Critically maligned game that you loved

[Dirt]

Looking for something new to play. I know that Gothic never scored very high amongst most critics, yet, it is one of the most often recommended RPG's. What game did you absolutely liked but wasn't well received by the critics?

[Rod Humble]

Thats a long long list for me. Games I like are often poorly received by reviewers. Different tastes I guess.

WW2 Online
1602AD
Hardwar
Warlords Battlecry II (to be fair not all reviewers disliked this one, I seem to remember a very positive CGW review, I put it in because its still my fav RTS)
Vietcong
EVE
Interstellar Trader

They are the recent ones. All excellent games I spent at least a solid week playing and having fun with.

[Charles]

I loved Max Payne and I'm not afraid to admit it.

[Tyrion Lannister]

StarFox Adventures for the GameCube.

Robotron 2040 for the N64.

Fortunately all my games have recieved good reviews. Although I'm constantly amazed at how clueless some reviewers are. e.g. Claiming one of my games didn't have Dolby Surround because there wasn't a mark on the packaging indicating it - yet anyone who plugged into an actual surround system would have heard that it was supported. Complaining about low framerate on a title that held at a steady 60Hz in all situations etc. Assuming that because they've played the game on one platform it is identical for the others. And lets not get into the attribution of certain techniques in the game which were never used. :-)

I'm fairly sure some of my reviews were cobbled together from other reviews and the actual game itself had never been played.

[Kyle Wilson]

Deus Ex. And I don't care what Tom Chick thinks.

[Bub, Andrew]

Oni

[TomChick]

I'm sorry, Kyle, but you're going to have to change your answer. Deus Ex was many things, but 'critically maligned' is not one of them.

-Tom

[Desslock]

Deus Ex. And I don't care what Tom Chick thinks.

A game that won "Game of the Year" from major publications can't exactly be included as "critically maligned"

[SpoofyChop]

Trespasser.

Really! I actually enjoyed it. I mean, it sucked donkey ding dong but it was still fun in a surreal sort of way.

:D

[EDIT: OH YEAH! And Ultima 9. Loved it!]

[Lum]

Don't really remember any bad reviews on Warlords Battlecry II either... the dynamic campaign in particular was tres cool.

As for my nominee: Ultima Online.

(More for historical value, mind you. CGW's opinion notwithstanding it held my attention for HOW many years?)

Current games? Um... most of the ones I liked the critics did too.

[christopher]

I loved Max Payne and I'm not afraid to admit it.

Did Max Payne get bad reviews? I don't remember exactly, but I thought it was at least considered pretty good. That was a terrible year for computer games, though, so it wouldn't surprise me if it got panned.

[malphigian]

Allegiance for the PC. A brilliant combination of Space Sim and RTS which came out as pretty much it's own genre. The strategy-obsessed could play it as RTS, which the more-FPS/action types could play as a pilot.

I remember way back when Valve was doing early press for TF2 (heh), the interface they described for the commander and soldiers was already being done brilliantly in allegiance.

Probably still my favorite multiplayer action game.

Reviewers mostly gave it an "okay" rating, and it never really built up a big enough fan base. Not really maligned, I guess, but under-rated for sure.

[Kalle]

Flying Heroes, I think Mark was the only reviewer with the good taste to spot this little gem for what it was.

[Mark Asher]

Flying Heroes!

[Jakub]

Did Max Payne get bad reviews? I don't remember exactly, but I thought it was at least considered pretty good. That was a terrible year for computer games, though, so it wouldn't surprise me if it got panned.
Max Payne was love-it-or-hate-it.

Very few average reviews. So I wouldn't call it critically maligned.

[Jason Lutes]

*cough* Shadow Watch *cough*

[awdougherty]

ultima 8 and 9

[Tyrion Lannister]

ultima 8 and 9

I forgot those two. The best of the Ultima series .

Very, very enjoyable. Even if the load/save game stuff took an age on U8.

[TomChick]

WTF, I liked Flying Heroes, too! I even kicked Asher's ass online. In fact, I tricked Christoph Nahr into buying it.

I think we're supposed to bring up Shadow Watch every so often. Excellent game, sadly misunderstood by most GAEM WRITERRS.

Vietcong was a great game, underreviewed by silly reviewers who complained about stuff like tree textures (Vietcong was not made by the creators of Mafia, as is commonly noted; it came from Pterodon, the guys who made Flying Heroes!).

-Tom

[Moore]

Faxanadu. I don't recall the reviews, but everyone I've ever met and everyone I knew then hated it.

Rise of the Dragon, same thing.

[bago]

Aww yeah, allegiance rocked ass! I bought copies for my friends.

[Mike Hussey]

POR 2. I can't say I loved it, but I don't seem to hate it as much as everyone else.

[awdougherty]

I personally don't think Ultima 8 & 9 are the best in the series, but I really did enjoy them. Ultima 8 was a real departure and the jumping puzzles were unnecessary. But I liked the extra exploration the climbing afforded and the story was fairly interesting. Ultima 9 is pretty cool now that the hardware is out there to run it smoothly. Here is where the exploration was truly fun.

[Warlord of Mars]

Bioforge.

[Doug Erickson]

Hoshigami for the PSOne. The RAP gauge and Session systems add some awesome, accessible depth. I also really liked the magic (Coinfeigm) system - it made the game too easy. Conversely, it's obvious the reviewers never really tried to like the game, since they bitched that it was too *hard*. Hell, the game even TELLS you that the path to victory is to abuse Coinfeigm spells, since that's what's causing the crisis in the game's story.

Ephemeral Fantasia for the PS2. Yeah, the cast, graphics, and dialogue are awful, but I really liked the time/schedule based puzzles, which were really tricky, and the sense of exploration was excellent. Not a great game, but a very smart and challenging one. It definitely didn't deserve the 2.0 scores it got. Chalk it up to reviewers of The GIA mindset demanding that all RPGs adhere to the same formula and emphasize narrative and visual character design uber alles.

Unlimited Saga, of course. Console RPGs where characters and narrative are absent because the games choose to deviate heavily from the stereotype really get lambasted - I guess reviewers just hate trying to figure out new RPG mechanisms, and thus dismiss the games as unplayable. As a friend of mine from HS said, "when I play a console RPG, I just wanna turn my brain off and follow the story." Unfortunately, the definition of a "console RPG" apparently encompasses anything with turn-based battles and anime characters.

[Angie Gallant]

Faxandu sucked hardcore.

I don't think Robot Alchemic Drive was so much maligned as overlooked. But I love it and all it's horrible voice acting. There were just so many mech games coming out at the same time, including Steel Battalion and it's Controler of Doom, that RAD didn't get much attention. And goddamn I love the controls.

[runesword forger]

I liked Lost Kingdoms for the Cube a lot, but reviews were pretty negative.

Honorable mention to the Sonic Adventure Battle 2 remake. It seemed like the critics really revised their opinion since the Dreamcast original, because it was slagged pretty hard. Or maybe they were disgusted that the camera wasn't fixed. But there were a lot of really fun gaming hours in there even with the issues, and my kids thought the improved Chao stuff.

[John Many Jars]

E.T. for the Atari 2600. Once you learn to play it, it rocks.

[DaveC]

Multi-player Simpson's Road Rage.

[Robert Sharp]

I don't know if the critics hated it or not, but it got little hype...my favorite no-name game is Rage of Mages (the first one). I had a lot of fun with that game.

[SimplyCosmic]

By "critically maligned" are we speaking strictly professional critical reviews, or general community word-of-mouth opinion as well.

If the latter, then I actually heavily enjoyed Tribes 2 with the gameplay mechanics (but not software bugs) presented upon its initial release prior to the many nerfings in following patches.

[christopher]

I personally don't think Ultima 8 & 9 are the best in the series, but I really did enjoy them. Ultima 8 was a real departure and the jumping puzzles were unnecessary. But I liked the extra exploration the climbing afforded and the story was fairly interesting. Ultima 9 is pretty cool now that the hardware is out there to run it smoothly. Here is where the exploration was truly fun.

I played both games post-patch so I never had to deal with the bugs that ruined them for a lot of people. I think Ultima 8 was pretty good after the patch. The quests were fixed so that the places people directed you to were actually there. The jumping puzzles went from impossible to very easy. And the fighting was also fixed so that the Avatar didn't fall down, so that went from horrible to acceptable as well. The good story was always there and once the crappy gameplay got out of the way the game was enjoyable.

But Ultima 9 was still a disappointment even after the patch. It seems like most of the effort went into the graphics, while everything else was secondary. The towns were all a lot smaller than they were in Ultima 7, and looked completely different. The dialogue was brief, and your old friends didn't seem to care about what was going on or where you'd been after you rescued them. There was even a fan patch created that changed a lot of the dialogue so that people like Iolo would ask things like, "What was Pagan like?" and so forth. I think Origin mistakenly thought they had to do something revolutionary with Ultima 9, when really what people wanted was just more Ultima 7 with maybe Baldur's Gate-style graphics. A huge 3D world wasn't necessary. People always said that they had to upgrade their computers every time Origin released a big game. I guess Origin thought this was a good thing. It wasn't.

[Charles]

ultima 8 and 9

Oh shit, can't believe I didn't say those. Fuck the critics, Ultima 8 was a good game, even if it wasn't strict to the classic ultimas. And Ultima 9 could have been great. Gothic 2 is filling that void nicely though.

I said Max Payne earlier because a lot of people are vocal about hating it. Reviews were good, but some people tend to be pretty vociferous about it.

Anyway, I'll also add Heavy Gear 1 to the list. It was a great mech game, even if it did have uber-cheese live action cutscenes.

[Lokust]

Allegiance was the best game ever, imo.

I still think flying heroes and shadow watch suck ass.

[DennyA]

I wrote a very positive feature review on Origin's Pacific Strike for the last issue of COMPUTE! Magazine, which was completed but never printed.

And sue me, I did enjoy that game for what it was -- a fun historical flying game. Still, kinda glad the two pages of glowing praise with one paragraph of bitching about frame rate didn't see print. :)

[quatoria]

WTF, I liked Flying Heroes, too! I even kicked Asher's ass online. In fact, I tricked Christoph Nahr into buying it.


DEUS EX. Oh, wait, that wasn't critically maligned, just maligned by CHICKY BABY.

[christopher]

I wrote a very positive feature review on Origin's Pacific Strike for the last issue of COMPUTE! Magazine, which was completed but never printed.

And sue me, I did enjoy that game for what it was -- a fun historical flying game. Still, kinda glad the two pages of glowing praise with one paragraph of bitching about frame rate didn't see print. :)

What about Strike Commander and Wings of Glory? Were those similar? I was hoping for "Wing Commander with planes instead of spaceships", but I never got around to playing them.

[David]

Outpost.

I was young, stupid, and I bought it with my birthday money. I forced myself to like it. Io this day I wouldnt mind a Simcity game set on another planet in the same vein as outpost(only without the suck).

[curst]

Ultima 8 was definitely cool. I think the major problem with it (maybe, this is pure conjecture) was that for a lot of people, Ultima's 5-7 hit this "sweet spot" of gaming BLISS, and 8 tampered with that oh-so-lovely formula enough that many couldn't adjust. (And I don't think all the changes were for the better, not by a long shot.) I think that's what's happening with some Fallout fans and what they think is going to occur with Fallout 3.

Anyway, I gave U8 a try and for the life of me couldn't understand why so many people had this rabid hatred for it. I don't like it as much as the holy trinity of Ultimas (again, 5-7 are just so amazing), but it's certainly good.

Ultima 9 - enh, I'm not so happy about it. I guess I need to hunt down a copy so I can play with all the patches, but the game in its original state just felt like a complete mess. And at the time of its release my computer was pretty powerful, yet U9 brought it to its knees even in "empty" areas, let alone in cities.



Here's a game that was mostly panned but will ROCK YOUR COCK: Syndicate Wars. Holy shit, the utter chaos and destruction you could wreak in those cities! Maybe it's the same thing - fans of the original didn't like the changes. I thought SW was superior to Syndicate in every way. Very few things are as fun as calling in air strikes and watching the resulting UNHOLY amounts of destruction.

FAKK 2 also seemed to take a lot of heat for feeling rushed. I guess I got lucky and didn't endure any bugs, which contributes to me viewing that game as Max Payne's equal (and I, too, really like Max Payne... man, you have to avidly hate action games to REALLY dislike it). To this day, FAKK 2 has one of the best final boss encounters ever, and the level/art design got a bit average-ish in parts, but was mostly incredibly good. The rest of the game simply ROCKS, 'nuff said!

[Brian Rubin]

I also have to go with Allegiance here. Friggin' excellent game that never got the attention it deserved. Luckily now you can play it for free! (http://www.freeallegiance.org/)

[Jupiter Jones]

"Raiders Of The Lost Ark" for Atari 2600
"Vanguard" for Atari 2600 (bad review in Electronic Games)
"Coaster" by Disney

[Charles]

People didn't like Vanguard? Holy shit.

[Lee Johnson]

[To] this day I wouldnt mind a Simcity game set on another planet in the same vein as outpost(only without the suck).
It's too bad that EA cancelled SimMars. It could have been exactly what you're asking for. :(

Outpost 2 was a nice little builder/RTS, not like the original at all. It wasn't without its annoyances, but playing it was actually... um... [looks around for signs of Tom] ... f-word. I imagine it tanked at retail because of the lingering stench left behind by its predecessor; nonetheless, I give Sierra credit for having the balls to bring it to market. :)

[Hump]

Just for the Multiplayer portions, not single player: Gore, Daikatana, Redline.

yes, I am serious....

-Hump

[Jason McCullough]

This is painful to admit.

Not only did I like Deadlock - don't even start, I can't explain why I get all woozy for spreadsheets - when Deadlock 2 came out I WENT BACK FOR MORE.

[SpoofyChop]

This is painful to admit.

Not only did I like Deadlock - don't even start, I can't explain why I get all woozy for spreadsheets - when Deadlock 2 came out I WENT BACK FOR MORE.

Deadlocks suck. We got one the other day but we couldn't reproduce it on our Dev servers.

What? Oh Deadlock the really crappy scifi RTS?

Oh yeah...I kinda liked that too.

[tromik]

Master of Orion 3, Myth 3, Vietcong.

[Dave Long]

Mega Man Network Transmission for Gamecube. The reviews are so far off base it's not even funny. It's a great entry in the series and a great overall 2D-style platformer in general. Reviewers completely missed the boat.

--Dave

[Jim Preston]

Dave Mirra Freestyle 2. I unlocked everything with every character. I could not get enough of that game. It's not Tony Hawk, but it's better than its mediocre reputation. At least that's what I'm telling myself after 35 hours of Dave Mirra 2.

[John Many Jars]

"Raiders Of The Lost Ark" for Atari 2600

Definitely. One of the best.

[John Many Jars]

Oh! Can't believe I forgot this: Ground Control.

All those who said the artillery was overpowered didn't play long enough to learn how to use their units (and thus to discover the *real* flaws in the game). Multiplayer remained great as long as the host set "no reinforcements" as an option.

[Brandon Clements]

I liked Privateer 2. Not as engrossing as the orignal, but still fun (and hey, it had Clive Owen and Christopher Walken in the cutscenes)

[DennyA]

Hey, I too liked Deadlock. And I think I wrote a positive review of it for CGW... Maybe. Might have been a preview. Ancient times.

Fighter Duel for the PC.

[voltaic]

Messiah, Blood 2, and Nocturne. Exceptional games, horrible reviews.

[Rob_Merritt]

I liked....


...

Klingon Honor Guard...

*sob*

there.. I said it!

[Kyle Wilson]

Deus Ex. And I don't care what Tom Chick thinks.

A game that won "Game of the Year" from major publications can't exactly be included as "critically maligned"

Hey, Tom's a critic. And he definitely maligned it. :)

[Ranulf]

Allegiance for the PC. A brilliant combination of Space Sim and RTS which came out as pretty much it's own genre. The strategy-obsessed could play it as RTS, which the more-FPS/action types could play as a pilot.



Definately a great game, ahead of its time but I think the monthly fee is what really hurt it.


I'd say Star Wars:Rebellion. Apart from the whole crappy UI I rather enjoyed the game.

[Brian Koontz]

Man, I can't think of ANY... I must have critically-acceptable taste in games or something.

The best I can come up with is Anachronox... but even I gave it an 84%. I just called it a "must play" game. The game was largely critically ignored.

Baseball Mogul 2004 is my second choice... largely critically ignored since its not a Retail game.

I don't remember Autoduel being very well received at the time, but I didn't subscribe to game magazines then (or ever) and that was well before my Internet time so good reviews may have slipped by me.

[ElRavager]

redneck rampage... this was the funnest freakin' game to play online, we played the hell out of it on the college lan...

"I'll bbq yer ass in molasses!" :o

[Brandon Clements]

redneck rampage... this was the funnest freakin' game to play online, we played the hell out of it on the college lan...

"I'll bbq yer ass in molasses!" :o
"Jesus Palomino!" or whatever they said was funny as hell too :lol:

[Charles]

Oh I just thought up a good one. I had tons of fun with Shadow Warrior.

[Kevin Perry]

I think we're supposed to bring up Shadow Watch every so often.

Yes. Yes we are.

[mtkafka]

I thought Urban Assault was one of the best RTS of its time, and still is imo... but it wasn;t really critically panned (I remember reviews in the 3/5 range), it just wasn't on the radar.

Also I thought Pools of Radiance had a good turnbased combat and was pretty fun up to the last quarter of the game .... not nearly as bad as it was panned... same with Throne of Darkness... a good Diablo ripoff in Japan.

etc

[krayzkrok]

It's hard to answer this. A lot of games are critically acclaimed on release, yet retrospectically they're viewed as crap. Isn't it annoying when you read "Red Faction really sucked donkey intromittant organ" when you distinctly recall that same reviewer giving it 90% and a highly recommended rating several months earlier?

Speaking of Red Faction... no, that wasn't a bad game per se, just a total waste of an engine.

I'd be tempted to nominate Freelancer. I love space sims, and while Freelancer's lost potential could be seen venting into the stellar vacuum it was still enough to reinvigorate interest in the genre. But really, my vote goes to X-Tension - the version of X - Beyond the Frontier that Egosoft should have released first. The only space sim in recent years to come close to that elusive "Elite" experience we all convince ourselves we had.

[cornfuzed]

I'll cast another vote for Trespasser. For some inexplicable reason I really had fun playing it.

[Kalle]

WTF, I liked Flying Heroes, too! I even kicked Asher's ass online. In fact, I tricked Christoph Nahr into buying it.


-Tom

My memory is a bit sketchy so I'll take your word for it. I do have a vague memory of Cristoph getting it (and posting about it on usenet). Anyway, nice to see you occasionally have good taste in games, I can't wait for your Deus Ex 2 review. :wink:

[NuclearWinter]

Definitely Messiah - I know it had a huge number of problems for some people but I guess I was lucky because it always worked perfectly fine for me... Stylish, original premise and the action was just damn cool - plus you could run around as a radtion worker with radioactive waste and watch everyone choke to death from radiation poisoning. That game had some seriously great action moments (but apparently only I think so).

[Lokust]

I actually enjoyed playing through Daikatana

[DennyA]

I actually enjoyed playing through Daikatana
Oh, now you're just lying to get attention.

[Chris Nahr]

Might and Magic IX!

[Lokust]

I actually enjoyed playing through Daikatana
Oh, now you're just lying to get attention.

Hah. It was the only time I've ever gotten hate-mail for being too positive in a review (http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/reviews/daikatana_a.shtm). I've had plenty of hate mail for bashing a game, but for saying a game isn't really that bad...? God... I cringe when I look at how bad my writing was back then.

[curst]

Messiah, Blood 2...

Definitely Messiah...

Arrrrgh... vision... turning... red... must... not... headbutt... monitor...

I'll just bite my tongue and say that you guys are loveable in a wacky way, but you're also obviously baby-eating masochists. :) Holy crap!

[Jack]

I actually enjoyed playing through Daikatana
Oh, now you're just lying to get attention.

Hah. It was the only time I've ever gotten hate-mail for being too positive in a review (http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/reviews/daikatana_a.shtm). I've had plenty of hate mail for bashing a game, but for saying a game isn't really that bad...? God... I cringe when I look at how bad my writing was back then.

Did the crack pipe come from Ion Storm or did you supply your own?

[Jazar]

"What about Strike Commander and Wings of Glory? Were those similar? I was hoping for "Wing Commander with planes instead of spaceships", but I never got around to playing them."

Strike Commander and Wings of Glory were good games. Especially SC. Excellent music, graphics and gameplay for its time the only problem was there wasn't a computer invented that could play it. I bought the 'talkie' CD version a year or so later and enjoyed the hell out of it.

Wings of Glory is also pretty good but I didn't enjoy it as much. Your description of both as, "Wing Commander with planes" is pretty spot on for SC and WoG. :)

[Xaroc]

I remember Strike Commander fondly. I think it's biggest drawback was the beefy system you had to have to run it well.

-- Xaroc

[Lokust]

Did the crack pipe come from Ion Storm or did you supply your own?

Did you play through all four episodes are are you talking out of your ass like most of the people who bashed the game?

[awdougherty]

Well, since this game was so universally shat on, I'll lower the "love" requirement to "thought it was okay and could see it being fun."

Pool of Radiance 2: Ruins of Myth Drannor

I never experienced any of the glitches others did, and while I never finished the game, the time I spent with it was okay. I enjoyed turn based combat (REALLY looking forward to Temple of Elemental Evil), and thought the overland areas were okay and fun to explore.

Now don't get me wrong, this game has tons of flaws and their dungeons and gameplay decisions somehow managed to violate almost every notion of fun that's ever existed throughout the universe for a lot of people, but my time with it wasn't too bad. The speed up hack helped tremendously for the legions of undead you had to face.

As for Ultima 9... it definitely didn't live up to the standards set by 5-7 but I have to give them a lot of credit for attempting the 3d world thing. I didn't find the dialogue too limiting, but I was surprised to see my old companions not asking about Pagan or surprised I wasn't dead. Again, mostly it was nice to explore mountain ranges and take in the views. My biggest complaint was the Guardian. He looked like an extremely sunburnt body builder. I seem to remember fitting into the palm of his hand in Pagan.

[Jack]

Did the crack pipe come from Ion Storm or did you supply your own?

Did you play through all four episodes are are you talking out of your ass like most of the people who bashed the game?

Whoa, ease up on the caffeine. I couldn't manage the whole thing. Speaking of ass, that reminds me of the AI and level design... but then I didn't slog through the entire thing because I wasn't being paid to do so.

It was just a friendly chide. I'm not commenting on your reviewing skills at all. I'm pleased you liked it. More power to ya.

[Jupiter Jones]

"KKND: Krush Kill 'N Destroy"
"Might And Magic VI"
"License To Kill" (Atari ST)
"Outlaws"

[Robert Sharp]

Might and Magic VI got bad reviews? I didn't know that. I second that vote. I LOVED that game.

Oh, I thought of another console game too. Inindo for the SNES. One of my favorite console RPGs of all time. Gets no credit, but was (and is) incredibly fun. Maybe I will play it again this weekend. In fact, all this reminiscing is making me want to play old games. I never got around to playing Lufia 2 on the SNES. Maybe I'll start that up instead. (I have a mint, complete copy, but I have never played it).

[Rywill]

Outlaws got bad reviews?? It's probably the best 2D shooter ever made. Well, second to DOOM.

[Lokust]

Did the crack pipe come from Ion Storm or did you supply your own?

Did you play through all four episodes are are you talking out of your ass like most of the people who bashed the game?

Whoa, ease up on the caffeine. I couldn't manage the whole thing. Speaking of ass, that reminds me of the AI and level design... but then I didn't slog through the entire thing because I wasn't being paid to do so.

It was just a friendly chide. I'm not commenting on your reviewing skills at all. I'm pleased you liked it. More power to ya.

My bad. Learning to work with the AI goons wasn't much different than learning to lead the hostages around in counter-strike - I didn't really have any problems with it. The game's greatest weakness was that the first episode was so much worse than the rest of the game.

[Rod Humble]

Outlaws got bad reviews?? It's probably the best 2D shooter ever made. Well, second to DOOM.

Not so sure about that. Outlaws on "Ugly" mode (which was not more difficult but "one shot one kill" style shooting for all sides) was probably my peak old school shooter experience. I have played it through single player five times on Ugly mode :)

"Maaaarshallll?" :)

[Chris Nahr]

Might and Magic VI got bad reviews? I didn't know that. I second that vote. I LOVED that game.

I don't know that either, MM6 was generally favourably received. So was MM7, by the way. MM8 got worse reviews for being too much of the same thing, and MM9 was generally reviled. BUT THEY ARE ALL IGNORANT PEASANTS! MM9 ROCKED!!!

[Bub, Andrew]

Both Outlaws and MM6 got 80%+ according to Game Rankings. Outlaws was only criticized for being 2D post-Quake. Still it's a great game.

[JD]

The soundtrack already justified the purchase of Outlaws.

[Jupiter Jones]

Outlaws got bad reviews?? It's probably the best 2D shooter ever made. Well, second to DOOM.

As I recall, "Outlaws" was knocked-down a few notches because it did not use 3D models for the characters.

"Might and Magic VI" was shot-down because it's 3D engine was outdated.

Notice, none of those complaints have anything to do with the gameplay of either title, just the visuals.

[Ron Talbot]

Conquest: Frontier Wars - A great space based rts game. The Single player campaign was weak but the Multiplayer random map games were only surpassed by Kohan IMHO.

Dark Omen - The best game no one but me ever played. Great graphics, challenging game play, and the best voice acting I have ever heard in a game.

Outlaws was a great game, my favorite FPS ever but I seem to remember that it was fairly popular with the reviewer elite...

still crazzzy
rwt

[Chris Nahr]

Conquest: Frontier Wars was great but I think it got good reviews -- just no paying customers.

Dark Omen would have been good if the difficulty level had been somewhat less than insane...

[Saam]

People didn't like Vanguard? Holy shit.


Oh man... did I love this game when I was a kid. The music was definitely one of a kind... it gave you an adrenaline pumpin' feeling. The Styx Zone, Rainbow level, Stripe Zone... man I wanna play it just by thinking about it.

Time to boot up my Atari emulator..

[Brian Rubin]

Yeah, Conquest is an excellent game, real shame no one played it. I feel the same way about Heavy Gear II. Totally amazing game, but hardly anyone played it.

[Charles]

I have another to add to the list.

Shadowrun for the SNES. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say anything good about the game, but to this day, it's one of my favorite games. I love everything about it.

[Acosta]

I am not sure Shadowrun got bad reviews, but remember that everybody took the genesis one over the Snes version because Nintendo toned down the game (well, something like that).

Could say some ones... Nomad Sould (Omikron) is the first that come to my mind. Don´t say that is a jewel of videogames design, but had some nice touches and I really enjoyed it (and the "sex" scene was hilarious).

Pretty sure than Pac-Man for GC will be in this thread in some months :).

Edit: Oh, it have a 77% at Gamerankings, is quite higher than I expected. Some magazines destroyed it in my country or was completely ignored for others.

[Mike Hussey]

Might and Magic VI got bad reviews? I didn't know that. I second that vote. I LOVED that game.



MM6, MM7 and MM8 all got terrible reviews in the UK edition of PC Gamer, scores in 20-35% region. They were slated for being old fashioned with crappy graphics and bad story lines. The other UK mags, such as the short lived UK version of CGW were much kinder to them. Personally they're not my favourite RPGs, but I picked up all of them (and quite enjoyed them) once the price had dropped.

[Machfive]

I have another to add to the list.

Shadowrun for the SNES. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say anything good about the game, but to this day, it's one of my favorite games. I love everything about it.

Was that the post-apocalyptic one with the hacking and the isometric view? I have a vague recollection of a game like that, but could never figure out the name.

And the details I do remember are so vague and blurred by time they'd be of little use to a google search.

So here are some keywords I think describe the game.

Sewers. Killing rats. Downloading stuff. Fighting bikers in a junkyard. Guns. Uh, stuff.

Yeah, that's it.

Any ideas?

[snowmyr]

Third Reich

The AI was horrible. The interface was poor.

The game rocked.

[JD]

Stunts/4D Sports Driving. I've seen nothing but terrible reviews of that game. However, my friends and me spent a huge amount of time toying around with that title, creating challenging tracks with the editor and trying to perform crazy stunts. Which one could record/save and show other people, fortunately.

[Machfive]

I don't remember any reviews, but I do remember buying Rocket Jockey for $10 and loving it to death. I think I was the only person in the world who played it.

[Kalle]

Dark Omen - The best game no one but me ever played. Great graphics, challenging game play, and the best voice acting I have ever heard in a game.


If you are talking about Warhammer:Dark Omen then calling the gameplay merely challenging is the understatement of the year. It's the best game I have never finished, due to the difficulty setting defaulting to "Hellishly Hard".

[RichardC]

The Last Express didn't do well, but I really dug it. Also the Tex Murphy games - which over here usually got a horrible beating (something which I've tried to fix over time, but...) Probably the biggest was Kingdom O'Magic, which I think I'm probably the only person on the planet to have found really, funny.

[Peter Olafson]

I seem to like a lot of games that other people can't stand. :) Titles that come to mind are Powerslave, Messiah, Oni, Nam, Daikatana and Postal 2(well, bits of them), and America.

On the other side the equation, M&M6 was generally well-rceived but I thought it was just more of M&M2's endless cycle of combat.

Peter

[Joe O'Malley]

I never saw a bad review for Heavy Gear 2. It wa just a bad time for giant robot games in general.

A game I liked that got trashed was Star Trek: Birth of the Federation (real title much longer). While I can't say that it didn't deserve the trashing it got, I still really enjoyed playng it, excessive minutia and all.

[Phil_Stein]

Last Express got good reviews (and I loved it), but yes, it sold relatively poorly.

Well reviewed, well liked games that sold poorly, however, is an entirely different topic - there's a billion games in that category.

[Jason McCullough]

I never saw a bad review for Heavy Gear 2. It wa just a bad time for giant robot games in general.

A game I liked that got trashed was Star Trek: Birth of the Federation (real title much longer). While I can't say that it didn't deserve the trashing it got, I still really enjoyed playng it, excessive minutia and all.

But....you couldn't even finish a game! It'd always die on turn 120 or whatever.

[Dirt]

Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is my vote. I love that game and played it to death. It did get annoying at the end as everbody just ran away from you. The slowdown after turn 100(?) was annoying too. It could have used a sequel. If I liked ST:BoTF, will I like MOO3?

[Brian Rubin]

I never saw a bad review for Heavy Gear 2. It wa just a bad time for giant robot games in general.
I never saw a bad review either, it's a shame it sold so poorly.

[Ron Talbot]

Dark Omen - The best game no one but me ever played. Great graphics, challenging game play, and the best voice acting I have ever heard in a game.


If you are talking about Warhammer:Dark Omen then calling the gameplay merely challenging is the understatement of the year. It's the best game I have never finished, due to the difficulty setting defaulting to "Hellishly Hard".

:shock: I consider myself to be, at best, an average RTS player ( my experiences online with WCIII were humilitating at best... :cry: ) and I finished it. It was hard at times and I had to reload on occasion but that always happens to me. (I am a, er, mature (physically at least) gamer so I am not as fast with the mouse as you young-uns) I remember the final scenario being a real challenge but I can't imangine any game that I can actually finish being that hard, odd. Still it's a great game!

still crazzzy
rwt

[Prodigy]

The Thing.

[Joe O'Malley]

I never saw a bad review for Heavy Gear 2. It wa just a bad time for giant robot games in general.

A game I liked that got trashed was Star Trek: Birth of the Federation (real title much longer). While I can't say that it didn't deserve the trashing it got, I still really enjoyed playng it, excessive minutia and all.

But....you couldn't even finish a game! It'd always die on turn 120 or whatever.

Sure you could. You just had to pathc it or the memory leak would eat your computer alive. :wink:

[Robert Sharp]

You know, I liked the SNES version of Shadowrun better too. It was watered down Shadowrun, of course (your character was like a street samurai/shaman/decker character...all in one!) but it was a lot of fun. The RPG elements were solid and you had to find spells and equipment and you had to hire people and get information. I just thought the game was really deep. I still own the Genesis version, but I never play it. I don't have a copy of the SNES game though :(.

[Aleck]

I never saw a bad review for Heavy Gear 2. It wa just a bad time for giant robot games in general.
I never saw a bad review either, it's a shame it sold so poorly.

More to the point, it's a shame the first one sucked so bad. I think it suffered because gamers said "fool me once...."

Is Heavy Gear the inverse of Activision's Interstate XX series? I think so!

[thecyke]

Original War

A great RTS game with RPG elements for your limited troops. Bugged as hell but special in the way some guilty pleasures are the best.

[Charles]

I have another to add to the list.

Shadowrun for the SNES. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say anything good about the game, but to this day, it's one of my favorite games. I love everything about it.

Was that the post-apocalyptic one with the hacking and the isometric view? I have a vague recollection of a game like that, but could never figure out the name.

And the details I do remember are so vague and blurred by time they'd be of little use to a google search.

So here are some keywords I think describe the game.

Sewers. Killing rats. Downloading stuff. Fighting bikers in a junkyard. Guns. Uh, stuff.

Yeah, that's it.

Any ideas?

Yep, that's definitely Shadowrun on the SNES.

[Robert Sharp]

I have another to add to the list.

Shadowrun for the SNES. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say anything good about the game, but to this day, it's one of my favorite games. I love everything about it.

Was that the post-apocalyptic one with the hacking and the isometric view? I have a vague recollection of a game like that, but could never figure out the name.

And the details I do remember are so vague and blurred by time they'd be of little use to a google search.

So here are some keywords I think describe the game.

Sewers. Killing rats. Downloading stuff. Fighting bikers in a junkyard. Guns. Uh, stuff.

Yeah, that's it.

Any ideas?

Yep, that's definitely Shadowrun on the SNES.

Actually, doesn't that describe the Genesis one a bit too? I am finding it hard to explain the differences between them even though there were VERY different. I guess you could say the SNES version is much more linear, but it still had some exploration. The Genesis one had more refined hacking though.

[Ben Sones]

Messiah, Blood 2, and Nocturne. Exceptional games, horrible reviews.

I gave Nocturne a good review, so the reviews weren't all bad. And I still think it was a good game, though I admit that you and I are in the minority on that count.

Overall, this is a tough question. I can think of plenty of games that the critics loved and nobody played, and plenty of games that critics loved and I hated. Not too many games that the critics hated and I loved, though. I guess the critics know crap when they see it.

I loved Myst, though I'm not sure that one counts, either. It got plenty of critical and popular acclaim; it didn't become fashionable to hate it until later.

How about Fantasy General? It weighs in at 67% on Game Rankings. Mostly because of GameSpot's score--4.9 out of 10 for the best fantasy wargame ever made!

[Charles]

Actually, doesn't that describe the Genesis one a bit too? I am finding it hard to explain the differences between them even though there were VERY different. I guess you could say the SNES version is much more linear, but it still had some exploration. The Genesis one had more refined hacking though.

I'm assuming he can accurately remember the difference between a SNES and a Genesis.

[Machfive]

Actually, doesn't that describe the Genesis one a bit too? I am finding it hard to explain the differences between them even though there were VERY different. I guess you could say the SNES version is much more linear, but it still had some exploration. The Genesis one had more refined hacking though.

I'm assuming he can accurately remember the difference between a SNES and a Genesis.

It's quite easy, since I never owned a Genesis, it simply HAD to be the SNES one. ;)

I'm so obtaining a copy of that game then. I recall it being oodles of fun.

Thanks a million, gentlemen!

[Brian Rubin]

How about Fantasy General? It weighs in at 67% on Game Rankings. Mostly because of GameSpot's score--4.9 out of 10 for the best fantasy wargame ever made!
They gave Fantasy General a WHAT?! <gets in car, drives to Gamespot's corporate headquarters, and starts busting skulls>. Fantasy General is indeed the best fantasy wargame EVAR. Lousy bitch...

Edit: From the Review (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/fantasygeneral/review.html):
Fantasy General is little more than Panzer General in a new box with some Dungeons and Drag... err… fantasy units in place of the tanks (I could almost hear the game's producer ordering his art director, “Quick, paint some fangs on that infantryman!”).
<Drives off to find Trent C. Ward and bring on the pain, who will get an extra smack for insulting the game's excellent soundtrack...>

[Ben Sones]

The funny thing is that FG was almost nothing like Dungeons & Dragons. It had a unique style--sort of a steampunk vibe--that wasn't even similar in anything other than a superficial "both are fantasy" sort of way.

But yeah, great game. The best of the 5-star series. I wish it would run on XP. I wish someone would do an open-source remake with updated graphics. Didn't SSI release the game into the public domain?

[Nomad]

Under a Killing Moon. It received serious bashing in PC Gamer because of... the lack of interactivity (how come, I still can't understand. Apparently, branching dialogue trees and lots of useable objects in a three-dimensional world were not "interactive" enough).

Anachronox. Many reviewers seemed to overlook excellent in-game cinematics, humorous dialogues, great characters and story and went on raving about "outdated Quake 2 engine" instead. Poor SoBs.

[Lizard_King]

If I liked ST:BoTF, will I like MOO3?

I don't think anyone could ever like MOO3. No matter how hard up for a new game you are, it is not even a strategy game. It is a math game, or a spectator sport; you only get to pick one of those roles, if memory serves, and they are equally unrewarding.

[Brian Koontz]

Under a Killing Moon. It received serious bashing in PC Gamer because of... the lack of interactivity (how come, I still can't understand. Apparently, branching dialogue trees and lots of useable objects in a three-dimensional world were not "interactive" enough).

I have your answer here.

Remember the furor and controversy behind FMV... Full Motion Video?

I was one of the people (among many) calling out against FMV. The worry was that games would become movies. Games wanted to go on DVD. They wanted to have movie-quality cinematics. They wanted to cater to the mass-market. They envied the cultural status of film.

One of the great values to computer games is their interactivity... they would lose their identity if FMV became standard.

Under a Killing Moon was one of the best of the FMV games... it was in fact the first one I remember. It came on several CDs [Edited from DVDs per Nomad's correction]. It had good actors, nice production values. If anything pushed the FMV envelope, this game was it.

So BECAUSE it was good, it was dangerous. The hatchet men were called in. With their axes in the form of game reviews, they chopped away at the FMV beast.

Just like that movie reviewer who disliked The Hulk because it was a comic book movie, these reviewers were reviewing a genre rather than a game.

[Phil_Stein]

At the time Under a Killing Moon came out, it was amazing. A 3D engine that was almost as good as the purely focused 3D engines of the time (circa Doom 1 era), PLUS, really well done video pasted on top of the 3D world, with name actors and a reasonably well written story.

I made it 6 2/3 days into the 7 day story - something stopped me just short of the ending and I never finished.

OTOH, as much as I enjoyed it, I never looked at any of the sequels to it, and I think I only ever played 2 other FMV games (The Last Express - great, the Sherlock Holmes thingies - terrible)

[Ben Sones]

You didn't miss much--the sequels weren't very good. UaKM was a fine game, though Mean Streets is still the best of the series.

[Jason McCullough]

That FG rating is a travesty. The combat mechanics they were using were interesting and vaguely plausible, too.

[Nomad]

So BECAUSE it was good, it was dangerous. The hatchet men were called in. With their axes in the form of game reviews, they chopped away at the FMV beast.

Just like that movie reviewer who disliked The Hulk because it was a comic book movie, these reviewers were reviewing a genre rather than a game.

The hatchet men should've started earlier - two years before the UKM they missed an opportunity to eliminate The 7th Guest, which used FMVs not to push the story forward, but to simply reward players for solving another annoying puzzle, to entertain in a way movies do.

On the contrary, UKM's full motion sequences were an integral part of the game's design. By the way, despite the hatchet men's best efforts to bury the FMVs, Pandora Directive, the next Tex Murphy title, featured even more elaborate ways to combine 3D universe, gameplay and videos, and still has one of the highest replay values ever in the adventure genre (along with The Last Express).

As for DVDs, there seems to be a mistake. UKM was using 4 plain CDs, the only DVD-published Tex Murphy title is Overseer (now that's a game worth bashing).

The worry was that games would become movies. Games wanted to go on DVD. They wanted to have movie-quality cinematics. They wanted to cater to the mass-market. They envied the cultural status of film.
Unfortunately, some of them still do. Look at modern first-person shooters. Medal of Honor mimics Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor and Band of Brothers, Half-Life 2 boasts detailed facial expressions and "virtual actors", other titles rely on scripted "rails" so often that it's not even funny, while all major studios are screaming about using Hollywood-born creative talents. Look at Enter The Matrix, The Hulk or X2: Wolverine's Revenge - these are just the latest examples of how a game can lose identity by trying to cater to the same mass-market, borrowing ready-to-use ideas and associating itself with a Big Movie Brand. Their numbers will steadily rise unless some hatchet men appear to stop them from multiplying.

But that's a topic for yet another discussion.

[Machfive]

Unfortunately, some of them still do. Look at modern first-person shooters. Medal of Honor mimics Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor and Band of Brothers, Half-Life 2 boasts detailed facial expressions and "virtual actors", other titles rely on scripted "rails" so often that it's not even funny, while all major studios are screaming about using Hollywood-born creative talents. Look at Enter The Matrix, The Hulk or X2: Wolverine's Revenge - these are just the latest examples of how a game can lose identity by trying to cater to the same mass-market, borrowing ready-to-use ideas and associating itself with a Big Movie Brand. Their numbers will steadily rise unless some hatchet men appear to stop them from multiplying.

But that's a topic for yet another discussion.

Let's not forget GTA3 and Vice City's use of first-rate actors to do the voice work. I played through the first one going, "There's no way that Joey Pants," until I finally ending up googling it and dropping my jaw.

[Peter Olafson]

Another one occurred to me: Sand Warriors from Gremlin, released via Interplay. A wonderful land-based flying 3D shoot 'em up, with huge environments, long-range visibility (which, along with being DOS-based, probably accounts for why it ran so slowly), high difficulty and lots of neat little graphical touches. Critically, this was pretty much ignored or under-valued in a Wing Commander-dominated market, but I loved every second of it.

I don't miss many defunct/absorbed games companies, but I miss Gremlin. One of the last great big independent English publishers. Virtually all the others from its era are gone: Core, Ocean, Mindscape. (Team 17's still at it, but, to judge by the web site, it seems to be an almost Worms-only concern these days.)

Peter

[Peter Olafson]

You didn't miss much--the sequels weren't very good. UaKM was a fine game, though Mean Streets is still the best of the series.

Thank you. Access may have admitted as much itself when it remade Mean Streets as the last in the series, and, sadly, managed to omit its key feature. The need in Mean Streets to physically travel from location to distant location under your own steam, then disembark and explore, made the game like few others (though Planet's Edge and the last two Mercenary games come to mind. Shame Mercenary IV died in development.)

Peter

[JD]

I don't miss many defunct/absorbed games companies, but I miss Gremlin. One of the last great big independent English publishers. Virtually all the others from its era are gone: Core, Ocean, Mindscape. (Team 17's still at it, but, to judge by the web site, it seems to be an almost Worms-only concern these days.)

Yeah, somehow weird to look at mags from late 80s/early 90s (I still own a bunch), seeing all those companies which got absorbed by others over time. Crappy movie-license-based games is what I still associate Ocean most with. Didn't Gremlin also publish the Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge series? Great games. What happened to Domark? I must have missed that purchase.

[Peter Olafson]

Yeah, somehow weird to look at mags from late 80s/early 90s (I still own a bunch), seeing all those companies which got absorbed by others over time. Crappy movie-license-based games is what I still associate Ocean most with. Didn't Gremlin also publish the Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge series? Great games. What happened to Domark? I must have missed that purchase.

Yes, Gremlin did the three Lotus titles.

And Domark simply changed its name to Eidos.

Ocean actually did a creditable movie license or two--Jurassic Park was good and Roboscop 3D was great--and moved more into original games (notably, its Did-authored sims) in the mid and late '90s. But I don't think it ever shed the movie-license stigma, and even now, I tend to think of the company that way.

Peter

[Preachy Preach]

[quote=JD]
And Domark simply changed its name to Eidos.


IIRC, that's not entirely correct - Eidos was a small company programming video codecs - in the first flush of the Internet stocks boom, it managed to get enough financing for a leveraged buyout of Domark...

[Peter Olafson]

You're right. I'd remembered it wrong. Eidos was (and still is) a video-compression technology outfit that acquired Domark in 1995.

Peter

[Don Quixote]

Ultima 9 - enh, I'm not so happy about it. I guess I need to hunt down a copy so I can play with all the patches, but the game in its original state just felt like a complete mess. And at the time of its release my computer was pretty powerful, yet U9 brought it to its knees even in "empty" areas, let alone in cities.


So I just reinstalled u9 last week, and thought I'd chime in here. If you do try to play this again, go find the unofficial '1.19 fan-made' (http://ultima9.4players.de:1027/archiv.htm) patch(don't worry that the site is in german- the patch works on english games). I'm getting much better d3d support with it. Also, there is another fan patch out that completely replaces 99% of the NPC dialouge (though none of the actual scripting), books, journal entries, etc. It pretty much changes the story completely, and brings it more in line with the earlier entries in the series, fills plot holes/continuity errors, etc. you can find the patch here (http://reconstruction.voyd.net/index.php?page=project&type=upgrades).

[RichardC]

You didn't miss much--the sequels weren't very good. UaKM was a fine game, though Mean Streets is still the best of the series.

(sucks in breath) Overseer was a bit of a rush job (that's not my being picky - it was part of an Intel deal and had to be banged out really fast), but Pandora was superb. A good story (UAKM's was pretty simple), real characters, branching puzzles and still the only adventure game to do the 3D thing properly. Every adventure reviewer I know over here, myself included, thinks that they deserved better the first time around though - although UAKM really did feature some of the worst acting ever committed to FMV.

Thank you. Access may have admitted as much itself when it remade Mean Streets as the last in the series, and, sadly, managed to omit its key feature.

Not quite. Mean Streets was meant to be the start of a new trilogy - Polarity and Trance being the other two games - which they used to both fill in the Tex background that people wouldn't know if they hadn't played the non-VW games. Unfortunately, it bombed with a capital B (it never even got a full release over here - straight to budget, it was) and Microsoft wasn't interested. They're working on a prototype for a web-based adventure as well.

Countdown was probably their best 2D adventure.