Patient Gamers

Deep Rock Galactic. I love the progression, the community and the humor.

Rimworld.

Hades is absolutely the culmination of so much experience in modern rogue-lite games and game development.

It's sequel comes out soon and I'm not going to be patient about jumping head first into it.

Minecraft believe it or not. Every few years I come back and install a mod pack and it’s like an entirely new game almost. Plus I love the factory and automation mods. The game just never seems to die.

Disco Elysium

Titanfall 2. I could keep playing that all evening. Its just a shame its not as popular as it was in its heyday.

Subnautica

Satisfactory. It's been in early access for a few years now, 2019 I think? At the beginning of this year (2024) they announced the next update would be the 1.0 release. I've been playing it on/off for years, especially recently with all the strides they've made in development.

The game is like Factorio, but presented as an FPS. You get dropped onto a planet in a pod straight out of Halo: ODST by a space-future megacorp called Ficsit, with the goal of harvesting the planet's resources for Ficsit off-planet divisions.

I have almost 1500hrs in Satisfactory since I got it, there's no shortage of gameplay. Coffee Stain (devs) have been posting videos regularly, updating the community on new/discontinued features, revamped recipes and production rates, and even just being silly as much as being helpful, to the point where Coffee Stain is my go-to example of good devteam-community interaction.

Oh, and it also has a really good modding community, so if there's anything that's not in game, that you want in game, it's probably already been made by one or two modders.

Control

Cyberpunk 2077 (with phantom liberty)

Dredge.

A very simple concept and gameplay loop that expands out into the bizarre and fantastic.

Honorable mention: Ronin.

Bullet time, effectively turn-based ninja combat. Simple, regularly autosaved "go until you die, then try something different" gameplay loop and just a helluva lot of fun.

Honorable mention: Valley.

Smooth and thrilling first-person mechanically-enhanced parkouring along the way to investigating the mysteries - both ancient and more recent - of a unique and very picturesque valley.

Personally, my favorite games in the last few years were the talos principle (1 and 2), and Grow: song of the evertree. They aren't really popular but I've replayed them a lot. Also have over 400 hours in core keeper.

The Witcher 3. It's not far from being 10, but got a very nice graphics update for free and has 2 DLC. The game and the DLC and the free graphics update and a very recent mod kit, all for around 10-15 USD right now on GOG . it's a steal! I highly recommend it. It became my favorite game of all time, very fast. And it will offer around 100h, and it will also offer replayability. What is there not to like?

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I don't know of it's considered a classic or if it will ever be, but to me Crysis 2 generally looks way better than most of the stuff you see nowadays.

Otherwise, I think Halo Reach is the best looking Halo and it doesn't show its age too much, if you look at the MCC/PC version.

Every 2-3 years I'll fire up Terraria again

No Man's Sky dragged me back in again recently. There's an expedition going on for another few weeks that was lots of fun. I've also started a permadeath save that I'm really enjoying.

Trine 5 was probably the best Trine to date. It‘s almost a year old, but already discounted to 15ish bucks in sales. Took a friend and I 20 hours to platinum and we had so much fun cheesing the puzzles and doing stupid stuff. I wish there just was no combat in the game tbh, it‘s just there to gatekeep you from having fun with the puzzles lol. I also wish there had been more achievements related to playing a level in a specific way that you gotta figure out. There‘s one for crossing all rivers in a specific map without touching water, and one where you gotta beat any map without destroying boxes. These two were a lotta fun to do.

I was also obsessed with HITMAN (Jan 2022 according to Steam, was a year exclusive to EGS IIRC). Now it‘s just some crappy liveservice-esque thing, but when they actually did new maps and stuff I had tons of fun walking around the crazy detailed levels and looking for small npc skits the devs put in there, doing looney toons banana peel assassinations etc. Agent 47 being that unfeeling killing robot trying to destroy the world controlling illuminati makes all the slapstick so much funnier.

got death stranding when it was free for a day on epic a while ago, been playing it for the last few weeks pretty nonstop and just finished the story. i've always been a kojima fan for mgs but oh my god this is magnificent. an absolute masterpiece, imho. i get it's not for everyone but i've had a blast and may immediately do a very hard offline second playthrough. definitely recommend, especially if you can grab it free or heavy discount.

Superliminal, very well done puzzler with a good narrator.

Trying not to pick titles with sequels/franchises

Slay the Spire

Returnal

Stardew Valley

Elden Ring

Death Stranding

Honorable mention : Overwatch 2 (I honestly can't see it as a true sequel, just an update)

Vampire Survivors isn't that old yet, right?

It's such a good Robotron clone.

I'm not sure if this counts because it's >10 years old, but also still developed:

Europa Universis IV

It's like this game was built exactly for what I like most in games.

But for something more in the spirit of your question, I'll go with Manifold Garden. I love M. C. Escher, and this feels like a puzzle game in one of his worlds.

Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin

Waited for the steam release and played through it almost fully with a friend in co-op, all DLC's included. My GOTY last year. Fantastic gameplay (shoutouts to Team Ninja), with a story that starts off as a shitpost but evolves into (in my opinion) something really beautiful, I can only recommend this game to any Final Fantasy fan. Having played through FF1 is not required, but makes it a little bit more fun. Best protagonist.

Recently got Mad Max from GOG. It's pretty great for Open World car combat and Arkham style brawling. It also runs great. Too bad it didn't get more attention.

Grim Dawn.

I keep coming back to Insurgency: Sandstorm's PVE modes. Man, what a underrated shooter!

I wish it had some better AI enemies, though.

The Hex! By Daniel Mullins, of “Inscryption” game. The Hex is HORRIBLY overlooked because of its graphics, but they’re not… really… its graphics? It’s a marvel of creative game design and I love it so much. The graphics make sense almost immediately when playing. MORE PEOPLE PEAS PLAY THE HEX it is so good

I have just gotten into baldurs gate 3 and holy shit it has consumed my soul.

... Which is kinda fitting considering the themes of the game