And what specifically makes it special, appealing, or interesting to you?
Pretty much any of the Zachtronics games. Shenzen I/O, ExaPunks, Opus Magnum, and Last Call BBS are all fun “puzzle” games for programmers and people with programmer brains.
Wait a minute are Zachtronics games not considered cool? Pfff
They’re supreme cool among puzzle game fans, and among some not-usually-puzzle-fans who like their relatively open-ended nature more than the “one correct solution” type of puzzle games.
I know a lot of people find them intimidating though, to be fair.
For all its flaws, I loved Mass Effect Andromeda. It was a fun one to play.
The original Secret World is still my guilty pleasure. It was the only MMO I ever got to endgame on. It’s shame what they did to it when they tore out all of it’s uniqueness and went FtP.
People love to rag on it but there’s nothing that quite compares to just fuckin around in the Mirror’s Edge Catalyst open world
Most of the Dark Pictures Anthology games have pretty mediocre ratings, but at this point my friends and I look forward to each release. It’s like a 10 hour long horror movie night. They’re just long enough to start right after lunch on a sat, and play late into the night, passing the controller around.
Their last release The Devil In Me is rated around 5/10, yet it might be my favorite one to date. It’s not uncommon for them to have a rocky release with bugs, so sometimes we give them a few months to patch it up. But honestly, one of the best local coop experiences I’ve had. Definitely recommend if you have some friends over.
I just loved the gameplay in Anthem. Not particularly the loop, the grinding, the enemy “variety” or mission design. But the base of it all, the flying and hovering and fighting. Especially the idea of turning the common formula around by making the combat ability focused with guns being more like support items, instead of focusing on shooting and using your abilities in between (like in Destiny 2 or The Division, for example).
The game really is the prime example of “wasted potential” when it comes to video games.
I just wish it would’ve been developed by a company with more experience in online multi-player games and released by a publisher that’s less egregiously openly focused on maximizing profit above everything else like EA.
Actually many people enjoyed the flying in Anthem. Let’s hope they take it and make some other game with it. Maybe a single-player iron man game?
Please, in the name of everything holy, not another Super Hero Comic property. Marvel fatigue is a thing and I really can’t be assed to voluntarily expose myself to any more Red/Golden Exo-suits, lightning channeling Vikings, spandex wearing human arachnids, Frisbee throwing patriots, talking raccoons, people with all the neon bright skin colors of Las Vegas at night and endless, pointless, aneurism triggering technobabble.
It doesn’t have to be connected to MCU. Insomniac’s Spider-man games are very good. Super hero games, done well, still has an audience, I believe.
I’m completely fine with the cheesy superhero aesthetic part of it, but imo the whole thing needs a reset. The MCU has gotten too big and unwieldy and is getting bogged down by trying to stick to all the canon and characters established by even its worst films. I used to watch every one, but it started falling apart for me after Spiderman: No Way Home (or far from home? Whichever was the first one. Stupid titles imo). Shiang-chi was good though, even though it had some of the blatantly obviously cute-cgi-animal-for-toys aspects.
Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor recently, especially I’m still alright with because it doesn’t try to pretend to be anything but what it is. I feel like the pseudo-80s space setting makes them feel like they can be fully and shamelessly over-the-top and playful, vs trying to make yet another semi-serious emotional epic somehow combined with zingers.
I am tired of the quippy one liner humor in general in these movies though.
Everything Everywhere All At Once blew Dr. Strange sky high out of the water as a multiverse movie (as well as, well, everything else). That might as well be a superhero/comic books movie.
I guess I just want a big shakeup and some more originality, less concern with the huge Cinematic Universe deal.
Now I’m talking myself around to thinking maybe it would actually be best for superhero movies if we booted marvel entirely and brought in independant comics as a basis instead.
Also I agree about the technobabble. A little handwavium for ship like FTL is fine, but generally I could so without all the hacking tropes and whatnot these days.
Not necessarily unpopular in general, but unpopular within its own series are the DS Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. These games have some great dungeon design and I really liked most aspects of the touch screen controls (except blowing into the DS). These games used the DS to its fullest and will sadly be locked there as a result. I might have been one of the only people disappointed with Link Between Worlds for adandoning the touch screen for traditional controls.
Spirit Tracks is the bomb. I loved that game very much.
I am bumping both of these games up my personal list to try on 3DS now. This sounds cool. And I’ve been playing totk so zelda is on the brain lately. :)
Imperator: Rome actually. I think I’ve been seeing a bit more appreciation for it recently (or maybe I’m just imagining it), but the launch was really rough and none of the updates, which changed quite a lot, really got the player counts up until Paradox just decided to abandon it. It’s definitely flawed, but I have kind of a soft spot for it and still enjoy the occasional game. For me the army automation was really nice, since microing stacks has always been one of the most annoying things for me to do in these games, the pop migration and stuff helped it feel like my cities were really growing more organically, and where the basegame falls short there are still some pretty decent mods to improve things (one major mod is actually still being regularly updated years after the game was axed by the devs).
Metroid other m. Far from best game in the series, a lot easier than the other games, but i found the presentation really fun.
The dodging and kill moves i found satisfying and the boss fights were. The cut scenes were a bit too long buy i enjoyed the game
Yeah, this really is a game that the story killed. The gameplay is tight and fun, and overall it’s a fun experiment in the series that was ruined by the creator of the series completely misunderstanding why people like Samus as a character.
Well part of my unpopular opinion is that the story isn’t that bad. To me the flashbacks arent so bad, it makes sense that samus was rebellious, she was young at the time and going through a phase but it also explains why she is a rogue hunter.
The part that is annoying is the present timeline where samus has completely abandoned the rebelliousness and will risk her own life in order to not disobey orders from someone who A) isn’t her commanding officer and B) she disobeyed in the past
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The game was a commercial and critical bomb, but it’s the only cover shooter I’ve ever enjoyed. It’s just such an unrelentingly visceral, disorienting, harsh game, with one of the main aesthetic gimmicks being that it emulates the look and feel of a late 2000s amateur video. It’s hard to describe without seeing it in action, but it was audacious as shit for what was meant to be a big budget, AAA title.
If we’re talking unpopular as in not very well known outside of its immediate community I gotta say Ultrakill. It’s a retro shooter distilled to its most essential parts with a style meter tied into it. It’s like ballet… with shotguns and exploding demons- so not a lot like ballet. But it’s good! Buy it!
Oh my god I love ultrakill, its such a good timesink.
BLOOD IS FUEL… FOR MY COCK
The Guild 2 and 3. They are so janky and absurd. Half the mechanics barely work, the dialogue is ridiculous, but the game just has charm. It’s got just enough economy mechanics to keep my math brain engaged while mostly playing it like The Sims.
Charm sure can go a long way, I find. Arguably, a lot of my favorite games just have a lot of character, more than anything, to differentiate them from similar games.
Not quite unpopular but titanfall 2. The movement is exquisite, the chaos that unfolds when titans start dropping is incredible. There is nothing quite like getting cornered by a titan as a pilot and desperately darting through buildings with your AT weapon trying to survive.
“Not quite unpopular” is an understatement, the problem with titanfall 2 is just that it didn’t sell that well, but whenever I see it mentioned it is always universally praised.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
It was a kinda janky 3D Action Adventure from around 2000. Back then it had really beautiful and colorful graphics. I remember playing it on my first “real” PC and being amazed by how it looked.
It also stands out to me for being actually funny and comitting to being a comedy game.
I loved this game! The humour was my favourite part - very dry and very British. A fun shooter with a lot of variety. Amazing soundtrack by Jeremy Soule. I found the game very difficult, though - I doubt I ever got close to finishing it. How about you?
When I first played it I didn’t get very far into it. But I came back to it a few years later and finished it. The Multiplayer was also suprisingly fun on LAN-parties.
You two + the screenshots on the steam page I just looked up have sold me on this. It looks, at the very least, interesting and different, which is sometimes all I want really. I’ll give it a shot.
There’s also a spiritual successor made by the same people (more or less), Armed & Dangerous.
Good luck. Let us know if it still holds up today.
Nobody can hate that game. Damn that was gold. I believe it’s well beloved, tho not widely remembered
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is my favorite game:
- Best name.
- In development since the 90s, still looks like the 90s.
- Played hundreds of hours, still never finished it (cause I’m shit).
