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[Kaje]

Hi dudes and dudettes,

It took me a while, but I eventually decided to play The Bureau - XCom Declassified after grabbing the recent 2K bundle.

I LOVE the X-Com games, the originals anyway - not so much the new incarnation, far too dumbed down for me - and I've played them all, but this one was absolutely slated by reviewers and even gamers. If it hadn't have been in the 2K bundle, I would NEVER have bothered playing it.

So, three solid days later and I've completed the campaign and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It's not a classic, but I would certainly have given it 7/10 at least. I love the setting, I love the art style, the story itself was fine. The action/combat left a lot to be desired, but I saw that as just a necessity to advance the story rather than a key component. I'd love to see an X-Com game set in the 1950s/60s (no, not Xenonauts, I'm really not sold on that game at all).

So, what games have YOU played that you enjoyed (and why) but were absolutely trashed by the media and other reviewers/gamers?

[flame99]

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts was one I absolutely loved. I really thought the vehicle building mechanic was well-implemented, and frankly, it's an enjoyable deconstruction of various games. While LOG and Kazooie do get annoying after a while, I still think it was an over all good experience.

I didn't so much "enjoy" it as much as find it mildly entertaining, but I actually kind of liked Shadow the Hedgehog. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely should not have been a Sonic game, and the story is frankly pretty dumb, but I found the gameplay fairly fun. Well, most of the time. Several of the boss fights were just boring.

[Neonivek]

-Phantasmagoria: Honestly I still believe this game is underrated. One thing it does that no other horror game does is build and create subtle changes in the atmosphere over time. It goes for the long haul and has some genuinely creepy moments. Sure it takes over half the game's runtime before it gets scary... but I appreciate it for being the only horror game I am aware of to attempt this.

-Kings Quest 6: Ok yeah... it is slow... yeah it is Disney like. But it isn't that bad. I like that it is far more intuitive then a lot of other games (Minus two garbage puzzles)... Its fun, come on! Its good I swear! Even if no one other then me seems to like it.

-Soul Caliber 4: While a lot of people disliked this game and found it to be a step back from 3... I actually found it to be an improvement. Sure it removed the old movesets, but the extra movesets didn't add too much to the game. It wasn't without is flaws (Dear goodness that tower...), but I thought it just needed minor improvements. It certainly was 1000 times better then Soul Caliber 5 which I loathe.

-Front Mission 4 (or 3 I forget): A lot of people were disappointed because it removed a lot of the features from 2... but I honestly wonder if they played it because that game was a mess with what they expected you to do in order to improve (Such as using every part in the game to build your moveset). While 3 streamlined it all to make it easier. While the game needed VAST improvements (dear goodness is the "perfect build" always immediately obvious... and WOW are grenades overpowered) it was just flat out more fun then the previous game.

-Suikeoden 3: Note that today Suikeoden 3 is loved mostly because 4 happened and people learned how bad the series could get... however at the time I didn't know what people disliked about it. It had a good story (though you can easily guess the "true path" the game took... since it is obvious who the real true fire rune user would be), the combat was actually quite fun, the unite attacks mostly SUCKED (Its the weakest they ever been), and for once Monster allies were GOOD. While it is the 4th best in the series the series as a whole is exemplary so that is no skin off its back, in fact some of the 3rds gimmicks I wish transferred to other games in the series (area bosses, encounter bosses)

[Bouchart]

Beyond the Beyond.  It's a fairly generic, very early PS1 JRPG.  It's got a good soundtrack.  It's kinda like the early NES JRPGs like the original Final Fantasy, in that there isn't much of a plot, there are flat characters, and plenty of challenging dungeons and random battles.

[Itnetlolor]

InMomentum

Sure, it's minimalistic in looks; sure, it may be a bit of a Mirror's Edge knock-off; sure, it's a platformer from hell on harder difficulties; but damn, if it isn't fun. I got it off a bundle, and actually looked forward to it from what I saw.

This is a freerunning playground (actually, the level Freestyle is a better example) that you can absolutely bolt through. No guns (actually, it's more a checkpoint gun that's made to knock out gates that make levels harder to go through. And in multiplayer, it briefly slows your opponent(s).), no monsters, no other goals but the finish line/gate.

Spoiler: A shot of Freestyle (fun to screw around in) and probably the tallest level (from the top of both of them) (click to show/hide)

Yes, I spent over an hour here. What of it? It's my playground.


Took me 15 whole seconds to land at the absolute bottom of the level (that's landable) at terminal velocity. AAAAAaaaaAAAAaaaAAAaaa!!!! has longer falls than that.

I think most reviewers are Graphics=Good Game, and are also likely under-/un-skilled platformers/gamers. Then again, I'm also the opposite end of that spectrum (I don't give as much a crap about graphics (8-bit era, I started in; Commodore-64 FTW!), and I'm surprisingly more competent than initially expected; and a tad suicidally confident at times.), but at least I'm open-minded to it, and other newer games and indie games in general. Plus, despite being minimalistic, it's surprisingly immersive (you can sorta feel your speed without looking at the speedometer; which helps with timing a good jump). So much, that I want it to be Oculus-Compatible. Being made in Unreal Engine 3, I hope it's standard to the point of being an option (3rd-party, or provided by devs).


In similar vein:

Cloudbuilt

This game is also pretty damn fun; though reviews are scattered since the sales (Some seem to not be fans of challenges or Sonic/Megaman). Think InMomentum, except instead of minimalistic, it's cel-shaded beauty. And instead of building up speed the normal way, you have a jetpack, that assists in wallrunning (vertically and horizontally), walljumping, and jumping long gaps. Oh yeah, and you have a blaster like Mega Man (though no robot masters to snag abilities from) to assist you through levels, knocking out robots, or blasting gates apart. Storyline involves being post-coma after an accident or war, and this is your path to recovery; this game (Sounds similar to IM's initial storyline (all there in the manual), before they tossed it, and dedicated it to freestyle/freerunning racing). Fuck what people say, this game is pretty damn fun (and frustrating in certain levels), though a bit more intense graphically than InMomentum, but the extra juice used is worth it, because damn, is it pretty.

EDIT:
One major gripe I would agree with about InMomentum is it's lacking playerbase to multiplay against. Negative reviews don't help this one bit. Quit your bitching, newbies, and stop ruining it for the rest of the more competent ones that DO actually want to race ninja-style. Go back to Skyrim, DOTA, or WoW, or some other popular location that accepts your conformist nature (Sorry to hipsterfy there for a bit; but this behavior still pisses me off. Call me an old man, but really...). I still check from time to time to see if anyone's on, nonetheless.


EDIT EDIT:
Speaking of lacking multiplayer games that need players again:

Super Laser Racer (Or as I have been commented: "The most videogame named videogame ever.")

Super Mario Kart/Wipeout (Death Race) meets Tron (vector graphics), viewed from above (2D). More fun than it looks and sounds, and has some pretty nifty music to it. Reason for lacking popularity. As you'd guess, vector-style graphics aren't cool. Not hip. Not SWAG. Not chill. Not "bad". Not (INSERT LAME-PAST-IT'S-PRIME SLANG/LINGO). That, and like I also said before, maybe they suck so terribly at the game, they downvote because victory isn't spoonfed to them.

I play this with my brothers online every other week, and it's hilarious, fun, and difficult most the time. We need Bay-12 servers for this game. It demands it. Toss in Steam Chat, Google+, or Teamspeak, or anything else that can allow for vocally/verbally abusing other players as you get mauled to death in the game. The unrefined anger from other players (and sometimes your own) is half the fun of this game.

[Seriyu]

I always quite enjoyed spore. I didn't really follow the development though, which, as I understand, is where most of the dissapointment comes from.

[nenjin]

Space Hulk (2013) - This game got panned pretty hard by RPS, and people just seemed to run with it after that. I have no idea why. Granted I've only played a few hours of it to date. It may have had slightly funky tile targeting, some bugs and a couple design oversights but it was essentially......Space Hulk. No better or worse. I enjoyed it because I thought it was a pretty faithful recreation of the table top game. It had all the right 40k flavor, iconography and sound. One of the few times I've completely disagreed with RPS about a game I've played and I've always felt a little sorry for Full Control. I thought they did, at the very least, an adequate job.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. - There are plenty of legitimate complaints about RO2. It had a lot of mechanics that needed a ton of continued tweaking after release. Tons of networking issues in Beta. Tons of features planned, shown off and then scrapped. A very loud and prideful CEO. Bugs galore. But when you set all that aside, RO2 is a good game for its audience. It just tried to go from a mod for hardcore realism wonks to a more flexible game that borrowed some ideas from other big FPS titles. But when the game works, oh man, it works. If you get immersed in FPS, RO2 really does it. I once was a German machine gunner up in a high window of a building, with probably 30% of the level as my arc of fire. Just mowing down lines of Russians at the far end of the map as they keep trying to flank, and keep getting cut down. Must gotten 40 or 50 kills. Alternatively, at least at first, getting completely wreckt by the enemy is also immersive. Artillery coming down, bullets keeping you pinned in cover, people charging in to stab you with bayonets...I don't blame anyone for not getting into RO2, but I enjoyed it a lot, because it's so different from Battlefield, Call of Duty, console shooters. Its systems are more simulationist than gameist and that appeals to me.

Aliens vs. Predator (2010) - People knocked this one hardcore on several levels. MP was a buggy mess, latency and performance were terrible. Species were drastically different in effectiveness. The campaign, each species having their own part of it, reused a lot of setpieces and played around the same events in the story taken in from different perspectives. So you had to listen to the same Lance Hendrikson as Weyland speech, and watch the same damn cutscene over and over again. Despite that, however, I enjoyed the game. There were a lot of good attempts at replicating the success of AvP Classic. The Predator jump mechanic, which a lot of people hated, I came to enjoy and get pretty good with. It's another immersive game that allows you, if you're that kind of player, to RP each species a bit. I loved stalking humans as the Predator. I love stalking Predators and Humans as an alien. I love the jump scares and the tension of playing the marine (admittedly the gun play and diversity there was pretty soft.) The alien wall crawl mechanic was buggy too, but it was still an awesome feature to have. Again, I'm not saying the panning was unjustified, but I did enjoy it.

I always quite enjoyed spore. I didn't really follow the development though, which, as I understand, is where most of the dissapointment comes from.

I only enjoy parts of it, and that's the very beginning and the very end. I spent more time designing things than I did actually playing most of the stages. I could like Spore, were I not so damn disappointed by it.

[Teneb]

I always quite enjoyed spore. I didn't really follow the development though, which, as I understand, is where most of the dissapointment comes from.

Yup. They promised a lot of stuff and so the game was pretty shallow when compared to that.

I still liked flying around in a spaceship carpet-bombing planets though.

[Neonivek]

I always quite enjoyed spore. I didn't really follow the development though, which, as I understand, is where most of the dissapointment comes from.

Ohh yeah I agree. I liked Spore quite a bit.

It is definitely #1 on my list of "Games that weren't very good that I would love to see a sequel of"

[Hanzoku]

Master of Orion 3. Universally hated and reviled for ruining all that was holy about Moo 1 and 2, but I oddly enough love the thing for allowing me to ignore all the fiddly micromanagement crap that causes me to give up 3/4 of the way through every other empire game so I can actually focus on controlling an empire spanning 1/3rd of the galaxy. I'm still disappointed that I can't get the thing to work on a VM Ware environment so I can play it again.

[gigaraptor487]

Destroy all humans path of the furon: Buggy as hell but it is always fun to demolish a city.

Warhammer 40k Fire Warrior: Generic but I found it nontheless fun

more coming soon to this post

[Arcvasti]

I really liked Spore. Although some of the stages were sort of meh, Creature and Space were pretty fun.

[HideousBeing]

Really enjoyed the game "Digimon World" for PS1. It got around a 5.5/10 from most reviewers, but I really liked the dynamic of raising a creature and all the different ways to train them. I still go back to it sometimes. It probably didn't cater to whatever digimon fans would have been into though.

[Neonivek]

Really enjoyed the game "Digimon World" for PS1. It got around a 5.5/10 from most reviewers, but I really liked the dynamic of raising a creature and all the different ways to train them. I still go back to it sometimes. It probably didn't cater to whatever digimon fans would have been into though.

Really? but it was a really fun game.

[HideousBeing]

Really? but it was a really fun game.

I thought so. I think the timing was bad as well. Tamagotchi and pokemon had recently hit the market and I can't think of many other games that don't let you control the battles directly. You know the "FUN" part! None of this raising a companion nonsense (Which ironically, was kind of the core of the show if I remember... The game holds up a bit better through time actually imo). And you know... cashing in on kids shows.

Nowadays someone would probably notice that it's actually a good game with gameplay that is fairly non-standard, but interesting to many.