Moonstone (amiga), Dark Sector (glaive baby, it made up for the wank melee combat), Pariah (shite end but my favourite grenade launcher EVAR), Project X (my fave sh'mup of all time) and Enslaved (great story, cool charcters and a wonderful setting. Gameplay was on the easy side but I still love it)
The only game that qualifies for this in my list of top favourites, I suppose, would be Driver 2- many discarded it as a terrible sequel to a great game with worse graphics and a bad frame rate. While these criticisms are valid, I love it for it's slightly improved controls, better overall mission design, and most of all the ability to switch on invincibility in survival mode (oh how I wish Driver 1 had that)
Outside that though, I have quite a few games I remember fondly, even if nobody else likes them (if they remember them at all)
Liero.
Soldat on steroids, imagine a game of Worms playing out in realtime with massive firepower vaporising huge chunks of the earth as two tiny worms make their way towards each other for a final showdown over... something. Also featured gaming's greatest grappling hooks until Just Cause 2 came along. This game could be played splitscreen on a single PC, and quite often was, way back in school.
Mashed
Somehow overlooked in the States, but in Europe and Australasia we saw this gem for the brilliant game it was: The ultimate couch car multiplayer game of the last generation bar none. It says something about the fun factor of the gameplay that most people's favourite track was a ice sheet racetrack comprising of just two straights and two hairpin turns. Incredibly addictive and perfect for parties. Even had it's own taunt button.
Blobby Volley
Another school favourite- this incredibly bright volleyball game was very simple- and had a tiny file size. It also had players controlling blobs.. but hey... We used to dim the screens down to an almost pitch black during class, and you could still see the blobs and the ball, which was all you needed, really!
This video is in german, like most of the youtube blobby videos. I chose this one because it accurately shows how much it can become serious business.
Mobile Forces
An absolutely mental game that was borderline broken, but somehow insanely fun at LANs. Picture Battlefield or UT2004, but only with on-foot and ground vehicles, with the cast of Counter Strike. Coming out the same year as BF1942, you'd think it'd be crap by comparison but keeping all the action on the ground in well designed maps lent to some fast and furious CTF plays and bombing runs with the nuke on that trailer. Hilariously inept bots filled out the roster as game after game had us in stitches seeing all the carnage and close shaves happen on a regular basis in each match. Again, it's a very small filesize too. And did I mention that its vehicle physics are absolutely outstanding? Suspension has never felt as right as in this game. Try it.
Re-Volt
Probably a bit better known than the others but if you don't know, this is THE Remote Controlled car racer. Some find its unforgiving car handling a... handful (snigger snigger), but you can't deny that it pretty much nailed how RC cars would feel racing around a track. Oh and there's plenty of Mario Kart weapons and a wonderful variety of levels, too.
Phantom Crash on the Xbox would be my first pick. The original disk doesn't even work on the X360.
Custom mech game, story and music are generally praised by anyone who's played it, during fights there's an emphasis on stealth and evasion rather then trying to out-damage and out-tank your enemies.
Maybe it's nostalgia talking, it surely can't be as awesome as I remember it...
A better known pick would be God Eater, specifically God Eater Burst on the PSP.
It's kinda well known, but too many people dismiss it as "baby Monster Hunter" because it has similar (if not a little more limited) gameplay and a linear story.
Customization and upgrades are the largest focus, not only do you create and tinker with your own blades/guns, but the customization goes right down into making your own bullets.
Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile. Tilted Mill's first and best managed to present a vision of the future of city-builders that was far beyond its time.
Sadly, instead of sequels we got another Caesar, a few indie games, and then years of silence.
I played Phantom Crash, it was kinda the bomb but I found it quite tricky and I owned Psi Ops!
But the last few levels with the ghost enemy thingys put me off finishing it. Shame really...
It was alright, sort of a Powerstone-esque competitive game; but with amusing ad-breaks. Think Dan Paladin (Castle Crashers) may have had something to do with it, judging by the art style.
Oh hells yes. I also like how it tries to have fun and be slapstick without taking away from the seriousness of some of the parts, and I SO wish they had a sequal to it.
My favorite thing of all time was to kill all but one of the enemy bots, then just start smacking him so his limbs gets loose, and then when he fires his gun or tries to walk he just flails around and cant do anything.
Tanis said:
PS2:
(Naval Ops Series) Warship Gunner 2:
Think Armored Core (but not as fucking slow, most of the time) with page after page after page of upgrades and ships types.
Play as everything from some little Currier to a submarine to an Aircraft Carrier and a story that's ripped out of the Ace Combat games, and you've got one of the most under looked games on the PS2.
The sales of this game were just plan shameful.
I will second this as well, with a question added on: You would happen to know how to unlock the other campains, would you? I have beat the starting campain, the "special" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SillinessSwitch] missions, the boss rush, and the survival modes, but I still only have the one campain.
OT: Others I would add to this list are
Warship Gunner: Commander (PS2), which is much like the others in the series with extreme customization, but you fight from a birds eye view instead of a 3rd person, and you command a fleet of 3 ships instead of just one ship.
Nobunaga's Ambition (PS2), which is a stratagy game where you play as a daiymo of a Japanese clan in the Sengoku period, and I would argue is 10x harder than even XCOM or Diablo or (insert hard game here).
PTO IV (PS2), which is exactly like Nobunaga's Ambition, but in WW2 and commanding a navy instead of an entire clan.
Locomotion (Comp), made by and using the same systems as Rollercoaster Tycoon, this one instead is you have to create a transport empire using trucks, trains, busses, planes, and ships.
Operation Darkness (Xbox 360), because Nazi Vampires and British Werewolves in turn based stratagy game, enough said.
Darkstar One: Broken Allience (Xbox 360), one of the few good space fighting games on the Xbox and allows for multiple ways to make money in the game (trader, merc, soldier, pirate, etc)
EDIT:
Before this gets flooded with games that are in no way underrated (and it will), I want to toss out Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I think both of those games have tons of great qualities and are absolutely worth playing, but some flaws and middling review scores have made them more or less forgotten.
I see your Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... And I raise you, Might and Magic (1-8). Everytime I try to recommend it to someone they confuse it with Dark Messiah which makes me think the damn thing isnt as underrated as people keep saying.
I'd have to go with Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. It was and pretty much still is, the only game to give you decent psychic powers that are actually fun to use.
Second Sight gave you a range of pretty useful and fun psychic powers.On top of that it had a decent story and one of the most memorable twists in recent gaming
I'd have to say "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines".
I know it was mentioned in another thread some months ago. But man! I really enjoy that game.
It's a true "role playing" game and each playthrough as a member of a different vampire clan is unique. Yes, the combat mechanics are clunky and it's not nearly as open world as it should have been, but it's just so immersive and fun!
Sanitarium. It's a great, albeit somewhat clunky, adventure game with a good dose of psychological horror. Good voice acting overall, very imaginative environments and a really intersting story. I'm a little surprised I don't see it around here more often.
Before this gets flooded with games that are in no way underrated (and it will), I want to toss out Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I think both of those games have tons of great qualities and are absolutely worth playing, but some flaws and middling review scores have made them more or less forgotten.
I see your Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... And I raise you, Might and Magic (1-8). Everytime I try to recommend it to someone they confuse it with Dark Messiah which makes me think the damn thing isnt as underrated as people keep saying.
Sure it would crash without fail if you killed any factory or carrier in the process of constructing a ship, but I just loved the whole organic ships mechanic.
Before this gets flooded with games that are in no way underrated (and it will), I want to toss out Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Earth and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I think both of those games have tons of great qualities and are absolutely worth playing, but some flaws and middling review scores have made them more or less forgotten.
I see your Dark Messiah of Might and Magic... And I raise you, Might and Magic (1-8). Everytime I try to recommend it to someone they confuse it with Dark Messiah which makes me think the damn thing isnt as underrated as people keep saying.
I have never, ever heard that. Generally people think I'm talking about Heroes.
Granted, the average X-box 360 owner isn't going to be familiar with them because they're old. But people who were playing RPGs in the early 90s generally consider them part of the holy trinity with Wizardry and Ultima. I couldn't really call either of those franchises underrated either, even if they've been relegated to the annals of early PCdom.
I've mentioned Area 51(Xbox/PS2) on this site multiple times because it's one of my favorite shooters ever, if not my favorite shooter ever. So if I had to switch it up, I'd say no one really talks about The Suffering anymore.
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