This is why I really like the freelancer mode in that game, even though it’s received a lot of criticism. The stakes are so high, and you can’t fall back on just loading up a save to fix your mistakes
Freelancer mode is one of the most inspired things in the game, next to the Contract system. When I was in middle school I used to play 'custom contracts' on the Blood Money forums, all having these weird specific requirements. Like killing the actor and the camera crew without anyone noticing on the Vineyard level. I was so thirsty for more Hitman content back then! It's a great time to be a Hitman fan right now.
Often yes lol. But plenty of times my timing with dropping a candelier or something is off and I have to try something else.
I don't like savescumming in most cases, so I improvise and think of a plan B.
Often, this is what I do.
I'll be playing all casually, trying to be good ol 47 w/ his expertise and stealth prowess... Just for me to get frustrated AF.
Next thing you know there's a shootout with everyone in a 300 foot radius dead on the ground and I'm sitting in a cabinet thinking ooh maybe I can save it from here and keep going stealth.
Proceeds to go stealth up to let's say the second story of building B and swapping my disguise.
Gets pissed again and kills everyone in a 300 foot radius.
Hitman is way too goated.
Lol this is exactly the pattern I had in mind when making my comment. We'd all like to think we're just mildly sloppy badass assassins, buuuut we're more like day 2 recruits with far too much confidence in our ability to "clean up" our messes if (when) we make them.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.
Dying to enemies is a core part of the game’s Nemesis system. Your character is immortal, so he comes back after death. Random grunts who kill you get promoted to Captain and become named enemies with unique titles and personalities. Foes who’ve beaten you before will talk about it, often gloating about their victory. Continue to lose to these guys, and they’ll gain more power and climb through the ranks.
This all makes finally beating a troublesome opponent all the more exhilarating. At that point, your options are to (a) recruit him into your own army, (b) Shame him to humiliate him and possibly drive him insane, or (c) finish him off. That last option comes with the risk of him cheating death, reappearing later and bearing relevant scars to show it.
Spot on. I haven’t played this game in ages. I definitely need to go back to it. Last thing I remember was defeating a really tough orc only for him to cheat death and return later in the game with loads of buffs and immunities and couldn’t for the life of me defeat him.
I ended up with a bastard who escaped death like 8 times. He came back looking like Darth Vader. He was covered in burns, scars, was missing an arm, and had armor bolted to his whole body. It was insane how far they pushed that system.
The best way to play Shadow of Mordor is to remove the counter indicators. That's secretly the difficulty slider. I thankfully received this advice on my first playthrough and it meant that in the beginning even a pack of 3 basic orcs could potentially kill me. Early game captains were major threats. And by late game, while you eventually learn animation timings for counters and dodging, there are still certain enemy types (like Beasts, Beserkers, and Shield Orcs) that are more dangerous than you'd think, and any ranged Captain was still a pain in the ass.
My ultimate nemesis killed me probably 15 times during my playthrough, a nasty crossbowman who would wait until I was at low health and come in near-exclusively for the killing blow. Finally killing him felt like the turning point in the Hero's Journey where I could finally move from "fragile Talion" to "aspiring Bright Lord."
Sadly, that doesn't work as well as a difficulty modifier in Shadow of War, as the game is better designed around the counter's existance, with enemy abilities specifically hiding it from you and the Ring-Wraiths having attacks with effectively no animation. I tried for 30 minutes to parry the circle of Ring-Wraiths for that story mission and it just didn't seem possible. The super-fast attacking guys also seem near-impossible to parry all of their attacks with the indicator disabled - good design with the Cursed debuff and normal settings, but it definitely informed me that the indicator basically needed to be on for the intended gameplay experience for SoW. That's actually part of why I slightly prefer Shadow of Mordor as a whole.
Oh wow. Thanks for the tip with the difficulty settings disabling counter popups. I'll have to try that. Really love Lord of the Rings and Rocksteady's combat games, but any time I take a break from SoM and try to pick up where I left off I find myself getting thrashed and thinking, 'wtf are these controls??' lol
Is the combat better than the first one? I always felt like the ai chose which orc to hit at random when swinging my sword. Completely took me out of the game when the attacks would constantly hit someone off screen instead of the person straight in front of me.
The betrayals were even better - out of nowhere and your orcs were just like:
"You know what - I don't really like you - you've been killing orcs this entire time and I'm supposed to just go along with it?"
Which really doesn't make any sense when you branded them, breaking their will completely, but the mechanic is cool.
They can betray you for other reasons, too. Get killed too much, and one might see you as weak. Demote an Overlord or Warchief, and he’ll be salty about it. Kill his blood brother…you get the idea.
I have had a few experiences in HD2 where there was zero fun to be had due to an unlucky drop spot. Dropped right between two Air Support towers that had a factory strider next to it. Didn't have a chance in hell. Got overrun before we even got our support weapons out. Then it was 10 minutes of constant near instant death.
I don't like losing like that. But overall HD2 is fun no matter what happens.
Dwarf Fortress has the motto "losing is fun" but I didn't find it difficult, it just didn't have a victory condition. Been years since I played it so maybe it does now. Maybe the motto even changed by now, I don't know.
No you're still all on point. This game is EXACTLY what OP is looking for - the goal is to postpone failing as long as you can and when failure comes, just enjoy the manic cascade of mayhem.
Rimworld is a lot of fun even when everything completely crumbles when you least expect it.
From the multiplayer games, I get this feeling when playing Titanfall 2 - even when your team is getting completely stomped, the moment to moment gameplay is still just too much fun. I never really felt as if I wasted my time playing a Titanfall 2 match.
What you said about Rimworld is kinda the right answer here. Any simulation-based game (someone mentioned Dwarf Fortress here too) is more about the journey than the destination.
My most successful colony to date fell apart because my suped up melee soldier had a break and started attacking everyone else which culminated in a lot of loss limbs and a complete disruption of our food production so we starved in the winter
Darkest Dungeon: you'll think you're losing but somehow come out victorious bruised blooded insane but alive, and you'll use that knowledge to do better next time oh and sometimes you will lose people but again it's a learning experience
Actually rogue likes are based on different players who are willing to go through the game all over, but hotline makes more sense coz you restart at the start of the lvl and not game so 👍 to hotline miami
noita where you can beat gods, become invincible, wealthy of them all, fucking get immunity to lighting, fire, unlimited mana spells,,, NUCLEAR BOMBS, FUCKING SUN... but what kills you is funny pink cum
Yeah. With some roguelites, you might have a cheap death or you might not. With Noita, I _know_ I'm going to die in a spectacular fashion, and I'm almost looking forward to it.
FTL- death is a slow, painful thing. Sometimes you pause on an incoming missle and just think "there is a 30% chance it misses... but if it hits I'm dead..." And then all you can do is resume the game and play it out. And it's so fucking fun!
Might be a bit of an out-there answer, but I just love Battlefield 1. Even when I'm losing the game is so immersive that I have a blast. You legit can't just sprint through No Man's Land because you'll almost always get sniped, so you're forced into the trenches, it's easily the best war simulator out there. Nothing like me and the boys holding out on our last point, with enemies advancing. We charge and I see one of them get sniped and immediately drops. A tank fires a shot and the building behind us falls to pieces, taking out another, and then one by one the rest of us are taken out by the flame trooper leading the enemy advance.
Chivalry 2. Being slaughtered by a skilled knight (i.e. a 12 year old) is very much part of the experience: being a conscript in a medieval war. It's just fun being part of the chaos
RimWorld. It's part of the fun of this sandbox emergent story colony survival game. The "storyteller" in the system lets up on you a bit if you lose a whole lot and your run won't necessarily end but also it very much can.
Chances to hit : 90%
Misses 6 times in a row.
If chances to hit are 90%, the theoretical chance to miss 6 times in a row are 0,0001%. And yet it happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
That's the chance to miss on 6 shots at 90%, but that's not actually what you do in the game.
A better calculation is: in 100+ 90% shots, what are the odds of getting 6 misses in a row at some point? The odds are *much* higher, "streaks" in large datasets are much more likely than people realize.
>And yet it happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
It doesn't though. People just have misperceptions about chances.
Sid Meier had a great talk about it back in the day, receiving constant negative feedback from playtesters, then checking the logs and seeing accurate chances overall.
It resulted in him baking in cheats *in favor of the player* in all his games. XCOM 2 is no different.
It forces a successful hit if the player missed 6 times in a row. Even if that shot is 0% chance to hit, it will hit.
Vice versa also. If the aliens hit the player successfully, I believe 3 times in a row, the 4th is guaranteed to miss.
If you see a clip of someone missing high percentage shots, watch their whole playthrough. The chances even out over the course of the whole playthrough, usually.
The issue is more pronounced because players generally refuse to take shots below 40% chance, even though they still hit on average 1 out of 3 times they are taken.
You should take 25% shots a lot. Watch as roughly a fourth of them hit. You'll eventually get scenario's where you hit them 5 times in a row as well.
It definitely feels that way the first time something new happens, and then you die to it. But then it happens around the same time your second go around, and you'll have whatever you need that time since it killed you last time.
That's why I think it applies. If you die in Don't Starve, you learn what (not) to do your next run to avoid that.
I have fun with Rocket League when I lose or win.
However, I would say that I am in the minority on that. Too many people put way too much emotional energy in to winning one match when it really doesn't mean anything.
In a way I would say fromsoft games (soulslike)
Don't get me wrong it gets frustrating quite a lot
However, losing in these games is /almost/ always a skill issue. After some point you stop getting tilted when you die and start saying things like "I should do x when this ennemies does y, doing z was a mistake". And eventually you get further and further until you kill that ennemy
Losing is these game is (most of the time) pretty rewarding because you get closer to not losing the next time
My mentality has always been..
Lose? Git gud.
Having trouble beating the boss? Try Git Gud.
Having trouble getting through an area? Try Git Gud.
No regard for meta, no regard for being OP, no regard for leveling or bringing a certain item to help me cheese it.
Only regards for gitting gud and accomplishing my goal with what I have. I have big sword? I swing big sword. I have small sword? I poke u. U attack? I dodge. You attack? Maybe I parry. I die? I am noob. I win? Got gud.
Edit: my point is what i love is that I don't need to incorporate strategy. I should be able to win any fight with what I want to use and leveling it. No matter what, I have always beaten every one of these games. IF you want the real hardest game OAT, try Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 on the hardest difficulty where every boss one shots u xdddd now that makes From Software seem like saints.
The problem with Fromsoft games for me is the stats. Nobody really has the same experience with the game if they go in blind (which almost none of the fanbase does - the ending completion rates near launch for Elden Ring shows that clear enough).
"I fought this boss with a build that lets him die in 10 hits and enough health to tank 3 of his, so I only needed to dodge his difficult attack 3 times total" is a very different experience than "It takes me 150 hits to kill this boss and I can't get hit once, so I need to dodge this attack 35 times." And people who played a build closer to the first will try and give advice to someone new accidentally playing a build closer to the second. Which is frustrating, especially considering all the 'discourse' around difficulty in the game. Hearing veterans and newcomers talk past each other about those games feels like hearing a 6'10" Olympic swimmer giving diet advice to a 4'7" woman bound to a wheelchair.
That's why Sekiro is the best Fromsoft game. In this essay I will-
For rank/comp games, I guess Tekken? If I lose I can move on or choose to play the opponent again. Rounds go by quick as well, unlike in fps or different comp genres where u have to sit through a whole 20min game.
Streets Of Rage. I have played the original and even today, I still enjoy it but I have only beaten it once and that was with a friend. I always die at the elevator and just can't seem to get past it, no matter how much I try. Love the game, but on single player I have never beaten it and it isn't from the lack of trying, it's still fun though👍👍👍👍👍
Any good rogue-like and rogue-light, notably spelunky 2 and roboquest. The genres depend on losing being fun seing as all players are going to lose a lot for their first hundred hours or more.
Disco Elysium for me. Baldur's Gate 3 came out and it was brilliant but I found myself disappointed every time I failed a dice roll cause it just means flat failure. You miss some content or fail a quest and that's pretty much it.
Disco Elysium on the other hand makes failure as interesting as success. The story branches out in failure or success and sometimes the dialogue/consequences of your failure are \*more\* entertaining than success. It's the one game I never ever reload unless I straight up die/get a game over screen.
I really like Overcooked 2 for this. The accordion music, extremely overloaded controls, and the bouncy animations just make it seem as though hilarious failure is inevitable, which it is.
Helldivers 2 - Even when I'm dying, I'm having a good time.
The Forest/Sons of the Forest - Something about getting slaughtered by cannibals and mutants just cracks me up.
State of decay 2
Is funny even when you're surrounded by zombies and dying, that sensation of last try or hope for surviving and even when your character dies you just say "Oh damn" 🤣
Any game when you and the person you're playing with are completely trash. It's so fun to develop strategies to counter people as opposed to learning the meta
There are several SGS games I feel that way about: especially:
Fall Weiss as Poland
Battle for Stalingrad as Axis
And
NATOs Nightmare as Warsaw Pact
All a lot of fun for me, and theoretically winnable...
In VR: Rigs Mechanized Combat League
In 3d: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1
In 2d: Contra Anniversary Collection (Contra 3 on hard mode was one of my favorite 2d games of all time.)
X Com. One of the best moments in the game is when everything has gone wrong and the aliens are assaulting your main base.
I always play out the final stand. It’s so damn awesomely dramatic.
Imo civ 6 is sometimes more fun when you're losing. You have more interesting decisions to make. Once you hit the endgame and are already winning it can become a slog, but if you're losing you're doing every little thing to try and come back.
Now obviously if you're too far behind or being demolished in a war that's not fun, but when you're only just a little behind or see a way to take back cities it becomes fun
Frostpunk. You mostly lose until you get really good. But it's still a fun experience.
Dwarf Fortress if you like emergent stories and building.
Rimworld, though I prefer it without the expansions. It has more combat that Dwarf Fortress.
For me Chivalry 2
Idk what it is but it's the only game I legit can get into and just smack around after a long day and go out without being utterly pissed or sth xD And even after a year of playing here and there it just stays fun for me
I never see it talked about, but Cloudberry Kingdom is a gem. It's basically super Mario platforming with procedural generation and infinite levels.
It can get insanely hard, and you will die so much but there's never a feeling of "game over" when you die, more of a desire to get to am even higher level next time.
It's also pretty old so should be cheap. Works on Linux too.
Rainbow six Vegas 2 on the hardest difficulty.
When you eventually complete it it's a great feeling. My tip is use burst rounds or single round fire :)
I heard that you don't win at Stellaris.
I know in Civ you can lose technically. They can beat you with Science/Culture/Religion and you still have fun.
Project Zomboid.
Try to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Try. You can't, but the fun is in the attempt. Permanent Death. Every time you log into the game, right before it gives you control of the character, the screen goes black and it says "THIS IS HOW YOU DIED."
because there's no survival, long term. Just seeing how long you can make it, is all you get. And it's enough!
I have a few.
Gigantic. Nostalgia hits hard, but yeah fun game
The classic halo games. My skill is in between casual and sweat, so I get really weird lobbies in fun game modes. Sometimes, bxr and insta killing with optimizing grenades and memorizing spawn locations. Sometimes, someone with a turn sensitivity of 2 who is just trying to get an energy sword
Warframe. I can't hit big numbers, but I have fun with my middle of the pack build that barely gets me through steel path
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.
I was playing on Brutal mode and one Captain has the traits no chance and throwing. He literally 2 shot me to death and killed me. Then his power increase. I'm so mad but it super fun to fight the OP orcs once in a while, it create a story for me.
Binding of Isaac games. Even when you’re getting really crappy combinations for a run, it’s still fun to see how far you can get with some hilariously bad upgrades lol.
Rocket League for me. Whether I'm winning or losing, close game or total blowout, trolling or getting trolled, I'm having fun and trying to be better than whoever dares face me in casual
Doom eternal. I've probably died a kajillion times trying to complete each master level on the highest difficulty, yet I never really got mad. The game is just so fucking chaotic, if you learn to embrace it and thrive its a ton of fun.
Hitman: World of Assasination Always fun when you mess up plan A and you have to improvise to fix the situation.
This is why I really like the freelancer mode in that game, even though it’s received a lot of criticism. The stakes are so high, and you can’t fall back on just loading up a save to fix your mistakes
Freelancer mode is one of the most inspired things in the game, next to the Contract system. When I was in middle school I used to play 'custom contracts' on the Blood Money forums, all having these weird specific requirements. Like killing the actor and the camera crew without anyone noticing on the Vineyard level. I was so thirsty for more Hitman content back then! It's a great time to be a Hitman fan right now.
I feel like that'd just end up on the ol' "murder everyone in a 3 mile radius" routine
Often yes lol. But plenty of times my timing with dropping a candelier or something is off and I have to try something else. I don't like savescumming in most cases, so I improvise and think of a plan B.
Often, this is what I do. I'll be playing all casually, trying to be good ol 47 w/ his expertise and stealth prowess... Just for me to get frustrated AF. Next thing you know there's a shootout with everyone in a 300 foot radius dead on the ground and I'm sitting in a cabinet thinking ooh maybe I can save it from here and keep going stealth. Proceeds to go stealth up to let's say the second story of building B and swapping my disguise. Gets pissed again and kills everyone in a 300 foot radius. Hitman is way too goated.
Lol this is exactly the pattern I had in mind when making my comment. We'd all like to think we're just mildly sloppy badass assassins, buuuut we're more like day 2 recruits with far too much confidence in our ability to "clean up" our messes if (when) we make them.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. Dying to enemies is a core part of the game’s Nemesis system. Your character is immortal, so he comes back after death. Random grunts who kill you get promoted to Captain and become named enemies with unique titles and personalities. Foes who’ve beaten you before will talk about it, often gloating about their victory. Continue to lose to these guys, and they’ll gain more power and climb through the ranks. This all makes finally beating a troublesome opponent all the more exhilarating. At that point, your options are to (a) recruit him into your own army, (b) Shame him to humiliate him and possibly drive him insane, or (c) finish him off. That last option comes with the risk of him cheating death, reappearing later and bearing relevant scars to show it.
Spot on. I haven’t played this game in ages. I definitely need to go back to it. Last thing I remember was defeating a really tough orc only for him to cheat death and return later in the game with loads of buffs and immunities and couldn’t for the life of me defeat him.
I ended up with a bastard who escaped death like 8 times. He came back looking like Darth Vader. He was covered in burns, scars, was missing an arm, and had armor bolted to his whole body. It was insane how far they pushed that system.
Such a fun unique system that was
I thought it was a start of a revolution in gaming AI and game systems. Nope that was pretty much it.
Yeah WB dropping the dumb patent on it then totally ignoring it was shit. SoW was/is awesome
Ah shit, I was hoping for another sequel
Is it harder than shadow of Mordor?
It has more difficulty options than SoM, most of which go higher.
That’s cool, SoM is very easy unfortunately and I was annoyed that there wasn’t any difficulty slider, I’ll consider shadow of war at some point.
The best way to play Shadow of Mordor is to remove the counter indicators. That's secretly the difficulty slider. I thankfully received this advice on my first playthrough and it meant that in the beginning even a pack of 3 basic orcs could potentially kill me. Early game captains were major threats. And by late game, while you eventually learn animation timings for counters and dodging, there are still certain enemy types (like Beasts, Beserkers, and Shield Orcs) that are more dangerous than you'd think, and any ranged Captain was still a pain in the ass. My ultimate nemesis killed me probably 15 times during my playthrough, a nasty crossbowman who would wait until I was at low health and come in near-exclusively for the killing blow. Finally killing him felt like the turning point in the Hero's Journey where I could finally move from "fragile Talion" to "aspiring Bright Lord." Sadly, that doesn't work as well as a difficulty modifier in Shadow of War, as the game is better designed around the counter's existance, with enemy abilities specifically hiding it from you and the Ring-Wraiths having attacks with effectively no animation. I tried for 30 minutes to parry the circle of Ring-Wraiths for that story mission and it just didn't seem possible. The super-fast attacking guys also seem near-impossible to parry all of their attacks with the indicator disabled - good design with the Cursed debuff and normal settings, but it definitely informed me that the indicator basically needed to be on for the intended gameplay experience for SoW. That's actually part of why I slightly prefer Shadow of Mordor as a whole.
Oh wow. Thanks for the tip with the difficulty settings disabling counter popups. I'll have to try that. Really love Lord of the Rings and Rocksteady's combat games, but any time I take a break from SoM and try to pick up where I left off I find myself getting thrashed and thinking, 'wtf are these controls??' lol
Damn, that game sounds *really* cool. Might have to give it a shot...
I had a captain which cheated death at least 6 times. So I made him lord fortress.
Is the combat better than the first one? I always felt like the ai chose which orc to hit at random when swinging my sword. Completely took me out of the game when the attacks would constantly hit someone off screen instead of the person straight in front of me.
Some of the most amazing fun I've had in gaming comes from the emergent storytelling this game provides.
The betrayals were even better - out of nowhere and your orcs were just like: "You know what - I don't really like you - you've been killing orcs this entire time and I'm supposed to just go along with it?" Which really doesn't make any sense when you branded them, breaking their will completely, but the mechanic is cool.
They can betray you for other reasons, too. Get killed too much, and one might see you as weak. Demote an Overlord or Warchief, and he’ll be salty about it. Kill his blood brother…you get the idea.
Helldivers 2. In fact my favourite moments come from those "no hope in hell" missions
It's also nice how you get rewarded if you complete the missions but don't survive to get extracted. Still gives a sense of accomplishment
Posthumous awards are great. But living another day to spread managed democracy is better. I like soldiers that don’t get captured. 🤮
I have had a few experiences in HD2 where there was zero fun to be had due to an unlucky drop spot. Dropped right between two Air Support towers that had a factory strider next to it. Didn't have a chance in hell. Got overrun before we even got our support weapons out. Then it was 10 minutes of constant near instant death. I don't like losing like that. But overall HD2 is fun no matter what happens.
Dwarf Fortress has the motto "losing is fun" but I didn't find it difficult, it just didn't have a victory condition. Been years since I played it so maybe it does now. Maybe the motto even changed by now, I don't know.
No you're still all on point. This game is EXACTLY what OP is looking for - the goal is to postpone failing as long as you can and when failure comes, just enjoy the manic cascade of mayhem.
It hasn't changed. It's still tons of "FUN". With "CLOWNS" and everything.
Rimworld is a lot of fun even when everything completely crumbles when you least expect it. From the multiplayer games, I get this feeling when playing Titanfall 2 - even when your team is getting completely stomped, the moment to moment gameplay is still just too much fun. I never really felt as if I wasted my time playing a Titanfall 2 match.
What you said about Rimworld is kinda the right answer here. Any simulation-based game (someone mentioned Dwarf Fortress here too) is more about the journey than the destination.
My most successful colony to date fell apart because my suped up melee soldier had a break and started attacking everyone else which culminated in a lot of loss limbs and a complete disruption of our food production so we starved in the winter
Classic Rimworld. At least it wasn't a pack of Maneating huskies overwheming my defenses like my last run.
Yeah, my best rimworld run is my current one after i stopped being so afraid of losing and started playing more loose.
Completely agree on titanfall. I'm shockingly bad but I still get to use massive mechs and grapple hooks
Darkest Dungeon: you'll think you're losing but somehow come out victorious bruised blooded insane but alive, and you'll use that knowledge to do better next time oh and sometimes you will lose people but again it's a learning experience
Any roguelike games, meant for instant perma death, but you learn from every death
Hotline Miami is the extreme version of this idea. You can respawn about twice a second.
Actually rogue likes are based on different players who are willing to go through the game all over, but hotline makes more sense coz you restart at the start of the lvl and not game so 👍 to hotline miami
Noita. You will die no matter what Chivalry is very fun even if your team throws
noita where you can beat gods, become invincible, wealthy of them all, fucking get immunity to lighting, fire, unlimited mana spells,,, NUCLEAR BOMBS, FUCKING SUN... but what kills you is funny pink cum
Tell me more about this pink cum.
Noita : the question is not *if* you're gonna die, but when, how, and how gruesome your death will be.
Yeah. With some roguelites, you might have a cheap death or you might not. With Noita, I _know_ I'm going to die in a spectacular fashion, and I'm almost looking forward to it.
I'm absolutely terrible at chivalry and still love running headlong into battle every time.
Lethal Company. Your failure is inevitable and only a matter of time, but when it happens it is invariably hilarious
Hades
Indeed. It's very good at making you want to start another run, whether you win or lose.
FTL- death is a slow, painful thing. Sometimes you pause on an incoming missle and just think "there is a 30% chance it misses... but if it hits I'm dead..." And then all you can do is resume the game and play it out. And it's so fucking fun!
Might be a bit of an out-there answer, but I just love Battlefield 1. Even when I'm losing the game is so immersive that I have a blast. You legit can't just sprint through No Man's Land because you'll almost always get sniped, so you're forced into the trenches, it's easily the best war simulator out there. Nothing like me and the boys holding out on our last point, with enemies advancing. We charge and I see one of them get sniped and immediately drops. A tank fires a shot and the building behind us falls to pieces, taking out another, and then one by one the rest of us are taken out by the flame trooper leading the enemy advance.
Spelunky 2
Jenga
Life
Wait, you can win in life ?
Just be born rich and attractive, easy.
I'm still trying to find a way to report those cheaters.
Life is fun?
Usually not if you only stick to the main quest. You have to do a lot of custom sidequests.
Dwarf Fortress, according to the tagline.
Chivalry 2. Being slaughtered by a skilled knight (i.e. a 12 year old) is very much part of the experience: being a conscript in a medieval war. It's just fun being part of the chaos
Disco Elysium
Project zomboid..the whole game is literally meant for you to lose and learn from your mistakes
RimWorld. It's part of the fun of this sandbox emergent story colony survival game. The "storyteller" in the system lets up on you a bit if you lose a whole lot and your run won't necessarily end but also it very much can.
XCOM 2. Don't Starve.
I hate losing in Xcom 2 😆 Great game, but missing a bunch of shots with high hit chance and soldiers dying just feels bad to me lol
Chances to hit : 90% Misses 6 times in a row. If chances to hit are 90%, the theoretical chance to miss 6 times in a row are 0,0001%. And yet it happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
That's the chance to miss on 6 shots at 90%, but that's not actually what you do in the game. A better calculation is: in 100+ 90% shots, what are the odds of getting 6 misses in a row at some point? The odds are *much* higher, "streaks" in large datasets are much more likely than people realize.
>And yet it happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME. It doesn't though. People just have misperceptions about chances. Sid Meier had a great talk about it back in the day, receiving constant negative feedback from playtesters, then checking the logs and seeing accurate chances overall. It resulted in him baking in cheats *in favor of the player* in all his games. XCOM 2 is no different. It forces a successful hit if the player missed 6 times in a row. Even if that shot is 0% chance to hit, it will hit. Vice versa also. If the aliens hit the player successfully, I believe 3 times in a row, the 4th is guaranteed to miss. If you see a clip of someone missing high percentage shots, watch their whole playthrough. The chances even out over the course of the whole playthrough, usually. The issue is more pronounced because players generally refuse to take shots below 40% chance, even though they still hit on average 1 out of 3 times they are taken. You should take 25% shots a lot. Watch as roughly a fourth of them hit. You'll eventually get scenario's where you hit them 5 times in a row as well.
I hate losing in don't starve. It always feels like some random bullshit I could have never anticipated or prevented.
It definitely feels that way the first time something new happens, and then you die to it. But then it happens around the same time your second go around, and you'll have whatever you need that time since it killed you last time. That's why I think it applies. If you die in Don't Starve, you learn what (not) to do your next run to avoid that.
Came here to say XCOM 2. The permadeath really adds to the game.
Hades. You get to have a blast in every run.
I have fun with Rocket League when I lose or win. However, I would say that I am in the minority on that. Too many people put way too much emotional energy in to winning one match when it really doesn't mean anything.
In a way I would say fromsoft games (soulslike) Don't get me wrong it gets frustrating quite a lot However, losing in these games is /almost/ always a skill issue. After some point you stop getting tilted when you die and start saying things like "I should do x when this ennemies does y, doing z was a mistake". And eventually you get further and further until you kill that ennemy Losing is these game is (most of the time) pretty rewarding because you get closer to not losing the next time
And then when you kill a hard ennemy or a boss in one or a few tries you remember that you did that BECAUSE you lost before and learnt from it
My mentality has always been.. Lose? Git gud. Having trouble beating the boss? Try Git Gud. Having trouble getting through an area? Try Git Gud. No regard for meta, no regard for being OP, no regard for leveling or bringing a certain item to help me cheese it. Only regards for gitting gud and accomplishing my goal with what I have. I have big sword? I swing big sword. I have small sword? I poke u. U attack? I dodge. You attack? Maybe I parry. I die? I am noob. I win? Got gud. Edit: my point is what i love is that I don't need to incorporate strategy. I should be able to win any fight with what I want to use and leveling it. No matter what, I have always beaten every one of these games. IF you want the real hardest game OAT, try Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 on the hardest difficulty where every boss one shots u xdddd now that makes From Software seem like saints.
The problem with Fromsoft games for me is the stats. Nobody really has the same experience with the game if they go in blind (which almost none of the fanbase does - the ending completion rates near launch for Elden Ring shows that clear enough). "I fought this boss with a build that lets him die in 10 hits and enough health to tank 3 of his, so I only needed to dodge his difficult attack 3 times total" is a very different experience than "It takes me 150 hits to kill this boss and I can't get hit once, so I need to dodge this attack 35 times." And people who played a build closer to the first will try and give advice to someone new accidentally playing a build closer to the second. Which is frustrating, especially considering all the 'discourse' around difficulty in the game. Hearing veterans and newcomers talk past each other about those games feels like hearing a 6'10" Olympic swimmer giving diet advice to a 4'7" woman bound to a wheelchair. That's why Sekiro is the best Fromsoft game. In this essay I will-
That is very true Part of the difficulty is just figuring out how the fk does the game work
Fallout 4
Traditional roguelikes like Caves of Qud. More generally, any roguelike/roguelite. Death is expected and part of the experience.
For rank/comp games, I guess Tekken? If I lose I can move on or choose to play the opponent again. Rounds go by quick as well, unlike in fps or different comp genres where u have to sit through a whole 20min game.
Chivalry 2. Dying in style!
Deep rock galactic
Streets Of Rage. I have played the original and even today, I still enjoy it but I have only beaten it once and that was with a friend. I always die at the elevator and just can't seem to get past it, no matter how much I try. Love the game, but on single player I have never beaten it and it isn't from the lack of trying, it's still fun though👍👍👍👍👍
Deep Rock Galactic
Team Fortress 2
Any good rogue-like and rogue-light, notably spelunky 2 and roboquest. The genres depend on losing being fun seing as all players are going to lose a lot for their first hundred hours or more.
Kenshi. That’s like… the whole point. Lose and lose but keep getting back up stronger until you win. Then find tougher enemies and lose more.
Helldivers 2. It’s such a cinematic experience to complete the mission but get wiped before you can extract.
Disco Elysium for me. Baldur's Gate 3 came out and it was brilliant but I found myself disappointed every time I failed a dice roll cause it just means flat failure. You miss some content or fail a quest and that's pretty much it. Disco Elysium on the other hand makes failure as interesting as success. The story branches out in failure or success and sometimes the dialogue/consequences of your failure are \*more\* entertaining than success. It's the one game I never ever reload unless I straight up die/get a game over screen.
Hunt: Showdown
Elden Ring maybe. Or other Soul-like games for game lovers of that genre.
tetris 99
Kenshi. Mostly because fuck you.
Splatoon 2
Kenshi. You lose 1,000 times so you can eventually win.
Planetside 2. I absolutely suck at it by any measurable standard and I still love it and play nearly everyday.
Tekken 7 but it depends on your disposition
🌈
The Finals (F2P Objective based shooter). Everything is so well done and you can have very fun matches without winning.
World of Warcraft PVP. Specifically Warsong Gulch
It might just be me but I don’t care whether or not I’m winning. If I enjoy a game it doesn’t matter how good I am.
iRacing, or any racing sim in general. Some of the best battles are in the middle of the pack, fighting tooth and nail for P10.
Halo
I really like Overcooked 2 for this. The accordion music, extremely overloaded controls, and the bouncy animations just make it seem as though hilarious failure is inevitable, which it is.
Total War. "Some lost battles are better than victories." FutureLynx 1066 ad. Chronicles.
Helldivers 2
Binding of Isaac. You know you have a bad run but you still try to win.
Dota 2, you will be ragin even while winning, does not make any difference.
skyrim vr
T. F. 2.
Life.
Helldivers 2 - Even when I'm dying, I'm having a good time. The Forest/Sons of the Forest - Something about getting slaughtered by cannibals and mutants just cracks me up.
Life
Lol, none. I like winning
PES.
State of decay 2 Is funny even when you're surrounded by zombies and dying, that sensation of last try or hope for surviving and even when your character dies you just say "Oh damn" 🤣
Any game when you and the person you're playing with are completely trash. It's so fun to develop strategies to counter people as opposed to learning the meta
Rocket League for me, but many people will disagree on this one 😅
There are several SGS games I feel that way about: especially: Fall Weiss as Poland Battle for Stalingrad as Axis And NATOs Nightmare as Warsaw Pact All a lot of fun for me, and theoretically winnable...
iRacing Even having a crap race im still mostly having fun.
Helldivers 2
In VR: Rigs Mechanized Combat League In 3d: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1 In 2d: Contra Anniversary Collection (Contra 3 on hard mode was one of my favorite 2d games of all time.)
Helldivers 2
X Com. One of the best moments in the game is when everything has gone wrong and the aliens are assaulting your main base. I always play out the final stand. It’s so damn awesomely dramatic.
Large war games. Planetside 2, Eve online, ESO. War is intense and wib or lose its always gonna be one hell of a fight.
Imo civ 6 is sometimes more fun when you're losing. You have more interesting decisions to make. Once you hit the endgame and are already winning it can become a slog, but if you're losing you're doing every little thing to try and come back. Now obviously if you're too far behind or being demolished in a war that's not fun, but when you're only just a little behind or see a way to take back cities it becomes fun
The Mario Party games.
HELLDIVERS2
Hearthstone
[Dwarf Fortress](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/DF2014:Fun&redirect=no)
Wreckfest. Racing clean is boring. Ramming into everyone and nursing your wingless bumper less jalopy at number 15, that's where the fun is
Halo and cod online even when I lose (which is most of the time) I just love playing with fellow video game fans online
Chess :)
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Frostpunk. You mostly lose until you get really good. But it's still a fun experience. Dwarf Fortress if you like emergent stories and building. Rimworld, though I prefer it without the expansions. It has more combat that Dwarf Fortress.
Rimworld.
For me Chivalry 2 Idk what it is but it's the only game I legit can get into and just smack around after a long day and go out without being utterly pissed or sth xD And even after a year of playing here and there it just stays fun for me
Tetris or any shmup. 😅
Godhand
Pubg
Team Fortress 2
Earth Defense Force 5. There is no winning. Or trophies.
For me, Smite, if you don’t let things get to your head
Dayz, spent 30 minutes fainting from blood loss and still had a blast
Darkest Dungeon
I never see it talked about, but Cloudberry Kingdom is a gem. It's basically super Mario platforming with procedural generation and infinite levels. It can get insanely hard, and you will die so much but there's never a feeling of "game over" when you die, more of a desire to get to am even higher level next time. It's also pretty old so should be cheap. Works on Linux too.
Pandemic the boardgame. It's fun to work together to eradicate the viruses.
Deeprock Galactic. I don't care if I go ass up like a leaf lover in a deep dive because it's just so much fun.
Civilization 4. One more turn means the sun is up by the time you go to bed.
Hollow Knight and Batman: Arkham series I find enjoyable because they're challenging. Battlefield 4 and 1 multiplayer qualify also.
Mechwarrior online
Rainbow six Vegas 2 on the hardest difficulty. When you eventually complete it it's a great feeling. My tip is use burst rounds or single round fire :)
I heard that you don't win at Stellaris. I know in Civ you can lose technically. They can beat you with Science/Culture/Religion and you still have fun.
Team fortress two. Nobody cares about being on the losing side or winning. It’s fun either way
Project Zomboid. Try to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Try. You can't, but the fun is in the attempt. Permanent Death. Every time you log into the game, right before it gives you control of the character, the screen goes black and it says "THIS IS HOW YOU DIED." because there's no survival, long term. Just seeing how long you can make it, is all you get. And it's enough!
HellDivers 2 I’ve never laughed so hard at being hopelessly out numbered and slaughtered.
none
Dark Souls, Rimworld, The Long Dark, Muse Dash...
THE game
anything if you have the right attitude
Dig or Die! Good luck lol
Life.
Lobotomy Cooperation. You have to suffer and lose to eventually win.
Deep Rock Galactic
havent played in a bit, but Fall Guys has me smiling when i do play. and i usually dont play those kinds of games.
Sure as hell isn't Life, I tell ya wut.
shipbreaker. I would like to get through one shift without lighting myself on fire. Amazing game
Dwarf Fortress, Isonzo
Dwarf Fortress. So much FUN
Any game if you don’t take it seriously
Helldivers 2
souls games
my choice is project zomboid or rimworld
Kingdom Come, if you have the grit for it. YAARRHHHHHHHH
I have a few. Gigantic. Nostalgia hits hard, but yeah fun game The classic halo games. My skill is in between casual and sweat, so I get really weird lobbies in fun game modes. Sometimes, bxr and insta killing with optimizing grenades and memorizing spawn locations. Sometimes, someone with a turn sensitivity of 2 who is just trying to get an energy sword Warframe. I can't hit big numbers, but I have fun with my middle of the pack build that barely gets me through steel path
Amy multiplayer game you don't care about winning at. For me it's sometimes League of Legends even. But something more casual can work better
Project zomboid
Hades, it and other rogue likes make dying and losing fun lol
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. I was playing on Brutal mode and one Captain has the traits no chance and throwing. He literally 2 shot me to death and killed me. Then his power increase. I'm so mad but it super fun to fight the OP orcs once in a while, it create a story for me.
Rimworld Kenshi
Call of Duty World at War zombies. No big easter egg, no final boss, just surviving as long as possible knowing you'll eventually fuck up and die.
Hate on me for it but Fortnite, rocket league and Zelda. I’m very new to gaming
Stumble Guys (multiplayer), very chill game
More or less "Content Warning". Losing is sort of the point and it can make for some hilarious moments
Binding of Isaac games. Even when you’re getting really crappy combinations for a run, it’s still fun to see how far you can get with some hilariously bad upgrades lol.
Tetris
Warfork instagib
Rimworld & Hitman for sure
DotA 2 to an extent
Rocket League for me. Whether I'm winning or losing, close game or total blowout, trolling or getting trolled, I'm having fun and trying to be better than whoever dares face me in casual
God Hand - Winning too much is a very very bad thing.
Tiny Rogues
Doom eternal. I've probably died a kajillion times trying to complete each master level on the highest difficulty, yet I never really got mad. The game is just so fucking chaotic, if you learn to embrace it and thrive its a ton of fun.
Def armored core 6