Summary
There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason as to why I choose to play a game. Generally, if I like the look of it, I’ll give it a go. I have genres I prefer,mostly JRPGs, really, but I’ll give most things a go if they catch my eye.
However, there are some games I put off for a while, usually because I’ve just not clicked with them or they didn’t grab my attention initially. Time passes. Then, something happens. I look at them in a new light, and think, why the heck not? These are some great games I very nearly didn’t give the time of day, but I’m now glad that I did.
I first saw Little Nightmares when someone was streaming it, but I didn’t try it out for myself until a long while after. The sneaking around and chase sequences didnotappeal to my sensitive sensibilities. But still, there was something about Little Nightmares that stuck with me. The image of the tiny child in a yellow coat was burned into my brain.
I eventually grabbed the game on sale and played through it all within a couple of evenings. The adrenaline of being chased by grotesque creatures with long arms propelled me to keep going, despite normally beingveryeasily scared. I probably won’t play Little Nightmares again any time soon, but it was an experience I ended up loving all the same.
I don’t normally play visual novels - I prefer reading a physical book or playing something that has more… actual game. However, Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo is a nice bridge between the two. Its eerie art style caught my eye first, but I wasn’t completely sold untilI saw all the glowing reviews. And they were all right.
Unravelling the titular mysteries in Paranormasight kept me glued to my Switch screen, and the innovative timeline mechanic, where you’re able to rewind and see all the different outcomes of the available choices, just sucked me in even more. Even if you’re not normally into visual novels, Paranormasight is a must-play.
Metaphor: ReFantazio scared me. Not because it’s actuallyscaryor anything, but because it uses the same formula as the Persona games - aka, you’re ona day-to-day time limit. I absolutely despite time limits in games; they’re almost always unnecessary and stress me out for no good reason.
But, yet again, the reviews for Metaphor were coming in hot and high. The concept ofa tournament for the throneintrigued me, and long JRPGs are my jam. Could I get past the calendar mechanic? It turns out, yes, I could, and Metaphor: ReFantazio easily earned its place among my favourite games of all time.
Fextralife Wiki
Hollow Knight is a difficult game. Need I say more? That’s what put me off from trying it out for myself, despite watching numerous streams and videos on it beforehand. When I finally took the plunge, it was challenging, that was still true, but it was also a completely fresh gaming experience.
Regardless of the number of tries it took me to defeat the bosses (we don’t need to talk about the Traitor Lord), the world was beautiful, from the environmental design to the soundtrack. I still remember the feeling I had the first time I heard the music in the City of Tears, with the rain falling down on the windows.
The first Xenoblade Chronicles game is a long, character-focused JRPG, why wouldn’t I like it? I think thatnow, but when I was considering playing it, I wasn’t completely sold on it being more on the sci-fi side of things, as I much prefer my JRPGs to be more fantasy.
The game’s opening, focusing on the Bionis and the Mechonis, and the attack of the Mechon, pulled me in further, but I wasn’t fully invested until I spent some time playing as Shulk and meeting more of the party. By the end of the game, not only did I love Xenoblade Chronicles, but I learned that maybe I like sci-fi a little more than I thought, too.
I’d seen and heard aboutthe Ace Attorney gamesfor years, and I never really gave them a second thought. Sure, they seemed fun, but I’d never felt like I needed to try them out for myself. I was content with seeing Phoenix being used as a reaction meme now and again.
Then, my partner suggested we should play through them together. I thought it would be a fun enough way to spend a few evenings, more fun to play together, but I didn’t expect to be so invested in how the cases would turn out and to love main characters so much. My cat is even called Maya now!
I do not do well with horror - games or movies, I’m probably not going to touch it by my own volition. My partner, however, loves horror. So you can guess why I tried out Resident Evil 4 Remake. We initially tried out the original RE4, before the remake was but a twinkle in our eyes, but, to put it bluntly, we were terrible at it.
With that experience still in my mind, I was a little hesitant to get the Resident Evil 4 Remake on launch. But it looked great. And I love Leon as a character. So we ended up getting it, and while I still panicked alotwhen any zombie so much as looked in my direction, I had a great time with it.
There’s a lot of discourse surrounding whether you should play the non-numbered Kingdom Hearts games or not. When I was first going through the series, the most prominent opinion I saw was that Chain of Memories was bad, the card system was too difficult to understand, and you should skip it. However, I am stubborn.
I’d bought thefullKingdom Hearts package. I was going to get my money’s worth out of it. So I played Re:Chain of Memories. And you know what? I loved it. The story was great,mistranslation issues aside, and, as it turns out, I loved the card mechanic. It requires thinking and strategy, a lot more so than the button-mashing gameplay of 1, 2, and 3, but it’s nowhere near as difficult or confusing as some make it out to be. If you skipped CoM because of its reputation, I urge you to give it a chance too.
I have zero sense of rhythm. I can’t dance in real life, and I can’t do well at rhythm games either. I’d heard Hi-Fi Rush was great, and I loved the look of its art style and the adorable cat robot character, but the rhythm-based combat was a big hurdle I couldn’t see myself jumping over.
I don’t have an Xbox, and it took about a year for Hi-Fi Rush to come to PS5, so I had a while to muse whether I should try it out or not. I decided to take the plunge, though (mostly because the PS5 has, you guessed it, not many other games) and yes, the rhythm-based gameplay was a struggle. But I got the hang of it a little bit, enough to beat the bosses at least, and it was one of the best games I played last year.
I was very late to the Zelda series - Breath of the Wild was my first game, and then I played Ocarina of Time, followed by Phantom Hourglass. Breath of the Wild is still one of my favorite games and I loved Ocarina of Time. Phantom Hourglass? Not so much.
With Phantom Hourglass being the main DS Zelda entry, and A Link Between Worlds being the 3DS one, I was apprehensive, to say the least. However, I’d heard a lot more great things about A Link Between Worlds than I had about Phantom Hourglass. I pushed past my hatred for Phantom Hourglass and its stupid Temple of the Ocean King, and A Link Between Worlds shot up among my favourite Zelda games.
