

Thank you for the recs. Part of the reason I wasn’t more specific is because, in terms of retro games, I have no idea of what I like since I haven’t really played any. Another part is that I want to know what you, the people, think holds up in 2025. And another part, I’m trying to keep my taste open – my first exposure to video games was GameBoy games, then Halo on PC, then having an Xbox 360 and playing popular action-y games. Later I’d find a taste for action RPGs (after much picking up and putting down), and only in the last few years have I expanded that to more…traditional? slower, I guess…RPGs like BG3 and Disco Elysium…expanding to puzzle games, sidescrollers, bullethells. I know they’re a lot different but I guess my point is, at one point, I found it hard to get into them, but over time I was able to figure them out and have fun. Still have never played a JRPG, so that’s on the horizon for me. I enjoy when things “click” in my brain, and if it takes a long time, that’s okay.
Some games that I’ve loved over my 25 or so years of consciousness:
My all time fav is Outer Wilds
RDR2
Disco Elysium
Balatro
Alan Wake 2
I’ll always have a soft spot for Halo 1-Reach
Portal 1 and 2
Hades
Risk of Rain 2
Doom 2016
Batman: Arkham City
Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro
Dave the Diver
Vampire Survivors
INSIDE
(noticing none of these are retro games so idk if this is even helpful)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Baldur’s Gate 3
Dredge was cool but I didn’t finish it
Witcher 3
Baba is You
Factorio was too addicting so I had to stop because it started feeling like work
GTA V because I enjoyed the satire
I have 2k+ hours in Rocket League since its the only game I can play while focusing on an audiobook or podcast or album.
Sounds pretentious because it is, but I like “heady” stuff, in games-terms I think that translates to things that expand my conception of what a game is and what it can do, or something that challenges me in a new way. But yeah, that’s a long winded explanation of why I wasn’t more specific regarding my taste.
I read all of almost all of David Graeber’s books, The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin, and Anarchism Works and The Solutions are Already Here by Peter Gelderloos.
But when I got to Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman, it really moved me in a different way. Totally worth checking out.
(It also led me to read Civil Disobedience by Thoreau and Self-Reliance by Emerson – both worth reading before Goldman because she references them a few times)