games

The "_________ of the killer" series by garmentdistrict. They're horror comedy walking sims with a dream-like soundtrack and art that looks like it was made in ms paint. I love the aesthetic and writing of it but most of the ppl I know just find it weird.

Kileak: The DNA Imperative (a PS1 game i've played emulated on DuckStation)

its a real-time FPS dungeon crawler where you in a mech (power armor? kinda hard to tell, but i think its a small mech more than a armor suit) explore a tunnel complex full of cybernetic combat drones.

the gameplay is kinda wack, you have to shoot like 30 or 40 shots (in single shot with the base weapon, a lot of rapid button mashing if you want to survive) at basically every enemy to kill them, the other weapons are super hard to find ammo for, and the tank controls in first person are pretty wild (in a fun way. you can move diagonally super fast for some reason. controls remind me of armored core 2), but it has such a sense of atmosphere its like one of those haunted PS1 videogames. Its basically like a slower paced Doom clone with more simplistic level architecture, most levels are linear corridors with some 90 degree turns and 4x4 and 6x6 rooms spread around. theres no jump or crouch or anything, just forward, back, strafe buttons with either L1/2 or R1/2 buttons, and you can't look up or down except by holding R1 and L1 to look up and R2 and L2 to look down at pre-defined angles. it doesnt matter since the game has aim assist, the crosshair moves to lock onto the enemy nearest the center/closest to you (not sure which).

Everquest 1 and BDO

Nostalgia for EQ1 is so strong but unless you got friends trying to get into an old-style mmorpg now is painful

BDO because I actually love the combat style and gameplay but the k-mmorpg inspired upgrade system is just maddening also fuck microtransactions

Death Stranding, Overwatch, Monster Hunter 3U.

Death Stranding because I'm not going to subject anyone to Kojima's brand of technobabble and self-fellation combined with a (admittedly fairly deep mechanically) walking simulator.

Overwatch because an FPS/MOBA combination has to be doing some actual damage to my psyche, and also it's just a hard sell to start with because of obvious reasons.

MH3U because it's only available on the 3DS and Wii U and it's the last really slow MH of the pre-World MHs. On 3DS it has no online play, and the Wii U servers have been taken down. It's the last MH before they introduced the mobility additions and improvements from 4 that made combat more fluid and fast, and before World introduced the system that basically finds the monster for you, as well as making mat gathering much more easy and less tedious.

EDIT: ooh for something that's more 'obscure jank' I just remembered I LOVED Phantom Breaker on the 360. It was a fighting game by 5pb/Mages that had a split style system. You had to choose between 'Quick' and 'Hard' where one was fast/felt more rushdown-y and the other was slower/felt more defensive. The game was super flashy because you would constantly clash, and meter built really fast WHILE ALSO CARRYING OVER BETWEEN ROUNDS which led to wild round start set-ups. This clip from will it kill is from the newer version but it's fucking hilarious.

The Movies (2004) is an incredible concept, with a lot of jank

Skullgirls

I have a huge soft spot for Capcom's Strider (Arcade, 1989) to the point that I have an actual PCB. Wildly ambitious in terms of design and worldbuilding...and incredibly janky. Also, it has a co-opted soviet council turn into a giant mecha-centipede wielding a hammer and sickle. Notably influential within Capcom's own devteams, having characters who influenced Street Fighter II's Chun-Li and Mega Man X's Vile.

Also fitting the bill more directly, we have Wolfteam's Earnest Evans (Sega Mega Drive/Mega CD, 1991). A lot of 16 bit games successfully played with segmented characters for an early form of skeletal animation - like a lot of well respected classics like Alien Soldier and Contra: Hard Corps - but Wolfteam tried to take things a step further with a entire platformer where the main character has sophisticated ragdoll physics. The end result isn't very playable, but it's pretty impressive for a platform that can't do hardware rotation effects. Also one of the all-time funniest speedruns imo.

Deadly Premonition. It has a cast of very charming and surprisingly well written characters alongside a fascinating mindfuck of a story that is very much unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Heavily inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks and the closest I've seen another piece of media come to recapturing its dreamy, surreal vibes. Has a cult following despite being an absolutely shit game by all reasonable metrics. The combat is atrocious, it's unfathomably buggy, you're forced to drive between locations in a janky ass car, and the driving is like pulling teeth. It's really quite an unpleasant game to play for many reasons, and that's if you even get the game to run; the PC port is basically unplayable and requires a fuckton of fiddling on newer systems. Despite all that, it's an experience I remember very fondly. Just don't know if I'll be booting it up for another run in the next decade.

Map games

But i dont "love" them

I "love" them in the same way a flagellant "loves" his whip

Dungeons Keeper 2, Heroes of Might and Magic III, medieval 2 Total war and Sid Meiet's Pirates!

I love them, but they're too old and I'm sure there's a modern version somewhere that's better. Also you won't get why theyre fantastic unless you were there when they came out. All games that scratch an itch no other game does.

Cuphead

It is infuriating and I wouldn’t wish the frustration on anyone

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The combat is absolutely fantastic, I've tried Mordhau but its just not the same. Unfortunately its almost entirely dead, there's only one server left in the US and it's only populated in the evenings (not even every night). It's also full of chuds, the chat is literally toxic waste.

Not obscure but ... League of Legends

Mobas literally have some of the best gameplay of any games out there but the player base and overall culture around the game prevents me from recommending it to people

honkai impact, which i've been playing for a year now bc my wife is a big mihoyo fan and i liked it best out of their three offerings. a lot of the older stuff is very jank/rough, it's a gacha game so it comes off with that usual baggage, and the general art direction is even more male-gazey than genshin. but the visuals/flow of the combat with modern characters is great, and there's clearly a lot of effort put into the choreography and animations that make actually playing the game with the 3-woman teams just really fun.

Europa Universalis 4