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I know people keep memeing on you for your Thief take(haven't played it so idk if they're right or nah) but your real bizarre take is ranking two modern Deus Ex, ESPECIALLY Human Revolution above og Deus Ex. Hbomberguy made perfect video showcasing how much of a let down Human Revolution was compared to OG Deus Ex, there was so much gameplay choices in original, so many ways to reach o n e NPC (in that Hong Kong level) and Human Revolution has ONE way, maybe two depending on the level(either guns blazing or v e n t s) However we all can agree Mankind is atleast better than HR but idk if it's better than og though
I'm the founder of Arkane, and creative director of Prey, Arx, DM as well as co-creative director of Dishonored. I like the video overall and the fact it lists all immersive sims. And I also recognize how hard and subjective it is to rank them, especially since time and context matters, but I disagree entirely with the score for Thief and Underworld: these games were fantastic at their time, and to me, context is everything. it's like saying the Ford T sucks. Underworld and Thief are like the Beetles of immersive sims
The incorporation of The Fermi Paradox and Hameroff and Penrose's Orch OR into Prey were icing on a perfection cake. I could gush for pages about that game, but there's no need; you know damn well what you made.
@@Rabbit-o-witz He left Arkane so I doubt he has information he can give of Prey 2. There are rumours recently of another Prey game so fingers crossed it's true.
This Thief take is actually baffling to me I am a couple of years Younger than the game, played it for the first time in 2019. And it instantly became my favourite stealth game( Thief 2 has overtaken it now). The stealth isn't particularly deep or anything but the level design, the atmosphere and presentation has held up so well. And yes I have played almost all the games in this list except the ultima games, Deathloop and Brigand. Other than that I have played the Hitman and Splinter Cell games for stealth too. Thief remains by favourite no question.
@@lyadh0451 i did the same, you can pick up a ps3 pretty cheap these days and get the trilogy (2, 3 and peace walker), then 1 is on the ps store and 4 is also on ps3
Thief *might be* a bad imsim, but really good stealth game. Spent around 400 hrs with Thief 1 in 2012 (when amazon gives some free keys), good times! Still I disagree with Charlatan's opinion about Thief 1 (I'm shocked that he rates this game as "really bad" but who cares).
Honestly, while it's not the best game quality wise out of the bunch, I'd say Prey is the prototypical ImSim. Just the amount of varried options on display to route any obsticle in your path is staggering, the amount of detail and work to make the station feel like a real and tangable place is applaudable. Any studio trying to create an ImSim would benefit from taking a look at Prey.
IMO I always considered Prey to be one of the few games that fall into the Icarus Tale, it flew to close to the sun for it's own good, in other words, it's to perfect for it's own good. I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I got easily overwhelmed by the number of things/possibilities/skills to do and unlock, and somehow it isn't quantity for quality, it is quantity AND quality, but I got to overwhelmed to experience it fully
Would Kenshi be considered an immersive sim? The ability to play how you want is the core of the game, although it does have an open world and it's top-down not first person, so I don't know if it would count.
It's one of these cult classics that has never really managed to gain wider recognition. Unlike Bloodlines for instance. It's not necessarily a bad thing though.
Thief Gold so low is unforgivable. I played it for the first time in 2015 as a 14 year old. I have played through it numerous times since. Its level design, gameplay, and most of all, its intoxicating atmosphere make it my third all-time favourite game... on some days my second, above Human Revolution and below the original Deus Ex.
I think it's preeeetty meh, there's nothing really impressive, too much focus on stealth, many other boring things, the premise itself is not very appealing
You ranked my lil' game (Filcher) above The Dark Project and I have VERY MIXED FEELINGS INDEED. Thief 1 isn't for everyone, but it's a miraculous game - weird, eclectic, indie-spirited, and decidedly "anti-Hollywood". It's artistically coherent in a way very few AAA games are. It's a thousand little aesthetic pieces SOMEHOW coming together: Inspired writing with an extremely well-judged tone. Subtle worldbuilding and storytelling. An engine with tailor-made AI, light and sound systems. Phenomenal ambience, sound design and voice acting. The game just oozes atmosphere, creativity and (if you're on its particular wavelength) charm. It may not have as much emergent gameplay or as varied playstyles as some other immsims, but by focusing on a narrower activity (thiefin'!) and by separating its gameplay and plot it also avoids immersion-breaking restrictions during missions (like non-killable NPCs and limited dialogue trees). The holistic design, the tense, dreamy atmosphere, the player freedom, and the many ways creatures can react to your presence absolutely sells it. Thief 1 and 2 are, for me, the most thrilling examples of immersive simulation to date, and I wish more immsims would take such a focused and restrained approach. My 2 cents... Enjoyable vid as always ;)
I need to continue Filcher. Finished first three missions, love the atmosphere, but for now I just don't have energy for challenging games at this time. Still - love it. Thank you for your game!
There is so much to like in Thief 1 that it was really weird to hear him say he couldn't see what there is to love about the game... Your comment puts it much more eloquently than I could. Maybe that's why Filcher is such a good game, you know your stuff, sir!
@@Gabrielnfs I was one of those who thought that The Metal Age is better than The Dark Project, but after some years of replaying both I think it's the opposite now. TMA's great, but TDP has a lot of variety in it. Of course, some of fan missions / campaigns are pretty much the best of both worlds
something must be up with me because i could not get into thief, i love imsims but thief just felt way too archaic and i quickly lost interest in it. its impressive for its time but i felt like i could just play gloomwood or something which felt less clunky. really hope to be convinced otherwise because i want to enjoy older imsims, but yeah just wasnt really for me.
I had the opposite reaction, I have fond memories of watching my dad play it when it first came out, but couldn't get into it myself when I bought it 15 years later!
Why? Human Revolution was great. Not top 3 imo but still great. Definitely outclassed by original deus ex, system shock 2, and prey. But HR gets a high B or low A in my book.
@@JayCycler There's no question the original had superior level design, but vents were a staple in the series from the beginning. I will say some levels were practically devoid of vents though. The Cathedral stands out to me as an amazing level without any vents that I could remember outside of the subway iirc. I'll still defend HR though as a worthy successor to the original. I'm actually curious now if someone has done a comparison in vent quantity between the original and HR. I seem to remember HR having more vents, but excluding a couple levels the original had tons too. Admittedly the original disguised a lot of vent type stealth zones in other ways. Things like rooftops, elevator shafts, hanging rafters or lights, abandoned buildings, or fire escapes. HR didn't bother disguising your sneak zones as much.
@Cool Cat Respectfully disagree on gameplay. Agree pretty strongly on story though. HR had some great characters but the premise and story basically fell apart towards the end.
Tbh, It should be higher, but it's still pretty far outclassed by Deus Ex and System Shock 2. I got into immersive sims hardcore around 2009 and the clunky pacing, controls, and how every other level was awful really dragged Thief 1 down. The levels where you break into a mansion and steal things are S tier. But all the platforming and bugs really drag it down. I don't see why he rated Bioshock so highly though.
I agree, a lot of people can't hack the levels which throw you off, so they should get good. Deus Ex and SS2 both have more choices than Thief, however the verticality and movement allows you to reach them in ways those games never could. I find a controller genuinely works great for Thief 1, the game has joystick support implemented, and all of the controls map nicely onto the controller inputs.
>Dishonored above Thief It's bait, folks. The lack of any footage after the second level of Gold and pissy attitude toward Thief fans out the gate is the cherry on top.
The inclusion of BioShock on this list made me very angry you are correct. And higher ranked than fucking VTMB, DMoMaM, and Arx Fatalis?? Oooooh my cheese is grated right now. Edit: Holy fucking shit you put Dishonored behind Bioshock. BioShock isn't even a fucking immersive sim!!! Wow, this tier list made me mad Charlatan. Wow.
Tbh I found it somewhat disappointing. Same with Dishonored, which was still enjoyable. Some people here were criticising Human Revolution but the thing is, that game doesn't punish you for playing lethally like Dishonored and Prey do and especially Prey.
@@John-or7pr Prey doesn't punish playing lethally?? It's got a couple "moral choices" that feel a bit contrived, but killing is completely fine throughout the game. Also HR *DOES* punish you for playing lethally. From a purely optimising perspective, if you aren't playing a nonlethal, knock *everyone* out playthrough, you're missing out on exp. Fair criticism on DH though.
@@John-or7prdishonored is my fac franchise game wise and yeah if there is anything wrong with atleast the first it is the morale system simply because they don't give you many ways to play non lethal,making it who you kill n 2 added more incentive to use the heart and make your choices and even multiple varied endings helped and death of the outsider getting rid of it was for the better
@@rmguy1342 eeeeh, I would see Bioshock as like the intro-game to immersive sims. It's a game to ease you into the genre but it is still an immersive sim.
I think it's the jank that drags it down. I'd move thief 1 up higher but it's got issues. The highs are great but the lows are just miserable. My first playthrough I kept getting sucked in then pulled right back out and pissed off by engine issues exacerbated by the level design. My takeaway was something like every other level of Thief 1 was amazing, but having to compulsively quicksave and deal with painful levels filled with undead ultimately made me not want to revisit it. System Shock 2 just felt infinitely better to me despite its flaws.
@@charleshorseman55 Okay? Where? Again, any sort of emergent gameplay that can happen in Bioshock can also happen in Cyberpunk, if not moreso. Though, I must admit that I played it with just a ton of mods that opened up the weapon and cyberware mod system during my playthrough, so maybe my experience literally was closer to imsim than vanilla cp2077
Never pictured Thief as an immersive sim, and just a stealth game, as Warren Spector himself said, he wanted to make a game like Deus Ex specifically BECAUSE he wanted to do something other than sneak when he was working on Thief lol.
Because immersive sim isn't a genre. It's a design philosophy. Warren Spector used immersive simulator as a basis for creating Thief, but at the end of the day, it was a stealth game, no different to Splinter Cell or Alien: Isolation.
Hey Charlatan have you ever considered doing a video on Pathologic or Pathologic 2? I'm not sure if they quite count as Immersive Sims but they really feel like they might fit the bill.
Modern Deus ex being that high is just blatantly incorrect, and he gives those games far more leniency. Why knock down certain games a couple tiers for the same problem you brush over in the games you love? It’s okay to be subjective but you gotta give more compelling reasons for your placements and not contradict yourself
His reason for such is quite reasonable. The game is infested with bugs and although the community did solve most of them, the game itself didn't receive it from it's developers, which is unnaceptable.
My God, I loved Mankind Divided when I played through it for the first time in 2019, but it was so bittersweet after getting to the end knowing that it was cut short and even more so nowadays knowing that we are unlikley to see a sequal for a longgg time. One of my favourite gaames of all time , no other game made me feel like a part of the world like DXMD.
@@TH3HY3N4 No, the new DE games are fucking overrated. If you want to play an imsim where you fight the illuminaty, just play hitman 3, it is 10 times better
Honestly I loved games with "do whatever you want" gameplay but didn't realize it was a Genre until I was recommended one of your vids a couple years ago! Immersive sims are amazing, and I will share this video to my friends to get them prepared for immersive sims.
It's not a genre. It's a design philosophy. It's weird that OP still doesn't get it. (I'm even more perplexed by this bogus tierlist that makes zero sense. Thief Deadly Shadows on top of Arx Fatalis? Are you kidding me?)
Sending love to my fellow immersive sim enjoyers! It is tough to find new shit but hopefully we can get something awesome soon! Meanwhile - gonna play some sweet Deus Ex 1 mods! Great vid!
I’m not sure if you guys heard of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It’s a wonderful fps rpg set in medieval bohemia. It’s got the AMAZING attention to detail and realism. It’s got cool swordfights and sneaking around the woods trying to poison bandit camps. Its missions are wonderful. It’s glitchy, but I love it.
If you play EYE now vs then, it's evolved from "oh an interesting rough game" to "flawed near-masterpiece". Particularly what they did to fix enemy AI helped it a bunch
My only problem woth your list is how dirty you did dishonored 2. It's better than the main game, It's not only "the bigger the better" philosophy as you mentioned, It's biggest because they realised how to make it bigger while improving different aspects of it. Not to mention "A crack in the slab" and "Clockwork mansion" mission which are 2 of the best pieces of level designs I've ever seen in video games and imo, should automatically uplift the game to the highest tier list and to contenders pack you crested.
Eh it's fair, if you don't like stealth you can't rank it higher. Reminds me of a game I really liked but avoided due to it being trashed in a gaming magazine because the reviewer doesn't like puzzle games.
Which one was that, if I may inquire? Your comment made me think of this: I remember reading an ad for SPLATTERHOUSE back in the day. I distinctly remember thinking, "god, what a gross and garish looking game, not even its mother could love it!" ... ten~ years later... I bought and repaired an old 360. Played it, as I didn't have many other games. And I absolutely loved it. Would replay it again, and buy a copy on PC if I could.
@@Torqegood hm, I remember playing one of the Phoenix Wright games on DS (also Capcom, I think) and that was really good, tho I don't remember it well. At a cursory glance, the game looks cute! And it seems to have reviewed quite well since. :3
@@madmorgo6233 Yeah but I remember reading in a gaming magazine, maybe one game crazy sold, that it wasn't a very good game in general. The reviewer really did not like those sorts of games, and when I did play it I regretted not playing it sooner due to said review.
@@DemienC. Pssh it's because people on the whole don't have the patience for games they have to "think" to play. Same goes with many rpgs. Why skyrim is even a game let alone considered a "good" game. Simple, streamlined, dumbed down.
I tend to equate SS1 and SS2 in terms of quality, though for different reasons. Bioshock I don't even see as an Immersive Sim, even something like Realms of the Haunting, the more recent RE games, or well, anything with an inventory (like STALKER) is closer to it IMO
@@OysterBoyo I don't, really. But immersive sims can also be defined as "opening drawers and taking stuff and being able to move things around" as well as all those inventory managements and many diferent aproaches to situations, of which RE7 for example, has a bit of. But Bioshock fails even in that minimal requirement. That I can0t even decide to keep or when to use most the items you find.
@@Pablojunior2006 "also". A sub-genre like that is not neately defined. If anything its more defined by exclusion. But to think that you can set what the "genre" is on stone is not right.
This man has surface level shallow casual takes. Seriously, ranking the most cookie cutter games that have some elements of immersive sims higher than games that have deeper systems and avenue for RPG alongside the immersive sim stuff? BioShock? higher than VtMB? Mankind Divided higher than Thief Gold? That game where you spend most of your time in the main game TALKING and listening with levels that have combat opportunities that only last two setpieces with only a few minutes of action and interactivity? This guy lives up to his Charlatan name.
the OG system shock 1 may be C tier simply due to the controls (which were admittedly atrocious) and technological limitations at the time. But the sheer innovation and immersion that game had for 1994 was insane, and still holds up today. The enhanced edition pretty much addresses the biggest problem of the original, the controls, and to me, is an A tier game. I'd say an aggregated score of B would be more fair. But not my list, so whatevs. As far as theif is concerned....I do agree that it's a tad overrated. Played it when it was new in 1997, and never really picked it up again. However, I think it was pretty innovative in it's own right, C tier for me.
Even with the enhanced edition I couldn't properly finish chapter 1 of system shock 1. I have trouble with those old shooter corridor, the ceiling is so close to the floor, I literally get dizzy when I get lost in games like this. I could go to some walkthrough and try to see how far I can get, but I seriously don't have a good time just exploring a level to see what I missed. And it's still one of those games where you can get completely lost, and you try to explore the whole freaking level to try to find the path you need.
who the fuck ranks a game TODAY as if they were playing a shittier version of it 20 years ago??? like cmon man guy should judge it as it is. That's like going to the tower of london in 2022 and complaining that shitting in a medieval toilet and wiping your ass with straw is uncomfortable.
Prey is my favorite game of all time. Its the first game I could play on a harder difficulty than normal because I play it so much. (I suck at games and I know it.) It was the first game I ever Platinumed and I'm literally only missing 1 achievement in Mooncrash. Happy to see it take the silver.
I played the Dishonored games exactly like Thief. Quicksave/quickload to get the perfect stealth experience. Also quicksave encourages me to try out different things and strategies. In a game without it I'll find a toolset that works for me and almost never switch. Also that Bioshock is rated that high baffles me. They were fine but announced as the spiritual successor of System Shock 2, but in the end it was a standard shooter with an interesting setting. I had fun, but never finished it again after my first play through.
Yeah, I did my first playthrough like that as well. The first Dishonored lacks non-lethal tools a bit, but with some other games quicksave has definitely encouraged experimentation for me. Far Cry 2 is the main example that comes to mind.
@@burningsheep4473 The lack of Non-lethal tools made stealth low-chaos runs a lot harder, but also felt really satisfying when you were able to ghost a level. Of course, one of the big reasons the new non-lethal tools were needed was for the players who claim that the game punishes you for playing with the combat on high chaos. Its super fun in Dishonored 2 to run around using its added non-lethal tools to both do the combat and get low chaos, but it also makes the low-chaos run much easier in that regard. I think its a win-win for the most part, but I know some people can get anal about mechanics that make certain achievements easier.
This is the problem with poorly defined genres in my opinion. Why are Thief games even considered immersive sims and not just pure stealth games? Thief Gold is better than most of these games in my opinion but obviously if you shoehorn it into the immersive sim label, it'll be weird to compare them. Nonetheless, ranking Thief Gold that low and putting it into "bad" tier is still absurdly hard to agree with, and does the game a disservice. It'd be ranking FPS games and putting Thief into "trash" tier lol. Which begs the question again, why are Thief games even considered immersive sims when they're quite obviously stealth games? It's especially funny when you consider Dishonored is ranked so highly - and while maybe Dishonored is a good Immersive Sim due to the amount of options you have when it comes to how you play, its stealth mechanics in general are incredibly rudimentary compared to any of the Thief trilogy games. Edit: So I watched the video in its entirety now and I think its a bit of a mess when it comes to consistency in a bunch of different ways, even when disregarding my many disagreements, I feel like the tiering was pretty messy and the contradicting rankings in both lists is confusing and poorly defined. Still enjoyed the video, and found it very interesting, though I suppose calling it "My" instead of "The" Absolutely Definitive Immersive Sim Tier List would be a lot better, since it is a perfectly fine personal list but way too messy in the way it is structured for any claims of it being "the" definitive list, imo. Also in my opinion bioshock games have no place on the list. Looking forward to your Thief 1 video though, I assume I'm gonna disagree with many things but still want to hear your thoughts about it to see if I can at least understand your POV.
I would also question whether the Thief games are immersive sims in the first place and I'm also curious how he's going to justify labeling them as such.
I'd definitely put both Bioshocks in C tier, and Prey above Mankind Divided in the final ranking, but otherwise I basically agree. I also definitely don't think Thief is a D but that's debatable. Well, really I'd put Shock 2 at number 1, but that's more of a personal bias than anything. Definitely not as accessible as some of the newer imsims.
That last bit is why I put System Shock 2 where it is: It's an amazing, groundbreaking game but it's over 20 years old which makes parts of it inaccessible without doing a couple hours of research or patching. It might have faired better if SS2-EE was out but Night Dive's got a lot on their plate right now.
The 3-D Fallouts are pretty clearly in the more traditional open world W-RPG mold. It's a sister genre, sure, but New Vegas and The Outer Worlds have a clear line of descent from the old isometric Fallouts, and from there all the way back to tabletop games that, say, Prey 2016 or Bioshock do not.
Serious questions tho: 1-why isn't Thief simulator in this list? 2-Why isn't Bioshock Infinite in this list? It is as much of an imsim as the first two, which is to say, not at all.
Infinite has such a focus on gun fights and (admittedly tighter than BS1) gun play that it ceases to be a true immersive sim. You have a few Dedicated Walking Segments with 'sidequests' in them, but they're wholly divorced from more standard shoot-bangs, which are like 85 percent or more of the gameplay. It even feels different from either of the previous 'Shocks. Hell, given Bioshock 2's linear, level-based focus I consider it's inclusion to be borderline a case of being grandfathered in -- and I like Bioshock 2 a great deal. As for Thief simulator... I suspect he just forgot about it. Edit: I am sure that at some point in development Bioshock Infinite was planned to be a more standard ImSim. But now it only counts in an alternate universe where it still plays like some of the earlier gameplay previews.
@@AdrianArmbruster Halo gives you more options to approach a fight than Bioshock, and having the option to not kill a mini boss is pretty meaningless in comparison to the admittedly limited stealth of System Shock 2. And even Duke Nukem gave you more to do between gun fights.
@@marreco6347 ... so that only proves that having a varied weapons sandbox or multiple approaches towards a level alone do not an Immersive Sim make. There's a very obvious shared line of descent through System Shock, Bioshock, and on to Prey '16 such that their gameplay loops are more similar to each other than they are to, say, Halo, or any given Fallout game even. You can say that Bioshock was a bad imsim based on gameplay limitations, or because it's a dirty console game, or what have you. But it does meet most definitions of an immersive sim. And we know there's a fine line between imsim and 'fps with psychic powers', and that Bioshock 1 is still on the imsim side of, because Bioshock Infinite most certainly tripped and fell onto the FPS side of that line.
I skipped to end of the video because Im at work. My rankings and thoughts. I played all these games after 2012 so theres no nostalgia. - Thief 2, is above Thief 1 for one tier - Thief 2, is above DX1 for one tier - DXHR is one or even two tiers below DX1 (DXHR was a step back in most compartments compared to 1 IMO) - System shock 2 in either thief1 or thief2 tier - Dark messiah is not as fun as YT montages make it seem - Thief 2 has some of the best level design off all time, and even tho games as a whole have improved in last decade, quality of best T2 levels is yet to be achieved and this sensation cant be find anywhere - Thief 1 did environmental storytelling, arguably better then Souls games did ~10 years later and Thief games dont get recognition for this feat. - SWAT4 is 10/10 game
I actually finished Thief 1 in 2021 and while I agree that it is MASSIVELY dated today, the game atmosphere, the lore, the sound design and artstyle made me fell in love with it. I wholeheartedly desagree that the game has bad pacing and missions, the only ones that I did not like were Thiefs Guild and The Mage Towers but they were added in GOLD Edition. From the oryginal set of missions I liked everything, there is also great variety becouse not everything is just a pure stealth gameplay but some of it pushes you to fight with the undead and other creatures and some of them is more of a search for tresures on ancient territory, kinda "Indiana Jones style" with stealth as the afterthought. But yes, I used quicksave A LOT and sometimes it was dull (mostly during the 2 missions I didnt like). I get why somebody may be frustraited with it and I still like the video. Sorry for bad grammar, my english sucks.
I honestly agree with most of your more controversial picks (tho I honestly didn't hate the Thief reboot as much as I expected, and would have ranked Thief 2 and 3 a bit higher), but I really like how you used the tier list to judge the games standing on their own but used the rankings to judge how good of an immersive sim they are. Personally, I would put Prey 2017 as my #1 Immersive Sim, things like the mimic ability, the crew registry allowing you to track down nearly every crew member of Talos I, along with having one of my favorite intros to any video game just edge it slightly ahead of the other contenders in my eyes.
Mankind Divided is the only game that after beating it the first time, I immediately started and finished new game +. Human Revolution is cool, but MD, imo, kicks it up a few notches. I really hope Eidos gets the green light to finish the Adam Jensen storyline.
You can spend so much time in Prague jumping around and sneaking into apartments, buying/selling/stealing gear etc, cruising through the cool sewers etc. Awesome game.
You can put EYE in D or in B and it would be right either way. What makes Divine Cybermancy special is reeeeally hard to grasp, definitely the most unique among all. I'm content with Charlatan not giving it a C, 'cause EYE is pretty fucking far from "Meh". Dark Messiah is truly a D tier game tho
@@andresmoro5939 Its a D tier game as an immersive sim because to me it is absolutely not an immersive sim, same as bioshock. Having an fps game with couple of points to redistribute doesnt make it an immersive sim in my eyes. But if i rate it as what it is (fantasy FPS) I find real hard to see a better one in its own niche.
Thief is damn good and I played it only a year ago, so not affected by nostalgia. It has great mechanics that are not present in current games and they fit pretty good. Dishonored is too simplified successor of thief and cannot truly be compared to thief games by stealth. You have truly biased rating in this tier list
I played Deus Ex GOTY edition (the first DE) because PC Gamer said it was very, very good. PC Gamer was correct. Because of that experience with DE, I went and got Thief... and I was disappointed. It is as this video describes it. Now maybe the problem is that I went from Deus Ex to Thief, instead of the other way around, but even accounting for age difference, I found "Thief" to be boring.
This list looks as if it was made "by zoomers for zoomers"... I guess one has to cater to their audience and stir a little bit of controversy as well. I'd encourage people to actually play these games for themselves and make up their own minds, otherwise they might miss out on a few absolute classics. After all, that's the immersive sim ethos - play it your own way.
I sort of agree, but all of the older games in this list have poor game feel by modern standards. I think Deus Ex deserved to be number 1 with Mankind Divided right behind it though.
My complaint with DXHR is that nearly all of the choices are just an illusion. There are multiple routes to the objective, but the core of the game remains unchanged DESPITE what you choose. So all of the choices end up being somewhat local. Also, your character's final form will be *IDENTICAL* to every other DXHR player, because unlike the very first DX game, there are enough resources to max out your Augs.... AND, you don't have to choose one Aug versus another, the way that you did in the very first DX.... but instead, you're just choosing which order to increase them. It's a minor nit-pick. But while I definitely enjoyed the last two Adam-Jenson DX games more than the first DX thanks to gaming hardware finally catching up to ambition... the reality is that setting aside the jankiness of the first one, the choices had more meaning than simply "do I sneak in through the roof, sneak in through the sewer, or talk my way through the front door?" Thankfully this was somewhat addressed in "Mankind Divided", because your choices have very real consequences outside of that map -- like if you _DON'T_ kill this one guy, then your friend *will* die. If you choose the mission that grants you the ability to save your boss, then a semi-innocent person will absolutely die. And bittersweet best-of-all, the choices were unavoidable, meaning that someone WILL die because of what you have chosen... you can't avoid that. If you played flawlessly, key people *will* die. I really appreciated that about DXMD. Also, I saw a RUclips video about Skyrim some time ago, and it was titled "Skyrim: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep." The video was like an hour long, but once you read the title, there really was no reason to watch the video, since that title summed up the frustrating shallowness of Skyrim *flawlessly.* This is an attribute that no one will ever assign to the best three DX games (I never played the second one.)
I disagree with Deathloop. Glad to see you didnt put it in A but i genuinely think its really, really bad. It bases itself on the time loop mechanic wich has been used to death and its so, mind numbingly, BORING. The characters, apart from yourself and the girl that hunts you that i forgot the name of, are incredibly forgettable, and when the entire point is to see them over and over to finally kill them, thats not a good thing. It has an extremely scarce array of weapons, and are generic as fuck. It even reuses skills and skill animations from dishonored/dark messia like the kick and the teleport. I really cannot fathom what people like so much about that game. Its like Preys DLC, but way longer and without every reason you would like Preys DLC.
agree I got bored and just rushed through the story, brain dead enemies and running around in the same 4 levels over and over just got to me clearly a game designed for braindead shooter audience
I grew up with Splinter Cell and only played Thief about 5 years ago, yet it has overtaken my love of Splinter Cell. It's not nostalgia. Spamming quicksaves/quickloads in Thief is a good way to make it a tedious slog. It's a game where you are completely underpowered, the basic enemies are a huge threat, you need heightened awareness to avoid them (hearing them ahead of time or just being observant in general) and you need to be completely immersed to navigate the levels. Save scumming makes it so you just bumble through a level without thinking about it and spam quickload anytime you walk into a guard. You are constantly getting punished for completely avoidable things and your brain is not in the game. Combine this with the fact that the levels are massive and require you to be somewhat immersed to navigate them and it's a recipe for pain. You can savescum through guards but you can't savescum through level design.
I must have played through it about the same time as you. For me it came down a lot to which level I was playing. It could be a bit frustrating at times (Thieves Guild argghh!), but some of those maps were very memorable. Especially the Bonehoard and the Mansion.
*Invisible war opens a new instance to load new levels* That sounds like something done to free up memory without having to manually free it in the engines code, when you do stuff like dynamic memory allocation you need to manually free that memory when you're done with it, unless the program itself closes, at which point all the memory for the program is freed and returned to the system. That might be some sort of trick they used to make SURE the game freed up all the memory it was using in an attempt to make it easier to code, but I'm just kinda throwing darts at the wall with that one. It's also NOT how I'd recommend anyone doing development in C or C++ do things, just remember to call 'free(the_thing_you_don't_need_now)' when you're done with something.
Invisible war was probably one of the worst "ports" I have ever seen. Well I don't know if it's a port but it does feel like a janky ass console port. I was so hyped for that game as I loves the first one. The game ran awful and it was very prone to crashes. There's a lot of stuff in that game that makes you scratch your head.
@@katherine2596 idk, I'm no expert. It's just assumption based on interactivity and how you can go about your goals. Blackout Club is good for that due to different perks and branching routes throughout the map. Golden Light and Oneiro have multiple elements of this since they allow a lot of player freedom (destroy walls and be destructive, be meticulous, etc). It's just the best descriptor I could think of
Im so happy i gave you this idea and you went with it! I really think you should do more like these to help the channel and algorithm. I def need to make my own list and post it here. I really think a video where you define what an imp sim and all the terminology is/are will help more people get in the channel and understand this content better.
@@holocade4908 only salty ppl think that lol so imma assume that one of your fav games got a shit tier. i mean so did mine but i still like this video cuz it’s unapologetically ballsy
So so glad to see Prey at number 2. Arkane's modern games were my introduction to immersive sims, and I loved Dishonored and Dishonored 2, but when I played Prey, my thoughts and perceptions of what a video game is and the limits of a player in the world were just blown away. And it was super accessible, really easy to get into, the controls are really intuitive, the powers and weapons are so cool, the story is awesome, the level design is absolutely amazing, and it's so easy to just get sucked into the gameplay loop and want to do everything. Absolutely love Prey, can't praise it enough. (The ending was kind of lame, but as I've sat with it for more time, I've come to really appreciate that the game kind of tells you what the final plot twist is right at the beginning)
Bioshock is a bare bones immersive sim. It's an immsim that has been simplified for the average player. And made to be more fast paced. Bioshock Infinite however isn't an immersive sim. It doesn't focus on the environment much and It's more of a generic war shooter with a twist and an decent story.
If anyone happens to see this in the next day or 2, there's a huge discount on the Deus ex series bundle, you get the complete, definitive versions of these games for like $10 total
I... what? I'm just confused. Thief in D tier and Human Revolution in A. Hell, I played HR before Thief and I love Thief more. Sure it isn't A tier and Thief 2 is far better, but for you to say Thief sucks for making you watch for guard patterns while excusing HR's terrible bosses that completely broke the genre upon release is just confusing.
If only bosses were the biggest problem of HR... It's not even the biggest. I love HR but the game is much shorter than OG DX, the music is inferior, the character almost doesn't improve with the upgrades across the game, technically it was very dated even for it's time, the optimization is horrible I can't hold 120 FPS all the time even with my killer rig because of horrible CPU utilization, and the entire endgame is ridiculous. It has a great atmosphere and solid quests, especially sidequests, and the writing is really good, but the game is not an A tier in my books, B tier is more likely. As for Thief, I played it quite recently, I really enjoyed it but it has aged very badly (a lot of bugs and all despite me locking the framerate to 60 and using all the fanpatches) and missions are very unequal. However D tier is absolutely ridiculous, C at very worst.
Some more feedback: - If you do want to play DXIW or T3, for God's sake use John P's texture overhauls if nothing else. - For VTMB, don't forget that it was the first third-party game to use the Source engine, was made concurrently with Half-Life 2, and didn't really get enough support from Valve (because they were building the damn thing themselves). Considering Troika's only other game (Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura), I truly weep for the studio's closure. - You missed "Consortium." Not the Tower sequel, which I have no idea if they'll ever finish, but the original Consortium.
@@Archangelm127 Im currently playing VTMB and to make it accessible it was a simple fix. So i dont see why its ok. As an immersive sim its immersive. Theres just some problems with the last half i.e the sewer level and the hunters level, so far.
In terms of the Faux Sims, I would've included The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (accessible only in physical form legally now in the remaster or original). It has the atmosphere of an Immersive Sim, the options to approach some combat situations in stealth, melee, or gunfight. It's linear while feeling open with a few branching paths. It's probably a better version of Baby's First Im Sim than Bioshock is but Riddick is really inaccessible today due to Atari leaving the IP in limbo and Starbreeze devs moving onto Machine Games.
Breath Of the Wild really should have been included if you include Bioshock. Just the weather, the enemy and animal AI and the runes make it more of a fauxsim than Bioshock. You could even argue the original Zelda was one of several major inspirations for Immersive Sims whether directly or just indirectly. I agree the Deus Ex games are the embodiment and pinnacle of what being an Immersive Sim is and Breath Of the Wild is far more like the Deus Ex games than Bioshock is.
this is kindof my thoughts. what exactly is an immersive sim? he mentions the emergent gameplay...but theres lots of games that do that.. not here. so, does he think that firstperson/third person closed environment is needed? is GTA not an immersive sim? and why not? Botw. KENSHI? whats the differance between a sandbox sim and immersive sim?
@@Cassandra112 I would definitely not call Breath Of the Wild a true immersive sim. The main things immersive sims seem to need to have according to fans and devs are - A very high level of emergence through complex systems like weather, weight or elemental interactions, which BOW has. - Simulate complex AI situations (enemies, wildlife, NPC routines and adaption to roadblocks that interfere with that routine etc.) which BOW has. - Open ended level design and multiple separate 'intended' and 'unintended' routes or solutions, which BOW has in a way other open world games rarely do. Like Hyrule castle is textbook immersive sim level design with how many viable entry ways there are. - Allows for multiple playstyles (guns/bow blazing, melee, stealth, environmental manipulation etc.) which BOW has. - Allows the player a great level of choice in what to do first or, sometimes, to ignore entirely, which BOW allows. - A way to meaningfully influence the narrative with player choices, which BOW doesn't really do. I think this holds it back to being just a fauxsim or hybrid-immersive sim.
Darn you, Charlatan. Because of all your vids, I realized how limited more mainstream games are limited, like RDR2. Jokes aside, thank you for your good vids!
Thief is a funny one - I remember playing the first one... on Mac, of all systems, if I'm not mistaken (or maybe on the very first PC we had) when I was about 10 years old. I was absolute crap at playing it, didn't really understand I was supposed to sneak so I tried to fight and kill stuf, and thus never got too far, but... THE ATMOSPHERE... Was insanely captivating. So, when I was about 22, I still remembered it, and now I was sufficiently not dumb to realize you're supposed to be... A THIEF, as opposed to a murderer, so I went back to it and tried it... and concluded that... yeah, it's kind of crap, gameplay-wise. But I didn't want to just give up on it, so I got the newest one at the time - Deadly Shadows... and I enjoyed it very much. Bioshock is not a funny one - I hate it, hate it, hate it. I played System Shock 2 and loved every polygon of it, and then was hyped for Bioshock, and then when it came out, I found out I hate it. Out of principle, for kinda hijacking the "Shock" brand/franchise, and derailing/ruining it, as well as in practice, for being a crap shooter. The art style, and the "would you kindly" twist are literally the only two good things about ALL OF bioshock. Including Infinite. Oh, we're including infinite too... Okay, it's ending story twist(s), about the lighthouses, and Booker dying... those were cool (imo) too. But that's about it. And if your series containing 3+ games literally only has "art style and two plot twists" going for it... that's a failed series in my book.
>ranking mankind divided over Original Deus Ex 💀 I will admit Mankind Divided is good and definite improvement over HR, but man even then it's still lacking compared to original Deus Ex in terms of immersive sim choices
@@MILDMONSTER1234 Only one truly necessary kill is Agent Navarra, others can be skipped. I'm sorry to disappoint ya but one forced kill doesn't ruin original Deus Ex level design and immersive sim creativity. Again not to say MD is bad, it did take HR and improved on it but it just doesn't compare to OG level design.
No hitman games smh. Metal gear solid 5 is also a huge omission. Those games provide more emergent gameplay, player choice and interactive elements than many games on this list
I actually played Thief 1 last year and loved it. And I don't have any nostalgia gogles - it was my first time. Not the first time I desagree with the Charlatan, but I love his work, and watch even if I disagree. Good job, man!
I did first playthroughs of System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Thief Gold in recent years and Thief was the one I easily liked the most. Thief 2 on the other hand... I couldn't really get into it unfortunately.
@burningsheep4473 same here with Thief 2, I think the atmosphere and level variation was lacking. It just feels completely different even though it's the same engine and a direct sequel
23:53 with their recent announcement, they could take FFVII Remake's backgrounds and make NFTs out of them, especially the end-game one where Barret unironically tells Cloud "never forget this view". 😂
IMO people generally overrate a game that "modernizes" or streamlines mechanics. Controls and certain features are made in the context of their own part of game development history, so comparing controls from 90's and early 00's games to games post 2010 shouldn't be used to say that the newer game does the mechanic better, it's the same but with the benefit of the industry developing for many more years as well so it's not just the game making an improvement. A game like Prey is rated so high because so many people rave and adore the games mechanics and systems, but these are from previous games and just adjusted, not truly and fully reinvented or iterated on. A lot of people also enjoy Talos I as a setting, but it often struggles to have a defining trait that makes it turn into as big of a character that settings from previous imsim games had. I think it's great as a modern take of the "classic" imsim, but where does it have its "a man chooses, a slave obeys" moment, or something similar to seeing SHODAN and hearing her talk to you in System Shock 2? Does the game stun you with moments of its unique design and character or because you've spent hours trying to find a solution or looking for crafting materials.
Have you ever considered doing a video on Kingdom Come Deliverance? I honestly consider it as at least a fauxsim, and also one of my favourite games. Plus, it has an actual charlatan in the game
>Puts Thief the dark project in garbage tier >Takes a low blow at civvie with 1/3 of subscribers while civvie takes no sponsors, only programmed ad cuts >chills sponsors Yup, this goes into my cringe compilation.
@@CharlatanWonder Civvie, however, finds it hard to get into other immersive sims. He said playing System Shock and Ultima Underworld felt like playing operating systems while he was filtered by the first level of Deus Ex.
I can respect that. A lot of folks on the ImSim scene sometimes forget that most ImSims are complicated at best and outright obtuse sometimes. That's why accessibility was a factor in the tiering. Conversely, I can't play fast-paced boomer shooters to save my life (see doom eternal video). I guess it's all a matter of your skillset.
Well i would never think that i would love Prey as much or more than Dishonored because i'm a massive stealth guy, but seriously Prey is incredible in terms of player agency, gameplay possibility, choices and most of all level design.
I think Prey came should have been #1, and Deus Ex #2. But your list is still good. I also feel that there is still so much potential for Immersive Sim games, and we have not seen that potential yet.
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Just a question, do you actually write these videos, or do you just normally open your mouth and hope something smart sounding comes out?
Super expensive for just some cereal, not your fault but still not that good.
what about a timestamp to avoid promos?
No I don’t think I will
I know people keep memeing on you for your Thief take(haven't played it so idk if they're right or nah) but your real bizarre take is ranking two modern Deus Ex, ESPECIALLY Human Revolution above og Deus Ex.
Hbomberguy made perfect video showcasing how much of a let down Human Revolution was compared to OG Deus Ex, there was so much gameplay choices in original, so many ways to reach o n e NPC (in that Hong Kong level) and Human Revolution has ONE way, maybe two depending on the level(either guns blazing or v e n t s)
However we all can agree Mankind is atleast better than HR but idk if it's better than og though
I'm the founder of Arkane, and creative director of Prey, Arx, DM as well as co-creative director of Dishonored. I like the video overall and the fact it lists all immersive sims. And I also recognize how hard and subjective it is to rank them, especially since time and context matters, but I disagree entirely with the score for Thief and Underworld: these games were fantastic at their time, and to me, context is everything. it's like saying the Ford T sucks. Underworld and Thief are like the Beetles of immersive sims
The incorporation of The Fermi Paradox and Hameroff and Penrose's Orch OR into Prey were icing on a perfection cake. I could gush for pages about that game, but there's no need; you know damn well what you made.
When prey 2
You are my hero for making Prey!! I hope one day we get a sequel even if you aren't around to make it as good as the original.
@@Rabbit-o-witz He left Arkane so I doubt he has information he can give of Prey 2. There are rumours recently of another Prey game so fingers crossed it's true.
You are a beast
This Thief take is actually baffling to me I am a couple of years Younger than the game, played it for the first time in 2019. And it instantly became my favourite stealth game( Thief 2 has overtaken it now). The stealth isn't particularly deep or anything but the level design, the atmosphere and presentation has held up so well. And yes I have played almost all the games in this list except the ultima games, Deathloop and Brigand. Other than that I have played the Hitman and Splinter Cell games for stealth too. Thief remains by favourite no question.
Check out Metal Gear Solid 5, gameplay wise it's one of the best stealth games
@@SoFarSoGoodSoWhat14 Havent gotten around to the Metal Gear Solid games yet but hope to play the whole series from MGS 1 someday
@@lyadh0451 i did the same, you can pick up a ps3 pretty cheap these days and get the trilogy (2, 3 and peace walker), then 1 is on the ps store and 4 is also on ps3
Thief *might be* a bad imsim, but really good stealth game. Spent around 400 hrs with Thief 1 in 2012 (when amazon gives some free keys), good times!
Still I disagree with Charlatan's opinion about Thief 1 (I'm shocked that he rates this game as "really bad" but who cares).
Well, thief's not an imsim. It's a pure stealth game. I don't even understand why it's considered an imsim.
Honestly, while it's not the best game quality wise out of the bunch, I'd say Prey is the prototypical ImSim. Just the amount of varried options on display to route any obsticle in your path is staggering, the amount of detail and work to make the station feel like a real and tangable place is applaudable. Any studio trying to create an ImSim would benefit from taking a look at Prey.
Words !! It embodies the imsim philosophy at its best
I feel like if prey had only a slightly better story towards the ending (opening is great!) it’d be near if not my favorite game
IMO I always considered Prey to be one of the few games that fall into the Icarus Tale, it flew to close to the sun for it's own good, in other words, it's to perfect for it's own good. I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I got easily overwhelmed by the number of things/possibilities/skills to do and unlock, and somehow it isn't quantity for quality, it is quantity AND quality, but I got to overwhelmed to experience it fully
Would Kenshi be considered an immersive sim? The ability to play how you want is the core of the game, although it does have an open world and it's top-down not first person, so I don't know if it would count.
Absolutely this. Prey is THE immersive sim of the modern era.
Imagine putting E.Ψ.Ǝ in the "Bad" tier 'cause you can't escape the cycles of guilt and get that salty at Synicle.
It's one of these cult classics that has never really managed to gain wider recognition. Unlike Bloodlines for instance. It's not necessarily a bad thing though.
Yeah this list pretty well describes difficulty... the easier the game the higher the rank.....coincidence maybe
Double Jian moment
maybe his legs are broken
@@Superschokokeks My legs are ok.
Thief Gold so low is unforgivable. I played it for the first time in 2015 as a 14 year old. I have played through it numerous times since. Its level design, gameplay, and most of all, its intoxicating atmosphere make it my third all-time favourite game... on some days my second, above Human Revolution and below the original Deus Ex.
I respect your tier list and your opinions, but ranking Thief in D tier is braindead.
The new new one is aids. Trilogy is great.
I think it's preeeetty meh, there's nothing really impressive, too much focus on stealth, many other boring things, the premise itself is not very appealing
@@groggod666 the game is called thief and youre complaining about the focus on stealth?
@@groggod666 Headass it isn't CoD
Nah I agree eith him thief was God for its time. But just doing stealth stuff isboring. And.😪
You ranked my lil' game (Filcher) above The Dark Project and I have VERY MIXED FEELINGS INDEED.
Thief 1 isn't for everyone, but it's a miraculous game - weird, eclectic, indie-spirited, and decidedly "anti-Hollywood". It's artistically coherent in a way very few AAA games are. It's a thousand little aesthetic pieces SOMEHOW coming together: Inspired writing with an extremely well-judged tone. Subtle worldbuilding and storytelling. An engine with tailor-made AI, light and sound systems. Phenomenal ambience, sound design and voice acting. The game just oozes atmosphere, creativity and (if you're on its particular wavelength) charm. It may not have as much emergent gameplay or as varied playstyles as some other immsims, but by focusing on a narrower activity (thiefin'!) and by separating its gameplay and plot it also avoids immersion-breaking restrictions during missions (like non-killable NPCs and limited dialogue trees). The holistic design, the tense, dreamy atmosphere, the player freedom, and the many ways creatures can react to your presence absolutely sells it. Thief 1 and 2 are, for me, the most thrilling examples of immersive simulation to date, and I wish more immsims would take such a focused and restrained approach.
My 2 cents... Enjoyable vid as always ;)
I need to continue Filcher. Finished first three missions, love the atmosphere, but for now I just don't have energy for challenging games at this time. Still - love it. Thank you for your game!
@@jossricketts4452 Thank you!
Picked Filcher up over Christmas and hadn't had the time to start it yet. This comment makes me feel like I'm in very good hands when I do!
There is so much to like in Thief 1 that it was really weird to hear him say he couldn't see what there is to love about the game... Your comment puts it much more eloquently than I could. Maybe that's why Filcher is such a good game, you know your stuff, sir!
@@Gabrielnfs I was one of those who thought that The Metal Age is better than The Dark Project, but after some years of replaying both I think it's the opposite now. TMA's great, but TDP has a lot of variety in it.
Of course, some of fan missions / campaigns are pretty much the best of both worlds
I played thief for the first time in 2020 and now it’s in my top 5. Definitely not nostalgia
Same here. Not sure when exactly I played it ... 2019 or something, but I utterly loved my time with it.
something must be up with me because i could not get into thief, i love imsims but thief just felt way too archaic and i quickly lost interest in it. its impressive for its time but i felt like i could just play gloomwood or something which felt less clunky. really hope to be convinced otherwise because i want to enjoy older imsims, but yeah just wasnt really for me.
@@BoogieBrando did you install Tfix?
I had the opposite reaction, I have fond memories of watching my dad play it when it first came out, but couldn't get into it myself when I bought it 15 years later!
The moment he ranked human revolution as top three, all the other rankings started to make sense.
Why? Human Revolution was great. Not top 3 imo but still great. Definitely outclassed by original deus ex, system shock 2, and prey. But HR gets a high B or low A in my book.
@@Garresh1 I wouldn't rank it high from the immersive sim perspective, all of the level design is mostly just vents
@@JayCycler There's no question the original had superior level design, but vents were a staple in the series from the beginning. I will say some levels were practically devoid of vents though. The Cathedral stands out to me as an amazing level without any vents that I could remember outside of the subway iirc. I'll still defend HR though as a worthy successor to the original.
I'm actually curious now if someone has done a comparison in vent quantity between the original and HR. I seem to remember HR having more vents, but excluding a couple levels the original had tons too. Admittedly the original disguised a lot of vent type stealth zones in other ways. Things like rooftops, elevator shafts, hanging rafters or lights, abandoned buildings, or fire escapes. HR didn't bother disguising your sneak zones as much.
@Cool Cat Respectfully disagree on gameplay. Agree pretty strongly on story though. HR had some great characters but the premise and story basically fell apart towards the end.
Same, I was like "ooooooh, you dig *this* type of imsim, OK"
Thief in the D tier is truly criminal. Easily one of the best ever in this genre.
Tbh, It should be higher, but it's still pretty far outclassed by Deus Ex and System Shock 2. I got into immersive sims hardcore around 2009 and the clunky pacing, controls, and how every other level was awful really dragged Thief 1 down. The levels where you break into a mansion and steal things are S tier. But all the platforming and bugs really drag it down.
I don't see why he rated Bioshock so highly though.
Heh, criminal
I agree, a lot of people can't hack the levels which throw you off, so they should get good.
Deus Ex and SS2 both have more choices than Thief, however the verticality and movement allows you to reach them in ways those games never could. I find a controller genuinely works great for Thief 1, the game has joystick support implemented, and all of the controls map nicely onto the controller inputs.
Putting Thief Gold on "D Bad" tier is a felony.
For those who are looking for more Thief-likes in style of Filcher, Neon Struct is pretty cool indie. Shame no one ever talks about it.
Hadn't heard of it but I'll look at it now.
Hexcraft: Harlequin Fair is another great indie imsim that received zero attention so far.. it is more Bloodlines and DE inspired..
It pleases me to see neon struct mentioned. No one talks about that game. Delightfyl is another immersive stealth game that has that thief aesthetic
>Dishonored above Thief
It's bait, folks.
The lack of any footage after the second level of Gold and pissy attitude toward Thief fans out the gate is the cherry on top.
I gotta admit the thought of it being bait crossed my mind, as it's indeed pretty hard to understand. If it is bait then it worked lmao
Placing Thief, EYE, and Dark Messiah in the BAD tier just proves that you're missing several chromosomes.
>Bioshock is in B
>EYE and Dark Messiah are in D
Just lost all respect in you as a reviewer
The inclusion of BioShock on this list made me very angry you are correct. And higher ranked than fucking VTMB, DMoMaM, and Arx Fatalis?? Oooooh my cheese is grated right now.
Edit:
Holy fucking shit you put Dishonored behind Bioshock. BioShock isn't even a fucking immersive sim!!! Wow, this tier list made me mad Charlatan. Wow.
I love Prey 2017. We’re lucky it even came out at all.
I wanted the original trailer. The revamp and IP rebrand was shit. Highly overrated bioshock game with boring atmosphere and dogshit writing.
Tbh I found it somewhat disappointing. Same with Dishonored, which was still enjoyable. Some people here were criticising Human Revolution but the thing is, that game doesn't punish you for playing lethally like Dishonored and Prey do and especially Prey.
@@John-or7pr Prey doesn't punish playing lethally?? It's got a couple "moral choices" that feel a bit contrived, but killing is completely fine throughout the game. Also HR *DOES* punish you for playing lethally. From a purely optimising perspective, if you aren't playing a nonlethal, knock *everyone* out playthrough, you're missing out on exp. Fair criticism on DH though.
@@John-or7prdishonored is my fac franchise game wise and yeah if there is anything wrong with atleast the first it is the morale system simply because they don't give you many ways to play non lethal,making it who you kill n 2 added more incentive to use the heart and make your choices and even multiple varied endings helped and death of the outsider getting rid of it was for the better
Calling Deathloop an immersive sim is like calling Call of Duty an RPG
Same for Bioshock, you always ended up killing your enemies. The 'immersive sim' aspect only goes for creativity
Yeah call of duty is an RPG! Some of the new campaigns involve player choice to get a different outcome 10/10 cod warzone best rpg
@@rmguy1342 eeeeh, I would see Bioshock as like the intro-game to immersive sims. It's a game to ease you into the genre but it is still an immersive sim.
You have RPGs in CoD :D
@@prodELOKXRPG is when player choice
Damn, I played Thief 1 for the first time last year and loved it
There's a lot of jank but it's still absolutely worth it imo
I think it's the jank that drags it down. I'd move thief 1 up higher but it's got issues. The highs are great but the lows are just miserable.
My first playthrough I kept getting sucked in then pulled right back out and pissed off by engine issues exacerbated by the level design. My takeaway was something like every other level of Thief 1 was amazing, but having to compulsively quicksave and deal with painful levels filled with undead ultimately made me not want to revisit it.
System Shock 2 just felt infinitely better to me despite its flaws.
Very rough list, dude. VERY hard to agree on any of these positions, even after listening to your arguments.
But it's your list. So that's that.
I would say Bioshock is more of a first person shooter than an immersive sim.
Bioshock Infinite definitely is, but the first two are definitely immersive sims.
@@my9thaccount140Nope, the first 2 games FEEL like immersive sims and it took away/dumbed down many imsim elements.
@@my9thaccount140 If Bioshock is an imsim then cyberpunk most definitely is..
@@Zondac Cyberpunk had every opportunity to be an immersive sim like Deus Ex but went somewhere...else.
@@charleshorseman55 Okay? Where? Again, any sort of emergent gameplay that can happen in Bioshock can also happen in Cyberpunk, if not moreso. Though, I must admit that I played it with just a ton of mods that opened up the weapon and cyberware mod system during my playthrough, so maybe my experience literally was closer to imsim than vanilla cp2077
Never pictured Thief as an immersive sim, and just a stealth game, as Warren Spector himself said, he wanted to make a game like Deus Ex specifically BECAUSE he wanted to do something other than sneak when he was working on Thief lol.
This idiot clearly doesn't know what he's doing. Not the first time he was talking absolute bullshit on his channel
Because immersive sim isn't a genre. It's a design philosophy. Warren Spector used immersive simulator as a basis for creating Thief, but at the end of the day, it was a stealth game, no different to Splinter Cell or Alien: Isolation.
Hey Charlatan have you ever considered doing a video on Pathologic or Pathologic 2? I'm not sure if they quite count as Immersive Sims but they really feel like they might fit the bill.
he's already done a video on pathologic 2. ruclips.net/video/8wXYU5gyAP4/видео.html
He has a vid on Pathologic 2, but not the original
He would shit on pathologic cus of it’s esoteric nature. It’s why he shat on thief
And I've been meaning to revisit it as I didn't have the time to cover all of it back then
Modern Deus ex being that high is just blatantly incorrect, and he gives those games far more leniency. Why knock down certain games a couple tiers for the same problem you brush over in the games you love? It’s okay to be subjective but you gotta give more compelling reasons for your placements and not contradict yourself
In mankind divided you can play the whole game non lethal stealth and it’s fun. You cant really do that in dx1
Ranking Bioshocks as better immersive sims than Vampire the Masquerade is a bloody war crime.
I agree, Vampire the Masquerade easily a contender. I also say that about Bioshock and Deus Ex Mankind Divided or Deus Ex.
Heh, "bloody". I see what you did there.
That is correct. But we must forgive him since he is also stuck in the cycles of his guilt.
His reason for such is quite reasonable. The game is infested with bugs and although the community did solve most of them, the game itself didn't receive it from it's developers, which is unnaceptable.
@@ilucasz Brigand is C tier yet it is more broken, at least when I tried playing it which was a while ago.
My God, I loved Mankind Divided when I played through it for the first time in 2019, but it was so bittersweet after getting to the end knowing that it was cut short and even more so nowadays knowing that we are unlikley to see a sequal for a longgg time. One of my favourite gaames of all time , no other game made me feel like a part of the world like DXMD.
MD is better than HR hands down despite all the cuts made to it. It's just amazing
Yeah, but the DLC's are pretty darn good. Especially the prison escape one.
Havent watched it yet but I'm sure that everything Deu Sex related will be at the top.
As it should.
Except for that one game
@@mayonnaise3959 thank god they never made a mobile game…
@@TH3HY3N4 No, the new DE games are fucking overrated. If you want to play an imsim where you fight the illuminaty, just play hitman 3, it is 10 times better
Honestly I loved games with "do whatever you want" gameplay but didn't realize it was a Genre until I was recommended one of your vids a couple years ago! Immersive sims are amazing, and I will share this video to my friends to get them prepared for immersive sims.
It's not a genre. It's a design philosophy. It's weird that OP still doesn't get it. (I'm even more perplexed by this bogus tierlist that makes zero sense. Thief Deadly Shadows on top of Arx Fatalis? Are you kidding me?)
@Gg2 Hh I’m with ya there
Immersive Sim just means "good game" it has nothing to do with genres
I first played Thief the Dark Project two years ago and I think it deserves at least a C
this guy had deathloop above thief, what a fucking hack. deathloop is one of those worst games ive played this decade
@@holocade4908 theif sucks, worlds slowest rhythm game
@@eryiusnefarious You have ADHD, see a doctor
@@holocade4908 I agree but coming from someone with ADHD, Thief takes more than a modicum of patience and careful planning like Garret says.
its A.
Sending love to my fellow immersive sim enjoyers! It is tough to find new shit but hopefully we can get something awesome soon!
Meanwhile - gonna play some sweet Deus Ex 1 mods! Great vid!
I’m not sure if you guys heard of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It’s a wonderful fps rpg set in medieval bohemia. It’s got the AMAZING attention to detail and realism. It’s got cool swordfights and sneaking around the woods trying to poison bandit camps. Its missions are wonderful. It’s glitchy, but I love it.
Never considered it as an imsim but it might be one lol I had a good time w it though
Came to see what ranking EYE got and i'm just happy it didn't end up in the "meh" tier. Truly the roughest, yet gemmiest game from the list imho
If you play EYE now vs then, it's evolved from "oh an interesting rough game" to "flawed near-masterpiece". Particularly what they did to fix enemy AI helped it a bunch
E.Y.E is fuckin awesome and nowhere near as inaccessible as people make it out to be.
My only problem woth your list is how dirty you did dishonored 2. It's better than the main game, It's not only "the bigger the better" philosophy as you mentioned, It's biggest because they realised how to make it bigger while improving different aspects of it. Not to mention "A crack in the slab" and "Clockwork mansion" mission which are 2 of the best pieces of level designs I've ever seen in video games and imo, should automatically uplift the game to the highest tier list and to contenders pack you crested.
I'm still having a hard time trying to understand how a game lower in the tier list can be ranked above games which are above in the tier list lol
Eh it's fair, if you don't like stealth you can't rank it higher. Reminds me of a game I really liked but avoided due to it being trashed in a gaming magazine because the reviewer doesn't like puzzle games.
Which one was that, if I may inquire?
Your comment made me think of this:
I remember reading an ad for SPLATTERHOUSE back in the day. I distinctly remember thinking, "god, what a gross and garish looking game, not even its mother could love it!"
... ten~ years later... I bought and repaired an old 360. Played it, as I didn't have many other games.
And I absolutely loved it. Would replay it again, and buy a copy on PC if I could.
@@madmorgo6233 Ghost Trick, Phantom Detective.
@@Torqegood hm, I remember playing one of the Phoenix Wright games on DS (also Capcom, I think) and that was really good, tho I don't remember it well. At a cursory glance, the game looks cute! And it seems to have reviewed quite well since. :3
@@madmorgo6233 Yeah but I remember reading in a gaming magazine, maybe one game crazy sold, that it wasn't a very good game in general. The reviewer really did not like those sorts of games, and when I did play it I regretted not playing it sooner due to said review.
I was suprised not to see kingdom come deliverance its more Imm sim than bioshock imo
True immersive sims are bellow bioshock on this list. Wtf
Madman put the Bioshocks above Thief, System Shock, and Vampire Bloodlines. TBH Bioshock should hardly be on the list.
i wish this genre of game was more popular, it would be amazing and make shooters way more indepth
Unfortunately this genre is "studio killer". It takes a lot of time to make decent ImSim. AAA studios are low on patience.
@@DemienC. Pssh it's because people on the whole don't have the patience for games they have to "think" to play. Same goes with many rpgs. Why skyrim is even a game let alone considered a "good" game. Simple, streamlined, dumbed down.
I tend to equate SS1 and SS2 in terms of quality, though for different reasons. Bioshock I don't even see as an Immersive Sim, even something like Realms of the Haunting, the more recent RE games, or well, anything with an inventory (like STALKER) is closer to it IMO
Sorry but being a huge RE fan I need to ask, where do you see the immersive sim in RE?
@@OysterBoyo I don't, really. But immersive sims can also be defined as "opening drawers and taking stuff and being able to move things around" as well as all those inventory managements and many diferent aproaches to situations, of which RE7 for example, has a bit of. But Bioshock fails even in that minimal requirement. That I can0t even decide to keep or when to use most the items you find.
Botw too i think
@@BinaryDood that's not what immersive sim is
@@Pablojunior2006 "also". A sub-genre like that is not neately defined. If anything its more defined by exclusion. But to think that you can set what the "genre" is on stone is not right.
I rate this video in D tier. Many technical (editing) mistakes, bad or rushed script, and contradictory statements.
This man has surface level shallow casual takes. Seriously, ranking the most cookie cutter games that have some elements of immersive sims higher than games that have deeper systems and avenue for RPG alongside the immersive sim stuff? BioShock? higher than VtMB? Mankind Divided higher than Thief Gold? That game where you spend most of your time in the main game TALKING and listening with levels that have combat opportunities that only last two setpieces with only a few minutes of action and interactivity? This guy lives up to his Charlatan name.
Yes, yes, I'm aware this video got posted to reddit.
@@CharlatanWonder It's okay to admit you have bad taste and got filtered bro.
Brother it's a tier list about video games that's dictated by a cat wearing sunglasses
I usually agree with you but this list is hardly what I'd call definitive lol
yeah this is easily the worst video on the channel
@@holocade4908 doom eternal video was worse
Sorry mate, I love you. But with E.Y.E not being in the S tier I have to down-vote your video. Hope your legs are okay, though.
the OG system shock 1 may be C tier simply due to the controls (which were admittedly atrocious) and technological limitations at the time. But the sheer innovation and immersion that game had for 1994 was insane, and still holds up today. The enhanced edition pretty much addresses the biggest problem of the original, the controls, and to me, is an A tier game. I'd say an aggregated score of B would be more fair. But not my list, so whatevs. As far as theif is concerned....I do agree that it's a tad overrated. Played it when it was new in 1997, and never really picked it up again. However, I think it was pretty innovative in it's own right, C tier for me.
Even with the enhanced edition I couldn't properly finish chapter 1 of system shock 1. I have trouble with those old shooter corridor, the ceiling is so close to the floor, I literally get dizzy when I get lost in games like this.
I could go to some walkthrough and try to see how far I can get, but I seriously don't have a good time just exploring a level to see what I missed. And it's still one of those games where you can get completely lost, and you try to explore the whole freaking level to try to find the path you need.
who the fuck ranks a game TODAY as if they were playing a shittier version of it 20 years ago??? like cmon man guy should judge it as it is. That's like going to the tower of london in 2022 and complaining that shitting in a medieval toilet and wiping your ass with straw is uncomfortable.
Prey is my favorite game of all time. Its the first game I could play on a harder difficulty than normal because I play it so much. (I suck at games and I know it.) It was the first game I ever Platinumed and I'm literally only missing 1 achievement in Mooncrash. Happy to see it take the silver.
I know it’s been a year but do you still remember what achievement you missed. I really want to know for some reason.
@@hershloodu8925 It was the one for getting all the neuromods on all the characters. I have since gotten that final one.
Mooncrash was so hard for me. I loved it, but after the 100th run of trying to get everyone off the moon I gave up like a wimp.
This tastelessness proves that all further opinions should be discarded
I played the Dishonored games exactly like Thief. Quicksave/quickload to get the perfect stealth experience.
Also quicksave encourages me to try out different things and strategies. In a game without it I'll find a toolset that works for me and almost never switch.
Also that Bioshock is rated that high baffles me. They were fine but announced as the spiritual successor of System Shock 2, but in the end it was a standard shooter with an interesting setting. I had fun, but never finished it again after my first play through.
Yeah, I did my first playthrough like that as well. The first Dishonored lacks non-lethal tools a bit, but with some other games quicksave has definitely encouraged experimentation for me. Far Cry 2 is the main example that comes to mind.
@@burningsheep4473 The lack of Non-lethal tools made stealth low-chaos runs a lot harder, but also felt really satisfying when you were able to ghost a level. Of course, one of the big reasons the new non-lethal tools were needed was for the players who claim that the game punishes you for playing with the combat on high chaos. Its super fun in Dishonored 2 to run around using its added non-lethal tools to both do the combat and get low chaos, but it also makes the low-chaos run much easier in that regard. I think its a win-win for the most part, but I know some people can get anal about mechanics that make certain achievements easier.
This is the problem with poorly defined genres in my opinion. Why are Thief games even considered immersive sims and not just pure stealth games?
Thief Gold is better than most of these games in my opinion but obviously if you shoehorn it into the immersive sim label, it'll be weird to compare them. Nonetheless, ranking Thief Gold that low and putting it into "bad" tier is still absurdly hard to agree with, and does the game a disservice. It'd be ranking FPS games and putting Thief into "trash" tier lol. Which begs the question again, why are Thief games even considered immersive sims when they're quite obviously stealth games?
It's especially funny when you consider Dishonored is ranked so highly - and while maybe Dishonored is a good Immersive Sim due to the amount of options you have when it comes to how you play, its stealth mechanics in general are incredibly rudimentary compared to any of the Thief trilogy games.
Edit: So I watched the video in its entirety now and I think its a bit of a mess when it comes to consistency in a bunch of different ways, even when disregarding my many disagreements, I feel like the tiering was pretty messy and the contradicting rankings in both lists is confusing and poorly defined. Still enjoyed the video, and found it very interesting, though I suppose calling it "My" instead of "The" Absolutely Definitive Immersive Sim Tier List would be a lot better, since it is a perfectly fine personal list but way too messy in the way it is structured for any claims of it being "the" definitive list, imo. Also in my opinion bioshock games have no place on the list.
Looking forward to your Thief 1 video though, I assume I'm gonna disagree with many things but still want to hear your thoughts about it to see if I can at least understand your POV.
I would also question whether the Thief games are immersive sims in the first place and I'm also curious how he's going to justify labeling them as such.
I feel like if bio shock made the list
Then it's completely fair for me to say my favorite immersive Sim is turok dinosaur hunter
I’d say it somewhat is. It’s a faux sim or a hybrid.
I'd definitely put both Bioshocks in C tier, and Prey above Mankind Divided in the final ranking, but otherwise I basically agree. I also definitely don't think Thief is a D but that's debatable.
Well, really I'd put Shock 2 at number 1, but that's more of a personal bias than anything. Definitely not as accessible as some of the newer imsims.
That last bit is why I put System Shock 2 where it is: It's an amazing, groundbreaking game but it's over 20 years old which makes parts of it inaccessible without doing a couple hours of research or patching. It might have faired better if SS2-EE was out but Night Dive's got a lot on their plate right now.
Its a good list even though I disagree on Vampire.The Masquerade, and if we are including Bioshock you could probably squeeze in Fallout New Vegas.
The 3-D Fallouts are pretty clearly in the more traditional open world W-RPG mold. It's a sister genre, sure, but New Vegas and The Outer Worlds have a clear line of descent from the old isometric Fallouts, and from there all the way back to tabletop games that, say, Prey 2016 or Bioshock do not.
Serious questions tho: 1-why isn't Thief simulator in this list? 2-Why isn't Bioshock Infinite in this list? It is as much of an imsim as the first two, which is to say, not at all.
Infinite is hardly more than a corridor shooter. Hell, it hardly even feels like a Bioshock game sometimes.
Infinite has such a focus on gun fights and (admittedly tighter than BS1) gun play that it ceases to be a true immersive sim. You have a few Dedicated Walking Segments with 'sidequests' in them, but they're wholly divorced from more standard shoot-bangs, which are like 85 percent or more of the gameplay. It even feels different from either of the previous 'Shocks.
Hell, given Bioshock 2's linear, level-based focus I consider it's inclusion to be borderline a case of being grandfathered in -- and I like Bioshock 2 a great deal.
As for Thief simulator... I suspect he just forgot about it.
Edit: I am sure that at some point in development Bioshock Infinite was planned to be a more standard ImSim. But now it only counts in an alternate universe where it still plays like some of the earlier gameplay previews.
@@AdrianArmbruster Halo gives you more options to approach a fight than Bioshock, and having the option to not kill a mini boss is pretty meaningless in comparison to the admittedly limited stealth of System Shock 2. And even Duke Nukem gave you more to do between gun fights.
@@marreco6347 ... so that only proves that having a varied weapons sandbox or multiple approaches towards a level alone do not an Immersive Sim make. There's a very obvious shared line of descent through System Shock, Bioshock, and on to Prey '16 such that their gameplay loops are more similar to each other than they are to, say, Halo, or any given Fallout game even.
You can say that Bioshock was a bad imsim based on gameplay limitations, or because it's a dirty console game, or what have you. But it does meet most definitions of an immersive sim. And we know there's a fine line between imsim and 'fps with psychic powers', and that Bioshock 1 is still on the imsim side of, because Bioshock Infinite most certainly tripped and fell onto the FPS side of that line.
I skipped to end of the video because Im at work. My rankings and thoughts. I played all these games after 2012 so theres no nostalgia.
- Thief 2, is above Thief 1 for one tier
- Thief 2, is above DX1 for one tier
- DXHR is one or even two tiers below DX1 (DXHR was a step back in most compartments compared to 1 IMO)
- System shock 2 in either thief1 or thief2 tier
- Dark messiah is not as fun as YT montages make it seem
- Thief 2 has some of the best level design off all time, and even tho games as a whole have improved in last decade, quality of best T2 levels is yet to be achieved and this sensation cant be find anywhere
- Thief 1 did environmental storytelling, arguably better then Souls games did ~10 years later and Thief games dont get recognition for this feat.
- SWAT4 is 10/10 game
Tell me you are a zoomer, without telling me you are a zoomer.
“Deus Ex MD nr 1”
“Thief D tier”
"Definitive Immersive Sim Tier List" Missed fallout... All of them. And if bioshock qualifies then so does fallout new vegas
No it doesn’t. Fallout is a RPG not a immersive sim
I actually finished Thief 1 in 2021 and while I agree that it is MASSIVELY dated today, the game atmosphere, the lore, the sound design and artstyle made me fell in love with it. I wholeheartedly desagree that the game has bad pacing and missions, the only ones that I did not like were Thiefs Guild and The Mage Towers but they were added in GOLD Edition. From the oryginal set of missions I liked everything, there is also great variety becouse not everything is just a pure stealth gameplay but some of it pushes you to fight with the undead and other creatures and some of them is more of a search for tresures on ancient territory, kinda "Indiana Jones style" with stealth as the afterthought. But yes, I used quicksave A LOT and sometimes it was dull (mostly during the 2 missions I didnt like). I get why somebody may be frustraited with it and I still like the video.
Sorry for bad grammar, my english sucks.
I honestly agree with most of your more controversial picks (tho I honestly didn't hate the Thief reboot as much as I expected, and would have ranked Thief 2 and 3 a bit higher), but I really like how you used the tier list to judge the games standing on their own but used the rankings to judge how good of an immersive sim they are. Personally, I would put Prey 2017 as my #1 Immersive Sim, things like the mimic ability, the crew registry allowing you to track down nearly every crew member of Talos I, along with having one of my favorite intros to any video game just edge it slightly ahead of the other contenders in my eyes.
Mankind Divided is the only game that after beating it the first time, I immediately started and finished new game +.
Human Revolution is cool, but MD, imo, kicks it up a few notches. I really hope Eidos gets the green light to finish the Adam Jensen storyline.
You can spend so much time in Prague jumping around and sneaking into apartments, buying/selling/stealing gear etc, cruising through the cool sewers etc. Awesome game.
This dude put fuckin EYE and Dark Messiah in "bad" and fucking TRASHLOOP in Good.
Yea I'm thinking "unsubscribe."
Goodbye
I mean in terms of immersive sim mechanics yeah
@@wesleyeberly228 well is a “lighter” immersive sim for some mechanics but it still an authentic Arkane experience about player choices and freedom.
You can put EYE in D or in B and it would be right either way. What makes Divine Cybermancy special is reeeeally hard to grasp, definitely the most unique among all. I'm content with Charlatan not giving it a C, 'cause EYE is pretty fucking far from "Meh".
Dark Messiah is truly a D tier game tho
@@andresmoro5939 Its a D tier game as an immersive sim because to me it is absolutely not an immersive sim, same as bioshock. Having an fps game with couple of points to redistribute doesnt make it an immersive sim in my eyes. But if i rate it as what it is (fantasy FPS) I find real hard to see a better one in its own niche.
Thief is damn good and I played it only a year ago, so not affected by nostalgia. It has great mechanics that are not present in current games and they fit pretty good. Dishonored is too simplified successor of thief and cannot truly be compared to thief games by stealth. You have truly biased rating in this tier list
I love both franchises, so I don't see how Dishonored is "simplified"? The powers give the game tons of depth and possibilities.
I played Deus Ex GOTY edition (the first DE) because PC Gamer said it was very, very good. PC Gamer was correct. Because of that experience with DE, I went and got Thief... and I was disappointed. It is as this video describes it. Now maybe the problem is that I went from Deus Ex to Thief, instead of the other way around, but even accounting for age difference, I found "Thief" to be boring.
This list looks as if it was made "by zoomers for zoomers"... I guess one has to cater to their audience and stir a little bit of controversy as well. I'd encourage people to actually play these games for themselves and make up their own minds, otherwise they might miss out on a few absolute classics. After all, that's the immersive sim ethos - play it your own way.
I sort of agree, but all of the older games in this list have poor game feel by modern standards. I think Deus Ex deserved to be number 1 with Mankind Divided right behind it though.
Downvote, not because you did my boy E.Y.E. dirty, but because you didn't put it in its own 'E' tier.
Shoulda given it the E.Y.E Tier
>Dishonored Good
>Dark Messiah Bad
>unsubbed for good
Don't forget that awful placement of fucking Bioshlock over the best of the genre.
My complaint with DXHR is that nearly all of the choices are just an illusion. There are multiple routes to the objective, but the core of the game remains unchanged DESPITE what you choose. So all of the choices end up being somewhat local. Also, your character's final form will be *IDENTICAL* to every other DXHR player, because unlike the very first DX game, there are enough resources to max out your Augs.... AND, you don't have to choose one Aug versus another, the way that you did in the very first DX.... but instead, you're just choosing which order to increase them.
It's a minor nit-pick. But while I definitely enjoyed the last two Adam-Jenson DX games more than the first DX thanks to gaming hardware finally catching up to ambition... the reality is that setting aside the jankiness of the first one, the choices had more meaning than simply "do I sneak in through the roof, sneak in through the sewer, or talk my way through the front door?" Thankfully this was somewhat addressed in "Mankind Divided", because your choices have very real consequences outside of that map -- like if you _DON'T_ kill this one guy, then your friend *will* die. If you choose the mission that grants you the ability to save your boss, then a semi-innocent person will absolutely die. And bittersweet best-of-all, the choices were unavoidable, meaning that someone WILL die because of what you have chosen... you can't avoid that. If you played flawlessly, key people *will* die. I really appreciated that about DXMD.
Also, I saw a RUclips video about Skyrim some time ago, and it was titled "Skyrim: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep." The video was like an hour long, but once you read the title, there really was no reason to watch the video, since that title summed up the frustrating shallowness of Skyrim *flawlessly.* This is an attribute that no one will ever assign to the best three DX games (I never played the second one.)
I disagree with Deathloop. Glad to see you didnt put it in A but i genuinely think its really, really bad.
It bases itself on the time loop mechanic wich has been used to death and its so, mind numbingly, BORING.
The characters, apart from yourself and the girl that hunts you that i forgot the name of, are incredibly forgettable, and when the entire point is to see them over and over to finally kill them, thats not a good thing. It has an extremely scarce array of weapons, and are generic as fuck. It even reuses skills and skill animations from dishonored/dark messia like the kick and the teleport. I really cannot fathom what people like so much about that game. Its like Preys DLC, but way longer and without every reason you would like Preys DLC.
agree I got bored and just rushed through the story, brain dead enemies and running around in the same 4 levels over and over just got to me clearly a game designed for braindead shooter audience
@@brushonfire8800 did you play prey mooncrash? I think it’s something you should play
so, D tier is fun tier alongside A
I grew up with Splinter Cell and only played Thief about 5 years ago, yet it has overtaken my love of Splinter Cell. It's not nostalgia.
Spamming quicksaves/quickloads in Thief is a good way to make it a tedious slog. It's a game where you are completely underpowered, the basic enemies are a huge threat, you need heightened awareness to avoid them (hearing them ahead of time or just being observant in general) and you need to be completely immersed to navigate the levels. Save scumming makes it so you just bumble through a level without thinking about it and spam quickload anytime you walk into a guard. You are constantly getting punished for completely avoidable things and your brain is not in the game. Combine this with the fact that the levels are massive and require you to be somewhat immersed to navigate them and it's a recipe for pain. You can savescum through guards but you can't savescum through level design.
I must have played through it about the same time as you. For me it came down a lot to which level I was playing. It could be a bit frustrating at times (Thieves Guild argghh!), but some of those maps were very memorable. Especially the Bonehoard and the Mansion.
@@burningsheep4473 Yeah those levels are 10/10 and I never really appreciated them the first time through until I got a hang of the game.
*Invisible war opens a new instance to load new levels*
That sounds like something done to free up memory without having to manually free it in the engines code, when you do stuff like dynamic memory allocation you need to manually free that memory when you're done with it, unless the program itself closes, at which point all the memory for the program is freed and returned to the system.
That might be some sort of trick they used to make SURE the game freed up all the memory it was using in an attempt to make it easier to code, but I'm just kinda throwing darts at the wall with that one.
It's also NOT how I'd recommend anyone doing development in C or C++ do things, just remember to call 'free(the_thing_you_don't_need_now)' when you're done with something.
Invisible war was probably one of the worst "ports" I have ever seen. Well I don't know if it's a port but it does feel like a janky ass console port. I was so hyped for that game as I loves the first one. The game ran awful and it was very prone to crashes. There's a lot of stuff in that game that makes you scratch your head.
Now I'm curious about how you feel about immersive sim-lites, like Blackout Club. Elements of em, but not quite actually immersive sims.
What else would you call a sim-lite? I never knew they even existed.
@@katherine2596 idk, I'm no expert. It's just assumption based on interactivity and how you can go about your goals. Blackout Club is good for that due to different perks and branching routes throughout the map. Golden Light and Oneiro have multiple elements of this since they allow a lot of player freedom (destroy walls and be destructive, be meticulous, etc).
It's just the best descriptor I could think of
Absolute fucking room temperature iq takes (thats room temperature celsius)
Im so happy i gave you this idea and you went with it!
I really think you should do more like these to help the channel and algorithm.
I def need to make my own list and post it here.
I really think a video where you define what an imp sim and all the terminology is/are will help more people get in the channel and understand this content better.
he should never do a vid like this again, one of his worst by far
@@holocade4908 only salty ppl think that lol so imma assume that one of your fav games got a shit tier. i mean so did mine but i still like this video cuz it’s unapologetically ballsy
So so glad to see Prey at number 2. Arkane's modern games were my introduction to immersive sims, and I loved Dishonored and Dishonored 2, but when I played Prey, my thoughts and perceptions of what a video game is and the limits of a player in the world were just blown away. And it was super accessible, really easy to get into, the controls are really intuitive, the powers and weapons are so cool, the story is awesome, the level design is absolutely amazing, and it's so easy to just get sucked into the gameplay loop and want to do everything. Absolutely love Prey, can't praise it enough.
(The ending was kind of lame, but as I've sat with it for more time, I've come to really appreciate that the game kind of tells you what the final plot twist is right at the beginning)
Bioshock is a bare bones immersive sim. It's an immsim that has been simplified for the average player. And made to be more fast paced. Bioshock Infinite however isn't an immersive sim. It doesn't focus on the environment much and It's more of a generic war shooter with a twist and an decent story.
Same with Deathloop, which is just an adventure FPS.
If anyone happens to see this in the next day or 2, there's a huge discount on the Deus ex series bundle, you get the complete, definitive versions of these games for like $10 total
I'm pretty sure that "S rank" is only a thing in Japanese *video games,* not their school system.
I would be surprised if it's not just a a Hideki Kamya thing.
Wouldn't know about japanese games, but Code S is the highest in GSL (korean Starcraft 2 tournament).
I... what? I'm just confused. Thief in D tier and Human Revolution in A. Hell, I played HR before Thief and I love Thief more. Sure it isn't A tier and Thief 2 is far better, but for you to say Thief sucks for making you watch for guard patterns while excusing HR's terrible bosses that completely broke the genre upon release is just confusing.
If only bosses were the biggest problem of HR... It's not even the biggest. I love HR but the game is much shorter than OG DX, the music is inferior, the character almost doesn't improve with the upgrades across the game, technically it was very dated even for it's time, the optimization is horrible I can't hold 120 FPS all the time even with my killer rig because of horrible CPU utilization, and the entire endgame is ridiculous. It has a great atmosphere and solid quests, especially sidequests, and the writing is really good, but the game is not an A tier in my books, B tier is more likely.
As for Thief, I played it quite recently, I really enjoyed it but it has aged very badly (a lot of bugs and all despite me locking the framerate to 60 and using all the fanpatches) and missions are very unequal. However D tier is absolutely ridiculous, C at very worst.
Some more feedback:
- If you do want to play DXIW or T3, for God's sake use John P's texture overhauls if nothing else.
- For VTMB, don't forget that it was the first third-party game to use the Source engine, was made concurrently with Half-Life 2, and didn't really get enough support from Valve (because they were building the damn thing themselves). Considering Troika's only other game (Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura), I truly weep for the studio's closure.
- You missed "Consortium." Not the Tower sequel, which I have no idea if they'll ever finish, but the original Consortium.
@@starless267 Oh right. My bad.
@@Archangelm127 Im currently playing VTMB and to make it accessible it was a simple fix. So i dont see why its ok. As an immersive sim its immersive. Theres just some problems with the last half i.e the sewer level and the hunters level, so far.
In terms of the Faux Sims, I would've included The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (accessible only in physical form legally now in the remaster or original). It has the atmosphere of an Immersive Sim, the options to approach some combat situations in stealth, melee, or gunfight. It's linear while feeling open with a few branching paths. It's probably a better version of Baby's First Im Sim than Bioshock is but Riddick is really inaccessible today due to Atari leaving the IP in limbo and Starbreeze devs moving onto Machine Games.
Breath Of the Wild really should have been included if you include Bioshock. Just the weather, the enemy and animal AI and the runes make it more of a fauxsim than Bioshock.
You could even argue the original Zelda was one of several major inspirations for Immersive Sims whether directly or just indirectly. I agree the Deus Ex games are the embodiment and pinnacle of what being an Immersive Sim is and Breath Of the Wild is far more like the Deus Ex games than Bioshock is.
Botw had an inventory system too
this is kindof my thoughts. what exactly is an immersive sim? he mentions the emergent gameplay...but theres lots of games that do that.. not here. so, does he think that firstperson/third person closed environment is needed? is GTA not an immersive sim? and why not? Botw. KENSHI?
whats the differance between a sandbox sim and immersive sim?
GTA mission structure is too rigid to classify as one. There's only one right way to complete them, which reminds you that you're in a game.
@@Cassandra112 I would definitely not call Breath Of the Wild a true immersive sim.
The main things immersive sims seem to need to have according to fans and devs are
- A very high level of emergence through complex systems like weather, weight or elemental interactions, which BOW has.
- Simulate complex AI situations (enemies, wildlife, NPC routines and adaption to roadblocks that interfere with that routine etc.) which BOW has.
- Open ended level design and multiple separate 'intended' and 'unintended' routes or solutions, which BOW has in a way other open world games rarely do. Like Hyrule castle is textbook immersive sim level design with how many viable entry ways there are.
- Allows for multiple playstyles (guns/bow blazing, melee, stealth, environmental manipulation etc.) which BOW has.
- Allows the player a great level of choice in what to do first or, sometimes, to ignore entirely, which BOW allows.
- A way to meaningfully influence the narrative with player choices, which BOW doesn't really do. I think this holds it back to being just a fauxsim or hybrid-immersive sim.
I was never asking for this, but i'm glad to see it
The genre deserves a better ranking than this.
I hope you take a gander at Gloomwood when you decide to come back to this list
Charlatan, I really like your stuff, but your take on Thief tDP is atrocious
Darn you, Charlatan.
Because of all your vids, I realized how limited more mainstream games are limited, like RDR2.
Jokes aside, thank you for your good vids!
Red dead 2 treats the player like a child
Thief is a funny one - I remember playing the first one... on Mac, of all systems, if I'm not mistaken (or maybe on the very first PC we had) when I was about 10 years old. I was absolute crap at playing it, didn't really understand I was supposed to sneak so I tried to fight and kill stuf, and thus never got too far, but... THE ATMOSPHERE... Was insanely captivating. So, when I was about 22, I still remembered it, and now I was sufficiently not dumb to realize you're supposed to be... A THIEF, as opposed to a murderer, so I went back to it and tried it... and concluded that... yeah, it's kind of crap, gameplay-wise. But I didn't want to just give up on it, so I got the newest one at the time - Deadly Shadows... and I enjoyed it very much.
Bioshock is not a funny one - I hate it, hate it, hate it. I played System Shock 2 and loved every polygon of it, and then was hyped for Bioshock, and then when it came out, I found out I hate it. Out of principle, for kinda hijacking the "Shock" brand/franchise, and derailing/ruining it, as well as in practice, for being a crap shooter. The art style, and the "would you kindly" twist are literally the only two good things about ALL OF bioshock. Including Infinite. Oh, we're including infinite too... Okay, it's ending story twist(s), about the lighthouses, and Booker dying... those were cool (imo) too. But that's about it. And if your series containing 3+ games literally only has "art style and two plot twists" going for it... that's a failed series in my book.
Bioshock is not even an immersive sim, the game is too linear, it has cool designs tho
This video is compelling evidence that just because you are physically capable of making a video doesnt mean that you should.
Never have I ever seen someone pour milk into the cereal box, what a sight lol
>ranking mankind divided over Original Deus Ex 💀
I will admit Mankind Divided is good and definite improvement over HR, but man even then it's still lacking compared to original Deus Ex in terms of immersive sim choices
My guy in dx1 you can’t even play non lethal all the way you are forced to kill in that game at points unlike MD
@@MILDMONSTER1234 Only one truly necessary kill is Agent Navarra, others can be skipped.
I'm sorry to disappoint ya but one forced kill doesn't ruin original Deus Ex level design and immersive sim creativity. Again not to say MD is bad, it did take HR and improved on it but it just doesn't compare to OG level design.
No hitman games smh. Metal gear solid 5 is also a huge omission. Those games provide more emergent gameplay, player choice and interactive elements than many games on this list
I guess that depends how you define immersive sims. Didnt know Prey was one or a good game
I actually played Thief 1 last year and loved it. And I don't have any nostalgia gogles - it was my first time. Not the first time I desagree with the Charlatan, but I love his work, and watch even if I disagree. Good job, man!
I did first playthroughs of System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Thief Gold in recent years and Thief was the one I easily liked the most. Thief 2 on the other hand... I couldn't really get into it unfortunately.
@burningsheep4473 same here with Thief 2, I think the atmosphere and level variation was lacking. It just feels completely different even though it's the same engine and a direct sequel
23:53 with their recent announcement, they could take FFVII Remake's backgrounds and make NFTs out of them, especially the end-game one where Barret unironically tells Cloud "never forget this view". 😂
IMO people generally overrate a game that "modernizes" or streamlines mechanics. Controls and certain features are made in the context of their own part of game development history, so comparing controls from 90's and early 00's games to games post 2010 shouldn't be used to say that the newer game does the mechanic better, it's the same but with the benefit of the industry developing for many more years as well so it's not just the game making an improvement.
A game like Prey is rated so high because so many people rave and adore the games mechanics and systems, but these are from previous games and just adjusted, not truly and fully reinvented or iterated on. A lot of people also enjoy Talos I as a setting, but it often struggles to have a defining trait that makes it turn into as big of a character that settings from previous imsim games had. I think it's great as a modern take of the "classic" imsim, but where does it have its "a man chooses, a slave obeys" moment, or something similar to seeing SHODAN and hearing her talk to you in System Shock 2? Does the game stun you with moments of its unique design and character or because you've spent hours trying to find a solution or looking for crafting materials.
Have you ever considered doing a video on Kingdom Come Deliverance? I honestly consider it as at least a fauxsim, and also one of my favourite games. Plus, it has an actual charlatan in the game
>Puts Thief the dark project in garbage tier
>Takes a low blow at civvie with 1/3 of subscribers while civvie takes no sponsors, only programmed ad cuts
>chills sponsors
Yup, this goes into my cringe compilation.
Bruh I was commending civvie for sticking it out despite a video not working with his formula. You gotta chill.
@@CharlatanWonder Civvie, however, finds it hard to get into other immersive sims.
He said playing System Shock and Ultima Underworld felt like playing operating systems while he was filtered by the first level of Deus Ex.
I can respect that. A lot of folks on the ImSim scene sometimes forget that most ImSims are complicated at best and outright obtuse sometimes. That's why accessibility was a factor in the tiering.
Conversely, I can't play fast-paced boomer shooters to save my life (see doom eternal video). I guess it's all a matter of your skillset.
Prey has been in my backlog for awhile and if you're saying it's a better Im-Sim than Dishonored, I'll give it a go now to see if I agree.
Well i would never think that i would love Prey as much or more than Dishonored because i'm a massive stealth guy, but seriously Prey is incredible in terms of player agency, gameplay possibility, choices and most of all level design.
Me be like. Jumps immediately to the end of the video. Sees E.Y.E in the BAD Tier. Closes.
Based
I think Prey came should have been #1, and Deus Ex #2. But your list is still good. I also feel that there is still so much potential for Immersive Sim games, and we have not seen that potential yet.