Games you didn't expect to turn out GREAT.

[DirtyMagic]

We've all had a moment where we bought a game that we didn't really know we would like.
We just bought it because you know, it was cheap. Or somebody else recommended it, but you don't really know anything about it.
In other words, you don't know what to expect of them, but you bought them anyway.
And hey, if they suck ,you can turn 'em in right?

Well, a few of those games turn out to be friggin' sweet. Tell us about them!

I've had a few, but most recent, it would be Enslaved: Odyssey To The West.
I think it was pretty much a low-flyer, sales wise. I've heard some good things about it, I've heard some bad things about it. Frankly, I didn't know what to expect. But I had a games cheque of 30 Euros sitting in my hand and the game sitting in front of me, costing 30 Euros.
So I thought, what the heck, let's do it.

Well holy crap, am I glad I bought it! If only for the scenery in the game, because it's breathtakingly awesome! The characters are really cool as well, but what else can you expect when the main characters are voiced by Gollum and Moze from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, right? The game is a bit on the easy side, but it has solid gameplay. But man, it's so much fun to play and a real joy to look at. And most of the dialogue is pretty much hilarious as well. A real hidden gem!

So, how about you guys?

 

[Crispee]

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon. I'd played no game in the Final Fantasy franchise before, but I had played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, which I liked, but only because of the Pokemon styled battling and story. And to my surprise, I loved every minute of the game, the story was unexpectedly interesting and the class system for battling worked very well. Such an underrated game.

Also, Red Steel 2. I had two free rentals I could use so, seeing nothing else I was interested in, took out Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles and this. This filled up my next few days quite well, once I learned most of the sword techniques, I really enjoyed myself carving my way through all of the baddies as I got more powerful. Admittedly the level designs weren't very varied and it makes you too reliant on the minimap with the green arrow, but it was good fun for me, though as I said, not without its faults.

 

[Wierdguy]

Honestly? DragonAge: Origins - I knew nothing about Bioware untill I bought taht game. I saw it in a store about 2-3 weeks after its release and though "Hey, that looks alright" Bought it on a whim and whoah - talk about a serious realization of the epicness I had been missing out on!

From there it didnt take long before I bought ME2/1, Jade empire, KOTOR, Baldurs Gate ect. Loved every single one.

 

[kortin]

the Golden Sun games. They were much better than I could have ever expected. I expected them to be final fantasy rejects that managed to fend for themselves long enough to release the game.

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

Majin and The Forbidden Kingdom

Sure graphics aren't great, but the puzzles and characters drew me in.

Altogether...Awesome!

 

[emeraldrafael]

I didnt expect The World Ends With You to be good, but I'm glad I was wrong.

After you get used to the dual screen and difficult curve, its rather enjoyable.

 

[nukethetuna]

I bought Alundra on a whim. Actually, I bought it because it had the "multidisc disc" type box... I figured "LOL FFVII HAD THREE DISCS SO IF THIS HAS MORE THAN ONE IT MUST BE PASSABLE". Of course the big box only had one disc in it and I began to feel like a fool.
Until I actually played the game, now it is my favorite game of all time.

Similarly, I figured Kingdom Hearts would be absolutely terrible. An awkward hybrid of Disney and Squaresoft characters caught in a limbo of terrible gameplay and a kid-friendly storyline. The actual game didn't have most of that.

 

[Sixcess]

Fear Effect. I'd read one half remembered review of it months earlier but hadn't really given it much thought, so it was pretty much an impulse buy. It's now my second favourite game of all time and I picked up the sequel on release day.

Great visual atmosphere, amazing writing and voice acting... I'm still saddened by the fact that the PS2 sequel was cancelled, which was why I never made the jump from the PS1 to the next gen.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Splinter Cell: Conviction and Darksiders.

Ended up getting SC:C with my XBox and I didn't play it for months. When I finally did I regretted taking so long.

Darksiders is one of the best games I've played in a long time, even if the story sucks.

Zelda dungeons + God of War combat + WoW artstyle? Sign me up.

 

[Rooster893]

Sonic Colors. When I heard Sonic was being voiced by ROGER CRAIG SMITH, there was hope. And that hope paid off! It was awesome!

And now I'm hyped for Sonic Generations.

 

[Phlakes]

I got FFVII a couple months ago after a lot of recommendations, thinking it would be a boring, g, stereotypical JRPG grind-fest with cliched characters and a completely convoluted story that I would have no emotional investment it, and I would probably delete the game after an hour or two.

Damn, was I wrong.

But for a more modern game, Metroid Prime. No explanation is needed.

 

[Ashcrexl]

interesting you should mention enslaved, because most recently, i've been playing heavenly sword.

i apologize for having a ridiculous opinion here, but i enjoyed HS more than god of war iii, despite my initial impression of it being a GOW ripoff. the scenery, like you mentioned, combined with the insanely awesome villains (and kai) and cutscene direction makes the narrative amazing. the combat has very graceful and flowing feel that i havent seen in any other game. it's not a top tier game, but it is definitely GREAT.

before that, there was mirror's edge, which is also criminally underrated.

 

[Sebenko]

Mount & Blade.

I played the demo and disliked it. Forgot about it, and bought the game later.

Pretty soon, I'm all "I AM ONE FEUDAL ************!", with six thousand kills on my own.

... Oh, that's why I like F&S less. I haven't felt that yet.

 

[Biodeamon]

Dragon Age origions. I started playing a week ago cause i had nothing else to do and at first i thought "hmmm, automatic non-manual attacks that you can't control? hmmmmm...." and then i thought "actually this is pretty intresting but still only mildly flavoured" but when i met The Grand Oak i was actually quite intrested in it.

 

[Scarim Coral]

The DS game Infinite Space. I got the game free from my bro so I had little expectation on it (I read a little about the game).
A week later I am loving the game due to the character and collecting the spaceship blueprints. I spacing ages trying to fits the modules within that spaceship blueprints.

 

[The Knightly Gamer]

Majin and The Forbidden Kingdom

Sure graphics aren't great, but the puzzles and characters drew me in.

Altogether...Awesome!

I will have to agree with that. It was a great game. I really enjoyed it and its story was pretty good in my mind.

 

[The Headcrab Farmer]

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (Yes, i love the Kane and Lynch series). I had read some awful reviews of it, downloaded the PS3 demo to see how it was, got pleasantly surprised, found steam and it's sales, bought it and WHOP-DE-F******-DUO! I could not see that awesome tale coming when i first started it and i could damn not see the supposed bad things in it afterwards!

The other game was Doshin the Giant. I had just gotten the Wii and i was getting some GC games 'cause i could. I found it just sitting alone on the shelf and since it had an offer, i bought... and i have not played anything like it since. You're basically a giant yellow friendly giant named Doshin (or a mean devil called Yashin) and you're like a god/demi god, walking around on a cartoony island, helping villagers by moving trees and terraforming and growing bigger for all the love/hate you get.

Atom Zombie Smasher wasn't too bad either...

 

[Subwayeatn]

Battlefield 1942, i had never played any sort of fps before and my uncle let me play it at his house.

Best game ever

 

[Citrus]

I second Enslaved. I went into it with pretty low expectations, but it wound up becoming one of my favourite games. The characters and acting are really great - even better than, say, Red Dead Redemption. At least in my opinion.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is another of my favourite games, and if you liked that one then you should definitely check Enslaved out. It's sort of like the Sands of Time for this console generation.

 

[Rnr1224]

batman: arkham asylum. the trailers made it look good to me so i figure why not take the plunge and preorder.