What game looks completely generic at first, but is actually well worth playing?

[go-10]

I'm gonna say Tomb Raider (2013) the reboot just looks like a generic shooter/Uncharted mash up. Give the game an 1 hour and you'll discover that it's actually much more than that. This Lara (despite what "real fans" say) is the best interpretation of a female badass in 2013... the healing factor + adamantium bones were a bit much but everything else was just great

 

[sageoftruth]

Shadow Hearts: Covenant.
It looks kind of original with the whole WWI thing going for it, however, because it doesn't start from the perspective of the main protagonist, but rather from Karin, his future ally, it seems to be another Empire vs. Resistance plot, with a dash of Japanese Christianity.
Then, the main protagonist, Yuri becomes the focus of the plot, and as more and more characters are introduced (especially the super-hammy, muscle-flexing, wrestling, vampire, Joachim) the story quickly ventures from stale war story into a goofy, subversive story that's such a blast to experience.

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

I could never get into that game. I tried twice, but it just didn't work.

It was so painfully obvious that it was meant to be an MMO, but it ended up being forced to be a singleplayer game, so you were by yourself.

I really didn't like the overly bright/cartoony art style and the questing was pulled out of MMOs standard missions.

Funny enough, the fact that it's basically a single-player MMO is exactly why it can keep me interested. I still want a single-player, party-driven RPG built in the same open, dungeon-filled end-game focused manner as World of Warcraft, but until then Kingdoms of Amalur is the best I've got.

OT: Divinity II.

Apparently the original release of the game was pretty dire, and on the surface it looks like a pretty generic fantasy hack&slash RPG, but with the Developer's Cut release, it was actually pretty sweet. The mechanics of the game were still fairly ropey, but there's a spirit behind everything that just gives it an unmistakable charm. It made me a fan of Larian Studios, at the very least.

You love MMOs but hate the fact it has to be played with people? I don't know what to think about that! So an RPG with less thoughtful questing, but with end game functionality like raiding?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Kingdoms didn't have party possibilities though, which is part of the reason I feel that it falls flat. It's as if the party would've been formed by other people playing, but because it wasn't an MMO, there is just you instead. It really does need to give you a party. I thought at least there would be some level of companions, like the gnome who follows you near the very start of the game, in the initial dungeon/opening of the game, but no, it's just you.

I really don't understand why you would want the MMO levelling experience marginalised to just single-player questing, all I'm interested in is the group dungeon dynamic rather than grinding quests, but I guess that's your thing and not mine.

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

I'm gonna say Tomb Raider (2013) the reboot just looks like a generic shooter/Uncharted mash up. Give the game an 1 hour and you'll discover that it's actually much more than that. This Lara (despite what "real fans" say) is the best interpretation of a female badass in 2013... the healing factor + adamantium bones were a bit much but everything else was just great

I don't know if I fully agree with that interpretation of Tomb Raider.

For me, there was always a disconnect between what Lara was saying and what she was doing.

For one, she just would not stop screaming. The game just seemed to have so many random occurrences which resulted in her just tumbling down a cliff and screaming. All the time; I almost felt like turning my sound off at one point.

She quickly became a rather cold killer and just got on with the job at hand, but that never came across in her dialogue and character interactions. For me, it just never really made sense.

And I thought a lot of her 'badassery' (is that a word?) was lessened by the fact that she just got really lucky all the time to not just die. As I just mentioned, the random occurrences, were often completely out of her control and it wasn't really skill that got her to the other side, but luck. So she easily could've failed her mission countless times, but through luck managed to pull through. For me, this lessened her strength as the lead, as it made her a hero by accident or luck.

I dunno, that's the way I saw it at least.

 

[sageoftruth]

/Deleted/

 

[shrekfan246]

I could never get into that game. I tried twice, but it just didn't work.

It was so painfully obvious that it was meant to be an MMO, but it ended up being forced to be a singleplayer game, so you were by yourself.

I really didn't like the overly bright/cartoony art style and the questing was pulled out of MMOs standard missions.

Funny enough, the fact that it's basically a single-player MMO is exactly why it can keep me interested. I still want a single-player, party-driven RPG built in the same open, dungeon-filled end-game focused manner as World of Warcraft, but until then Kingdoms of Amalur is the best I've got.

OT: Divinity II.

Apparently the original release of the game was pretty dire, and on the surface it looks like a pretty generic fantasy hack&slash RPG, but with the Developer's Cut release, it was actually pretty sweet. The mechanics of the game were still fairly ropey, but there's a spirit behind everything that just gives it an unmistakable charm. It made me a fan of Larian Studios, at the very least.

You love MMOs but hate the fact it has to be played with people? I don't know what to think about that! So an RPG with less thoughtful questing, but with end game functionality like raiding?

Most of the time when I'm playing an MMO, I'm running solo anyway. I appreciate the social experiences, and I met a lot of awesome people in my time playing WoW, but I've never been a terribly social person and the vast majority of my raiding experiences were with a relatively small group of people in the grand scheme of things; I had a raiding group run by my brother and another part-time raiding group run by someone who had formerly been in a previous guild which I had joined because of my brother.

Additionally, now my aversion is also partially owed to my internet being absolutely dreadful and my planning on moving to university soon. I still like the actual mechanics of end-game MMO raiding, but I want at least one game which can provide the same experience in a single-player setting with the player forming their own five-person-party or so and going dungeon diving to fight a bunch of tough bosses and get awesome loot and maybe learn a little more about the lore of the world. Things like Dragon Age are similar, but proceed too linearly to the plotline to give me the same feeling.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Kingdoms didn't have party possibilities though, which is part of the reason I feel that it falls flat. It's as if the party would've been formed by other people playing, but because it wasn't an MMO, there is just you instead. It really does need to give you a party. I thought at least there would be some level of companions, like the gnome who follows you near the very start of the game, in the initial dungeon/opening of the game, but no, it's just you.

No, you're right. It's a completely solo game with the exception of a few quests.

I really don't understand why you would want the MMO levelling experience marginalised to just single-player questing, all I'm interested in is the group dungeon dynamic rather than grinding quests, but I guess that's your thing and not mine.

It's not so much that I literally want something like World of Warcraft to just be ported over to a single-player mode the way it exists right now (though I'd like to see Blizzard tackle my idea with the Warcraft brand). I recognize that some pretty massive changes would need to be made to the game in order to keep it interesting, because the thing that kept me playing World of Warcraft for five and a half years was the few friends I had in the game. But I want a game that gives me the same sort of experience, without being tied to servers and reliant on an internet connection and other people keeping it amusing. I wouldn't need to play it for five years off and on, but I have yet to see a single-player game that utilizes end-game content (and early- or mid-game, as far as world-building dungeons are concerned) in the same way as an MMO, and it's just something I would like to see at least once.

 

[DikkieDik]

Lost Odyssey.

Looked like your run-of-the-mill FF clone, but in reality was much, MUCH more. Granted, the game is not a standout in terms of mechanics (although I enjoyed the combat system well enough), the story and the way it is told in both the game itself and the prose "memories" is fantastic.

Easily one of the best RPGs of last console generation.

Spot on and Blue Dragon is well worth a try too, pick it up for 10 bucks and both are great games

 

[Racecarlock]

Ace Combat 6. You just go into it expecting just to shoot down planes and then...

"Dragon busters is down to %40 of their forces"

"Warlock battalion down to %50, get over there!"

Navy Ship: "This is the marigold, we need air support."

*Missile alert missile alert missile alert missile alert missile alert missile alert missile alert missile alert*

"Dragon busters is down to %20! It's a mess down there, garuda team!"

"Warlock battalion is retreating. We have failed to take back the radio station!"

Seriously, everybody all needs your help at the same time all the time and you're also dodging fiery death missiles. And don't think of leaving any part of your friendly military forces alone at any point because if you do, things start shitting the bed again almost immediately. The game is great at making you feel like the single most important person in the war, if only because the rest of the military is incompetent and they mention this legendary ace who is going to save us all in cutscenes and that ace is you.

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

It's not so much that I literally want something like World of Warcraft to just be ported over to a single-player mode the way it exists right now (though I'd like to see Blizzard tackle my idea with the Warcraft brand). I recognize that some pretty massive changes would need to be made to the game in order to keep it interesting, because the thing that kept me playing World of Warcraft for five and a half years was the few friends I had in the game. But I want a game that gives me the same sort of experience, without being tied to servers and reliant on an internet connection and other people keeping it amusing. I wouldn't need to play it for five years off and on, but I have yet to see a single-player game that utilizes end-game content (and early- or mid-game, as far as world-building dungeons are concerned) in the same way as an MMO, and it's just something I would like to see at least once.

I think the reason WoW has been able to achieve this is because of how much of a lucrative endeavour it was.

Vanilla WoW raiding prospects were a lot more bare than what is on offer now and I think with continued investment of players, who inevitably will mostly end up as max levels, has allowed them to forge the raiding experience over time.

Without the incentive of holding subscriber bases and continuing a games lifespan to encourage more expansions, I'm not sure a lot of games could really have this same focus as WoW does.

I'm sure they could try and maybe shoehorn some DLCs to extend end-game content, but maybe it necessitates this long-term, continuous input of a big base of players.

I agree that most games don't leave you in the sandbox of your game in order to do as you please at the end though. For some reason, it just doesn't seem to be the focus of many games outside of say Saints Row or GTA or similar - where the world continues after you are done and there are further prospects to mess around with.

I suppose it depends on what you define as the end-game raiding experience and how this is separate from 'towards the end of the game' content for more linear games.

I dunno, thoughts, words, things.

 

[Aerosteam]

For me what surprised me the most was Fallout 3. I don't know anything about it aside from my friend was letting me borrow a disc containing all of its DLC, I thought it wasn't an official disc let alone one that was packaged with the GotY edition. Looking at the back of the box, the screenshots made the game look like complete ass (which it does) but it's still one of my favourite games ever.

Wait, there are answers to this question that aren't Frog Fractions?

Fuck.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

...is it better than Gothic 1, though? Actually, how do the rest of the Gothic/Risen games compare to Gothic 1? I tried playing the first one and I quit a few hours in due to frustration with the controls.

Control-wise, yeah, vastly better. Gothic II took the controls of the first game and made them all work smoothly enough, while Risen 1 has them all working very fluidly. Gothic 1 is a great game, but the controls are definitely too muddled for it to be as enjoyable as it otherwise should be. Those problems aren't in the second game or the first Risen, both of which handle fine.

 

[Muspelheim]

ArmA II.

It really is a contemporary war shooter done well. It really is, and deserve a far better fate than the "dumb game attached to me zombies" fate has alloted it. It looks very, very generic, but it really is something of its own. The sheer ambition of it alone belies the generic shouting U.S. Marine on the cover.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I'm really enjoying FTL: Faster Than Light.

I never looked into it because I thought it was an arcade-y little space shooter where you really just go around shooting stuff down.

Instead, it's a really rogue-like simulator that is based on a little bit of skill and a LOT of luck. It's incredibly challenging and really gets under your skin in a good way. Go watch a let's play.

 

[pilouuuu]

Hearthstone seems like another cards game, which I usually don't enjoy. Besides that it's F2P, which always gives a bad feeling. But once you start playing it's easy to get into, entertaining and it's hard to stop playing it.

Sleeping Dogs looks like a generic GTA rip-off. It's kind of an underdog! Such an amazing game! The fights are as good as those in Arkham games, the graphics are amazing, the controls are much better than GTA and overall I consider it a much more enjoyable game than GTA.

Euro Truck Simulator looks like an idiotic, boring game, but it's really relaxing and enjoyable to drive a truck around europe while listening to european radio stations!

 

[EHKOS]

Gonna have to go with Sniper Elite V2. It's a military shooter kind of based on stealth, but if you're like me you can run and gun it for the most part. There's an awesome X-Ray camera, and a whole bunch of sniper specific mechanics like wind, bullet drop, speed and momentum decrease so it won't fly through more than two enemies, and setting up your nest. It's short with a shit story, but it's fun enough to replay a few times, and you can bounce a bullet off the ground into an enemy.

The only unfortunate thing is when you have the Hitler DLC his model still has two testicles.

 

[Trunkage]

I'm still surprised people were surprised about Spec Ops, if anyone bothered listening to a single review or looked up any info beforehand you'd know it was an interpretation of Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness.

OT: Oblivion, for Elder Scrolls standards it's generic as shit. However it's probably the best Elder Scrolls games there is.

I sort of recall the review I saw. The talked about how there was a big moment that totally changed the game half way through. They didn't spoil it by citing movie analogies.

Sleeping Dogs looks like a generic GTA rip-off. It's kind of an underdog! Such an amazing game! The fights are as good as those in Arkham games, the graphics are amazing, the controls are much better than GTA and overall I consider it a much more enjoyable game than GTA.

I was told it was arkham asylum and GTA mashed up. Took me a year to even try it, as I find GTA boring. The fights were incredible and more realistic than the arkham games. Guns kinda ruined it though

 

[Riverwolf]

Probably can't get more seemingly-generic-yet-freshly-fun-and-addicting than my entry, though I should note now that in terms of real-life-worth, this is nowhere NEAR in the same league as Spec-Ops: The Line.

PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+.

Yes, it's Pac-Man. It's the same Pac-Man that we know, at least that's what it looked like (for the record, I'd never heard of or played the original Pac Man Championship Edition from 2007). What made me download the demo was nothing more than the ability to play classic Pac-Man with flashy rainbow/neon colors and rockin' techno music. I didn't get that. Well, I did get the flashing colors and rockin' techno, but for the game itself, what I got took the basic Pac-Man outline and crafted a fast-paced arcade-action game that in my opinion really breathed new life in this franchise. That convinced me to spend 10 bucks on it.

I would highly recommend it, especially if you haven't played any (proper[footnote]I love Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for the Genesis, but despite that love, I fully recognize that it's not a Pac-Man game at all. I also don't recommend it for most gamers, even retro gamers whose primary play pool consists of games from its era. Watch PushingUpRoses/PeanutButterGamer's Let's Play of it and you'll see why.[/footnote]) Pac-Man game released after Ms. Pac-Man.

If you want something less recognizable(or just some more variety), I also recommend a 360 launch title: Kameo: Elements of Power, produced by Rare. It looks like a generic kids' action-platformer on the surface, but to me, it's quite a deep and interesting action-platformer-beatemup. The eponymous main character, a fairy-elf princess, has the ability to change her form to 3 creatures(called "elementals") with the push of a button, selected from a pool unlocked one by one as the game progresses, in order to solve various problems (from a fire-breathing dragon and a rolling armadillo-type creature, to an ice-spear-chucking yeti and a boxing venus fly trap[footnote]The boxing flower ALONE justifies the price of admission far as I'm concerned.[/footnote]). The game is also GORGEOUS. In my personal opinion, despite having roughly the same graphical prowess and being released almost 2 years earlier, Kameo looks far more beautiful aesthetically than Halo 3, largely because its use of color and stylization meant that it didn't need to constantly shove bloom all over the place.

Sure there's problems: some segments of the game feel out of place and some of the beat-em-up segments seem unnecessarily padded. The controls also sometimes feel like they could have used a wee bit more polish. But these don't ruin the game for me at all, especially since out-of-place segments, some unnecessary padding, and somewhat unpolished controls were also present in Banjo-Kazooie, one of the most fun and joyous games of all time.

Seeing as I've never seen anyone even mention the game, even back then, Kameo is MY Psychonauts/Beyond Good and Evil.

Oh, and yes you read correctly, the main character is a PRINCESS. And even when not transformed into a creature, she can land a really satisfying flip-kick on her enemies. AND she's got some kick*** warpaint. If you've seen some of my other posts, you'll know why that makes me smile. ^_^

 

[Kyrinn]

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (version with the prequel missions of course). At first glace the game looks like just another WWII shooter but I'll be damned if that game isn't one of my all time favourites.

 

[Bad Jim]

I'll say Diablo 2. As generic looking as a game can get. Graphics weren't that great even when the game was released, plot is thin, and there is nothing to clearly distinguish it from the many other games that do the same thing. Start playing it however, and you are likely to carry on playing it. For months or even years. It just has that secret sauce that makes it great. No-one knows what the secret sauce is, but there's a lot more of it in Diablo 2 than in similar games.

 

[Pink Gregory]

ArmA II.

It really is a contemporary war shooter done well. It really is, and deserve a far better fate than the "dumb game attached to me zombies" fate has alloted it. It looks very, very generic, but it really is something of its own. The sheer ambition of it alone belies the generic shouting U.S. Marine on the cover.

How can something that has total realism as a cornerstone not look generic?