Patient Gamers

Superliminal, very well done puzzler with a good narrator.

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.

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.

Vampire Survivors isn't that old yet, right?

It's such a good Robotron clone.

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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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.

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

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)

Control

Cyberpunk 2077 (with phantom liberty)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Disco Elysium

Rimworld.