Awesome, overlooked games that should be reconsidered...
 

This thread is dedicated to those overlooked games that really should have gotten the "time of day" from everyone.

List a game that you feel was excellent, but didn't sell well, or was off of everyone's radar.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are the first titles that immediately spring to mind. If any games ever deserved to sell Halo or GTA numbers, it was them.

I think both Ico and Shadow made it to IGN's Top 25 games of all time for the PS2.

What qualifies as overlooked?

overlooked is really subjective, considering if you are aware of it, its not exactly overlooked to you. You might feel something deserved to do better, but was not advertised properly, it didn't fit into some mold that would cause a lot of interest (sort of like madden), etc.

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were cult games from the get go, a little too abstract for the mainstream as it would be.

One game that I always felt was somewhat neglected (it got decent reviews, not huge sales) was Intelligent Qube on the PSX. I'm a huge fan of the series, but none of the follow ups had the same simplistic pleasures as the original.

Also, Skullmonkeys was a great platformer imo with a solid sense of humor, but failed both critically and in terms of sales.

Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. It's criminal how poorly this game did compared to how unbelievably awesome it is. A victim of Halo 2's wrath. :(

Beyond Good & Evil - Everyone claims to love Zelda-style gameplay, and this game had excellent Zelda-style gameplay, but hardly anyone bought it. WTF is up with that.

Psychonauts - Everyone loves the old Lucasarts adventure games from the '90s. Tim Schafer, who was one of the guys who worked on those old games, designs Psychonauts. Hence, the game has a very Lucasarts adventure feel to it. Yet sales were pretty bad still. WTF is up with that.

No One Lives Forever 1 & 2 - Before Monolith got famous with FEAR and Condemned, they developed a little known franchise called No One Lives Forever. These two games had the absolute best storyline of any FPS I have ever played, and I have played the vast majority of them. The games are also some of the funniest games I have ever played (after the old Lucasarts games). I would kill for a NOLF 3.

Thief 1 & 2 - Thief had the misfortune of being released at the same time as Metal Gear Solid. MGS just completely overshadowed Thief, even though Thief has much better stealth gameplay. Actually Thief has a much better everything than MGS. Thief has an excellent storyline that is not cluttered with long pointless cutscenes. The missions are non-linear and have a ton of hidden secrets. You can literally play through a mission several times and find something new each time.

Money Idol Exchanger. A better, more clever version of the Magical Drop series.

BG&E and Psychonauts definitely.

Aerobiz: Supersonic for the SNES is awesome too :) I hope it comes to VC.

Oddworld: Strangers Wrath

Fair enough. Also, just because the regulars here at dvdtalk aren't playing or talking about a particular game for various reasons here in the forum, that doesn't mean that the rest of the world isn't into said game.

I always thought that Intelligent Qube was the fuckin' hotness too! I'm really kicking myself that I sold mine off a long time ago to pick up a Dreamcast, because I'd probably still be playing it today.

imo Psychonauts didn't feel like those classic adventure titles. The story was probably too outlandish for many (for me it was the high point), the gameplay bordered on generic with a few nice touches, but still a rather standard 3d platformer. (One that came out as 'softer' games were noteably absent and geared toward the Gamecube crowd, if it wasn't GTA or Halo at the time, it was ignored.)

The Thief series, I thought, did well. Beyond Good & Evil just had poor advertising, it wasn't a well known game, and while the game played just fine, I think the setting hurt it, and the camera aspect was likely, at least initially, a turn off.

NOLF was great, but again got stuck in that "too much a gamers game for non-gamers, not hardcore enough for gamers" crack.

I do understand the microcosm that is DVDtalk. Of course not everyone will agree with everyone else in this thread, but this isn't exactly about that.

Cool. Just so you know I was talking in general and adding to what you said. I wasn't tryin' to disagree. :up:

Phantom Dust and Ring of Red

I don't think the Thief series did well since both development companies that made the games died. The original developer, Looking Glass, went bankrupt shortly after the release of Thief 2. They had planned to make Thief a trilogy. Eidos retained the rights to Thief as the publisher, and Ion Storm finished the third Thief game that Looking Glass started. Ion Storm went out of business not long after Thief 3 was released. Maybe there is a curse on the Thief franchise. If you develop a Thief game, you will die.

Maniac Mansion for NES. I'd LOVE a remake.

= J

Maximo for the PS2 if you haven't played it. Well-reviewed but not that popular AFAIK.

yea, i wasn't creating a fuss or anything. I'm a member of quite a lot of forums, so I've seen the downward spiral of many threads, and have witnessed many of threads turn into pointless argueing over nothing.

basically, I recently purchased a game I've very taken with, but due to extraneous circumstances, many people will completely overlook said game based on those circumstances, rendering them at a loss, considering they probably will never try out the game in the first place.

this led me to believe that there exist countless titles for a ton of systems that I would be suspect of this same phenomena, and I wanted some feedback from others :)

Lucasarts would be foolish to not revisit the SCUMM-based games on the DS. I'd love to go back through MM, DotT, Loom, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, MONKEY ISLAND, etc. Even a series of collections would be awesome.

I absolutely loved the music for maniac mansion.


for some reason, that actually "stuck" more than the story, or actual game play

Gunpey for the Nintendo DS. I picked this up for 3.xx at Target on clearance. Simple little puzzle game that's great. If it had wireless play it would be the perfect game.

Cosmic Smash for the Dreamcast. I believe this title was import only but it was worth it. It was like Rez w/ raquetball. I bust it out sometimes even now to play.

I wouldn't say Maniac Mansion was overlooked. It was the start of the whole Lucasarts adventure game popularity. I am not sure, but where there even any adventure style games at all before Maniac Mansion?

Okami.

Got great reviews, but sold like crap like most of the games listed thus far.

Almost as good as Zelda: TP or OoT, just held back by not having enough dungeons. Great graphic design, the brush makes using items/moves a lot more fun and great, funny and interesting characters.