Some Games That aren’t Like Any Other Game 2022

Some games out there follow a very specific formula. Open-world games all have certain things that you’ll find in them, but some games are totally unique.10 games that aren’t like any other game. And before I get going here, like, it has to be said we’re not gonna focus on indies today. The indie game scene is extremely creative. People come up with unique stuff all the time. What we’re really gonna do is focus on mainstream games. Like big games where, if you really think about it, there really isn’t anything else quite like them. There aren’t really any good imitators, you know? With that in mind.

let’s start off at number 10,”Ghostwire: Tokyo.”

Now, this is probably the most recent game on the list, it’s also one of the most unusual. It’s a Japanese FPS set in an open-world recreation of the real-world Shibuya district in Tokyo, Japan. You play a ghost hunter. It’s your job to exercise the demons that have taken over. And that sounds like a horror game, right? More of an action game. Yeah, there are some minor horror elements, but mainly an action game. Instead of guns, you use magic to defeat the ghosts, which makes this game feel kind of like a first-person “Devil May Cry,” rather than an FPS. It’s really unusual. It has the trappings of a lot of open-world FPS games, but how it pulls everything off makes the game feel really unique and different. It doesn’t always work. Like, there are times where this game can be a bit of a chore to get through all the open-world stuff, but the visual style alone makes the game stand out. And again, it just has a weird cadence to the gameplay that you don’t really get anywhere else. It clearly does take inspiration from a lot of other games out there, but the sum of its parts, the way it incorporates all those ideas, is just really unique.

At number nine is “Undertale,” a subversive RPG

That can feel similar to other games in terms of tone and some of the ideas of the plot, but the presentation and style make it completely unique even now. There are a few imitators out there at this point, but they just don’t hit the same way as “Undertale.” “Undertale” is set in an underground world filled with monsters and has a very strange, but easy-to-understand turn-based battle system where whenever an enemy attacks you manually control a heart in order to dodge them. The battle system alone would be enough to make this game stand out because it’s basically JRPG battle system that plays nothing like a JRPG battle system, but if you know how to play a JRPG battle system, you know how to play “Undertale.” That’s kind of the best way to describe it, which is laborious. But they manage to do a lot of clever things with what seems like a really basic concept. But the real noteworthy thing that everybody remembers is that this is an RPG where you do not have to kill anything. You could choose to be totally nonviolentby selecting the spare option in battle. And that’s not all you can do. If you’re not feeling, so friendly, you can kill everything. Like literally everything. And depending on what you do, it can have a major impact on the ending you get. It’s a game with tons of inspirations, but there’s just nothing out there that managed to pull it all off the way that “Undertale” does.

At number eight it’s “Bully.”

It’s easy to call “Bully” “GTA” but in a school, but I think that’s selling the game a little short. You almost never see Western-developed and published games set in a school, let alone one by a studio like Rockstar, and never with this kind of love and detail. Instead of being set in a sprawling open-world playground,”Bully’s” set in a small town called Bull worth. You play as Jimmy, a new kid at Bullworth Academy. And at least, at first, the game is probably the opposite of a “Grand Theft Auto” game. You have to go to school, avoid getting into trouble, you can’t kill anyone for fun. Hell, you can’t even leave the Academy for the first few hours. Rather than being an unstoppable killing machine like a “GTA” game where you’re free to basically do whatever you want, in “Bully” you’re a kid, and at best, you can beat someone up and maybe avoid detention by running away from the prefects. Yeah, there are a lot of Japanese games set in schools, but they are nothing like “Bully.” Like, most of those games involve making choices as to who you date and what spells to learn when you take out the invading army. Yeah, those are weird too, but there’s a lot of them. There’s only one “Bully.”

At number seven is the “Hitman” series.

Now, when you think of stealth, most people think of sneaking around in the shadows, hiding in closets, avoiding enemy patrols. And while you do a little of that in “Hitman,” these games are way more out in the open. Stealth in the “Hitman” games is more like a puzzle than anything else. It’s about finding the right uniform, sneaking in the correct weapons, setting up the perfect situation, so you can kill your target without anyone even knowing you were there. The “Hitman” games are exactly what their name implies, they’re hitman simulators. You play his Agent 47,a guy that you would think would stand out because he’s bald and has a distinct barcode tattoo on the back of his neck, but he seems to fit in pretty all right. To eliminate whatever target or targets you’ve got for a specific level, you usually have a ton of options. You can snipe them from a good vantage point, orchestrate some kind of accident, push them off a ledge when no one’s looking. As long as you’re wearing the right thing in the right place, most people won’t question you, and you’re free to move around the area as you see fit. All these interlocking systems make each level in a “Hitman” game basically a huge puzzle that needs to be solved. It’s all about trying to get that coveted Silent Assassin ranking, which you can get by killing your target without alerting anyone or leaving a trace of your presence. Getting that perfect assassination is super satisfying, but it’s almost just as fun when you screw up because that’s when you just grab a machine gun and go on a rampage. The “Hitman” games have elements of stealth games, adventure games, andthird-person shooters, but the way all those pieces come together just make it something nothing like anything else.

At number six is the “Splatoon” series.

This has gotta be one of the weirdest concepts for a multiplayer shooter at all, right? In the “Splatoon” games, you play as a kid or a squid, maybe a kid. How about a squid kid? I don’t really know what to say here. The commercial really made it so that it’s impossible to get past those two words. But you’re going up against other squid kids in a multiplayer battle arena. The difference is that instead of shooting bullets, you shoot ink, ’cause you’re a kid and a squid. And kids don’t shoot bullets at each other and squid shoot ink. I know I’m, you know, having as much fun as I can with saying this stuff, but it’s actually pretty simple and straightforward and extremely enjoyable. Now, instead of being about getting kills, “Splatoon’s” basic game mode, Turf War, is about spreading ink. Whoever covers the surface of the map the most is the winning team. Now, the ink is also not just for splashing around, of course, you can use it, you can kind of get kills with it. They don’t really matter in terms of score per se, though, they just kind of knock the enemy team out of action. Now, to refill your ink, you transform into squid form, which actually also has other benefits. Like you’re hidden, the ink recharges, you can move much faster through your own ink. Like, normally, the movement is pretty slow, but traveling through the ink is essential to getting back to the frontline quickly, especially after you’ve been knocked out. And you can flank opponents this way, using all of these moves to your advantage. This is all wrapped up in a really cool urban style which is pretty unlike anything else out there. The “Splatoon” games are both kid-friendly and weirdly dark. Just the fact that the series comes from the usually risk-averse Nintendo kind of makes the thing seem that much more original. And really, “Splatoon,” fantastic games.

At number five is “Sea of Thieves,”

A large-scale cooperative multiplayer action game. “Sea of Thieves” is really hard to pin down. It’s a multiplayer game where teams of four-playerplayer scan and control various parts of a pirate ship and go exploring, you can get in fights with other players, or you can just trade items like fish and meat. I mean, you’re a pirate so, obviously, people are questioning where that meat is coming from, at least internally, or I like to think of it that way anyhow. That’s a pretty basic rundown of what the game has to offer because it’s getting consistent updates, and has since it came out way back in March of 2018. Basically, if you want a game to do pirate stuff in, this is the game to do it. The entire package is wrapped up in rare’s unusuabrandsnd of humor as well, which gives it a really unique flavor. And there are a few pirate games out there, there’s just nothing even close to the ambition and weirdness of “Sea of Thieves” though. Which, when the game came out, is not something I expected I would ever say, also, ’cause it was kind of bland at launch. So, I mean, even on that level, that launch in a way that not everybody loves that turn into something that you go, “Wow, thanothing likethinglike anything else “and it does it well.”

At number four is “Driver: San Francisco,”

Maybe the strangest turn for a major franchise I can think of. In the PS1 era, “Driver” was a huge franchise. They were semi-realistic driving games set in a massive open-world city, and you could only drive, but, I mean, they were pretty ambitious in that way. With “Driver: San Francisco,”they just completely changed the formula. Instead of just being able to control one car, you can possess any car you want. It’s done seamlessly. When you leave a car, the world goes into slow motion, and you can fly around and possess a new car, which is weird. This little mechanic lets you do crazy stuff like swap into a new car mid-race, switched to a vehicle heading the right direction if you take a wrong turn during a time trial, or if you’re feeling spicy, you can possess a bus and crash it head first in your rival racers. It completely changes the dynamic of the game and takes what would otherwise be a pretty simple driving game and makes it one of the most fun and unique racers out there .

At number three, “Brothers“

A Tale of Two Sons.” An adventure game created by Josef Fares, the guy who would go on to create some amazing co-op games like “A Way Out” and “It Takes Two.” This has a simple premise, it’s a co-op game, but single-player. How does that possibly work, you ask? Simple, one brothers controlled by the left stick and the others are controlled by the right stick. So instead of controlling one character at all times, you control two. Thankfully, they put in a lot of effort to make it go as smoothly as possible and ease players into the experience, but it’s still something that takes a lot of getting used to and not something that other people have done. Story is very simple. It’s two brothers on a journey to find medicine to help their sick father, and along the way, you’re solving puzzle sand avoiding danger. It’s kind of short, but it smartly doesn’t overstay its welcome and try to do anything too complicated. It’s brilliant and a creative control method that I really don’t think has ever been replicated, at least in a way that works.

At number two is “Shadow of the Colossus.“

Few games manage to both be incredibly strange and entertaining in a way that “Shadow of the Colossus” manages to do. It’s a game that’s Stein a really desolate land, and you have a really simple goal, hunt all these huge creatures down and kill them. Now, in truth, that doesn’t sound particularly unique, but it’s actually some of the limits and the mechanics that make it into just a completely different experience than anything else. You only have a few tools, a sword, a bow and arrow, a horse, and you have, you know, hands, so you can climb. To take out the colossi, you have to find a way to climb up to their weak points and take them out. It’s part action game, part platform, part puzzle game. And each colossus is different, so it’s not like they all have the same weak points, and getting them to expose their weak points isn’t easy. Further, this whole experience has a really melancholy feel to it that gives the game a really unique atmosphere. I mean, it’s hard to mention open-world games without mentioning “Breath of the Wild,” but it’s not what you think here. This is a game that a lot of this game’s DNA can be felt in “Breath of the Wild.” Hell, a lot of this game’s DNA can be felt in “Sonic Frontiers” once you get into the bigger bosses. Not quite the same thing, but you know if you’ve played it. But even though a lot of games have taken influence from it, it is totally unique. There’s just nothing else quite like it.

And finally, at number one is “Death Stranding.”

From the mad mind of Hideo Kojima comes possibly the strangest AAA big-budget game of all time. As good as I can describe it, “Death Stranding” is an anopen-world post-apocalyptic supernatural FedEx simulator. Yeah, as a follow-up to the masterful stealth action of the “Metal Gear Solid” series, Kojima made a game about delivering packages. The setting itself is also one of the weirdest of all time. Most of the world’s been devastated and the mere presence of a dead body can be catastrophic. And your goal is basically to reconnect humanity to itself, one delivery at a time. A little bit higher stakes than the Amazon guy. I mean, unless yoully anticipating a package, then it seems like the stakes are super high for the Amazon guy. But no, he is not reconnecting humanity with itself. There’s so much weird stuff in this game, it would take a whole day to explain it. It’s so strange. It’s a game where you have a baby in a tank strapped to your chest, which warns you about invisible ghosts that appear as handprints. There’s rain that makes you age. When people die, they essentially become a time bomb. When you die, you are transported to a beach, and you can swim back to life. I mean, everything about it is strange. It’s probably onall-time strangestall-timestrangest video game experiences of this or any generation. Some bonus games for you too. The “God of War” reboot series. Some people might bulk at this, but think about it, the reboot is super weird. Instead of a usual third-person action game camera, it looks more like “Gears of War, “close over-the-shouldercloseover-the-shoulder camera angle. It’s partially an open-world narrative fiction game, but the presentation is so unique that it doesn’t seem like anything else in that genre. It’s easy to forget how revolutionary “God of War” felt in 2018a. And it’s sequel, I mean, it’s still like the only other game like that. There’s just nothing else out there quite like these games. And then I gotta also mention “Katamari Damacy.” You can’t do a unique game list without mentioning this PS2 classic. It’s a puzzle game, I mean, I think, where the goal is to roll a sticky ball called a Katamari around various environments to collect larger and larger objects until the ball is big enough to reach a goat that starts small, eventually, you’re rolling up house pets, people, and even entire cities. This is all because the King of All Cosmos destroyed the stars in the sky, and I guess rolling uncanny can make stars. Don’t question it. It’s at is pretty fun. But don’t think about it, that’s more difficult than the game itself.