Games you love, but probably didn't get enough sales/attention

[Evilpigeon]

Vampire the masquerade, for the 3rd time. Sure it's more widely known now but if it had been recognised at release or, even better given enough time to be finished properly, we might still have Troika.

 

[Innegativeion]

Besides, of course, one of the big champions of this category; Beyond Good and Evil,

we also have Metal Arms; Glitch in the system, a third person shooter who's quality and humor is up there on par with giants like ratchet and clank! And yet, it wallows in obscurity. Such a pity.

*snip*

baaaah! ninja'd

 

[Triforceformer]

Super Monday Night Combat. Due to issues with Steam and Beta invites, the girl was thrown out on stage almost two whole months too early. The community slowly dwindles every week, and the disaster that was its TF2 promo did nothing but cause a week of grief and drive 3500 of the game's players away in a month.

 

[scorptatious]

Well there's games like Metal Arms: Glitch in the System, Valkyria Chronicles and Psychonauts.

Those three games are awesome.

 

[bafrali]

Rayman Origins. Thank God Ubisoft decided on a sequal despite its low sales. Game is brilliant i tell you, brilliant.

 

[Skeggers]

Thinking about it, Payday: The Heist was an excellent game in my opinion, and that first heist is just so great.

 

[Magicite Spring]

snip

I've never actually played it truth be told as I'm not really a JRPG fan, but I rarely hear anything positive about it. One of the things I hear is what you said; that it's too linear and if I was a fan of the series it sounds like I'd be disappointed.

I can deal with linearity, heck I would say on a scale I would prefer linearity to open world, but dear lord, the pacing vs what they let on for the story + what you did in between each cut scene chunk...

just..the worst combinations. Most linear games have you enthralled in the story or thinking "damn, i really wanna go kick that guys ass! gotta destroy his baddies to prove how big of a piece of shit he is! fuck you for killing my party member!" but the motivation is definitely nowhere to be seen, as most cutscenes do next to nothing for plot reveals or pacing of story elements (kinda just reiterated what I said, but really, it's that bad...to me at least.)

Well it seems you got a totally different experience to me. I was enthralled by the story. I've never played a game before were the main characters are forced to play for the bad guys side, and in a way that makes everyone they used to live with fear and hate them on sight, and from the start I was very interested in what the characters would do and how they would grow as their story progressed. This, along with the awesome graphics, amazing enviroments and a combat system I though was innovative as it brought pace to the battle system as well as actually fun to use meant I didn't mind running through the linear corridors. I didn't care since I wanted to find out what happened at the end of them. But it seems I and only I felt this way about FFXIII (which is sort of depressing).

OT: I agree with Rayman Origins. Brilliant game, definately deserved more attention.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

snip

I've never actually played it truth be told as I'm not really a JRPG fan, but I rarely hear anything positive about it. One of the things I hear is what you said; that it's too linear and if I was a fan of the series it sounds like I'd be disappointed.

I can deal with linearity, heck I would say on a scale I would prefer linearity to open world, but dear lord, the pacing vs what they let on for the story + what you did in between each cut scene chunk...

just..the worst combinations. Most linear games have you enthralled in the story or thinking "damn, i really wanna go kick that guys ass! gotta destroy his baddies to prove how big of a piece of shit he is! fuck you for killing my party member!" but the motivation is definitely nowhere to be seen, as most cutscenes do next to nothing for plot reveals or pacing of story elements (kinda just reiterated what I said, but really, it's that bad...to me at least.)

Well it seems you got a totally different experience to me. I was enthralled by the story. I've never played a game before were the main characters are forced to play for the bad guys side, and in a way that makes everyone they used to live with fear and hate them on sight, and from the start I was very interested in what the characters would do and how they would grow as their story progressed. This, along with the awesome graphics, amazing enviroments and a combat system I though was innovative as it brought pace to the battle system as well as actually fun to use meant I didn't mind running through the linear corridors. I didn't care since I wanted to find out what happened at the end of them. But it seems I and only I felt this way about FFXIII (which is sort of depressing).

OT: I agree with Rayman Origins. Brilliant game, definately deserved more attention.

well i am glad you did enjoy it, and for anyone who does enjoy it, however that is what i meant about the "worst combinations" part of my post, the overall pacing and how they revealed and what they revealed just made it the most sludgiest game i have ever tried to get through, hell I didn't have to put in as much effort into half life to figure out how bored I was.

edit (stupid thing posted before i was done)

It had some great stuff going for it, but it just didn't flow well at all when put together, for me at least.

 

[JasonKaotic]

I've heard from a lot of other people that Okami's good too. I'll have to give it a play sometime.

But my vote goes for Lost Odyssey. It may ring a bell to a lot of people, but hardly anyone seems to have played it. Seriously, I can't express how much I love that game. If you like JRPGs and don't mind a game not being that good until a little while in (the first one or two hours are hard as hell and not very interesting, but it picks up massively after that), you have to play that game.
It's sad. They were considering making more, it could've been Final Fantasy's successor, but because hardly anyone bought the game they didn't think there would be any point. Mistwalker is pretty much Squaresoft 2.0, two of the three main people of the company are Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu. Hironobu was the director of every Final Fantasy up to 10, and Nobuo made the soundtracks for each of them.

In short, if you like JRPGs and turn-based battle systems buy it right friggin' now, and ignore the mediocrity of the first hour or two. And that Kaim is a bit of a dick during that time for some reason. It gets so good I can't even explain it. It's my favourite game of this generation by far.

Edit: There's not much replay value though. It is mainly story-based. And the start of the game is so damn hard. In a bad, frustrating way.

 

[crono738]

Psychonauts and Okami, for obvious answers.

Other than them, Vanquish...good God Vanquish. It was made of such concentrated awesome that nobody could have possibly disliked it.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Psychonauts and Okami, for obvious answers.

Other than them, Vanquish...good God Vanquish. It was made of such concentrated awesome that nobody could have possibly disliked it.

Definitely games I want to play. Same goes to Bayonetta.

Ooooh... Bayonetta/Vanquish crossover! It'd be- <u?No[/U].

 

[Nothing Tra La La]

Haunting Ground. It's one of my all time favorite games but is so unheard of. Although I have to say that the best underrated game for me would be Rule of Rose. It has one of the most fantastic stories in gaming history and, despite it's really frustrating combat system, is so well done that it's a sin that it doesn't have a larger fanbase. It's even been banned in some countries because of it's macabre story. If there is a god, Rule of Rose would be remade for nextgen consoles.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Banjo-Kazooie Nuts N' Bolts. Original vehicular platformer, each mission a puzzle in true Banjo SPIRIT. Just because it wasn't a carbon copy of an out-dated genre, doesn't mean it needed to be so very hated

Collect-O-Thon Platformer Genre
Origin: Super Mario 64 (1996)

First-Person Shooter Genre
Origin: Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

Alright, so, some games that get a lot of hate for no good reason? I've thought about this...

Zapper: One Wicked Cricket
People say that this is a carbon-copy of Frogger, and, indeed, you hop around on grid-based maps in the same fashion, but, that's where the similarities end. Zapper can actually kill stuff and he has to solve various puzzles.

Shadow the Hedgehog
I don't like Next-Gen, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, and especially Black Knight. But, I just don't understand all the hate for Shadow. You can be evil? No one complained about that in Sonic Adventure 2 or any other titles that let you play as a villain. You can use guns? Guns have been in the series since the first game. Just being more accessible isn't a problem. It's dark? Once again, Sonic Adventure 2 was so much darker, and people say it's the greatest Sonic game of all time. The gameplay is all Adventureish, the engine is smooth, the locations are cool, and the game's just fun to play. Also, you actually play as Shadow, and not guide him through railroad tracks, moving left and right, occasionally jumping, like the Sonic games of more recent years.

Gex series
People say that Conker using cultural references was a good thing. But, when Gex does it, they say that making cultural references is stupid. Then, they see Conker and Duke Nukem again and completely forgot they even said that. The gameplay's nice, too, and the whole "Media Dimension" thing was an interesting idea, as well.

Below is a franchise that isn't hated, but is just obscure.

Army Men
Before 2K games bought it, 3DO made this amazing series that kept innovating so much, the games kept coming in a flurry of different genres, such as RTS, third-person shooter, and vehicle combat. It was created under the idea to have those plastic army soldiers actually be alive and from another universe waging war, occasionally slipping into our own. If they stayed too long, they got plasticized, as in, hardened up, with a base formed under their feet.

That's so unfair because the collect-a-thon platformer genre didn't update like the FPS genre did. The FPS genre kept up with the times and constantly modernized. The collect-a-thon platformer was targeted as old when Super Mario Sunshine came out, which then pretty much switched genres with Galaxy.

Though to be fair, DKC, Back the Future (II?), Yoshi's Island, and a few Genesis games such as Sonic fall under that "collect-a-thon" genre.

EDIT: I forgot Dizzy which I BELIEVE is a collect-a-thon, type.

EDIT 2: A friend wants me to make sure to list Vectorman as a collect-a-thon shooter/platformer.

 

[Wanderhome]

+1 Mirrors Edge!!


My pick is Advent Rising, maybe it'll be revived... prolly not but i'll hold fast hope.

 

[Alma Mare]

Alice: Madness Returns. Best level design I've seen in quite a while, aesthetics that stand head and shoulders above the rest. So much going for that game and all people do is whine about how long the levels are.

 

[crono738]

Psychonauts and Okami, for obvious answers.

Other than them, Vanquish...good God Vanquish. It was made of such concentrated awesome that nobody could have possibly disliked it.

Definitely games I want to play. Same goes to Bayonetta.

Ooooh... Bayonetta/Vanquish crossover! It'd be- <u?No[/U].

I highly recommend Vanquish. My only real complaint is that it's way too short, as in, my first play-through was around 4.5 hours.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

Beyond good and evil nuff said. one of the best reviewed games the year it came out and no one bought it.

The sales of the HD remake for PS360 were apparently better, but for a potential sequel Ubisoft keeps pulling this crap like "well, we'll see how Rayman Origins, (then insert other "core" game) sells first, to make sure that market is still there." Huh?

Agreed though, amazing game. I hope even if it takes until the next gen that a sequel does arrive, it deserves it, and Ansel deserves it.