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Buckshot

Most underrated games you've ever played

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There's alot of them...

but one that always comes to mind that should have had alot more attention to it than it did (and I think it's mainly because GTAV eclipsed it) was Max Payne 3. Really was a great game... though didn't hear to much about it after release. Thought it was a great successor to the series and really played out like a intense action movie.

Also... Blake Stone:AOG. Was pretty fun though quickly eclipsed by DOOM'S release a week later.

Anyone else?

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Jurassic Park Dinosaur Battles. It was clunky and not the greatest, but it had a fun factor and gave you basically what you expected: Dinosaurs beating the shit out of each other at your command. It was probably better than Warpath: Jurassic Park, the MK styled game, that everyone defends to their last breath.

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Clonehunter said:

Jurassic Park Dinosaur Battles. It was clunky and not the greatest, but it had a fun factor and gave you basically what you expected: Dinosaurs beating the shit out of each other at your command. It was probably better than Warpath: Jurassic Park, the MK styled game, that everyone defends to their last breath.


Heh, Warpath. Oh my. How excited I was for that game, and how heartbroken I was after playing it. Guess I was expecting a Primal Rage-like experience.

You know... most are going to roll their eyes when I say "Trespasser" was underrated. And yes, it had it's problems. A lot more so than other games. But I really liked what it was trying to attempt, and it had a lot of great moments and JP lore. Had it been released today, probably would have worked out far better. Just too much in a short amount of time... though it did leaps and bounds as far as engine tech, audio positioning, etc went over any other game at the time. I always felt bad for the Trespasser team, Seamus Blackley and the rest of them, because they really did work hard and put all their best efforts into it... just had a unrealistic delivery goal to work with. Hell, universal studios wouldn't even give dreamworks interactive (spielbergs own damn game studio) a proper license for Jurassic Park sound FX. They were screwed from the start.

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McKids. Really nice Mario-like game with its own personality and mechanics.

A shame that the NES version is the only one worth playing; all the ports used a different engine that controlled like shit. Otherwise I'd totally go with the funkier Amiga version.

I find it amusing that the marketing was made more "edgy" when brought to Europe. It's usually when importing to the US that the "angry eyebrows" crap is done. I imagine it was to appeal to an older audience that would be more capable of handling its brutal difficulty.

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Trespasser was a shame. But I agree that it gets more hate than it deserves. For what the studio accomplished in its short time was fairly impressive for an early physics based game. Some of it didn't make sense, and the Dino AI was nigh-atrocious, but it still had a sense of fun and even adventure. Of course, I suppose something is wrong when the single most memorable part of the game (For me, anyways) is Hammond's monologue (Which has since been compiled into a kind of unofficial audio book of sorts).

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Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy was a pretty neat sixth generation game that sold like shit, might've had something to do with the dumb name. It was actually my first PS2 game.

The game was split into 2 sections, parts where you controlled Sphinx, and parts where you controlled the mummy. The bits with Spinx were like Zelda meets Ratchet & Clank, with a lot of platforming and combat. The parts were you play as the mummy are where the game goes apeshit and you gotta solve weird puzzles by doing horrible things to the mummy like setting him on fire or electrifying him in order to activate machinery, amongst other things.

It was really rushed towards the end of development, and almost half of the game was cut out/restructured, but it manages to hide this pretty well. It had a badass soundtrack and for an early PS2 title, the graphics and animation are surprisingly good.

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I thoroughly enjoyed DoReMi Fantasy. It's a light-hearted SNES platformer, colorful and diverse. I didn't know about it until about a year ago, although that can be explained by the fact that it was only released in Japan. Luckily, fan translation exists.

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I'm gonna go for "Red Faction" (the original).

Although it was a pretty big hit on the PS2, it's reception on the PC was positive but mediocre. Personally, I found it a very enjoyable and playable game most of the way through and it's one that I still revisit. The only sections I didn't really enjoy were the "stealth" sections where you had to sneak through offices etc. As a seasoned "Thief" player, these were simply not up to scratch. The stealth/detection system was not advanced enough and there was nothing like the tension of sneaking in Thief.

Almost all of the weapons were fun, the enemies were, on the whole, the kind that I like fighting (humanoid, armed in a similar manner to me), the setting(for me) was perfect (sci-fi on Mars with a short space station section) and there were some fun touches like enemies and innocent bystanders running away pleading for mercy. I have to say that the much publicised "geomod" technology was underused and, on the whole, not very important at all to the game though it did add a little something to the deathmatch experience in some levels.

It's also one of the rare FPS games where I didn't mind the vehicle sections (I normally hate them - keep vehicles out of my FPS games, thank you). The Jeep and other land vehicles were a bit random and bounced around too much but the big diggers, flying things and submarines were fine. Although it wasn't really a player controllable vehicle there was a tram chase section that was quite good fun as well.

There were other nice touches too, such as mounted machine guns that you could man, a variety of environments: tunnels, labs, open air, offices, space station, industrial areas (though mostly tunnels) and the theme was well realised and consistent with a good, if fairly simplistic and predictable story.

It has the most satisfying glass breaking animation that I have seen in any game.

Spoiler




It does feel a bit "consoley" as far as FPS games are concerned but I thought it did so in an acceptable and satisfying way. I can see why some reviewers described it as "uninspired" and "derivative" but I enjoyed it.

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Far Cry 2 is one of the best fps games I've ever played, truly visceral battles. But most people got hung up on its annoyances (weapon jamming, malaria, respawning enemies)

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Albion. Fantastic German RPG from the mid-90's. It's now on GOG.

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def agree with Far Cry 2. I still don't understand the dislike for it as it's not much different than FC3, and I actually liked the African conflict setting better. Jackal was a badass character.

I think had Quake 4 had a better MP (SP was fine by me), it'd probably have faired better off.

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I loved Far Cry 2's suvivalness and its beautiful looking deep jungles especially around sunset. One thing I disliked about Far Cry 3 was how much more easier it was compared to Far Cry 2.

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Hogs of War is kind of underrated. it's basically Worms-style gameplay in 3D before Worms 3D was a thing, though it plays differently than Worms do (armanents aren't shared, each pig is their own unique class, etc.) i'd say Rik Mayall's giant repertoire of voice-acting in that game (there's about 50 unique voice-banks (!) in the game, plus him being a snarky narrator in multiplayer and a grouchy sarge in single) is reason enough to play the game, but the game itself isn't that bad. it's fairly enjoyable and i think it did the 3D formula better than Worms did. RIP Rik Mayall though. :c

Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes is surprisingly competent for being a Tomb Raider style game but with bigger guns, badder attitude and a lot more babes in it. i replayed it not too long ago, and i was surprised at how enjoyable it was: the graphics are hilariously outdated, but the gameplay wasn't as stiff as i thought it would be, and the music is pretty awesome, something of a successor to the Duke Nukem 3D soundtrack.

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Doomhuntress said:

Hogs of War is kind of underrated. it's basically Worms-style gameplay in 3D before Worms 3D was a thing, though it plays differently than Worms do (armanents aren't shared, each pig is their own unique class, etc.) i'd say Rik Mayall's giant repertoire of voice-acting in that game (there's about 50 unique voice-banks (!) in the game, plus him being a snarky narrator in multiplayer and a grouchy sarge in single) is reason enough to play the game, but the game itself isn't that bad. it's fairly enjoyable and i think it did the 3D formula better than Worms did. RIP Rik Mayall though. :c

Heh, my son had that on the PlayStation and he used to sit in my office playing it over and over. Damn, I can still hear all those voices to this day. Rik Mayall certainly added to the character of that game.

In fact, now that I remember, my son just bought the PC version off GoG a couple of months back. I guess he's old enough to start feeling nostalgic about stuff these days. :/

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Enjay said:

Heh, my son had that on the PlayStation and he used to sit in my office playing it over and over. Damn, I can still hear all those voices to this day. Rik Mayall certainly added to the character of that game.

In fact, now that I remember, my son just bought the PC version off GoG a couple of months back. I guess he's old enough to start feeling nostalgic about stuff these days. :/

has he had any problem with the game? i bought it on GOG too when it was released, but sometimes, launching the exe makes explorer hang, forcing me to terminate the process and restart explorer. the little i did play of the PC version was kind of a letdown, though: it certainly looks better, and there's more unique death animations and models. however, it seems to miss the overworld theme, and the AI teams songs don't seem to playback correctly to me, which IMO is a huge part of the experience for me. can't really blame GOG for a shoddy PC port though.

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Blood 2, i know, unbalanced due to the fact that enemies are bullet sponges, but hey gibs are gibs, still i love the humor in the game, Stephan Weyte's voice fits Caleb perfectly, its calm, pure evil and those laughs, what can i say, its evil vs evil, despite that Caleb is kinda masochist(remember the dynamite in Blood?) with the weapons he has.
Powerslave/Exhumed, i enjoyed the PC version, although it wasn't that bad, i kinda liked the gameplay, was challenging, but i completed it.
The Duke 3rd person games, i liked the gameplay, although i would have had more fun if these had source ports, oh well and Jon St. Jonh voices Duke so great.
Kingpin:Life of Crime, killing gangstas and taking their cash, having a gang following and fighitng along side you, killin' some gang lords and the city being yours then, who knew that being a thug was so fun.

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Doomhuntress said:

has he had any problem with the game?

I haven't heard him complaining about it and I'm pretty sure he's completed it twice since he bought it so it must be working reasonably OK. I'll try and get more details from him at some point. He's not around right now.

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Soundblock said:

90's: Xcom Apocolypse

It's a really great game and I love how it modernized certain Xcom mechanics, but it's also a rushed and underdeveloped product. It's glaringly obvious the devs had much deeper plans with the game and it's genuinely sad to realize how much better the game could've been. The relations between the coprs are very shallow, yet you can feel it was meant to be much more. Raiding a possibly infiltrated corp and revealing aliens in their midst was probably meant to be a risky political act that could wreck havoc on your funding, but as it stands you just raid the Cult of Osiris for resources whenever you please. And goddamit, the alien dimension is utterly pathetic. It has formidable defences prepared as you step through the looking glass, but after you wipe those out, their entire economy fails and they just wait around as you start blowing up their production line. The missions are pretty tough, but it's a total humiliation on the strategic screen.

Basically, I'd say the game is great on the tactical scale (even the RT mode, which I use very rarely) and even on the micromanagement scale, but the macro/political scale is even more broken than in the first two games.

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SavageCorona said:

Bubsy deserves its bad reviews for being a sub par platformer with bad design out the ass.


Yeah I know. I was kidding.

Seriously Blood 2 for me. I modded that game and I had a lot of fun doing it while at the same time a lot of hardship. But I love that game.

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Red Faction: Guerrilla. Damn game is genius, but aside from Doom Dude, who got me into it, I don't know anyone who likes it. Running around a Mars colony and causing mayhem was just awesome.

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Extreme Pinball. The music was awesome, especially the Medieval Knights board!

SavageCorona said:

Bubsy deserves its bad reviews for being a sub par platformer with bad design out the ass.

Go ahead, pin the blame on that damn cat as the reason we didn't get a Plok 2! :P

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Enjay said:

my son just bought the PC version off GoG a couple of months back.

Huh, I thought that game was a console exclusive?

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