Feel free to replace “friends” with “anyone you know in real life” or even online groups you trust or are close with.
“They”:
and my own personal experience; most games I have bought in the past 10 years have been off of recommendations from r/gamingsuggestions before Reddit went to crap and Lemmy came into existence; and even moreso when it is a personal friend recommending things to me.
Mods, feel free to nuke if this feels too close to advertising or better-suited for [email protected] (my own community); I mean it more as a discussion piece but I don’t run the place.
EDIT: The “not” in the title is optional; I’m asking about both successful and failed recommendations.
Gris is a hard game to recommend because, while it is a game, it doesn’t really do anything particularly unusual for a game. The platforming is passable and there really isn’t a narrative in the sense of the game telling you what is happening. If you go into it expecting a game it will be disappointing or at least just ok.
Instead, if you go into it expecting a visual and audio journey through the emotional prossessing of grief, and growing to move forward, it is incredible. Especially if you happen to play it while working through your own grief.
People who recommend it need to provide a caveat that it is less the game mechanics and more the emotional journey.