Games you didn't expect to turn out GREAT.

[Noswad]

Well apart from the obvious, portal lets face it no one saw that coming, i would say Deus Ex, having never even heard of it before i picked it up a few years back because it was on sale for a quid and i was poor and wanted a new game. I always felt guilty playing it because the level designers had put in so many ways to complete objective, it felt like i was ignoring the majority off their work.

 

[RottingAwesome]

aaaaa A reckless disregard for gravity.
got it in the potato pack and have fallen in love with the surrealism and aesthetic :3

 

[Russano_Greenstripe]

Ignore this post, I put it in the wrong thread. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Record of Agarest War has no right being as good as it is.

 

[BreakfastMan]

I bought Hitman: Blood Money on a whim, thinking it would be something I would play for a couple hours, get bored/frustrated with, and never play again. Basically, a minor distraction. Boy, was I ever wrong. I am glad I was too.

 

[kijebe]

beyond good and evil

old game that has a good storyline, even if it was cartoonish

 

[Riobux]

Rune: Viking Warlord. I bought it on a deal with absolutely no prior knowledge about the game for 2 for £10 on PS2. It ended up being a game with a ton of fun as you go through terrain feeling like one bad-arse Viking mother fucker.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Darksiders was remarkably something new, and unexpectedly good once I got past the fact that War looks absolutely ridiculous.

And Super Princess Peach, actually. My gf at the time was playing it, and challenged me to, and I did, and wow, it was pretty decent, actually.

 

[Johnson294]

Just Cause 2, it jut bought it because it looked interesting and was fairly cheap. The game however was extremely addicting and huge, I played it for about 60 hours over about 20 days before stopping. One of my favorite sandbox games this gen.

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

mary kate and ashley's sweet 16 not one word damn it. I played it with my little cousin after she begged for two hours and it brought back sweet memories of mario party 2 you know when it was actually fun.

 

[Krantos]

Mount & Blade.

$5 on steam. 200+ hrs later....

 

[glyphseeker]

painkiller
i got this in a box with like 20 other computer games so i popped it in and started playing
twas the best two days of my life ever

 

[DesertMummy]

Red Dead: Redemption. I originally didn't even plan to buy it, until my friend told me that it was amazing, so I did. It was awesome, I still don't think it is GOTY worthy, though that's a whole other story. Still, good game, play it if you haven't already.

 

[zHellas]

Contact.

Spoiler: Game Cover

Really breaks the 4th Wall, and it's a very interesting JRPG.

I highly recommend it to anyone!

 

[Lilani]

mary kate and ashley's sweet 16 not one word damn it. I played it with my little cousin after she begged for two hours and it brought back sweet memories of mario party 2 you know when it was actually fun.

I admit, I very much enjoyed Mary Kate and Ashley's Magical Mystery Mall. The minigames were just so much fun! That and Angelica from the Rugrats had her own game, I think it was a fashion show game or something. Either way I remember having a BLAST playing thoughs.

 

[DustyDrB]

I'm with you about Enslaved. The game was outstanding.
Alpha Protocol was a lot better than what I heard. While I won't call the overall game great, there were some great aspects of it.

 

[PopcornAvenger]

Dead Space 2. I liked the original, but wasn't blown away by it. DS2 was done the way a sequel should be done: they actually fixed what was dodgy in the first game, added more content, but kept the gameplay (almost) exactly the same. I think it's a stretch to call it *great*, but it was very good, a pleasant surprise.

I was surprised by Darksiders also, but when the developers went nuts with the "ray-beam puzzle orgy" at the end I shelved it, didn't finish it. I play hack'n'slashers to do exactly that, hack'n'slash. Not spend my time screaming at the monitor over a tedious puzzle some developer put in there to make themselves feel clever.

A similar game that was a nice surprise, bordering on great, was X-men Origins: Wolverine.

Magicka. I thought it'd be little more than a day's diversion, but it turned out pretty good.

The one game that completely blindsided me with how good - and how addictive it is - is Plants Vs. Zombies. I *still* play that game, and probably will for years.

 

[NeutralDrow]

A Drug That Makes You Dream.

It was almost a random purchase at Comic Con one year. I didn't really know much about it, beyond the fact that it had a vaguely uncomfortable but interesting premise, it was at least intended to be a deeper game not just focused on sex, and there were a couple of user reviews that spoke glowingly of it. The latter didn't really reassure me, since I'd just finished Xchange, which received decent reviews despite being almost insultingly crappy.

So I played it.

It was like I set the bar low enough to step over, and the game opted instead to jump twenty stories up. <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.135672-Neutral-Drow-reviews-A-Drug-That-Makes-You-Dream>Details.