Right at this moment it’s Civilization 7. I’ve never seen it mentioned here, just on CivFanatics forums and mostly negatively on Reddit. It had a botched/way too early release. My personal theory is that 2K knew that GTA was getting delayed so they said no delay for Civ.
New giant patch inbound any day! I swear it’s fun. Best combat in Civ so far, and I have played every mainline game for the past roughly 30 years.
luanti https://www.luanti.org/
It’s Luanti* - You got the name wrong
ok I edited it
One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It’s called Out of Space and it’s a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it’s less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it’s procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it’s the perfect game of “let’s play a round of something”, yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.
GUNZ The Duel - man that was just so much fun. Online guns and swords gladiator style battles in the most neat stages. I remember an old mansion with broken staircases and balconies, a train station with freight cargo all over the place, an actual roman colosseum, a beach with a grounded ship ashore.
Some people could do this thing called K-style or butterfly style where you slash your sword against walls or other objects which made you lift off the ground, and switch between your gun to shoot as you do so - it was a neat trick which I learned but definitely did not master.
So much fun though.
Butterfly made my wrists fall off. Worth it.
The Thief series. I LOVED the first one especially, Thief the Dark Project. Medieval (low magic fantasy?) stealth shooter. The more valuable you pick up directly translates to what you can buy as a load out for the next level so you’re encouraged to explore, though even the low level enemies can kick you ass so you have to be sneaky. Actually great stealth mechanics even for an old game. The world building is amazing, with it’s own lore, culture and slang. The plot of the games are also great.
The Kingdom of Loathing is a game I’ve played almost non-stop since about 2003. Web based and free, it’s based off of old text based games. But it’s fun. Really fun. And hilarious. The currency is meat. The classes are goofy. Saucerer? Disco bandit? Seal Clubber? A lot of games deal with things like power creep or inflation, or how the heck to get people to actually help pay for it. This game solves problems like these elegantly. The user base is fun and friendly and corporative, there’s always new stuff coming out to try, they do a holiday special every year, and all the pictures are crudely drawn stick figures.
Disco bandit checking in! You got any meat paste?
I stack my meat like I stack the bodies of knob goblins in my wake
The Moxie on this one!
“Whiplash!” Was an old racing sim that had crazy tracks. It had collision damage and in single player mode you could give your teammate commands.
It supported 8 players on a lan in multiplayer. All of this while running from DOS. Looking back it seemed a little ahead of its time. I’ve never encountered anyone in person that knew of this game.
Earthworm Jim
Atomic Robokid (Genesis)
Tempest (Atari 2600 version)
Ghosts and Goblins (NES)
The game where it’s a rich guy that sends a trained assassin out onto a island with nothing and hunts him for 24 hours, and if the assassin kills the rich guy he gets his freedom and like $20K.
Rock n Roll Racing (SNES)
Beyond All Reason/Planetary Annihilation
Earthworm Jim
https://store.steampowered.com/app/901147/Earthworm_Jim/
Ghosts and Goblins (NES)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1556690/Capcom_Arcade_StadiumGhosts_n_Goblins/ (arcade)
Not the same, but apparently close.
The NES & arcade versions are very similar in terms of level layout and enemy spawns. There are certainly differences, but I haven’t played the arcade version enough to tell you what those specific differences are.
Beyond All Reason
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Planetary Annihilation
https://store.steampowered.com/app/386070/Planetary_Annihilation_TITANS/
I personally enjoyed Total Annihilation, but Planetary Annihilation and some of the later games, like the Spring-based remakes never quite caught me the same way.
TIL there’s an arcade version of Ghosts n Goblins
Thanks for the links!
The arcade was the original version. There’s also a really good modern port on the Commodore 64 with a banging soundtrack called “Ghosts n Goblins Arcade”
Next week, imma be all about this.