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Starkiller

'The most underappreciated videogames you've played' thread

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There is already a thread for overrated games, now what are some games you consider underrated? 

 

For me, there is a game called Scratches, a horror adventure game where your character explores around a haunted manor on the matter of a supernatural treasure, as far as I can remember, and to find out what is the source of all the scratches. All I can remember about the game is that it had truly disturbing parts, such as a basement and a chapel, that actually made me uncomfortable while playing through. 

 

Westwood's Emperor: Battle for Dune from 2001 is another underrated classic. It's so unknown, it is a shame. Had it not been released around the same time as Red Alert 2's expansion pack (also a great game), maybe it would have gotten more attention it deserved. It was ahead of it's time, having the first use of a 3D engine, use of a non-linear map system and A.I. controlled enemies that encourages replayability, story that can easily fit in as an alternate-universe to the main Dune story, and a badass soundtracks for all of the three houses. It still looks, sounds, and feels good even today.

 

Honourable mentions: Onimusha, Drakengard, F.E.A.R., Sid Meier's Pirates!, Blood, Black, Xenosaga, Prey 2006, Unreal Gold, and Red Faction 1. 

Edited by Starkiller : Fucking phone keyboard made me post this unfinished, lol.

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Ultima IX: Although this game is bad, but this is also a good game. This game give birth to the "Now Cancelled' Ultima X, and Ultima Online 2.

 

DOOM 3: Although this doesn't look like a Doom game, but it has some things that both common to both games. Like the BFG, and CyberDemon's rocket launcher.

 

Project Spark: This game has release to the public, but the majorly of people don't know what the game is, so that's why I'm add this here.

 

Roblox: This simple MMO can also make some more "complex" games.

 

Deus Ex: The Fall: This game is responsible for bugs, and crashes. But at least is better than Deus Ex: Invisible War, since there's no loading every door opened. (And heck I didn't even played that game.)

 

Young Conker: Same as Project Spark.

 

There are my games that are "underrated" right now.

Edited by Apaul27 : Added "Young Conker" to the list.

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Asura's Wrath and Rise of Nations are all I can think of.

TES III Morrowind is underrated by virtue of being ridiculously overshadowed by the o su leet Skahrihm.

 

Asura's Wrath is basically an interactive anime, but its so fun and awesome that it avoids falling into the trap that CoD and other modern story-driven games did.

RoN is a truly superb RTS with easy-to-understand mechanics that are easy to get a grip on, but hard to master, with a very wide variety of factions that are mostly cosmetically the same, but have some (usually five to eight) unique units and unique powers while combining the "ages" of history with RTS, where Civilization did this with turn-based strategy.

Morrowind is the best (in my opinion) of Bethesda's RPG's (and this includes Fallout New Vegas, which was technically made by Obsidian and not Bethesda) despite being nearly entirely depended on RNG for anything and everything in the game because of its rich lore and world and surprisingly fun and tense (thanks to RNG) combat.

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Gladius (console) - turn base fanatasy arena game that is both story and open world. It's really grabbing, you really get attached to building your Gladiators skills, equipment and teams.

 

Mount & Blade and Stalker games. Ok so they ARE loved by a reasonable number of fans but I feel it deserves more.

 

7 days to die. You either love it or hate it but if you can get pass its painful beginning / learning curve and the odd stupid death this survival game can be scary, action packed, relaxing, addictive and more. I personally love quietly sneaking into homes trying to not wake up the sleeping zombies as I loot the cupboards for canned food. And the odd fat stomping zombie wakes up and walking towards me in the hallway where I panic and empty my only one clip to take it down. Then I start running as all the others wake up. Once I was surrounded and jumped out the window of the second floor and broke my legs. Survival baby.

Edited by Chezza

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Summoner. It's a semi-open world RPG released in 2001, and it's one of my favorite games of all time (and I'm not a fan of RPGs!). The combat can feel a bit clunky and managing your party during combat often feels like you're trying to keep alive a bunch of suicidal three-year-olds, but the storytelling and writing are downright amazing IMO, and I especially like the backstory of most the side quests, since the developers actually put some thought behind them instead of making them generic "go find this because of reasons" or "go kill that because it's bad" kind of tasks (at least most of the time). What baffles me the most though, is that I haven't heard about the game... well... anywhere! I found out about it when I found a demo of it on some old CDs that came with some game magazines of the early 00s.

 

It's on sale on Steam and GOG right now for like $1.50 if you're interested.

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STRAFE®


Had the game been not as buggy on launch and the description be less vague in the gameplay department, I bet a lot more people would've liked it. I did a few days after it was released.

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We've had one of these too... anyway...

 

Doom 3? I guess. Although now that its 15 years old people have come around to it. Sure its not Doom 1 or Doom 2, but it stands out on its own.

 

Mario 2 and Zelda 2? It too got a lot of hate in the early Youtube years and now people have come around on them.

 

Its tough to find good & popular games that are hated.

 

Arkham Origins seems like its hated in the sense that "people liked the first, people loved the second, now its the third and meh." Still a fantastic game with a better story, but its just not fresh anymore. People found joy in nitpicking the fact that Batman had more gadgets in the prequel than the others in the series. It still didn't get the hate that Arkham Knight got... and I think that falls into the issue of people and their PS3 quality PCs weren't good enough to play a PS4 quality game despite having 8 GB graphics cards.

 

Arkham Original: Blackgate seems to be crucified on Steam for being a 2.5D Arkham game rather than one that makes use of 3D movement. Its still a fantastic game and Metroidvania even if it does seem to have less production values than the actual Arkham main games.

 

Duke Forever needs to chop off the first 2+ hours. The game gets better and more enjoyable, but those first few hours were a struggle. Some ugly environments that looked good in Duke 3D but not in the Unreal engine. While I'm here, I'll give a shout out to Aliens: Colonial Marines isn't as bad as controversy made it. Sure the AI has this habit of clipping through the player... would you rather have them block you? And the final boss literally lets you clip through it... and the AI just shoots at walls, but these are all things Mass Effect 1 had issues with and no one crucified that game despite being made by EA.

 

Mass Effect 3... did the ending really ruin a good to great game? Its still far better than the first game, but again its like Arkham Origins where its the third game in the series and doesn't do enough fresh things. The second was of course better and more fun while Mass Effect 3 was geared more toward war and being serious.

 

Dead Space 3, yeah let's fight about this one. Its story was far better than the first two even if it manages to have a love triangle and more characters to interrupt your loneliness and fighting off aliens + ghosts. Fighting human enemies is kept to a minimum and beyond the opening sequence and later on when the dead inhabit the humans to make them new enemies made for better diversity. Also reviewers said there was a big emphasis on micro transactions. You can just buy things with real money. I never felt the need to do so.

 

Spec Ops: The Line seems to get so much hate for the gameplay and praise. The gameplay is good... except for the parking garage that's full of cover and the game doesn't know what to stick you to.

 

Alpha Protocol? Another stick to cover and shoot things. Its a precursor to Mass Effect, so everyone forgets that it exists. Then again its a decade old.

 

Ducktales: Remastered has a better sense of what you're doing, maps, easier controls and an actual story in game. Reviewers seem to complain about that. Its a better game than the original, even if its dialog heavy for a 2D game that was originally 30+ minutes long.

 

DaiKatana... look those first few levels if not first episode is terrible. The game becomes far better in the second and third episodes. Still not perfect by any means. The game gets hated for the early levels and rightfully so.

 

Two Worlds was a lot of fun... but only past like the 4 hours of a steep uphill grind, since it was meant to be a MMO. The game lets you wander to areas that will kick your ass, but as long as you stay on your horse you can outrun everything. Its a beautiful looking game in terms of environment design and has glaring flaws.

 

Chronicles of Teddy II which was renamed to something else. Anyway, no one found out about this game due to bad marketing or whatever. Its like Zelda 2, engaging and fun. It deserves a shout out for being a hidden gem.

 

Yeah that's it for now. Discuss among yourselves.

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There are a shitton of those but I will just name one series:

The Legacy of Kain franchise.

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3 minutes ago, SOSU said:

There are a shitton of those but I will just name one series:

The Legacy of Kain franchise.

Legacy of Kain is a great franchise in my book with an underrated attention (sadly, with an unfinished conclusion). 

 

2 hours ago, Starkiller said:

Onimusha

Also true and I wish that it gets revived, at least the trilogy because that game is so fucking good man...

I'll always say that Shadow Man is a truly underrated game that almost no one knows about it.

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 The trilogy of  soul brazer, illusion of gaia, and terranigma:

gems lost in the space of the history.....

 

Megaman Zero Series: is the better (for me) and is the most underappreciated of the community of megaman

 

The others is nice games, but not known

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3 hours ago, Apaul27 said:

Deus Ex: The Fall: This game is responsible for bugs, and crashes. But at least is better than Deus Ex: Invisible War, since there's no loading every door opened. (And heck I didn't even played that game.)

 

Invisible War is the only DX game I have any interest in ever playing again, and IMO is the franchise's most underappreciated entry.  But then I think the rest are over-rated.

 

2 hours ago, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

Morrowind is the best (in my opinion) of Bethesda's RPG's (and this includes Fallout New Vegas, which was technically made by Obsidian and not Bethesda) despite being nearly entirely depended on RNG for anything and everything in the game because of its rich lore and world and surprisingly fun and tense (thanks to RNG) combat.

 

Morrowind is pretty widely touted as Bethesda's best, so I am not sure it is really underappreciated.

 

My nomination for the thread is Venetica, which is a solid little CRPG that seems to have gone largely unremarked.

 

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I have a sports game worth mentioning - Tecmo Super Bowl II: Special Edition 

 

The Tecmo SB games on the Super Nintendo are often overlooked in favor of the NES one that is the most famous. The SNES versions don't have the hilarious broken Bo Jackson feature to it. Instead, they're more balanced and have prettier graphics while taking place during the early 90's of the NFL. This means you don't get Joe Montana on the 49ers, the Cowboys are much better teams in all three SNES Tecmos, and Green Bay has Brett Favre who can launch bombs all day long. And no matter how bad the Buffalo Bills look in a season simulation, they are the best bet of limping out of the AFC into the Super Bowl to get demolished by the 49ers or Cowboys. 

 

TSB 3 is somewhat popular because of the feature that allows you to get interceptions and run them back for touchdowns. This also coins the joke among Tecmo fans that "Rod is God" because Rod Woodson in TSB 3 is pretty much the best player in the entire game. Not only can he return kick offs for touchdowns, but he gets interceptions and can run them back for pick sixes. 

 

What makes TSB II truly special is that of all the three Tecmo games on the SNES, it's the one with the hardest difficulty and it also is the only one to feature 3 different seasons in it. You can play 1992, 1993 and the current (at the time) 1994 season. Since the game was made after the first two seasons, the rosters and playbooks are extremely accurate to the years. They account for injuries too, so Randall Cunningham and Dan Marino are both absent in the 1993 year since they both went down with injuries. The accuracy is there in simulations, as you most likely will get Dallas/Buffalo in the SB for 1992 and 1993. The Cowboys and 49ers teams in those years are absolutely loaded and if/when they meet in the playoffs, it's the real Super Bowl of those years. The Run-N-Shoot Oilers are also stacked and can prove to be a legitimate SB contender as well (that's if they don't choke to Buffalo in the playoffs) 

 

As for the difficulty in TSB 2, the game adds expanded playbooks and defensive formations. Instead of just 4 run plays and 4 pass plays, you have two playbooks doubling them. The defensive formations are normal (3-4 or 4-3 depending on the team. Yes! This game is accurate for defenses that used 4-3 formations), nickel, dime and goal line. You also have 2 point conversions which sadly is the only downside to the game cause sometimes the computer will stupidly go for 2 points when they're only down by a touchdown and need to tie game. 

 

Unlike the NES Tecmo that had Bo Jackson and TSB 3 that has Rod Woodson, there is no overly powerful "god mode" player in TSB II. It's extremely balanced, and the only real way to cheat the game is to just play as the 49ers or Cowboys who are all around the most stacked teams in all three year modes. 

 

Sadly the game is not without flaws. The biggest downside is the sound quality, which has hilariously cheesy "red two, hut hut!" voice acting from the team QB and it's missing the first down markers from TSB 1 and TSB 3. It's recommended to play on mute and just put music over it. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, geo said:

 

 

Arkham Original: Blackgate seems to be crucified on Steam for being a 2.5D Arkham game rather than one that makes use of 3D movement. Its still a fantastic game and Metroidvania even if it does seem to have less production values than the actual Arkham main games.

 

 

So happy to see this game mentioned. i bought Blackgate when it first came out and loved it. The only issue I had was some of the boss fights were confusing, but it's indeed a fantastic game. The exploration made it worth trying to go for 100%. 

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27 minutes ago, Capellan said:

Morrowind is pretty widely touted as Bethesda's best, so I am not sure it is really underappreciated.

Is it? All I hear about is about how impossibly amazing Skyrim is and Skyrim this, Skyrim that, Skyrim that other thing, Skyrim blah, blah, blah, babbity blah blah blah.

As I'm sure you can tell, I'm really over Skyrim.

Good to hear that Morrowind is actually recognized as being good as it is, though.

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I've seen arguments that Morrowind or Oblivion is the best and I've seen Morrowind or Skyrim is the best. Since its argued still to this day as being the best or one of the best I doubt its underappreciated. Then again since Skyrim has been around for a decade, Morrowind and Oblivion will be forgotten. Both great games for their era, but even as someone with hundreds or thousands of hours in both, I feel no need to return to either one.

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38 minutes ago, geo said:

I've seen arguments that Morrowind or Oblivion is the best and I've seen Morrowind or Skyrim is the best. 

 

I have literally never seen anyone argue that Oblivion is the best.  And I say that as someone who is solidly in the "it's not as bad as most people make out" camp.

 

 

48 minutes ago, Aquila Chrysaetos said:

Good to hear that Morrowind is actually recognized as being good as it is, though.

 

Just google "Morrowind is best" sometime.

 

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Just now, Capellan said:

 

I have literally never seen anyone argue that Oblivion is the best.  And I say that as someone who is solidly in the "it's not as bad as most people make out" camp.

 

 

 

Just google "Morrowind is best" sometime.

 

This was the Oblivion era I remember seeing the discussions. Post Oblivion its now moved onto Skyrim vs Morrowind as the best.

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The Mechwarrior/Heavy Gear series and 'mech sims in general. Hence why the genre is basically dead these days, aside from that f2p Mechwarrior Online.

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Thief Gold

Thief 2: The Metal Age

 

While Thief (2014) is pure garbage... It's sad that there's no real successor of this game. Just like Bullfrog, Looking Glass Studios went out of business after this and System Shock :(

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4 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Thief Gold

Thief 2: The Metal Age

 

While Thief (2014) is pure garbage... It's sad that there's no real successor of this game. Just like Bullfrog, Looking Glass Studios went out of business after this and System Shock :(

 

What about The Dark Mod?

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9 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

Thief Gold

Thief 2: The Metal Age

 

While Thief (2014) is pure garbage... It's sad that there's no real successor of this game. Just like Bullfrog, Looking Glass Studios went out of business after this and System Shock :(

What about Deadly Shadows? 

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@AjoraI would say The Dark Mod is a very fun non official MOD thing. The time I was typing those sentences, I forgot about this thing... It's one way how the community is great IMO.

 

@StarkillerI would say Deadly Shadows is a great game, but for some reason I don't really like it, but I don't hate it either. If I'm going to rate these games, this is my score:

Thief Gold - 9

Thief 2: The Metal Age - 9.5

Thief: Deadly Shadows - 8

Thief (2014) - 5

 

The system in DS is sometimes quite wonky and funny in the same time. For example, NPC can go to some stupid places where they can't normally reach, or NPC can jump of the balcony and kill himself and count as you killing someone and failing the mission... I think the most complaint about DS is that a mission is usually separated into 2 to 3 parts. I'm not sure whether this is a limitation to engine or what, but indeed it damages the experience a little bit. Probably I can't really give a reason, but it seems I tend to replay T2 more than DS.

 

BTW, why you two post in a same format, which somehow makes me nervous XD

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Definitely the Beat 'em Up sub-genre of Action games. Stuff like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, God Hand, Bayonetta, Wonderful 101, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, etc. are often derided as button mashers but have some of the deepest combat outside of fighting games. They have excellent difficulty curves as well.

 

In FPS, I'd say DESYNC. The game is essentially a mash-up of DMC and Quake, and is possibly one of the greatest FPS ever made but is underlooked, and even scorned, because it is portrayed as unfair or needlessly difficult.

 

In Stealth, I'd say Mark of the Ninja. It's up there with Thief 2 and MGS3 as one of the best Stealth games ever. It features one of the best response systems ever conceived of in a Stealth game.

 

In Metroidvanias, well we have La-Mulana, Rabi Ribi, and Environmental Station Alpha. They're the pinnacle of the genre (heck La-Mulana may be the best indie game and best 2D game I've ever played) as far as I'm concerned.

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Some games that deserve some more attention in my opinion are IL-2  Sturmovik game series, Dark Souls 2, most bullet hell games (despite games like Touhou having a loyal niche playerbase), metroidvanias, Unepic.

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53 minutes ago, DoomUK said:

Dead Space

 

*runs away, laughing maniacally 

Dead Space is the opposite of underrated. Maybe you're thinking about the 3rd game in the series. 

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1 minute ago, Starkiller said:

Dead Space is the opposite of underrated. Maybe you're thinking about the 3rd game in the series. 

 

Yes but Doomworld hates it, if your other thread is anything to go by.

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Thief Deadly Shadows

Under appreciated due to.... change in engine? Not being PC exclusive? I dunno exactly but it is my second favorite Thief title after Thief 2. It introduced many different things, one of them is the mini-game with lock-picking the doors instead of just holding the button. The choice between third person & first person with the latter having you actually see Garrett's feet & arms, something extremely rare, even to this day.

I don't remember much about the story since I've played the game in 2012 last time but I do remember enjoying it.

The ambiance is still there & it still feels like Thief.

 

Doom 3

One of the best horror games I've played & the only one who truly scared me back in a day. The audio logs, emails & all the terrible hints to the hell invasion, was just perfect. Atmosphere, true hell horror, great story & the expansion we got, was a good continuation. Lost missions added many things to the overall story as well & very good at that. Oh & no cliffhanger endings which I'm don't like.

 

Q.U.B.E.

A lovely puzzle game that get crapped on by Portal cultist for being "a rip off" somehow. The only similarity there is, is the aesthetics. Other than that, it's quite unique with controlling the different colored blocks. The story is kind of enigma & leaves you with questions but I don't think anybody played Portal games due to plot.

8 € makes it totally worth it to twist your mind.

 

Tokyo Dark

A recent game barely anyone has heard of. The game is side-scrolling anime detective point & click game with an interesting feature called SPIN. (Sanity, professionalism, investigation & neurosis.) It get affected by the choices you make through the game & has an affect on the endings you get. The soundtrack is fantastic & the story kept me going plus the replay value is quite high with multiple endings. It's 18 € on Steam but I can assure you, it is worth it.

 

Blood

Well, this is not a shocker to anyone here. lol What makes Blood so special is, the aesthetics are beyond amazing. The early 20th century setting with one of the best arsenal I've seen & just perfect gunplay execution & satisfying deaths with blood flying & gore bouncing off the walls.... the list goes on & on.

Need I say more? It's 1.69 € on Gog right now & it has BloodGDX source port that you can download from the net! A steal!

Oh & Death Wish mod which is a perfect sequel for those who thought Blood 2 was awful.

 

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