Great Games released at the WRONG time.

[SecondPrize]

Exanima. It was released at the wrong time in that it was released as Early Access which will turn off many people entirely but I've never played anything like this before and always wanted to without knowing it and I still don't get why nobody talks about it.

In North America, Alan Wake was released the same day as RDR, that was pretty bad timing in my opinion.

Which leads me to post this, Alan Wake, one of my favorite games of all time, was released on the same day as RDR. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to release it on the same day as RDR, but it definitely hurt the game saleswise.

You have excellent taste, Sir or Madame. Alan Wake is another one of those things I'd never seen before in video game in terms of the narrative style and the way it tells the story with the page collectibles. It's my favorite game of the last generation, beating out Dead Space by a nose. Barry's. I didn't realize at the time that it shipped alongside RDR, but I don't buy rockstar games so that didn't really exist for me.

 

[Mir Teiwaz]

ZombiU, a brilliant survival horror game that made great usage of the Wii U gamepad and managed to make Zombies a somewhat intimidating foe once more.

It was released as a launch title for the Wii U in November 2012. Both a very terrible time for Wii U sales, and for horror games in the time in which the also brilliant Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the bad-but-successful Halo 4 had only just released.

Ubisoft blames the Wii U and have declared that the hundreds of thousands worth of sales did not suffice for a sequel which I deem abhorrent. ZombiU's issues are ones expected of a launch title, a sequel could have been a horror game for the ages.

My problems with the game revolved around the cricket bat. It takes way too many swings to kill a zombie with it. This would be fine if there was some way to upgrade it, but since that's not possible it seems ridiculous that a zombie takes 5+ swings to the head for it to die. Since using a gun is basically an absolute last resort, the bat was your main weapon.

I'd love to see a sequel made where this issue is fixed in one way or another.

 

[Evonisia]

ZombiU, a brilliant survival horror game that made great usage of the Wii U gamepad and managed to make Zombies a somewhat intimidating foe once more.

It was released as a launch title for the Wii U in November 2012. Both a very terrible time for Wii U sales, and for horror games in the time in which the also brilliant Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the bad-but-successful Halo 4 had only just released.

Ubisoft blames the Wii U and have declared that the hundreds of thousands worth of sales did not suffice for a sequel which I deem abhorrent. ZombiU's issues are ones expected of a launch title, a sequel could have been a horror game for the ages.

My problems with the game revolved around the cricket bat. It takes way too many swings to kill a zombie with it. This would be fine if there was some way to upgrade it, but since that's not possible it seems ridiculous that a zombie takes 5+ swings to the head for it to die. Since using a gun is basically an absolute last resort, the bat was your main weapon.

I'd love to see a sequel made where this issue is fixed in one way or another.

I don't think I ever personally took issue with the Cricket Bat's damage save for the stupid Police Armour Zombies (I swear one actually took seventeen hits to die). Eventually I learned it was three hits to knock the helmet off, and just whip out the pistol for a quick headshot.

Perhaps it was a combination of the Cricket Bat being the loudest silent weapon I've ever seen in a game and playing Dying Light recently teaching me to just tolerate having to hit a Zombie eight billion times to kill them, making me forget about ZombiU's comparatively small problem.

 

[Unspoken_Request]

KoA is one of those games you know would have had an amazing sequel given the chance. There was a lot to like and a number of things not to like. But they could've been improved and we could've gotten a really good game. Sadly we all know the tale of what happened.

I could not agree more. It was a great foundation for a franchise. Too bad no publisher/devs decided to purchase the IP.

 

[Kyle Winston]

Shantae is a decent metroidvania game for the Game Boy Color, but was released at the end of the GBC lifecycle. I am glad it is getting so much love recently with rather good sequels.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Space Marine. Released a week before Gears of War 3. Go figure.

 

[Fallow]

The Freespace series (1998, 1999).

Absolutely top class games; great review scores, supported modding toolset, great storyline (lots of cinematics), great replayability (multiple paths through the story). It's just a complete package.

Pretty bad sales, and now languishing in obscurity.
Volition wants to do a 3, but Interplay owns the IP

 

[MetalDooley]

In North America, Alan Wake was released the same day as RDR, that was pretty bad timing in my opinion.

Which leads me to post this, Alan Wake, one of my favorite games of all time, was released on the same day as RDR. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to release it on the same day as RDR, but it definitely hurt the game saleswise.

The same day?I thought 4 days was bad but whoever ok'd that decision needs a serious talking to

ZombiU, a brilliant survival horror game that made great usage of the Wii U gamepad and managed to make Zombies a somewhat intimidating foe once more.

It was released as a launch title for the Wii U in November 2012. Both a very terrible time for Wii U sales, and for horror games in the time in which the also brilliant Call of Duty: Black Ops II and the bad-but-successful Halo 4 had only just released.

Ubisoft blames the Wii U and have declared that the hundreds of thousands worth of sales did not suffice for a sequel which I deem abhorrent. ZombiU's issues are ones expected of a launch title, a sequel could have been a horror game for the ages.

Probably didn't help that people didn't seem to be expecting a survival horror game.I can't remember which site had a review(but it was one of the major ones)where the reviewer was quite scathing in his review and said something along the lines of "it could have been a great L4D style shooter"...FFS at what stage in all the pre-release footage and demos did it ever look like L4D

My problems with the game revolved around the cricket bat. It takes way too many swings to kill a zombie with it. This would be fine if there was some way to upgrade it, but since that's not possible it seems ridiculous that a zombie takes 5+ swings to the head for it to die. Since using a gun is basically an absolute last resort, the bat was your main weapon.

I'd love to see a sequel made where this issue is fixed in one way or another.

See this never bothered me as I imagine in real life it would take quite a few swings to bash someones head in so it made the game more realistic.It kind of annoys me in shows like the Walking Dead when even the scrawniest armed character is able to bash a zombies head in with one hit

 

[SomeGuyOnHisComputer]

Many good 3rd party Wii games came out too far in it's life cycle. "Core" gamers gave up on the system, and the games simply didn't appeal to the trendy casual crowed.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Fantasy Life came out A WEEK before Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the 3DS. No matter how much praised it got in Japan, everyone will be getting SSBB first especially for those strap on cash!

Ok sure I would say it's a great game but some other people seen to praised it. Now if only I can give it a proper day of time to played it if it weren't for its lengthly tutorials for each professions!

 

[Meximagician]

Descent on PC, released the same year as Doom II and written off as a clone. Now has a cult following, but deserves much more for creating the Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) sub-genre, which still has only a handful of true examples.

Alundra on PS1, also written off as a clone, this time of the Legend of Zelda series, really didn't help that Final Fantasy VII was released on the same year and system. Has a small but dedicated cult following for being a darker, harder Zelda-esque action adventure.

 

[Foolery]

Resonance of Fate (PS3/X360)- March 16, 2010
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3/X360) - March 9, 2010

Sega made a fairly niche but certainly interesting JRPG go head to head with the newest and highly anticipated installement of Square Enix' juggernaut. You can guess how well that ended. And the saddest part is, Final Fantasy XIII wasn't all that amazing anyway.

God bless Tri-Ace, they make some pretty decent overlooked JRPGs like Valkyrie Profile. Interestingly enough, it was Tri-Ace that worked on most of Final Fantasy XIII-2.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Wow! So much love for KoA and The Neverhood in one thread? This is like a beautiful dream.

I didn't mind how easy KoA was, so that didn't detract from my high opinion of the game; however, my opinion of the game was enhanced by how open the devs were with their audience on the official forums. People wanted a true hard mode, and the devs came right out and said that they were working on it due to community demand. The only reason it didn't happen is because of the sad demise of 38 Studios.

As for Neverhood, I spent dozens of hours playing that with my girlfriend at the time. The game wasn't THAT long, but we spent an eternity screwing around in the world and laughing endlessly. It's so unfortunate that Neverhood was released as point-and-click games were drowning in a riptide, or else its name might be as recognizable today as Monkey Island, and regarded with equal reverence.

I also think that every horror game not called Amnesia, Slender-*yawn*, or Outlast is released at the wrong time. It doesn't matter how well they do, there's always some excuse to abandon horror.

 

[GabeZhul]

The Freespace series (1998, 1999).

Absolutely top class games; great review scores, supported modding toolset, great storyline (lots of cinematics), great replayability (multiple paths through the story). It's just a complete package.

Pretty bad sales, and now languishing in obscurity.
Volition wants to do a 3, but Interplay owns the IP

I wouldn't say they're languishing in obscurity. FP2 has a very active modding scene and the games often frequent top 100 and 50 games lists. The real reason why they are not a household name is because the space-combat genre itself dropped out of the mainstream right after they came out (some say exactly because FP2 set the bar so high it intimidated other developers at the time). Sure, the younger generation probably doesn't know them too well, but chances are most gamers who grew up in the nineties played the hell out of them already.

Vampire: The Masquerade ? Bloodlines. Yeah it was a Troika game (I miss Troika) so expect bugs but great writing and role playing. But it was released Novemeber 2004.

Also launched that month: Half Life 2, Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3.

A great month for gaming, not for Bloodlines.

You are really understating of just how broken Bloodlines was at release. It wasn't just a few bugs, the game was downright unplayable. It became a great, if still flawed gem after all the community patches, but you cannot blame the release date for the low sales of this one.

For my five cents:

The flop of Beyond Good and Evil baffles me even to this day. It had great reviews. It won a plethora of awards. It had a great community reaction. All my friends played it and we all absolutely adored it. Even today it is still considered a cult classic, yet it had terrible sales, and no one really knows why. It's just sad.

As for others... Well, there's Tribes: Vengeance. It is an extremely fun FPS with a decent single player campaign following five different characters through almost two decades, great gameplay- and movement-mechanics (different armor-suits with different abilities, "skiing", jet-packs and so forth) and map-design. The only problem was that it was released just a few months after Doom 3 and just a bit before HL2, with practically zero advertisement support (not to mention it was using the updated Unreal 2 engine at a time where everyone was trying to wow the public with high-def graphics and textures and physics and whatnot). It was a commercial fail, and I don't think it had much of a cult following either, but it was still a pretty good, fast-paced old-school FPS. Yathzee would probably love it too.

 

[FoolKiller]

Pretty much most games released between Oct - Dec as they get overshadowed by the big annual releases.Why publishers insist on cramming the majority of releases into the autumn/winter period is beyond me

Beyond Good and Evil is a perfect example.Released a few weeks after Vice City and around the same time as Prince of Persia:Sands of Time,Mario Kartouble Dash,Max Payne 2 and KOTOR it didn't really stand a chance

Alan Wake is another good example.While it didn't do badly sales wise it was definitely a mistake to release it 4 days before Red Dead Redemption came out as it was always going to be overshadowed by Rockstars game

In North America, Alan Wake was released the same day as RDR, that was pretty bad timing in my opinion.

Which leads me to post this, Alan Wake, one of my favorite games of all time, was released on the same day as RDR. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to release it on the same day as RDR, but it definitely hurt the game saleswise.

I loved Alan Wake and beat it two days before RDR came out! Then enjoyed me some RDR.

Also, it's easy to judge this looking back but RDR wasn't a thing until it came out. The original didn't really sell well at all.

Personally, I think that Nier, and Blue Dragon are two of the most overlooked games of last generation.

 

[FoolKiller]

Resonance of Fate (PS3/X360)- March 16, 2010
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3/X360) - March 9, 2010

Sega made a fairly niche but certainly interesting JRPG go head to head with the newest and highly anticipated installement of Square Enix' juggernaut. You can guess how well that ended. And the saddest part is, Final Fantasy XIII wasn't all that amazing anyway.

God bless Tri-Ace, they make some pretty decent overlooked JRPGs like Valkyrie Profile. Interestingly enough, it was Tri-Ace that worked on most of Final Fantasy XIII-2.

I'll add to the Tri-Ace love with my love of Infinite Undiscovery, possibly the stupidest title in the history of titles, but an awesome game with a memorable story.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Wow! So much love for KoA and The Neverhood in one thread? This is like a beautiful dream.

I didn't mind how easy KoA was, so that didn't detract from my high opinion of the game; however, my opinion of the game was enhanced by how open the devs were with their audience on the official forums. People wanted a true hard mode, and the devs came right out and said that they were working on it due to community demand. The only reason it didn't happen is because of the sad demise of 38 Studios.

I loved KOA and the behind the scenes world building that was going on by R.A. Salvatore. He'd had a huge bit of lore imagined and was writing furiously to add to the MMO that was supposed to follow. I used to talk to him regularly through various means (he still answers my e-mails!!) and he really felt horrible for all the fans who wanted more from the world of Amalur. Its even worse that all the stuff he did will never see the light of day thanks to court orders. He's still bound by an NDA and can't give any details about it, no matter how much begging people do.
I love his work, especially the Demon Wars universe. And Amalur seemed to be on that scale since he was building it from the ground up, behind the scenes. Sucks major that we got one entry in that series and nothing else despite the demand from fans its so silly that no major publisher bought up the rights... It could have been a massive plus for any dev/pub to get, but maybe the asking price was a bit high.

 

[MetalDooley]

The flop of Beyond Good and Evil baffles me even to this day. It had great reviews. It won a plethora of awards. It had a great community reaction. All my friends played it and we all absolutely adored it. Even today it is still considered a cult classic, yet it had terrible sales, and no one really knows why.

Releasing it at the busiest time of the year for game releases alongside other big name titles like Vice City and Mario Kart combined with fuck all marketing probably didn't help

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Resident Evil 0.
Maybe it was the whole Gamecube not being a serious platform but it was a very solid RE game.
Certainly in the top 5 of the series. Can't wait for the remake

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I loved Alan Wake and beat it two days before RDR came out! Then enjoyed me some RDR.

I might have beaten Alan Wake in that time frame except that I got distracted at the beginning. Hearing one of my all-time favorite singers in a video game made me so giddy that I couldn't do anything else. More games need Harry Nilsson.

Spoiler: It's so obvious.

Need something heavier?


And you can't tell me that this wouldn't work in the credits of a crazy-ass shooter:

Then again, any developer who thinks that far out of the box is automatically creating a game that's ahead of its time. So sad!

------------------------------------------

*snip*

I'd never even heard of Salvatore before KoA, but I was really impressed by what he wrote for the game. You could tell that KoA's story was just the beginning of something greater. It was so good that I was dumbfounded every time the IP was passed up at auction. The pundits suggested that the IP was toxic because of its association with 38 Studios, but I can't believe that nobody saw the potential in continuing a story that was already so thoroughly and carefully crafted.