For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Multiplayer games taught me that I generally dislike other people.
I tried DOTA once. Once was enough.
I can play on my own time, and I can play with friends, but god help me I HATE playing on the server’s time. I can kinda do it with Pokemon Go, but that’s one you can play as casually or as hardcore as you like since you’re mostly playing for yourself after a point.
Unblock Me taught me that even if you don’t see the solution yet, moving the pieces in the way that they can move will often illustrate the correct path.
Elden ring taught me that I had to be calm when playing games. It taught me to know that I will be able to clear content, its just a matter of when. I used to think of games in terms of, can I clear this content? Now I think of games in terms of, how long will it take me to clear this content? I also realized that single player games aren’t hard. They are literally designed to be beaten.
I also learned that I play a lot better when I’m more focused on my body than the screen. I started bringing the same mindsets I use for sports into playing games and it helped a lot. It used to be that when I played games the screen was all that existed. Now I focus more on the pleasure of my fingers gliding across the keyboard, or just the contentment of experiencing my body doing something it enjoys.
Margit the fell omen and Godric the grafted took me like 30+ tries each. I beat blood flower lady on the second try (with mimic tear) and the final boss in maybe 6 tries (with a less powerful tear). I was beating bosses on the first or second try pretty consistently, like the starbeast things, ancestor spirit, dragonkin soldier, magma wyrm, and some of the crypt dungeon bosses.
I had put 40 hours into hades back in 2020 or 2021 and I probably cleared the game with no heat 5 or so times in those hours. More recently I sunk my teeth into hades and put in another 60 hours. In those 60 hours I got 100% on steam and was able to clear the game on +17. I also got through the first phase of hades on +32. But, I realized getting good enough at that fight to get through all 3 phases would’ve been rough. But regardless the difference in skill level was really apparent to me. It was so much fun to actually get constant story progress because I was actually clearing the game.
spider solitaire for the windows 98
it thought me a lot about how to move the mouse around the screen and also built up my tolerance for horror games by introducing spiders into the solitaire universe
Rocket League. If I can reach my fast moving targets without having to adjust pitch, roll, yaw, and thrust, all at once, from a third-person view, there’s just no challenge.
Rainbow Six Siege made me much better at FPS games.
Planescape: Torment made me slow down and realize a game can be an entire world onto itself and I shouldn’t skim over stuff I read.
The Outer Wilds is probably the most recent game that changed how I approach stuff. It’s so good. Nothing is given to you, you have to figure out everything on your own. It’s good for developing patience and curiosity.
For twitchy gameplay type stuff, I recommend Radiant Silvergun. Makes every other shmup feel like they’re in slow motion. That game is why I was able to beat any of the Touhou games.
Six-ish years ago I would say Overwatch. It was my first online multiplayer FPS and it fosters a lot of skills. Teamwork, communication, mechanical ability, game sense, ability management, managing tilt, etc.
Too bad Blizzard decided to stop new content for Overwatch 1 for years, only to reintroduce Overwatch 1.5 with an upgraded battlepass and cash shop monetization scheme. I don’t get how people are still playing after what they did to it.
Rhythm Games in general, but specifically osu!mania taught me that I can, like, actually get good at completely new stuff no matter how much I suck at it to begin with
It also taught me that I really like Hardcore EDM, before hand I wouldn’t really listen to music cuz I wasn’t sure exactly what kind of music I was drawn to
I can’t n get into rhythm games but I just don’t think I found the right one. I am sure there is a rhythm game out there that will blow me away.
Yeah there’s a decent ton of them out there, each player can find the one that resonates with them!
Something I think worth doing is searching “in 40 rhythm games” on YouTube to get a quick compilation of a bunch of unique rhythm games , and importantly it gives a little preview of their gameplay, usually at a high level
Celeste was the first “hard” game I played that I actually ended up 100%ing. It’s so fun and makes me try harder on other games too
No one gonna say it?? No one?
Fine.
Cuphead
I would recommend playing Metal Slug 2 & 3 before getting into Cuphead.
The original Driver on PS1 made me better at handling cars in general, both in video games and real life. It’s a shame GTA and Saints Row went with exaggerated vehicle physics and the Driver series never got the non-vehicular parts right.
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Zelda 2 Adventure of Link. I didn’t have Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden as a kid so that was my Nintendo Hard game lol.
Counter Strike: raw aim, how to outsmart opponents, perfect practice makes perfect and if you put enough hours into anything and do it correctly/good, then you can get good at almost anything.
Path of Exile: Taught me about being efficient. If you’re repeating the same action 10,000 times, if you can cut even 1 second off each time you do that action, it adds up over time to a significant amount. And then you can try and cut another 2 seconds off…then another second.
It took me 1038 hours to get out of silver in csgo. It took me 10hrs to get to DMG, one day something just clicked.
Knowing the maps puts you at such an advantage, those hours add up
