I’m not necessarily talking about moment-to-moment gameplay or mechanics (though I could see some interesting points being made about, for example, RTS gameplay or RPG character building influence how you approached “strategy” in your own life).
What I’m trying to get at are the games you felt really had something to say.
For example, while I’m by no means the biggest fan (only ever played 2 and V), playing MGS V recently (and catching up on the background a bit) has created this sense in me, and I wondered where else one might have experienced that from vidya
F1 23.
It taught me that there's nothing the enemy won't politicise. Thanks Game Pass Ultimate!
This is a trait you share.
Why do you like racing games so much?
Also cmon bruh hit me with the real answer
They're harder for women to ruin. Also, big fan of cars and racing all my life. But a big part of why I retreated to them heavily recently is that women can't ruin them as much.
Sure, they can add cutscenes with their annoying, screechy voices, and have female AI voices read the tutorial.
But they can't make driving a car a statement of their non-existent superiority. They can't write kill all men all over it like everything else they touch.
They can only shit out propaganda like F1 23's story mode (that a tiny percentage of players have played) and Grid Legends with the female-named AI being faster.
Having said that, they're pushing to ruin IRL motorsports, under Lulu Hamilton's desperation to not be linked with FTX, and they ruined driving movies by casting Brie Larson in the Fast and Furious movie that doesn't exist...at least in my head.
Last racing game I played was NFS Shift - when the genre changed from having the player character be basically Stig in a car to having the player character be an up-and-coming cholo in the barrio (or whatever stupid scenario the recent grad placed on the “story” team came up with) was when I had to check out.
But fr bruh no bussin, which game or series has stuck with you, rattling about in your mind?
I liked Shift, actually. Shift 2 was a shitty Forza clone that was stupidly complicated and just really bad.
Need for Speed really went retarded with Payback, where there was a literal feminist racing crew. Unbound is such colossal crap in mechanics I don't even know if it's woke because I quit really early. The handling reminds me of mobile games.
Although I shouldn't be surprised. One of the handheld ports of Need for Speed had a plot where, honest to God...you killed your own brother to simp for a girl. I think it was Own the City?
Counter Strike Global Offensive made me a lot of money, but I got bored of it and went back to Xbox for good when Forza Motorsport 7 came out. The main push that made me jump ship was the allowing of porn games, which just filled the new releases tab with total shovelware VNs.
I guess it helped me build up my initial investments, because I cashed out most of my items. I learned some market basics, that I built on over pandemic times until I started managing a portfolio of my own.
As for a plot that stuck with me...I honestly don't know. The only plot I really remember from a kind of old game is Black Ops, where you find out Reznov died when you were fleeing the gulag, and he had reprogrammed your brainwashing that you got to make you want to kill the President, so you'd go after the actual targets instead because your brain told you he was there telling you to.
It was the most basic twist ever, but it reminds me of when games with a plot were actually exciting and not just being hit with a pink sledgehammer over and over again.
Part of me is glad Black Ops 4 didn't have a campaign. At least they didn't get to retcon everything to be "a woman did it".