What games surprised you in terms of their quality?

[Ironshroom]

So this happened recently to me when I picked up Driver San Francisco. I bought it for like 20 bucks in a bin in some department store, and I am glad that I did. That game greatly exceeded my expectations in terms of quality, and I actually found myself having a bunch of fun.

So who else has experienced this, where your low expectations are thrown away to reveal something that is actually pretty great?

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Vanilla Skyrim. I knew Skyrim would be a great game when you mod the ass out of it, but after the horrible mess Oblivion was in its vanilla form, I was expecting the same. But no, even unmodded, Skyrim is a pretty solid game, and that surprised me.

 

[Zeckt]

Defiance. Everyone says the game is complete crap but was reduced to 10$ as a regular price so I wondered how bad it could be. Turned out I had a ton of fun with that game and was 75 hours well spent. The gameplay is fun, and the gun and enemy variety were pretty good.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm a console gamer so I'm always on the outside looking in when it comes to Bethesda RPGs...that being said, I'm going to say Bethesda RPGs...these are the only games that I'll buy multiple times on multiple consoles just to play the vanilla version. Hell, I'm currently in a playthrough of New Vegas on the PS3 and I've been freaking glued to it.

Barnyard Blast: Swine of the Night on the DS. It looks exactly like the kind of thing you're supposed to ignore but when you play it, it's very reminiscent of games like Ghouls n' Ghosts and, Castlevania. The difference being you play as a Pig named Robert Belmart who is questing to save his son Cliffy Belmart (Cliffy B, get it?!) Also Rob needs to pick up some milk...because there's Comedy in this game! It's super cheap! Shoggy says to buy it!

 

[nyankaty]

Silent Hill: Downpour. After all the horrible reviews it got, I was expecting it to be awful but I was pleasantly surprised. If you're expecting another version of SH2 or 3, then yeah, you'll be sorely disappointed but taking it as a standalone game, it's very lovely to look at, the music is good, the atmosphere is spot on, the story is pretty good, and it's just very fun to play. SH was the first game I ever got for XBox 360 and I was expecting awfulness, but it was actually a pretty solid little game.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Tomb Raider (2013). I was expecting a crappy Uncharted clone (which is itself already a crap series), and instead I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It had a great world which was fun to explore and probably the best third-person shooting mechanics since Gears of War.

 

[Zeh Don]

Darkstalkers II. I enjoyed the first one, especially it's atmosphere, story, setting and character design. However, I didn't enjoy the repetitiveness of the combat. With Darkstalkers II, I didn't like the premise at all so stayed away. Recently picked it up from the bargain bin for $20, and my Good Lord in heaven is it so much better than the first one.

With just a little more polish, it really would have been a classic. I feel that THQ didn't really market the game fairly, and a lot of it's advertising material really lacked the punch it needed. What makes me sad is that the game didn't perform as well as expected, and contributed to the downfall of THQ and Vigil Games. Hell of a note to go out on, though.

 

[The Madman]

War Thunder

It's a free-to-play flight sim on the PC so my expectations going into it weren't exactly sky high. Hell the only reason I downloaded it was because I was looking into recent flight sims and found out it had both the Lancaster and the Mosquito flyable, which are damned sexy airplanes and a lot more obscure than your usual Spitfire/Mustang/Stukka and whatnot. Figured it might be worth looking into plus the screenshots were nice.

Anyway turns out it's a genuinely fantastic game. Plays extremely smooth, has a nice UI, fantastic variety in planes, good support and regular updates, plus it's got some of the best visuals on the PC today. All for the low low initial cost of free!

Most pleasant surprise I've had in awhile.

 

[josemlopes]

War Thunder

It's a free-to-play flight sim on the PC so my expectations going into it weren't exactly sky high. Hell the only reason I downloaded it was because I was looking into recent flight sims and found out it had both the Lancaster and the Mosquito flyable, which are damned sexy airplanes and a lot more obscure than your usual Spitfire/Mustang/Stukka and whatnot. Figured it might be worth looking into plus the screenshots were nice.

Anyway turns out it's a genuinely fantastic game. Plays extremely smooth, has a nice UI, fantastic variety in planes, good support and regular updates, plus it's got some of the best visuals on the PC today. All for the low low initial cost of free!

Most pleasant surprise I've had in awhile.

The game is basicly Wings of Prey/Birds of Steel: F2P Edition so no wonder it has such quality, I think they did a really smart choice in doing what they did instead of making a new game from scratch that would need to be adjusted for a F2P budget. I mean, if they already made such high quality content why not use that as a starting point? Its amazing how the F2P version even comes with a mission editor and single player campaigns that were in the other games.

OT: GTAV - Yeah, its a GTA game and those usually do suprise with some cool new stuff but when I saw that the flip-flops werent glued to the characters feet I was really suprised. That and how much I love the map (the city feels like a city and the wilderness feel wild, its great).

Quake 4 with the Sikkmod - I kind of liked playing Quake 2 (played very recently for the first time) and was looking for something similar, tried Quake 4 and it was shit, really slow and the precense of team mates slow the game's pacing to a crawl. After that I installed the Sikkmod and there it was, the fast paced Quake 2 gameplay, now it is actually fun to play (and it looks gorgeus). I was suprised since it managed to turn something so shitty into a fun game, the game itself even seemed to be design around Quake 2's gameplay.

 

[Drizzitdude]

Dragon's Dogma: I knew it would be good to some of the videos it had before release. But man, that is the single best rpg I have played in a long time.

Darksiders: Figured it would just be god of war in a christian mythos, which it basically is but is was done stupid well.

Lost planet 2: Figured it would just be another lame japanese shooter, but the customization, mechs, giant boss battles, versatility of movement and all the secret thing you could find (like making 2 mechs transform in to one.) made it one of my favorite shooters of all time. Also gun swords.

The Witcher: I had seen multiple reviews and gameplay vidoes before hand and it just looked like a bore. From how it had been described it made it sounds like it was a massive throwback to old school rpgs with the good and bad mixed in. Then I played witcher 2, it was great, went back to play the first one when it went on sale, and now and eagerly awaiting the third.

 

[Drizzitdude]

I was very impressed with Darksiders. Honestly a great game that offered a very fulfilling experience that had potential as a short term adventure franchise...and then quickly ruined with Darksiders 2.

I thought dakrsiders 2 was nothing but improvement. It became a lot more combo based, had less backtracking, more weapon and combo options and added in rpg elements to keep you into it when you've killed the 1500th enemy in a level rather than thinking "at the end of this dungeon, I will just get an upgrade that lets me teleport, that I will only use for solving puzzles"

 

[Jenvas1306]

Infestation: survivor stories, better know as war z certainly surprized me.
my boyfriend wanted to play it with me and bought it for me when it was on sale...
they have free female playermodels now he said, so I made an account (being asked to make a war z account when thats not the games name anymore) and I made my first character. loading takes a bit and then Im getting shot and would have to wait an hour for a respawn, so I make another character. the zombies are derp, seriously derp and I manage to meet with my bf ingame. Our first raid of a village ends with us getting shot by some camper.

so I didnt expect much but this game managed to surprize me at how bad a pvp focussed zombie survival game with one hour respawn timers can be.

 

[obiterocelot]

I was really skeptical about the latest Assassin's Creed. Thought it would be more of the exact same thing and a poorly written story as they flounder about trying to extend the series past it's use-by-date.

Turns out I was mostly wrong. It's still plenty of the same. But this time you're a pirate. I didn't expect my inner child to enjoy being a pirate this much.

 

[Padwolf]

Viva Pintata. My gods that game is so much fun. It's so colourful! The most colourful game I've ever played. It seemed kind of childish at first and then when I got into it I saw how great it actually is. It's also rather challenging, it really makes you work to level up and get rewards. I find it hard deciding what Pinata's I want and if I want one should I kill off a group of different Pinatas, how I'm going to lay out the garden, where to put things, what to do when evil Pinata's come along. I also found it oddly disturbing in a few places. You can kill Pinata's by whacking them with a shovel. They become ill and curl up into a defenceless ball and once they die they explode into chocolate pieces which you can then feed to that pinata's children. That was fucked up when I first saw it.

The Darkness. I wasn't expecting a game of that quality. I picked it up for £4 in CEX. I had so much fun with it! I loved the combat, I loved the story, I loved the way you could sit and watch an entire film in it. It's a real shame the sequel is not as long and doesn't have as much in it.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. A retelling of Silent Hill? I did not have high hopes for this one, not after the travesty of Silent Hill Homecoming and Silent Hill Origins. But I was so shocked and stunned and how great this game was. How well the controls worked and how shockingly responsive they felt to me. I was also surprised at how well the phone was implemented. Also it looked fantastic and I found it rather creepy.

 

[keniakittykat]

Disney's Hercules for the PS1

I was visiting my sister the other day, and her boyfriend owned a copy of this game from when he was a kid. Movie adaptations are known to suck balls, but this game just blew my mind.

The 2D graphics, the responsive controls, the music, it's a true gem.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The Last of Us

I was done with the Uncharted formula, I was annoyed by the 'Look what a strong, feisty, independent girl she is' pre release coverage, her looking like Ellen Page didn't help much either, and I was fresh off The Walking Dead.

Sure I expected some quality, it is Naughty Dog after all, but I didn't think the game would be as brilliant is it turned out to be.

 

[Directionless]

Sleeping Dogs. I thought it would be an enjoyable romp through Hong Kong with serviceable gameplay. Instead I got perhaps one of the best open world games of this gen. It may not look like much, but Sleeping Dogs is nothing but quality.

This. I bought Sleeping Dogs around September last year, and since then it has been installed on my computer 90% of the time. I've played it to the point where there is nothing more to accomplish, but i still love just driving around Hong Kong and beating the shit out of Sun on Yee.