10 FANTASTIC Video Games (You Should Never Play)
Missed the golden age of these heavy hitters? Your game time is better spent elsewhere.
Nothing exists in a bubble.
The reason why any open-world game with swords and sorcery is inevitably compared to Skyrim and the concept of difficulty has somehow become a subgenre itself synonymous with Dark Souls is precisely because inspiration (and borderline plagiarism, if you ask Nintendo) naturally leads to association.
Are the comparisons always fair? Not a cat in hell's chance. It's also not the case for every entrant on this list that they were once considered the apex of their respective genres and subsequently fell out of favour when something superior came along and put it to shame.
Great games can just as easily be casualties of their communities or, just as we meatbags are, age. Genuine British institutions like RuneScape 3 haven't been sidelined by a more modern take on the sandbox MMO as much as failing to give any fresh-faced newcomer a reason to even bother investing time in understanding its archaic systems.
Self-sabotage is a recurring theme this time around and it's a testament to the power of nostalgia that many of these titles are still considered to be some of the best money can buy, even despite their flaws.
10. Destiny 2
The masterminds behind Halo had already departed Bungie by the time Destiny 2 rolled around. Still, the knowledge of how to forge best-in-class shmup mechanics is clearly something that runs deep in the studio's blood, as the latter feels like an evolution of Master Chief's golden years in almost every respect.
That being the case, there are precisely zero negatives to give Destiny 2's core gameplay. If only the same could be said for the surrounding baggage that drags it down to the depths of Titan's impossible ocean.
For every individual component of Destiny 2 that stands head and shoulders above its contemporaries (think raids, intimidatingly deep lore, and a power fantasy like no other), so too, do counterpoints so grievous exist that they can't be waived as ignorable irritants.
As old as it is, Destiny 2 has become a case study of why the live service model isn't sustainable. Chiefly in how its otherwise fantastic story has become a piecemeal, time-gated experience for existing players and a nonsensical mishmash of nonlinear events for newbies. Pile on some horrifying microtransactions, neglected PvP, and cookie-cutter seasonal content and you're left with naught but an adventure that's long since turned its back on attracting new blood and exists only to keep existing Guardians running the treadmil in its aging ecosystem.