What's your favourite underrated game that you KNOW! is awesome!?

[SilkySkyKitten]

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

While short and a bit on the easy side, it is easily one of the absolute best platformers I have ever had the wonderful chance to play. It's got a great soundtrack, a surprisingly fantastic storyline, and simple yet fantastic gameplay. 'Tis a massive shame few people seem to have ever played it...

 

[Iwata]

Starlancer.

Everyone raves about how "awesome" Freelancer was, but what they don't realize is that it pissed all over its glorious predecessor. Starlancer is the best and most worthy successor to the Wing Commander series (same dev team), and Freelancer can go die in a fire for raping its corpse

I loved them both, but to me they had absolutely nothing to do with each other, besides the premise of "Colony ships sent into space", even if they were a supposed "continuation". I considered them to be different universes.

I guess that's the only way to go.

Seriously, after waiting years for a sequel to Starlancer, being told in the intro video of Freelancer that I can go fuck myself, because nothing I did in the first game mattered and it's now thousands of years later was the cause of much rage.

And the gameplay... first game: Wing Commander-like military space sim. Second game: fuck you!

And my last gripe, the game has the ugliest ship designs this side of EVE Online.

 

[Zeles]

Kingdom hearts games... mirrors edge (OMFGYEEEEEEESSSSS)

Kingdom hearts rocks!

 

[alithanar8]

Legend of Dragoon for the PS 1 I love that game!

 

[random_bars]

Brutal Legend by far. Yeah the story mode ended abruptly and the game as a whole could do with a bit of polish, but the core gameplay of the stage battles is so goddamn fantastic that it makes up for the game's flaws a hundred times over. It's just a pity that the game's explanation of that gameplay is so limited that a lot of people tried to play it like Mouse Cursor Simulator, failed completely, and decided this was the fault of shitty mechanics. It wasn't.

 

[Ninjamedic]

DDY [http://http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DynamiteHeaddy]. One of the best platformers of all time, let alone on the MegaDrive. I haven't even beaten it yet and I still regard it as one of the most memorable and visually striking games I have ever played. The perfect example of how games using basic graphics and sound drivers with creativity will always be superior to any game where the emphasis is placed on HD rendering every speck of dust.

 

[hedges1001]

Cross Edge all the way kickass music kickass characters (over 20 in a JRPG) and hot springs with etna PRINNIES UNITE!!!

 

[Truehare]

Evil Genius. I don't know if it could really be called underrated, but I had never heard of it when I found it while looking for similar games to Dungeon Keeper. I certainly don't hear anyone talking about it now, either. Which is a shame, it's so much better than DK, IMO. Funnier too. And it definitely is one of those "6 am games", if you know what I mean.

Also, depending on how you look at it, Shadow of Destiny (or "of Memories") is one of my favorite "games" (though it could hardly be called that) of all time, and half the people who played it hated it to death. The other half feel like I do.

Also, I don't recall the first Blood Omen being very popular either, and I've played it through four times, and am considering giving it another go.

EDIT: Oooh, I remember another one that should not go unmentioned: Nightshade on the NES. I can only convey how much I loved that game by telling you I'm working on a fan-made sequel to it. It's really only in planning stage, but someday it could even see the light of... well, night.

 

[DarklordKyo]

Zettal Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger Vs. Darkdeath Evilman is my pick. Take the storytelling of a Disgaea title, base it around Power Rangers, and have the gameplay of a turn-based Diablo, and you got a good idea on what to expect from ZHP.

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

Always have to plug the Suikoden Series and the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series.

Both series have just unbelievably massive timelines and worlds to set the scene. Suikoden is especially awesome as each game takes place at different periods of time in different regions of the world, but they all link up in some fashion, and it's a real treat once you put all the pieces together. The gameplay is a little dull, there's not a lot of extras in each game aside from gathering all the characters, but it's a very unique series that blends RPG with a little but of Turn-based Strategy here and there rather well.

The Soul Reaver series is almost...Shakespearean in a way. Each game's storyline is told through inner monologues, and you kinda have to play the first Blood Omen before you pick up the first Soul Reaver to really understand what's going on, but put together, it makes for a very interesting, very strong story that's hard to come by in games.

 

[Vrach]

Alpha Protocol. The dialogue system is too fucking awesome, it's a huge shame it got buried under a pile of bad reviews (anyone condemning a game for bugs and giving a green light to Civilization V should be fired... out of a cannon, into the Sun).

Far Cry 2. Secretely it's an awesome game. Hilarious too. Just look at it like a cheesey action cartoon that takes itself a bit too seriously.

Ugh, had so much potential, but was awful to me on the whole. I shit you not, when I first heard it's dialogue (you know, everyone talking ridiculously fast to try and give the African vibe or whatever), I shut down the game and went looking for a fix thinking it was a bug that sped up the audio files.

The story's quite awful, as are the characters and dotting the landscape with checkpoints and houses/savepoints just feels like the level design was done by a 10 year old... me, in particular, it reminds my own completely formulaic maps I used to make for Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and shit like that.

It's such a shame too, every second I played it, I wanted to like it, I'm a huge fan of open world games and the ability to sneak around, snipe people off, the little touch like being able to wound a guy as a sniper to draw out his buddies to try and help him etc... I was just really trying to like it, but a part of me just died every time I passed a checkpoint and sadly that was pretty much every 2 fucking minutes :<

Multiplayer's surprisingly fun though, at least in small scale with a few buddies.

 

[cydvis]

all on xbox:
- Grabbed by the goulies
- kung fu chaos (really fun multi player)
- breakdown

 

[Bonino90]

Darksiders for sure.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Been playing Sweet Home lately. Fantastic game that never made it out of Japan.

 

[alimination602]

Primal

 

[Wolfram23]

Cryostasis. It's so different... but so fun an interesting to explore through the ship and it's doom. Definitely a wierd game though, with a bizarre ending... but I think it's a must play - especially given the low price now.

 

[sulld1]

Total annihilation, absolutely brilliant as a game, that and warzone 2100 both utterly brill and to my knowledge very unknown.

 

[sheah1]

Armored Core For Answer, poured so many hours into that, and customisable mechs, gotta love it.

 

[Pseudopod]

Brutal Legend. Fantastic game with fantastic art, writing, exploration, music, and loads of fun. Got a lot of negative or mediocre reviews because the game didn't do a great job training you for the hybrid RTS/action battles. It seems like a lot of people tried to play it as a straightforward RTS and missed out on a lot of fun.