So, this should be an interesting one. Day 12 of the 30 Day Gaming Challenge asks for A Game Everyone Should Play.
Now, I spent some time running through different ideas here. Maybe I should go for a retro classic like Pac-Man or Galaxian? Should I stick to my tried and true hedgehogs and face smashing fighters? Is there a modern gem that should take the spotlight? In the end, I decided on a game that I loved but haven’t spoken about on here before: Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee.
First exploding onto the PlayStation (before the One) in 1997, the game was part platformer, part puzzler. As the titular Abe, you were tasked with saving your fellow Mudokan’s before you’re all slaughtered for meat by Molluk the Glutton and his fiendish staff at RuptureFarms. And how do you do this? Mostly, by talking. You use simple commands like ‘follow me’, ‘wait’, and ‘*fart noise*’ to get your fellow slaves to do as you want, and lead them to exits. You can also telepathically control some enemies, throw certain items and … uhm … die. I did that last one a fair bit at first.
The reason I think everyone should play the game is that it’s a quirky little classic. The gameplay is fun, challenging, and thoroughly engrossing. Give the odd(world)ity a chance.
Matt Doyle Media 
This really is a quirky classic. I did not have it in my own collection, but played it at a friends house and it was a lot of fun. But I played it just before the PS2 came out, so I never bought it after that. But I agree that it’s a fun game 😀
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It really is. As it turns out, my partner got me the PS1 original for Christmas too, so I’m reliving it again right now 😀
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I remember this game. I didn’t own it because it wasn’t on a system I owned but I played at a friends. Didn’t get very far but have fond memories of the game.
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It still holds up really well. It’s a fun little puzzler 😀
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Never played this. Perhaps I will check out the PS4 re-release some day. Commanding slaves with farts sounds like a novel idea.
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It did anyways give me a childish giggle. You can possess some of the enemies too which led to more fun.
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Possessing enemies and gunning down their own allies before overloading and exploding them into pieces was fantastic fun.
The game fits the “for everyone” thing as I remember playing this with my dad when growing up. Fond memories.
Otherwise I don’t think there’s such a thing as “everyone should have played” game. If I had to, I’d probably pick one of the Lucas Arts classics. Or maybe my favorite oldie RPG, Albion. Or perhaps one of the Tycoon games, they tend to appeal to everyone, too. Or …
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It is a sweeping statement, isn’t it? Looking back on our, it’s been years since I played a Tycoon game, though I do have fond memories of Theme Park, which I think may have been the precursor to the Tycoon series.
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Not in any direct sense. Rollercoaster Tycoon was done by Chris Sawyer, the Transport Tycoon guy. Theme Park was done by Mollyneux, who before that also was (vaguely) involved in Theme Hospital (also of course Dungeon Keeper and Populous). The other “big guys” with those games were probably Sid Meier, who did Railroad Tycoon, and Will Wright, who did Sim City (and SimEarth, SimAnts etc).
Well, those and many others. There’s a lot of those games ^^;
Anyway, I’m still playing OpenTTD, so if that counts as Transport Tycoon it’s the game I’ve been playing the longest – some 23 or so years, ha (game time-wise it’s probably still not #1, though).
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I’d forgotten there was a Sim Hospital. We used Sim City as part of our lessons in school for a while though.
What would be your number one game time wise?
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Boringly enough it’s definitely Counter-Strike. That was just the game everyone played during high school, so I’ve got … I don’t even know. 5000+h or so of it? Even got respectably good at it ^^
And if I’m off by an order of magnitude the next game with clear play time is probably Guild Wars at something like 600h, so nowhere near that.
TTD/OpenTTD is very difficult to count over all those years, obviously. It’s definitely by now also several hundreds of hours, most of those in the last few years oddly enough.
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I played Counter-Strike a little. I think that when it comes to older FPS games, I may have put the most time into either the original Doom or Quake II. I played a little Unreal Tournament online too, though I was far from good.
Do you go more for the PC or mobile version of OpenTTD, or is it a combo of both? I think that the tycoon style games always tended to be easy to get lsot in time wise.
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The earliest FPS passed me by, to be honest. I’m too young / wasn’t allowed to murder virtual people until a bit later (although my parents were very inconsistent about this ^^). CS just came along at the right time and everyone was switching from QIIIA to it in those days. I still played those and UT and such on some LANs (are people still doing that these days? ^^) but not nearly as much.
I only play on the PC. I don’t do any mobile gaming in general (well, beyond on a laptop, occasionally). And the OTTD ports aren’t that well-suited anyway (I think the android one got some actual adaptions done but largely they are just the same compiled for whatever OS the devices are which usually means usability suffers). Also, if I play, I tend to play on large maps with lots of vehicles and that means despite the age of the game you need a decent CPU to run the thing. Pathfinding is costly to calculate.
And, yes, I do sink time into those games. It’s mostly about making something nice looking these days for me; not gameplay challenges. I suppose it’s an ersatz-model train, basically.
https://www.tt-forums.net/download/file.php?id=199902
Rrrrr. The advantage of pixel graphics is that they are basically timelessly appealing (if one likes them, which I do).
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I can definitley agree that there’s something timeless with pixels. The pixel graphic feel was part of what amde Sonic Mania so cool for me.
I did wonder if it would work well on mobile. You see a lot fo games get mobile adaptions now that i jsut can’t figure how they’d feel right. Beat ’em ups for example, must feel very strange on mobile.
Heh. My parents were quite consistent with me with games: as far as they were concerned, I knew it was just a game, so anything goes. Whether that was good or not, I don’t know, but it did let me experience plenty of games.
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Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this game. Amazing how many games just pass you by that are loved by other people!
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It really is. I’m forever finding old games that I’ve never heard of but others seem to love.
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