Four words: Spec Ops: The Line.

On top of that I'm going to say Unreal (the original game), because if you can spell imput with an m in your game and still have me take things seriously, then you doing something right. Followed by Monkey Island 2, System Shock 2 and Mass Effect 1+2.

4 hours ago, Esteban5XG said:

Talking about Spec Ops, I don't know what is this game about. Is it similar than Monkey Island?

Oh, no-no. It's a third person shooter that starts out familiar, but then turns into something you don't expect. I had a really hard time putting it down once it got going. It was one of those games that went completely under the radar for most people. In fact, I picked it up by pure chance after discovering it in my library one day (most likely after having gotten it in a bundle of some sort).

Just give it a couple of hours before starting to form any judgment. Heck, even Angry Joe stopped playing before he really got into the story and gave it a mediocre review, which is quite sad.

I genuinely don't want to ruin the story as it takes the front and center stage. I also suggest you don't read to much about it. The campaign is only around 6-8 hours and I was playing on Hard, which was probably a mistake - just play it on something easier the first time around so you won't get stuck in certain missions and lose a sense of flow.

Also - while I think 20€ is quite fair for it, it gets discounted quite often.

Here you go: 

What is interesting about Spec Ops: The Line is this: the gameplay was generic and mostly boring. But the story of the game did not suffer because of it. If anything, it was enhanced by it. So much that some people claimed that the gameplay was made to be bad on purpose to better fit the story. On the downside, the boring gameplay is the reason why so many people missed the game.

Another game that managed something similar is Far Cry 2. It looked as brown and dull as any "late 2000s 'realistic-looking' shooter" and the gameplay was repetitive tasks and fighting the same checkpoints over and over again. But that fit the theme of the game so perfectly: the game depicted an African country torn with civil war, with constant fighting without either side accomplishing anything, where the main character ends up being just a cog in the machine. So on that front, the game's repetitiveness just helped reinforce that feeling (again, probably unintentionally). Because of the bad gameplay, many people skipped the game and some great design decisions (the immersive minimal UI) were never used again.

A game I think deserves an honorable mention here is Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.  Basically it's like Game of Thrones without the gratuitous sex scenes but it came out about a decade prior to the first book and I have a sneaking suspicion George R.R. Martin played this game at some point in the 90's.  The story is based loosely on the Yugoslav wars and the music of Queen and the game play is solid.  The same team changed the story to be more War of the Roses/Crusades themed and polished the game play a bit to make the game's spiritual squeal, Final Fantasy Tactics which is also a great game, but in my opinion Tactics Ogre is better, and the SNES/PSX version is better than the PSP re-release, the dialogue feels more natural and less like they are going for the faux-medieval feel.  There really are questions about right and wrong and the paths of "lawful" and "chaotic" aren't really just place holders for "good" and "evil" but an examination on what extent states should go to when fighting one another and even where the moral line is when states fight non-state entities.  It's really deep for a game that came out in 1995 but it manages to not be preachy, it just is what it is.  Everyone has the potential to be a monster in this game

It's one of the first games to give an actual branching story although it is somewhat limited and leads to the same end boss there are different actions you can take that will give different endings.  I am going to avoid spoilers just in case anyone wants to play the game themselves but I will leave a link to one of the multiple ending scenes.  It's a clip of the PSP version but it still holds up.  Just in case the link doesn't work the scene starts at 15:00.  I think this is how GoT is going to end at which point my theory will be confirmed.

On 12/10/2018 at 4:02 PM, 1024 said:

What is interesting about Spec Ops: The Line is this: the gameplay was generic and mostly boring. But the story of the game did not suffer because of it. If anything, it was enhanced by it. So much that some people claimed that the gameplay was made to be bad on purpose to better fit the story. On the downside, the boring gameplay is the reason why so many people missed the game.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the gameplay was bad. It was just... there. I personally didn't find it repetitive either (then again I don't really play modern shooters so my bar isn't so much low as it just doesn't really exist). If anything, I would say it was shallow potentially on purpose to avoid you being distracted from the story too much. It's an interesting point of discussion and I haven't read anything any of the devs have said about the production phase, so it could really be either.

For me, personally, the "meh"-ness of the gameplay generated a certain urgency of wanting to see more of the story as opposed to overly enjoying the shootouts. Again, I recall most of the shooting actually being okay and there being only a handful of of instances where I felt the game was unfair. Then again, I play Quake on Nightmare and Unreal on Unreal, so punishment isn't new to me (not to say these games are too punishing in the first place). As such, in my case, the sense of urgency to move on only further seems to stem from the fact that the story made me want to not challenge myself as much, but rather just experience it (which is why I suggested not playing it on Hard in my post).

Speaking of shooters, I'd like to throw two more titles in here: Deus Ex and The Thing. The latter I REALLY want to replay as it reminded of Carpenter's film to a somewhat uncomfortable degree (even if I don't remember so much about the story). That being said, it's surprisingly non-trivial to come by unless you're willing to pirate it. The prior probably speaks for itself.

While I don't think these two titles embody the greatest stories ever told, I do think that they demonstrate that a game is more than the sum of its parts and can be a truly exhilarating experience even if one (or sometimes more) parts are not at their prime.

I find it interesting that most people are describing games in which the game-play integrated very well with the story. It's as if how you interact with the story is almost more important than the actual story itself. Anyway, here's my top three...

Hotel Dusk : Amazing characters with believable personalities that you explore further as the game progresses. Also, the art style compliments these believable personalities very well.

Firewatch : Best dialog and voice acting I've ever experienced. It was just so natural and felt like real conversations and real emotions.

Driftmoon : This game feels like a fairy tale from your childhood. It's fun, silly and just oozes charm.