Games that got you through stuff

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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sunnshiner
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Games that got you through stuff

Post by sunnshiner »

Did a game ever help you through a particular period of your life? No details if you don't want to, just name the game that you leant on for a bit.

For me it's Street Fighter Alpha 2 on SNES (emulated on a crappy laptop with an OG xbox 360 controller).
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by Sima Tuna »

Final Fantasy Tactics, when I was a kid. I used to turn on a cd in the background and just play for ages. No details but I wasn't happy often. I was happy when I was playing FFT.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Suikoden III. Sometimes padding a game's length out with copious backtracking keeping you in a goofy world populated by armed anthropomorphic ducks that much longer is a welcome thing.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI. Sometimes you have a shitty Japanese boss who doesn't pay you on time, or enough to get through the month at all in the big city for that matter. And an endlessly replayable game that takes 80 hours to complete a scenario but not much brain power or reflex once you've built up your forces is a good way to take your mind off the fact that you're spending two days living off taco shells because that's the only thing left in your cupboard. I wonder if Nakamura-san is dead now.

Destiny 2. A top-notch skinner box with really satisfying alien head-pops and cool as fuck guns that will keep you hypnotized for 18 consecutive hours a day with piles of olympic-level grinds. Except whatever it gets you through, you've probably let other areas of your life burn out of control in the interim so uh, spoiler warnings for that. (RIP Zavala BTW)
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drauch
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by drauch »

System Shock 2 got me through a really rough patch in my life the first time I played that.

Sons of the Forest recently helped me forget the misery of existing. Hoping RE4 will carry that flame, among the surprising amount of other games I'm looking forward to. I've got a crapload of hobbies, but games are the only one that help me turn off that shitty thing called a brain.
BIL wrote: "Small sack, LOTS OF CUM" - Nikola Tesla
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Blinge
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by Blinge »

Souls and Shmups I guess.
Mostly shmups. made me think I was good at something, when I needed that, even though I was always very mid.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Blinge wrote:Mostly shmups. made me think I was good at something, when I needed that, even though I was always very mid.
Being mid at shmups makes you a legit demigod in the wider context of 6th/7th gen gaming.
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BIL
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by BIL »

Arcade gaming as a whole gets me through things, as in, it's something I know is always there to fall back on. This is why I never endorsed the whole "bruh, u play jarpigs??? lollll u sukk bruh" XTREEM SHUMPER/Xtreme Burnout mindset. I'll be pottering away with arcade clears and writing STs until I fall dead off my chair, there's no rush.

Among console titles, the first two Silent Hills are games I've consistently returned to over the last couple decades+. I know I'll always forget about whatever with those; they're richly, darkly enveloping games, representing 110% effort from KCET. I love the third and fourth, too, and will usually play them back-to-back every few winters, but it's the original duo that evince an era when Konami gave its star talent the time and resources needed to create unfettered classics.

SOTN is also great for tuning out the world. Again I like to revisit every few years. Bloodborne, despite having vastly higher baseline and performance ceilings alike, fulfills a very similar role. Beautiful violent playgrounds chock-full of cool deadly toys.

EDIT: oh also, RE4. A masterpiece of rollicking interactive horror/action cinema, undergirded by an improbably perfect fusion of oldschool survival horror and classical gun shooting. Plus the super-replayable arcade gauntlet THE ANOTHER ORDER, and legitimately immortal arcade time attack, THE MERCENARIES Image Mikami is one of the most unfailingly reliable directors around. While I consider the relentless adrenaline rush Vanquish his masterpiece, RE4 is unbeatable for simple recreation with comparable oomph and just the right dusting of oldschool precision.

EDIT2: and Brutal DOOM. Gives the OG trilogy juuust the right jolt of RNG chaos, along with a bone-judderingly good sense of crushing, shredding, exploding force. E1/2/3 Black Metal difficulty is utterly perfect for unwinding with, a hellish blast of pure catharsis each and every time. E4 is a legitimately arcade-intense 1LC, with a very cool, Metal Slug-esque build up/cash in structure.

More recently - as in "a week ago" - GNG Resurrection truly surprised me. I legitimately did not believe a game like this could be produced nowadays, not even with a legend like Tokuro Fujiwara at the helm. No input lag, no nostalgia-wanking Kaizo gimmicks, and absolutely no fucks given for fragile mainstream sensibilities; just a precision-machined slab of vintage arcade granite. Packed with fiendish intricacies, geared for hard-won clears, with an upper tier expressly for the most battle-tested diehards. And at the same time, masterfully adorned with strictly optional footholds. A work of crossover genius.

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I was glad to see Sumez and the other series vets' positive reaction, a couple years back, but (there's that persistence again) I was going balls-out with a few bucket list 1LCs at the time, so I let it lie. I wish I hadn't - it's really improved my mood, re: modern arcade-style gaming. :lol:
Last edited by BIL on Tue Mar 21, 2023 7:32 am, edited 3 times in total.
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BryanM
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by BryanM »

BIL wrote:This is why I never endorsed the whole "bruh, u play jarpigs??? lollll u sukk bruh" XTREEM SHUMPER/Xtreme Burnout mindset.
Dodonpachi ruined my life by making me better at games. You know me, all the neurons have to either be all the way on or all the way off. And playing that game moved way too many damn games into the bastard middle ground between the two.

Now the only thing that makes me able to feel anything is short grueling I Wanna Be The Guy level bullshit. That's what that full rank Mandara fight was: a checkpoint in these Meat Boy style games.

... damn it, I'm going to have to get around to Battle Kid 2 soon...
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BIL
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by BIL »

BryanM wrote:Now the only thing that makes me able to feel anything is short grueling I Wanna Be The Guy level bullshit. That's what that full rank Mandara fight was: a checkpoint in these Meat Boy style games.

... damn it, I'm going to have to get around to Battle Kid 2 soon...
It's not IWBTG - just the simmering controlled chaos and diversely lethal setpieces of DaiMakaimura, with some smart but carefully balanced accoutrements, like always-on magic - but GNGR's Legend tier will definitely scratch that "every inch paid for in blood" itch. Image They basically designed a full arcade game, only deliberately foregoing preamble for nonstop near-endgame. There's still a sense of escalation, and lots of twists, it's not some shitty meme game. It just goes from five to ten, rather than starting at zero; no freebies.

I tried one-lifing Ninja Spirit this last Sunday, normally a 75% sure thing, only I'd drank way too much after church, and it'd been half a year, clouding matters somewhat. I breezed through to its infamously lethal peak of Stage 6, a raging battlefield par excellence, where I executed several flawless, pixel-tight evasions of the terrifyingly aggressive Samurai enemies, mowing through them and their supports alike while forging into the cruelly uneven terrain - "Fuuuck yeah" I said, "imma GIF this motherf-" Only to reach safe ground, where an industrious little Ninja Dog I'd not noticed bit me on the dick and killed me. GNGR Legend is that kind of crucible heat the whole way through, it's glorious. ^__^
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MJR
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by MJR »

I can certainly name few games that got me through hard times

Chaos Strikes Back on Amiga - every inch of that game was hard-won victory. Worked well to 15-year old me going through turmoil. In the end, my characters, which I grinded by making them run naked into the wall, got so tough that I could use invisible maze full of dragons as my live food storage 8)

Silent Hill 1 and 2, for the catharsis

Bloodborne, after a breakup from 10-year relationship. The atmosphere of utter hopelesness was just dead-on; I straight on lived in it. Only From Software game where I got platinum on.

Those also happen to be some of my all-time favourite games; at the very top of my top lists.
neorichieb1971
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by neorichieb1971 »

When I was going through divorce, moving away far from family due to my job commitments and being totally alone in the USA in 2005, games like Shadow of the collossus, God of War and Mr Driller were my go to games. I did play a lot of DDP and ESP Ra.de at the time as well.

A good grinding game gets you through debt issues as well. I am trying to save right now so I am buying PS2 games for £2.50 to about £6.00 that have hours of platforming action because thats what I am into right now. I've saved more than double what I usually save because i'm retro gaming in that area where games are dirt cheap. So if you are going through emotional turmoil buy an emotional game, if you are in debt, try to find a game you can grind through for cheap.
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
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blackoak
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by blackoak »

I'm not sure if this counts exactly, but all the early interviews I was translating for the forum here back in ~2011-2012 helped lift me out of some real depression. I did the first ~50 or so translations "on the alt+tab sly" at these soul-draining document review jobs (doc review is like the bottom dregs of legal work... I was doing Japanese language review so it paid well but it was still super depressing, ennui-inducing work). Eventually I parlayed that work into shmuplations, which really turned my life around and allowed me to get out of legal work once and for all.

It's funny because before that, I would have said that games were a somewhat negative influence on my life. Escapism, numbing, the usual watchwords. But turning it into something where I was helping other people gave meaning to my life in a dark time when everything seemed pretty pointless. What they say about helping others to lift yourself out of depression is really true!
Last edited by blackoak on Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BIL
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by BIL »

^ That's wonderful to hear, bud! You really have given this community an absolute treasure trove over the past decade-plus; I know there's many dozens of games (old and new favourites alike) I couldn't appreciate or discuss on here the way I do, otherwise. Image Image
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NYN
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jump yourself out of the hole

Post by NYN »

Silent Hill 2 got me out of an unfulfilling relationship. Afterwards she never wrote a letter...
"I've transmuted into a super being. I'll proof it by killing you." -NGIII ( words to kill by )
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XoPachi
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Re: Games that got you through stuff

Post by XoPachi »

Back when I was 18 in college, I had a very weird schedule, bad transportation situation, and my major didn't have anything to classically study for.
That in mind, I had a semester where for the first few weeks of it, I didn't have anything to do outside of class until midterms hit. This particular semester, I had a 2 hour gap between my composition and HTML classes. I was basically stranded at the school but that was fine to me. During those few weeks where I was idle, I'd sit at the library and play Link to the Past on my DS. I would beat a fresh file everyday at my break when I didn't have anything to work on.

I have played Link to the Past so much in my life. I have all 3 of my childhood files on my father's old cartridge completed still. All 3 files finished on my phone's emulator, on my GBA, in NSO, in BSNES, my Retroid, my Wii. I've played it almost as much as speedrunners have. I find the game comforting. It takes away certain amounts of stress. Enough to proceed with what's bothering me.
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