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What's a game you like that was overlooked?
Personally, Spec Ops: The Line is one of my favorite games, but ask someone about it and they probably don't know what it is. Is there a game like this for you?
Personally, Spec Ops: The Line is one of my favorite games, but ask someone about it and they probably don't know what it is. Is there a game like this for you?
Tinertia is the example that usually comes to mind for me. It's a difficult, speedrun-ish platformer game along the lines of Super Meat Boy, but your character can't jump—you have to "rocket jump" by shooting rockets into the floor or walls to get through the levels.
It's extremely well-done overall, feels great to play, has a good soundtrack, etc. but got very little attention. It's been out for 3 years but there are only 53 reviews on Steam (and they're 100% positive), and the number of scores on the leaderboards is surprisingly low, especially as you start getting to some of the later levels. The leaked Steam sales numbers earlier this year estimated that it only had about 3600 players.
Despite that, the developers continued updating it significantly multiple times, including even adding a VR mode last year (which is totally unnecessary, but pretty neat). I think it's an excellent game, and it's sad that it wasn't very successful even though the developers did such a great job.
This game looks really cool! I'm definitely gonna try the VR mode, the reviews say it's great. I'll probably buy this when I get paid next, I've been looking for something to scratch my Meat Boy itch.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Tinertia was going to be one of my suggestions on entering the thread. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks it's criminally overlooked!
The game does so much right. It's got a novel concept, well-designed levels, spot-on movement feel, and a native Linux build! It is quite difficult, but because the controls are so tight it never feels unfair. My only complaint was that I had to limit my play sessions because if I played too long I would end up rubbing my right thumb raw from all the rocket flicking.
Similar to Tinertia, Action Henk is another pretty dang good speedrunning game that is really unknown/overlooked too with only 224 very positive reviews. I think you may have even recommended it to me way back when. :P
Yeah, Action Henk is a great game too. I think you watched me play it for a little while over Steam streaming and ended up buying it, if I remember right.
It's not nearly as overlooked as Tinertia (those leaked Steam numbers estimate it at 74,000 players), but I think it's also been in a few bundles. I think they probably hurt their potential audience quite a bit with the weird name and visual style, especially with the main character being a sloppy-looking fat guy. It's pretty incongruous with how smooth and awesome the game can feel when you're having a really good run on a level, and they probably could have gotten a lot more attention if the game had made it look awesome too, instead of a fat guy sliding around on his butt.
I think you're right. Now that you mention it, I seem to remember seeing you playing it and thinking it was a weird name for a game and asked to see you stream it. And yeah I think the name and main character really did them a disservice. Then again, it was what caught my eye... so maybe not? :P
I feel like flash games are often overlooked simply because of the format they're in. Give Up Robot, 4 Second Frenzy, Crush the Castle, Fancy Pants Adventure, hell VVVVVV and Alien Hominid both started out as flash games. People seem to think flash games are just a stupid time-waster for kids, but they often ended up being great games in their own right, and they had huge influences on the rest of the industry. Candy Crush is just Bejeweled, and Angry Birds is just Crush the Castle. I remember Minecraft used to be playable in-browser too, even though it's not a Flash game.
Still not forgiving crush the castle 3.
Absolutely Hand of Fate for me. It blends like 3 things together absolutely flawlessly. The almost D&D-like dungeon crawling card game overworld, the deckbuilding mechanic that influences the entire game, even the random card shuffling RNG (the cards are shown up front and can be tracked with a close enough eye) makes you feel like you still have influence over your own fate. And that all is seamlessly shifted over to the real-time (and incredibly fluid) combat. Even just the transition between the two where the cards representing your equipment morphs into the actual equipment that appears on your player. And the Dealer whose dialog makes the entire game. Ugh I love it so much. Was absolutely thrilled when I switched to Linux and saw it was still supported natively. And now there's a sequel too and I'm only hearing good things about it.
I love Hand of Fate too... I just wish the combat was a bit more dynamic and varied. I really love the deck-building, narrative story, exploration and even the somewhat RNG aspects of it, but the combat is the one thing I get rather tired of pretty quickly. I have to force myself to get through the combat in order to keep playing and it’s the single biggest hurdle I need to mentally overcome before I can manage to actually jump in to playing it again whenever I get the urge to go back to it.
p.s. Oh damn... I didn't realize there was a Hand of Fate 2 out! Do you know if it's as good/better than the previous one?
I've put about 60 hours into the second game and it's way better IMO. They improved on just about every aspect of the game.
A few examples of improvements: Each level has a unique structure and goal which really spices up the gameplay. There are multiple games of chance now, too, some of which are purposefully more or less skill based. You also no longer get stuck with stupid cards in the deck (like the kraken in the first game). Endless mode has mini goals instead of just dragging on forever.
The only part that wasn't dramatically improved is, unfortunately, the combat. It's a little better but still not a interesting as it ought to be.
Not sure, haven't played it yet personally. I'm insisting that I beat the last boss (the dealer really stacks the deck against you) before I buy it.
But I haven't heard anything bad about it. Been watching it since it was first announced and the general trend is that yeah, it's supposed to be bigger and better and somehow more refined than the first.
I know it won GOTY back in the day, but I swear to god none of my friends played/had any interest in playing No One Lives Forever 1 or 2. ...granted it was likely because the first one came out the same year as Diablo, Deus Ex, Perfect Dark, and Red Alert 2.
Pretty much all of Monolith's games are amazing. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Shogo in spite of it being a terribly dated mess of a game. F.E.A.R. probably still has the best enemy AI out there. And they've always been great about optimizing their engine so their games work great even if you don't have the best hardware.
I think BLOOD was the only monolith game that I ever finished, but I definitely remember playing through (most of?) the first NOLF. Was pretty fun, though iirc not 100% polished.
I want to play those and never got a chance. Why the hell are they not on Steam?
Hidden gems are pretty much my favorite games to talk about! Here's a handful of my favorites. I don't really have a threshhold or metric for how I consider them "overlooked," it's more that I think each one is good enough to warrant more audience than it currently has.
The TrackMania Series - Absolutely fantastic arcade racing. Ridiculous tracks, tight handling, and time-trial-based multiplayer make these games ones I've come back to for years. They definitely have a niche audience already, but they're dying and they deserve so much better. Going to a free-to-play model would actually be strongly beneficial, IMO. They did it once with Nations and I keep hoping they'll do it to save the current iterations.
Splasher - Similar to Tinertia, Splasher does nearly everything right. It's a platformer where you wield a gun that can fire three different liquids. One makes you stick to walls, one makes you bounce off of them, and one washes off anything already on the wall. It's a clever idea with great execution. Very satisfying to play.
Spirits of Xanadu - A lot of the reviews seem to fault it for being exactly what it is: a small, low-budget indie love letter to System Shock 2. I thought the game did a great job with creating a tense atmosphere and delivering on a compelling, minimalist story.
Love and kuso - These are both dead-simple 2D platformers made by the same guy. Your goal is to navigate sprawling minimalist levels with as few deaths as possible. You can place checkpoints wherever you like. I come back to these simply because they're effortlessly playable and engaging.
Resonance - One of the best modern point and click adventure games I've played. I was actually going to suggest its sibling, Gemini Rue, but that one seems to have received much more attention. Same goes for The Blackwell Series. Honestly, almost everything published by Wadjet Eye games is probably worth your time.
Coin Crypt - This is a fun little roguelite that's based around a bunch of different coins that all have different abilities attached to them. Battles are waged by drawing a set number of coins from your purse and then spending them to activate their effects. The fun of the game comes from trying to direct which coins you receive so that you can play the ones you want. You're never fully comfortable in this though, because once you spend a coin, it's gone. On the other hand, it also means it's very easy to switch up your tactics mid-game since you're not locked-in. Because of the myriad abilities and the randomness of the play, there's a lot of different strategies you can try, and the game very much encourages finding fun ways to cheese its systems.
Quern: Undying Thoughts - This one gets compared to Myst but I liked it significantly more. You're basically on a big escape-room-island, and you go from puzzle to puzzle to puzzle to puzzle. The reason it gets a mention here is that, with only a few exceptions, the puzzles are exceptionally well-designed and integrated into the world. The game is full of "aha!" moments and clever design.
How does Quern compare to something like The Witness? I'm playing through that at the moment and am enjoying it much more than any of the Mysts I've played, I think because it's just a little bit more structured so I feel lost less.
Similar in scope, but different in puzzles. The Witness is all about uncovering the hidden rules of its omnipresent line-puzzles, so the experience is very uniform despite all the variety of the different areas.
Quern, on the other hand, has much more quantized puzzles which are often very different. You might be sliding blocks in one, doing math in another, and then trying to find a missing piece to make a machine work in a third.
I liked both games but for different reasons, and on a surface level they are both mystery puzzle island adventures. I also actually dislike Myst for the same reason you stated. With Myst I felt like discovery of the islands and their mechanics felt very trial-and-error, leaving me directionless. Quern, on the other hand, has much better conveyance in my opinion. It's usually clear what you have to do, you just have to figure out how. I will admit there were times I ducked out to a guide, but those were few and far between. Instead I spent most of my time mulling over what was in front of me until something finally clicked and I found the way to proceed.
I quite liked resonance, probably gave me the best feeling since gemini rue. I grabbed technobabylon on release, and I keep trying to go back, but for some reason it just isn't keeping me, and I can't work out why...
I felt exactly that way about Primordia. Everybody else seemed to love it, but it just didn't stick for me. I haven't played Technobabylon but it's on my list to get around to at some point.
Tomba!, a 2D platformer for the PS1 that's got to be one of the best games in the genre that I've ever played. It does have a bit of a cult following but not nearly what it deserved, I only know one other person who's played it.
I only ever played a demo of the first, but I played through all of Tomba! 2 back in the day and you're right: it's genuinely fantastic and definitely overlooked. I would love to play a modern interpretation of the game.
I never played the second one actually, might try and dig up a ROM. I would definitely recommend going back and playing the first on an emulator or however though, I did about a year ago and it held up amazingly well.
Battlewheels was the best game on the Atari Lynx and I'm ready to die on this hill if I need to.
Edit:
I have never heard of that, but after looking at a gameplay video it kinda reminds me of a pseudo-3D Carmageddon mixed with the new Mad Max game. I may have to find a ROM to give it a try... it looks interesting.
Lynx was such a great system. I was too young to know at the time; what did it in? Price?
It just had a hard lil' life. It came out right after the Game Boy in '89, but they couldn't make enough of them. Atari had money from their computers doing OK, but that never translated into Lynxes and software on shelves. They just weren't very common, and what software there was didn't tend to be super good. Plus, the Lynx 1 was kind of dorky looking, and had the same issues versus the Game Boy that the Game Gear did.
Price was alright, though. Once the nicer Lynx 2 came out in 1991 I recall you could get it for about $100, where a Game Gear was $150. It wasn't bad like the NEC Turbo Express, that thing was $250 or so.
I'm a fan of the Japanese company Zoom. Their games were often quite bad, but they had so much charm to them that I can't help but love them. You might have even played one by accident; Lagoon and Phalanx on the SNES are their most notable releases in the West, though early Playstation adopters may know them for having developed Zero Divide.
Their best game (IMHO) Is Genocide 2, which I also consider to be the best giant robot game of the early 90s. What other game has giant robots doing backflips and beating up giant kamikaze human soldiers with a sword? The graphics are great, the soundtrack is catchy, and it's even got a killer intro sequence. It's somewhat infamous for an absolutely terrible SNES port done by British studio BITS Entertainment, who cut out quite a lot of content from the game.
They are also famous for a very strange PS2 game called Ka, released in the US as Mister Mosquito. It's a completely insane mosquito flight simulator. Words don't do it justice. You just need to play it.
I'm also a fan of Exact, who is best known for the Playstation Ghost in the Shell game as well as the Jumping Flash series.
I also really love Lord Monarch, a very early RTS game made by Falcom. It's a pretty simple game, but it's got a few interesting complications and lots of characters. Falcom surprisingly still has the Windows PC version of this game translated to English available for download on their website. If you are interested, it's available here: https://www.falcom.com/monarch/index_e.html
Quite a lot of my favourite games could qualify, but have also won awards, so aren't totally unknown.
The Guild of Dungeoneering. 1000 Steam Revies, Indie of the Year 2015 (IndieDB).
A card-game based dungeon game. Rewards give you equipment, or allow you to expand your own base. But... Don't get too attached to any particular character. You die and fill out your graveyard rather rapidly. Every quest requires some strategising, but there is a fair amount of randomness as well. Beautiful artwork, love the soundtrack.
Zigurat, 2000 Steam Reviews, Best Console Game 2015 (gamelab), Public Award 2015 (gamelab)
Old-school FPS, modern game. Fight through a ziggurat, against increasingly difficult swarms of bad guys, picking up some amazing magical weapons as you go. Powerups all come with cons as well as benefits. Only takes a couple hours to burn through, but replayable, daily challenges and the like. (Best purchased on sale).
Folklore for the PS3
I have this game. I played only for a little bit. I don't remember exactly why, but the gameplay just didn't grab me. The art was fantastic, though.
That game is truly beautiful, but it felt a bit slow
The SimCity reboot. I know it's in vogue to hate EA with a burning passion, but it was purely a bad start that led to its terrible reviews. I guarantee, if you were to go back to it now, it'd be 7/10 at the least. It also got overshadowed by Cities:Skylines, but C:S doesn't have anywhere close to the classic simcity gameplay. It is a design game more than a game where you actually run a city.
I actually really enjoy SimCity (2013). I disliked the small city sizes, but other than that the game was solid. The customizable building layouts were awesome.
So what does it have? My wife and I both tried it early on, and neither of us were particularly into it. What can I actually get from it that other games aren't doing better?Misunderstanding.
Mainly the actual concept of city building. In C:S and some of the other clones of that style, if you put down houses, people will move in without a second thought, even if you haven't given them power or water or even jobs. It's not so much a balancing act as it is a design game. SimCity and its predecessors always focused on it being a challenge to get your city to grow.
I just realized I misunderstood your comment. You were saying Cities was a design game; I read it as you saying that about SimCity, instead.
Sorry!
No problem!
Intelligent Qube. One of the best puzzle games ever, period.
Now there's a game I haven't thought about in a long time! I still remember the great music and the "perrrrrrrrrrfect!" voice line. I also remember the mounting tension when you make a mistake, which shortens the stage, which makes your next mistake easier to make, which shortens the stage more... A game can cascade out of control pretty quickly.
I played the demo over and over again but I could never find the full game in stores. It wasn't until a local Blockbuster was liquidating that I was able to pick up the rental copy they were selling. It had a great atmosphere and a unique puzzle style. Honestly, the game is ripe for a modern sequel or reinterpretation. It could be a modern indie hit if done right.
Holy bleeding hell. I could almost just copy-paste kfwyre's response and have it apply to me.
Hot damn, I didn't even know I had anything stored in my memory about that game until right now. Wow.
Whilst cogmimd is still in early access, the sheer quality d quantity of content amazes me. Cogmimd is a sci-fi rougelike where you can pick up parts from your dead enemies and attack them to you.