You just gotta get in there and smack them buttons. Them big buttons are fun to tap. I personally don’t draw a distinction between DDR, plastic instruments, and arbitrary button setups (I’ve played nearly as much Amplitude on PS2 as DDR)
Beatmania has always eluded me. I’ve found a few Sound Voltex charts that are crazy fun (and it makes me wish the buttons in the xbox 360 DJ Hero controller were arcade-quality)
Pump It Up can, of course, go to hell.
I agree with Rym about those genero rhythm games, but with a few exceptions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGVPulsHvE&t=0s
Dat Miku.
Man, this has made me wanna dig up my Vita and play some DJ MAX.
World is too full of great, fun, rhythm games that don’t pretend to be anything, but pressing buttons or doing other such stuff on time with good music. Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, Elite Beat Agents, Um Jammer Lammy, Elite Beat Agents and probably lots which I’ve never played. That one phone game about those anime idols was pretty fun for a while too.
Today I learned the Nier Lore includes stage plays.
http://nier2.com/
Also, since Nier 2 is coming up, this guy does a great job summarizing the plots of the previous games without having to deal with all the horrible gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__q_Nx9WbgY
I’m currently playing through the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun games. One thing I really like about them is that they are stingy with doling out money. I’m used to RPGs where you finish the game as a fully kitted out beast. Whereas in these games, I feel like I’m always scraping by. It helps add a bit more weight to the decision of taking on the more morally dubious quests for financial gain.
I “beat” Axiom Verge. I didn’t get 100% or the best ending, but I got enough.
If you want some Metroid action on a fresh map, just go for it. Just don’t expect it to be top tier. Definitely lacks a lot of polish, and has some very busted bits. It’s about as good as some of those lesser and middling GBA/DS Castlevanias.
Also, Fez, this game, and any other that expects me to spend my time decrypting their alphabet can go fuck themselves. I see that shit and I either stop playing or go directly to Google. If I wanted to I could get some cryptograms. I want to jump and shoot.
The best game for “learn our language” is easily The Witness. You’re not so much learning a specific language but you’re learning a language of it’s simple puzzle solving to move forward in the world. It does it so perfectly.
The last 1/4 of Axiom Verge I was just trying to skip any combat I could just to get to the end. I knew I was almost there, but the combat just got so frustrating at the end.
Yeah The Witness is a revelation simulator
Where can I draw lines?
I finished replaying GTA Vice City which I haven’t played in over 12 years. The gameplay is really unfair and I had to cheat constantly so I wouldn’t give up out of frustration. All of the RC and plane missions were absolute hell because of the shoddy control system. The plot was also very poorly written, your partner in crime is Lance Vance but you have no idea who he is and what his motivations are when he shows up. In one climatic mission, he goes after a drug lord because “he killed my brother.” Turns out, the drug deal at the very beginning of the game shows Lance and his brother except they never introduce themselves. Just really shoddy execution overall.
The saving grace of the game is the amazing radio soundtrack and overall look of the city which is still immersive to this day. Driving around and listening to 80s songs is a blast. The soundtrack is a 10/10, the game itself is a 6 or a 7.
So last year I attempted a Final Fantasy challenge, just try to get through the main games within a year. That failed spectacularly because I got to FFV and it was just so slow and boring that I lost momentum. Turns out all I really needed to do was get a better port. Started it again on PC (was using PS1) and it is sooooo much better (the reviews are wrong and stupid). As it turns out, speed of battle really matters, and having auto-battle is a real winner. I think it might be a little easier too, but it’s tough to really tell since I’m playing more efficiently this time around.
Other than that, also started Shovel Knight. Game is really good so far. The music isn’t really doing it for me though, despite the universal praise it’s gotten. I dunno, I never got into the 8-bit music trend, it would be a lot more pleasant if it copied the 16-bit era instead.
FFV is probably the hardest mainline Final Fantasy in terms of the difficulty of bosses and battles. You have to grind like your life depended on it.
It’s not a skin in that case, it’s a core game mechanic.
It’s a trope of meh indie games from that era to have relatively simplistic puzzle platformer gameplay, but cover it with obtuse puzzles that require significant out-of-game effort. Couple that with a “this game is deep” aesthetic, and bam! Revolutionary indie game.
It’s sloppy game design most of the time. The puzzles are so meta in many cases that they’re almost extrinsic to the games themselves.
Because god forbid people have fun in a non-practical way. 
Reminds me a lot of adventure games from the late 80s through the mid 90s (basically the entire pre-Myst era of those kinds of games), with the insane troll logic of shit like having to use a magnet and a fishing line to get a key from a grate or some shit.
Been playing a lot of Virtues Last Reward. I feel like this game manages to trump 999 with some of its craziness. I’ve been liking it so far but I think it takes a bit for it to really sink in. Others might been hooked from the get go but I kinda kept picking at it until it caught me.
I’ve gotten to very end game stuff on Vermintide now and its quite the challenge sometimes. Just beat Dungeons on Cataclysm with only 3 people for the finale. A rare time where I was shaking with nervousness.
I downloaded that Fire Emblem Heroes game. Seems okay. Sorta bite sized strategy, but you can level out of encounters. My friend code is 3878812028 If anyone is playing it.
Way late to the party I finally sat down and played Bloodborne and it’s hands down one if the best games I’ve played in years. The Victorian-Gothic-Lovecraftian horror motif on the very teetering edge of being steampunk is so my jam I can’t believe I never played it. I guess I was intimidated by the From Software reputation having never played any Souls games. In all honesty even now in new game plus it’s challenging but not insanely so.
I just finished Virtues Last Reward last night. The sequel for 999. It’s really insane from a story perspective. Probably more so than 999, which is already crazy to begin with. I feel like it more tightly couples the puzzle rooms with the story, but I found myself starting to just look up the solutions to the last couple puzzles as I went through it. Part of that was its absurdly long comparatively. I clocked in at close to 40 hours or so at the end. And at a certain point I was kinda getting tired of going through the motions over and over. The game gives you a timeline to jump around on which alleviates some of the issues with the first game. Although for the iOS version of 999 I believe they added that feature in as well. You can also similarly fast forward through text but since it’ll pause on new text you often have to re-engage this. It’s nice to see the extra text but there are times when it deviates ever so slightly for a couple sentences and then you can fast forward again. At the very least if you liked the story from that first game I think you’d like this one. I would recommend a guide though. There’s an image that I was using that sort of illustrates an “optimal” way to play the story which worked out nicely. It just tells you which doors you should go through and which decisions you would make. It works pretty well story-wise.