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Comment by compscistd | Hacker News Reader

I just finished playing through Horizon Zero Dawn which had been untouched, collecting dust on the shelf for a couple years. Found more time in the pandemic and I'm wondering what else I've missed out on! The only other titles I've played with great acclaim are God of War and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

From a brief wiki search, it seems outside of Nintendo, studios only tend to have one-hit wonders. I never played the Infamous games, but will take you on your word on Ghosts of Tsushima.

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Since you liked Horizon Zero Dawn:

- Witcher 3 brought me back to gaming after a 10+ year hiatus. While not perfect, it's the best/most immersive game I have ever played. Thanks to truly incredible writing, an interesting, engaging world where small side quests are some of the best content, good graphics that still hold up very well (especially with mods on PC, but just fine on console). All built on a foundation of very solid combat and gameplay.

- "Nier Automata" is an unusual experience that smoothly blends very different combat styles and has a mind-boggling, thought-provoking story.

Do you need to play Witcher 1 & 2?

No. Most people just play Witcher 3 and never touch 1 and 2.

You can pick up the story just fine, and 1+2 aren't remotely close wrt quality.

I'd say Witcher 2 is at least close, just smaller and less refined. The potion system is significantly more interesting in my opinion. That said, 3 is a masterpiece.

Even the original Witcher game is solid and has some interesting systems for its time. I wouldn't recommend it though to anyone who doesn't have an absurd amount of free time, or a real passion for the characters. It's been really neat watching CD Projekt step up their game, as it were, over the years.

Witcher 1 had some serious pacing issues, but I personally enjoyed it more than 2. 2 got too flash for me, whereas 1 was more about the characters and the story.

But it most DEFINITELY had pacing issues around the swamp area.

I watched the TV series first, and Witcher 3 has a much better and coherent story than the TV show even though the game picks up after the events of Witcher 1/2. I finished the game mostly for the stories.

tbf the TV show was pretty convoluted with time jumping all over the place

That's because it's based on the books which are a collections of shorter stories (at least the first one iirc).

It does stray quite far from the books though. Especially the angle on infertility is hilarious. In books the infertility was a side effect of hormonal imbalance caused by the use of magic. Impossible to recover from for males, nearly impossible for females. With how they changed it in the series, I wonder how are they going to explain all those important characters, Geralt included, being sons of sorceresses.

They could have very easily made the series a collection of short stories too, but they trued to tie them tigether in an incoherent way instead. Very poor attempt, in my opinion, and I often enjoy cheap TV shows.

They could've very easily had text on the screen saying what time period the current scene was in. It seems like they left it out deliberately for artistic reasons and many people have been confused as a result.

Even having read all the material and played all the games, the show was pretty convoluted and confused me until near the end. The time jumps give little to no notice.

I didn't feel pulled out of it but going back and replaying it made me feel like I missed a little bit of lore.

No, but you'd very possibly do yourself a disservice by skipping them. Personally I prefer the first two games over the third in most respects, with notable exceptions for graphical polish and inventory management.

Witcher 2 is a good introduction to the state of the world in 3. You can read the books (or watch the whole series after it concludes), play 2 and understand the geopolitics of 3. It is also short, has a good but nearly-linear story (there are choices that significantly change your playthrough and outcomes, but when you play a second time taking the other road at every fork you've seen it all) and can be had for cheap. Oh, and it has a really touching story arc with the best love scene I've ever seen in any game.

Witcher 1 was a good game for its time, but unless you consider yourself a serious fan of the universe, I would recommend skipping. It's the only one in which Sapkowski was involved, it has some very good dialogues in random places and it's the only one which gives you a very good feel for what a "normal" Witcher's life is. But the voice acting is only good in Polish, up to the point it's recommended everyone use Polish audio with subtitles if they don't speak the language. And the plot is quite disconnected from the books -> Witcher 2 -> 3 line (I'm really bummed we never got closure on the plot of 1).

I played and enjoyed Witcher 1, but it's long and grindy. I wouldn't recommend it now unless you have a lot of time to kill.

Nier Automata is just something else. Not every part of the game is that well executed, but the music alone is worth the price of entry and the emotional payoff in the story makes me forgive the many clunky elements.

I'm so glad I gave it a chance, because battle androids in maid costumes was not something that got my attention for the right reasons. Skill Up's review on YouTube is what tipped me over the edge - he expressed he had many of the same concerns going in.

Yeah, the game can be a bit uneven at times, but it's definitely on my list of 'must-play' games.

I second the HZD recommendation – it's one of the best video games I've ever played. Funny thing is if I hadn't bought an HDR tv I'd probably never pick up the game, mechanized dinosaurs didn't really float my boat and I never saw a trailer or read the synopsis for the game. I bought it dirt cheap on sale only because it said it had HDR support and I wanted to see what difference it'd make in a game. Turns out it was stunningly gorgeous, great gameplay and a compelling story to boot!

I'm getting a PS5 this winter or next year, chiefly because of the Horizon Zero Dawn sequel – I desperately want to see where they take the story.

Metal Gear Solid 5 remains one of the most fun games I played this generation. The storyline is dumb even by MGS standards, but the gameplay is absolutely phenomenal. Every feature just clicks together.

It also manages to avoid, for the most part, the pitfalls open world games fall in to (huge spans to cross with nothing happening, fetch missions, collect missions etc).

Infiltrating and exfiltrating a compound, whichever way you can think of, in the Afghan desert with none of the fancy SONAR or gadgetry of other MGS titles is what the series has clearly wished it was since day one.

> Infiltrating and exfiltrating a compound, whichever way you can think of, in the Afghan desert with none of the fancy SONAR or gadgetry of other MGS titles is what the series has clearly wished it was since day one

That sounds exactly like “The Wild Geese”, the movie Kojima got the idea for stealth gameplay from: https://youtu.be/G0xy-XdMqS4

The Master Chief Collection is out on PC now. It's an excellent way to experience the Halo series.

The games I enjoyed most over the past few years, in no particular order, are Red Dead Redemption 2, Spiderman, The Last of Us Remastered, Detroit Become Human, Bloodborne, Days Gone, Shadow of the Collossus remake. And in 2D, I loooooved Hollow Knight,

And of the ones already mentioned: God of War, The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima.

The Infamous games were ok. Not great, but not bad. Ghist of Tsushima is vastly better than their previous titles, IMHO.

If you're at all into 'platformers', I highly recommend Celeste, Hollow Knight, and Ori and the Blind Forest. These are some of the best in the genre and pretty cheap to boot.

GoW is really good.

And surprisingly affordable (10 bucks!) considering the quality of such entertainment.

The GoW games on a PS2(console, not emulated) are amazing, especially considering it's a 20 year old system. I still prefer them to the newer GoW on PS4.

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