I recently finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy XVI, and I’m hesitant what I should play next (PC or PS5).
With FF I enjoyed the game and the story was all I expected from it, and I’m really looking forward to the DLC.
With Tomb Raider… damn that game is all over the place. The story is predictable, and also stupid. “Why did you rush in there? Without weapons? Against an army?”, and other similar thoughts kept running through my head. I don’t feel inclined to play Shadow of the tomb Raider (the sequel).
I have a backlog of too many games, and lately it takes a lot of effort to start because I don’t know if it’s worth the time investment. I love games with good stories, and playing a game that puts the lore and story in the background feels like a waste of time.
Sure, I could get started on Baldurs Gate 3, I’ve heard great things. But is the story great? Will I be able to say “oh that chapter/fight/act is awesome!” To other people looking for game experiences?
Experiences like Escaping from the ship in Super Metroid, helping that king in Witcher 3, fighting Psycho Mantis in MGS, fighting Titan in FFXVI, killing the first colossus, escaping from darth Vader, that first Mario odyssey stage, beating the first boss in Bloodborne, playing “Brothers” for the first time and getting to the ending… all great experiences with awesome stories to tell
TL;DR: what am I missing?
EDIT: Holy crap I didn't expect these many replies. Thank you! There are many recommendations I've already played, and many others I will definitely play. Thanks!
If anyone is interested in the result:
Recommended, bought:
- Bioshock 2
- Black mesa
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Death stranding
- Deaths door
- Detroit become human (PS5)
- Disco elysium
- Dragon Age
- Elden ring
- Fallout 3
- Fallout 4
- Fallout new Vegas
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Hades
- Half life alyx
- Hellblade senuas sacrifice
- Homeworld
- Horizon zero dawn
- Inscryption
- Just cause 3
- Life is Strange
- Mass effect 3
- Metro series
- Ori and the blind forest, and sequel
- Oxenfree
- Persona 5
- Planescape: torment
- Shadowrun dragonfall
- Shadowrun Hong Kong
- Soma
- Spider-Man
- Subnautica
- Tyranny
- Wolfenstein series
Recommended, to buy:
- 13 sentinels (PS4)
- Age of decadence
- Cruelty squad
- Dead space
- Ghost recon wildlands
- God of war ragnarok
- Grandia
- Kingdom Come Deliverance
- Octopath Traveler 1 & 2
- Outer wilds
- Pathologic 2
- Red dead redemption 2
- Song of horror
- Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG
- The hex
- the last of us part 2
- The upturned
- Torment: tides of numenera
- Withering rooms
- Yakuza
Already Played, and yeah, these are awesome:
- Alpha centauri
- Bioshock 1
- Bioshock infinite
- Borderlands series
- Control
- Dark souls series
- Deus ex human revolution
- Deus ex mankind divided
- FFXIV
- Ghost trick
- God of war 2018
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Hollow knight
- Hotel Dusk
- Mass effect
- Mass effect 2
- Nier: automata
- Nier: replicant
- Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
- Portal
- Portal 2
- Psychonauts 1 & 2
- Spec ops: the line
- Stray
- the last of us part 1
- The Stanley parable
- Titanfall 2
- Undertale
- What remains of Edith finch
- Witcher 3
The first three Metal Gear Solid games have fascinating stories. They're not the most logically sound stories and they have a lot of weird elements that make them hard to follow. At the micro scale they're not the most comprehensive. On the macro scale they're not hard to get into at all. When the story hooks you it really hooks you.
I was a child when I completed the first two MHS games. I never finished MGS3 because the disk got smashed to pieces. I do remember liking it a lot though. MGS2 is my favorite of the bunch. It was a good mix of old characters and new that carried the story in a satisfying way.
The absolute best story in video games(IMO) is the Mass Effect trilogy. For the longest time those games set the bar for video game story telling to me. Every character was so easy to get invested in. I cared for all of them and deciding who completed the journey or not was a series of deeply personal tough choices that carried across three games. Did the ending suck? Absolutely. Do not let that last 0.1% mar what is easily %99.9 one of the best space scifi stories in any medium.
MGS2 will blow your mind. This scene from MGS2 has been living rent-free in my mind since I first saw it as a teen when MGS2 came out.
Remember, this game came out around 2000. The internet was just starting to become relevant back then.
The 3rd act of MGS2 hits like a sledgehammer after so much light hearted, self-parodying, comfortably familiar heroic espionage. The story has aged so well. It invokes that eerie 4th wall break feeling that Psycho Mantis delivered, but on a prolonged and more meaningful scale.
As an edgy teen back then, I didn't fully appreciate the brilliance of MGS2. It's the one I look back at nowadays if I think about Kojima mindfuckery