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.
Unblock Me taught me that even if you don’t see the solution yet, moving the pieces in the way that they can move will often illustrate the correct path.
Multiplayer games taught me that I generally dislike other people.
I tried DOTA once. Once was enough.
I’ve been on a decade long hiatus from multiplayer aspect of games - aside from games I was with people I knew in RL.
I only occasionally get a twinge for the comraderie of some epic raid in an MMO, or tight unspoken squad tactics where everyone just does their job as expected (not necessarily well lol) and came out on top.
But really, I don’t have the time to commit to either of those.
Then I hear about my friend in GW2 (RL friend) who is going through some toxic guild BS and I don’t miss it.
I can play on my own time, and I can play with friends, but god help me I HATE playing on the server’s time. I can kinda do it with Pokemon Go, but that’s one you can play as casually or as hardcore as you like since you’re mostly playing for yourself after a point.
Unironically old school runescape. Playing it for years ingrained the concept of efficiency into me. Now I’m able to do well in games where mechanically I’m still shit because I’m constantly trying to use my time as efficiently as possible.
It also taught me how to type (albeit not 100% correctly because I use my right pointer finger to hit the space bar rather than my thumb)
Bayonetta, and Burnout 3. I got really good reflexes and timing.
And way way back when I was super absorbed playing Manhunt I got uncannily good at spotting dark shadows at night to hide in.
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.
Well, I can tell you this. I grew up playing Mega Man. People say those games are hard, but I have them all memorized, so they’re all pretty easy for me.
Sometimes I play platformers that people consider hard, and I’m just disappointed by how mind-numbingly easy they are. Celeste is one example. I kept thinking, surely it must get harder. Maybe when I do the B sides. Surely there must be at least one part I struggle on. There never was. I never found anything hard about the game. The story was amazing, though.
So anyway, my answer is Mega Man. Not Mega Man X. Those games are amazing - quite possibly my favorite platformers of all time - but they’re too easy to fit into this category. The classic, 8-bit mega Man games from the NES (Mega Man 2 excluded. That one is also too easy).
The last of us multiplayer made me a better sniper. Smash bros amplified my reaction time. And halo improved my hand eye coordination with grenades.
StarCraft II made transitioning to League of Legends easy. I also played a lot of Kovaaks which made my aim generally better in FPS games and it helps with osu! too.
Counter Strike: raw aim, how to outsmart opponents, perfect practice makes perfect and if you put enough hours into anything and do it correctly/good, then you can get good at almost anything.
Path of Exile: Taught me about being efficient. If you’re repeating the same action 10,000 times, if you can cut even 1 second off each time you do that action, it adds up over time to a significant amount. And then you can try and cut another 2 seconds off…then another second.
It took me 1038 hours to get out of silver in csgo. It took me 10hrs to get to DMG, one day something just clicked.
Knowing the maps puts you at such an advantage, those hours add up
TF1, Q3 arena - at least for multiplayer.
If you think Super Meat Boy is hard oh boy do I have one for you.
The End Is Nigh is also an Edmund McMullen platformer, but with a much higher emphasis on precision. The game is technically short, but there are just so many easy ways to die that you have to get good to beat it.
It also has a little modding community that has produced some even more nightmarish levels to go along with it.
Crusader Kings reminded me that losing can be fun
- Dwarf Fortress has entered the chat.
Oh man, that brings back memories. All my Dwarf Fortress games were horrific dystopias. Full-on police states optimized for the production and export of lead children’s toys (they are enchanted by our more ethical works).
Then new unskilled arrivals would wait in a room with retractable spikes before they met anyone. It was someone’s job to pull a lever all day. Then the clothes would be exported (they are enchanted by our more ethical works).
Everyone left was either in the army or a skilled worker confined to a 2x2 room containing a bed, table, chair, and statue of the mayor. The doors locked from the outside.
Newer versions have made this strategy less productive I think – I haven’t really kept up. At the time a single death could send your fortress into a fatal spiral of depression and it worked pretty well though.
Nothing like castrating half of the family tree because of that one time your brother tried to break up your empire!
You may have misread my post. I said losing the game. What you’re describing is clearly winning the game :p
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
Hades. I used to hate hard games. Hades taught me to get good.
I stll hate hard games, luckily Hades is not among them.
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. 
Oh fuck, I used to play Tribes Ascend. Still so sad that game got axed and we never got a follow up. I never thought about it that way, but I think I’d agree. Tribes is at once slow and fast since you can ski at incredible speeds, but shooting in that game is more about preparing and positioning for a few really good shots.
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
