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?

Comments

Marathon...

[pomo monster]

...Marathon 2: Durandal, and Marathon Infinity. You know, back from before Bungie became Microsoft.

Re:Marathon...

[Blakey Rat]

I was racing to post this myself to get the "early poster free mod points," but you beat me to it. In any case, *seconded!*

Look at how advanced Marathon (1994) was:

1) 3D world where you can look up and down (hey, at the time it was impressive.)
2) Weapons that didn't extend through your stomach but instead were held in a realistic manner.
3) A story so deep that, over a decade later, it's *still* being dissected at marathon.bungie.org and other sites. Not only that but it was clever and had excellent writing.
4) Civilians you had to rescue, security drone allies. (Again, at the time it was impressive.)
5) Designed to be moddable. You could drop in any combination of physics files, map files, sprite files, sound files and music files. You could use the art from your "kill Barney" mod with the sounds from your "Simpsons" mod without using an editor. Marathon 2 even had a nice GUI to select which mod you wanted before you started the game.
6) Multiplayer over LAN
7) Team games with many different game types.
8) Real-time voice communication during multiplayer.
9) Marathon 2 is the first FPS (I'm aware of) to use ambient sounds in the 3D world instead of a musical soundtrack.
10) Probably a half-dozen more I'm not thinking of.

They were great games, seriously great.

I'm a wanna be indie so

[ViperG]

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/

Re:One game that got very little press

[-kertrats-]

Little press? Are you kidding? Every gaming magazine, website, comic, fansite I've ever been to has heralded how amazing Ico was. It got press everywhere. Just because no one bought it doesnt mean there was little press.

Old Favorites

[Alzheimers]

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.

More underrated games...

[sharopolis]

I love this kind of thing, I have a kind of collection of underrated games. There's a whole world of games out there that have got little attention, have been forgotten or have never gained much recogntion outside of their niche, I name hundereds, but Home of The Underdogs is the place to go for this type of thing and a I think someone has beat me to that link.

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.

Obligatory link to...

[FooAtWFU]

Home of the Underdogs, for all those under-rated games of yesteryear.