Gaming gems you almost didn't play

[Mr Pantomime]

I have a few

Metal Gear Solid 3 - A friend of mine talked about the series for years. Never seemed like my thing. So, one day I was browsing through some PS2 games at a rental store, and saw Metal Gear Solid 3. I decided to give it a try. 3 days later, I finished the game, returned it, and went into my local EB games to find a copy. Took me a while to find one, but during that time I found MSG2. SO I wasnt to bothered. Ive finshed those games about 4 times each.

Half Life 2 - Let me get this out of the way. I dont like Half Life. Ive played it at random places since 2005, but never got into it at all. Anyway, I bought Half Life 2 on the steam sales end of last year, and recently downloaded it. I dont know why, but Im really enjoying it.

Persona 3 - I randomly purchased it from a shopping site. I was looking for a good JRPG to kill the time. Needless to say im happy with my purchase

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Legend of Dragoon. Thank god I looked in that bin......
I've put hundreds of hours into it.

 

[Darkauthor81]

Odin Sphere

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Star Trek: Bridge Commander. I saw it once in a shop years ago, but given the massive amounts of Star Trek Shovelware I didn't buy it. Then a couple years ago I looked up all the Star Trek games to see how many awful ones there were. I read the Wiki article on BC and was intregued. A couple months later I found a copy in a bargain bin (I love small games retailers) and it is now up there with "Birth of the Federation" as my favourite Star Trek game, and I still play it all the time. Thanks mainly to the strong modding community that keeps on adding awesome new features and ships.

If the thought of pitting the original Enterprise against a Cylon Basestar sounds interesting then this is the game for you. BTW the Basestar generally wins. It has no shields, but the Enterprise just doesnt have the firepower.

EDIT: I just looked to see how much a copy costs on Amazon. £80 for a new copy!! £30 for a used one. That bargain bin was well named!

Also I can never stop gushing about this game. So here's a Screenshot to show how amazing this game looks (it was released in 2002)

<img height=400>http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/8/potd/1243282493_56.jpg
that's In-Game graphcs, and not a cutscene. Open in new tab for bigger picture

EDIT THE SECOND: 5555 posts

Never heard of it before. I'll definitely have to check it out

OT: I almost missed out on Golden Sun until a friend lent me a copy after he kept bragging about how awesome it was. I was given Blitzkrieg 2, which I didn't think I would enjoy as much as I still do.

 

[Woodsey]

I almost missed Dragon Age: Origins, not for any real reason, it just kind of snuck up, was a massive hit, but because I hadn't really noticed it before release, I carried on not noticing it.

 

[Ldude893]

Call of Duty 4. It was the first FPS shooter I ever played. Prior to being 13, I was more into strategy games like Command and Conquer Generals. One day at a cousin's house with my family, I saw that he had CoD4 and I guess I had to find a way to pass the time.
I never regretted it.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

Star Trek: Bridge Commander. I saw it once in a shop years ago, but given the massive amounts of Star Trek Shovelware I didn't buy it. Then a couple years ago I looked up all the Star Trek games to see how many awful ones there were. I read the Wiki article on BC and was intregued. A couple months later I found a copy in a bargain bin (I love small games retailers) and it is now up there with "Birth of the Federation" as my favourite Star Trek game, and I still play it all the time. Thanks mainly to the strong modding community that keeps on adding awesome new features and ships.

If the thought of pitting the original Enterprise against a Cylon Basestar sounds interesting then this is the game for you. BTW the Basestar generally wins. It has no shields, but the Enterprise just doesnt have the firepower.

EDIT: I just looked to see how much a copy costs on Amazon. £80 for a new copy!! £30 for a used one. That bargain bin was well named!

Also I can never stop gushing about this game. So here's a Screenshot to show how amazing this game looks (it was released in 2002)

<img height=400>http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/8/potd/1243282493_56.jpg
that's In-Game graphcs, and not a cutscene. Open in new tab for bigger picture

EDIT THE SECOND: 5555 posts

Never heard of it before. I'll definitely have to check it out

Do so. It can be a bit hard to come by, and I'll doubt you'll see it in a brick and mortar shop. Look online for people selling copies (It's probably on pirate sites, but it's too good to torrent). If you do get it (which I would suggest you do) you'll want the cool Mods for it. These are essential as it updates all the ships, the scenarios, and the graphics to more modern standards. You can find them at bcfiles.com. Drop me a line if you get it and I'll point you in the direction of some great mods.

 

[thenoblegaunt]

I almost didn't play No More Heroes. Still need to play the sequel though.

 

[rancher of monsters]

Kingdom Hearts, beacuse mixing final fantasy, Goofy, and an oddly place pop song wasn't something I was going to actually pay money for. Luckily a friend let me borrow it.

GTA: San Andreas was something that landed on my lunch table one day, the only reason they let me keep it is beacuse they thought it didn't work anymore.

 

[pulse2]

Theres a lot of games I only played to test and ended up making them the best games I've played.

Fallout 3 - I borrowed a friend's copy along with some other games I assumed were better, gave it a try once, didn't like it very much, tried it again through from a different perspective and suddenly fell in love with it, now I can't get enough.

Populous - Played a demo of it with a friend, was okay, we had a laugh, my friend bought the real game, amazing! Love it! Have it on everything now.

Shadow of the Collosus and Ico - Someone told me ages ago that Ico was the prequel to God of war, after 3 minutes I realised they were telling a fib, but I liked it anyway, played on and realised I loved it. Shadow of the collosus I heard about everywhere online, so had to try it out.

God of war - Played a demo, loved the demo, bought the game Have every single one now.

And theres quite a lot more I encountered by sheer coincidence.

 

[ahrnygoose]

Mega Man 2, I had had a NES back in the 80s but had never played or heard of the series till 00s, now I rebought a NES and have completed it 20+ times, perfect platforming and shooting, just perfect

Awesome! One of my favorite games!

 

[Timberwolf0924]

Valkrya Chronicles saw it on a poster and thought "great japanese FPS, lets see how this fails"
Morrowind a buddy kept nagging how great this game was. I forget what I was playing at the time, but I'm glad I got it.
Portal I'm an fps fan, so I got TOB for Half-Life and Team Fortress. Was bored one day and decided. Whats the worst a "puzzle" game can do, kill some time maybe?
Okami thought "oh wow, so they took it form the ps2 and put it on the wii" and I needed a game for my wii and got a copy for like $19.95 awesome, beautiful game.
Fable same friend with morrowind told me to get this, waiting to get Fable 3 now.

 

[GamerRelic]

I just started system shock 2 and its amazing and so are my friends,I almost didnt play KotOR 2 cause I heard it was so buggy but while looking for mods for the first game I saw someone released a content restoration project (coulda called it pack I guess :/)What else could fit under this list,ah here we go , I hope no one stakes me once they find out I only recently bought the xcom and freedom force games because it was only 4$.

 

[ryai458]

Fallout 3 I was going to buy L4D but my brother convinced me to buy FO3, I'm very happy he did.

 

[VanQ]

I never would have played Tales of Symphonia if I hadn't seen a commercial for it. I flipped on the TV one day, it was on some random channel, and it was at a different time in the day than usual since school got out early. It was the only thing that tipped me off to the box art at Gamestop that weekend. I haven't ever seen the commercial again since that day. Now I'm a devout Tales series fan.

I also never would have even heard of Ocarina of Time if my next door neighbor hadn't let me watch him play it.

Tales of Symphonia, read an article about it's then upcoming sequel and figured I'd buy it to prepare for Dawn of The New World. Absolutely adored it. Oddly enough I never got around to buying DoTNW nor do I plan to.

Also Persona 3 FES,I'd heard about it but the dating sim aspect and only having one dungeon turned me off it.Saw it for $15 new one day and figured Why not,One of the best purchases I've ever made.

Really glad to see other Tales of fans out there, it's such a shame we may never see Tales of Graces or Tales of Xillia on this side of the pacific.

Spoiler: spoilered to save space

Xillia looks absolutely GORGEOUS, everything in that trailer is in game footage too. Ah well, I'll just have to wait til I can speak Japanese well enough to play it.

Also UncleUlty, I freakin' love your avatar, Teddy rocks! One of the funniest characters ever created.

 

[illas]

Cryostasis.

Getting the damn thing to run at more than 10FPS despite it being 4 years old was a pain, and I all but gave up. Eventually I found a hack/mod script that reduced the resolution below the default minimum via Google and started playing.

Ten hours later I sat back to realise that I had been blown away by one of the most brilliantly atmospheric games I'd ever played.

 

[gunman127]

When I built my first gaming rig, it was to play Universal Combat.

I got UC and Max Payne 2 for a 2-4-1 in Game...

Needless to say, UC is a massive pile of turds, and Max Payne 2 (and 1) are superb gaming experiences!

I found X2:The Threat, new in box, for 50p in a charity shop...
Played it for over 2000 hours, it helped me fail my Uni course!
Then bought X3:Reunion on launch day!

 

[-Samurai-]

The Suffering

It looked stupid...sounded stupid...and all of the reviews seemed to have people starting on Nightmare mode. It was on sale for 5 bucks and I figured, "Eh...5 bucks is worth an hour or two."

Played that game twice. Loved it. Real atmosphere building and the little psychological hiccups were interesting instead of distracting. Have to play it on normal to get a real feel for the game, though.

I still say that if it remained extremely close to the game, The Suffering would make a great movie. That gas chamber guy freaked me the hell out.

OT: Fallout 3. I wasn't interested in it at all. Then I found it for $8 and decided to see what the fuss was all about. I'm still not in love with it, but I've sunk a ton of hours into it.

 

[mireko]

Really glad to see other Tales of fans out there, it's such a shame we may never see Tales of Graces or Tales of Xillia on this side of the pacific.

Tales of Graces F is getting a US release. No news on the Wii version, but the PS3 version has been announced (which is better, since it's region-free). http://ataleoftworichards.com/

OT: I picked up the PSP remakes of Disgaea and Persona 3 (at different times, obviously), introducing me to both series. Persona is now the most interesting RPG franchise I've experienced, and Disgaea is awesome.