Underrated games!

[futurefields]

List some underrated games here and why you think they are underrated:

Batman: Arkham Origins

- fixed the DX11 renderer from Arkham City, resulting in much better performance
- polished gameplay that is as good as previous Arkham games



Dead Space 3
- very well implemented co-op through the entire campaign, heard it was a nightmare to program
- a very in depth weapon crafting and customizing system
- great performance on PC
- polished gameplay that is as good as previous Dead Space games



Diablo 3

- underrated from the start IMO. auction house sucked but it is now gone
- gameplay has been very polished from the beginning
- name a dungeon crawler ARPG that looks anywhere near as good or plays anywhere near as smooth

 

[irishScott]

The Penumbra Series: Like Amnesia, made by some of the same people actually, but the puzzles are much more involved and intellectual.

 

[Red Storm]

How can Batman and Diablo be considered underrated? They had very well established and popular predecessors.

 

[irishScott]

How can Batman and Diablo be considered underrated? They had very well established and popular predecessors.

So? We're talking about the specific games. Arkham Origins is considered to be the weakest of the Arkham Batman games thus far, and Diablo III the weakest of the Diablo series; and both claims have some merit IMO.

If we're talking somewhat unknown but still highly rated games, then I'll put down Planet's Edge. Great classic Space RPG from the mid-90s in the same vein as Star Control 2.
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/651/Planets+Edge.html

 

[QuantumPion]

Neverwinter Nights 2 + MOTB. This game never was that popular even though IMO the campaign is at least as good or better than BG2 and PS:T.

Silent Hunter V - while panned in the sub sim community for being much inferior to its predecessors in terms of realism and controls, the better graphics and ability to walk around the boat really made it enjoyable to play.

Rise of Nations - easily the best RTS I've ever played, in terms of gameplay mechanics and playability.

Homeworld 2 - many did not like HW2 but I thought it was an excellent and worthy successor to the original.

Civilization 4 - definitely the best TBS of all time. Steep learning curve with poor learning mechanics led to it being very unappreciated by most but the hardcore fans.

 

[irishScott]

Neverwinter Nights 2 + MOTB. This game never was that popular even though IMO the campaign is at least as good or better than BG2 and PS:T.

Silent Hunter V - while panned in the sub sim community for being much inferior to its predecessors in terms of realism and controls, the better graphics and ability to walk around the boat really made it enjoyable to play.

Rise of Nations - easily the best RTS I've ever played, in terms of gameplay mechanics and playability.

Homeworld 2 - many did not like HW2 but I thought it was an excellent and worthy successor to the original.

Civilization 4 - definitely the best TBS of all time. Steep learning curve with poor learning mechanics led to it being very unappreciated by most but the hardcore fans.

I remember RON getting 90%+ reviews everywhere when it came out, and it's still popular enough to get a recent HD re-release. Not sure I'd call it "underrated".

 

[surfsatwerk]

Dead Space 3

No, it was the worst of the series.

 

[QuantumPion]

I remember RON getting 90%+ reviews everywhere when it came out, and it's still popular enough to get a recent HD re-release. Not sure I'd call it "underrated".

It is underrated in the sense that it not very popular, well known, or widely played despite having great reviews and an HD re-release.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Flatout: Ultimate Carnage

It's a really fun racing gaming that is bookended by Flatout 1/2 and Flatout 3, all inferior racing games. It's the best of the Flatout series, IMHO.

 

[xantub]

Victoria 2. With her 2 giant brothers (Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4) not many people bother to try Vicky 2. Those who do are in for a great 19th/early 20th century grand strategy game.

 

[MeldarthX]

D3 isn't underrated as its not as good as Diablo or Diablo 2......they took a great tree system that worked beautiful in D3 *was part of the beta* and completely gutted it; dumbing down the damn so badly. The massive reconning of the first two games; along with the usual publishing a completely unfinished game in normal blizzard fashion. Polished? not even; the massive amount of crashes along with the crippled service called battlenet; as it couldn't handle the people trying to log on; and when you could; you'd get a disconnect nearly the moment you got into a game.

It deserved every slate it got.

Its gone from complete waste of space on my hd to playable; would I put a year and half into it like I did with Diablo? or the nearly another 2 years for Diablo 2......no; there is now only one saving grace; rifts.....other than that; Diablo 2 tree of skills far; far superior to D3 mess; hell D3's tree of skills is superior to the dumbed down mess we got. *when console get a superior version of a PC centered game; its not underrated its a pile of crap*

Origins is unrrated but still weakest of the 3 so far.

I like Deadspace 3; but it also was the weakest; because of all the dlc crap

 

[clok1966]

Kohan Series: 3 games Kohan and Exp pack, and KOHAN II
Introduced RTS standards before the games "known" for them, Hero units a year before Warcraft III did it, you could even resurrect them after death for a cost. Smaller squads of units (COH or DOW) long before they did it. Resource points you held, in the form of cities, the earlier game let you build um, the 2nd was limited to so many (like DOW/COH). The best was Custom unit groups, as you build your cities you gain access to better types of troops , so you can mix and match them. Heavy Calvary with back up healers, and if you attach a Hero such as a ranger they move through forests at full speed (yes there are penalties and pluses for terrain types.) You also get bonus's if you set up camp, say a choice choke point, you got your heavy troops razzing cities and don't want to commit a good unit to defense, if said unit, say archers sits there, after so long they become entrenched and have big defense bonus's so can take on better troops.

Older games (2000 ish) where available on Steam and assume still are. RTS games. first is 2d, second is 3D.

Settlers II, not so unknown, but after the many crap to so-so version after.. its easy to forget how great Settlers II was.

 

[Dankk]

It's important to distinguish between "under-rated" and "under-popular". Some of these games received great ratings, they just weren't known by a lot of people.

 

[Zenoth]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Was underrated, and today is pretty much forgotten. At the time it DID have performance-related issues (frame-rate issues, v-sync-related issues and stuttering to name those by heart, which I experienced myself, but was never a game breaker per say) but unfortunately many couldn't get past those to enjoy the actual game.

And the underrated part wasn't the story, which itself wasn't exactly complex nor full of mind-blowing and unexpected twists (although it wasn't bad either). It's the game-play that was fun, the melee combat system within first-person view wasn't common back then (it wasn't just a single melee option, it was things along the line of kicking the enemy on a wall of spikes, using the environment and enemy-traps against them). I also liked that the game was fully voiced in both English and French (and maybe other languages that I'm not aware of). If you switched your Steam's UI language to French (for example) then upon launching the game it would switch to its French version (with voices). That was a neat thing and I played both versions to the end (which also allowed me to choose different paths when I could).

I mean Dark Messiah in my book isn't a masterpiece, I'm not praising it like I would for something like Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect or Super Metroid. But Dark Messiah was underrated, still is today by those whom can still remember that it even existed. And side note, it's the same guys that made Arx Fatalis and more recently Dishonored (they also contributed to the development of BioShock 2), namely Arkane Studios, got respect for them.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Victoria 2. With her 2 giant brothers (Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4) not many people bother to try Vicky 2. Those who do are in for a great 19th/early 20th century grand strategy game.

Victoria 2 was great, though my preference was for EU3 and EU4



Id like to add Mount and Blade: Warband. it is one of the best games Ive played. (original Mount and Blade is great as well. The fire and steel sequel is complete garbage since it completely removes the conquest/world domination aspect of the game, and that was the best part of the game IMO)

Also, Id recommend Albion Prelude, however maybe not since the developer really fvcked up on their new game, and they likely will die because of it.

 

[DeathReborn]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Was underrated, and today is pretty much forgotten. At the time it DID have performance-related issues (frame-rate issues, v-sync-related issues and stuttering to name those by heart, which I experienced myself, but was never a game breaker per say) but unfortunately many couldn't get past those to enjoy the actual game.

And the underrated part wasn't the story, which itself wasn't exactly complex nor full of mind-blowing and unexpected twists (although it wasn't bad either). It's the game-play that was fun, the melee combat system within first-person view wasn't common back then (it wasn't just a single melee option, it was things along the line of kicking the enemy on a wall of spikes, using the environment and enemy-traps against them). I also liked that the game was fully voiced in both English and French (and maybe other languages that I'm not aware of). If you switched your Steam's UI language to French (for example) then upon launching the game it would switch to its French version (with voices). That was a neat thing and I played both versions to the end (which also allowed me to choose different paths when I could).

I mean Dark Messiah in my book isn't a masterpiece, I'm not praising it like I would for something like Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect or Super Metroid. But Dark Messiah was underrated, still is today by those whom can still remember that it even existed. And side note, it's the same guys that made Arx Fatalis and more recently Dishonored (they also contributed to the development of BioShock 2), namely Arkane Studios, got respect for them.

I remember playing this game, had to hide it from my little brother though as he watched me play the demo before I bought it and he had nightmares for about a week.

 

[Jodell88]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Was underrated, and today is pretty much forgotten. At the time it DID have performance-related issues (frame-rate issues, v-sync-related issues and stuttering to name those by heart, which I experienced myself, but was never a game breaker per say) but unfortunately many couldn't get past those to enjoy the actual game.

And the underrated part wasn't the story, which itself wasn't exactly complex nor full of mind-blowing and unexpected twists (although it wasn't bad either). It's the game-play that was fun, the melee combat system within first-person view wasn't common back then (it wasn't just a single melee option, it was things along the line of kicking the enemy on a wall of spikes, using the environment and enemy-traps against them). I also liked that the game was fully voiced in both English and French (and maybe other languages that I'm not aware of). If you switched your Steam's UI language to French (for example) then upon launching the game it would switch to its French version (with voices). That was a neat thing and I played both versions to the end (which also allowed me to choose different paths when I could).

I mean Dark Messiah in my book isn't a masterpiece, I'm not praising it like I would for something like Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect or Super Metroid. But Dark Messiah was underrated, still is today by those whom can still remember that it even existed. And side note, it's the same guys that made Arx Fatalis and more recently Dishonored (they also contributed to the development of BioShock 2), namely Arkane Studios, got respect for them.

This game was awesome! However, I have never finished it because stability is not in its programming.

 

[Mai72]

Sacrifice
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
Kingpin
Deus Ex
Homeworld

 

[Elcs]

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

The best space-based game of it's type. To some degree it would remind me more of Dawn of War 2 in an RTS sense where you relied on a smaller number of specialist units, working on tactics and positioning, rather than clicking furiously to build/re-build/queue production and upgrades.

Pacing was quite slow, story was questionable but the missions were quite compelling and the gameplay was smashing.

Being in charge of multiple capital ships and their upgrades, ability to pause, rotate, change tactics, target subsystems with specific subsystem targeting weapons...

Such a shame that the Nexus 2 kickstarter failed...

 

[Fenixgoon]

alpha protocol.

awesome action-rpg/stealth game where your decisions matter.

lots of people had issues, especially buggy AI, but i played through the whole game without any incident. i thoroughly enjoyed the game.

 

[Kalmah]

I don't believe that I've ever seen anybody ever mention the PC version of Overlord 2. Hook up an xbox controller and it's a blast to play. Hook up a second controller and you can split screen it with a friend on the PC as well.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Of course, as with any thread of this title, half the games are triple A blockbusters that rated highly...

 

[frozentundra123456]

I would vote for Titan Quest and TQIT. They were great games, generally well received, but IMO didnt really get the recognition they deserved.

Other than that, cant think of much. I could pick a lot of overrated games though. As far as Diablo 3, it definitely was not underrated, it got plenty of hype. I did think it was not as bad as some of the detractors made it out to be though.

 

[MeldarthX]

alpha protocol.

awesome action-rpg/stealth game where your decisions matter.

lots of people had issues, especially buggy AI, but i played through the whole game without any incident. i thoroughly enjoyed the game.

I loveeeeee this game; damn it I want a sequel; I think if we keep pestering Sega they may just fold and give us one; its one of the best spy games around with several endings; you could play it how you wanted it; each decision actually effected the game *coughs FU ME3*

there were major performance issues when it first came out killing it; but after a couple patches it really ran smoothly.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I don't believe that I've ever seen anybody ever mention the PC version of Overlord 2. Hook up an xbox controller and it's a blast to play. Hook up a second controller and you can split screen it with a friend on the PC as well.

Is Overlord 2 better than the first? Not that the first one was bad, but it didn't hold my interest very long.