Let’s hear about some games you maybe were told were not worth your time, or had bad reviews but you managed to love regardless.
I’ll go first. I’m not embarrased to admit that I played the shit out of Elder Scrolls Blades (the easily forgettable Skyrim-esque mobile game). I had to wait for it to release on Switch which had the benifit of the shitty timers being gone by then.
Once I started to think of it as a kind of advanced ‘Swords and Sandles’ type game I was hooked.
Judging by the trailers I thought “INFRA” was going to be a short first person exploration puzzler type of deal. Take photos of damaged structures, explore abandoned buildings, marvel at the graphical excellence of 2020s gaming, that kinda thing. It had rave reviews, but I chose to go in blind in terms of story.
Turns out, it’s an over 30 hour puzzle adventure game with an ARG, pretty deep lore, comedy elements, horror elements, open exploration, collectibles, secret areas, easter eggs, etc. Most of it is pretty standard “walking simulator” gameplay, and part of the middle chapters can feel like a serious slog walking through tunnel after tunnel, but I found myself consistently surprised and even awed by the crazy environments the developers managed to create. The puzzles can also be seriously difficult at times, usually requiring some pretty good logical skills or even prior knowledge of how engineering and physics works. (although there is that one electrical wiring puzzle at the end of chapter 6/7 or whatever that has everybody stumped no matter their education level)
Real Civil Engineer (RCE) did a playthrough of the full game. What’s great is watching him point out all the times when the game correctly or incorrectly flags safety violations, as well as commenting on all the things that a safe engineer would never do.