Mount & Blade. It’s not unpopular per se, but somehow I never saw anyone mentioning it around here in Lemmy.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
I have been playing this game my entire life on/off, and have the most hours in, but I have never beaten it. I came close 1 fucking time, and I will forever remember the one dumb mistake I made that lost it for me just on the cusp of victory.
One day...
Right at this moment it's Civilization 7. I've never seen it mentioned here, just on CivFanatics forums and mostly negatively on Reddit. It had a botched/way too early release. My personal theory is that 2K knew that GTA was getting delayed so they said no delay for Civ.
New giant patch inbound any day! I swear it's fun. Best combat in Civ so far, and I have played every mainline game for the past roughly 30 years.
luanti https://www.luanti.org/
The Fatal Frame series (maybe the second one here and there) and Kunitsu-Gami. The second one surprised me since it's relatively new, but I thought it was a great surprise. I loved the hell out of that game.
One of my favorite games is a hidden gem that I never see people mention. It's called Out of Space and it's a couch co-op game similar to Overcooked with two major differences, it's less frenetic so you can play it to chill out, and it's procedurally generated so you have lots of replayability. For me and my wife it's the perfect game of "let's play a round of something", yet I never see it mentioned anywhere.
Flashback.
I played it on SNES, but it was on a few consoles. I heard they are making a sequel so that's cool. It's science fiction with flavours of total recall, they live, and running man. I just really enjoyed the prince of Persia style gameplay but cyberpunk.Parasite Eve
More specifically number 2, because the first one never officially came to pal regions. It's like resident evil but SciFi/body horror. The third game was shit because they lost the rights to the novel it was originally based on. If there's any game sequel that I wish for it would be a proper PE3.Thing Thing series
Pocket Tanks
Black Ice
The Thief series. I LOVED the first one especially, Thief the Dark Project. Medieval (low magic fantasy?) stealth shooter. The more valuable you pick up directly translates to what you can buy as a load out for the next level so you're encouraged to explore, though even the low level enemies can kick you ass so you have to be sneaky. Actually great stealth mechanics even for an old game. The world building is amazing, with it's own lore, culture and slang. The plot of the games are also great.
The Kingdom of Loathing is a game I've played almost non-stop since about 2003. Web based and free, it's based off of old text based games. But it's fun. Really fun. And hilarious. The currency is meat. The classes are goofy. Saucerer? Disco bandit? Seal Clubber? A lot of games deal with things like power creep or inflation, or how the heck to get people to actually help pay for it. This game solves problems like these elegantly. The user base is fun and friendly and corporative, there's always new stuff coming out to try, they do a holiday special every year, and all the pictures are crudely drawn stick figures.
The original Master of Magic for DOS. It's STILL being actively modded 32 years post release and has never quite been duplicated.
The Age of Wonders series does a fairly good job with the feel, but it's just not the same.
There's a bunch on the PS1 that got lost in the mix.
Ape Escape was really fun and novel, it was the first mandatory dual-stick release, and it did initially sell really well! It got two sequels on the PS2 but then drifted into spin-offs and party games. It's been two decades since the last proper installment.
Tomba! is delightful nonsense, a 2D adventure platformer that presented non-linear quests and tight controls. It's a cult-classic and the digital Special Edition on PS5 looks like it was done well.
Now for something truly forgotten: Running Wild. It's a kart racer but instead of karts it's a bunch of furries in a footrace. The announcer yells a lot, some of the character designs are lazy stereotypes, the graphics are muddy, but the track design is solid and it really feels fast when you get going. Very rewarding to learn the best lines and get into a clean flow.
Gun. (2005) So fun.
Mortal Sin, a Melee - Roguellike with great visuals and a dev that cares a lot.
ΔV: Rings of Saturn, a hard-scifi 2d asteroid mining game. Great to relax to, a nice community and a great dev, linux native!
Deadlink, a Roguelike arena shooter, tight controls, pretty hard for an aging man like me, but i still like it, even if it puts me in my place regularly lol
The Void by Ice-Pick Lodge, the makers of Pathologic.
This game taught me that actions have consequences and that I should be more humble and think twice about the environment before exploiting it like I'm playing a game.
Yes, it's that kind of game.
The legend of dragoon.
Tactics Ogre. I see people drop Final Fantasy Tactics as the greatest tactics game of all time. Then you always see Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and Disgaea after. People sleep on Tactics Ogre. It's a mechanically superior game to all of the mentioned. It's story is equally as good as FFT. I think the graphics are better. It's a challenging game from the start. FFT was created with the Tactics Ogre director and lead artist to be a more accessible version of TO. People see 90s golden era Final Fantasy and automatically put FFT on a pedestal. TO is like Undertaker stalking AJ Styles ready to obliterate whatever is in its way.
Shining Force 3. Mostly cause it's marooned on the Saturn but it's so friggin good.
Legend of Legaia. It’s a JRPG from the PS1 golden era, but it had a relatively small launch and basically zero marketing. It was completely overshadowed by other games like FFVII and Legend of Dragoon. It has a sort of cult classic following now. The story starts off as a fairly basic “world is awful, kid gets a magic weapon to beat the big evil thing” type of plot, but has a surprising amount of twists and turns.
The combat system is interesting, and hasn’t really been replicated since. You string together a series of small attacks, to make larger super combos.
Fair warning, the US release is significantly harder than the JP and EU versions. For some reason, the devs multiplied all the enemy stats by 1.25, and slashed their exp/gold drop rates by 50% for the US release. So you need to grind twice as long to be properly geared/leveled, and the grinding is 25% more difficult.
Kinda cheating, since this game (hell, entire series; linking my fave entry) has kind of a cult following in Central/Eastern Europe.
Rhythm Doctor.
Didn't see Receiver 2 mentioned, so I'll give it a shoutout! Really interesting game, and as far as I know the only one with such deep shooting mechanics. Unfortunately the sale had ended a couple days ago, so it's back to its normal price, but even then I'd heavily recommend it!
Escape Velocity and its open-source spiritual successor, Endless Sky.
I rarely see any Ys game referenced. It's gotten a bit bigger, but still a super underrated series.
The Saboteur by Pandemic as well.
Field Commander on PSP.
The original Overlord game (with the minions).
The Adventures of Lolo - a puzzle game on the NES. There were 1 or 2 sequels depending on how you count and they were fun too.
It’s a puzzle game with fairly simple mechanics but surprising complexity and difficulty. I beat both US versions and designed levels for a knockoff but have never met anyone in person that has heard of it.
Fahrenheit/ Indigo Prophecy, an early David Cage/ Quantic Dream game from the same people who made Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human
I haven't played it in forever so I'm not sure how well it holds up (if at all) and I also have a love/hate relationship with it.
It has one of the single worst/ cheap levels of any game I have ever played*, and in the very last level the story really shits the bed. On the other hand it was doing things at the time that I still haven't seen in other games. (I haven't gotten around to playing his other games so he might be doing similar things in them). In terms of attempting to evolve the way stories are told in games it was truly groundbreaking and unique for its time.
I still have fond memories of playing it despite it's flaws. I'd say it's worth playing for anyone interested in a older game that does some really interesting things from a story telling perspective and/or people who are fans of the later games and are curious to see where it started. As long as you can make it through the QTE level with your sanity intact and are prepared for the story to get stupid right at the end- it's worth a playthrough imo
*Even though I hate the level, the concept behind it is actually pretty cool. A malevolent force tries to kill the player character by throwing his apartment at him. The problem is it's a 4 1/2 minute QTE sequence that requires precise timing and you can't mess up even one time or you have to start the entire thing over from the beginning. You also have plenty of time to wonder why the force never varies it's strategy of throwing one object at a time. Good idea, terrible execution.
Patricks parabox. The ultimate sokoban IMO
The Strider reboot. I wouldn't have minded another one of them, but I guess I'll replay it again instead.
Revenge of the Mutant Camels - highlight 1: "Ninety-foot high, neutronium shielded, laser-spitting, death camels". Hightlight 2: Almost 40 years after its first release, in 2021 Jeff Minter fixed a bug on collision detection in the Commodore 64 version.
Impossible Mission - highlight: "Another visitor. Stay a while... stay forever!"
Deuteros - highlight: the way the game world unfolded and opened up
Syndicate - highlight: abusing the Persuadertron
Shadow Hearts - highlight: the Judgement RingEndless Sky According to wikipedia it is a space trading and combat simulation game. Its free and open source, has a lot of content (even more with plugins). You do missions to get the storyline forward and to get money, you can also mine asteroid, trade with other planets, attack other ships and plunder them. You discover new species and Outfits to make your space ship better, etc.
GUNZ The Duel - man that was just so much fun. Online guns and swords gladiator style battles in the most neat stages. I remember an old mansion with broken staircases and balconies, a train station with freight cargo all over the place, an actual roman colosseum, a beach with a grounded ship ashore.
Some people could do this thing called K-style or butterfly style where you slash your sword against walls or other objects which made you lift off the ground, and switch between your gun to shoot as you do so - it was a neat trick which I learned but definitely did not master.
So much fun though.
Outlaws. An early Spaghetti Western themed FPS from LucasArts. After Dark Forces (Retconned by Rogue One) and before DF2:Jedi Knight (the one with the amazibad FMV cut scenes and the best expansion pack ever), it leveraged the 2.5d engine for all it was worth and did a hand-animated slightly Don-Bluth-esque aesthetic that worked perfectly.
Level design was good. Multiplayer was fun, even though if you tried to LAN with an unswitched hub (it was 1998!) player 3 would lag like motherfucker and be relegated to throwing dynamite and praying. Story was straight out of a Tropes-R-Us, but well executed and with good voice acting (including John de Lancie IIRC). The coup de grace was the soundtrack, Clint Bajakian seemed to inhabit Ennio Morricone’s soul, but with leitmotifs to make John Williams proud. It absolutely elevated the game.
Bugsnax. It's like Pokemon Snap/Legends Arceus, but the Pokemon are food items, like a sub-sandwich centipede or a lollipop dragonfly. You can feed them to people, and when you do, their body parts turn into the food they just ate. It's great!
It's a relatively obscure PS1 game in the horror genre.
The main thing that made it relatively unique among the horror game of the PS1 era is its lack of action mechanics. It’s essentially a horror dungeon crawler without action mechanics. You can run away or sneak past the invincible enemy, or if you gain a companion, the enemy kills your companion allowing you to run away when caught.
Game mechanics and ending spoilers
Essentially, your companion is your extra life. Different companions also have different abilities. Different endings result from who your companion is, or not having any at the game ending.
Its mechanics is more akin to Clock Tower—first person point and click at certain rooms, while being a first-person dungeon crawler in most other areas.
From the wiki article:
The game uses a first-person perspective, very similar to first-person shooter games, only without any means of combat. Throughout the game, players must travel through different areas of The Mesh and beyond, and must solve puzzles to progress to the surface. The player encounters only one type of enemy, and that is the mutating monster called The Hybrid. The only possible way for players to survive is to run away. Any close contact with the enemy will result in the deaths of their companion (and finally themselves). Once the companions are attacked, they are killed off permanently.
It is pretty different from the other horror games from the PS1 era, which made it relatively disappointing for those expecting it to be similar to the likes of Resident Evil or even Silent Hill.
Enderal.
I'll edit this later when I can post from my comp (mobile now) with the full pitchas promised:Basically an indie dev crew broke skyrim down to its most basic assets, then rebuilt a completely new game using them. AND IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD. Completely new lore / game universe (has nothing at all to do with elder scrolls, tamriel, etc), new voice acting, terrain, music, you name it.
Steers away from common story tropes to the point that there isn't really an antagonist in the traditional sense - but it uses concepts, emotions, philosophies, etc as the driving force for the main story line and some of the larger quest chains.
This game is an absolute passion project by the devs, which is something we don't see often now-a-days.
Note: link above is to the version that uses Skyrim SE's assets (the 2016 re-release). If you have the original version of skyrim, use this link instead. If you own a different version of Skyrim, there might be a compatible version of Enderal here: https://sureai.net/games/enderal/
Fair warning: the children NPC voice acting is even worse than the kids in Skyrim. The TAI (toggle AI) command can shut them up without breaking them.
Fair warning 2: they redid combat. The OP shit in Skyrim, like the sneaky archer build, will get your ass beat to a pulp in Enderal. Make a save when you get to the point where you can spend some talent points, experiment with a few styles, and go from there.
Fair warning 3: It's built on Skyrim's assets, which means it has all of Skyrim's problems. Step on a basket full of cabbage just right; get launched into low orbit. Quest items clipping through the floor. Bounty that refuses to go away. Shit like that. Save frequently, and don't be afraid to use the command console to do things like magic in a lost item or force a broken quest to progress to the next stage.
Guardian Heroes was an outstanding RPG beat 'em up on Sega Saturn. It had
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a two player co-op storyline with branching choices to get alternate endings
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unlockable characters for a 6-player arena mode
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incredibly unique characters to unlock, spellcasting with ➡️⬅️⬆️⬇️ input
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and a kick ass soundtrack.
Nothing has really scratched the same itch since (yes, I'm aware there's a sequel, but it's terrible).
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I think I'd have to say La-Mulana.
Dysmantle.
Casual post apocalyptic survival etc game. It’s also available on consoles, switch and mobile.
Dark Fall 1 & 2 (specifically not 3)
couple of my favorite point and click adventures, and I've played a lot
SCP:SL(SCP: Secret Laboratory Yes Steam Only
Edit:Fix Link and Grammer
Description/Opinion of the game
a multiplayer Game uses SCP stories, and inspired by SCP:CB(SCP: Containment Breach)/SCP:CB multiplayer, you play as chaos,Mtf,scps,d-bois and scientists. in this game it takes place in SITE-02, you can set nukes, etc.
The goal is you must survive. the group that survives (Foundation,Chaos,scp) will win. it also relies on community hosted servers.(the devs also host one)
it takes place in a non-cannon site-02.
its pretty fun to play ,and very good for VC, it feels designed for it.“Hide and go fuck yourself.“
Earthworm Jim
Atomic Robokid (Genesis)
Tempest (Atari 2600 version)
Ghosts and Goblins (NES)
The game where it's a rich guy that sends a trained assassin out onto a island with nothing and hunts him for 24 hours, and if the assassin kills the rich guy he gets his freedom and like $20K.
Rock n Roll Racing (SNES)
Beyond All Reason/Planetary Annihilation
“Whiplash!” Was an old racing sim that had crazy tracks. It had collision damage and in single player mode you could give your teammate commands.
It supported 8 players on a lan in multiplayer. All of this while running from DOS. Looking back it seemed a little ahead of its time. I’ve never encountered anyone in person that knew of this game.
During lockdown I played ECHO, which had been in my backlog for a few years after a stray recommendation I saw on MetaFilter. It was a surprisingly tight integration of beautiful and intriguing environmental/UI/sound design, gorgeous music, compelling yet minimalist storytelling (and voice acting), and a really strong gameplay loop of stealth, puzzle-solving, and the occasional panicky run-and-gun. Imagine my surprise when I read up on it after and learned it only sold a few thousand copies!
I strongly recommend playing it blind, but this trailer gives a good overview of the style and mechanics.
Maximo! It’s a 3D hack and slash collectathon. It’s based on the Ghosts and Goblins games. There was a sequel that fell a little short of expectations (got rid of the really fun hub worlds). They were going to do a third game but Capcom canceled it.
Warzone 2100.
Dead Head Fred, that game is awesome and sadly forever locked to the PSP. That it has never gotten a console port is nothing short of criminal.
The Longest Journey. It’s one of the best adventure games ever made, and has one of the best stories in interactive storytelling.
Sacrifice. An old Interplay title where you are a sorcerer in service to a god. You summon armies of creatures and cast world-altering spells using the souls of creatures you’ve sacrificed to your god.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Even just the soundtrack is worth the price of admission.
Sauerbraten FOSS FPS, available in your repo. Single player racemaps are fun. Get to the podium in the quickest time.
Try these servers:
-Racing#1 2021 [rev]-
or
Racing Reloaded
--//--
0AD FLOSS RTS, also available in your repo.
Excellent theming and challenges.
it's a first person shooter dungeon crawler, the levels and enemies are procedurally generated, sometimes you can get a room with enemies that are one hit kills, then walk into a connecting room with 3 different over powers enemy types coming at you from all directions.
its face paced and fun as fuck to run around killing shit with magic wands and magical guns.
no playthrough is the same.
Back in the day I really enjoyed ONI.
_edit: _ some gameplay footage.
Kinetica - a racing game where the 'vehicles' are people in mechanical suits that make them look like sexy mecha, racing to old techno
Bloody Roar - a series of fighting games where you fight as people who can suddenly shift into other forms, some recognizable animals and some abstract, and with the ability in some arenas to kick people through walls or over ledges into new arenas
Forsaken - 3D hover vehicle battles
Tiny Tank - a game where you play as a sweary AI tank
Megaman Legends 1 and 2 - Megaman as a 3d adventure game with a storyline and characters
Gitaroo Man - a rhythm game I enjoyed, later imitated by some others
Shadow of the Colossus - more known but not cared for these days. A game in which there are only boss battles. A subtly told story. Part of the ICO universe.
Titan Souls - One boy, one bow, one arrow that can be magically recalled to the bow, and giant stone destroyers that he must conquer with nothing more. Kind of a 2D Shadow of the Colossus
BPM: Bullets Per Minute - everyone has the idea for a rhythm FPS. This is the only one that does a good job of it.
Receiver - a game in which you don't just hit R to reload, but have to go through the full manual of arms, dropping the clip, holstering the weapon, loading each round into the clip, drawing the weapon, seating the clip, racking the round, checking the chamber to make sure it fed correctly, aiming, firing, clearing the jam, all while worrying about killer robots.
Valley - a movement game that has such an amazing feeling of freedom in its movement
Tunnet - lovecraftian network technician game
Wiz n'Liz
The Witness. It might have had its moment but it feels like it's probably pretty forgotten at this point. It's a first person puzzle game where you're on an island ... and it's not Myst, Riven, or ... that other game that was a puzzle game where you were on an island? At least as far into it as I've played, it's pretty low stakes and there's very little in the way of videos or audio narration. It's spooky but in bright daylight. There's quite a lot of game there, too.
Honestly, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.
The remaster got some attention, but it still feels pretty niche for a game made by the Ace Attorney guy. I never felt like it got its "moment" in the same way as, say, Blue Prince.
And yet, from the moment the 15-year-old announcement trailer dropped, I knew it was going to be in "top 5 of all time" territory for me. 😍
Balloon Fight. Amazing game with great controls.
An old game that never really took off, Orbz.
I was one of the best players in the world while it lasted.
Simple little game, you're a ball and you throw yourself at stars. The more you hit in a row without missing, the better your combo and score.
Essentially pong, but you play the ball, and it's on a landscape rather than somewhere you fall off and die.
I made a few levels for it.
Another was Triptych, which my friends and I called jelly tetris. Imagine tetris but the bits are springy and bounce a bit. It was a blast. Both were commercial games available on Linux at the time, early 2000s.
Star Tropics for the NES.
Mars: War Logs, and Technomancer
Gotcha Force for the GameCube slaps hard and I want another one so bad. I've only met 1 person who also played it back then. Ahhh fuck just talking about it makes me wanna download it now
Hmm. I don't know if they'd stand the test of time, but a few older games I enjoyed a lot back in the day that aren't going to show up much of anywhere due to age:
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Loony Labyrinth, a 2D video pinball game for the Mac and Windows by Little Wing Software. I've played huge numbers of tables on newer and more sophisticated engines, but that table kept me coming back for more hours of gameplay than any later ones. Not on GOG or Steam, though Little Wing sells copies directly.
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Flying Nightmares, or AV-8B Harrier Assault. Untextured polygon flight sim where you're operating off a US amphibious assault force; probably one of the few games kind of like Carrier Command 2 that I can think of in that you can also control other of your forces (though Flying Nightmares focuses on operating the Harriers, and Carrier Command 2 the amphibious assault ship). Doesn't look like GOG or Steam have them.
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Eufloria. Steam link for an HD re-release. One of those "real-time 4X" games, but using plants and seeds and minimalistic graphics.
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Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. A spiritual successor to Carrier Command. One has an amphibious assault ship, can construct autonomous vehicles and move your ship around. Unlike Carrier Command 2, this is a single-player game. Wish that someone would make a more single-player-oriented Carrier Command 2. The graphics haven't really kept up with the time, and it tends to encourage exploiting the AI's weaknesses, but I've had a lot of fun with it.
It's not exactly unknown within its niche, but because it is niche, Rule the Waves 3, a game that simulates naval fleet command and development.
EDIT: Oh, here's an oddball, not quite as old game: Ghost Master. One acquires and upgrades different types of ghosts, then places them and uses their abilities to scare humans away from a location. Nothing else very similar to it out there that I'm aware of.
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The entire Pang series.
- Bionic Commando on Game Boy --> platform game with good graphics and good musics for a 1992 Game Boy game. It's an adaptation of the NES/Arcade game but in a futuristic world and more fluid controls (in my opinion) than the NES one.
- Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle --> really good tactical RPG with a funny universe and awesome music that was released early on the Nintendo Switch.
Jump Ultimate Stars!
Chewy: Esc from F5
A funny little German point and click adventure about a little pink alien landing on earth and trying to get back to space, I think. I should play it again. I think by now it even has ScummVM support.
A little better known is Simon the Sorcerer. But it was kind of overshadowed by Monkey Island.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Griffon_VF-9
Wildly fun game, with a bit more than a few terrifying moments thrown in due to the PS limitations at the time. They turned it into a feature instead of a limitation, and it made the whole game more horrifying.
It was also a cool voice acted anime storyline with giant mechs on the moon as an adventure/run and gun game.
My favorite Atlus game is Digital Devil Saga 1&2 but that's not even people's third thought when I say Shin Megami Tensei PS2 era.
Sentient by Psygnosis for PC and PS1.
It is a super ambitious 1997 adventure game on a simulated space station with multiple endings. The whole crew is simulated also and there is a fairly open dialog system with which you can ask questions, give orders or just small talk.
I would give an arm and a leg for a proper remake.
Lost Kingdoms 2 for the GameCube
Great card battle concept that I wish was put into a modern game and improved with more transformations and monsters
Poo dollar
