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.
No one gonna say it?? No one?
Fine.
Cuphead
I would recommend playing Metal Slug 2 & 3 before getting into Cuphead.
2? Not X?
3 is such a coin-eating masterpiece though
MS-X does not suffer the performance issues found in MS2, yeah.
But was also made slightly harder than MS2 so “master players” would get more enjoyment out of it.
So yeah, for beginners i would recommend the original Metal Slug 2.
Zelda 2 Adventure of Link. I didn’t have Castlevania or Ninja Gaiden as a kid so that was my Nintendo Hard game lol.
If you think Super Meat Boy is hard oh boy do I have one for you.
The End Is Nigh is also an Edmund McMullen platformer, but with a much higher emphasis on precision. The game is technically short, but there are just so many easy ways to die that you have to get good to beat it.
It also has a little modding community that has produced some even more nightmarish levels to go along with it.
I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game
If you know, you know.
You lost
Fucking CONSTANTLY. I did eventually beat it though.
Not that it’s much of a benefit today as RTS games are barely nonexistent. But StarCraft 2 taught me all about macro management. Spending them resources and building an economy.
Yeah, learning to perform a macro cycle while doing other stuff is really useful. I sometimes play AoE2 with friends, and I’m not very good at it, but if there’s one thing I can do, it’s spamming trash units in the late game.
Sekiro
Many games come down to finding some unbreakable combo of buttons or abilities and when you have that figured out you steamroll the game. To successfully finish Sekiro, you must be patient. Learn when to let your enemy attack, so that they leave themselves open or provide you with a chance to parry.
There’s no leveling up to get so strong you can thrash any boss, like in other souls games. You just have to learn the game mechanics and get good.
Sekiro really is the “Get Gud” of FromSoft games
I feel most improvement playing turn-based games, like TFT, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire.
DayZ SA hardcore, my reactions have improved and I have become more cautious as a player, especially of people.
Well, I can tell you this. I grew up playing Mega Man. People say those games are hard, but I have them all memorized, so they’re all pretty easy for me.
Sometimes I play platformers that people consider hard, and I’m just disappointed by how mind-numbingly easy they are. Celeste is one example. I kept thinking, surely it must get harder. Maybe when I do the B sides. Surely there must be at least one part I struggle on. There never was. I never found anything hard about the game. The story was amazing, though.
So anyway, my answer is Mega Man. Not Mega Man X. Those games are amazing - quite possibly my favorite platformers of all time - but they’re too easy to fit into this category. The classic, 8-bit mega Man games from the NES (Mega Man 2 excluded. That one is also too easy).
StarCraft II made transitioning to League of Legends easy. I also played a lot of Kovaaks which made my aim generally better in FPS games and it helps with osu! too.
DOOM 2016 on Nightmare (not ultra)
Sniper Elite
Hotline Miami
Dead Cells
Dying Light on Nightmare
Unironically old school runescape. Playing it for years ingrained the concept of efficiency into me. Now I’m able to do well in games where mechanically I’m still shit because I’m constantly trying to use my time as efficiently as possible.
It also taught me how to type (albeit not 100% correctly because I use my right pointer finger to hit the space bar rather than my thumb)
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
Bayonetta, and Burnout 3. I got really good reflexes and timing.
And way way back when I was super absorbed playing Manhunt I got uncannily good at spotting dark shadows at night to hide in.
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