For example, I am terrible at Super Meat Boy, but just playing it has really improved how I play platformers and games that need faster imputs overall.
Bethesda games taught me to save at every opportunity
quicksave
Literally every couple steps.
Sorry in advance to people who hate talking about it but Dark Souls is a very paradoxical experience It can:
- Help you learn patience and awareness
- Help you learn not to stress over losses
- Help you learn that people have different experiences of enjoyment and understand your scope of interest in games.
I think that only works if you already have that in the first place though (and you already have enough mechanical skill to get anywhere in those games fast enough to get hooked)
Have made the mistake of introducing people who don’t really play videogames to games like Celeste before thinking it’ll help them improve but it only ends in frustration
Those first two are so true. I got around to Elden Ring recently, and I realized that losses I’ve taken and not sweated and how meticulously and carefully I approach each situation have been influenced by all the games that came before. I’m (relatively) kicking the crap out of it because I know how to play Souls games now because the series has been teaching me these exact things all along. I’ve offed quite a few bosses first try, and damn it feels good. It’s such a great series for giving you a sense of power through perseverance and awareness, rather than just grinding up the XP to trivialize everything like most other RPGs. Miyazaki really did strike gold with the formula. I hope there are way more Souls games coming in the future.
getting incredibly good at Quake back in the day made me good at basically any first person shooter game that you put in front of me
Also, the first time using a mouse for look/steer-ing. Before that (e.g. Doom 1/2 etc.) you just used the arrow keys.
Sekiro
Many games come down to finding some unbreakable combo of buttons or abilities and when you have that figured out you steamroll the game. To successfully finish Sekiro, you must be patient. Learn when to let your enemy attack, so that they leave themselves open or provide you with a chance to parry.
There’s no leveling up to get so strong you can thrash any boss, like in other souls games. You just have to learn the game mechanics and get good.
Sekiro really is the “Get Gud” of FromSoft games
This is admittedly kind of an oddball interpretation of “better gamer”, but my personal take on that is being able to enjoy games more, as opposed to any measure of skill in playing them (and also understanding that there’s a lot of overlap there, but humor me for a sec :P).
Perspective: currently in my mid 30s, peak gaming for my childhood was competitive shit like the N64’s Smash Bros (which is the best Smash Bros. Fite meh.) or 007; fast forward to some racing type games, COD… the thing those all have in common was that the fun was in defeating your opponent, and any aspect of the game that wasn’t competitive just kinda automatically felt not fun. Nor was getting stuck in a losing streak from playing against people better than me; or winning streak from playing against people who weren’t challenging to beat. The window of potential to actually have ‘fun’ was shockingly narrow.
The game that kinda pulled me out of that was Halo CE. Right out the gate, it looked like any other shooter, and it had a rapidly growing community and the competitive elements that caught my initial attention. Fire it up, and it IMMEDIATELY stood out as something special. Up to that point, videogame music was pretty much exclusively simple digital sounding jingles, so the Halo CE login screen music hit like a fucking truck. I start up the campaign, and experience another first: the story had me hooked. Campaigns in shooters only ever felt like a tutorial you have to sit through to not be terrible in multiplayer, but Halo CE was like a full-blown movie, with each scene supported by a literal symphony.
It made me look at games differently - things like Zelda had flown under my radar, cuz what’s the point if there’s no multiplayer?? Not even score to compare?? Got myself a copy of OOC, and “…oh, that’s why.”
So, long story short, Halo CE was my gateway drug into RPGs.
More in tune with OP’s question though, it kinda yanked off the blinders that stopped me from fully enjoying parts of some games, or entire genres of games.
…and that whole spiel is ofc relative to my subjective experience to the gaming industry circa …idk, 1995+? So, Halo CE probably won’t hit the same against today’s gaming industry: but keep an eye out for games that blend elements you know you enjoy with material you haven’t really dabbled into - you could unlock an entire new genre of awesome experiences.
I’m in the same boat. I had a PS1 when I was a kid and didn’t rediscover video games until a few years ago in my early 30s. I definitely appreciate games more as a form of self expression as an adult.
I definitely appreciate games more as a form of self expression
If Enderal isn’t already on your radar, I can’t give that game a high enough recommendation.
Basically an indie dev crew broke skyrim down to its most basic assets, then rebuilt a completely new game using them. AND IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD. Completely new lore / game universe (has nothing at all to do with elder scrolls, tamriel, etc), new voice acting, terrain, music, you name it.
Steers away from common story tropes to the point that there isn’t really an antagonist in the traditional sense - but it uses concepts, emotions, philosophies, etc as the driving force for the main story line and some of the larger quest chains.
This game is an absolute passion project by the devs, which is something we don’t see often now-a-days.
Note: link above is to the version that uses Skyrim SE’s assets (the 2016 re-release). If you have the original version of skyrim, use this link instead. If you own a different version of Skyrim, there might be a compatible version of Enderal here: https://sureai.net/games/enderal/
Fair warning: the children NPC voice acting is even worse than the kids in Skyrim. The TAI (toggle AI) command can shut them up without breaking them.
Fair warning 2: they redid combat. The OP shit in Skyrim, like the sneaky archer build, will get your ass beat to a pulp in Enderal. Make a save when you get to the point where you can spend some talent points, experiment with a few styles, and go from there.
Hades. I used to hate hard games. Hades taught me to get good.
WoW increased my typing speed and accuracy as without voip, its essential to communicate effectively.
+1 for wow for typing and also it was the game that taught me to think about the enemy’s habilities and how my abilities should be used in a particular way effectively against them.
Same. I wouldn’t stop talking during combat so I was typing full sentences in that one second global cooldown.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (PS2).
You either learned, or you quitted.
I have two answers.
First, my general reflexes, situational awareness in games etc. were strongly improved thanks to Doom Eternal. The game keeps you stressed and engaged the whole time (especially on the harder difficulties) and you have to be very quick. It was the first time I needed custom keybindings to be fast enough to solve some sections. Switching between 8 weapons, sometimes after single shots, is something you have to get used to, but it’s incredibly fun!
Second, specifically for 6DoF navigation, Outer Wilds was incredible. When I started I could barely make the spaceship go anywhere without exploding, now I feel I could be pretty good at a 6DoF racing game!
Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament. In my opinion, these are still two of the greatest games of all time. You don’t get better because your character or weapon is better. You get better because you put in the practice. you improve your reflexes. You learn the arena. Every player starts every match on an even playing field. Every frag feels like an accomplishment.
I appreciate that modern shooters are trying to do something different with every iteration. But stuff like call of duty, overwatch, or destiny never captures that magic. In many ways, they felt more like slot machines.
Halo got close, but I always felt it was too slow. And also, I felt Tribes was the better series for online play that felt similar. 
Have you tried Diabotical
I did. I feel like it overpromised it underdelivered. Mostly, I’m not too thrilled about the character and weapon designs. There’s a lot of UI elements that were taken right from Overwatch. 
It’s certainly not bad. Just not what I crave.
Totally fair, the movement and customizable UI is great, but yes, some other areas were not so great. And the player base is just not big enough.
Yeah. I think there’s a lot of room for a Arena FPS Revival, especially for console players who are sick of the monetization and slot-machine point mechanics from games like Call of Duty.
I think the Quake 2 Remaster sales and rave reviews say plenty to that. There’s decent online play too.
Quake 3 Remaster could be perfect for the 25 year anniversary next year.
But who knows.
I would love quake 3 remastered, that was so much fun back in the day
Red Dead Redemption 2 taught me once again to slow down and take all the time I want with these huge games. I’ve saved a ton of money since.
In relation to skill, playing a ton of the original Halo on Xbox at my friend’s house while being only a PlayStation owner got me really good at using arbitrary controls.
Dark Souls, don’t give up skeleton, rethink your strategy and learn what’s being thrown at you, you’ll get through it.
With all due respect, while I loved the setting if Dark Souls, after I played 50 hours, I got not a tiny bit better and still kept dying at any point and never being able to beat bosses. I had a friend who had 1000s of dark souls hours tell me hints but it didn’t help . At the end I was so demotivated that I just quit playing.
I still feel bad, I’d love to experience that game, but it was beyond frustrating to me.
Not every game is for everyone, and that’s okay!
I bought demons souls, could hardly pass the first level, and put it down.
I bought dark souls when it came out, and again, played a bit, didn’t get it, and put it on the shelf.
Dark souls 2, bloodborne, and darks souls 3, all the same story. I knew they were amazing games, I just didn’t get it.
Then on some reddit post someone talked about summoning a player to help, and the summon charged into the boss fight naked with only a katana like a freaking jedi.
Every time I had played the games, I was slow, with heavy armour, hiding behind a shield.
I put in dark souls 3, and went super light weight with a fast sword, and something just clicked.
Dark souls 2, it was the twin blade, dark souls one, a katana.
While I haven’t platinumed them all like my girlfriend has, I have beaten all the main souls games except bloodborn and Sekiro with a variety of builds.
Elden Ring was the first one we both got to play new together, and our first play through was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
I highly suggest going back to dark souls one and trying out the different styles. Magic, pyromancy, heavy weapons, fast and light, etc.
There is a really good chance one style will click, and the whole series of amazing games will open up for you.
Elden Ring.
I didn’t love the learning/difficulty curve of Soulsborne games until this one, but it got its hooks in me hard.
I usually spammed most boss fights and played everything a certain way, but here I had to learn the boss’s moves and dodge, parry and use power ups to bring them down.
Worth it. While frustrating, it made me return to other genres and play them again but differently. Hitman, sniper elite, roguelites/likes, anything that rewards patience, really. These now had a whole new facet I didn’t see before, or I did and I was applying it to these games.
I’ve since tried other soulsborne games, and while I now appreciate the difficulty and find them a lot more fun, the exploration and world of Elden Ring was the difference maker for me. It was being able to forge my own path and choose my challenges.
Similar answer and probably cliché, but for me it was the first Dark Souls. I finally played it about 2 years ago after avoiding it for a long time and thinking it wasn’t my thing. I thought I hated games that didn’t allow animation cancelling because they weren’t “responsive”. If I hadn’t heard so many people insist it’s great I would have given up because the character doesn’t react to every wild button mash.
Boy was I wrong. Once I understood the combat it was like Zelda (my OG favorite franchise) but better. And brutal. Playing through it subsequently made Elden Ring much easier than it probably would’ve been otherwise. Exploring every nook and cranny and overleveling helped a bit too I’m sure.
On PC with mods for upgraded resolution and textures (and dsfix) DS1 was a quite good experience. There’s still a bit too much BS like hidden paths and even NPCs that are way too obscure, and the game falls apart near the end, but learning to navigate the platforms of Blighttown and besting all the different bosses sharpened my skills like nothing had in ages.
Portal was my first FPS on a computer. Got me to practice using mouse and keyboard and now I can’t imagine playing an FPS with a controller
Not that it’s much of a benefit today as RTS games are barely nonexistent. But StarCraft 2 taught me all about macro management. Spending them resources and building an economy.
