We’ve all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I’ll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1

  • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Son, you’re talking to a guy who spoke no English when he first played the legend of Zelda for NES. Talk about playing a game that doesn’t tell you where to go next

  • jonjuan@programming.dev
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    6 days ago

    I got echo the dolphin for Sega genesis when I was about 8. I don’t know how much of the game I got through, but thinking back it couldn’t have been more than a few percent. And I played that shit for hours trying to figure out where to go next.

    • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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      5 days ago

      I still have the fond memory of the Ecco the Dolphin being called like game of the year by many magazines. So I begged my uncle to rented it from Blockbuster. First few days, I struggled. Then I asked to extend the rental. After a week, I gave up. Game was bs. I played Nintendo hard games.

      A decade later, I decided to read about Ecco and how brutally unfair it is and yeah, fuck that game.

    • Who knew?@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      I found the way to progress once, you have to like flip up out of the water and across to some other part of the level. I couldn’t ever remember how I did it afterwards though.

    • ReasonablePea@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      Holyshit I forgot this game existed! I had the exact same experience, no idea what I was doing but for some reason I kept playing

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      6 days ago

      The funny thing about Disco Elsyium is that there’s so much to do in the opening area and it builds such a rich picture of the city that you assume it’s a much bigger world than it really is.

      It really isn’t that much bigger than the first part, but they did such a great job you don’t end up minding.

    • abigscaryhobo@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I always took Disco as just a “stumble into the plot” kind of game. You’re not supposed to go anywhere.

      • eronth@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        True, but the problem (at least for me) is that I was simultaneously going nowhere and running out of places to go. I legit wasn’t sure how to progress literally any of the opened quests and felt like nothing was getting done.

  • just some guy@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Myst 3 and hollow knight got me that way. Hollow knight was the worst, I simply couldn’t tell where I needed to go and where I’d already been 😅

    • slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
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      6 days ago

      I like hollow knight, but i don’t think i can ever go back to that game. I had so much fun for a few hours and then i walked around for an hour or two, being beyond lost.

      • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Interestingly that’s the exact thing I loved about Hollow Knight. I got so immersed in the exploration specifically because I got lost. On my first playthrough I ended up sequence breaking the game and cleared out deepnest, ancient basin, hive and kingdoms end before the city of tears. I was way out of my depth and I loved every moment of it.

  • Abnorc@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    La Mulana for sure! It’s a game where you play as professor Lemeza Kosugi (i.e. Japanese Indiana Jones) exploring an ancient temple. I admit that I did not have the patience for it. The map is huge and exploration is very non-linear. You also have to solve fairly obscure puzzles. If you really wanted to give it a go, I’d keep hand-written or typed notes separate from the in-game notes. They only let you save so much data at once, and you need more notes (or a good memory). I still kind of loved exploring the maps even partially though. It’s pretty huge and ambitious in scope.

    The combat and movement are not fantastic though. Not bad, but they feel very limiting compared to typical metroidvanias that let you style on enemies as you get better at the game. The game is not very shy about how it enjoys killing you too! I respect it, but it was tough for me to enjoy.

  • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 days ago

    Most 90’s and late 80’s point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)

    • Machinist@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Dark Seed was old school hard and explained nothing. Gave up multiple times, wasn’t playable for me. Sucked because I’m a huge fan of H.R. Giger.

    • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      I still remember the first time playing morrowind and being blown away by the freedom. For some reason my clearest memory of that game is a dude falling from the sky and splatting. Then I stole his magic boots and died the same way.

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Old DOOMs up till 64. Halo 1 was also very repetitive in its lookalike hallways and got me lost multiple times. I don’t miss the get lost mechanics of these games. Especially in doom where the function of the many look alike chambers was unknown to me so the architecture made no sense.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Halo 1 was never difficult with Cortana telling you were to go and the waypoint on screen. Assault on the Control/Two Betrayals has arrows on the hallway floors and I never got turned around in The Library.

      If you really want labyrinth level design from Bungie, the Marathon series is were it’s at and completely explains why there’s so much hand holding in Halo CE.

    • GiveOver@feddit.uk
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      6 days ago

      I remember playing Assault on the Control Room on Halo 1 and one of the doors glitched and didn’t unlock. I must have walked around those hallways for hours trying to work out where I was supposed to go

    • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      OMG! Yes! classic doom had some of the most frustrating level designs. I started to hate the game after being lost forever on some maps.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      6 days ago

      I think Hexen takes the cake among the “old Dooms”, since it has a hub map and you have to revisit some levels to toggle switches that became accessible after toggling another switch in another map.

  • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    This is an extremely specific situation in a game, but…

    In World of Warcraft, back in the day, there was a dungeon in Outland, I believe it was Helfire Citadel. It wasn’t particularly hard, but if you died, you were screwed. The way dungeon deaths worked was your spirit would spawn in a graveyard out in the regular world, and you would have to run your spirit ass back to the dungeon entrance to respawn. But finding the entrance to Helfire Citadel was so difficult I told the group if they don’t rez me, they’d have to just kick me, because I’d never make it back in. It was awful.

    • MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      There is a reason that as long as Hellfire Citadel has existed, the first Google auto complete suggestion is “Hellfire Citadel entrance.”

    • Frostbeard@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Lots of the vanilla WoW instances was like that. Often the way to the entrance was populated by the same level elites as the dungeon so you had to run a gauntlet just to get in.

      The Deadmines and Uldaman comes to mind. And since you spawned at the entrance you had to dodge and sneak past patrols avoided on the run. Gnomereagan and Maraudon and parts of Dire Maul was very maze like if my memory serves me right

      • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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        6 days ago

        Maraudon was the worst of all imo, big empty rooms so not only did you get lost it just took forever to run everywhere. Good times.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        6 days ago

        Blackrock Depths was fucking big, too. Later on, with the LFG tool, it was separated into 2 or 3 parts, I think. I mean, running alone back in WotLK days, where you could easily kill everything side, would still take you 2 to 3 hours to fully clear the place

        • Frostbeard@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Forgot about BRD. I also remember stranding in Ironforge begging for someone with the key to Upper Blackrock Spire to unlock it. Man that key was hard to get, and the gems did not even have a 100% droprate

    • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      I got lost a few times in that game as a kid. I do not htink it is too bad these days. I think it was a matter of being put in a significantly larger world from what we were used to.

      I’ve played it so many times at this point, I think I could navigate it without enemies or needing to click on consoles it with my eyes closed.

  • moakley@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Star Flight. I played it on Genesis, and it’s still one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.

    One space ship, 270 solar systems, and 800 planets. The manual included a captain’s log that was sent back in time from the future, but without that you’d just be scouring the stars for clues, interrogating aliens, digging through ancient ruins, and watching slowly as a rash of planet-destroying solar flares spreads through the galaxy.

    So fucking good.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      Sounds interesting. Reminds me somewhat of Uncharted Waters, which is a naval RPG set around 1560. You could visit ports all over Europe, Middle East and Africa, probably over India and Japan, too, doing trade runs or living a pirate’s life.

      • moakley@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        A lot of the game is scanning planets, gathering resources, and upgrading your ship. The upgrades allow you to gather more resources, explore further, and get better weapons so you can survive hostile alien encounters.

        If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend giving it a try.