What games do you LOVE in genres/subgenres you don't?

[Bobinator]

So, not everybody likes every genre. And even if you DO like a genre, there's going to be certain subsets of the genre you won't necessarily dig. But every so often, there are games that are so good that they manage to be pretty great even if they're not something you'd usually play. Now, don't take this as an opportunity to complain about genres and subgenres you don't like, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm asking for games that ARE are a part of them that you love anyway. Games that make you say, "Why couldn't other games be more like you?"

For me, here's a few.

JRPGS - Earthbound - I don't really get along with JRPGs for a bunch of reasons. There's a few I actually do like, but Earthbound is the most "traditional" of the ones I like the most. The unique setting and goofy dialogue is part of the draw, sure, but when you get past that, the game just cuts out so much of the tedious filler I tend to associate with the genre. There's so many little quality of life improvements over other games of the time that I have to wonder if Nintendo must have patented most of them since so few games tend to use them. Mother 3's pretty excellent as well, for the same reasons.

Diablo clones - Victor Vran - It's really the combat that makes this for me. There's a lot more emphasis on skill, as opposed to how big your numbers are. Sure, there's still a fair bit of growing up your numbers, but the way each weapon functions so differently and the way you have to constantly be ready to dodge attacks really holds my interest.

Metroidvanias - Guacamelee - I got inspired to make this thread because I've been playing Guacamelee 2 right now, and I love it just as much as the first game. I'm not sure if it's the frantic, Smash Brothers-esque combat or the level design I really love more. I tend to feel most examples of the genre are mostly just a bunch of static platforms hanging in big, empty rooms, but not here -- there's all kinds of difficult platforming challenges that never manage to get TOO frustrating. The new powers are fun to use, and the backtracking is kept to a minimum.

Open world shooters - Sleeping Dogs - It's honestly kind of a toss-up between this and Saint's Row the Third, but to honor the loss of its developer, I'm going to officially place this one. There's pretty much a minimum of cruft here to hold you back from getting through this game's gritty plotline, and what IS there is always generally solid. The combat, while hardly original. is snappy and appropriately brutal, the gunplay's solid, and the driving's excited. There's what feels like a minimum of the typical open-world tedium of "make all the diamonds on the map go away"... it's there, sure, but it hardly feels like it's ever as necessary to enjoy the game.

[X-pert74]

Fighting games - Super Smash Bros. is the one big exception for me. I generally can't stand fighting games, but I loooooooove Super Smash Bros. I think the fact that it plays more like a competitive action-platformer, rather than a traditional fighting game with long combos and special move inputs to memorize, helps make it more accessible for me.

Racing games - Mario Kart 64. I'm more open to racing games than I am fighting games, but it's just not a genre I particularly am that into, overall. I do really like Mario Kart 64 though; nostalgia might play a part in that, but I still generally find it fun to revisit. I especially love its battle mode, as well as all the cool hidden shortcuts that are hidden in its stages.

[ommadawnyawn2]

FPS - Strife, System Shock 2
Survival Horror - I guess SH2 but it could use a control update. Only played a few others.

Fighting - Soul Blade & Calibur 1. For me the characters, music and flashy special attacks are important. But I still get bored after a while with seemingly any game, haven't really followed this genre since the PS2 era. 

Adventure - Loom, most of Day of the Tentacle, King's Quest 3 fan remake

JRPG - Mother 3, FF5, FF7, CT. I generally have a problem with how time consuming they are, how much of the time is spent on boring combat, and the lack of interactivity when it comes to dialogue/affecting the story and various objects in the environment. 

MMORPG - Pass for now
Life Sim - Pass for now

Roguelike - ​Torneko no Daiboken, Shiren the Wanderer and Roguelight are all decent but would need various changes for me to love them.

Tower Defense - Pass for now
Dating Sim - Pass for now
Cinematic Platformer - Limbo, Flashback
Eroge - Pass for good? lol
Stealth - Need to play a few more games
3D Platformer - Pass for now, closest would be Dark Forces 2 so far. 
Diablo-likes - Diablo 1 so far. I think there's too much bloat in this genre but I've only played a few. 

[Bumpyroad]

Not a dedicated sports games fan, but at some point i've been really enjoying Pro Evolution Soccer & Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games.

[lurker]

This topic seems familiar.

Aug 22, 2018 6:11:41 GMT -5 X-pert74 said:

Racing games - Mario Kart 64. I'm more open to racing games than I am fighting games, but it's just not a genre I particularly am that into, overall. I do really like Mario Kart 64 though; nostalgia might play a part in that, but I still generally find it fun to revisit. I especially love its battle mode, as well as all the cool hidden shortcuts that are hidden in its stages.

Kart racing games are the only ones I can really get into in the genre, outside of some sci-fi racers.  Would love if there was an HD port or remake of the Disney World kart game.  So many rides that they could base courses around that have been and gone since the original was released.

[Snake]

Randomized Dungeon Crawlers - Other Life Azure Dreams.  
There is enough charm here to keep me interested; plus the setting backdrop is unique enough. 

Real-time Strategy - Command & Conquer
I normally don't have the patience to learn the intricacies of games like Starcraft and Warcraft.  But Command & Conquer was well-paced and simple enough for me to follow. Loved the cheesy acting too.

Sports - NBA Jam.  Prince of Tennis:Smash Hit!2
Realistic, roster-intensive sports games are not my forte.  NBA Jam and Prince of Tennis are straight-forward, easy to pick-up, and packed with arcade pace action. Prince of Tennis particularly captures a lot of the essence of the manga/anime.  

Puzzle - Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Puzzle Bobble 2.
I usually prefer to spend time on games that have an ending, or a point.  Lots of colorful character in both these games, and fantastic music.  

3-D platformer - Super Mario 64, Brave Fencer Musashiden
You know, now that I listed them, I'm not sure I even "love" these games.  They are more like games I am willing to replay.  The action RPG elements of Brave Fencer keep it interesting enough.  

2-D Prince of Persia style maze platformers - Nosferatu, Out of this World
I love them because they are beautifully conceptualized and put-together.  Nosferatu is just gorgeous, horrific design and animation.  Just great mood and atmosphere.  While Out of this World is generally frustrating because you will constantly die, I like how imaginative it is in terms of putting you in an alien world.  There are no words needed for what plays out, yet it feels immersive.  




 

[Ike]

Blades of Steel is the only sports game I will play with some enthusiasm, but I wouldn't say I love it.

Witcher 3 is a beautiful WRPG, if people still use that term anymore.

I'm generally not a fan of huge open world games (like most WRPGs) but I enjoyed BotW quite a bit. I don't enjoy GTA-style games, but I did like Bully a lot when it came out. Can't say how I'd feel about it now.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

Monkey Island is probably the only point-and-click adventure (that isn't made for kids) that I ever enjoyed. There's probably a few others that I'd enjoy that are accessible, but so far, this is the only one I had the patience to play for more than an hour. It still has some absolute bullshit puzzles, but it's a relatively smooth ride.

Aug 22, 2018 6:11:41 GMT -5 X-pert74 said:

Fighting games - Super Smash Bros. is the one big exception for me. I generally can't stand fighting games, but I loooooooove Super Smash Bros. I think the fact that it plays more like a competitive action-platformer, rather than a traditional fighting game with long combos and special move inputs to memorize, helps make it more accessible for me.

This exactly. It's pretty much not even the same genre anymore.

Smash really spoils you if that's what you grow up with. You can feasibly play as each character in the roster, and each attack has its own, stand-alone purpose instead of being part of a combo. It's hard to go back to convoluted inputs and games where it takes long to even play one character after that.

I will say that there's one fighting game I've been playing recently that gets it right. BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. Inputs are easy to do (just quarter-circle forward and back), making it pretty easy to play each character, and there's only two main attack buttons, one stronger, special attack button, and two buttons to switch characters. It's easy to learn, but there's enough room for growth. Which IMO, is a way more fun way to design a game than the way 2D fighters are typically done. Hopefully there will be more games like this in the future.

[ResidentTsundere]

Racing games: Burnout and Project Gotham Racing.

[edmonddantes]

RTS - Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (both original and Battle.net editions) - Its weird, I actually find most RTS games I've played wind up getting either stupidly boring or else pretty overwhelming in no time flat, but somehow, Warcraft II is actually one of my favorite games of all time.

It really shouldn't be, either. Its a very flawed game--for the most part you can win any battle just by mass-producing knights and sending them in willy-nilly before the comp gets much chance to do crap (due to my internet situation I don't get much opportunity to play online, where I understand this wouldn't work)--but I think what helps make it work for me is that it is simplistic and yet has charm and character, a serious story but with a self-aware level of camp. I love the units banter, in other words. Especially the orcs. They're adorable.

Ironically its follow-up, Starcraft, is an example of an RTS I tend to find fits into the "too much going on at once" category. I know that on an "objective" level Starcraft is the deeper, more strategic experience, but I find Warcraft II actually far more fun to just sit down and play, and that owes in part to that I know what my options are and what all the abilities do whereas in Starcraft, I don't, and I never felt like I had enough opportunity to learn about the millions of different unit variations and abilities you can research.  People who are familiar with my opinions on RPGs will probably see some overlap here--I tend to dislike extensive experimentation and prefer things where I get the idea just at a glance.

(I also actually really like Warcraft I, the only problem being its dated controls)

Some stuff I'm not sure fits this discussion

Okay, in general I'm not a sports game nut, and yet... I remember really liking NBA Jam when I got a Genesis copy a few years ago, and recently had an obsession with golf.

I tend to prefer fantasy racers over "realistic" ones, but I do enjoy me some Gran Turismo.

I don't like "realistic" FPS games. I could rant at length about why this is... so I will: It essentially comes down to that, by design, the game will never ever change. One gun will be just like any other (because that's what guns are like in real life) and you'll never get different types of enemy soldiers (because there's only so many ways you can make a human soldier different). There have, however, been a couple of exceptions to this: One I'm not sure counts is the MS-DOS classic Wolfenstein 3D and its sequel Spear of Destiny, which I think only work because of how comparatively arcade-like they are, another is the first couple of games in the Rainbow Six series, which I got addicted to and actually managed to beat the original on Elite difficulty (which isn't actually hard once you realize how the game actually works), which I think hooked me because of how rapidly success or failure can come--either you get your team killed in five minutes or else you've killed all the terrorists in five minutes. I also recall enjoying the original Medal of Honor on PS1 but only for awhile and that may have just been because it was fresh for me at the time rather than because it did anything particularly good.

[GamerL]

There aren't many genres I turn my nose up at completely, but sports is definitely one of them, however that said I did enjoy the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series and a few similar games like Aggressive Inline back in the day. 

Although a couple of years ago I replayed Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and found myself getting bored quickly, I don't know if that's just because the game is dated or if my interest has faded, in the context of being a teenager in the 2000s the THPS games were dependable rentals when nothing else was grabbing my interest or most everything was checked out, but I'm not sure how well they hold up for me today.

But either way THPS is the only sports series I'm really familiar with.