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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?
...Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon Infinity. You know, back from before Bungie became Microsoft.
If you want to find underground or indie games, I'd recommend sites like
http://www.gametunnel.com/
http://www.madmonkey.net/
http://www.indiegamer.com/
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
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.
Some games that never quite received the love they deserved:
The Guardian Legend (NES)- the first game to combine an overhead shooter (shmup) with a 3/4 RPG. Interesting puzzles, excellent controlls, and one of the deepest adventure games of it's time.
Rygar (NES) - combining 3/4 adventure with a sidescrolling action, this was one of the few NES translations that was *better* than the arcade version (don't remind me of Double Dragon *sob*). The PS2 Followup was an excellent sequel, God of War before GoW existed, but suffered from a horrible storyline and the worst voice acting ever.
Crystalis (NES) - a 3/4 overhead Action/RPG that was the first true Zelda-Killer, it was one of the greatest achievements of the 8-bit era to go unnoticed.
River City Ransom (NES) - the original Brawler for the NES, the depth of which was quite impressive considering the weak storyline.
Phantasy Star 2 (Genesis) - The greatest RPG of it's time, Final Fantasy be damned. A rich storyline in a futuristic setting, several worlds to explore, and a cataclysmic epic with a truly satisfying conclusion.
Actraiser (SNES) - The unique hybrid of Sidescrolling action and RPG/RTS was constantly changing to keep from getting stale. One moment you're marching through a forest on your way to slay a boss, the next you're building roads and accepting gifts from worshippers, then you're back in a forgotten pyramid. Also one of the most underrated soundtracks, with one theme in particular that sounds very similar to Brian Adams' "Hazard"
and finally
Tetrisphere (N64) - One of the greatest puzzlers ever created, this underappreciated gem was the first to bring Tetris to 3D in a form that I actually enjoyed. An awesome techo soundtrack; smooth, slick two player action, and simple rules that reveal a complex and engaging system made this one of the best Tetris games of all time.
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.
For many years, I've been a fan of roleplaying Multi-User Dungeons, AKA "MUDs". There are a lot of bad ones, but the best ones combine deep gameplay mechanics, vast, ever-changing worlds, great fantasy settings and an opportunity to roleplay interesting characters of your own design.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
the problem there are may underrated game.
I just need a online database so I can find people with similar likes/dislikes, chances are if they share my optinion of X, Y and Z, maybe I will look at their fav.
Shiny (Sacrifice), Planet Moon (Giants), Lionhead/Bullfrog(Magic Carpet/B&W) do some good stuff, but like any developer they can often lay an egg.
Not being underrated is a matter of timing, just like a movie release.
Moonbase Commander was a fun little turn-based strategy game that nobody ever played. It was highly addictive, and had a lot of replay value against humans. The balance of units was perfect.
Unfortunately, it was limited to 4 players via IPX. Gamespy allowed you to play it over the net, though. If you have it loaded and open Gamespy, there will always be that ONE other person who has it installed and will beg you to play it with them.
VGA Planets. Quite the obscure title, but if you've got several friends up for an extended play by email campaign combining Diplomacy with Star Fleet Battles, you can have an amazingly good time.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
It had some beautiful environments, fun gameplay elements, and the humor was well done. It was a little "kidish" in a few respects, but I'd recommend it.
I have Plok, and it was fun (if semi-strange). It was also pretty damn hard. I could never get past Rockafeller, even on Easy. Or maybe it was the Spider Queen. I can't really remember which came first, but it was hard. I think Septerra Core was a pretty underated game. It had an interesting story and a cool card magic system, but the battles took forever.
The ZX Spectrum hosts a tresure trove of games that are mostly unknown outside of Speccy strongholds. Ultimate (which later became RARE) released a whole slew of games during the eighties which were innovative, fun and often offered types of play which have never been recreated on modern platforms. Attic Attack, Knight Lore, Jetpack, all classics and worth looking up. Plus games like School Daze ( set in a school, Take Two's Bully sounds suspiciously like a remake of this), Fat Worm Blows a Sparky, Knight Tyme, Lords of Midnight, Target Renegade, How To Be a Complete Bastard, too many to name.
The Snes had tons of really great RPG's many of which have only become playable to no japanese speakers thanks to fan Translaton patches. Titles like Bhamut Lagoon, Seiken Densetsu 3 ( the real sequal to secret of manna), some weird ones like Wedding Peach (bloody nuts but oddly fun) and Sailor Mood, plus some stuff that had wester releases but never took off like the Adventures of Spike McFang and Terranigma.
Atari classic I,Robot has got to be worth mentioning, the first true 3d game, released in 1983 in the arcades, sank without trace, but was at least a decade ahead of it's time, Starfox seemed to borrow a lot from this game.
To me however, the most underrated game of all time has got to be Gunpey. Appearing on the Bandai Wonderswan, both game and console were developed by the legendary Gunpei Yakoi, the man responisble for the Game and Watch and The Gameboy. A stupidly simple puzzler, its really worth looking for. You can get both console and game for next to nothing on Ebay, why this never got a western release I'll never know but it's a lot of fun.
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!
Quarantine, like the review says, "the Great Grandaddy of Grand Theft Auto"
Home of the Underdogs, for all those under-rated games of yesteryear.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Presentation
The characters in the game are very stylized, with anthropomorphic animals running about everywhere alongside humans. This gives the game a very "kiddie" feel at first glance. The voice acting is very well done and after a few hours of playing the game you will find yourself genuinly liking the characters after enjoying their banter and interactions.
Gameplay
The gameplay has a strong focus on exploration throughout, and it has much diversity as you find yourself performing many different activies throughout the game (racing, puzzle-solving, ship-based combat, personal combat, stealth). The pacing is very well done in the game, keeping the gameply fresh throughout. The personal combat is probably the weakest aspect of the gameplay, and it is unfortunate that the opening scene of the game is a big combat. Some of the later stealth/photgraphic missions really put the basic combat to shame. The game also uses an interesting partner mechanic, allowing the NPCs toprovide specific help to allow you through some situations.
Plot
As I mentioned earlier, at first glance the game appears marketed towards an 8-12 year old audience. The graphics are brightly colored and the characters appear very cartoony. The plot to the game is surprisingly sophisticated. A war against the "Domz" is happening, and only the "Alpha Squadron" stands between them and the planet's helpless population. The story introduces themes of propaganda and as Jade, you pick up the responsibility of exposing the truth to the public at large. Witnessing the populace of the city slowly change their view as you bring more and more condemning evidence to light is a very rewarding experience.
All in all, I really enjoyed the game and it was one of the first games that I was able to get my journalist wife to play with me (she's since branched out and we enjoy many evenings playing games together). The production values are high, although there seems to be no particular reward for collecting 100% of the items that are strewn about the world (you only need a certain amount of them to buy the final upgrade for your hover-craft), which was a disappointment.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
Rez- hypnotic shooter that's amazing. welcome to synaesthesia
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
- had
to play it. The only problem I could find with the game was that there was never enough people on to have a good game. Oh well. ~jackNot Ready, Aim, Tomatoes, not Panic on Funkotron, and not the recent X-box update (which wasn't bad, mind you, but not up to the original).
The original is possibly the coolest game on the Genesis. 25-level, whacked-out, randomly-generated two-player gameplay with very meaningful co-op. (The developers considered it a two-player game with a one-player option.) More importantly, it took all the important lessons from Roguelike games. It fits the Roguelike description, in fact, much better than Diablo and Diablo II.
TJ&E III: Mission to Earth (the X-box update) messed up by making everything pre-identified from the start, by discarding the "stacked" level structure (meaning falling off was considerably less meaningful and never useful as it was sometime in the original game), by putting in mini-games where none were needed, and by riding its "funk" theme a little too hard, turning an extremely silly game more like Hitchhiker's Guide mixed with George Clinton into something that seemed like it actually wanted to be from Da Hood.
Somewhere I have an issue of Play magazine where they interview the guy who was the voice of Earl, and it's almost scary how badly he got the character wrong; he is NOT some kind of urban warrior-type, he is a big friendly alien without much going on upstairs and whose pants periodically fall down!
More importantly, a game with innovative and subtle gameplay is better suited to something weird and whimiscal than something that markets itself to a subculture that is sometimes seen as unduly confrontational. For all people complain about Nintendo's "kiddy" games, this is one lesson no one's ever had to teach them.
But um, yeah. The original game was aces.
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.
While most people were clamoring over Doom, Rise of the Triad was quietly released. ROTT was an extremely fun game with all sorts of humor built-in but it still managed to be a pretty intense game. It was also the BEST multiplayer of its day. Where else can you get Shroom power-ups, people begging not to be shot, God AND Dog Modes, the creepiest hidden level I've ever seen (You Do Not Belong Here), a character named Ian Paul Freely, and all the Ludicrous Gibs you can handle?
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!!