A bit of a weird title, but basically what’s a game that’s more than a year old but still considered “modern” that you love? There’s no real strict definition for modern, I’d just like to see some discussion around great games that aren’t quite classics yet (but probably will be one day).
The nature of this community typically attracts discussion around decade-old games (which is what I mostly play too), but I’d like to see some newer (but not too new) games on this post.
Deep Rock Galactic. I love the progression, the community and the humor.
Rock and stone, brother!
Rock and Stone! To the Bone!
If you don’t rock and stone, you ain’t goin’ home.
Rimworld.
Definitely a classic.
Minecraft believe it or not. Every few years I come back and install a mod pack and it’s like an entirely new game almost. Plus I love the factory and automation mods. The game just never seems to die.
Pretty stoked for the upcoming Vault Hunters “vanilla” mod.
Hades is absolutely the culmination of so much experience in modern rogue-lite games and game development.
It’s sequel comes out soon and I’m not going to be patient about jumping head first into it.
Available in early access now with plenty of content already, just no ending
I hated roguelikes until I played Hades, decided to give roguelikes a try again. Realized It’s just Hades that I like.
Definitely a legit take, there are very few people I wouldn’t recommend Hades to, if only for enough playthroughs to get to the “end” of the story. Though there is so much past that
Disco Elysium
I know it is cliche to say but it took me the longest time to really knuckle down and play it, but boy once I did - I basically started up another playthrough right after to see what I missed and the shift in perspective when I played a different type of character was interesting to say the least.
So started as a skeptical intellectual who had to pull themselves from a sorry cop to a regular cop and approached things logically with a touch of eccentricity and pangs of regret and then compared to a wishy-washy communist with fascist leanings (which characters called the character out on) psychic superstar cop with an alias he truly believed was his name and I enjoyed and saw a completely different side of the game which was unexpected.
Subnautica
Satisfactory. It’s been in early access for a few years now, 2019 I think? At the beginning of this year (2024) they announced the next update would be the 1.0 release. I’ve been playing it on/off for years, especially recently with all the strides they’ve made in development.
The game is like Factorio, but presented as an FPS. You get dropped onto a planet in a pod straight out of Halo: ODST by a space-future megacorp called Ficsit, with the goal of harvesting the planet’s resources for Ficsit off-planet divisions.
I have almost 1500hrs in Satisfactory since I got it, there’s no shortage of gameplay. Coffee Stain (devs) have been posting videos regularly, updating the community on new/discontinued features, revamped recipes and production rates, and even just being silly as much as being helpful, to the point where Coffee Stain is my go-to example of good devteam-community interaction.
Oh, and it also has a really good modding community, so if there’s anything that’s not in game, that you want in game, it’s probably already been made by one or two modders.
There are mods? Dude, I have been playing this game for the past month, and I am almost done with the game. Thanks for the info man!
And trains! Those are the best part. Both a joy, and a nightmare.
Control
Cyberpunk 2077 (with phantom liberty)
Definitely second both of these. Cyberpunk 2077 post 2.0 is very solid, with an engaging, 100+ hour story. Similarly, control is a spectacular single player narrative, easily 20-30 hours of mindfuckery and atmospheric storytelling.
Control is a really special game. I only got around to playing it last year but it was a wild ride!
I hope Alan Wake 2 goes on sale later this year so I can scoop that up. I got about halfway through AW1 (after getting it for ~£2 on steam) but the gameplay was too repetitive for me in the end.
Personally, my favorite games in the last few years were the talos principle (1 and 2), and Grow: song of the evertree. They aren’t really popular but I’ve replayed them a lot. Also have over 400 hours in core keeper.
I’ve been looking to get core keeper for quite some time…
It’s an adorable game, and has multiplayer!
I don’t know of it’s considered a classic or if it will ever be, but to me Crysis 2 generally looks way better than most of the stuff you see nowadays.
Otherwise, I think Halo Reach is the best looking Halo and it doesn’t show its age too much, if you look at the MCC/PC version.
Trine 5 was probably the best Trine to date. It‘s almost a year old, but already discounted to 15ish bucks in sales. Took a friend and I 20 hours to platinum and we had so much fun cheesing the puzzles and doing stupid stuff. I wish there just was no combat in the game tbh, it‘s just there to gatekeep you from having fun with the puzzles lol. I also wish there had been more achievements related to playing a level in a specific way that you gotta figure out. There‘s one for crossing all rivers in a specific map without touching water, and one where you gotta beat any map without destroying boxes. These two were a lotta fun to do.
I was also obsessed with HITMAN (Jan 2022 according to Steam, was a year exclusive to EGS IIRC). Now it‘s just some crappy liveservice-esque thing, but when they actually did new maps and stuff I had tons of fun walking around the crazy detailed levels and looking for small npc skits the devs put in there, doing looney toons banana peel assassinations etc. Agent 47 being that unfeeling killing robot trying to destroy the world controlling illuminati makes all the slapstick so much funnier.
Dude they made another trine??? Damn I’ve gotta get that into my library. Some of the most fun co-op I’ve ever done was trine, trine 2 and trine 3. Hopefully 5 took a lot of “don’t do that”'s from trine 4.
That’s so funny, I was thinking “they made more than two??”
Not sure what you disliked about 4, but we had tons of fun with 5. The combat‘s meh but IMO it‘s always been.
Calling HITMAN a crappy live service thing is hardly fair. True, the always online part feels really unnecessary, but beyond that it is a stellar single player game with the best Hitman gameplay of the last two decades, a large selection of excellent maps with variants and extra missions, as well as a really impressive rogue-like mode added later for free.
The elusive targets and seasonal content can be completely ignored, and the game would still be a major milestone in modern singleplayer games.
I’m not saying it’s a bad game, it’s easily in the top 10 favorite games of mine (I meant to refer to liveservice as a concept as crappy, not the game). I was just trying to say it was a better franchise when they actually made new games with new maps. Now they‘re done with HITMAN as far as I understand so no HITMAN 4 for the foreseeable future. They even went ahead and rebranded HITMAN 3 to HITMAN WORLD OF ASSASSINATION to further emphasize that this is gonna be an everturning wheel now in their minds. I‘d much prefer a HITMAN 4 with fresh maps, fresh ideas, and a fresh spy thriller story. This HITMAN‘s still the best game in the series IMO and getting the map packs gives new players insane amounts of content. However, HITMAN 4 should be in the making by now, not this liveservice stuff.
IIRC they are making a James Bond game, so here‘s hoping that that‘ll give me more of this kinda gameplay.
Anyone who hasn‘t experienced HITMAN, however, should definitely get the game with the map packs on top and play the whole thing, they‘re in for a treat.
Trying not to pick titles with sequels/franchises
Slay the Spire
Returnal
Stardew Valley
Elden Ring
Death Stranding
Honorable mention : Overwatch 2 (I honestly can’t see it as a true sequel, just an update)
Joke’s on you. Slay the Spire is having a sequel!
Sooo looking forward to this one
No Man’s Sky dragged me back in again recently. There’s an expedition going on for another few weeks that was lots of fun. I’ve also started a permadeath save that I’m really enjoying.
got death stranding when it was free for a day on epic a while ago, been playing it for the last few weeks pretty nonstop and just finished the story. i’ve always been a kojima fan for mgs but oh my god this is magnificent. an absolute masterpiece, imho. i get it’s not for everyone but i’ve had a blast and may immediately do a very hard offline second playthrough. definitely recommend, especially if you can grab it free or heavy discount.
How have the “interactive” features been now that there are fewer players? Is it a wasteland, or does the game still randomly place in user generated content from when the game first released?
online stuff smattered everywhere. plenty of people still playing and i imagine a good handful also snagged it like i did when epic gave it away for a day. there’s also older stuff like well placed safe houses and joke bridges on flat land or mountain peaks that have an insane number of likes so they must’ve been there for years.
also there’s a page where you can see the players you’ve interacted with, your likes for them and their likes for you and it also shows last login date, and most of mine are online recently like me with some maybe last logged in in january, or late last year. i did see one who hasn’t played since '22 but they’ve still got stuff in my world, too, so i think there’s some playtime syncing where a bridge or whatever might actually be destroyed in their game if they logged in today but since it was there from hour 5 to 25 of their playthrough you’ll get it at hour 5 and will stay if you repair it unlike they did. but that’s a guess.
edit: for quick reference when you log in you get a summary of people liking your stuff and yesterday i saw “75 players are pleased with you, 7328 likes”. so definitely still active. also no spoilers but there are a game mechanic or two that affects how many other players you are connected to, so your actions in game can determine how many people’s stuff shows up, as well.
It’s the game I would have hated as a young adult but absolutely love as a… less young adult.
Superliminal, very well done puzzler with a good narrator.
LOOOOOVED that game. Had such a fun time playing it. 100% with you on that.
