Underrated Games | Shoulda Been Classics | Your forgotten gems

[sky pies]

We've all had them, surely. Games that nobody else considered ground breaking titles but which you will forever feel convinced were excellent entries to the computer gaming body of work.

I know people are going to be a bit nonplussed about this, but I have to say I consider 2007's Crysis to be an all time classic computer game.

I'm also going to say GTA 2 was a classic game.

Age of Empires II, and it's expansion, and Homeworld 1 and 2 were all classic RTS games that, although occasionally paid lipservice and HD remakes, are rarely afforded the recognition they deserve as classics.

Travelling into less trodden paths, I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the greatest PC game of all time!

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear was fantastic.

The first Dungeon Seige was a wonderful seamless adventure of epic proportions and real challenge.

Operation Flashpoint was an utterly beautiful, ambitious work of art of a game that was solid and entertaining in it's handling of a genre that almost every game since - read: Op Flash 2 and the ARMA series - have got wrong. It's expansions, Red Hammer and Resistance, were fantastic games in their own right.

I would happily live on a desert island with Morrowind and it's two expansions.

What is your list of games that have, in your mind, been unfairly overlooked by posterity?
Why do you think they were not classics?
Why do you think they should have been classics?

 

[FavouriteDream]

Jedi Academy. It's a classic.

The single player campaign offers huge amounts of gameplay customisation and a nice element of storyline choices.

The multiplayer is unreal. The depth to the saber fighting is incredible and, to this day, the multiplayer remains active and competitive. That's incredible consider the game is almost 15 years old.

 

[sky pies]

Jedi Academy. It's a classic.

The single player campaign offers huge amounts of gameplay customisation and a nice element of storyline choices.

The multiplayer is unreal. The depth to the saber fighting is incredible and, to this day, the multiplayer remains active and competitive. That's incredible consider the game is almost 15 years old.

I love this nomination. I might just quickly ask what you think of Jedi Outcast? A very different game with more or less none of the customization and storyline choices you mention, but widely considered a really top title. Your position?

 

[FavouriteDream]

Jedi Academy. It's a classic.

The single player campaign offers huge amounts of gameplay customisation and a nice element of storyline choices.

The multiplayer is unreal. The depth to the saber fighting is incredible and, to this day, the multiplayer remains active and competitive. That's incredible consider the game is almost 15 years old.

I love this nomination. I might just quickly ask what you think of Jedi Outcast? A very different game with more or less none of the customization and storyline choices you mention, but widely considered a really top title. Your position?

Well Outcast is great in the sense that without it, Academy wouldn't have been possible.

The reason why Outcast didn't live as long is it was obviously lacking the customisation and decision making - but the mechanics themselves were simpler. The multiplayer didn't last as long because the mechanics to saber fighting weren't as varied. One thing Outcast did do well was the story - it's arguably a better and more coherent narrative than Academy.

I've been playing Academy since release and I am still learning techniques in lightsaber duelling. I am just blown away by this. The skill cap is limitless.

 

[Frankster]

Team Buddies.
I don't know how to begin describing this game.. Let alone the plot or premise..
Basically its a team vs team vs team vs team brawl set across varied maps where the goal is to utterly annihilate the other teams, with the help of weapon crates being dropped from the sky. You could combine those crates to make various weapons for your dudes, or make new dudes (there was tons of types), and best of all could make vehicles, which came in all forms and could be crewed by multiple dudes. As a solo game it was tons of fun, and as a coop/versus game it was epicness.
Hopefully video will make more sense then I do.

Future Cop LAPD.
This was made by the makers of desert/jungle/urban strike and its influences show. Basically you played a cop in futuristic LA, whose police car can transform into a mecha. You go around shooting people for great justice.

What made this game shine is a robust coop mode and an even more robust versus mode, where both players are in charge of their own little armies they need to manage as best as they can. Ultimately the game could only be won by your units taking over the enemy base, so there was as much emphasis on strategy as there was individual skill and you couldn't be everywhere on the battlefield at once. It was a very interesting mode and not something I've encountered since.

Hunted: Demon Forge.
I wouldn't go as far as to call it a classic but it's definitly been unfairly maligned.
It's a coop game through and through and designed as such, playing it with a friend was a special experience.

Binary Domain.
Why this game wasn't a smash hit I'll never know, it's a 3rd person shooter where basically you're part of an anti robot unit infiltrating Japan to go investigate mysterious shenanigans involving robots disguised as humans and honestly thinking they are humans too and end up shooting lots and lots of robots into pieces, shredding them limb by limb..I guess deadpsace dismemberement might make that seem less unique but I found legions of robots fun to dismantle, more so then the necromorphs.

And it had some..fairly interesting moments too...

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

-Mercenaries
This is still my favorite sandbox game. You have a bunch of factions you have to do missions for so one mission you'll be hired by the US to do something bad against the Chinese, then next mission you're hired by the Chinese to do something bad to the US. You want to complete missions without the other faction knowing it was you so they don't get mad at you. The game is more of a puzzle game in the sense that there's always a way to do a mission without the faction knowing it was you. Yeah, you can take the easy route and just pay them off to forgive you, but it was a blast trying to find a way to complete missions without them knowing. The key features that make Mercenaries unique were the airstrikes (which can be used very strategically) and vehicle disguise system (get in a Chinese vehicle and you're disguised as the Chinese). Mercenaries made me realize how shitty the GTA games are due to the plethora of options to complete each mission.

Binary Domain.
Why this game wasn't a smash hit I'll never know, it's a 3rd person shooter where basically you're part of an anti robot unit infiltrating Japan to go investigate mysterious shenanigans involving robots disguised as humans and honestly thinking they are humans too and end up shooting lots and lots of robots into pieces, shredding them limb by limb..I guess deadpsace dismemberement might make that seem less unique but I found legions of robots fun to dismantle, more so then the necromorphs.

And it had some..fairly interesting moments too...

I loved Binary Domain but it definitely has some major flaws. Those vehicle sections are just generic like Uncharted 1 jet ski sections bad. Some of the bosses took so freaking long to kill that it got boring not even halfway through the fight. The shooting while solid and overall good was nothing spectacular especially compared Vanquish, that other robot killing game. The last 2 chapters were really great, a lot of the flaws weren't present like the bad vehicle sections and drawn out boss battles. I really dug the characters and story, and the tone was just right (in "a good fun and not very serious action movie" sorta way).

 

[sky pies]

-Mercenaries

Oh man YES! Mercenaries, how awesome was that game? I ain't gonna lie, I played this game when I was in China and got a chipped xBox and bought the game for about $5 back in 2005-06. I had no idea what to expect but I certainly wasn't expecting what I got! Fantastic game, the only reason I never completed it was because games were so cheap and were therefore so plentiful that completing them was just never a necessity! But boy was it good! I remember the second game being less awesome.

I miss that game!

You're right on every count.

 

[Albino Boo]

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. A true classic of a game with plenty of content and a wide option of play styles.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Oh, it's that thread that pops up every now and again where we talk about how good Alpha Protocol is. Isn't Alpha Protocol great? Sure, the combat and stealth leave something to be desired (and those are important aspects) but the story, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences are fantastic. I'd rather play a game like Alpha Protocol which is great in some areas, doing things no other games really do and is massively flawed in others than a game that's just okay across the board.

 

[sky pies]

Oh, it's that thread that pops up every now and again where we talk about how good Alpha Protocol is. Isn't Alpha Protocol great? Sure, the combat and stealth leave something to be desired (and those are important aspects) but the story, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences are fantastic. I'd rather play a game like Alpha Protocol which is great in some areas, doing things no other games really do and is massively flawed in others than a game that's just okay across the board.

Is that a vote in the FOR or AGAINST column?

 

[DefunctTheory]

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. A true classic of game with plenty of content and a wide option of play styles.

God damn it, you beat me to it.

Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries is unarguably the perfect Battletech/Mechwarrior video game experience, and therefore arguably the best video game in the 'giant custom mecha' category, and 'Mercenary' category. It is without a doubt held in the highest esteem by mech heads, but it doesn't get even a fraction of the attention it deserves from video game enthusiast as a whole.

So that's two votes for MW2:M.

Oh, it's that thread that pops up every now and again where we talk about how good Alpha Protocol is. Isn't Alpha Protocol great? Sure, the combat and stealth leave something to be desired (and those are important aspects) but the story, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences are fantastic. I'd rather play a game like Alpha Protocol which is great in some areas, doing things no other games really do and is massively flawed in others than a game that's just okay across the board.

I am flabbergasted by how many people seem to like Alpha Protocol. Your maybe the 5th person I've seen in a month talk about how much they liked it (Some even saying it was better then Human Revolution).

I guess I'll have to move it from the 'Massive Pile of Trash' category into the 'My Personal Opinion is that its a Massive Pile of Trash' category.

Captcha: Captcha just forced me to type in 'Greatest Games Lineup' for Xbox One/Gears of War. Not cool, Advertisement Department of The Escapist Magazine. Not cool at all.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Oh, it's that thread that pops up every now and again where we talk about how good Alpha Protocol is. Isn't Alpha Protocol great? Sure, the combat and stealth leave something to be desired (and those are important aspects) but the story, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences are fantastic. I'd rather play a game like Alpha Protocol which is great in some areas, doing things no other games really do and is massively flawed in others than a game that's just okay across the board.

Is that a vote in the FOR or AGAINST column?

For. I like Alpha Protocol a bunch.

Oh, it's that thread that pops up every now and again where we talk about how good Alpha Protocol is. Isn't Alpha Protocol great? Sure, the combat and stealth leave something to be desired (and those are important aspects) but the story, characters, dialogue, choice & consequences are fantastic. I'd rather play a game like Alpha Protocol which is great in some areas, doing things no other games really do and is massively flawed in others than a game that's just okay across the board.

I am flabbergasted by how many people seem to like Alpha Protocol. Your maybe the 5th person I've seen in a month talk about how much they liked it (Some even saying it was better then Human Revolution).

I guess I'll have to move it from the 'Massive Pile of Trash' category into the 'My Personal Opinion is that its a Massive Pile of Trash' category.

Captcha: Captcha just forced me to type in 'Greatest Games Lineup' for Xbox One/Gears of War. Not cool, Advertisement Department of The Escapist Magazine. Not cool at all.

Better than Human Revolution? Wow.

But yeah whenever people make overlooked/underrated games threads I always see people talking about Alpha Protocol. It's a cult classic similar to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines which is another game I'd count as a forgotten gem.

Personally I hated Final Fantasy 13 but I have friends for whom it's one of their favourite games of all time. So I have experience with a game I hated being massively loved by others.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Personally I hated Final Fantasy 13 but I have friends for whom it's one of their favourite games of all time. So I have experience with a game I hated being massively loved by others.

I destroyed my copy of FF13 after playing it for 20 yours straight. I wanted to like it so much, and it was just so infuriatingly bad. I could have turned it back in to Gamestop and gotten my 60 bucks back, but the feeling of breaking the disc into a millions piece and setting those pieces on fire was worth 60 bucks to me.

I did the same thing to my Windows Vista CD too, though. Maybe I have a problem.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Chex Quest - It's a short Doom clone (staring anthropomorphic cereal people!) with the violence toned down to Saturday morning cartoon levels. (You're not killing enemies. They're getting zapped to their home dimension (sometimes with a spoon...somehow). Their attacks just coat you in slime until you can't move.) It originally came in Chex cereal boxes in the mid 90s. Now there's a small community (including one of the original's creators) that releasedthe original, two sequels and mods, all for free. It's worth checking out if you are in to mid 90's first person games.

Ranger X - A simple Run 'n gun game for the Sega Genesis that put you in a mech, with a monocycle. It's short and not too hard on normal difficulty, but it could have spawned a franchise.

Also, this might sound weird, but I'd like to play the Jump Start educational games again. The few that I played were pretty could when you ignore the fact that grammar and math problems are what unlock doors and such.

Dark Chronicle, one of the best games ever made, caused me to fucking cry (when I was a kid).

Put a vote in from me for both Dark Clouds. I really wish Level 5 would make a 3rd for this generation. (I'd even take a 3DS or Wii U version. The touchscreens would work great for the georama.) Still waiting on a remastered collection, here.

Personally I hated Final Fantasy 13 but I have friends for whom it's one of their favourite games of all time. So I have experience with a game I hated being massively loved by others.

I destroyed my copy of FF13 after playing it for 20 yours straight. I wanted to like it so much, and it was just so infuriatingly bad. I could have turned it back in to Gamestop and gotten my 60 bucks back, but the feeling of breaking the disc into a millions piece and setting those pieces on fire was worth 60 bucks to me.

I did the same thing to my Windows Vista CD too, though. Maybe I have a problem.

I'd probably have destroyed mine too if I forced myself past 3 hours. Now the disc languishes in the purgatory of its case, crushed under the weight of much better games.

I think your only problem is you were willing to sacrifice money so at least one other person wouldn't have to suffer an inferior product. If I bought 13 new, I would be too weak to not try and get back some of my money.

 

[Buckets]

Fort Apocalypse, Raid on Bungeling Bay (Commodore 64) - amazingly deep considering how small the files were back then.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm also going to say GTA 2 was a classic game.

Widely considered a classic game. Not underrated!

Age of Empires II, and it's expansion, and Homeworld 1 and 2 were all classic RTS games that, although occasionally paid lipservice and HD remakes, are rarely afforded the recognition they deserve as classics.

Both are widely acknowledged as classics, both routinely show up in classic games lists, and both were so well remembered that they were tapped for HD remakes! These games were NOT underrated. Hell, Homeworld borders on overrated at this point.

Travelling into less trodden paths, I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the greatest PC game of all time!

Best PC game of all time is a bold statement, but it was both a well regarded/high selling title, and is part of an ongoing series. Not underrated!

Tom Clancy's Rogue Spear was fantastic.

I'll bite, I don't remember this.

The first Dungeon Seige was a wonderful seamless adventure of epic proportions and real challenge.

Spawned two sequels! Sold well! Not underrated! They even made a terrible movie!

Operation Flashpoint was an utterly beautiful, ambitious work of art of a game that was solid and entertaining in it's handling of a genre that almost every game since - read: Op Flash 2 and the ARMA series - have got wrong. It's expansions, Red Hammer and Resistance, were fantastic games in their own right.

Interesting choice. I remember Operation Flashpoint was sort of the grognard version of ARMA. Not really well remembered today, at all. Good call. This is an underrated/forgotten game.

I would happily live on a desert island with Morrowind and it's two expansions.

Oh my word it was a mega-hit then and it was carried on with Oblivion and then Skyrim, the latter of which is the highest selling CRPG in history. NOT UNDERRATED. In fact, Morrowind fans can't shut up about it as the splinter point at which Elder Scrolls games became "too accessible". No Elder Scrolls title can fairly be said to be underrated or forgotten, except MAYBE Arena.

What is your list of games that have, in your mind, been unfairly overlooked by posterity?
Why do you think they were not classics?
Why do you think they should have been classics?

It's a hard call, there are games that were good in their day but eventually completely forgotten, like Magic Candle, or Sentinel Worlds, or The Ancient Art of War. There were games that were seminal, widely hailed classics that have been overlooked by younger gamers, like Ultima Or Wing Commander, Starflight or M.U.L.E...foundation games that could never accurately be called "underrated" but due to a lack of modern incarnations tend to be overlooked when discussing games of historical importance. There were niche/cult games like Sacrifice or Alpha Protocol that carry forward a loud and insistent fanbase but never got a followup. There were games considered under-appreciated in their day that have gone on to become almost over-appreciated in hindsight, like the aforementioned Homeworld, or Planescape Torment, or the original Deus Ex. And then there are games that are just straight up underrated for issues that have little to do with their quality, like Diablo 3, or a variety of MMOs.

I cannot, off hand, think of a game that was at once underrated, forgotten, AND "should have been a classic".

Fort Apocalypse, Raid on Bungeling Bay (Commodore 64) - amazingly deep considering how small the files were back then.

Raid on Bungling Bay! I played that! Greetings, fellow old person.

Okay okay okay wait OP, I have one.

I'm going to go with Worlds of Ultima: Martian Dreams. The "Worlds" spin-off series never got the acclaim that the core series, Ultima Underworld, or Ultima Online got...they were considered too esoteric for mass consumption. Unlike the campy-as-fuck Savage Empire, Martian Dreams actually had some pretty unique/original concepts banging around under the hood. It's SUPER forgotten, and should probably be considered a classic based on pure originality if nothing else.

http://www.gog.com/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_martian_dreams

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

Secret of Evermore. God, I loved that game. Robot toaster dogs for life!

LUNAR series, in particular - Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue complete.

 

[lazinesslord]

There's this game on the the gameboy advanced call Ninja Cop. It's such a good game. It controls excellently, the grappling hook is fun to use, the level design is clever, and it's called Ninja Cop.

 

[Breakdown]

The original System Shock. Always gets overlooked in favour of the more famous sequel.