Most underrated and most overrated developers

[Maximilian]

From a real gamer's perspective they've always been bleh. In the 15 years they've been around they haven't really done much compared to many other much better studios.

A truly underrated studio that has done plenty of big name projects that you've probably played: Raven Software

Starcraft 1, its map editor and battle.net 1.0 were absolute masterpieces in their time. Every single thing in starcraft was done well, graphics looked good, gameplay was fun, story was cool, the easy to use map editor and well thought out online UI allowed people to create and play UMS games that extended the games lifespan massively. Cant fault that game tbh. To be fair a lot of credit goes to the community giving the game its longevity.

Thats without even mentioning the highly addictive diablo II or warcraft1/2/3.

I liked star trek:elite force from Raven, it was a fun and memorable shooter. Only nitpick with that game was if you wanted to rampage and kill the voyager crew you drop to your knees crying and the game ends after ~20 seconds of killing Boo!

 

[chalmers]

I'm sure your post history is a model of quality & diversity, right?

...I guess?

 

[TidusZ]

blizzard was the best by far but I think they lost a lot of talent in the last few years. D3 was an eye opener in how bad it was.

 

[Martimus]

Overrated: Blizzard, they're not what they used to be people!

I was going to say Blizzard as well. They make pretty good games, but I was always slightly disappointed with each of their games. Warcraft 2 was fun, but not nearly as fun as C&C. Starcraft was also fun, but again paled in comparison to Red Alert. Diablo was fun, but it got old quick with just mashing a single button over and over again throughout the game. Diablo 2 was almost exactly the same as Diablo 1, with almost no changes whatsoever. Warcraft 3 was good, but far from great. World of Warcraft wasn't remotely fun, and I still can't understand how it did so well. I thought the UI was atrocious, and couldn't play more than 10 minutes before finding too annoying to continue. I haven't played any other Blizzard games, so I can't comment on any of the other games.

I don't think Blizzard is a bad devoloper, far from it, but I have never thought any of their games have been revolutionary, great, or even the best of it's genre. I can say that they were all fun for a time (except WoW), and above average. I just never understood the rabid fan love for them a few years ago.

 

[chalmers]

You never understood the rabid fan love? They're easily accessible games that millions of people enjoy.

 

[Craig234]

I was going to say Blizzard as well. They make pretty good games, but I was always slightly disappointed with each of their games. Warcraft 2 was fun, but not nearly as fun as C&C. Starcraft was also fun, but again paled in comparison to Red Alert. Diablo was fun, but it got old quick with just mashing a single button over and over again throughout the game. Diablo 2 was almost exactly the same as Diablo 1, with almost no changes whatsoever. Warcraft 3 was good, but far from great. World of Warcraft wasn't remotely fun, and I still can't understand how it did so well. I thought the UI was atrocious, and couldn't play more than 10 minutes before finding too annoying to continue. I haven't played any other Blizzard games, so I can't comment on any of the other games.

I don't think Blizzard is a bad devoloper, far from it, but I have never thought any of their games have been revolutionary, great, or even the best of it's genre. I can say that they were all fun for a time (except WoW), and above average. I just never understood the rabid fan love for them a few years ago.

Blizzard's first(?) game, Lost Vikings, was my favorite platormer ever.

They usually seem to evolve other games, but do it so well as to be 'the best'.

Diablo series broke new groung for action RPG's really establishing the genre as I recall - RPG players were furious saying it wasn't really an RPG at all.

Starcraft series is considered one of the best and most polished RTS's ever. The Warcraft RTS games were generally considered polished top notch games in their genre also.

World of Warcraft copied Everquest largely and made improvements.

They break sales records in each of these genres for a reason, for making incredible games.

Even if they are evolutions.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I still think Bungie is underrated. People know them for Halo and pretty much only Halo. They don't realize that Halo as the FPS we know it as now was originally played in the 3rd person and was a network action game. I don't know at which point this changed but their original demo vids showed no fps elements. They did a very good RTS game with great campaign story. They've done 3d action games, had the first game with mouse aim with Marathon.

Before they settled on the Destiny project they were working on a sort of strategy/building game where you built up a fort and then attacked or defended. They hesitated to categorize it as a strategy game and it really was just an idea demo, not even a tech demo. It sounded like it could have had some very interesting possibilities but needed the right ideas.

Anyway they are very diverse and looking at them beyond Halo I feel they are highly underrated in the industry.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I love CDPR, including their pet DD store, GoG; TW1 was great, and TW2 was the best action RPG I've ever played...I just don't know how to call them underrated, when they're few games so far have gotten such great critical and user responses, and rightly so.

I agree!

 

[HurleyBird]

Over-rated:

Firaxis, who couldn't design a good TBS if their lives depended on it. Civ is the antithesis of the original Master of Orion, and it's bad design choices have been stagnating the 4x genre for decades. Technically the new XCOM is a decent TBS, but every design decision Firaxis made that strayed from the original formula made the game worse, not better.

Under-rated:

Cyanide, because the Game of Thrones RPG was actually pretty awesome with good dialog and amazing CnC.

 

[desura]

Eh, okay, to invert the indie vs big publisher thing...

Underrated: Infinity Ward. Modern Warfare 2 was very impressive to me, and one of the few games which IMO rivaled cinema in impact. There were many very clever and creative moments in the campaign which left me in awe.

Overrated: Let's see...of the indie developers, the one that didn't impress me at all was...maybe Media Molecule. LittleBigPlanet has an appealing premise, but its gameplay very quickly got boring and uninteresting for me. It's kind of too clever on the surface for its own good.

 

[Craig234]

Overrated: Let's see...of the indie developers, the one that didn't impress me at all was...maybe Media Molecule. LittleBigPlanet has an appealing premise, but its gameplay very quickly got boring and uninteresting for me. It's kind of too clever on the surface for its own good.

Wow, because Little Big Planet on the PS3 seemed like a great game in its art to me, I really liked it and was impressed by the developer. A favorite PS3 title.

I will admit that as much as I liked the artistic design, and enjoyed some of the game, at some point it got a bit tiresome and I didn't finish it.

And I never did do the 'construction' stuff and didn't like the excessive DLC content.

 

[Zenoth]

So far I think that the "over-rated" term is being used as a forced synonym of "the games made by that dev are really bad", rather than simply being "they're indeed good games, but perhaps they're being given a bit too much credit or praise, but they're still enjoyable". That or maybe it's just too subjective and I just happen to have my own definition of what is a developer (or just one game) that happens to be over-rated. And I guess that the same goes for under-rated.

I mean I pretty much disliked Mass Effect 3 almost completely (save for the Tuchanka arc and... that's about it I think, being completely honest here) and the "choices" (I.E. lack thereof) given to our Shepard(s) from the bony dialog wheel were shallow or sometimes irrelevant to say the least, but I wouldn't say that BioWare as a developer is "over-rated". They still make superb games overall, usually still better than most and the production quality is still evident, even if some specific games or moment in those games end up "more cheesy than BioWare would normally do".

That's the problem I have with "over-rated" and "under-rated", lots of people use these terms to just bash, rather than give credit where due but still point out at issues that maybe some people didn't consider when originally giving scores, high merit, or themselves being hyped without looking at the details during previews or interviews, etc.

Anyway...

For me as far as over-rated goes I'd say Blizzard, since I really think that Diablo III was evidently released too soon, barely completed (if that) and with obvious lack of preparation on Blizzard's side during release (Error 37, anyone?). They had... oh, what... nearly a decade to prepare? When they said "we just couldn't expect that much demand" (in relation to server issues, latency, errors, etc) I couldn't believe it myself. I mean it could have been a genuine naivety, you know they might have thought (honestly so) "well, ok guys we're ready, that's for sure!" but c'mon, it's Diablo III, the numberless hordes of Diablo fans all around the world waited for that moment for a decade. Sure no one knew in advance before playing it that it would turn out like a failed attempt at even being a Diablo game (in my opinion, anyway, and remember I'm referring to the build we had at release, now the one we have now) but prior to release it was a genuine hype almost without precedent in the gaming industry that didn't just start to build up a week prior to release, it built up before D3 was even rumored to be in development. To be honest it just felt like an uncared for and unprofessionally barely-prepared launch of a clearly rushed, uncompleted game.

Now of course today D3 is "better" than it was at release and I DO enjoy some of it, although with very controlled moderation because, honestly, I DO get bored of it if I just dare playing more than two hours. So when I feel like just burning some time on a rainy day by bashing some skeletons in a crypt I just launch it get on my Barb and clear early Act 1 for maybe an hour and I get my fill. I do NOT "hate" the game, nor do I "hate" Blizzard, just want to make that clear.

And under-rated, for that I have to go back a couple of years to Arkane Studios' Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Mostly due to that game that is, so of course I could as well say that what's under-rated is that game, rather than the developer themselves, because we know that recently enough Dishonored did quite well in the market. But had it not been for Dishonored, honestly, who would have remembered about Arkane Studios? Well I sure do since I really liked Dark Messiah at the time, and still today I do. When a thread asks for sleeper hits or under-rated games I always mention Dark Messiah, it's a reflex by now, barely ever mentioned, easily forgotten and in my opinion unfortunately disliked by too many whom probably never got to the end of it to start with, but that's ok to each their own.

 

[Craig234]

Zenoth, good points. It's in that context I list Sid Meier as overrated - not because his games are 'bad', but he seems like perhaps the most famous developer with his name as part of the titles and the word 'legend' is used, while I find his games as a rule to just not feel very fun, to feel kind of a formula that isn't all that much fun. Hence overrated.

You do seem to base a lot of opinion of Blizzard on one game at launch.

Funny anecdote on Dark Messiah, I had a 3DO game that had servers taken down before I even played it and contacted them, and they offered to replace it with a copy of Dark Messiah. I went to the 3DO headquarters, and they had a couple people greet me and thank me for playing ther games to make the exchange. Fun. Still haven't played it.

 

[zinfamous]

Don't have much experience with Bethesda games, but Gearbox is pretty impressive with Borderlands. It really gets the feel of guns pretty good and just inaccurate enough to be interesting.

What games do you like from those underrated studios? Haven't heard of them.

I assume the reason for listing both Bethesda and Gearbox is that both studios notoriously release huge, popular games ridden with bugs that are never fixed and as good as these games are (fallout, borderlands), they tend to be rather unbalanced.

...and these are fantastic games, but both studios seem to exhibit very little interest in fixing recurring problems.

 

[tential]

I disagree completely. Say what you will about Blizzard now, but IMHO they were the best at what they were doing 9-10 years ago and prior to that. WC III and TFT were such great games, I wasted many nights playing them - and I still find WC3 more enjoyable than SC2 because of the dynamics that heroes added. The lore was also amazing. I remember reading through the entire WC III manual just to catch up on the story, and what a great story it was.

I don't think they can even do a RTS follow-up to WC3 anymore, all of the most interesting villains from the warcraft universe are dead now thanks to world of warcraft.

I only stopped playing WC3 because I lost the CDKeys. I actually think I purchased that game multiple times. Blizzard now though couldn't really get me to play anything. I'm not going to play D3 (lol... seriously?), SC2? Nope. WoW? Ya, I'm not playing a watered down MMO for casual gamers.

WC4? Oh ya, they refuse to make that. Blizzard had me hooked in. Now, I wouldn't play their games if it was free. I've gotten people to pay for my WoW account, or purchase me the games, I still said I won't play. They just aren't worth the time to me. I put more time into WC3 than most MMOs I've played probably.

I don't blame them though, they are in it for the cash like any smart company.

I'm not sure what stops them from making WC4 though. That's a decent franchise and would probably sell even more copies just because WoW is popular.

 

[tential]

I still think Bungie is underrated. People know them for Halo and pretty much only Halo. They don't realize that Halo as the FPS we know it as now was originally played in the 3rd person and was a network action game. I don't know at which point this changed but their original demo vids showed no fps elements. They did a very good RTS game with great campaign story. They've done 3d action games, had the first game with mouse aim with Marathon.

Before they settled on the Destiny project they were working on a sort of strategy/building game where you built up a fort and then attacked or defended. They hesitated to categorize it as a strategy game and it really was just an idea demo, not even a tech demo. It sounded like it could have had some very interesting possibilities but needed the right ideas.

Anyway they are very diverse and looking at them beyond Halo I feel they are highly underrated in the industry.

Hate to double post but wanted to keep my posts separate.

I think Bungie is overrated TBH when it came to the Halo series. I think the Halo series (this is only talking multiplayer) grew VERY stagnant under Bungie. It was just more added guns and slightly tweaked mechanics. Once 343 came in, the whole multiplayer got a huge breath of fresh air. Ya, the sprint mechanic was a little CoDish (And the reasoning behind it pisses me off but that's a whole other post), and maybe the perks system was a little CoDish too, but the implantation was a lot of fun. I clocked more hours on this multiplayer game mechanics system than any other previous game of the Halo series.

I won't speak for the single player, the leader rankings, or any other part of the game, but the multiplayer gameplay I think was a lot more fun under 343 and I like the balancing as well.

Well, I guess actually a lot of the game I think could have been improved, but the multiplayer gameplay was great. I probably would have changed the majority of how multiplayer worked though lol. But all of the most critical perks were available within 15 levels (Promo vision, Sprint, Dexterity, Boltshot secondary) and I liked that as well.

Now that I think of it not sure how I feel about Bungie and the series considering Halo Reach was definitely the step in the right direction and I liked that game a lot too. Who knows what would have happened if Bungie had done Halo 4 themselves.

 

[JoetheLion]

Overrated: Gas Powered Games and Lionhead Studios: both companies weren't able to provide a single game that is not boring by its stereotypes, shallowness and a very minimalistic game options (Fable trilogy for example is a very linear and shallow thing, with all this marriage, property stuff being only a cosmetic thing that doesn't affect the game play at all) offering no diversity or any advanced options to choose from when it comes to their "rpg elements".

And Molyneux has a big mouth full of promises of how something will be awesome and original, yet he always delivers the same underwhelming experience.

It's hard to choose an underrated company for me. Most of my favourites are non-existant. One of the things I don't like about indie retro is, that they do not realize that back then, when the "retro" they follow was born, it was something that broadened and deepened the genres, adding new possibilities and new ways of a video game experience. Yet most of these indie games are just parasiting on the concept that was fresh 15-20 years ago, but are actually not pushing the genre anywhere now. + Writing isn't as strong as it was back then.


And one more thing about Blizzard. I am not a fanboy, but you may dislike their games, I can understand that (even I don't like all their stuff), but they are always able to publish polished material, not something half-baked (even though I don't know about D3, I've never tried it) in both concept and design and this is a rare commodity in this industry full of bugs, glitches, poor ideas and half-made concepts. And even if it doesn't look like it, since they aim for the mainstream audience, they still put a little bit of innovation in their games which is not always a good thing, but it's there.

 

[Craig234]

Joe, I have to agree. I love Total Annihilation and really wanted to like more Chris Taylor games, but they've fallen short IMO.

And I love the creativity if Molyneux but the games fall short as well.

I feel a bit similarly about Will Wright. There was such excitement about Spore, I thought it likely it would be a letdown and think it was.

Finally, how about Richard Garriott?

 

[darkewaffle]

CDPR for overrated. Couldn't stand the Witcher. Also Bethesda, I couldn't play more than a couple hours of FO3 or Skyrim. I hate how their controls and gameplay mechanics are/feel and ultimately just don't get any pleasure out of their "open world with no direction" approach.

Underrated, Stunlock Studios. Bloodline Champions is leaps and bounds ahead of other moba titles imo but just never quite got the following because it didn't pander and include the pointless faux RPG stylings or churn out character/costumes ad nauseum but focused on balance and gameplay. Good for game, bad for business sadly lol.

 

[zinfamous]

I'm gonna toss out Stardock as Underrated. They put out very good games and in my experience, have unmatched customer service.

Consider the story of Elemental: so much hype and released way too early as a huge buggy dud. The first real disaster for them. But rather than just step away and ignore that game, they worked on it for another 2 years, turned it into Fallen Enchantress and now Legendary Heroes, and on top of that, gave both of these away free to anyone that bought the original Elemental.

I haven't heard of anything like that from any other studio.

 

[Aikouka]

And Molyneux has a big mouth full of promises of how something will be awesome and original, yet he always delivers the same underwhelming experience.

I think Molyneux's problem is that his imagination is not based in reality. He comes up with potentially interesting ideas and new concepts, but he fails to understand the implications of implementation. I've certainly commented on Fable III here quite a bit, but I think it's the best example of this. Sanctuary was his grand idea as a way to remove those pesky, old menus and provide something fresh and new, but every action performed using Sanctuary would take significantly less time using a standard menu. It's a similar rule to adding gestures to a game: if it provides no real benefit (i.e. faster to perform), don't do it.

Don't have much experience with Bethesda games, but Gearbox is pretty impressive with Borderlands. It really gets the feel of guns pretty good and just inaccurate enough to be interesting.

I've played both Borderlands game for around a collective 600 hours, and I would include Gearbox as overrated. To put it simply, I think their biggest fault is that they're either lazy or unwilling to experiment. Borderlands 2 may have added an actual story, which was sorely lacking in the original, but the game still contains many of the same flaws in regard to the gameplay. In my opinion, the biggest fault is the difficulty, which can be broken out into a few issues. (1) Playthrough system pushes recycling the exact same experience (2) #1 wouldn't be so bad if enemy difficulty adjustments were more than just health/damage changes (3) Enemies don't level with you, and just like the original, it's not hard to out-level them. Also, I thought they took a rather lazy approach to their +11 level cap increase... mostly because they charged you for adding yet another difficulty mode with even more tweaked numbers. They're planning on raising the level cap again (in October), and how much do you want to bet that we still won't see new talents. It's going to end up just like Borderlands 1 where you'll fill out 80% of your talent tree and the concept of specialization (the whole point of talent trees) IS GONE.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Hate to double post but wanted to keep my posts separate.

I think Bungie is overrated TBH when it came to the Halo series. I think the Halo series (this is only talking multiplayer) grew VERY stagnant under Bungie. It was just more added guns and slightly tweaked mechanics. Once 343 came in, the whole multiplayer got a huge breath of fresh air. Ya, the sprint mechanic was a little CoDish (And the reasoning behind it pisses me off but that's a whole other post), and maybe the perks system was a little CoDish too, but the implantation was a lot of fun. I clocked more hours on this multiplayer game mechanics system than any other previous game of the Halo series.

I won't speak for the single player, the leader rankings, or any other part of the game, but the multiplayer gameplay I think was a lot more fun under 343 and I like the balancing as well.

Well, I guess actually a lot of the game I think could have been improved, but the multiplayer gameplay was great. I probably would have changed the majority of how multiplayer worked though lol. But all of the most critical perks were available within 15 levels (Promo vision, Sprint, Dexterity, Boltshot secondary) and I liked that as well.

Now that I think of it not sure how I feel about Bungie and the series considering Halo Reach was definitely the step in the right direction and I liked that game a lot too. Who knows what would have happened if Bungie had done Halo 4 themselves.

No...the game stagnated because of Microsoft not bungie. Trust me there is a reason bungie left Microsoft. They could have asked to stay but did not. Most of the engine and mechanics came from bungie. There were a few employees who stayed on to continue working on it before halo 4 released. Bungie wanted to diversify and try different things, Microsoft just wanted to keep pumping out halo. For proof just look at what Microsoft did to Rare.

 

[Texashiker]

The most overrated for the past decade would have to be id software and Splash Damage. I think rage and brink proved how bad those developers really are.

Underrated,,,, I think that would be people can fly. Painkiller was a good game for its time, but it could have been better.

 

[dougp]

Overrated: Gas Powered Games and Lionhead Studios: both companies weren't able to provide a single game that is not boring by its stereotypes, shallowness and a very minimalistic game options (Fable trilogy for example is a very linear and shallow thing, with all this marriage, property stuff being only a cosmetic thing that doesn't affect the game play at all) offering no diversity or any advanced options to choose from when it comes to their "rpg elements".

Seriously, you think Supreme Commander was "boring," shallow and minimalistic? Far from it, compared very well to Total Annihilation. Dungeon Siege was great as a "Diablo" clone. I do have the non-original Fable games as some of the worst I've played.

Joe, I have to agree. I love Total Annihilation and really wanted to like more Chris Taylor games, but they've fallen short IMO.

Outside of TA, SC and DS (all the first in their "series,") they've been misses. Then again, TA:K was made after Taylor left Cavedog, DS2 was done by Lambert and was the last DS game made by GPG.

I put Talor at the same place I put American McGee - great designers who have awesome concepts that are either hit or miss. When they miss, it's not by much - and when they hit it, they hit big.

 

[cmdrdredd]

The most overrated for the past decade would have to be id software and Splash Damage. I think rage and brink proved how bad those developers really are.

Underrated,,,, I think that would be people can fly. Painkiller was a good game for its time, but it could have been better.

The guys at ID are technical geniuses who can't make a good game in the modern era. The days of arena shooters are over at this point. That is about all they know. They blundered with Rage by using ultra low resolution textures that by any standard looked horrible. The technical aspects of their engine and mega textures in general is sound, implementing it into a game without it looking terrible is another thing.