Submitted 11 months ago by tsonfeir@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
I recently played Alien Isolation, and I noticed all of the “hacking” she does on doors and computers are different types of games, like press the button at the right time, or match the images within a timer, etc.
A lot of games have these mini-games, and I was wondering which you think are the best? Or at least, didn’t get old fast?
All of the Yakuza games are basically, collections of well made mini games that turn each beat-em-up campaign into a hundred hours of fun. But among those, the Cabaret Club and Pocket Circuit RC race-car games from Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami, are probably my favs.
Cabaret club is great! I wish they’d put it out as it’s own little mini games for smartphones or something
The photo minigame in Kiwami 2 makes me extremely uncomfortable, I guess it’s commendable that it can make the player feel so strongly about it
Final Fantasy VIII card game ♥️
I second this. Triple Triad is so much fun! Fun fact, they have it in Final Fantasy XIV and it’s so much fun to collect the cards and play other people. They even have tournaments.
Lol my friend sat down to play FFXIV once, but as soon as he was able to play Triple Triad, thats all he did for hours
I love this right up until the random rule gets applied, then it’s just frustrating.
I liked all the mini games in 7 and the card game in 8. However, due to nostalgia, my favorite is the sliding puzzle game in the first one.
For some reason it just wouldn’t click with me, tried getting into it in multiple point of the game but no luck.
Yes. Triple Triad is the only answer here.
Not to be mistaken by the abomination that is Tetra Master.
Animal Crossing on the GameCube straight up let you buy little NES consoles with a small variety of titles.
Does it actually let you buy them? I thought they were mostly locked away behind special event codes, or even dummied out.
Really basic ones can be dug up or purchased. You did have to get event codes for some cooler ones.
I also loved that they added some minigames from Amiibo Festival into New Leaf on the 3DS: Puzzle League and Desert Island Escape
I have a few.
PGR3, a Xbox360 racing game, contains Geometry Wars 1 and 2 as mini games. YT Link
Celeste contains the entirety of Celeste Classic (PICO-8) as an easter egg in one of its levels. YT Link
Xenogears, a PS1 JRPG game, contains a battle arena minigame, and I spent a few hours on that as a kid. YT Link
Machinarium’s 5 in a row minigame is so much fun, I played with my friends at school when we didn’t want to listen to our teacher :) By the way, I really recommend Machinarium to every fan of old school point-and-click games.
Geometry Wars was the best! And in each Project Gotham the had a new version!
Gwent from Witcher 3
I’m pretty sure I spent more time playing Ghent than the actual game. And I’m still upset that the standalone version sucked.
The standalone just didn’t have that same magic
Which one? The MP game or the SP one?
FFX Blitzball is the mini-game that I sunk the most time into by far (100+ hours), and always had fun.
Gwent from Witcher 3 kind of goes without saying, the framework is so good it’s spawned 3 full games that I can think of.
Best Hacking mini-game goes to the newer Deux Ex games, quick, the right amount of challenge but if you didn’t like it you could basically never do it.
Best lockpicking I’m going to give to Starfield. Literally the only part of the game I actually enjoyed, each is a great little puzzle.
OMG blitzball!! Initially thought it was stupid but once it clicked I was hooked !!!
My roommate in college would play Qwent in Witcher 3 and I would find myself glued to the TV.
I remember spending so much time playing Farkle in Kingdom Come Deliverance, betting my money on every game. I think Witcher 1 or 2 have similar dice game that i also very into it, played with every NPC possible whenever i have the chance.
Dice poker was Witcher 1 and 2. Was fun! Then gwent came and I was hooked on that too
Funny that i can’t get into gwent 😂
As a fan of the LucasArts point-and-click adventure games of the 80s-90s, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Day of the Tentacle, the sequel to Maniac Mansion (their first adventure game ever), actually contains Maniac Mansion as a minigame.
Gwent, in The Witcher 3!
The one that was so successful that it got its own game.
I don´t care much for the standalone pc game but check this out: imgur.com/a/qktqY
Many people love Stardew Valley so I gave it a go. It was fun for a couple of hours, but it doesn’t really have any depth. But you can go to the tavern and hop on an arcade machine with a really fun minimalist twin-stick shooter called Journey of the Prairie King that’s actually pretty great. It’s fast paced and unforgiving, and I spent more time playing that than on actual farming and what not.
SDV doesn’t have depth? 😳
For me it was fun for like 5 hours, but I was massively let down after that. The combat is pretty basic so that got boring quickly, and the new maps pretty much didn’t have anything new except new vegetables and enemies with new skins. You learn everything you need to know about the game in the first couple of hours and after that there’s no challenge and no real reason to keep making money which makes the grinding pointless. It’s a good casual game if you like decorating the farm but it’s not my cup of tea.
Blitzball
I really liked the hacking puzzles in Half-Life Alyx. There was a nice variety to the different type of puzzles that could appear, and the difficulty never felt like it got out of hand.
The door hacking in Deus Ex Human Revolution. Each one was unique, could be solved by skill (speed and precision) or with tools (consumable items found throughout the game). It was a mini puzzle game each time you tried to unlock something.
At the time, I loved it so much I tried to build my own version but it never went anywhere.
Kinda old school here but I really loved Pokémon Stadium mini games, also the shooter mode from Donkey Kong 64 was a blast, back in the day. Even Banjo Kazzoie/Tooie had some amazing mini games, I really loved those.
Me and my friends played the Pokemon stadium mini games WAY more than the actual battles. They were a lot of fun.
The multiplayer shooter in DK64 was so fun!
Rdr2 fishing has a following…
In Super Pitfall for the SNES, there was an Easter egg hidden in a temple that would warp you into the original Atari version. If that counts, that’s my favorite “game inside a game.”
The host club manager minigame in Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2, I don’t even remember their rewards, just that they were very fun. Compared to the real state minigame in 0 that was so boring I only remember the prize at the end, at least it was worth it
You got Kyriu’s original fighting style as a 4th one that breaks the game with a fanservice scene that references the cover art of the first game.
I love that song too. I need to remember to add that to my playlist.
I loved that mini game , it had great gameplay and very short and sweet story . I would buy it in a heard beat if it was a standalone game with more in-depth mechanics.
I spent way more time than I should have playing Dice in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Very flash puzzle game from newgrounds
I’d throw Crash Bandicoot showing up in Uncharted 4 into the mix, with an honorable mention for Nathan’s Nerf gun setup in his attic.
Maybe neither of those count, as they’re not complete in and of themselves? But I think they count in the spirit of the question asked.
I was pretty happy when I could play that in Uncharted 4. Uncharted is such a good series.
I like how the Yakuza/Like a Dragon is jam packed with mini-games. Sega even puts classic arcade games in it. But I feel like paying for your buck, you’re going to have the most mini games in the Yakuza game then you will in any other game.
This, absolutely. The claw catcher is my jam.
For minigames as "games within the game" (e.g., GTA has a lot of these like pool, golf, etc.,) throw another one up for Witcher 3's Gwent!
For minigames as representations of some other mechanic (e.g., hacking, lock picking,) I remember liking the hacking in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Reminded me of hacking in EVE: Online.
Probe scanning was awesome in EVE too—ay least it was a decade or so ago. Who knows if it's still the same now doe? Not me.
I always found the GTA ones pretty lackluster, even bowling was more fun in the Yakuza games. The videogame arcades and consoles in San Andreas were the only ones that I had fun.
Not sure if this totally counts but my favorite is the Chao raising systems in the Sonic Adventure games
The FF9 tetra masts card games and chocobo digging
…Who hurt you?
I can’t think of any memorable “hacking” type ones as they all just become a chore by the end. Fable II has some wood chopping, pie making and lute playing that wasn’t so bad if you can get a high multiplier going.
As for actual “games within a game” then Shenmue series has many gambling and arcade machines. Roll it On Top, Lucky Hit, Darts and then Arterburner, Space Barrier, Outrun and Hang On.
I don’t know if it counts but Red Dead Redemption introduced me to Liar Dice! Now I freakin’ love Liar Dice!
Rockstar loves minigames. They even have an arcade in gta online
FICSIT Productivity Packer Deluxe (Satisfactory). It’s a fun little game available at The HUB once it is fully upgraded. You take Tetris-like pieces and arrange them to fit within a square, completing as many squares as you can within the time limit to determine your score.
Then again, the real mini game in Satisfactory is the planning that goes into your factory while you are not playing the game. It’s the game that just keeps on giving.
The minigame is a spreadsheet on one monitor and a production planner on the other and it’s awesome 👌
Anaconda in TimeSplitters 2, mostly for the incredibly catchy music.
I believe the correct answer is the loading screen minigames from Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 1-3
The Yamcha Spirit ball one had me actually trying to hit each item every time there was a loading screen lol
swolf@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Gwent!
Rodeo@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
It suffers the same problem every trading card game does: if you don’t have the best cards, you lose. Skill and strategy and even luck are nothing compared to just having better cards.
bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
IMO pay-to-win mechanics work really well for a game-within-a-game since rather than exploiting the player for money, they are exploiting the player character for effort, which can lead you to go on more epic quests
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 11 months ago
That’s a really superficial take. For instance in MTG every format has “must have” cards, like fetchlands or shock lands (or dual lands), but beyond that there’s no “best” cards. There are “meta” cards that go into a specific meta deck and when you have one meta deck playing against another that’s when skill and strategy come into play. And it’s not like you must build a meta deck to play, you can build anti-meta decks or lab out a completely new meta deck. The problem is that such a level of deck building skills go way beyond what 99% of players are capable of doing. Even some of the best players in the world suck at deck building, because is an entirely different skillset to playing the game.
But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. The modern meta looks very different to when I got into MTG 10+ years ago. Some are still around in some form, like regular Tron turned into mono-g tron and burn turned into boros burn. But the bans on Twin and Pod have killed those decks while Jund and Affinity have dropped out of the meta. In those place we have brand new decks like amulet titan or 5c Omnath. Somewhere in that timeframe we also got Eggs that was literally jank cards thrown into a pile of meta-defining solitaire playing, and then it got banned for being too boring.
You can get meta cards to build a meta deck but you can’t explicitly buy “best” cards because a new combination of “bad” cards can create a meta deck and then those become the new “best” cards.
kratoz29@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I disagree but I understand you… I don’t know why it didn’t click for me as an old Yu-Gi-Oh! Player (that is the only card game I have ever played… And several minutes of a “Duel Master” card game for GBA… Perhaps that one would trigger some old memories for some it was based on an anime too).
swolf@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It was my first foray into CCG type games. I did try the in game Gwent recently and did not enjoy it as much.
I guess you may feel that way because mature CCG are far better than the Gwent mini game.
Godric@lemmy.world 11 months ago
God I love gwent, I might have to pick witcher back up just to play.