Hidden gems [PC only]

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

They're not literally hidden, but they flew completely below my radar. The last two weeks I discovered and played "Of Orcs and Men" and "Enslaved: Odyssey to The West", and I was completely taken. I'm thrilled that games can still surprise me like that. No one seems to be talking about these two games, and I don't remember anyone mentioning anything when they were released. I love them, Especially Enslaved. It suffers from some console port problems, but it's nothing game-breaking. I just love the story, the setting and the characters so much. Both games feel so fresh, even though they don't do anything particularly groundbreaking.

So I'm here to ask what else have I missed? Any other hidden gems on the PC that went unnoticed in the past few years? Enlighten me, please.

 

[josemlopes]

I had some but dont have much time now so I'll just make a list with a basic explanation,

Insurgency

Imagine a mix of Counter Strike with Arma, basicly a tacticool game that has a shit ton of small cool details (3D scopes, the aim isnt fixed, rather cool AI) that is very cool for people interested in that sort of game.


Hidden And Dangerous 2 (didnt like 1 much but I hear a lot of people do)

A tactical WW2 shooter (can be played as an FPS or TPS) that is VERY good at what it does, the fights are intense and the weapons are fun to use, the biggest downside is that the missions could be a bit more interesting overall.


EYE: Divine Cybermancy

Holy shit, this game is insane. Cyberpunk made by some french dudes, it has problems but its so unique and fun to play that the biggest problem is that its hard as fuck to get into.


Boiling Point: Road to Hell

Basicly Far Cry 2 in South America before Far Cry 2, very rough around the edges but it has some cool concepts and its rather unique. In how many games do you start by having to count you dollars to see if you can afford the gas for the trip to the objective?


Necrovision

Weird floaty gameplay but there arent many WW1 games where at the end of the first level you end up fighting a wizard and by the end of the fifth you are driving mechs and dragons.


7,62 High Caliber

After about 4 times trying to get into the game I finally did it and if the levels were more interesting then it would be one hell of a game. Its a real time strategy shooter I guess, kind of like Jagged Alliance: Back in Action but it has so many weapons, options and details.


1nsane 2

Some random ass game made by russians that since it shares some elements with the original 1nsane Codemasters bought the thing and sold it as 1nsane 2 for other regions, but fuck it, its a very fun racing game that even though its a lot more arcadey then the original it does work great and it adds to the fun of the original game modes.

Kung Fu Strike: The Warriors Rise

A very fun (but hard) brawler, just put the soundtrack of The Matrix as background and you will be kicking ass in no time feeling like a pro. The combat style is a bit like the Batman games but more involved, you have to hit all the kicks and punches and the blocking time is really small so there really isnt any down time just watching the character do the stuff for you.



That is all I guess.

 

[Ronald Nand]

The only thing I can think of is Death to Spies 1 and 2, these are basically the only games apart from the Hitman series that use a disguise mechanic, the game is rough around the edges but is still good. The reason I consider it a gem is because judging by how poorly the kickstarter for Death to Spies 3 is going, not many people know about the series.

There are a bunch of free Indie Games I'd consider gems too, most of the stuff on Digipen is good you have Deity, Chrono Disfunglement and other great games, Valve took two of the teams from there to work on portal so that's a testament to how good they are.

 

[ZedOmega]

Seven Kingdoms II: Frythan Wars is a good one to check out if you're into RTSes. Relatively simplistic compared to the big-name RTS games, a rather simplistic storyline (if you can even call it that), but the campaign mode is the closest to a roguelike that I've ever seen. Worth a shot.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

Shank 1 and 2

Awesome and fun beat em ups. They also have great multiplayer.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

One of the best rpgs I've ever played. Dripping with lore and atmosphere. Kinda bummed there isn't a sequel. Also be sure to install the Clan Quest mod

Alice Madness Returns

Overlooked Action Adventure game. Nice, otherworldy visuals. Gameplay can get kinda repetitive though.

Sonic Generations

Remarkably fun plat former. Sonic comes back into form. Great graphics, and a semi-decent PC port. For more fun, install the Sonic Unleashed mod. ( PC gaming WHOA!)

Darksiders

Preety much Zelda/God of War on PC. Interesting art design straight out of Spawn or Warhammer 40K, with great combat.

Ys series

Amazing that this series is relatively unknown. Great gameplay, story, and soundtrack all with high quality sprites. Hard as balls though.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Great story, great character narration, love the atmosphere, pretty creepy, runs on crappier computers, but still a surprisingly skillful and fun shooter on top of that. Stealth sucks though, and the game is unsupported because the developers went under.

7,62 High Caliber

After about 4 times trying to get into the game I finally did it and if the levels were more interesting then it would be one hell of a game. Its a real time strategy shooter I guess, kind of like Jagged Alliance: Back in Action but it has so many weapons, options and details.

Oh god the guns in that game. There's no attachment they omitted, there's no gun model too irrelevant to be left out, it's all there and it's glorious. It had like five variants of the MP5, five types of guns based on the M14, about every single major and minor Kalashnikov... I feel like the developers loved H&K a bit too much from all the guns they had in there.

 

[gsilver]

Freedom Planet

It is perhaps the best sidescroller/platformer that I've ever played, yet it didn't even get a published review by any of the normal sites. Gamerankings shows zero reviews, Metacritic shows two, and neither are in English.

Which is a goddamn shame, since it's an amazing platformer/action game. The boss battles in particular are impressive, as is the art and music. There's tons of influence from my favorite 16-bit era games, like Sonic, Gunstar Heroes (SEVEN FORCE!!!), Rocket Knight, Mega Man, and a bunch of others. It's also pretty awesome in its own right.


NeonXSZ is another. I'm a bit biased here since I love 6-DOF games (like Descent) and the genre has very slim pickings, but this one is impressive none-the-less. I think that the developer did himself a disservice by releasing it as "early access" since the first (estimated) 20 hours is content-complete and (nearly) bug-free. It would have been better to release that officially and call his future expansion plans as "free DLC". Ah well, what do I know?


I also love Cloudbuilt and Strike Vector, but those are (relatively) better known titles... Still niche, but not completely ignored.


Though I will say that at this point, Strike Vector and Freedom Planet are my #1 and #2 picks, respectively, for my favorite games of this year.

 

[Morgoth780]

Ascendant is a pretty good brawler/roguelike, if you like those types of games. Totalbiscuit did a WTF is on it, it's worth noting that there is controller support for it now.

 

[Dalisclock]

Alice Madness Returns

Overlooked Action Adventure game. Nice, otherworldy visuals. Gameplay can get kinda repetitive though.

Was it PC only? I don't disagree with you but I swore it was on consoles too.

Yeah, I really liked the game. The whole dollhouse/toys/Victorian museum world is still one of the creepiest areas I've ever seen in a video game, and the fact it very gradually transitions from one to the other is one of the reasons.

 

[Dalisclock]

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. Great story, great character narration, love the atmosphere, pretty creepy, runs on crappier computers, but still a surprisingly skillful and fun shooter on top of that. Stealth sucks though, and the game is unsupported because the developers went under.

Unfortunately it's buggy too. I got stopped by bugs that wouldn't trigger the way forward on the cutter and at the giant final boss in the underwater city.

Don't get me wrong. I liked the atmosphere and it's faithfulness to the stories(especially the bit in the hotel). Unfortunately, once it became a shooter, the game went downhill, because the game really didn't know how to be a good shooter. And the whole Innsmouth Raid felt really disappointing.

 

[Dalisclock]

My Answer for Every thread like this: Kentucky Route Zero.

I'm not sure if it's even a game, but it's wonderfully atmospheric and interesting and I really, really want to see the last to episodes soon.

I also have a fondness for Superbrothers: The Sword and Swocery EP because it's a fun, and wierd little fantasy-quest game that feels like someone was smoking pot, listening to pink floyd and watching twin peaks while composing a prog rock album(which then got turned into a computer game).

 

[Tanis]

A Story About My Uncle:
It's an odd puzzle/platformer that reminds me a lot of Myst.
But the game play is closer to a first person web-slinger (think: Spider-Man).

It's fairly new, so that's a plus.
Also, while the puzzles aren't terribly difficult, they're also varied and fun enough that you don't really mind.

 

[Starbird]

Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 3. I'm a pretty big Naruto fan, but this blew my socks off so hard that I ended up buying a Ps3 just to play the first half (#2).

One Must Fall 2097. Why is it that the best fighting game ever made is 20 years old? Seriously, just try this game, especially the tournament mode.

Orcs Must Die! 2. Hilariously fun and addictive Tower Defense/Action hybrid.

Defense Grid. Still about the best pure Tower Defense game ever made.

Cyberstorm. The best mech based game ever made that isn't a shooter.

Spec Ops: The Line. Not a fan of modern realistic shooters at all. But holy crap this game needs to be played. Storytelling on a Bioshock level of awesome, if not better.

Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners Of The Earth. One of the most atmospheric and genuinely awesome games in ages. Get patches.

Starscape: Awesome, awesome little space shooter/bullet hell/rpg hybrid.

Condemned: Criminal Origins. Yeah, again just play this game.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

Alice Madness Returns

Overlooked Action Adventure game. Nice, otherworldy visuals. Gameplay can get kinda repetitive though.

Was it PC only? I don't disagree with you but I swore it was on consoles too.

Yeah, I really liked the game. The whole dollhouse/toys/Victorian museum world is still one of the creepiest areas I've ever seen in a video game, and the fact it very gradually transitions from one to the other is one of the reasons.

I was under the impression that it didn't matter what platform was on, as long as it also came out on PC.

All the games I listed came out on PC.

 

[Starbird]

Really didn't like Alice, despite how sexy it was in 3D. One good boss fight, but about 75% of the game was a slog.

 

[Chicago Ted]

If you haven't heard/look into it, check out Mount & Blade Warband. It's a great low fantasy game that can have some massive battles take place in it and is pretty open to modding. There are few games that I can think of that do medieval combat as well as it.

 

[Signa]

Sanctum and Sanctum 2 have flown under a lot of radars. I vote for them. Coffee Stain is probably my favorite indie dev now.

 

[Krige]

Mars: War Logs - it's an RPG, not mind-blowingly awesome, but quite solid for its price, if a bit short. Played through twice, didn't regret it and I'm usually picky when it comes to RPGs.

Satazius - a friend gifted it to me and I was amazed how simple yet addicting this sidescrolling shooter is.

Space Pirates and Zombies - I got it off a bundle with some titles I was actually interested in. Half a year later I have over 50 hours in this neat little space shooter/sandbox thing. Tl;dr - you're pirates, there are also zombies and a whole lot of shooting and ship designing, in space.

One Must Fall 2097. Why is it that the best fighting game ever made is 20 years old? Seriously, just try this game, especially the tournament mode.

Just a small heads-up for everyone, last I checked, OMF2097 was released for free by the developers of the sequel, hosted on its site.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Underhell is probably the best free singleplayer mod I've played. So far only the prologue and the first chapter out of four are available but offer around 12 hours of gameplay. It won Mod of the Year awards at Moddb a couple times but I've seen very little mention of it anywhere else, which is a shame because it's great. It's a mish-mash of ideas that work surprising well together, the first part of the game plays like a cross between FEAR and The Matrix with fast movement and clever enemies that do a lot of damage but have little health and then the bulk of the game becomes survival horror set in an abandoned prison where resource management and learning the map layouts is key. At any time you can leave the main campaign narrative and play a prequel of sorts set in the main character's house where strange goings on are happening that has you getting freaked out by your PC's dead wife, investigating weird stuff and having even weirder nightmares, some of which I found genuinely unsettling. There's pretty much no reason not to at least try this, and it's arguably (or perhaps not so arguably) even in it's unfinished state still better than most AAA FPS's in recent memory.

Pathologic and The Void, both by the same Russian indie dev team. Both are very bleak, bizarre and memorable and very hard to describe within just a paragraph or so, they're essentially brutally difficult survival adventure RPGs dealing with some heavy themes set in distinct but equally whacked out settings. Definitely worth a look if you want to try something different or if you'd like your faith in originality in games to be rekindled. Rock Paper Shotgun has pretty extensive write ups on both of them which are pretty insightful.

NeoTokyo is a free multiplayer FPS Source mod that got a Steam release recently. It's essentially Counter Strike with some more realistic elements, like leaning around corners and ADS as well as various futuristic style visions modes and abilities, all wrapped in a cyberpunk-ish Ghost in Shell-esque setting. To be honest there's not really a whole lot of 'game' to it, but its great for what it is and never really got the playerbase it deserved. Strangely for a multiplayer only mod, it also has perhaps one of the best videogame soundtracks ever.

TrackMania: Stadium is pretty well known already but I hate myself for not having gotten it sooner. It's easy to learn and hard to master with a surprising amount of depth to it thanks to it's easy to use map tools and a community that constantly churns out new tracks. Very enjoyable overall.

Running With Rifles is a top down shooter featuring huge maps, tons of weapons, vehicles and abilities and loads of little green, grey and brown uniformed guys blowing the crap out of each other. It's fun and frantic and somehow manages to be both bright and humorous with cartoon graphics and pastel-y colours and a bit grim and depressing as the battlefield gets littered with corpses, blood and shell craters as your little army men die left and right. Has solid singleplayer and multiplayer modes with more stuff always on the way.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
A really simple but fun platformer about one greedy old man's pie fueled rampage through space and time, it gets a bonus cause it's told entirely in rhyme.

Life Goes On
A very cool platformer designed around the concept that you have to die to finish the levels.

AI War: Fleet Command
A very niche but incredibly solid Space RTS game that really plays up both grand strategy and skill with absolutely insane AI that can just wreck you if you push them the wrong way.

La Mulana
Another rather niche game but I have yet to find a better puzzle based Metroidvania. Really solid mechanics that definitely take some getting used to but work really well. Some of the puzzles can be a little obtuse though.

Aquaria
This one is much older from ~2007 but this game was really cool and still holds up. It's movement mechanics fit really well and definitely made it feel like flying underwater. It also has some of the best art design I've seen in a long time.