What games offer a genuinely unique gaming experience?

[LookingGlass]

As per the title. It can be due to unique gameplay elements, graphical style, storytelling methods, atmosphere, control style, humour, use of sound, etc. Anything.

Can also be "unique to a series", in which case you should mention the game in the series that provides the best example, or does it best.

There are plenty, but the first one I'll mention the Jet Set (Grind to the Americans) Radio series. I've personally only played Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox) but I loved it and it's a shame that there have been no sequels since. These were games about graffitiing (if that's how I spell that) a city, grinding on everything you could find on your roller blades, and pulling off crazy tricks in the process. Its own brand of fast-paced gameplay and a great looking cel-shaded art style made JSRF a truly unique experience for me.

What have you got?

Captcha agrees that this game is "the bee's knees".

 

[hazabaza1]

Recettear.
You play a 10 year old girl paying off her father's debt by running an item store with a loan shark fairy.
It mixes the economy with dungeon crawling and some great humour.

 

[Sgt. Dante]

Mirrors edge is pretty much the only first person parkour puzzle platformer I know of.

Admittedly the puzzles were always, I'm here and how do i get there... but still, 4p's xD

 

[Hides His Eyes]

Portal 1 and 2 are the only ones I can think of that have come out recently. And they manage to offer a unique experience while using exactly the same basic gameplay that any other FPS uses.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Recettear.
You play a 10 year old girl paying off her father's debt by running an item store with a loan shark fairy.
It mixes the economy with dungeon crawling and some great humour.

I loved Recettear. Never beat it but it was such a funny and entertaining game.

I thought The World Ends With You was a pretty unique game. I mean, it wasn't perfect but it had a unique artstyle, gameplay, story and soundtrack. I enjoyed it quite a bit actually, don't have it anymore though.

 

[LiraelG]

Portal 1 and 2 offer pretty unique experiences! They're both very very good, too.

Limbo.

Pattapon looks rather unique... I haven't played it, but...

 

[Rubucopter]

Flower was a great game. Short but the gameplay was different and the graphics were beautiful. If you are looking for nonsense there is also Noby Noby boy but it is certainly unique.

 

[Zantos]

I'd say that, until recently when I picked up a game that had more or less just replaced the art and kept everything else exactly the same, God of War was certainly a unique experience.

 

[Jerubbaal]

The Mother series, known as Earthbound here in the U.S., is one of the quirkiest, funniest series that I know. And I genuinely believe that Mother 3 does the best storytelling of any game I have ever played.

Here's a video showcasing the fan translation of the third one in the series. It was never released in the U.S., so you have to play a hacked fan translation on an emulator. Try to find a way to make it up to the developers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjMllYgUOeU

 

[slarrs]

Katamari, Parappa and Patapon all come to mind, with the first and third being personal favorite games. Mirrors edge tries something new, with moderate success (everyone else doesn't seem to agree, but I had fun while it lasted)

Borderlands didn't do anything unique exactly, but the way it was all put together was fairly unique.

Never have and probably never will play anything quite like Sly Cooper again, either.

Shadow of the Colossus gets a mention, for sure, although I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Halo Wars. It offers the best RTS experience on console and is easy to manage. Vehicles beat Infantry, Infantry beat Aircraft and Aircraft beat Vehicles.

 

[ramboondiea]

id say bastion, its an xbla game, and although its a standard rpg action game, its style is unique and the entire game is narrated, im bloody inlove with the game
id also say clash of heroes for ds, never played a game like it

 

[ruben6f]

I loved playing jet set radio future, a game that felt new to me was S.T.A.L.K.E.R I think it's a very unique game, it's a fps sandbox but the story is very well done, the mood is amazing and the whole S.T.A.L.K.E.R universe is just very well done.

 

[Richardplex]

The Mother series, known as Earthbound here in the U.S., is one of the quirkiest, funniest series that I know. And I genuinely believe that Mother 3 does the best storytelling of any game I have ever played.

Here's a video showcasing the fan translation of the third one in the series. It was never released in the U.S., so you have to play a hacked fan translation on an emulator. Try to find a way to make it up to the developers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjMllYgUOeU

Damn, ninja'd. But yeah, this.. oh, it's you again. Hi person whom all I know about you is that you also like the Mother series!

 

[CrowdControl85]

got to agree with Portal and Mirror's Edge.

Just finished LA Noire, the interrogations are quite unique, never been so much emphasis on getting your responses right in a game before.

I always thought that Megadrive-era Micro Machines was unique in it's top down view and mix of cars/environments

 

[aba1]

ilomilo was unique and alot of fun

 

[KimonoBoxFox]

I could list many, but I'll pick these for brevity.

Freeware: Yume Nikki and Cave Story

The former is about a shut-in girl (Matsudoki) who enters a bizarre nightmare world. It's pretty much free-roaming top-down exploration in an RPG style. There are no random encounters or enemies to fight, except the bizarre Toriningen, birdlike people who will go insane and teleport you into sealed off rooms if they can catch you. Part of the gameplay is just finding different weird things to do, finding special 'eggs' that have unique effects (one makes you squishy, another turns you into a neon light, one freezes time). Kind of a screwing-around type game.

The latter, Cave Story, plays a bit like Metroid/Megaman--side scrolling shoot-em-up action, but with a unique fantasy sci-fi story about an army of androids sent to eradicate a race of rabbit-like creatures called Mimigas. You gain different weapons, as you progress, such as a missile launcher, a machinegun that lets you hover via the recoil, and a boomeranging throwing knife, and they gain more powerful effects as you kill enemies and collect triangular energy pieces from them. Taking damage causes your weapons to downgrade, so dodging enemy attacks is a staple for success.

Lastly, for a bigger-budget, there's the Deus Ex series, including the original, its 2003 sequel--Invisible War, and Human Revolution, which releases next month. The series revolves around government conspiracy, transhumanism, and mechanical augmentation of the body. In the pilot game, you play UNATCO Agent JC Denton, an anti-terrorist who has been given nanite implants that allow him to upgrade his body in various ways, gaining regeneration, night vision, the ability to detonate explosives at long distance, and so forth. It plays like a first-person shooter, but uses an RPG-style skill point system for upgrading your character in various ways, similar to Fallout. You can specialize in hacking computers, hand to hand combat, explosives, etc, and there are numerous secret items in the environment such as augmentations and weapons mods that you can use to improve your abilities.

The third game in the Deus Ex series is slated for release next month, the 23rd, and will be available on the PS3, 360, and Windows PC.

 

[Jerubbaal]

The Mother series, known as Earthbound here in the U.S., is one of the quirkiest, funniest series that I know. And I genuinely believe that Mother 3 does the best storytelling of any game I have ever played.

Here's a video showcasing the fan translation of the third one in the series. It was never released in the U.S., so you have to play a hacked fan translation on an emulator. Try to find a way to make it up to the developers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjMllYgUOeU

Damn, ninja'd. But yeah, this.. oh, it's you again. Hi person whom all I know about you is that you also like the Mother series!

We Mother fans must stick together! Maybe, someday, we can get Nintendo to localize the games. Though the fan translation of Mother 3 is actually pretty damn good.