Underrated Video Games

[Frankie Blueberries]

When I first saw Sunset Overdrive I hated everything about it. The look, the skate culture, and the gameplay loop just looked bad. I gave it a chance for a very bad reason (the soundtrack) and ended having a good time. It's not perfect and it will never be on the best of lists, but it was a fun game.

Sunset might be my favourite game of this generation. The gameplay is just so much fun to control.

 

[BigMac1212]

Chrono Trigger should have gotten a better rep. It has a great a great time travel story, an intuitive combat engine, new game+ and a great cast of character. I know that some will say I'm stretching with this pick, but with only Chrono Cross as the only real sequel in the franchise, this is due for a revival.

 

[Do Make Say Think]

Chrono Trigger should have gotten a better rep. It has a great a great time travel story, an intuitive combat engine, new game+ and a great cast of character. I know that some will say I'm stretching with this pick, but with only Chrono Cross as the only real sequel in the franchise, this is due for a revival.

The fabled Chrono Break?

It ain't happening. Squeenix is run by idiots and neither Trigger nor Cross sold particularly well.

 

[aleshemsky83]

The original Xbox had a ton of underrated exclusives.

Brute Force, amazing co-op 3rd person shooter

Otogi 1 and 2, Fantastic hack and slash games

Panzer Dragoon Orta, Really good on rails shooter

Jet Set Radio Future, Fantastic Jet Grind sequel. I remember this kid that moved away would have his mom drive him 40 minutes to my house every weekend just to play this game. He wasn't even my friend but I would have to let him hang out.

Hunter: The Reckoning, Very good beat em up style game.

Kingdom Under Fire, A pretty cool western take on dynasty warriors and RTS.

Unfortunately the console was such a failure nobody knows about most of the library.

 

[mmalady]

prey

 

[Unholy]

Chrono Trigger should have gotten a better rep. It has a great a great time travel story, an intuitive combat engine, new game+ and a great cast of character. I know that some will say I'm stretching with this pick, but with only Chrono Cross as the only real sequel in the franchise, this is due for a revival.

If anything I say Cross is the underrated one. I might be the only person who prefers it to Trigger >_>

 

[x Tame Impala]

Brute Force, amazing co-op 3rd person shooter

Yuuuuup. So cool. Loved being able to switch between the 4 characters and work together

 

[SniperHF]

prey

Which one ?

 

[Bocephus86]

Mass Effect: Andromeda.

I'm with you here. I bought it a year or so after release, after they fixed some bugs & after I spent a year hearing how awful it was. The story/characters are kind of a let down from the trilogy but, on it's own, it is strong enough & the game play is great. Really enjoyed it once I stopped trying to compare it to the trilogy.

 

[The Nemesis]

Chrono Trigger isn't underrated. It's usually and rightfully regarded as one of the best JRPGs ever, best SNES games, and best video games period. It also sold reasonably well (top 20 globally for all SNES titles, I think north of 4 million units total if you count the remakes and reissues.) And this is coming from a game that had its initial release at a time before JRPGs got anything resembling the traction they got outside of Japan when we got to the PSX era Final Fantasy games. It sold significantly better than Super Metroid, for example.

Chrono Cross is probably a better fit for this topic. It has an absolutely outstanding soundtrack, lush and colorful game design, unique and interesting combat/magic mechanics, and a broad cast of characters (even if they did a **** job of making you ever think about using more than 5-10% of the game's total roster). I always felt like if it wasn't tethered to the Chrono name it would've been much more well received. A lot of its backlash was for being so different from Trigger and for kind of pissing on Trigger with the rather blase way that it brings up and then dismisses any links it has to the previous game. It's a very good game that gets a lot of undue flak for not living up to the impossible standard of a much better game.

It's also the game that had poor sales that potentially doomed the franchise (along with the fact that both games were made from a cobbled-together all-star squad at Square that they couldn't just reunite at a moment's notice.)

My other suggestions:

1) Advance Wars was already said. IS is basically full bore dedicated to Fire Emblem once again so I bet we don't see another Wars game, but the GBA pair and Dual Strike were great. I much preferred them to the grittier esthetic and gameplay changes of Days of Ruin.

2) Mech Commander: an RTS game crossbred with MechWarrior where instead of piloting a single mech you got to control a squad of them in a top-down point-and-click RTS environment. You could set your weapon loadout on mechs ahead of missions, assign pilots who would level up and improve with experience, and in missions you could ether just try to frag your enemies or you could target specific parts of the enemy mech (destroy arms to take away weapons, damage legs to cripple mobility, hit the reactor to just make it blow up real good, take out the cockpit to kill the pilot in short order and be able to salvage the intact frame). They made 2 games in the series and I never got to play the second one, but I remember the first one being quite fun even if it was challenging at times if you weren't lucky enough to be able to get good salvage from enemy mechs.

3) Pocky & Rocky from the SNES. It was this weird mashup of like a top-down action-adventure game like Legend of Zelda and a shooter like Gradius with a ton of really Japanese flair (that was oddly painted over in a surprisingly half-assed way when it was translated for the west) But it was a lot of fun.

4) Someone said super dodge-ball advance. Good call.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Chrono Trigger isn't underrated. It's usually and rightfully regarded as one of the best JRPGs ever, best SNES games, and best video games period. It also sold reasonably well (top 20 globally for all SNES titles, I think north of 4 million units total if you count the remakes and reissues.) And this is coming from a game that had its initial release at a time before JRPGs got anything resembling the traction they got outside of Japan when we got to the PSX era Final Fantasy games. It sold significantly better than Super Metroid, for example.

which is very good when you consider it came out during a global chip shortage and was an 80 or 90 dollar game.

I don't see a point in a Chrono trigger sequel. Everything already got sorted out other than magus sister. The only thing you can do is reboot it to another time travel story like other JRPGs do, and imo that would make the original less special.

 

[WarriorOfGandhi]

Kingdom Under Fire, A pretty cool western take on dynasty warriors and RTS.

man I loved this game but holy hell was it buggy and hard to play. I mean it's hard enough to make an RTS on a console, but they made it mad difficult to maneuver your army, and there were glitches everywhere.

 

[mmalady]

Which one ?

actually both..2006,2017.....would have liked to see the "cancelled" prey 2 as well

 

[Frankie Spankie]

I still don't get the appeal to the original Prey. It plays exactly the same as Duke Nukem Forever which gets constantly ripped apart.

The new Prey probably should have gotten more praise than it got but I felt the difficulty scaling as you progressed didn't make sense. I love games like this (similar to Deus Ex and Dishonored) where they have multiple paths to an objective and it's truly up to your play style for how you reach it, but I felt completely punished in Prey for going for a stealth build and powering up a silenced hand gun. The later stages in the game force you into combat and the enemies are so strong, it's just frustrating to do anything about it. It was still a good game but the end game really took away a lot of the love I had for it. It's definitely the weakest of that small genre (whatever you want to call it of games like Prey, Deus Ex, Dishonored, etc.)

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

If anything I say Cross is the underrated one. I might be the only person who prefers it to Trigger >_>

I prefer Cross to Trigger, playable characters werent as good but I loved everything else more

 

[Xelebes]

Will Rock

Never beat the game but you always seemed to get a pleasant workout just giving at another jump into it. This is unlike Serious Sam where you definitely felt like you needed to get to the end of each installment.

 

[Unholy Diver]

I'll second on these:

Sunset Overdrive

Prey - the new one

And I will add:

Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning

Overlord

Brutal Legend

 

[Sensfan5]

Freedom fighters - I loved that game so much. Never hear it come up in video game discussions. I still remember all the cheat codes.

 

[Aladyyn]

I still don't get the appeal to the original Prey. It plays exactly the same as Duke Nukem Forever which gets constantly ripped apart.

The new Prey probably should have gotten more praise than it got but I felt the difficulty scaling as you progressed didn't make sense. I love games like this (similar to Deus Ex and Dishonored) where they have multiple paths to an objective and it's truly up to your play style for how you reach it, but I felt completely punished in Prey for going for a stealth build and powering up a silenced hand gun. The later stages in the game force you into combat and the enemies are so strong, it's just frustrating to do anything about it. It was still a good game but the end game really took away a lot of the love I had for it. It's definitely the weakest of that small genre (whatever you want to call it of games like Prey, Deus Ex, Dishonored, etc.)

The name I've seen used is "Immersive Sim"

 

[PeakMcOil]

Darkwatch for the OG Xbox. Super fun and challenging shooter.

EVO for SNES. Maybe my favourite game on the SNES, that or Metroid.

Gotta agree with the Sunset Overdrive mentions. When I first saw it I was not impressed and hated the style, the look, everything. Played it after it went games with gold and was hooked. So much fun.

 

[Spawn]

Dark Souls 2

It gets a tonne of hate from a lot of people. And no, it's not as good as the first Dark Souls. But just because it isn't a masterpiece doesn't mean it isn't still a very good game.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Freedom fighters - I loved that game so much. Never hear it come up in video game discussions. I still remember all the cheat codes.

It was very good (though a bit too difficult, couldn't beat it without the cheat codes). It probably would have got a sequel but Hitman blew up so they focused their attention on that instead.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

Darkwatch for the OG Xbox. Super fun and challenging shooter.

EVO for SNES. Maybe my favourite game on the SNES, that or Metroid.

Gotta agree with the Sunset Overdrive mentions. When I first saw it I was not impressed and hated the style, the look, everything. Played it after it went games with gold and was hooked. So much fun.

I totally forgot about Darkwatch. I played the demo on XBox and thought it was a lot of fun and very different. Never got around to trying the full game though.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

They were very well rated, but in terms of not being played enough, I would highlight FreeSpace 1 & 2 for the PC and Okami for the PS2 and subsequently rereleased numerous times, including recently on the Switch. The FreeSpace series was just an all around fantastic space dogfighting game from the turn of the millennia that was so damn near perfect, and Okami was a glorious Zelda-esque game with a phenomenal art direction.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Blade Runner?

I wish I could play it ATM, but one of my discs are scratched.

Edit: Panzer Dragoon for Saturn and Warhawk for the OG Playstation (yes, even the cheeseball FMV)

Holy shit man, talk about a blast from the past. Brings me back to my days sitting in my childhood laundry room (where we kept our game systems) and playing the Sega Saturn. Man, that system was ahead of it's time.