I liked what I played of Pokopia, and I loved Pokemon Legends Arceus.

Other than those, the last time I really loved a Pokemon game was likely Black 2.

I’ve been enjoying some of the quality ROMhacks that have come out in recent years like Lazarus, Odyssey, Emerald Seaglass, and Scorched Silver. I also started casually playing Platinum Kaizo (a difficulty hack), but haven’t played it much at all.

But I’ve had a better time in Odyssey and Lazarus than I have had in a mainline game in a long time.

I’m sure some of it comes from the graphics being inspired by the GSC (Lazarus) or using RSE graphics (Odyssey) and those are the most nostalgic ones for me.

I am ashamed to say that Pokopia (on my sibling's Switch 2) is pretty great. It's a sublime, cozy exploration game, basically absent of battling so far.

SAM and their relationship with Ryder was interesting.

...That's about it, sadly.

Mechanically and visually, the game was awesome though.

Planetside 2, for me.

It was never perfect, yet it's basically dying of old age. I think that's quite an achievement for an MMOFPS.

And I'm pretty sure there will never be another game like it, at its scale (and Foxhole doesn't count IMO).

Yeah, that and they just haven't really had the same feel/balance.

Pokopia is a subcategory of Pokemon. What kills it for me is that the game is Switch 2 exclusive. So I might get to try it in a decade.

Mystery Dungeon is still my goto favourite Pokemon game. Combat is back set, exploration top priority

Infinite fusion is fantastic, even if it didn't have the merge gimmick. My favorite pokemon game since b/w2

Command & Conquer. I don't think I'll ever touch 4. Tempest Rising is great so there's that. I guess I'll just keep playing Tiberium Wars until time stops.

I didn't get to finish Lost Odyssey due to my 360 red-ringing. It's a shame too because the story was one of the saddest since FF IX. It really explores the idea that immortality isn't all that great when everyone you know and love will eventually die and leave you with just memories, but then end up losing those memories too which ends up being half blessing and curse. The industrial setting a la FF VI was just gorgeous with one of Uematsu's best ever scores going off in the background. The character designs were pretty great overall too with Jansen being one of my favorite JRPG characters because of his dry witty remarks no matter what the situation is.

Everything about the game hit just right and felt like it was a proper FF title in all but name. It hurt to know Mistwalker Studios barely did anything worthwhile after that for a long while until Fantasian.

Tiberium Wars is definitely peak and pinnacle...even tho I suck at it. :)

It's such a venn diagram between potheads and literal children...likely with lots of overlap. Lol

Halo

The games? Yeah, eh, one of these days I'd consider Infinite single player if it's like $10.

The series? I can't remember if people said Season 2 was...watchable...but that makes me sad...

I remember liking the books, though. The books were rad.

That's fair. It's not to say that I didn't try the multiplayer in college. I was the only guy doing work-study with the network admin team so everyone needed me to configure their Xboxes for the campus LAN.

My favorite thing to do was to find a warthog and barrel around the map like a maniac trying to run people over. Still better than a dirty camper!

The Elder Scrolls

Bethesda is dead.

They made it into in A button simulator lol.

I only ever played DPP and BW/2 a long time ago, but I then happend to jump to SwSh when it came out and it literally became a live joke between my sibling watching me play to see how far we could go through the battles by only mashing the A button.

I think we made it to like between the 7th and 8th gym before I had to actually change my attack/pokemon using the c-stick.

Halo. We're never getting another real one.

Besides all the mentioned ones, here are few from my side:

Need for Speed - played since 2 SE until Undercover. It is impossible to release the same game each year and the peak was MW'05.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater - some may say American Wasteland was good. I didn't liked it but it was not as bad as anything after.

CODs - that is a pet peeve of mine. Great game, but it overstayed it's welcome. OG MW1 and MW2 still hold a special place in my heart.

Battlefield - same as above. BC and BF3 can't be beat.

World of Warcraft - that is an entirely different game to what it used to be imo.

Blizzard is a corpse being puppeted.

It's just Activision. Has been for years.

Planetside 2 at its peak was such a cool and unique experience. Shame it's withering and dying

You know, Lost Odyssey wasn't on the radar for me but you may have put it on the map. Will have to look into it.

It's no wonder the VII remakes feel like KH since they are being done by Nomura.

Until you learn about Blizzard’s bro culture that has existed almost as long as the company that resulted in a female employee committing suicide because no one would take her sexual assault allegations seriously.

Goodbye, Mass Effect.

100% agree. I was a Briggs veteran for a long time after the peak. My username (not this one) is in the RecordSmash official post recognising the 1158-player world record. The Daybreak takeover was concerning, but we pushed through.

But realistically I just "accomplished" everything I reasonably could have, and then they took my server away from me. My time with the game ended, but I have no regrets. What a phenomenal experience it was at the time.

Sonic Racing Crossworlds has been scratching the kart racer itch lately.

In my opinion, Pokemon peaked in gen 2. Why? Because every game after added new gimmicks that distract from the core gameplay instead of adding to it. What is the core gameplay? As the motto goes "Gotta Catch 'Em All". Gen 1 had 150 monsters for the player to find and catch. Gen 2 added time of day specific spawn rates and Pokemon that you could only get by breeding. And that is it. None of the further games made the monster collection any more interesting until Legends Arceus, a spinoff title. The future games added fashion shows and secret tunnels (at least, I don't think so. I have not played all of them).

Pokemon Home is, obviously, a game changer, but it is something outside the game and too little, too late for someone like me who fell off the franchise.

Dungeon keeper

What "until"?

Blizzards artistic merit was killed by Activision, until you find out they have always had a female-abusive work environment.

What?

It's another valid reason to boycott blizz... But you're adding that factoid as if it counters mine? It's also not relevant for why their IPs are souring. It's another reason why they don't deserve customers, even if the games were still good, but its not the reason their games are suffering in terms of quality.

What "until"?

It's just Activision.

You think it’s all Activision’s fault until you learn that Blizzard was toxic from the get go. Blizzard products had issues before Activision bought them, they cut content for time, overworked & underpaid people, killed what could have been great games, all on their own.

Activism is just a corporate scapegoat for the mess Blizzard has always been. Separating Blizzard into its own company won’t fix any of its problems.

I didn't say it was all Activisions fault. Blizzard had to be the kind of company that would join forces with Activision for the merger to happen. I'm well aware of the smaller details.

I'm saying the Blizzard that created the IPs people love, has long been dead (in that the people who made those things are no longer in positions to do so again).

What's left, is "a corpse being puppeted by Activision" in that actiblizz is lead by the type of people and decision-making that Activision is a lot more known for.

It's a really short way to express to people who still have nostalgia goggles for Blizzard, that the things that allowed them to make good things, are gone. Replaced by profit motivated suits that have no respect for art.

Blizzard doesn't need saving. It's a rotting corpse of a brand. Remove activision, and you still have just a rotting corpse.

Pokemon lost its way once they got rid of the shithead rival character. The "rivals" they have now are too plucky and lacking in antagonistic traits. I don't even think they choose a type-advantage starter anymore.

Ace Attorney (a.k.a. Phoenix Wright)

It peaked in the first trilogy. Each game built on what was good about the previous game while adding a new mechanism that flashed out another part of the game.

The second trilogy of games collapsed trying to follow it up. Both the writing and gameplay show the same issue. The games are trying to be a clean break with new characters and powers but the game designers were afraid that they might scare away fans of previous games, so the old characters and gameplay all come back to make an appearance. None of it works. The returning characters and gameplay are all very brief and shallow without the progression they got in their original games, but they take up so much space that the new characters and mechanics don't have room to build up over the course of 4-5 cases in a game.

I am now trudging through the two prequel games. The game designers finally had the determination to make a clean break, but it seems that they lost the magic of the initial games. There are new characters and new gameplay. There is too much plot, not enough game. There is too much (bad) writing between player interactions and when they happen, the game is more hand holdy to make sure the player is given a bucket of clues about what to do next. And there is no reason to make the game easier, since there is a new easy mode that plays the game for a player if they ever get stuck.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon my beloved 👀💜

I was (and still is) a Battlefield 2. I found battlefield 3 an alright sequel, though I wish they hadn't bullshitted with the whole "the game is too complex now for map and mod tools". But it is unreasonable how much fun Bad Company 2 was. I was one of the early haters of it because they took away prone and the faster paced gameplay. But boy did my opinion on it changed. Even my brother who rarely plays shooters sat and grinded out weapons on it. I know even DICE are questioning why it was such a success.

This happened for me with Destiny.

Ultimate is the best entry since melee, and both are still loved and played today. Nothing is wrong with smash bros.

Yes, the dlc chars are usually too strong, but same goes for some base characters and I don't feel like it's much if a problem. We get good actual content for the money.

If Nintendo releases a good smash for switch 2, they got me by the balls.

WOW- if it wasn't for classic and now anniversary, I never would have renewed my subscription.

Retail is just horrible and getting worse.

I didn’t even make it through more than a handful of episodes in season one. The books are solid, yeah. I did fall off after the Forerunner trilogy, though.

I agree with you 100%. Smash is basically my favorite couch multiplayer game.

Honestly used to love Minecraft, still have a soft spot and will likely return to it at some point. All that said, MSoft has made me give up on Mojang and Minecraft. Mojang also just ignores pretty serious feedback about gameplay and don't seem open to discussion with the community which always creates friction between mojang and the community.

Halo Infinite killed the franchise for me.

I still get my friends together to play Halo a couple times a year. But finishing Infinite was the first time I was no longer excited for the next installment.

But Minecraft's ecosystem makes it super easy to run any version you like best. Play the Minecraft you loved and ignore the latest versions if you don't like them. It's basically just a game engine anyway, the actual game is all the mods you install.

Luanti (luanti.org) (née Minetest) exists!

The world size is much smaller, but as a play system and exploration thingy it is still quite fun. Also has several games (adventures), mods and gamemodes.

Pokémon here, too. I used to be more attentive to the franchise as a fanwork creative, but the franchise went into decline starting with G6 (X and Y) in my opinion. It got so bad to the point that I basically left the games back in Gen 7 (Sun and Moon) and go by mostly by the side games and fanwork by this point. For my contemporary work I mostly ignore everything from the games that is not the Pokémon themselves, and for when that's not enough I create my own Pokémon and also am working on adapting a few concepts from Palworld (Palworld will always be a nice, stingy reminder of what Pokémon can get back to).

Speaking of sidegames, the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games are real gems that Nintendon't seem to remember anymore past getting us a "Kanto remake" of, and Pokken is a fun fighting game but rather restricted in roster and sad in retrospective in a "look at what we could have had if the franchise spun more in this direction" moment. Today Pokémon Close Combat exists which is a decent fangame in more or less the same direction.

Ultimate is doing even less favors for the next Smash Bros game. They make too much money for Nintendo to not make it but Sakurai, who lead all the others, will likely not lead the next on. Idk how you'd follow ultimate even with him on board.

Definitely a good point, Minecraft would have faded without the modding scene, especially performance mods which seem to be the backbone of any Java based playthrough. That's also part of my problem, I don't want to have to download mods to turn off the telemetry, chat reports, a button for their servers that are awful. I'd rather invest my time in an open source solution like minetest or other non MSoft options if I'm relying on mods to remove junk.

Ever since Halo 2 dropped my best friend and I have co-opped each one in one sitting. Infinite is the first time in 2 decades that we couldn't get through an installment. Open world was fun but empty, and they tried to have it cover for a plot. The entire 4-5-6 "trilogy" is more disjointed than the star wars sequels. Story was not compelling, no emotional pulls. Halo was legit top tier sci fi and infinite felt like it was written by a committee ina meeting room. Just sad.

Replaing the trilogy for probably the ninth time, and it confirmed to me that there is no way a new installment can ever live up to the lightning in a bottle that the trilogy had.

Its why they're so afraid of ES6. They know they can't do it. What I don't know is does that make them better or worse than the studios who are trying to bring back old franchises

You can tell they were so far up their own asses by not being able to forsee that. Any gamer would have told you "fine announce the mobile game. But you better be fucking ready to also announce the next actual installment too"