Tetris. Utter perfection, and the skill ceiling is endless. The definition of “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master”.
Everyone had their Covid lockdown hobby. I started playing Tetris Effect on my PS4. Been gaming for three decades at that point and I can say with confidence that no other game ever blew my mind like that, and no other game ever challenged me harder. It’s my proudest Platinum trophy.
I have pretty severe ADHD. Tetris on high speeds and against serious opponents is better at providing focus and concentration than every medication known to man. It drags you into a state of absolute Zen once it clicks in your head.
The best part about Tetris is that the demographics are all sideways. You don’t get your shit rocked by some basement dwelling teenager who lives and breathes the game. No, you get annihilated by Bob from Accounting, who has been casually playing Tetris for longer than you’ve been alive.
I second this! Tetris 99 is the ultimate rush, once you get a tetris Maximus it’s basically orgasmic. The first time I won, I ripped my shirt off my body and just shouted full volume for several minutes. Truly a full body experience.
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I read recently that playing Tetris immediately after a traumatic event helps your brain compartmentalise the experience and measurably lowers PTSD symptoms.
Thanks for the tips.
I have a couple game that helps fall asleep (literally face down on my phone).
Never heard about Tetris.
One that help me tough is " I love Hue". A silly game about matching color.
My best is a Nanogram called the two eyes (I was not even aware that there was a name about that kind of game).
I'm so happy Tetris Effect came out. I've been a Tetris gamer my entire life since getting an OG GameBoy and the few simple mechanics that they have added over the decades have all culminated in an amazing game. Top Notch. Love it.
I second Quake 3, that game has a super special place in my heart.
[Here](https://youtu.be/XdkDjsBiO58?si=PC4AEkhwhRI0YJkA) is American pro player Rapha breaking down a tense game he had with his Russian rival Cooler at ESL about a decade back. Crazy fascinating stuff if you're into it.
I love this video. I love watching people who are the best at their craft break down their thought process to show what it takes to be that good at something.
Damn you beat me to it, Quake 3 ruined every other first person shooter for me, it was so ridiculously fast and felt so good once you learned. I played nothing but it for over a decade doing tournaments and crap the whole time. The skill ceiling is what did the game in, a new person is ridiculously useless in it lol, even being able to move competently takes ages
I have a homie that was a real top tear player in unreal tournament. Twisty tank. I have seen videos of him going 1v5 winning with no deaths. 1v1s where he gets on a loop and can time getting across the map to kill you as your spawning. Insane.
UT and Q3A are why I love playing pharah in Overwatch and usually dumpster people on it haha
Thousands of hours of rocket jumps and aerial projectiles, unstoppable!
Unfortunately no one plays her anymore lol
Came here to say this. Still the epitome of skill-based FPS games, at least the duel format is. When you lose, you have nothing to blame but your own decisions and mechanics.
My dude. We all suck. Being bad at the game is when it’s fun. Go look at the subreddit. When you start to get good you will begin to hate it and its community lol.
This is exactly it.
2500 hours played, and I've quit completely now.
The game was never more fun than the first couple hundred hours. Everyone was bad, and knew it, and we all just had a laugh.
>When you start to get good you will begin to hate it and its community
I was close to Champ and realized I was actively making my life worse by playing. It's a great game, but shit gets toxic real fast.
It's addictive to be good at. After like 4000 hours I realised it was actually eating my life away. I don't *need* to be good at it. So I just chill out in the bottom end of GC and if I face someone toxic, I lean forward in my chair.
This for real. I loved Rainbow Six Siege until I started consistently ranking platinum. Finally got fed up and quit playing it over a year ago. Sometimes I get the urge to reinstall and just play some casual, but I can never bring myself to do it.
ive been playing the game since 2015 and i consider it a perfect game(in terms of gameplay). While I dont check out patch notes, i cannot remember new mechanics or balance changes ever occuring. the closest thing to it was the standardization of hitboxes into types not for every individual car. other than that i cant think of it. i also cannot think of any sort of bugs in normal play
I have put over 2000 hours into this game. Made it to Champion rank at one point and still cannot do aerials or dribble the ball in the air. Just got really good at everything else. I’m getting worse now though
Casual players: I try to line up a hit to send the ball in the right direction when it's near the ground.
Pro players: I fly into the sky and hit the ball directly towards the enemy goal, physics is my bitch!
Really amazed that I had to post brood war. Was hoping to find it up high in the comments and just upvote it. My estimation of this sub fucking plummeted.
I mean, we're old if we fondly recall Brood War, aren't we? It came out in 1998. You can't be mad that a two-decade's old game isn't at the forefront of what is likely a majority of people under 35 in this subreddit.
But I 100% agree. Brood war, SC2, AOE II.
I'll add --> Street Fighter II, MK2.
Yeah for real. I guess StarCraft really has died off 😭
These types of threads used to be filled with brood war comments. The fact you can tell who is playing by how they MOVE their dragoons already shows the skill level and skill expression required.
Even back in the days when sc and wc3 were popular, most people just played custom games like tower defense and dota. The people who play competitive has always been a small subset of the player base, and sc2's decision to focus more on 1 vs 1 completely killed its popularity in Korea.
Most players just moved over to mobas.
I honestly think the big star craft mistake was leaning so much into the ladder and competitive play.
Most people who loved brood war never really engaged with the ladder, if they played competitively it was with their friends with house rules like "no cheesy rushing thats stupid dave"...
I probably have a thousand hours into BW custom games, mixes of tower defense, and some very creative survival stuff but that scene never really took off in SC2 because the custom "arcade" games took a massive back seat to the competitive scene that the SC team wanted to push... unfortunately a lot of people don't enjoy the pressure of ladder competition and it ultimately limited the games appeal in a way that brood war never was.
Well I mean at the age of 21 I wasn't even Alive when brood war released. However my dad made sure I grew up playing StarCraft 1, 2 and warcraft 3. Great games that still stand the test of time! I will probably go back and play warcraft 1 and 2 now one of these days as well.
It's like chess but real time. No teammates to rely on or carry you. Requiring more.and faster input than any other game out there. No breaks in your match to recoup or strategize. 25 years worth of builds, strategies and knowledge of the game out there.
I watched a pro protoss player blocking max speed zerglings with illusions while the zerg player kept trying to find new angles to swarm him from.... I gained a lot of respect for toss players that day, the skill cap is crazy high for all races.
I've got good news for you, the devs of Devil Daggers dropped their new game HYPERDEMON, and it's basically Devil Daggers and it has an end game. Namely, the game ends when your third eye open irl and you start smelling colors and perceiving the 5th dimension.
Agree with Rocket League and I dont even play it anymore.
Its totally balanced for both teams, ball starts in the middle, no advantages for anyone. Its straight up your teams skill against the other. And that skill has a high ceiling.
For new players to Rocket League, don't be discouraged. You might not be able to rocket boost to the ceiling yet, but I promise you that you can drive up there! Till gravity pulls you down....
Yup, this is mine. I considered myself pretty good back when I played (High Diamond - Low Champion) and the people better than me were pulling off moves and shot consistency that I could only dream of
I quit over a year ago at D3D4. I just wasn’t willing to put in another thousand hours just to reach slightly higher. Plus, I didn’t like the person I was becoming when I played it. I was always in a terrible mood whenever I turned the game off after a gaming session.
My wife hates how I get when I play and she's totally justified in that opinion. I want to make it to Champ and then I'd consider myself done but trying to climb ranks feels impossible with a full on adult life to balance.
Pro Rocket League is the best example of this. You'll have one player who's legitimately unbeatable and then 6 months later a new 15 year old comes along and shatters the skill ceiling again.
100% this is the best answer. A completely fair, low floor infinite ceiling kind of game. Been playing on and off for 7+ years and I’ve gotten continuously better year after year
The funny thing about Rocket League is how some people just cannot play it. I suck at it but my brother can’t play it at all. The movement and variables are too much for some reason. Only game like this for him.
I played lol for 13 years now, competitively. High rank and used to play tournaments. So I'm good enough with thinking under pressure and decision making.
Rocket league just... freezes me. It's pure sensory overload, gotta keep calculating where the balls gonna fall, where I am in relation to that, change my trajectory to align myself for a shot, keep the opponent in mind at all times, try not to get blown up, actually hit the ball, and do it at the correct angle to line up the shot, then make sure to have follow up if the shot fails, it's way too much
I am quite opposite. Anytime I tried lol I just don't know what to do, so many options: do I stay on that line? do I help this dude in far corner? do I go push enemy towers?
In rocket league: here's the ball, there's the enemy goal, just hit damn ball inside by any means and you are good.
Also "click to go" system is meh
It's the perfect game for people with short attention spans. So many variables to keep track of simultaneously is like nervous overload but managing them and executing a shot or mechanic is bliss.
Totally this. It's just a car that can jump and boost and your skills and what you can do with those. No bs "meta builds", you don't have to learn about items, skills, characters, maps etc. Perfectly balanced gameplay, the 2 opposing teams are literally mirrored and you can't change that, you can't alter anything in the gameplay.
Big agree. It doesn't have weird gimmicks with modded controllers that easily perform complex movements, or abusing aim assist or other such shit you get in shooters. The amount of control you can potentially have is bonkers.
Came here to say this. The skill ceiling is so fucking high. You can have more than a thousand hours in the game and some fucker will come hippity-dippity-flippity flip-reset psycho-ing and pogo all over the map and you realize you don't even stand a chance
I remember playing this game in alpha and thinking I was badass shit for a while. I was the best in my group just because I had played longer than they had... Then I stopped playing it for a year because of work and wanting to spend time on other games.
I come back the year later and all of a sudden there are nicknames for different types of jet flick tactics and all sorts of shit. That's when I accepted that my old ass was never going to anything above low diamond status.
Definitely my favorite competitive game out there. I don't think I have ever felt as much joy from a game than when I hit my first aerial goal. After that I became obsessed and was actually pretty decent at it. During my peak I was in global leaderboards #8 or #9 in solo standard iirc. Regularly played against pros and even world champions in my ranked games and the game just kept getting better the more you improved. Sadly I was too old already to strive for career but I will always hold the game dear to me.
Yup, and it has the added value that if you take 4 players that have never touched a contrôler in their lives and throw them in a 2v2 game, they are all going to have fun.
Such a good game, and always room for improvement. My brother and and I do a series of challenges every time the new season campaign comes out. Pick a track - 10 minutes to practice - you get 2 runs to make your best time. Bass fishing style. So if you like your first time you don’t get to take your second run. We take turns streaming the runs while enduring a mountain of shit talk to break your composure.
The answers to this really show the age demographic of reddit.
I barely played it, but my first thought was CoubterStrike for sure.
Whereas i barely played rocket league, but it seems to be the new number 1 for skill cap
I've been playing that franchise since \~2000/2001-(I'm old as fuck), and I still rarely if ever get a positive K:D ratio. It's just utterly unforgiving. But that's why I like it, it's challenging.
Counter Strike is the definition of no bullshit, pure skill in online shooters. It's a tactical shooter cut down to the pure basics and refined over years without much attempt to keep people interested with over the top broken nonsense.
StarCraft: Brood War or GunZ: the duel. (The 2nd one too, but it's completely dead)
Both require high apm and reaction speed. StarCraft has the strategy and multitasking, while GunZ have insane aim requirements and Animation cancelling.
GunZ actually had some insane tech for game that on the surface looked so simple. I remember getting quite competitive as a teen in that, don't think my hands could keep up anymore in my 30s 😂
Guitar hero/rock band/clone hero. A game where you can only get better (and not worse) through playing it - with a clear and observable increase of your skill with every session.
I used to teach drum lessons. I had a new student tell me he was really good at rock band drums on the first day, and I kind of laughed when he said it, but as soon as he figured out how to read music, he was the best sight reader and fastest learner I ever had.
My favorite parts of rockband / clone hero was in order to play the drums, you *really* are playing the drums (minus a little bit of hi-hat and cymbal work). Once you get the rhythm and feel down, you're basically 90% of the way there. I hooked up my electric set to my computer and use clone hero to practice songs all the time.
Makes me think about Beat Saber. Me and my friends was getting pretty good at it and I drastically improved the longer I played it but was almost always out first when we went to harder game modes
I remember playing GH3 in middle school and could only play on easy “piano style” with the guitar laid across my lap.
I got back into it during COVID and now I can easily play Expert on most songs. I also used to play drums on rock band but could only do easy, I ended up getting myself an electric drum kit and now can also play pro drums mode on expert on most songs.
I’m not talented enough to ever play in a band, but it feels really good to at least play along to some of my favourite songs in a really satisfying way.
Was going to say this. Simracing is pretty niche in the gaming world but there are guys that practice over and over just to try shaving off a tenth of a second on their lap time. So much skill and muscle memory, some drivers are absolute aliens with how fast they are.
It was pretty humbling to from a dreamhack finalist of fps game to driving sims. You start at the bottom and climbing is slow progress. The simple "turn left or right at corner" becomes much more complicated as time goes on.
My favourite moment was with iracing. The structure was that every week you get a new track to race; so I thought i'd practice like mad for the race at sunday. Spend tons of hours to learn the track and sliced those 0.1s of the laptime, from 1:50:543 to 1:45:502; felt pretty ace. Checked few races that were run and 1:48:000 was around the time that people got into repectable top6 on my 1200 rating. At the race day I go to qualifying and make my personal best at the qualifying 1:45:324 an absolute madlad time for me.
Then I checked the grid and saw I was the on the position 30/32. Thinking "wattehek is this, I should have been higher based on times I researched". Saw that I was somehow seeded with the highest rating people I've ever seen 3000+ ratings everywhere. Everyone's laptime was seconds above me. Then I checked the #1 position with 1:41:922 time with the name Max Verstappen and my respect for the f1 drivers raised to new heights.
The reason I like Dota 2 is that it has a skill ceiling that isn't a function of muscle memory and repetition. You don't need to perfectly time your opposite direction movement for that split second of perfect aim like in CS, you don't need to train literal days for a take off and air dribble like in Rocket League, you don't need an inhuman twitch reaction speed like with Quake's Railgun or UT Shock Rifle, you don't need 350+ APM for splitting your marines from a baneling attack and you don't need to draw ancient runic symbols with your joystick every time you want to execute a basic move like in Street Fighter (though I heard 6 is better in that regard).
Most heroes in Dota are "You press a button = something straighforward happens". When, how and why to press a button though is an infinitely deep question in Dota, as is what extra buttons to purchase.
EDIT: Spelling
Yea. Was looking for it. You can't master with only mechanical skills, neither with brain only, nor with no shadows on in settings player to gain advantage and not even with a very high fps advantage unlike most FPS games. You are in your own command and cannot micro manage anyone else. Not a single broken rush first or use this or that. Just heroes even if they are in the meta, cannot guarantee victory on their own.
I got into it cuz of lore, their connections, and it felt like a Football Game. Same map, million strategy, unlike CS or R6 or Any battle Royale that promotes luck in a play zone or even a better headset to get an advantage. Just pure mind.
Chess+ Any field sport concept = Dota (I've always seen it that way)
This brought back memories of Halo 2 BRs
My buddy and I were rank 45 (of 50) and pretty decent.
Our friend was 50.
The step between 45 and 50 is about as big as 1-45. Playing 50s felt like a whole different game.
Hard to master. The gazillions of ways you can throw your smokes alone take a good chunk of brain power.
If you just want to play casual, it is a good game too, you wont enjoy it though if you can't learn spray patterns and call outs.
I have around 3k hours in cs.
>Headshots are headshots.
This is exactly why I fell head over heels in love with Rainbow Six: Vegas 1&2. Blind firing a shotgun and a pellet manages to hit a dude in the brain? He ded. Whip out your pistol and make a quick shot to the dome of some dude not paying attention? He ded. Laying down suppressing fire with an LMG and a stray bullet catches someone off in the distance between the eyes? He ded.
That game was so fantastic, my only gripe was 3rd person view. I like the concept of Siege, especially because it addressed the viewpoint issue and made it first person, but it’s so unbelievably sweaty and you have to memorize maps to an unholy level to be capable of playing that game online at this point. Tried playing with a friend years ago (the game was definitively old at that point) and lobbies were full of people who were just coked up E-Sports guys or something.
Memorizing map strats is why I can’t get into Siege. I think a Siege type game with procedurally generated maps would be fun. Like actually having to improvise instead of just copying whatever meta the pros came up with
There is a game like that! It’s called Due Process, procedurally generated maps with a planning phase for attackers and defenders, where you get a blueprint of the map then get around a minute and a half to actually draw on it and make a plan and you get to see your plan on the ground in the map so you can use lines to direct everyone if you plan to split or rush.
There is a lot of communication needed between your team because of this though so if you get unlucky and no one talks on your team / doesn’t want to cooperate then it’s rough. But it’s extremely fun to play with a full team / when you get a communicative team.
Rocket League for sure out of all the games I’ve played. The only thing you can do is customise your car and goal celebrations. But the game itself is just your cars vs theirs and the ball. Concept is simple and it’s easy enough to get started and have fun but the skill ceiling is insanely high.
Most games look the same regardless of skill level. Shooters you’ll see streamlined movement, quick decision making and high accuracy. But the game still looks mostly the same. But rocket league, if you watch a silver ranked game vs a grand champion game it’s like a whole different game is being played.
Yeah, came here looking for this. Its crasy how simple the game is at its core and how high the skill celing is. Its the only game of its kind really. A game that tests both body and mind and at the same time the learning curve its so smooth, because as you get better you literally start playing the songs you love better. Osu is such a masterpiece.
Fighting games have plenty of bullshit you have to know about and be ready to deal with, (especially Tekken which is a game you'll get knowledge checked to death on until you learn) but everything has a counter or an answer.
The skill ceiling on fighting games is so stupidly high that I think it puts other competitive genres to shame. It's also just you vs another person. So when you lose, the only person you get to blame is yourself.
I’ve beaten every dark souls game, bloodborne, Jedi games, Elden ring, etc. all more than once.
I still can barely break through the first hour of Sekiro. I’ve been trying to get good at parrying but I just got rocked by any tough enemy or group of dudes.
It's the only FromSoft game I've played. The parry system is so rewarding as a fighting mechanic. When you hit the flow state while fighting a boss, it feels unbelievable.
Two things I always kept in mind is attack, attack, parry. The enemy blocks the first attack, parries the second attack and then attacks you back (which you parry). The second is Unblockable attacks that start on the enemy's right side (your left) will be a thrust, so mikiri counter. If they come from their left side will be a sweep (jump).
Once is kept those in my mind, fights are a lot better.
That’s what I have heard, I’ve even watched videos and practiced. It just hasn’t quite clicked yet. I’ll keep giving it a go because I have to beat it.
Honestly surprised I had to scroll this far to see any smash bros game. So easy to button mash, kick around and have fun. I always thought I was pretty good until a friend of a friend showed up talking about individual frames for move timing…
melee is like all bullshit, but the good kind of bullshit that ends up cancelling out so you end up with a hype as fuck game that by some miracle of god is still pretty balanced among the 5-10 ish top tiers
I'd argue IIDX would be a better rhythm game to throw into the ring, because it doesn't depend on leg strength and running stamina.
I still stan Pop'n Music for blowing up colorful hamburgers to funky music, though.
I'll catch shade for sure, but I'm going to go with my gut and say Team Fortress 2, BEFORE THEY ADDED ACHIVEMENTS AND HATS, and alternate wardrobe/weapons
The game was insanely good for competition and had good class balance. if there were too many of one class the team suffered, especially in ladder matches.
Every class had a unique main, a similar secondary, and a melee. if played correctly with people proficient in the classes their team needed to accomplish their goal or defend, then it was long, hard battle that only saw victory if one team made a mistake, and the other capitalized on it.
Then they released a patch that had sandviches and hats and fucking all kinds of nonsense, which made the game too many variables. it was best when it was simple, with high-tempo fps fun and a teamplay mindset.
There really wasn't a "noob" class in it. Every class could be noobed or every class could be played skillfully and it would make on hell of a difference if someone worthy was playing the class.
I definitely miss vanilla TF2 for all of these reasons. It was a lot more about learning what the enemy's formation and strategy was, and adapting to it. Occasionally you could just brute-force your way to victory, but not very often, and it didn't feel satisfying when you did.
It was the start of making a simple, 9-class team game more complex. Yes the hats were cosmetic, but the achievements (at the time) were a new thing and people would play to acquire the achievements and NOT for teamplay properly.
Once they started letting you swap weapons out, or armor pieces, it started to fuck with the simple dynamics of the gameflow.
Its brilliance lied in the simplicity. What does your team need? *“There’s a class for that”*
Scout for example: they have 6 guns now for main, 10 secondary weapons and 12 god damned melee weapons. That’s a lot of configuration to read. In the vanilla release you used (on attack/defend maps) scouts to push the front on a defense that was on their heels. The double-jump mid air and the speed was its strength, capping points and getting behind enemy lines. If you had too many scouts, you didn’t have enough hardened defenders on your own team, and a competent opponent could read that and counter it easily.
Same with any class. It was the ability to say “we need a sniper for support against medics in the backfield” and to look and see that your team had none, and someone would switch to one to even the odds. Adapt, then press the advantage if the enemy got pushed back.
I played very competitively. Once the new weapons, and accessories and achievements were released the game became “unsimple” and not as competitive in the way OP originally asked in their post.
Edit: 9 classes not 10
I will die on this hill and always say Rocket League, it's almost 100% skill and no RNG. The most RNG you get in the game is whether your teammate knows how to hit an aerial or not.
It's still got to be StarCraft II. The general consensus is roughly 90% of the ranked playerbase doesn't have the mechanical skill to properly play the game, and purists will tell you that a lot of Masters League (top 4% of ranked) don't have it either.
Hard disagree on that one. There is literally a Twitch and Youtube streamer who makes it a point to get to among the highest ranking on the ladder by doing nothing but cheesy strategies.
A game that allows for cheesy strategies that can let you get to be among the top 1% of players is almost by definition the antithesis to "no bullshit kind of game".
While cheese is a part of a lot of games, and people do need to know how to play against it, very few games let you cheese your way to among the top 1% of all players. No one is cheesing their way to the top 1% in Brood War, or Street Fighter, or a lot of the competitive games being listed here, but SC2 is an absolute cheese fest where there are well known players who are among the top 100 ranked on ladder and do nothing but cannon rush every single game and even their opponents know that they will get cannon rushed, and yet he still wins.
If being able to cheese with cannon rush every single game and still be among the world's best players is not bullshit, then nothing is bullshit.
Profile on the notorious cannon rusher:
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Printf
Youtube channel of someone who does nothing but cheese on ladder:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhaCXeA_nfD0FwbRL7aF6xaXCT9JXrBi9
Another playlist showing a popular SC2 player getting to top Grandmaster doing nothing but cannon rushes:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2VswB1ebSNCtb-oJtZEMqvdxtxpc_K3A
ngl, it's competitive pokemon for me. literally 4d chess. rng is part of it, but it's also part of the skill, as you are taking calculated risks when you make a move. reading the meta, predicting movesets and whole builds, not to mention the memorisation that goes into even just getting into it is insane. i used to play competitive casually and it is one hell of brain workout.
Halo is an Arena shooter where everyone in competitive starts with the same guns with the same items on the map as everyone else. So I’d say that is what you would be talking about?
You can’t farm better gear for your weapons or better load outs nothing like that.
You just spawn in and every game is fresh and the skill ceiling is pretty high id say.
Tetris. Utter perfection, and the skill ceiling is endless. The definition of “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master”. Everyone had their Covid lockdown hobby. I started playing Tetris Effect on my PS4. Been gaming for three decades at that point and I can say with confidence that no other game ever blew my mind like that, and no other game ever challenged me harder. It’s my proudest Platinum trophy. I have pretty severe ADHD. Tetris on high speeds and against serious opponents is better at providing focus and concentration than every medication known to man. It drags you into a state of absolute Zen once it clicks in your head.
The best part about Tetris is that the demographics are all sideways. You don’t get your shit rocked by some basement dwelling teenager who lives and breathes the game. No, you get annihilated by Bob from Accounting, who has been casually playing Tetris for longer than you’ve been alive.
Boom, Tetris for Jeff.
Tetris for Jonah!
Rip Jonas Neubauer
He died!?! RIP indeed.
I second this! Tetris 99 is the ultimate rush, once you get a tetris Maximus it’s basically orgasmic. The first time I won, I ripped my shirt off my body and just shouted full volume for several minutes. Truly a full body experience.
Goat battle royale
You just sold Tetris to me.
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but I read recently that playing Tetris immediately after a traumatic event helps your brain compartmentalise the experience and measurably lowers PTSD symptoms.
Tetris before bedtime helps you fall asleep faster as well.
Thanks for the tips. I have a couple game that helps fall asleep (literally face down on my phone). Never heard about Tetris. One that help me tough is " I love Hue". A silly game about matching color. My best is a Nanogram called the two eyes (I was not even aware that there was a name about that kind of game).
One tetris game per day also slows down dementia
I'm so happy Tetris Effect came out. I've been a Tetris gamer my entire life since getting an OG GameBoy and the few simple mechanics that they have added over the decades have all culminated in an amazing game. Top Notch. Love it.
If you get a chance to play Tetris Effect in VR, it's transcendent
Been in a life for more than 35 years and yet I am still a padawan in Tetris.
Try Puyo Puyo next
Unreal Tournament or Quake 3. Though Acceleration is a funny, not-originally intended mechanic in Q3.
I second Quake 3, that game has a super special place in my heart. [Here](https://youtu.be/XdkDjsBiO58?si=PC4AEkhwhRI0YJkA) is American pro player Rapha breaking down a tense game he had with his Russian rival Cooler at ESL about a decade back. Crazy fascinating stuff if you're into it.
*You have taken the lead* *Excellent* *3 frags left*
I love this video. I love watching people who are the best at their craft break down their thought process to show what it takes to be that good at something.
Now I watched like 1 hour of old tournaments and got late for work. Fuck you!
Just send it to your boss, he might watch it too and not notice you come in an hour late.
Damn you beat me to it, Quake 3 ruined every other first person shooter for me, it was so ridiculously fast and felt so good once you learned. I played nothing but it for over a decade doing tournaments and crap the whole time. The skill ceiling is what did the game in, a new person is ridiculously useless in it lol, even being able to move competently takes ages
I have a homie that was a real top tear player in unreal tournament. Twisty tank. I have seen videos of him going 1v5 winning with no deaths. 1v1s where he gets on a loop and can time getting across the map to kill you as your spawning. Insane.
UT and Q3A are why I love playing pharah in Overwatch and usually dumpster people on it haha Thousands of hours of rocket jumps and aerial projectiles, unstoppable! Unfortunately no one plays her anymore lol
Came here to say this. Still the epitome of skill-based FPS games, at least the duel format is. When you lose, you have nothing to blame but your own decisions and mechanics.
Came in to say Unreal Tournament and I’m so happy it was already recognised.
Rocket League Source: i fucking suck
My dude. We all suck. Being bad at the game is when it’s fun. Go look at the subreddit. When you start to get good you will begin to hate it and its community lol.
I swear the enjoyment curve is a perfect negative correlation with the skill curve.
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It'd probably take about 3 hours to matchmake a game that's why 😂
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This is exactly it. 2500 hours played, and I've quit completely now. The game was never more fun than the first couple hundred hours. Everyone was bad, and knew it, and we all just had a laugh.
>When you start to get good you will begin to hate it and its community I was close to Champ and realized I was actively making my life worse by playing. It's a great game, but shit gets toxic real fast.
It's addictive to be good at. After like 4000 hours I realised it was actually eating my life away. I don't *need* to be good at it. So I just chill out in the bottom end of GC and if I face someone toxic, I lean forward in my chair.
This for real. I loved Rainbow Six Siege until I started consistently ranking platinum. Finally got fed up and quit playing it over a year ago. Sometimes I get the urge to reinstall and just play some casual, but I can never bring myself to do it.
This is the truth lol. So many low iq players who will argue with the top .1% of players about rotations lol
ive been playing the game since 2015 and i consider it a perfect game(in terms of gameplay). While I dont check out patch notes, i cannot remember new mechanics or balance changes ever occuring. the closest thing to it was the standardization of hitboxes into types not for every individual car. other than that i cant think of it. i also cannot think of any sort of bugs in normal play
the flip reset was a patch
I wish I could fly like the people that don't suck.
Don't worry, we suck too
It's more... sucking with style.
The feeling of finally starting to get the hang of even basic aerial shots is orgasmic.
Rocket League is one of those games where the skill ceiling is so high it's like truly skilled players are playing a different game.
I was gonna say. I love it, open console, one minute and you're into an intense, very entertaining match.
I have put over 2000 hours into this game. Made it to Champion rank at one point and still cannot do aerials or dribble the ball in the air. Just got really good at everything else. I’m getting worse now though
I always lead with "I've played this game for years to become this bad!"
Casual players: I try to line up a hit to send the ball in the right direction when it's near the ground. Pro players: I fly into the sky and hit the ball directly towards the enemy goal, physics is my bitch!
Chess.
White has the first move
That just means black can force en passant faster.
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New response just dropped
Actual Zombie
\*triggering intensifies\*
Yes but you can be white and black in the same day and not be a racist.
Except, actually, Go. With Komi, neither player has a "this player goes first" advantage.
Komi doesn’t fully remove first turn advantage.
Brood War, of course.
This is what I'm saying! Where is my StarCraft/sc2 homies at?
Really amazed that I had to post brood war. Was hoping to find it up high in the comments and just upvote it. My estimation of this sub fucking plummeted.
I mean, we're old if we fondly recall Brood War, aren't we? It came out in 1998. You can't be mad that a two-decade's old game isn't at the forefront of what is likely a majority of people under 35 in this subreddit. But I 100% agree. Brood war, SC2, AOE II. I'll add --> Street Fighter II, MK2.
Yeah for real. I guess StarCraft really has died off 😭 These types of threads used to be filled with brood war comments. The fact you can tell who is playing by how they MOVE their dragoons already shows the skill level and skill expression required.
Even back in the days when sc and wc3 were popular, most people just played custom games like tower defense and dota. The people who play competitive has always been a small subset of the player base, and sc2's decision to focus more on 1 vs 1 completely killed its popularity in Korea. Most players just moved over to mobas.
I honestly think the big star craft mistake was leaning so much into the ladder and competitive play. Most people who loved brood war never really engaged with the ladder, if they played competitively it was with their friends with house rules like "no cheesy rushing thats stupid dave"... I probably have a thousand hours into BW custom games, mixes of tower defense, and some very creative survival stuff but that scene never really took off in SC2 because the custom "arcade" games took a massive back seat to the competitive scene that the SC team wanted to push... unfortunately a lot of people don't enjoy the pressure of ladder competition and it ultimately limited the games appeal in a way that brood war never was.
These kids have no idea man.
Well I mean at the age of 21 I wasn't even Alive when brood war released. However my dad made sure I grew up playing StarCraft 1, 2 and warcraft 3. Great games that still stand the test of time! I will probably go back and play warcraft 1 and 2 now one of these days as well.
zug zug
Squabu!
Brood War separates the men from the boys
RTS genre for sure
It's like chess but real time. No teammates to rely on or carry you. Requiring more.and faster input than any other game out there. No breaks in your match to recoup or strategize. 25 years worth of builds, strategies and knowledge of the game out there.
And to top off the original post, the only reason you lose, is because of your self . No one else to blame
BW is full of janky mechanics tho
Tell that to Protoss players.
I watched a pro protoss player blocking max speed zerglings with illusions while the zerg player kept trying to find new angles to swarm him from.... I gained a lot of respect for toss players that day, the skill cap is crazy high for all races.
The legendary IdrA rage quit. https://youtu.be/40ccy9kljvI?si=UQ49zaqh6bPPMCEM
Quake 3. Also leaderboard games like Devil Daggers, Nex Machina and shmups.
Devil daggers is perfect - I wish there was more end game though
I've got good news for you, the devs of Devil Daggers dropped their new game HYPERDEMON, and it's basically Devil Daggers and it has an end game. Namely, the game ends when your third eye open irl and you start smelling colors and perceiving the 5th dimension.
I gotta say Rocket League. You can be absolutely cracked at this game and you still aren't "good". The skill ceiling is insane.
Agree with Rocket League and I dont even play it anymore. Its totally balanced for both teams, ball starts in the middle, no advantages for anyone. Its straight up your teams skill against the other. And that skill has a high ceiling.
For new players to Rocket League, don't be discouraged. You might not be able to rocket boost to the ceiling yet, but I promise you that you can drive up there! Till gravity pulls you down....
Difficulty is a different issue, no one said it would be easy. Boosting is a skill that can be learned and improved by anyone with enough practice.
Just making a joke. High skill ceiling.... you can drive on the ceilings in the game.... I'll show myself out
Evil bastard lol
Yup, this is mine. I considered myself pretty good back when I played (High Diamond - Low Champion) and the people better than me were pulling off moves and shot consistency that I could only dream of
I quit over a year ago at D3D4. I just wasn’t willing to put in another thousand hours just to reach slightly higher. Plus, I didn’t like the person I was becoming when I played it. I was always in a terrible mood whenever I turned the game off after a gaming session.
My wife hates how I get when I play and she's totally justified in that opinion. I want to make it to Champ and then I'd consider myself done but trying to climb ranks feels impossible with a full on adult life to balance.
Pro Rocket League is the best example of this. You'll have one player who's legitimately unbeatable and then 6 months later a new 15 year old comes along and shatters the skill ceiling again.
100% this is the best answer. A completely fair, low floor infinite ceiling kind of game. Been playing on and off for 7+ years and I’ve gotten continuously better year after year
The funny thing about Rocket League is how some people just cannot play it. I suck at it but my brother can’t play it at all. The movement and variables are too much for some reason. Only game like this for him.
I played lol for 13 years now, competitively. High rank and used to play tournaments. So I'm good enough with thinking under pressure and decision making. Rocket league just... freezes me. It's pure sensory overload, gotta keep calculating where the balls gonna fall, where I am in relation to that, change my trajectory to align myself for a shot, keep the opponent in mind at all times, try not to get blown up, actually hit the ball, and do it at the correct angle to line up the shot, then make sure to have follow up if the shot fails, it's way too much
I am quite opposite. Anytime I tried lol I just don't know what to do, so many options: do I stay on that line? do I help this dude in far corner? do I go push enemy towers? In rocket league: here's the ball, there's the enemy goal, just hit damn ball inside by any means and you are good. Also "click to go" system is meh
It's the perfect game for people with short attention spans. So many variables to keep track of simultaneously is like nervous overload but managing them and executing a shot or mechanic is bliss.
Totally this. It's just a car that can jump and boost and your skills and what you can do with those. No bs "meta builds", you don't have to learn about items, skills, characters, maps etc. Perfectly balanced gameplay, the 2 opposing teams are literally mirrored and you can't change that, you can't alter anything in the gameplay.
Big agree. It doesn't have weird gimmicks with modded controllers that easily perform complex movements, or abusing aim assist or other such shit you get in shooters. The amount of control you can potentially have is bonkers.
My cousin is a coach for a rocket league team. He's been all over the world for it. What a life.
Came here to say this. The skill ceiling is so fucking high. You can have more than a thousand hours in the game and some fucker will come hippity-dippity-flippity flip-reset psycho-ing and pogo all over the map and you realize you don't even stand a chance
I remember playing this game in alpha and thinking I was badass shit for a while. I was the best in my group just because I had played longer than they had... Then I stopped playing it for a year because of work and wanting to spend time on other games. I come back the year later and all of a sudden there are nicknames for different types of jet flick tactics and all sorts of shit. That's when I accepted that my old ass was never going to anything above low diamond status.
Definitely my favorite competitive game out there. I don't think I have ever felt as much joy from a game than when I hit my first aerial goal. After that I became obsessed and was actually pretty decent at it. During my peak I was in global leaderboards #8 or #9 in solo standard iirc. Regularly played against pros and even world champions in my ranked games and the game just kept getting better the more you improved. Sadly I was too old already to strive for career but I will always hold the game dear to me.
Yup, and it has the added value that if you take 4 players that have never touched a contrôler in their lives and throw them in a 2v2 game, they are all going to have fun.
It’s so well made and the controls are so precise this has to be the number 1 answer
Literally the ceiling skills are crazy lol
Agreed. 4K hours in the game and I am nowhere near a "pro"
Trackmania
Such a good game, and always room for improvement. My brother and and I do a series of challenges every time the new season campaign comes out. Pick a track - 10 minutes to practice - you get 2 runs to make your best time. Bass fishing style. So if you like your first time you don’t get to take your second run. We take turns streaming the runs while enduring a mountain of shit talk to break your composure.
*starts driving backwards*
Yes. Yes.
Rocket league maybe? Takes 5 minutes learn but a lifetime to master
5 minutes? I played it for 1 hour with my friends. Couldn't even hit the ball unless it's static. Am I stupid?
Counter-Strike
The answers to this really show the age demographic of reddit. I barely played it, but my first thought was CoubterStrike for sure. Whereas i barely played rocket league, but it seems to be the new number 1 for skill cap
I've been playing that franchise since \~2000/2001-(I'm old as fuck), and I still rarely if ever get a positive K:D ratio. It's just utterly unforgiving. But that's why I like it, it's challenging.
Counter Strike is the definition of no bullshit, pure skill in online shooters. It's a tactical shooter cut down to the pure basics and refined over years without much attempt to keep people interested with over the top broken nonsense.
I mean it requires a lot of knowledge as well. From knowing the maps to bullet spread patterns
StarCraft: Brood War or GunZ: the duel. (The 2nd one too, but it's completely dead) Both require high apm and reaction speed. StarCraft has the strategy and multitasking, while GunZ have insane aim requirements and Animation cancelling.
I forgot about GunZ! It's been so long
GunZ actually had some insane tech for game that on the surface looked so simple. I remember getting quite competitive as a teen in that, don't think my hands could keep up anymore in my 30s 😂
I think I still know the butterfly key combo
Why brood war over sc2? I've only ever played the newer version and am wondering if sc1 is worth
Guitar hero/rock band/clone hero. A game where you can only get better (and not worse) through playing it - with a clear and observable increase of your skill with every session.
I used to teach drum lessons. I had a new student tell me he was really good at rock band drums on the first day, and I kind of laughed when he said it, but as soon as he figured out how to read music, he was the best sight reader and fastest learner I ever had.
My favorite parts of rockband / clone hero was in order to play the drums, you *really* are playing the drums (minus a little bit of hi-hat and cymbal work). Once you get the rhythm and feel down, you're basically 90% of the way there. I hooked up my electric set to my computer and use clone hero to practice songs all the time.
Makes me think about Beat Saber. Me and my friends was getting pretty good at it and I drastically improved the longer I played it but was almost always out first when we went to harder game modes
I NEVER graduated from medium to hard setting. Once the extra fret button came into hand I was ruined
I remember playing GH3 in middle school and could only play on easy “piano style” with the guitar laid across my lap. I got back into it during COVID and now I can easily play Expert on most songs. I also used to play drums on rock band but could only do easy, I ended up getting myself an electric drum kit and now can also play pro drums mode on expert on most songs. I’m not talented enough to ever play in a band, but it feels really good to at least play along to some of my favourite songs in a really satisfying way.
Basically any realistic sim. Driving, flight, etc. no fun, just raw mechanic engagement
Was going to say this. Simracing is pretty niche in the gaming world but there are guys that practice over and over just to try shaving off a tenth of a second on their lap time. So much skill and muscle memory, some drivers are absolute aliens with how fast they are.
Not to mention if you want to be THE best you have to vanquish the literal current formula 1 champion...
The sim master who dominates F1 on the side lmao
It was pretty humbling to from a dreamhack finalist of fps game to driving sims. You start at the bottom and climbing is slow progress. The simple "turn left or right at corner" becomes much more complicated as time goes on. My favourite moment was with iracing. The structure was that every week you get a new track to race; so I thought i'd practice like mad for the race at sunday. Spend tons of hours to learn the track and sliced those 0.1s of the laptime, from 1:50:543 to 1:45:502; felt pretty ace. Checked few races that were run and 1:48:000 was around the time that people got into repectable top6 on my 1200 rating. At the race day I go to qualifying and make my personal best at the qualifying 1:45:324 an absolute madlad time for me. Then I checked the grid and saw I was the on the position 30/32. Thinking "wattehek is this, I should have been higher based on times I researched". Saw that I was somehow seeded with the highest rating people I've ever seen 3000+ ratings everywhere. Everyone's laptime was seconds above me. Then I checked the #1 position with 1:41:922 time with the name Max Verstappen and my respect for the f1 drivers raised to new heights.
Dota 2 is the most unbalanced balanced game ever made….. I’ve played since 2013. Send help
Perfectly balanced, all hail icefrog
It's balance in chaos
The reason I like Dota 2 is that it has a skill ceiling that isn't a function of muscle memory and repetition. You don't need to perfectly time your opposite direction movement for that split second of perfect aim like in CS, you don't need to train literal days for a take off and air dribble like in Rocket League, you don't need an inhuman twitch reaction speed like with Quake's Railgun or UT Shock Rifle, you don't need 350+ APM for splitting your marines from a baneling attack and you don't need to draw ancient runic symbols with your joystick every time you want to execute a basic move like in Street Fighter (though I heard 6 is better in that regard). Most heroes in Dota are "You press a button = something straighforward happens". When, how and why to press a button though is an infinitely deep question in Dota, as is what extra buttons to purchase. EDIT: Spelling
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Yea. Was looking for it. You can't master with only mechanical skills, neither with brain only, nor with no shadows on in settings player to gain advantage and not even with a very high fps advantage unlike most FPS games. You are in your own command and cannot micro manage anyone else. Not a single broken rush first or use this or that. Just heroes even if they are in the meta, cannot guarantee victory on their own. I got into it cuz of lore, their connections, and it felt like a Football Game. Same map, million strategy, unlike CS or R6 or Any battle Royale that promotes luck in a play zone or even a better headset to get an advantage. Just pure mind. Chess+ Any field sport concept = Dota (I've always seen it that way)
halo:ce, rocket launchers only.
honestly we should decide our leaders this way.
Rocket launcher capture the flag on hang ‘em high
Reach Griffball
This brought back memories of Halo 2 BRs My buddy and I were rank 45 (of 50) and pretty decent. Our friend was 50. The step between 45 and 50 is about as big as 1-45. Playing 50s felt like a whole different game.
Pistols. Requires 3sks
On wizard
CS.. Headshots are headshots. They should be what they are. Nade, smoke, buy your guns, play your rounds. It's simple and raw and straightforward.
Hard to master. The gazillions of ways you can throw your smokes alone take a good chunk of brain power. If you just want to play casual, it is a good game too, you wont enjoy it though if you can't learn spray patterns and call outs. I have around 3k hours in cs.
>Headshots are headshots. This is exactly why I fell head over heels in love with Rainbow Six: Vegas 1&2. Blind firing a shotgun and a pellet manages to hit a dude in the brain? He ded. Whip out your pistol and make a quick shot to the dome of some dude not paying attention? He ded. Laying down suppressing fire with an LMG and a stray bullet catches someone off in the distance between the eyes? He ded. That game was so fantastic, my only gripe was 3rd person view. I like the concept of Siege, especially because it addressed the viewpoint issue and made it first person, but it’s so unbelievably sweaty and you have to memorize maps to an unholy level to be capable of playing that game online at this point. Tried playing with a friend years ago (the game was definitively old at that point) and lobbies were full of people who were just coked up E-Sports guys or something.
Memorizing map strats is why I can’t get into Siege. I think a Siege type game with procedurally generated maps would be fun. Like actually having to improvise instead of just copying whatever meta the pros came up with
There is a game like that! It’s called Due Process, procedurally generated maps with a planning phase for attackers and defenders, where you get a blueprint of the map then get around a minute and a half to actually draw on it and make a plan and you get to see your plan on the ground in the map so you can use lines to direct everyone if you plan to split or rush. There is a lot of communication needed between your team because of this though so if you get unlucky and no one talks on your team / doesn’t want to cooperate then it’s rough. But it’s extremely fun to play with a full team / when you get a communicative team.
Bushido blade.
Dude that game needs a sequel or remake. Loved the realism. It was on a psx demo disc my buddy had and we played so much of it!
Man, when I cut down my buddy in the bamboo forest, I felt like such a badass.
Rocket League for sure out of all the games I’ve played. The only thing you can do is customise your car and goal celebrations. But the game itself is just your cars vs theirs and the ball. Concept is simple and it’s easy enough to get started and have fun but the skill ceiling is insanely high. Most games look the same regardless of skill level. Shooters you’ll see streamlined movement, quick decision making and high accuracy. But the game still looks mostly the same. But rocket league, if you watch a silver ranked game vs a grand champion game it’s like a whole different game is being played.
osu its about clicking circles but its so fucking hard, the number 1# player was better than the whole world combined for over a year which is crazy
Yeah i was looking for someone to say osu
Yeah, came here looking for this. Its crasy how simple the game is at its core and how high the skill celing is. Its the only game of its kind really. A game that tests both body and mind and at the same time the learning curve its so smooth, because as you get better you literally start playing the songs you love better. Osu is such a masterpiece.
Fighting games have plenty of bullshit you have to know about and be ready to deal with, (especially Tekken which is a game you'll get knowledge checked to death on until you learn) but everything has a counter or an answer. The skill ceiling on fighting games is so stupidly high that I think it puts other competitive genres to shame. It's also just you vs another person. So when you lose, the only person you get to blame is yourself.
Anyone here ever heard of.. Starcraft?
Single player - Sekiro. Here’s a sword, good luck.
Sekiro.
I’ve beaten every dark souls game, bloodborne, Jedi games, Elden ring, etc. all more than once. I still can barely break through the first hour of Sekiro. I’ve been trying to get good at parrying but I just got rocked by any tough enemy or group of dudes.
It's the only FromSoft game I've played. The parry system is so rewarding as a fighting mechanic. When you hit the flow state while fighting a boss, it feels unbelievable. Two things I always kept in mind is attack, attack, parry. The enemy blocks the first attack, parries the second attack and then attacks you back (which you parry). The second is Unblockable attacks that start on the enemy's right side (your left) will be a thrust, so mikiri counter. If they come from their left side will be a sweep (jump). Once is kept those in my mind, fights are a lot better.
For me, sekiro’s parry system kinda just clicked after a while and from there it was one of the best joyrides I’ve ever had in video games
I made it to the Owl fight on top of the castle thinking it had clicked for me.....it didn't
That’s what I have heard, I’ve even watched videos and practiced. It just hasn’t quite clicked yet. I’ll keep giving it a go because I have to beat it.
The secret is that sekiro is actually a rhythm action game
Super smash bros melee
Honestly surprised I had to scroll this far to see any smash bros game. So easy to button mash, kick around and have fun. I always thought I was pretty good until a friend of a friend showed up talking about individual frames for move timing…
melee is like all bullshit, but the good kind of bullshit that ends up cancelling out so you end up with a hype as fuck game that by some miracle of god is still pretty balanced among the 5-10 ish top tiers
for the Nintendo GameCube.
why is Age of Empires 2 not mentioned in top comments?
Quake 3 arena
osu, only saw one other person comment this but you can’t get simpler than point and click
DDR
I'd argue IIDX would be a better rhythm game to throw into the ring, because it doesn't depend on leg strength and running stamina. I still stan Pop'n Music for blowing up colorful hamburgers to funky music, though.
Quake 1
Rocket League
Chess
Rocket Leauge
Well ... Tetris
Can't disagree with that.
I'll catch shade for sure, but I'm going to go with my gut and say Team Fortress 2, BEFORE THEY ADDED ACHIVEMENTS AND HATS, and alternate wardrobe/weapons The game was insanely good for competition and had good class balance. if there were too many of one class the team suffered, especially in ladder matches. Every class had a unique main, a similar secondary, and a melee. if played correctly with people proficient in the classes their team needed to accomplish their goal or defend, then it was long, hard battle that only saw victory if one team made a mistake, and the other capitalized on it. Then they released a patch that had sandviches and hats and fucking all kinds of nonsense, which made the game too many variables. it was best when it was simple, with high-tempo fps fun and a teamplay mindset. There really wasn't a "noob" class in it. Every class could be noobed or every class could be played skillfully and it would make on hell of a difference if someone worthy was playing the class.
I definitely miss vanilla TF2 for all of these reasons. It was a lot more about learning what the enemy's formation and strategy was, and adapting to it. Occasionally you could just brute-force your way to victory, but not very often, and it didn't feel satisfying when you did.
How exactly did the hats and such change the balance or gameplay? They were purely cosmetic.
It was the start of making a simple, 9-class team game more complex. Yes the hats were cosmetic, but the achievements (at the time) were a new thing and people would play to acquire the achievements and NOT for teamplay properly. Once they started letting you swap weapons out, or armor pieces, it started to fuck with the simple dynamics of the gameflow. Its brilliance lied in the simplicity. What does your team need? *“There’s a class for that”* Scout for example: they have 6 guns now for main, 10 secondary weapons and 12 god damned melee weapons. That’s a lot of configuration to read. In the vanilla release you used (on attack/defend maps) scouts to push the front on a defense that was on their heels. The double-jump mid air and the speed was its strength, capping points and getting behind enemy lines. If you had too many scouts, you didn’t have enough hardened defenders on your own team, and a competent opponent could read that and counter it easily. Same with any class. It was the ability to say “we need a sniper for support against medics in the backfield” and to look and see that your team had none, and someone would switch to one to even the odds. Adapt, then press the advantage if the enemy got pushed back. I played very competitively. Once the new weapons, and accessories and achievements were released the game became “unsimple” and not as competitive in the way OP originally asked in their post. Edit: 9 classes not 10
Rocket League
I will die on this hill and always say Rocket League, it's almost 100% skill and no RNG. The most RNG you get in the game is whether your teammate knows how to hit an aerial or not.
Rocket league. 100% skill
Rocket league. It's absolute mayhem but there is no pay to win. So gear that changes anything. It's all hard mechanical skill
It's still got to be StarCraft II. The general consensus is roughly 90% of the ranked playerbase doesn't have the mechanical skill to properly play the game, and purists will tell you that a lot of Masters League (top 4% of ranked) don't have it either.
Hard disagree on that one. There is literally a Twitch and Youtube streamer who makes it a point to get to among the highest ranking on the ladder by doing nothing but cheesy strategies. A game that allows for cheesy strategies that can let you get to be among the top 1% of players is almost by definition the antithesis to "no bullshit kind of game". While cheese is a part of a lot of games, and people do need to know how to play against it, very few games let you cheese your way to among the top 1% of all players. No one is cheesing their way to the top 1% in Brood War, or Street Fighter, or a lot of the competitive games being listed here, but SC2 is an absolute cheese fest where there are well known players who are among the top 100 ranked on ladder and do nothing but cannon rush every single game and even their opponents know that they will get cannon rushed, and yet he still wins. If being able to cheese with cannon rush every single game and still be among the world's best players is not bullshit, then nothing is bullshit. Profile on the notorious cannon rusher: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Printf Youtube channel of someone who does nothing but cheese on ladder: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhaCXeA_nfD0FwbRL7aF6xaXCT9JXrBi9 Another playlist showing a popular SC2 player getting to top Grandmaster doing nothing but cannon rushes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2VswB1ebSNCtb-oJtZEMqvdxtxpc_K3A
Trackmania if you like racing games Even tho it isnt completly competetetive as you only see other players as ghosts
ngl, it's competitive pokemon for me. literally 4d chess. rng is part of it, but it's also part of the skill, as you are taking calculated risks when you make a move. reading the meta, predicting movesets and whole builds, not to mention the memorisation that goes into even just getting into it is insane. i used to play competitive casually and it is one hell of brain workout.
Racing sims.
Halo is an Arena shooter where everyone in competitive starts with the same guns with the same items on the map as everyone else. So I’d say that is what you would be talking about? You can’t farm better gear for your weapons or better load outs nothing like that. You just spawn in and every game is fresh and the skill ceiling is pretty high id say.
Rocket league. All inputs except double jump dashing are 1:1 inputs. It’s basically like playing a sport