10 Games That Aren't Like ANYTHING YOU'VE EVER PLAYED

Introduction

A lot of games are geared towards similar goals, a lot of control schemes are very standardized, and a lot of visuals are similar. But some games buck those trends, and today we want to talk about those. Hi folks, it's Zaid Ikram, and today on Speed Tool, we're discussing 10 games that aren't like anything you've ever played.

Pacific Drive

Starting at number 10, it's Pacific Drive. Imagine throwing STALKER, Jalopy, and Returnal into a blender and hitting puree—that's what Pacific Drive is. When it was released back in February, this horror roguelike, where you're mostly driving a car, threw a lot of people for a loop. The premise alone qualifies the game for this list, but the experience just gets stranger. Rather than your bog-standard zombie apocalypse, Pacific Drive has you contend with various anomalies that start relatively small and easy to avoid, but they only get stranger and more dangerous as you progress. You can get killed, of course, but what you’re sweating over is your car. This is your safe space, your home base, your only means of transportation, all rolled into one. If it gets trashed, you're screwed. It sounds like it’d be frantic, but this game has a surreal atmosphere that’s sometimes oddly serene and chill, and sometimes completely terrifying. For the first dozen or so hours, this game feels like anything can happen. That sense of the unknown is what probably makes it so effectively creepy. Even doing something as basic as scavenging for supplies can be tense because you’re always on the clock in this game. The world of Pacific Drive is recognizable, but it's just off or wrong in a way that throws you off. It's not aggressive about it; it’s not in-your-face weird like some other games, but that almost makes it feel weirder because sometimes it lures you into a false sense of security before throwing something unexpected at you.

Outpost Infinity Siege

At number nine is Outpost Infinity Siege. This one just came out, and while it’s not intentionally surreal, it’s such an insane game that I feel like it has to go on this list. The basic premise is something we’ve heard a million times already: you’re a generic soldier fighting a malevolent AI. Bog standard at this point, even if the weirdly impressive production values contrast pretty hard against the quality of the writing and voice acting, which is terrible. One day I'm going to zip that bloody mouth of yours. Relax, it's a reverse jinx. Here she is, Outpost 11. Take care of her. The weird part of the gameplay, though, it's a tower defense game where you play in first person. You run around, collect resources on these maps that sometimes have STALKER-like locations, customize guns in a convoluted way, pilot mechs, fire turrets, build guns, recruit soldiers, and there are jumping puzzles for some reason. It’s all over the place, but what stands out is how over-the-top the production values are. This level of baffling experimentation is something I’d expect from a mod or something, but not this. Combat can get insane at higher difficulties, and there are so many interlocking systems and strange gameplay choices that it’s impossible to cover it all in a few minutes. It’s a game that wants to be everything, and the result is kind of a mess, at least for now. While I’m writing this, I’m not 100% sure I can recommend you play it in its current state, but it is an ongoing production. I guess it's unique—you can’t call it anything but that.

Rollerdrome

Number eight is Rollerdrome, one of those high-concept elevator pitches that never get made, but this one exists. The gameplay isn’t hard to describe, but it manages to feel pretty unique. It’s Tony Hawk, but a shooter. Instead of dropping you onto a map and telling you to get the highest score, it tells you to kill all the guys and also get a high score. How do these two seemingly disconnected elements work together? Well, it’s fairly simple: if you want to reload, you have to perform a trick. It’s super easy to explain but very tough to master. Trying to do tricks while aiming takes a lot of getting used to, but it’s a very satisfying experience once you get the hang of it. That’s not the only odd thing about the game. The unusual flat art style is striking and unique, and in between each mission, you get to walk around the backstage area, check emails, and do things like that, so there’s a narrative adventure element to the game as well. It’s one of the most straightforward games on this list but manages to feel like its own thing because of how elegant the controls are. They’re not like anything else I’ve played. Multiple games have some kind of shooting score system or incorporate elements of extreme sports games, but nothing quite accomplishes what Rollerdrome does. It nails it.

Who's Leela

At number seven is Who’s Leela. This game doesn’t need an explanation to show how weird it is—just take a look at a screenshot. One look at this, and you're like, "What the hell, man?" It’s a branching adventure game with one absolutely bonkers twist: the way you do anything is by manipulating the guy's face to communicate with people. Like, that’s your primary means of communication—dragging around the parts of this guy's face to form a gross approximation of human emotion. If the weird faces aren’t off-putting enough, there’s also a surreal and off-putting story about a missing girl, and you're the last guy who saw her, so congrats, you’re the number one suspect. You've got to navigate the world and figure out what's going on. Not that you're going to get a ton of answers from the game's many endings. The more you find out, the more baffling it all gets. The game wears its David Lynch inspirations on its sleeve and might be a little too heavy on the Lynch references, but the core gameplay and visuals are so odd that the game stands on its own as a uniquely off-putting adventure.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos

Coming in at number six is Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, made by Ace Team, which, if you know anything about them, you know it's going to be weird. These guys are behind oddities like Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages, and the recent Eternal Cylinder. At first glance, Clash appears to be the most accessible game, but the world is extremely strange, and the story is inexplicable, look at your dude running around—it’s God of War with an oddball martial arts twist. If that's all the game was, it probably wouldn't earn a spot on this list, but it's the added complication of the Relic that makes it weird. Before the battle with any humanoid enemies, you play this game called the ritual where you roll dice, draw lines, and pull down spikes, and it's bizarre. It seems impenetrable at first, but it’s pretty fun once you get the hang of it. You won't, by the way, from just listening to what I'm saying about it. Wait, little hermit. What makes the game so important is that if you lose, the enemy activates a bunch of advantages, and if you win, you get those advantages. Along with that, there’s a customizable combat system with its complications, a bizarre open world with an inexplicable day-night cycle where your guy transforms into, like, this rock golem at night. You can equip different body parts—it’s a weird system. Maybe it wouldn't be if it were explained better, or some in-world justification made sense, but they're just kind of throwing artifacts of chaos at you. Every game from this dev is super weird, and any one of them could have a place on this list, but I think the contrast between the more accessible stuff in this game and the weird nonsense makes it especially interesting, particularly to me.

Illbleed

At number five, we have Illbleed, which was released on the Dreamcast in 2001. It's a survival horror game developed by the most appropriately named studio ever, Crazy Games. Not an exaggeration, because even among this crop of completely bizarre games, even if you restrict it to the Dreamcast, which was home to some pretty bizarre stuff, this game stands alone. Rather than your usual survival horror experience where you wander around a spooky location, collect weapons and ammo, and solve puzzles, it’s more like a haunted house simulator. You have no real weapons, and actual enemies are kind of rare. What you’re doing is using a special tool to find and disarm various traps hidden around levels, which are jump scares that increase your heart rate. If your heart rate goes up too high, you just die. That's probably the most normal thing about this game. Look at the detector, though—you got sight, hearing, smell, and sixth sense. What do any of these meters mean? I can't tell you. It’s one of the more bafflingly opaque gameplay systems in this mess of a game. The real showstopper, though, is the traps, which are uniquely bizarre and ridiculous. They're often stupid, even laugh-out-loud funny at times, but the game wants you to avoid them. They can kill you, but they’re also the thing that you would want to see in the game. There's so much more strange stuff about this game—I mean, there's an entire extended Toy Story parody that ends with you fighting a demonic Sonic the Hedgehog. And when I say fighting, I'm not 100% sure that's entirely the correct description. It's so weird—the gameplay is just the beginning of the madness when it comes to Illbleed.

Killer 7

Moving on to number four, we have Killer 7. This 2005 action game, directed by Goichi Suda, still amazes me that it was published by Capcom and came out on the GameCube. It's probably still, at this point, his weirdest game, at least in terms of gameplay. I'm not exactly sure how to describe it. You control a member of the Killer 7 in the third person. You can only move on rails and choose what direction you want to go when you hit an intersection. Enemies are these creatures called Heaven Smiles that are not visible by default—you have to scan for them in first person and shoot their weak points. These are the only enemies outside the bosses. When you're not killing, there’s an utterly nonsensical set of puzzles to solve and weirdos who talk in pure gibberish. The story is inexplicable—it takes wild swings and detours in whatever direction it feels like, and it’s mostly extremely dark, satirical, and intentionally off-putting. It’s an insane game by any metric, and frankly, a miracle that it came out. In this game’s case, the actual gameplay is the worst part of it. It’s one of those games where you have to force yourself to get to the good stuff, which is everything else. There's a reason no other game plays like it, but it's so relentlessly unusual I can't help but marvel that it exists.

Sunset Overdrive

Continuing to number three, let's talk about Sunset Overdrive. This 2014 launch title for the Xbox came from an unlikely partnership between Insomniac Studios, the guys behind Ratchet and Clank, the Resistance games, and recently the PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man games. The company, actually a fairly recent acquisition for Sony, along with Fuse, are sort of the forgotten Insomniac games, but at least this game deserves better because it's one of the most unique and fun open-world games out there. You can see a lot of what Spider-Man would eventually become here. It’s an open-world game with a focus on constant movement and speed. The environment is just a playground for movement—you can bounce on top of cars, grind on telephone wires, slide across the water, and wall run there are tons of options here. But you're going to use them because the game strongly incentivizes you to stay off the ground and keep moving. If you're just walking around, your character is slow, weak, and vulnerable to attack. But if you're bouncing and grinding, you're much safer. And while you're doing this stuff, you're building up a combo meter that grants you extra powers to power up your weapons or generate tornadoes or all kinds of other wild effects. The gun stuff is familiar to anybody who's played the Ratchet games; there are a lot of oddball weapons here. But the movement powers combined with the shooting make it feel like Jet Set Radio combined with inFAMOUS. It’s a unique experience, especially in a genre that's often derided for its lack of innovation. Because this game relies so much on environmental interactions, the actual open world is one of the best. It's entertaining as hell to move around this place, and the nature of the gameplay leads to a lot of unique missions. It's an incredibly fun game most of the time. With games that try to do something different, they often come out kind of half-baked, especially when it's a developer's first open-world game. But these guys are pros, and they make it look easy. The actual story and humor might not be for everybody; the game goes hard on being whacky, and to some people, that's going to come off as super annoying. But if I were, I wouldn't mind because I don't return to this game for that reason. I return to it for the gameplay—it’s so unique and fun and holds everything together. And it does not feel like a decade-old game at this point; it still feels ahead of the curve.

Hellish Quart

At number two is Hellish Quart, a sword-fighting game that is, well, weird. Developed by the ex-senior animator for Witcher 3, a guy by the name of Jacob Kessle (or maybe Cassil, I'm not 100% sure), the inspiration for this game is 1997's Bushido Blade. It's a physics-based early-access sword fighter, and it's crazy. It doesn’t feel anything like any other sword-fighting game you've played. It feels a little like Bushido Blade, but not a lot because while Bushido Blade certainly does have a not entirely unlike this control scheme, this has physics in it. There's also a VR mode—I haven’t tried that, but I would highly recommend checking this out. It’s a very strange game. I bought it and played it for a while just because it’s very strange. It's not a game that you're going to have an easy time getting good at per se; in fact, I would say that’s not going to happen. I think that people who get good at this are going to be freaks. Maybe it's just that it's foreign to me; it’s like Bushido Blade, but not like Bushido Blade. Give it a shot—it’s weird.

Detuned

Finally, at number one, it's Detuned. Definitely unlike anything else I've ever played. This demo released back on the PS3 pushes the definition of what a game is. I will say the argument could be made that it is not a game but more of an experimental art piece. But hey, it's interactive, so whatever. A guy is sitting in a chair, and if you press buttons, things happen. His head will change, he'll start dancing, the filters in the background change, stuff like that. And that's it. It's kind of a trippy audiovisual experience, but it's so darn weird it deserves a spot here. Nothing about it—I mean, nothing—makes any sense whatsoever. Why is his head transforming? What are those little phone mascot things in the background? What's up with the weird blurring whenever he moves? What is any of this? There are no answers. Also, it’s made by a German demo group; they're not trying to make something that makes any sense. It's just bizarre for its own sake, but that doesn't make it not bizarre. Mission accomplished, Detuned.

Outro

And that’s all for today. Leave us a comment; let us know what you think. As always, we thank you very much for reading this blog. I'm Zaid Ikram, and we'll see you next time right here on Speed Tool.