Imagine for a second: you’ve developed a routine. It’s comfortable, optimized, quiet, calm, some might even saycozy. But something is missing.
The lust for life, the excitement, that slight twinge of panic when your brain realizes that you might need to alter your course for a minute.
After you blink away the double vision from the near-faint you’ve just experienced, you feel alive, you feel like you’re able to conquer anything.
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Just like in life, some games like to throw a curveball at you, be it via a new genre coming into play, imposed limitations or a story-based change, forcing you to change your playstyle, for better or worse.
Here are ten of these such games, ranked by the scale and integration of the forced change of playstyle and how exciting it makes playing the game.
There are spoilers for Undertale and Bravely Default in entries 4 and 5 respectively.
10Watch_Dogs 2
Watch Dogs 2
Watch_Dogs 2is a gem of a game. Set in thecolorful, picturesque city of San Franciscoand its surrounding area, you play as Marcus, a hacker, who teams up with the group DedSec to destroy the ctOS system before it can wreak havoc.
The game places a huge emphasis on remote and non-lethal approaches to missions, with Marcus’s characterization being against lethal violence and instead going for drones, RC cars and hacking via CCTV.
This leads to some very open level design, in which you can infiltrate an area and steal the information without ever needing to actually go into the danger zone yourself.
Or at the very least, you only need to step foot in it at the end to reach the objective marker after you’ve cleared the way with your tech. This can lead to some very satisfying puzzles.
Which is why it irks me so much that, at the end of certain missions, the police will be called, blocking off the exit even if you’ve infiltrated without alerting anyone, and you’ll have no choice but to just make a break for it or go out guns blazing.
9Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Boss Fights
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex: Human Revolutionis one of the most well-renowned stealth games. A deeply immersive sim, where hacking and talking your way out of trouble reign supreme over the Rambo approach.
Why, you may ask then, did the developers think that having the boss fights in the game become straight firefights would be a good idea?
That’s right, nosneaking around in air vents, no hacking turrets to help you dispatch enemies, actually no nonlethal approaches at all.
This is due to the boss fights actually being outsourced to a different company, due to time constraints, causing this discrepancy in tone and playstyle.
While this was addressed somewhat in the Director’s Cut, the nonlethal approach is still removed for boss fights, with the achievements for nonlethal playthroughs just having to include an asterisk.
8Marvel’s Spider-Man
Stealth Sections
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
InMarvel’s Spider-Man, Insomniac cracked the code on how to create a really good movement system, with web-slinging andgeneral movement that just feels so right.
The combat system as well, allows you to feel like a superhero, chaining together acrobatic combos with a wide range of gadgets and quips for every situation.
The game does, however, have aminor flaw, and that is the forced stealth sections.
At certain points in the game, you are given control of Mary Jane and Miles Morales and asked to make your way through areas without being seen.
These sections slow the pacing of the game to a crawl, as, instead of feeling like a superhero, you feel like a regular person again, with all the inconveniences of not being able to crawl along the walls or fly through the air.
7Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
Drayton’s Trial
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
InPokemon S&V, and specifically, the 2nd DLC, The Teal Mask, your character is called upon to help your old friend Kieran, in the only way new Pokémon games seem to know how – by embarrassing them into submission by complete and utter domination in a Pokémon battle.
Before this, however, you’ll need to beat the Elite 4 of Blueberry Academy, each of which has a small trial for you to complete first, from having to trade ingredients around to make a spicy sandwich to answering a Pokémon quiz.
For Drayton’s trial, you’re tasked with battling 3 trainers, with only Pokémon that have been caught in the DLC’s specific area of the Terarium. That’s right, say goodbye to your Level 100 starter Pokémon, and to the legendaries that have carried you thus far.
This was a great little twist to the format and made me have to think about type match-ups a bit more, as the Pokémon I’d caught weren’t all EV trained.
Unfortunately, the matches aren’t particularly difficult, but for an added challenge, you can then continue with this team into Drayton’s battle proper.
6The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The Trial Of The Sword
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wildhas been critically acclaimed for its approach to open-world design and the integration of systems that use real-world physics to allow for extremely creative approaches to puzzles and exploration.
This means that most challenges in BOTW can be overcome using the style of play that suits you best, allowing you to hone your skills over the course of a playthrough and really feel like the Hero of Legend.
But what if these skills were taken away from you? Enter BOTW’s DLC, with the challenge mode called ‘The Trial of the Sword’. Taking place over 54 floors, you are stripped of all your weapons, armor, Champion abilities, food and items.
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With each floor ascended, you will face tougher and tougher enemies, with the only checkpoints happening when you complete one of the three sets that the floors are separated into.
If you leave at any point, then you lose all items gained during your run and will have to start from the beginning of the last set you completed.
A gauntlet to be sure, and one that will test even the most skilled hero of legend.
5Bravely Default
Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
Bravely Defaultis, on the surface at least, a classic RPG from the masters of the genre, Square Enix. In it, you play as Tiz, the sole survivor of a chasm opening up and swallowing up his village.
Along the way, you’ll grow to a party of four, level up, focus on certain job classes like Red Mage, Performer or Sword Master, dungeon crawl, battle bosses and generally continue your adventure to save the world.
However, once you get to the supposed end of the game, the devs throw a curveball and the adventure resets.
Not once, but four times (you’re able to, optionally, break it earlier) you’ll loop around and have to effectively play the game again, with the characters getting more and more confused about what is happening and the bosses getting harder and harder.
These later loops have some enemies that pack a pretty impressive wallop, causing you to have to rethink your battle style. Gone are the days of four distinct job classes and reacting to each turn.
Instead, say hello to min-maxing and getting used to using the Vampire job builda lot.
4Undertale
To Kill Or Not To Kill?
InUndertale, how you deal with enemies directly affects the story that is shown. Most players will follow a similar path from Neutral to Pacifist and then, for the true completionists/sadistic among us, Genocide.
In Neutral, you’re learning the game’s systems and subversions, so you’re expected to attack some enemies and potentially kill some to gain EXP, as in most RPGs. You’ll learn by the end of this run, however, that there was another way.
In the world of Undertale there is always an option for compassion, allowing you to bypass enemy fights, and empathize with even the most obviously evil monster, but you’ll have to make do with no EXP gains.
However, there’s also an option to play the game just like any other RPG, killing and destroying as you go. Just ensure you’reready to face the conSANquences.
3The Last Of Us
Grounded Mode
The Last of Us
InThe Last Of Us, you will spend your time counting ammo, crafting makeshift Molotovs and weapons and using your mystical listening ability to keep track of your enemies.
This already leads to some very tense situations, with your character always just barely able to get ahead of the enemy, be they human orinfected.
If you want even more of a challenge, however, then just load up Grounded Mode. No HUD, no listening mode and even scarcer materials means every decision you make is critical.
In fact, in certain areas, like the infamous Hotel Basement section, you might have to resort to breaking the game, learning exactly the reach and spawn times of enemies to get to safety.
As such, I wouldn’t recommend playing this version of the game until you feel like you’ve absorbed the story, as it really does change how you feel about the game, for better and worse.
2NieR: Automata
All The Genres And Endings
NieR: Automata
Fextralife Wiki
Nier: Automataprides itself on subverting and amending the player’s playstyle. The game starts as a pretty straightforward, albeit challenging, action-RPG with combat by the great Platinum Games.
But what follows is a sprawling and dense open world filled with multiple different gameplay genres, from top-down shooter to text adventure, as well as 26 different endings.
To collect them all and really start to grapple with the ethical questions posed by the game, you’ll need to be open to forgetting all you think you know about the game at the drop of a hat and dive right into the next version of the game.
1Alien Isolation
Alien: Isolation
InAlien: Isolation, you play as Amanda Ripley, daughter to Ellen Ripley from the film series.
After entering a space station to try and recover a flight recorder belonging to her mother, Ripley very quickly discovers that something terrible has happened, and an Alien is loose.
Evoking the atmosphere from the first film, there’s just the one Alien to contend with in this game, but it’s a mean one.
Able to amend its approach depending on how you play, you’ll have to consistently amend your playstyle to stay one step ahead and survive.
Oh, and get ready to find as many hiding places as possible, because thisAlien can’t die.
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