What should I play next? Advise-all

With the end on the generation and with a slow period in new releases, I find myself checking my back catalogue for games to play. I figured if I am doing it, maybe others are as well. So I thought I’d start a thread.

Right now I am deciding among The Witcher 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier Automata, and The Last of Us. All of these games I put less than a handful of hours in when they released, but fell off for one reason or another.

What do you think?

Also, there could be another play through of Dragon Age Inquisition. But that’s not really what this is about.

The Witcher 3 is special. Problem is it's tough to live in because it's so bleak. Beautiful, brutal and bleak.

HZD is well made, looks great and is maybe the type of open world you like, but I found its systems to be ho hum. I'm not much of a checklist open world player (see: Ubisoft games).

Nier Automata is special and a lil obtuse at the same time. It's def worth an experience though.

TLoU is a game I haven't played and have no interest in as I don't like Naughty Dog games. They are simply not my type of game. Incredibly well made, but I'd rather watch a movie than play their games.

Wow! I was just thinking this morning about creating a thread for this very topic. We even overlap in some of the games I'm considering playing.

My suggestion would be to play The Last of Us: Left Behind. It's included with The Last of Us on PS4, but it's shorter, snappier, and more interesting. The Last of Us has a banger opening and then a long, tiring first act that's hard to get through. I found that playing Left Behind first helped give me the momentum to then go back and get through the opening of the main game.

garion333 wrote:

I'd rather watch a movie than play their games.

This doesn't make any sense. These two things are pretty much the same activity.

My honest suggestion is to go to howlongtobeat.com and check the playtimes for each. I bet Last of Us will be shortest so you should play that. Since you get distracted by new stuff (like me ) you will have the best chance of finishing the shortest game.

I'm looking to pick not one game but two! I get burned out by long games if I play them without interruption, so I alternate between games every week. I also alternate platforms (Xbox and Playstation) to ensure even browning.

As luck would have it, I finished both my Xbox game and my Playstation game at the same time, so I'm looking for two new games to play, one on each platform, that are hopefully complimentary to each other but not too similar. Picking something has started feeling like one of those annoying logic puzzles where Sally can sit to the left of Mike but won't sit next to Carlos, Carlos will only sit next to Carole, and no one sits to the right of William.

Here's my menu:

Playstation

  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Chrono Cross
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Mafia III

Xbox

  • Final Fantasy XV
  • The Witcher 3
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar
  • A Plague Tale: Innocence

Help me, my game sommeliers.

HZD for PS, because that's the only one on that list I'd want to play (and was a GOTY darling). FF7 really isn't much good without high-presciption nostalgia-goggles, same for Chrono Cross, and Mafia 3 is.....fine, I guess, a solid B-tier game.

Witcher 3
for Xbox - get in while the zeit is still geisting. I've restarted playing it on account of slowly working my way through the TV show, and they're surprisingly complementary.

I'm also looking forward to digging into A Plague Tale myself (probably post-Geralt'ing), and FF XV is fine until it gets tedious (which could be said about all the final fantasies if I'm honest)

I feel like HZD and TW3 together is too much colossally huge open world games at once.

A few potential pairings:
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy XV

Refresh your memory of FF7, AND see what the current state of the franchise is, before FF7 Remake comes out to ruin everything.

Mafia III
A Plague Tale: Innocence

Murder white supremacists, then dip into the shorter more story focused Plague Tale when Mafia III's gameplay loops gets stale. When you're tired of solving puzzles with your sibling, go back to the murderfest. You could probably swap Horizon Zero Dawn for Mafia III and get the same effect.

Chrono Cross
Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Two JRPGs from different eras and hemispheres could make for an interesting comparison.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Playstation

  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Chrono Cross
  • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Mafia III

Xbox

  • Final Fantasy XV
  • The Witcher 3
  • Battle Chasers: Nightwar
  • A Plague Tale: Innocence

Because I haven't played them.

For UpTolsomorphism, I would say play The Last of Us first, then Horizon, and then The Witcher (and skip Nier).

For ClockworkHouse, I would say play Horizon on the PS4, and A Plague Tale on Xbox... unless you want to play Battle Chasers along with me, as I just got it for the PS4 .

I recommend Horizon Zero Dawn first for both UpToIsomorphism and ClockworkHouse.

It's open world without being a cluttered Ubisoft icon-athon and its combat make you feel like more of a hunter. It's got probably my favourite bow in games.

As much as I loved Witcher 3, it is hard to recommend outright because it's so heavy in tone, very dour and Game of Thrones-y. It's obviously great if you dig what it's putting down, though. It may be heretic to say, but if you want a taste without going through the whole thing, and wanted to avoid some of the heavier-themed questlines, you could just play the Blood & Wine expansion.

I'd restart HZD if there are a ton of people to play it with me? Clocky?

I have a ridiculously huge back log but I will play it again.

Play Chrono Cross. It's such a weird obtuse game. I absolutely love it and still feel the colours and music are some of the best I've experienced in games.

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

I'd restart HZD if there are a ton of people to play it with me? Clocky?

I'm afraid not. I don't know which one yet, but I've settled on one of my PS1 games for that coveted Playstation slot. PS1 JRPGs are pretty much peak nostalgia comfort food for me.

Vector wrote:

Play Chrono Cross. It's such a weird obtuse game. I absolutely love it and still feel the colours and music are some of the best I've experienced in games.

I played the first hour of it last night to try to get a sense of whether I'd prefer it or FF7. I'm really glad that I remembered that PS1 games used to come with manuals and read that ahead of time, because the game makes zero effort to explain its mechanics. It sure is pretty, though.

Now to pick an Xbox game.

Worth noting that if you're on Steam there's some recent tools they've implemented for choosing what to play next. It's pretty neat.

Interactive Recommender:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593...

Play Next:

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/St...

Horizon Zero dawn is also on my backlog.. sigh......

Glad you liked the initial impression. Yeah, the combat can take a bit to get used just because it’s trying something a bit different and isn’t explained very well. There is an optional tutorial given by Radius fairly early on.

Aaron D. wrote:

Worth noting that if you're on Steam there's some recent tools they've implemented for choosing what to play next. It's pretty neat.

Play Next:

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/St...

Their Play Next thing functions more as a "Reminder Why This Is Still On Your Backlog", or "Hey, Remember This Game You Got For Free That You Still Don't Want To Play" service

beanman101283 wrote:

Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy XV

Refresh your memory of FF7, AND see what the current state of the franchise is, before FF7 Remake comes out to ruin everything.

I went with Door #1. If I don't like it, I'm blaming you!

Aaron D. wrote:

Worth noting that if you're on Steam there's some recent tools they've implemented for choosing what to play next. It's pretty neat.

Interactive Recommender:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593...

Play Next:

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/St...

I'm always looking for new ways to order the games I play for a few days and fail to finish, so I'm going to give the play next lab a try for a bit.

It's first suggestion, Fallout: New Vegas isn't working out so well though. After I installed it, everything was in German. it was hard to find anything that indicated it was a German version, but when I went to ask for support I finally saw Jul 22, 2012 - Received on Steam as part of: Fallout: New Vegas (DE). Timing wise I guessed that might might match up with a Summer Sale (and, in fact, it was the glorious Secret of the Magic Crystals pony-all sale). After digging through the thread a bit, I saw where I thanked Luggage for the gift. IIRC, after receiving it, I decided I really needed to finish all earlier Fallout games first. Shockingly, I failed to ever do that, and apparently never installed New Vegas at all. Guess I need to readd to my wish list.

Next up on Steam's suggestion list is Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition. That's installing now, but I spent most of my time tracking down the German mystery, so will probably not be able to play tonight. I did finish Returns and I think I came close to finishing Dragonfall, so this might be a good suggestion.