A REAL underdog feel in games

[ZombieGenesis]

There's a particular feeling I get in some games that I sometimes get a massive hankering for. It's the feeling of going into the wastelands with nothing but ragged clothes and a rusty handgun. Specifically, the feeling that you're starting from scratch and really HAVE to work for your goodies.
Sadly Skyrim couldn't solve this for me since the magical gizmos seem all too frequent. Just ran through Zealot Dead Space 2 which boasted "scarce ammo and enemies will pulverise you" only to cut through it like a hot knife through butter, shedding medpacks and extra ammo as I went...

It's an odd request but still- is there a game out there that really FEELS like your rewards are scarce, varied and vital for your survival?


Captcha: yeah right
(How foreboding.)

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

Dark Souls for sure...

 

[Zhukov]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

That game puts you at the very bottom of the food chain in a castle full of hungry things.

 

[Hal10k]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

That game makes you feel very, very alone in the universe.

 

[nomzy]

Only ever had it in multiplayer games.
Generally when doing progression raiding. (Being undergeared and not knowing the fights )
And when my team is getting smashed in a pug/scrim in CS:S. I.E Going 13-2 in the first half. (there are 15 rounds each half, first to 16 by a margin of 2)

 

[daveman247]

It's an odd request but still- is there a game out there that really FEELS like your rewards are scarce, varied and vital for your survival?


Captcha: yeah right
(How foreboding.)

I second dark souls. You start out with a rusty sword hilt and a pair of pants.

Or metro 2033. You start out with a pistol and a gun made of nuts and bolts.

Bioshock you only start with a wrench

 

[Vault101]

I know what you mean...its somthing I like too

I mean it quickly goes away in New Vegas unfortunatly

you could say its the oposite in Mass effect...untill ME3 and you really so feel well and truly fucked

Dark souls especially, like at the start its just you...in some cell

 

[Waffle_Man]

I second Metro 2033. It's probably one of the better single player experiences I've had in a while precisely because it actually feels like you're in over your head practically the entire game.

 

[Imre Csete]

Dwarf Fortress has so much fun stuff you couldn't believe!

 

[Furioso]

It's an odd request but still- is there a game out there that really FEELS like your rewards are scarce, varied and vital for your survival?

That's pretty much the premise behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent, at least in Dark/Demons Souls you can kill the enemies, in Amnesia you cannot harm the things that go bump in the night, all you have is the light, any light that you can find, (such as lighting lights with the tinderboxes you find, and your precious lantern that quickly drains oil) and you need that light to keep your sanity in check (literally, it is a game mechanic) as you try and navigate your way through the horrors of the castle, it is a horror game through and through though, if that isn't your thing

 

[Kraiiit]

I... third? Metro 2033. Sprinting blindly into a dark corridor, away from one mutant, hoping the NEXT corridor doesn't have anything worse, with 3 rounds in your revolver...

 

[The Madman]

The STALKER series as well as Mount & Blade come to mind.

In STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat you're essentially just another grunt in a wasteland full of em. Whether you live or die the games do a great job of making it feel like the zone will live on without you, the stalkers will hunt, the bandits strike, and the mutants kill. It's refreshing, gives a great sense of progression too when you finally get to that point you've become one of the true badass. Call of Pripyat in particular I felt did this well, building relationships and going from an obscure wanderer to a legend within the area. And since the game thrives on survival horror elements, every little thing can help. It's a post-apocalyptic scavengers dream game, even moreso than the Fallout games.

And then there's Mount & Blade, where you can begin as a peasant with little more than a few furs and maybe a hunting bow and knife to your name and slowly work your way to becoming a lord and even, dare I say, King! Like Stalker above there's also a great sense of a living world around you with everyone doing their own thing and you just another slob trying to work your way up in that war-ridden land.

Both are great series (For the most part!) and I'd highly recommend em both. Definitely seem like something you'd be into.

 

[bobfish92]

Excluding the games already said; Get the Reborn mod for Fallout 3. No VATS. Realistic weapon damage. Required food, sleep and shitting. You'll feel like a proper waster when you realise that two bandits have a high chance of killing you, but the mod is fair - If you're clever you'll never die, but always feel underdog.

 

[NooNameLeft]

Fallout 3, with the FWE - FO3 Wanderers Edition that make the game exactly the way you describe it.
just a few changes this mod make:
- Stimpacks, food, water and ammo are much rarer.
- Global damage is incrased making everything die faster and limbs break more easly and require more then just stimpacks to heal.
- Hunger, dehydration and radiation are real problams and will kill you if you don't hunt\steal\buy clean food and water (which are very hard to find).
- sneaking is harder, crosshair is replaced with the actual weapon scope and enemys are smarter.
- fast travel is disabled.

Also take care that all of those changes can be customize to your liking, but one change you really should do right away is making hunger and dehydration go up much faster because this really help making the game feel like a fight for survivol.

you can findout everything you need to know here:
https://sites.google.com/site/fo3wanderersedition/home

also some more mods that you should add with FWE:
Weapon Mod Kits
Mart's Mutant Mod
EVE
Project Beauty

 

[spartandude]

Dark Souls and Morrowind do it for me

Dark Souls because well... just play it

and morrowind because you start out weak and with nothing save the cloths on your back, and for the first few levels you run around trying to avoid anything larger than a rat

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Metro 2033, Left 4 Dead 1&2, Halo 3, Bastion, DOOM 1&2, Fallout 3 (until you hit the Brotherhood), Dragon Age: Origins, Dead Space 1... That's what I can pull off the top of my head. I would say Dark Souls, but the presence of co-op in the game deminishes the feeling. (at least for me)

 

[endtherapture]

Play Baldur's Gate 1. You will have like 10 hit points at most, thrown out into the world with only one idea of where to go. You'll be significantly challenged fighting low level critters like Goblins. Your arrows can run out, perma-death for character if they get gibbed, your weapons will eventually break over time, you can't craft potions you only have to buy them.

And if you take a wrong turn on the world map you'll end up in an area with Basilisks who can turn you to stone on sight, which = game over.

It is literally impossible.

 

[BENZOOKA]

You should try some serious skill-based competitivish multiplayer FPS, like Counter-Strike: Source.

A decade into the franchise and I still constantly get in to situations where I feel like I'm the biggest underdog. Whether it's because there are some devastating pros against or I'm the last one standing against five terrorists who are near to plant. But once I outsmart a better pro by reading where his head will pop up next and one-hit him or do an incredible performance and manage to kill the last five enemies and defuse the bomb; it's rewarding. Very rewarding.

 

[Dandark]

They have already been said but...........................
Metro 2033: It's just an awesome game. Play it on normal or hard difficulty, if you are smart and conserve ammo then you should be fine but it does a great job of making you seem desperate to survive, especially if you are running low on air and your gasmask is starting to crack while your on the surface.

The STALKER series: These games are just pretty awesome for making you feel like the underdog, especially if you get mods to increase their difficulty. The world doesn't care about you and will go on regardless of what happens to you.

Mount and Blade series: Just like STALKER these games don't much care about you and go on regardless of what you do. You can feel like a real weakling at the start as you do jobs for Lesser lords or Guildmasters, you wil be preying that no bandits attack you. Then later on you can end up a lord scouring the area of bandits or enemy invaders.

 

[verdant monkai]

Final Fantasy 1, your characters are smaller than everything in the game, even zombies are supposedly much larger than you are. Plus there is not even an explanation of where to go you just look everywhere across the massive game world, your characters dont even talk to each other they just wander around in silence.

It is a fucking depressing game.