the country, and attending to my island.
We definitely playing different games.
We always had these on PC. The joke stands and stands alone when regarding console.
I am a geometry and I dash
The last game I played had me building a self-sufficient factory so large that I had to heavily dip into the logistics tech tree to navigate it.
The constant pollution does sort of upset the neighbors.
is it satisfactory lol
Factorio, but I also play Satisfactory from time to time.
We finally got The Dark Fog in Dyson Sphere Program! It’s absolutely a blast as well. I dunno if you travel to other planets/ systems in Satisfactory, but DSP is kinda like a 3D Factorio with Space Exploration installed. Not quite as complex though, cause the DSP devs didn’t make you rely on random chance. When Nilaus says “I’m calling this done, because it will be eventually,” you did something terribly wrong.
I found that the late game in DSP tends to center around hydrogen logistics, and it drags the whole thing down. They’re still considered early access, though, and could fix this.
I think the dark swarm drops hydrogen. They can be farmed for all sorts of stuff once they are a high enough level.
I want to love Factorio but all the drama surrounding its creator have really put me off.
Not a single sale in its entire lifespan but somehow being okay with doubling the price nearly a decade after release?
Defending statutory rape?
Idk man, maybe I’ll pirate it or something.
Yeah, I got it a while back, and figure I might as well play it since I have it.
I’ve been on a 2d kick lately. Factorio, Rimworld,Stardew, Mindistry, etc. I even replayed Bastion last year.
I love Rimworld, I’m thinking of trying out Dwarf Fortress but it looks so daunting.
And yeah man, after being obsessed with Hades I decided to check out all their games. Loved Bastion and am playing Pyre rn.
The steam version of Dwarf Fortress is relatively accessible. You don’t need to interact with all of the systems right away.
Also Pyre is great. Very underrated.
Note that DF’s Steam version lets you destroy stairs in a way that makes them impossible to rebuild, so be careful with stairs.
I haven’t run into that problem, but it sounds stairable. Would have me in hystairics.
Factorio would be a bargain at $100. I’m not aware of the statutory rape bit, though.
Defending statutory rape?
Kovarex seems to be the only problematic one, and considering factorio is developed by a lot more people, it seems its mostly just one bad apple, but that apple is one of the owners and lead devs so
Also alternatively: I am a dead sexy treasure hunter, and I go on adventures with my dead sexy girlfriend/wife where we climb over pretty ruins and find lost cities.
We’ve been doing that one since before there were videogames. Dead sexy treasure hunters have been a thing for so long the dead sexy treasure hunter we’re all thinking of was a retro callback in 1981 already.
There was sex and violence in 1980s games too!
“In 2087, generations after the devastation of a global nuclear war in 1998, a remnant force of the United States Army called the Desert Rangers operates in the Southwestern United States, acting as peacekeepers to protect fellow survivors and their descendants. A team of Desert Rangers is assigned to investigate a series of disturbances in nearby areas. Throughout the game, the rangers explore the remaining enclaves of human civilization, including a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas.”
“Splatterhouse is an arcade-style sidescrolling beat 'em up with platform elements[2] in which the player controls Rick, a parapsychology college major who is trapped inside West Mansion. After his resurrection by the Terror Mask, Rick makes his way through the mansion, fighting off hordes of creatures in a vain attempt to save his girlfriend Jennifer from a grisly fate.”
“The games follow Larry Laffer, a balding, double entendre-speaking, leisure suit-wearing man in his 40s. The stories generally revolve around his attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to seduce attractive young women.”
The shadow president needs you to kill the presidential candidate so he doesn’t impose a 1% income tax on the rich.
The last game I played gave me the option to remove the vocal chords of tens of thousands of people because they annoyed someone I’d just met. That was not a “bad guy” choice.
Made me laugh quite a lot.
Rogue Trader?
Yes lol. The humor in that game is dark AF and im here for it.
I was thinking about buying it. Is it worth the money? a lot of steam reviews mention bugs
Idk if you’re familiar with Owlcat, but it is a very typical Owlcat game. Shitloads of bugs, but a great core.
If you’re on the fence, give it 6 months or so for them to clean it up.
If you like 40k at all, I consider it a must-buy. If you like crunchy CRPGs, I’d also consider it a must-buy. In both cases, if you’re not a big-time Owlcat fan who finds some of the bugs funny, I’d advise waiting around 6 months.
Big 40K fan, only really got into crpgs with Baldurs Gate 3, so I’ll probably wait around. Although FOMO does have one eyeing that bonus if you buy before January 31.
Never played an Owlcat game, tho i did hear that they stuck around to iron out bugs in Pathfinder, so one can probably expect the same from Rogue Trader
Dont buy it, pirate it. Russians dont deserve any money going to their war right now.
Owlcat is a company located in Cyprus. They aren’t Russian.
Owlcat Games is a team of developers united by a love of RPGs. From our beginnings as a small group of games industry veterans obsessed with the idea of making our dream games a reality, we have grown into a truly international company, with our headquarters and development in Cyprus and more than 450 employees spread across offices in various countries. We are continuing to expand and take on new hires from around the world, and we also get together every week to play tabletop games in the office and on Roll20 online.
The saving grace for Owlcat to me, given their releases, is that they put a lot of effort into fixing issues, responding to player feedback, etc.
They’re a small company, and they often bite off more than they can chew, but they really make the effort.
This is one of the reasons why I’m mostly a retro gamer.
Retro games rock. I’ve been playimg a lot of retro and retro-themed indie games lately.
I’m also old. I grew up with an Atari 2600 and then an NES, plus an Apple II at my parents’ house and a C-64 at my grandparents’ house. When I want to play a game for comforting fun, those are the games I most often turn to because they take me back to a simpler time in my life while being generally simpler themselves. And sure, there were some games for those systems that were complex and dark, like some Infocom games and Wasteland, which I thoroughly enjoyed and even enjoyed the modern sequels to… but honestly, I’d rather play Snake Byte on an Apple II emulator most of the time.
Unless you want a phone game, there are so few games out there now that you can just pick up and play for five minutes and then do something else. Most of them are indie edge cases (which admittedly can be good games sometimes) or quickly made web games that pretty much suck. Everything has a complex storyline. They’re not games to me as much as interactive movies sometimes. And that’s fine when I have a couple of hours to devote my time to it, but not all that fine when I want a slight distraction while watching a YouTube video on the other monitor.
I swear, they’d give Tetris cut scenes if it existed today.
Out of curiosity, what’s you’re favorite Atari 2600 game?
I have the console in my retro collection, but I haven’t hooked it up in ages.
Ooh. That is a really good question.
I’m going to give a weird answer. Boxing. I’m not even a fan of real boxing. Something about it just tickles me.
I loved that one as a kid!
I also really liked some game (whose name I can’t remember) where you’re both cowboys and trying to shoot each other through a moving barrier in the middle.
Oh man, I know the game you’re talking about, but I just can’t think of it.
SNES was my favorite console because it was technically primitive enough the devs had to design around it’s limitations, but advanced enough that the gameplay itself could still be complex.
Hundreds of SNES games still look good and play well. With PSX/N64 generation onwards, the drive to make things look “better” resulted in visuals aging horribly.
Link to the Past still looks and plays great. Ocarina of Time (while a great game) looks like crap.
The SNES is an amazing console, I actually had a dream last night about discovering a long lost secret level in super mario world. In the dream it turned out that the level in the final area that has a secret ending creating a path directly to bowser (bipassing the castle level) actually had a second secret ending leading to an entierly new short path ending in a ghost house.
Totally agreed. SNES hit that sweet spot of being the pinnacle of 2D consoles right before the awkward years of early 3D.
Dusk: You woke up hanging on meat hooks. Kill
Amid Evil: Evil has conquered the realms. Kill.
Cultic: You woke up in a pile of dead bodies while investigating a missing persons case. Kill.
Ion Fury: An asshole mad scientist made you spill your drink. Kill.
Turbo Overkill: Stop an AI bent of godhood. Kill.
System Shock: Also stop an AI bent of godhood. Kill.
Marathon: The AI bent of godhood is using you, but you both don’t like the alien slavers invading your spaceship. Kill.
Prodeus: IDK. Red Demons vs Blue Demons vs You. Kill
Mark my words, Ashen-one. You shall remain among the accursed
Also video games now: You’re a robot and all you know is blood is fuel and hell is full, therefore you need to kill everything you see that can bleed
You have crashed your spaceship in a drunken stupor. You should do genocide about it until you can build a new one.
Bethesda games: you are a prisoner about yo be executed
Imsims: you wake up in the medical deck
You weren’t about to be executed in Morrowind. You were a prisoner, but you get released almost immediately. Of course Bethesda promptly forgot how to create a good game as soon as they released Morrowind.
Souls-likes: you wake up in a jail cell
“Ah! Dead body!”
I guess if the only game in the 80’s you played was Mario Bros and not Pacman…
