Favorite underrated video games?

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Space Empires IV
One of my favorite 4x strategy games of all time. Given that it was made in 2001 it's graphics may look quite dated, but it works on nearly any Windows OS (including Windows 10). Custom made empires and mods you can find for it are plenty, but making your own custom races is super easy to do as long as you know how to edit the textfiles properly and make custom BMP images the correct size.

Halo 2: Vista
My personal opinion is that Halo 2 for Windows Vista is making a decent comeback with Project Cartographer. These people who still have a passion for the game not only brought back multiplayer after Windows Live went down, but were working on a Co-Op mode (that should have been included). I will cede that H2V should have come with the Dev tools the way Halo CE did so people could really have fun with it, but you know Microsoft and Bungie and how they don't want more $$ taken away from Eckzbawks Live Gold.

Civilization IV: Colonization
Appears underrated to me. I love the spin that was put on Civilization because in this game, you aren't playing as the ruler of your country. The King is. You play as a viceroy running his colonies in the New World. I've been working on my own version of this game that will make it so the King will help you in wars he gets you into where you'd see the Royal Expeditionary Force do something in the game other than merely pummel their colonies if they decide to rebel.

Some people seeing this on my list might talk about how good the original Colonization was, but the with the lack of multiplayer (i.e. hotseat) and difficult interface makes me prefer the new version now that we have it. Especially when mods for C4C exist such as We The People, Betray Colony, and 2071.

Glest
Indie Game on GameJolt that plays similar to Warcraft 3. Pretty well made IMO, and it's free so you could just try it to see for yourself what I see in it.

Cossacks: Back to War
Based on what I've seen. You play as a European country (or the Ottoman Empire) during the 1600's to the 1700's, and you need to carefully manage your food, gold stone, coal, iron, etc. I replaced the sound files for this game with that of the original game because I liked the original sounds better. Some people told me that to them it's Age of Empires II in the renaissance era but only in Europe and Northern Africa, and much more complicated. Run out of food and your people starve. Run out of stone and your buildings explode. Run out of coal and your guns can't fire. Run out of gold? Hope that you weren't using mercenaries, otherwise prepare your assets for a revolt.
 
Shmups as a genre are severely underrated so I'll just list my favourites:

Border Down
Ginga Force
Gradius V
Eschatos
Ketsui
Mushihimesama Futari
Strania
Under Defeat
Battle Garegga
Soukyugurentai
Radiant Silvergun
 
I don't know, i just love Just Cause, the first one in the series.
Everybody likes the franchise since 2, and i think everybody forget about the first one.
Game is pretty slow, but well, RDR2 is slow too. Soundtrack is fucking amazing; mainly when you're flying in the game.
 
Beyond Good and Evil is a personal favorite of mine.

Short, but sweet with a lot of heart set it an interesting world with a compelling story and beautiful soundtrack. A bit of jank, but a good combination of different gameplay from racing/fighting/photography.

The 'sequel' looks like absolute wokeshit, but seems to be in development hell so hopefully it never sees the light of day.
 
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I think the trophy for me has to go to Iji, a free game from 2008, I've seen maybe two other people talk about it or anything connected to it. It's short but it's got a decent story, multiple endings and plenty of humour, even if it tries to take itself a bit too seriously at times.
 
Anything with jiggle physics/sexy anime girls.

Specifically Senran Kagura and Neoverse.

Some time ago, game journos collectively decided that sexy girls in vidya sluts, and sluts outta cover up. Can't have that shit anymore.

Edit: Honorable mentions indie games: Radium Mines of Xantor and Bite Me. Good luck finding those ones, indie game enthuziasts.
 
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Overcast said:
Not sure if they really count as underrated, seeing as how they're pretty well-praised by most who played them, still I do feel the Sly Cooper series is relatively niche as far as platformers go, (possibly due to people looking at the games and associating them with furries) so I might as well talk about them.

The original trilogy in particular had great stories, characters and stealth/platforming gameplay. The first one, as much as it holds a special place in my heart is admittedly a game that was still trying to find its footing and was held back a bit by what was standard in 3D platformers at the time.

Second game was on a whole other level. It took the best parts of the original's gameplay and placed it into an open-world/mission based kind of structure, where Sly and crew do a bunch of small jobs that ultimately build up to a big heist at the end of each episode. Really made you feel you were playing as a group of professional thieves. Had quite a few twists and turns in it as well so it never felt predictable.

Third game suffered the same sort of problems a lot of "third games" in its genre suffered at the time. Shorter development cycle, loads of gimmicks and mini-games in lieu of actually good mission and level design, ect. Unlike Jak 3 and R&C: Up Your Arsenal however, I feel it did a satisfactory job overall and ended the series on a pretty high note story wise. (If you're willing to ignore plot conveniences and contrivances)

Also I always found the fact that the main character Sly, a thief, having flirtatious banter and romantic feelings towards someone trying to arrest him very quirky and endearing. Stuff like that really gives a game flavor, you know?

Less said about Thieves in Time the better.
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I replayed the first Sly Cooper last year, what really struck me is that while the game is dated in some aspects it has just such a wonderful vibe to it, right off the bat I was amazed to be reminded just how likable the characters are, the whole thing just felt so refreshing, long, long before Wokeness when a game could just be good, clean fun.

I have yet to get around to revisiting the second game, imo I preferred the first game's formula, but 2 definitely had some really cool moments, however I never got around to playing 3 regrettably or Thieves in Time, is it really that bad?

Gender: Xenomorph said:
Anything with jiggle physics/sexy anime girls.

Specifically Senran Kagura and Neoverse.

Some time ago, game journos collectively decided that sexy girls in vidya sluts, and sluts outta cover up. Can't have that shit anymore.
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DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball and Rumble Roses were two games that while the T&A angle was obvious, they were still very fun games to play, especially in the case of Rumble Roses.

I will never in a million years understand why people got such a stick up their ass about that sort of thing.
 
American Conquest: Divided Nation on the PC was a really fun game for me. It played a lot like Cossacks and as a Yuropoor it really helped me learn about some of the major events of the American Civil War.
 
Dom Cruise said:
is it really that bad?
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You know how in Sly 2 you could just go into the hideout, switch to a different character and continue on in a matter of... what three seconds? That same process takes roughly two minutes to do in TiT. There are minute long loading screens for every time you go back to the hideout and when you go back out into the map. Every time you complete a mission, you're sent straight back to the hideout which involves waiting through load screens.

The story feels like fanfiction (although it technically is, seeing as how it was made by a completely different studio) with certain characters being outright flanderized. Sly and Murray I feel both suffered pretty bad on that front in particular. And a lot of the bad guys in the game felt like lesser copies of ones from previous games. The final boss is just a long series of QTE's and the game ends on a cliffhanger that to this day has yet to be resolved.

At the very least, the gameplay itself works fine. It has the same problems as 3 I feel in that it relies too much on gimmick characters and mini-games rather than making interesting levels based around the main characters' strengths like in 2.

Looking back, the game could have been far worse when you consider how much the landscape has changed since then. A lot of elements could have been woke-ified. And a new entry in the series may very well become that. So I guess it was all for the best.
 
I really liked Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon "orta". For an on rails shooter it is remarkably engaging. The story is cool too. I wish they would explore it more. The setting would be perfect for a dragon rider RPG.
 
RoboWarrior for the NES. It's a single-player puzzle/action spinoff of Bomberman except the bombs go off way faster. Overall it is much faster than Bomberman. There's also a button to shoot at enemies.

It has items that does different things and the bombs aren't infinite so some planning is necessary to move through the environments. I haven't played it in forever but I think it should hold up today and it would probably be a good game on the go(if it can be paused/suspended. Savestates would be desirable since it uses codes.
 
Mad Max (PS4).
For some reason it didn't get a ton of attention when it came out, which I don't understand because it was super fresh and well-produced. It was basically a Far Cry style open world (no minigames or anything, just combat on a deserted-feeling map) loosely tied into Fury Road that revolved around two things, brawling and car combat. The brawling I think people bitched about because Batman games were the big thing everybody was ripping off at the time (AC Syndicate did it too), it was just a simple thing of beating people up with consumable weapons like shivs and a sawed-off thrown in. The actual focus of the game was the car combat, and it was really cool, dont' remember what all weapons it had but there was basically ramming and scraping the side, some artillery/shooting out the window. You had to armor up your car and upgrade it. I thought the car combat played very well and was unlike anything I've seen in any other game, much less a AAA one.

What was about as amazing as that, though, was the world. You would think a desert apocalypse world would get very boring, but Mad Max proved that you can get extremely different feelings out of one biome by exploring the differences within that biome, not need a patchwork map. There was junk heap worlds, ghost town worlds, ship wreck worlds on a dead seabed, volcanic gray ashen noxious fume worlds, sahara like dune worlds, all kinds of vivid environments that felt totally different from each other. I think the game really didn't get anywhere near enough credit.
 
Somebody already mentiomed it years ago, but still deserves any shout out. Demon's Crest, god I love that game.

Another one that I love but was fucked from the getgo. Metal Combat, it's a game that required the Super Scope 6, but really let that fucking thing shine as bright as a diamond. All the robot designs were ace and you even had a few ebdings in there. Playing vs with one using the bazooka and tje other controlling a robot was also an awesome time.

Tiny Toon Adventutes, Buster Busts Loose and Mickey Magical quest. Two platform games that were a lot better than what anybody would expect from them. They had that classic Konami and Capcom magic.

Wave Race 64, pretty impressive water for when it came out and I played the fuck out of it even if I wasn't that much of a fan of racing games.

More recent, Inscryption, fantastic deck building game with great atmosphere and with a few good curve balls.
 
Atomic Bomberman.

This is the americanized version of Bomberman, not the shitty chiby cutesy japanese one. These ones scream and shout (and even SWEAR) and on top of that it's a very good, well made multiplayer game. A lot of fun was had with this one, but if you ask any Bomberman fans they treat this one like it's icky.

No, faggots. This is what Bombeman should look like, not the cutesy blowing robots bomberman, THIS!

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Indiana Jones and the Infernal machine is a really great action/adventure/platformer game that I never hear people talk about. My dad had it when I was growing up and I used to watch him play it. I did a full playthrough a few years ago to see if it held up and it totally does. If you can deal with early 3D tank controls it's a total blast to play and you can pick it up on GOG for under $6.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine - Wikipedia
 
I haven't played it in a long time so I may or may not be nostalgia blind but I played Battle for Middle-Earth 2 a lot. A few of the skirmish/mulitplayer maps had a special starting area that would put a player behind the walls of places like Helm's deep or Minas Tirith giving them a huge defensive advantage and making the match a siege. Also if you built up enough points you could use the eye of sauron to spot another player's base and then spawn a balrog in the middle of it.

Another was Lost Planet 1 & 2. 1's story was like a poorly written anime but playing it again last year was an enjoyable experience. The sequel wasn't as memorable but I still like it, the mission with the giant worm and huge gun was especially fun when playing co-op. 3 was okay but it was very forgettable as it blended in with the majority of the 360/ps3 sci-fi action games.
 
Papa stink said:
I haven't played it in a long time so I may or may not be nostalgia blind but I played Battle for Middle-Earth 2 a lot. A few of the skirmish/mulitplayer maps had a special starting area that would put a player behind the walls of places like Helm's deep or Minas Tirith giving them a huge defensive advantage and making the match a siege. Also if you built up enough points you could use the eye of sauron to spot another player's base and then spawn a balrog in the middle of it.
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Loved BFME 2. Place 4 AIs with handicap 25% against Minas Tirith and watch hordes of orcs struggle to break in.
 
Devil King - Probably one of the few Musou type games that had lasting memories of, alongside the Dinasty Warrior Gundam series

Knights of Kinights - A japanese indie game from 2003 I played as a kid for windows 98/2k/XP/Vista that doesn't run in current day hardware cus it won't render the textures, it had an interesting combat ideas and skills, sadly it only has one level, after that Tomoshibi the dev made more games similar to it later but they where not as successful

The Bouncer - Wonky physics beat em up from Square Enix from 2002

Soul Calibur 4 - I just loved the character creation aspect of it, equipment and shit. Its my favorite of all of the Soul fighting games (Not as underrated as everything else listed here tho)
 
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