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Industry Folks Talk Underrated Games
A topic we've touched on several times in the past here is discussed in the answers to another of Gamasutra's Questions of the week. Underrated games are the order of the day. From the article: "Natural Selection by Unknown Worlds is an outstanding work combining FPS action and RTS strategy elements. NS has gained a great following, but it has been overshadowed by success of Counter-Strike. The game play of NS naturally draws players to work together. I have always found the teamwork in NS better than most other FPS network games. The variety of classes in Aliens and Marines provides a lot of depth of play to experience. The RTS elements in the game were beautifully put together." I've always been partial to Shiny's Sacrifice , a weird little First Person RTS title where you play a mage that summons all of your units. Any titles that you think didn't get the attention they deserved?
Ico for the PS2. This was a great game and had a very moving ending.
Another game that may have gotten press back when it was going strong but kinda fell off the face of the Earth was Descent. I remember playing Descent 2 online a lot. It's a shame that it kinda died.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Clive Barker's Undying - great reviews everywhere, terrible sales.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yeah, Natural Selection is one of my top 10 games. And it's free. That's just crazy. Very few games have the same mix of teamwork and action.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
Two online games that stick out for me are Legacy Online and A Tale In the Desert.
Legacy Online is no longer in existence, but basically imagine the flipside to SimCity. You are a company that builds the housing in the residential zoned areas, builds the stores in the commercial areas, and builds the factories to supply your stores in industrial areas. It was very interesting, and if I were teaching an economics class, playing this game would have been required material. It made you understand a lot of market concepts, such as your company actually wanting the minimum wage to be higher because it gave your customers more cash to spend at your stores. You couldn't just raise wages on your own, because the effect of just one company was next to nothing, so it just raised your costs. Very interesting stuff.
ATITD is a non-combat MMORPG. If you play games to "pwnxxorz n00bz," it may or may not be for you. But if you prefer PvE, it has a free trial and it's worth a try. You only need to play it for a few hours to realize that the crafting systems you herald from WoW or other MMORPGs are pure crap with no thought put into them.
I refuse to believe Battlezone ever existed. I mean, the thing came out in the dark ages of 1998 and that thing had everything. RTSing and FPSing and ninjaing and hovertank racing and Cold War cliches. Nope, such a great concept obviously never existed.
Or maybe it did exist, it was just that it was too far ahead of its time and most people just forgot about it.
Oh, wait, it did exist, I have the game box and manual and CD and all other stuff right here. ::blows dust off the box:: Hmm, now if only I had Windows around to try this one out, maybe I could install it on QEMU... ::browses through the computer part drawers and can only find a Windows 95 OEM CD:: No wait, I cannot touch this artifact of evil, looks like the verification has to be done later!
Rez- hypnotic shooter that's amazing. welcome to synaesthesia
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
First, it looked really bad. No backgrounds for battle scenes, no pseudo-3D dungeons, everything looked ugly and indistinctive. It's hard to believe it ran on a far more powerful system, since it looks like it's the other way around. And the music was not memorable, except in the sense that, after so many years, I still remember how bad it was. And it was not fun to play: very slow-paced, leveling up took too long, all labyrinths were too confusing.
Now, the story, its supposed strong point. You get home, and find a complete stranger who says something like "d00d your a her0! I wanna j0in ur te4m!!1 And it happens just how many times? Give me a fuckin' break here.
After we discard the ex machina freaks, we are left with only three somewhat interesting characters - Rolf, Nei, and Lutz. All of them have potential, there is some background plot for all of them, but none is properly developed.
Rolf is a descendant of Alis. This is not explored. As a child, he was the sole survivor of the forged accident that was Mother Brain's excuse to ban space travel. This is not explored. He later found and sort of adopted Nei, a mysterious, artificially engineered human/beast hybrid. Beyond the fight against Neifirst, this is not explored. Lutz is the bearer of the wisdom and knowledge of many generations. This is not explored either. Also, he has a story but displays no personality.
Lastly, the characters just don't display emotions. Even in the previous game there was some emotion, but not here. The most disturbing example... In the context of the game, cloning can be seen as giving someone a new life, sort of a resurrection. But after the Neifirst event, the ugly lady at the cloning station says she is no longer allowed to clone Nei... which causes absolutely no reaction from any party member. If the game's plot developement was better, they could have tried something - bribery, threats, any emotional reaction, especially from Rolf. "So, you're saying you could bring back from the dead the woman I love, but will not because of some bureaucracy crap?" Yeah, that's it. "Oh, ok then, bye."
Maybe Phantasy Star II was regarded as good back then... after all, people didn't know many RPGs and had nothing to compare. But now it is clear that the game's flaws are much bigger than its qualities.
Circumcision is child abuse.
One of my all-time favorite games is The Longest Journey. It's a wonderful story/adventure game. I used a walkthrough to get past some of the nastier puzzles (there are some pretty obscure ones), and I still felt like I got 10x my money's worth out of it. Long, intricate plot, good graphics, super characters, top-notch conversations, great voicing. There are long conversations you can have with some of your neighbors that have no real bearing on the game whatsoever... they're just background. But even the background 'throwaway' stuff has incredible texture to it.
Not even Grim Fandango was quite as good as TLJ.
They're working on a sequel, Dreamfall. It'll be a preorder for sure.
I don't know if it's really underrated, but I hardly ever see anyone mention it. I'm not sure it sold all that well. It's really a shame... what a wonderful experience it was. A great, great ride from a master storyteller.
Just wanted to add that The Fallout series was my all time favorites. Fallout, fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics.
:)
The team from Fallout went on to make another of my favorites, Arcanum. Same style and more character customization.
Thanks for the link, I will check it out when I get a chance
- my $.02? - you can't have it...it's all I have!!