Gaming

Salt and Sanctuary (more for it being unpopular vs bad hivemind).

I love Metroidvanias, but combined with Souls-like elements makes for a very fun concoction. This one in particular I have so much fun exploring. The story telling and world building adds to the mystery and the fun of unraveling the story. It has a very good variety of enemies/bosses/items. It also oozes so much atmosphere. One of the better Metroidvanias (I played a fair number of them).

Another one is Dark Souls 2. I get it being disliked; can't be helped as it had a lot of departures from the first. But out of all 3, this one I played x3 as much. I absolutely love the sheer variety of locations (it's ridiculous); exploration is super fun and rewarding.

Die Hard: Vendetta on the GameCube. Never seen the Die Hard movies but I received this game as a kid and my brother and loved it. It’s bad in a goofy way but it was fun.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The game was a commercial and critical bomb, but it's the only cover shooter I've ever enjoyed. It's just such an unrelentingly visceral, disorienting, harsh game, with one of the main aesthetic gimmicks being that it emulates the look and feel of a late 2000s amateur video. It's hard to describe without seeing it in action, but it was audacious as shit for what was meant to be a big budget, AAA title.

I was always a massive fan of the Lost Planet games on Xbox 360. Mixes up my childhood favorite things, giant monsters and mechs.

Metroid other m. Far from best game in the series, a lot easier than the other games, but i found the presentation really fun.

The dodging and kill moves i found satisfying and the boss fights were. The cut scenes were a bit too long buy i enjoyed the game

Love loved loved Battleborn. Nothing like it to my knowledge other than Gigantic which also died. The combo FPS / Moba was super fun. RIP Battleborn you died before you even took off.

Dirty Bomb. Think Insurgency/TF2 Payload map but with Valorant playstyle and graphic. This works surprisingly well and create a lifelong communities that still active to this day despite the game is unsupported by dev years ago. On top of that, the maps layout are memorable, something that TF2 Payload map and Insurgency Capture lack.

The original Secret World is still my guilty pleasure. It was the only MMO I ever got to endgame on. It's shame what they did to it when they tore out all of it's uniqueness and went FtP.

There was this platformed called box boy, it was fun. Idk how popular it was but monster hunter stories was a huge part of my life a few years ago idk why I liked it, it was just a fun rpg

Most of the Dark Pictures Anthology games have pretty mediocre ratings, but at this point my friends and I look forward to each release. It's like a 10 hour long horror movie night. They're just long enough to start right after lunch on a sat, and play late into the night, passing the controller around.

Their last release The Devil In Me is rated around 5/10, yet it might be my favorite one to date. It's not uncommon for them to have a rocky release with bugs, so sometimes we give them a few months to patch it up. But honestly, one of the best local coop experiences I've had. Definitely recommend if you have some friends over.

I liked Balan Wonderworld. i didn't love it, but i certainly don't understand the hate- I haven't ran into any bugs, some of the powers were neat, the music was phenomenal, and the simple controls were a selling point for me. it was like playing a new Dreamcast game in 2023 for better or for worse, another Billy Hatcher or something.

SCRAPS Modular Vehicle Combat.It's so much fun building epic guncars and battling with your friends LAN or over the internet. So sad to see the development abandoned though.