Hot on the heels of ChronoPunk’s thread about what genres you struggled to get into, I want to know: what is your favourite genre?
I’ve recently come to a realisation that the genre I’ve long claimed to be my favourite is, well, probably not my favourite… I like RPGs (specially JRPGs), or at least I thought I liked them more than any other genre.
Looking at the list of games I’ve completed this year, though, it seems that is not the case!
The few games I have completed in 2017:
Gravity Rush 2
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap
All games that fit in the rather more nebulous hybrid genre of action-adventure games!
These games captured my attention and were played to completion, unlike:
Tales of Berseria
Persona 5
Two RPGs that have failed to draw me in and have rather pitiful playtimes…
Perhaps there are other factors, but this is the conclusion I’ve drawn.
What about y’all? What is your favourite genre? Has it changed over time?
I guess all my favourite games recently have defied genre expectations or boundaries in some way, or just not really felt like they ‘belong’ firmly in a genre.
The Last Guardian - Sort of platformy, sort of puzzly, sort of climby thing
Yakuza 0 - Fighting but also with weird open world minigame stuff?
Nier: Automata - Fighting and various kinds of shooting and RPGing in a mishmash
Growing up I would have answered this very easily, it would have been point and click adventures, and I still like those.
At some point I probably would have called Deus Ex one of my favourite games, and I still enjoy a good 0451 game.
But while I’m really enjoying Prey so far, there’s almost a feeling of knowing what to expect, getting into a groove. Which can be comfortable, but I’ve come to really appreciate the excitement of really not knowing what I can expect a game to do next, what systems it’ll throw at me.
0451 games, which I think is much better term then immersive sim as it gets Gone Home in there as well, have more and more become my favorites. Dishonored 2 was so goddamn good, dark and beautiful with some of the best combat and stealth ever in such a game. I love Prey so far as well, even if it scares me to death. It’s a really restrained and somber game that makes the immersive simminess pop all the more to me. The lack of characters is not a problem for me, as characters have never really been a big part in those games for me, apart from the player one. Even Bioshock Infinite, often disliked, is one of my favorite games. They just get me in there and make me get absorbed.
I used to love MMOs, and while I still do, I get way too much into them and take leadership of things to a degree that it just eats up all my free time. It becomes a chore beside my job that I to need shape other social things around, and I can honestly say my relationships have taken a toll plenty of times when I’m deep in a WoW expansion. So, it has had to go.
Same can probably be said for western RPGs, especially Bioware games, as recently they’ve been really, really bad with so much shit thrown in for no reason it just becomes a time suck. Hate that. Still waiting for Divinity Original Sin 2 however.
Eh, if you say your favorite genre is RPG, I really don’t think games like Gravity Rush 2, Breath of the Wild and Dragon’s Trap are too far removed, honestly. There’s just not much to differentiate action RPGs from action/adventures. Now you might say “But Berseria limits you to a battle arena!” Well, so does Okami, and that’s an action/adventure.
But anyway, I’d personally consider action RPGs (if that term still has any meaning) my favorite genre, and I think the games I’ve played this year are quite representative of that. I’ve beaten Breath of the Wild, Nier Automata, Dragon’s Trap and Kamiko. I’m also 30 hours into Dragon Quest Heroes II, and Dragon Quest XI is my most anticipated game.
So nothing unusual there, really. I do play many other genres of course, but RPGs (giving a slight edge to the action variety) have been my favorite since my early teens. It was really the GBA/PS2 era that got me into the genre. Before that it was mostly 3D platformers, and before that almost exclusively 2D platformers.
Thanks for the shoutout @Trickster! RPGs are probably my favorite genre because they’re the genre I’ve clung onto the longest, but I also have a strong affinity for platformers and character action games. I’ve had trouble getting into more modern RPGs though.
The thing about RPGs these days is that those elements have been diseminated into a bunch of different genres over time; shooters now have skill trees, platformers have experience points, etc. I thought I would be more into RPG elements in normal action games, but honestly I’m a little put off by them. Lately I’ve been struggling to find a game to sink time into and ran across Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky in my Steam library.
I’ve sunk about 10 hours into this thing already, and I’m surprised at how much I can get into a game with systems that other people would call “dated.” This game is such a PURE RPG. I don’t mean to say that newer games are tainted or anything, it’s just that this game feels like it was made in a vacuum where the developer just kept making SNES/PS1-style JRPGs, not worrying about new trends in development.
There are some newer games that do take newer influences like Dragon’s Dogma and Nier Automata, but there’s this state of bliss that I get whenever I’m grinding in a JRPG that is just what I need when I want to relax.
Used to like stealth-action. Dishonored did a lot for the genre to get me to like it again by adding a supernatural element while keeping a good story but not letting itself be bogged down by it (looking at you, Metal Gear Solid 4).
Point-and-click adventure is still pretty good to me and I can name a few of games from the genre that have come out in the last few years that I like, such as Primordia and The Last Door. I’d count any Telltale game in this category too, and while they’ve gotten formulaic, they’re still mechanically solid.
Roguelikes are probably my favorite genre, but I’d like to get more that have balance between character and world, as well as a more cohesive story. In this, Crypt of the Necrodancer is pretty good.
Also… Look, the Just Dance franchise is good for video games, okay?
Metroidvanias are still my favorite. I love a good exploration/progression loop, and platforming mechanics are my personal favorite way of navigating virtual worlds. A really well-made Metroidvania has a beautiful hand-crafted quality to it that I can’t say any other genre has been able to win me over with.
I grew up playing multiplayer first person shooters competitively and currently think that there hasn’t been a good one released since 1999. Okay, 2001. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was alright.
So yea, I guess now I would lean more towards JRPGs or character action stuff, which I’ve also always played/liked.
For a long while it was FPS & action platformers like Ratchet & Clank & the later Jak games. Although I still enjoy FPS’ now and then and my interest in other genres like RPG’s has increased I still enjoy a good character action game so long as I have a way to play it without having to memorize combos (RPG & platforming elements are a bonus). Action sports games are my secret favorite genre though if I’m being perfectly honest.
I was out of RtCW by the time ET came out. Around that time was the swan song of Quake 3… and then the world ended shortly after. And by that I mean I got into the World of Warcraft beta.
My default answer is ‘JRPG’, though I’m nowhere near as taken with the genre as I used to be. When I was younger, getting to play any old JRPG was extremely exciting to me. I didn’t have to know a thing about the game–if I saw on the back of the box that it featured turn-based combat and a colorful cast of characters, I immediately surrendered myself to the game’s world and went along for the ride. Now I find myself almost starting these games up defiantly, needing to be won over by their quality before I can derive any enjoyment from them. Even then I can’t help but scrutinize or compare the games, or the emotions that they instill in me, to what I’ve experienced in the past even when I’m in the middle of playing them. Very rarely do I play a JRPG where I’m not telling myself, “I bet I would’ve loved this 10 years ago.”
That being said, my frozen heart has definitely been thawed by Persona 5. I don’t know if I’ll wind up liking it as much as some of its predecessors, but I’m having a good time with it. Earlier this year, Yakuza 0 provided me with the best single-player experience I’ve had in years, so even if I’ve become more critical of and less open to games in general, it’s nice to be reassured that there are still games out there that I can get lost in.
I’m a big fan of the immersive sim, even though that term is more a of a design philosophy than genre. I love stealth games and shooters in that vein. Dishonored and Bioshock rank really high on my personal list for that reason, and I’m incredibly excited to try Prey (or to even get around to Dishonored 2, for that matter). But I really love the little features of the immersive sim which pull the player in. Manually wiping the gasmask and cranking your flashlight in the Metro games, for example, go a long way to helping a game sink its hooks in me. It’s really great when the game can add features like that which, ideally, add to the experience without simply burdening the player. I also find that I constantly long for more immersive elements in non-immersive sim games. For example, right now, I wish that The Witcher 3 had a less intrusive UI and something a little more ~immersive~ than the minimap.
I used to be a big strategy game fan, lately I find it hard to sit down and play one. Racing games are one of the only genres I’m consistently into. I’m proud of that because consistency is a big issue for me.
My favorite genre is platformers and it always has been
My tastes in games has absolutely changed over time - I’m way less interested in FPSes than I used to be, I love Animal Crossing now but I hated it ten years ago, etc. But my love of a good run n jump has always been constant.
I loved JRPGs when I was younger, and many of the games in my personal top 10 are still JRPGs–for now. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve found that picking a favorite genre doesn’t really work for me, because I’ve had so many experiences outside of my comfort genres (platforming, JRPGs, narrative FPS) that did a lot for me. I’ve also moved away from JRPGs due to lack of time, but I try to play a new one every year and I always play one of my old favorites again.
So it’s my love of genres in general that has changed over time, I guess.
