Most Surprisingly Good/Bad Game?

[Nimzabaat]

Bad: I wanted to like Dishonored more than I did. It was so Disappointing that I think I put it aside after 30 minutes. It might get better, it sure didn't feel like it. It may have hurt it that I was playing the Witcher 2 right before and the opening is pretty much the same. Except the Witcher 2 did all of it better. It also hurts Dishonored that it's up for a bunch of awards and whenever a "meh" game is touted as "game of the year", I hate it just a little bit more.

Good: Hmm having a hard time thinking of a game that was better than I thought it would be. It's not that my expectations are high, it's just that I research my purchases pretty well. Xcom Enemy Unknown is really good, but I thought it would be. I'll have to come back to this question at some point.

PS Yes Alpha Protocol was pretty awesome but I expected that from Obsidian. Still, they should make another. Maybe crowd-funded so they have time to test everything.

 

[Raggedstar]

I was excited for Tokyo Jungle mostly because it was a weird animal-themed game from Japan. What I got was a surprisingly addictive, FUN game with a surprising level of depth. Well done, Sony.

Skyward Sword isn't BAD, but it was disappointing. I can pick out EXACTLY where the writers stopped caring about it. Started out alright, but then it resorted to padding and failed to bring variety (...and then Fi). Painful lesson to take the press releases and reviews with a heap of salt.

Assassin's Creed 1 was also like that. Going in I tried to be completely clean. I couldn't play right away so I flipped through the manual and got a rather nasty surprise. I went in so clean I didn't know about the whole Desmond framing device. I made peace with it eventually, but it was a shock. I managed to forgive it because at that point the repetitive gameplay soured me more. Game isn't bad, but I felt like I wanted a different game (...and that was AC2).

 

[Blaster395]

Blown away by.. I guess that means I need to find it far more enjoyable than I expected from reviews.

1. Simearth, more for its technological accomplishment of simulating climate, air and ocean circulation, plate tectonics, biosphere and techno sphere on a SNES. Too bad it just isn't fun as a game.

2. Titan Quest. Works perfectly as a Diablo 2.5 (or even a diablo 3 if you really hated Diablo 3). Plays much closer to Diablo 2, but with the added graphics and polish you would expect from something released more recently.

3. Warhammer 40K. A RTS developers first attempt at the notoriously competitive third person hack-and-slash genre, and they nail it perfectly. No 40K game has ever come as close to the atmosphere, personality and canon-accuracy as this, and the gameplay mechanics fit what it means to be a space marine.

4. Red Faction Guerillia. A relatively silent sequel to an otherwise forgettable game... that went on to become an amazing selling masterpiece. Too bad that Armageddon was so terrible it has seemingly killed the rebooted series for good.

5. Call of Duty: World at War. My favorite first person shooter simply due to the depressing and brutal atmosphere of the Campaign (especially the Russian front). The only truly anti-war Call of Duty game. Admittedly, I am not a big fan of FPS games anyway. Also, Nazi Zombies.

6. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series. A very in-depth commercial roguelike that, when described, ends up sounding like a clusterfuck of ideas that should fail horribly. Actually works and is an excellent game.

 

[shrekfan246]

inb4 Mass Effect 3

OT: Most Surprisingly Good: The Walking Dead.

I don't typically play point-and-click adventure games, because the logic puzzles in them frustrate the hell out of me, but I picked up The Walking Dead on a whim after hearing a lot of good things about it from Sassafrass, and it just blew me away. All of the puzzles were fairly straight-forward, and it used the Heavy Rain-style of Quick-Time Events during scenes to increase player interaction, in a way that really did actually improve the game.

Most Surprisingly Bad: ... well, it depends on what time reference we're talking about here. For me, I'd have to say probably Final Fantasy XIII, for reasons that I've extensively gone into before on these forums. If you really want to read my reasoning, then I suppose I can dig out a few of the walls of text that I've typed up before, but I won't burden the thread with that right now.

 

[Eddie the head]

Surprisingly good Mass Effect 2. I played the first one and hated it, but the second one was pretty good.

 

[krazykidd]

Alpha protocol. Amazing game that doesn't get enough recognition . Sure it had problems but the pros outweights the cons .

Most disappointing . FFXIII-2 . I didn't even expect it to be good , after the travesti that is FFX-2 i had low hopes for XIII-2 ... And it was worst than ever that . You know a game is terrible when you buy a game , expect it to be bad , then it still disappoints you .

 

[Nazulu]

I was most surprised with Super Metroid. It came with my SNES that I got for a birthday present when it first came out. I was a 'casual' player I guess back then because the most difficult game I would only play back then was Super Mario World, but after seeing the start up on Super Metroid I was instantly hooked. Even though I had no idea where to go or what I should be doing, I still found it amazing, and I still find it amazing now.

Half-Life 2 is another game that became a nice big surprise. After playing so many FPS games through the late 2000's, I never really wanted to play one again, they were all becoming so similar and 'realistic'. However, the hype around HL2 still had me curious so one day I bought The Orange Box on a whim and discovered HL2 is one of best designed games I've ever seen. This was back late in 2011, so it's not nostalgia, and the controls and game play on the PC is possibly the best I've ever played on my PC.

Surprisingly Bad is Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I'm still confused how they could make so many terrible design decisions and other shit ideas after such a beautiful and fluent game like Melee. After this abomination I decided never to become hyped for any thing ever again, and I'm glad I did because Nintendo keep getting worse.

 

[natster43]

GOOD:
Dynasty Warriors 7. I didn't really like 6, so I didn't expect much, now it is my favorite game of last year.
BAD:
Resident Evil 6. I expected it to be at least as good as 5 (which in my opinion was the worst in the series up until this game, not bad but not very good either) if not slightly better and so far it has proven to be about as good as 5 at it's best, and worse than it the rest of the time.
Crackdown 2. A game that isn't bad, but bad compared to the original.

 

['Record Stops.']

Here's my input, and golly I HAVE been gone from these forums for quite some time, now haven't I.

For the better than I thought game, I was with a most dreary attitude watching Unskippable episodes several years back, when I saw the episode on Folklore, it looked like your average dark fantasy game, and since I was on a somewhat small list of games for my PS3 at the time, I decided to buy it and see if it was all crap or just mostly crap. To my surprise it was a beautifully executed and astonishingly well written mystery fantasy, with a lot of suspense and a story that actually made me engaged enough to want to keep going, every new level I look forward to play either character and see what new monsters I can look at and enjoy fighting.

For the less good than I wanted game...uuuhh...Let's go with Kirby Squeak Squad, I remember picking this game up because I'm a rather large Kirby fan, first game I ever beat in full by myself was Kirby 64, and ever since that game I was deeply in need of more like it. Squeak Squad, was not what I wanted, and it was actually rather dull for a Kirby game. The treasure hunting aspect was amusing but frustrating at times, and I really loathed how badly they botched the combo system. It took them nearly seven years to make this game, and they still managed to mess it up. I was left wanting and felt unsatisfied, so all in all that was my take on this.

 

[Darren716]

Last year I had a bloody trilogy of disappointment in the form of Modern Warfare 3, Saints Row the Third, and Skyward Sword. MW3 was the nail in the coffin for me with CoD, I enjoyed the other games but I could not stand the community, then they completely ruined the gameplay and gave a terrible end to the trilogy. Saints Row the Third was a game I was looking forward to ever since it was first shown off at E3, I saw it get a large amount of press coverage and was glad the series was being recognized my the media, and then I played it and saw that even a game as simple as Saints Row was apparently too complex so I got a completely watered down piece of shit holding a purple dildo which was supposed to excuse all of the games faults, fuck you thq I hope you do go under. And finally Skyward Sword, I knew that this game was going to focus heavily on motion controls but did Nintendo seriously need to make every action you do require a pointless motion control? Also enemies that you had to hit in a specific spot got old really damn fast. Finally the over world felt boring because of how disjointed it was and how much of a pain is was to get from one area to the next. So far Skyward Sword is the only Zelda game I own that i never finished.

Edit: I forgot that this was a good and bad surprise thread so for my good surprise I'll go with Bioshock it was a game that kept on giving. I bought Bioshock knowing very little about it besides some word of mouth and a demo I played once when I played it I instantly loved it due to how you could choose how to play the game. Then I discovered that it was all based off Ayn Rand philosophy and began to enjoy it even more when I discovered what Objectivism was.

 

[kuyo]

When I got Way of the Samurai 3, I had never played a WotS game, but I quickly realized everyone should. It pays to have as a reference point when looking at choice-heavy games like Fabe and everything by Bioware. WotS has a renegade trigger that's always available: it draws your sword. Your choices matter= 21 possible endings.

Not so much bad as I didn't like it: Half-Life 2. It gave me a headache every time I played it.

 

[Xangba]

Mine is NIER, I remember avoiding this game because I kept hearing bad things about it, cue a whole damn year later I find myself terribly bored and rummaging through a local game store's bargain bin only to end up pulling Nier out between all the other garbage games it was so neatly packed between. I initially hesitated but thought "eh, it's cheap anyway" and bought it.

Surprisingly enough, Nier turned out to be one of the best damn games i've ever played thanks to its amazingly dark story. Truly an underrated gem, if you ask me.

Really? I may have to check it out then. Like you I was put off by the universal bad reaction. Then again the same thing happened with Alpha Protocol, then I bought that in pretty much the same situation you got Nier and thought it was great.

OT: Well as for ones that impressed me there's Just Cause 2 for one. I didn't think it seemed all that great, but a friend convinced me to try it and...well let's just say I lost contact with people for a while. Crusader Kings 2 surprised me as well. Was curious, but not enough to buy it, but when I saw a Song of Ice and Fire mod for it I decided to try it out. Ended up barely playing the mod lol.

As for disappointed, well not that I don't like the game, but with how much my friend hyped up the Halo series, telling me how amazing it was, I was sorely let down. I still play when my friend is on, but it doesn't stand out very much (especially when me and another friend finished the campaign for 4 in 5 hours on Legendary).

Suppose that's all I have off the top of my head. I'm sure in an hour I'll think of plenty more and be too lazy to update this.

 

[CityofTreez]

Most surprised: The Walking Dead games.

I expected a cash grab. Nothing more, nothing less. instead I got an amazing Heavy Rain/point and click adventure/horror game with great real characters. Nice art style and audio. Not to mention the gameplay is incredible.

Most disappointing: Half-Life 2.

This one is likely my fault considering that I played it pretty late. All the good things about it I expected it to be blown away, but I felt it was rather generic. I had seen and played better. Of course directly comparing a game made in 2004 to today's standards isn't the best way to go through things.

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

Surprisingly good:
I had previously said "Hell no I'm not buying Black Ops 2", but after playing it, I'm considering it... Oh God...

Surprisingly bad:
I've flamed on Blacksite more than I care to count on here, but that's my best answer.

 

[Jake Hardy]

Aha, well, my two games may not seem that surprising, but you need to keep in mind I had NO CLUE what either of these games were about. I simply bought them off cover art. Those two games were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and then later on when I got my Xbox 360, The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away by both games. Hell, The Legend of Zelda helped me learn to read.

As for the biggest letdown, that would be the Call of Duty series, starting at around World At War. Call of Duty 2 still remains one of my favorite games of all time and I absolutely love the World War 2 settings, and no one can deny that Modern Warfare was an AMAZING game. But after that, everything seemed to go downhill. Everything turned into a huge blockbuster, set piece "BOOM EXPLOSION" experience. And the absolutely horrendous playerbase makes me want to rip out my hair. I can understand some trash talk, but being called a "******" 50 times a game by a little kid isn't exactly my cup of tea.

So those are my biggest surprises and letdowns. Hope you enjoyed the long read, and my opinion.

tl;dr
Fantasty Games are cool. Modern Warfare FPS', not so much.

 

[SkullKing84]

Surprisingly good: Wizardy
I was at Gamestop, found a $20 in my pocket. I look up and the game cover art caught my eye. I thought " well its $10 bucks and i just found a 20... Meh. If it sucks OH WELL"

Man, it is still one of my favorite games.

Surprisingly didn't care for it: Assassin's Creed 1
Its has alot of things i like in a game. But, for some reason just couldn't get into it. Played for an hour got bored and said i'll play it later. Years later "oh, yeah i do own this"

 

[Rose and Thorn]

Hmmm, I guess I could say Black Ops.

I have never been a big fan of Call of Duty, especially the community. But a lot of my friends were really into it during 2011 and would make me play it. We most played in closed multi-player games with bots filling in the gaps. Often times 4 of us against a bunch of bots. I found it to be great fun. I thoroughly enjoyed the weapon customization of the game and it was just plain fun. Now I never played the campaign, online multi-player *other then with friends* nor did I play the zombies mode much, as I didn't like it, compared to Left 4 Dead <3.

I still have NEVER bought a Call of Duty game in my life and don't really plan to. I just enjoy playing Black Ops.

 

[Vhite]

Kingdom of Amalur, when it came out, was making hard claims of revolutionizing combat and being better than Skyrim. I, only few days before finishing Skyrim, went into it with smug "Ill show you what RPG is." expectation.
I guess none of us expected ending up in the same bed next morning.

Also, Dungeon Defenders, a blind buy, has probably twice the hours played on my account than all the other games combined. No regrets buying it for full price.

 

[Yojoo]

Surprisingly GOOD reaction: Mass Effect 3. I played it months after it came out, after hearing people complaining about how terrible it was, and it was much better than I had heard. The ending wasn't as bad as I was expecting, and everything else about it was excellent.

Surprisingly BAD reaction: Assassin's Creed Revelations. I loved all the Creed games going into it, and the trailer had me giddy to play the game. I first realized that something was amiss when the trailer that had gotten me so excited for the game was the opening cinematic, which not only came across as cheap but also totally undercut the tension of the scene (I had thought Ezio would die, only to realize that it was the beginning of the story, not the end). Then, the gameplay wound up being a re-tread of Brotherhood which hardly anything new added in, and the storyline was a snooze-fest.

 

[Norrdicus]

Just recently I started playing Dungeon Siege 2. I was not expecting much at all since Dungeon Siege 1 was an unbelievably dull chore to play (if I were to give that game one compliment, it'd be length)

I play it for 15 minutes and it's way way WAY better than Dungeon Siege 1 was. Spells are more useful, combat is generally more fun, the level system feels rewarding, shops are more accessible, controls are better and you can make more specialized characters (i.e., do you want to make your nature mage a healer, buffer, ice mage, summoner, or a hybrid of those?)