I’ve been recently been thinking about Arkane Studio’s Prey which is a immersive sim, with a pretty good rogue like dlc, that probably has one of the strongest hooks of any game I’ve played. If you liked Halflife, System Shock, or Deus Ex it’s definitely worth a play.
Are there any titles that might not have been commercially successful that you feel everyone should give a shot?
Hardspace Shipbreaker. You’re a wage slave (literally) in a space dock, taking apart ships and throwing the bits into the right bins. Doesn’t sound super fun, but it is. 1) You’re chopping up ships but you get to use LASERS!!! and the energy grappling hook. So satisfying. 2) The physics is 90% spot on. You’re in 3d, but it’s not purely inertial. There’s a dampening field that slows things down, so it doesn’t get too outta hand. There are a couple of other quirks, but they’re not hugely impacting. 3) The soundtrack is perfect. It’s a very bluesy, banjo style for a very bluecollar type job. 4) The voice acting is amazing. Every line from Weaver is just perfect. You hate Hal with a passion (you’re supposed to). The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Launch Trailer | PS5 Games It’s also on PC and game pass.
I’ve played it thru twice. The first time as-is, but the 2nd time I shut off the “15 minute shifts” option. I think that breaks things up too much. I think open-shift is better. I bought the vinyl soundtrack. I’m not a huge fan of vinyl, but this is the right style of music that would benefit from it.
Hardspace Shipbreaker - OST Full
Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Americana Beats to Chill to
Underappreciated for sure, but to be fair, it’s super repetitive. If they’d added a secondary component or loop where you could black market trade or participate in the economy of the game some how to drown out the monotony of breaking the same ships over and over, I’d have played it more.
I remeber playing Jedi fallen order and seeing ships being broken down like that during the opening mission. I thought that I would rather be doing that and then hardspace showed up on steam a few days later. It’s been on my wish list for way too long, definitely going to pick it up for my next game
I’ve just recently said that on Lemmy - I said to a friend I wanted a game where you broke down and scrapped star wars ships, and they pointed me towards this game. It was recently on sale so I picked it up. It’s been an absolute blast and exactly what I was looking for (though I still wish I could do it with SW ships). I also agree about the shift timer, so thankfully there’s an option for that.
Which annoyingly, is the reason I bounced off the game. Breaking down ships is fun. That’s literally the whole reason I want to play the game. The story wants me to hate playing the game and won’t let me play until I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
Capitalism is pretty bad, so it didn’t bother me. It was refreshing to hear it in a narrative. Game devs don’t usually get to say stuff like that, so it was nice.
Yeah, but you don’t need to tell me that in an unskippable cutscene (the fact that it’s unskippable is the part I have an issue with) and ironically, the gameplay is so compelling that I absolutely do not mind just wasting my life away toiling under these ridiculous work conditions.
Edit: Let’s be real here, the game didn’t need a story. Just set me up with a ridiculous amount of debt and let me just break down ship after ship. They could have just added more ships and systems than make a story that people actively would work against.