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[Greiger]

Because, that happened to me so many times it brings horrible horrible memories of good runs destroyed in their prime.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Ah, the Paws of Fury. I could probably tell many good things about that game if I ever managed to win even one fight... I only know it by its Genesis release, though.

[Neruz]

Zomg, Captain Claw, i remember playing the demo of that.

It's like half my childhood is in this thread XD

[Graven]

Yeah, it's kind of the same for me, except I was born in 1989, so some of the games people remember with such fondness appear to be from before the dawn of time to me

And it's time for yet another of "Gravenous's not-quite-obscure games", this time - Severance : Edge of Darkness (a.k.a. Blade of Darkness) - another of the awesome games brought to me by Gamers' Workshop (if only the damned thing still existed - they'd be obliged to pay me for advertising efforts).

A third person action adventure. Gritty, dark, with engrossing atmosphere, notoriously difficult, even ridiculously so at times, with clunky controls and visceral combat. Four different characters each of which uses different types of weapons - the Barbarian demolishes enemies with two-handed swords and axes, the Paladin fights with a shield and sword, the Amazon prefers spearrs and bows, the Dwarf wrecks enemies with a shield and mace. There were combos, part of which general - can be used with every enemy, part - unique to a given weapon. There were unique weapons, mild RPG elements, mainly HP and stamina gains on level up.

It was awesome. Completely, totally, uniformly awesome. Did I mention the insanely well-made (for its time, at least) fire and water effects? No? Well, they are.

Pictures!

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[Neruz]

I was born in 1989 too, i just played compy games from the age of like, 4.


My father is an IT man (currently an IT Director) so i grew up around computers and was always fascinated by the flashy lights. Dad introduced me to computer games at an early age to stop me moving his icons all over his desktop (which i thought was -great- fun.)

[Sean Mirrsen]

I still have a CD image of BoD. Easily the best 3rd person slasher to date. Not the most technological, but so much more fun.

[Graven]

Hah, Neruz, are you by any chance me? So did my dad, and he seemed to be the only one in my city (Just Democratized Bulgaria, for some reason, wasn't the best possible country to be a computer expert), and I, too, started poking around PCs at the tender age of four. Much to my dad's dismay, though, I kept to games mostly. Hardware still remains a somewhat shrouded mystery, but I'll learn something more than the basics, I swear! If only I wasn't shoe-horned into economy, dammit... Anyway.

ANOTHER GAME, WOO!

Rune : Halls of Valhalla. Unless that's the expansion and the original is only Rune. It doesn't matter.

Another 3d person hack-n-slash, this time with Vikings rather than barbarians. Differences - a freaking slow start with boring enemies (You die in the intro and are forced to escape from Hela's domain fighting off extremely vicious enemies such as

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plants

), better controls, less gore, magical weapons you can evoke to use spells like invisibility and increased damage.

It's a worse game than Edge of Darkness, that's for sure, but that's like saying being a billionaire is worse than being a trillionaire. It was, actually, considered a bad game by reviewers, and I agree with some of their complaints - not that good level design, the horrible starting section and stuff, but if you're into fantasy hack-n-slash, you can do a lot worse than Rune. As always in my posts, incoming screenies :

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[Neruz]

Zomg, you have discovered my secret. I am your alternate personality, now i must kill you.

[Graven]

Fool! You can't kill me! No man can kill me! (Unless you're a woman, in which case you won't be me, in which case I'm perfectly safe, thank Armok.)

And since I detest off-topic, here goes yet another of Graven's patented "slightly-obscure-game-which-was-critically-underappreciated"tm!

Enclave. I bet you can't guess the genre!

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3D person action adventure

. It's on the PC and the original X-Box, and here are its main pros :
- pretty decent graphics, even for now
- varied enemies, weapons and armour
- varied characters which you rescue and join you - druids, mages, hunters, warriors, berserkers, goblins, orc sappers and more
- cool levels featuring a haunted mine, a nightmarish dreamscape, a demon-infested house, several battlements, a destroyed city, a flooded mansion and more!
- two campaigns, light and dark, and two corresponding plot paths
- decent, if predictable plot with a rather nice backstory
- well animated characters
- excellent control scheme, the easiest of all the games I've posted

SCREENIES FOR THE SCREEN GOD!

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Last reply for tonight, I'm off to play DoomRL. Oh, and those screenies look like rubbish for some reason, I replayed the game a few weeks ago, it most certainly looks better in person.

[Vester]

That actually looks pretty cool. What year did that come out? (my laptop can't run anything after 2006 except for Red Alert 3, apparently, because it is a lump of junk whose screen no longer works properly).

[Graven]

Ok, so not my last reply. Gamespot seems to think 2003, and IIRC it's actually true! Don't sweat it, I've run it on abysmal systems, so if it can boot up windows, it'll run Enclave

edit : last =/= first, hurr.

edit : VVV Dude, what? Were you playing the X-Box version or something? I finished it at all three difficulties, both campaigns at the tender age of 14, so it can in no way, shape or form be difficult

[jnecros]

Enclave was so bloody hard, damn I nearly broke my disc..still own it though. Kind of like Demon's Souls in a way.

[Sordid]

It was awesome. Completely, totally, uniformly awesome. Did I mention the insanely well-made (for its time, at least) fire and water effects? No? Well, they are.

Fire and water effects? Nuthin'! The most impressive technical achievement of this game have to be the 100% real-time shadows. John Carmack made a big deal out of those in his Doom 3, how every polygon casts a real shadow, yadda, yadda, yadda... well, this game had the exact same thing three years earlier and with hardware requirements an order of magnitude lower.

[Graven]

Eh, I remember it required the equivallent of Clarke's Monolith to run well at the time was released. The only reason the requirements seem lower is because the game was older. And besides, the particle effects when you break a crate will make the game stutter even on the contemporary equivallent of Clarke's Monolith, and I have no idea why the hell that is.

With everything said, the game is still amazing.

I'm trying to think of another obscure game to post here, but honestly, my brain has switched to "retarded automaton simulation" mode and I'm helpless

[Farce]

Ah.  Has anyone played a game called Tai Chi?  I remember borrowing from Blockbuster, for PS1.  You were a kung-fu tiger and ran around fighting bad guys with your crazy tiger kung fu.  Or Tai Chi, you know, whatever.

I also remember getting some RTS-type game for free somehow.  I think the name had a 7 in it?  Anyway, you could either be humans of various ethnicity, with a couple differences depending on your choice - Japanese got samurai instead of knights, Egyptians got camels instead of regular cavalry, stuff like that - or monsters, that only got one troop type from each base.  There wasn't any Warcraft-style base building - buildings were just whole cities, like, and you had to capture them - I don't think you could actually command new cities to be founded.  The monsters had dens, instead, with several different types that made different monsters.  Monster economy was fueled by enslaving human cities for brains or something, while humans had to set up caravan routes.

Like most games, I didn't play it much - just messed around in the editors and free mode.


There's also Battle Realms, but I've heard people talk about that before, so it might not be THAT obscure.  I also just remembered Tail Concerto - PS1 game, where you run around in a mech on flying sky islands, shooting bubbles at tiny catpirates to arrest them.