My Six Most Underappreciated Games of All Time

There’s a chance that at one stage in your life, or possibly more than once, you’ll have played a game and thought something along the lines of: “Wow. Just WOW! My bits are actually tingling due to the sheer pleasure this piece of entertainment is causing me.” Much later, once you’ve completed this orgasmic, real-life replacement, you’ll talk to your friends and ask “Have you played this amazing game?” to which their response will be “Errmm...I’ve heard of it...looks alright...might have a try.” This indifference, to what is surely God’s gift to humanity, ensures no end of bickering with said friend and ultimately causes them to move into the ‘acquaintance’ zone - the power of games at work.

This compilation isn’t so much a collection of critically underrated games, though some certainly are, it’s more a list of games that - much like whoever invented the tripod stool that sits in the middle of a pizza box - never got the appreciation they deserved.

 

6 – Brothers: A tale of two sons: The first entry is an example of an indie release receiving brilliant reviews, but sadly not the sales figures to match. Not only is this game incredibly innovative for its use of assigning one controller stick to each of the protagonists, essentially allowing you manipulate both at once, but it’s beautiful enough to warrant a place in the National Gallery. Although the main reason I’ll always love Brothers isn’t the unique controls, the great puzzles or the breathtaking art style, it’s the fact that it contains some of the most incredibly heart wrenching scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a game. Affected by Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy 7, or when Dom finds Maria in Gears of War 2?, Hah! They were moments of light relief compared to some of the unexpected twists Brothers provides. Of course a mere videogame would never reduce a hardened man like me to tears……..*sniff*

 

So how come it never set the world on fire? Some say it was Brothers’ short length of about 6 hours, and the fact that once completed there wasn’t a lot to draw you back for another playthrough. Having an indie game budget also meant Brothers didn’t exactly get Grand Theft Auto levels of advertising either. Maybe its description of being an ‘emotional, adult puzzler with a revolutionary control system’ didn’t appeal to the majority of gamers. Or perhaps a lot of people are just philistines.

 

5 - Condemned 2:Bloodshot : This terrified me more than any game I’d played previously. I still have nightmares about moving through the carnage that grizzly bear had left, and the horror of it bursting through the door of the room I’m trapped in. The atmosphere throughout Condemned was incredible, it had some great jump scares, an excellent story, imaginative environmental attacks, and - for budding Gil Grissoms - a fantastic crime scene investigation mechanic, which I personally found much better than the one used in the Batman series.

 

 

The game was released to mostly positive reviews, averaging about eight out of ten, but sales weren’t great. It was certainly an excessively violent, dark game, which did generate some negative publicity because of the content. Plus the story followed on directly from the first Condemned, making it difficult for newbies to the series (like me) to understand exactly what the hell was going on.

 

4 - Call of Juarez : Gunslinger: I’d previously played, and greatly enjoyed, the first two Call of Juarez games, then The Cartel was released and it made me die a little inside; so my hopes for Gunslinger weren’t what you would call excessively high. As things turned out, I needn’t have worried. Taking control of aging gunslinger Silas Greaves, the game’s narrative premise revolves around him recounting his tales of glory in a dusty saloon, while the player takes control of Silas in his stories. A clever voiceover trick whereby Silas commentates on your actions - and sections of the game rewinding, should new memories of the events return to him - will be familiar to anyone who has played Bastion before. It may be a linear first person shooter, but that never did Call of Duty any harm. Containing light RPG elements such as levelling up skills and specialising in certain weapons, Gunslinger was better than a lot of people gave it credit for.

 

The game received mixed reviews: averaging around the 79% mark from most critics. A big problem was the astoundingly long loading times - I remember having a copy of Viz next to me as I played, for those seemingly endless moments between episodes. It certainly didn’t take ages to complete either, and the linear, shooting gallery style didn’t appeal to everyone. But the biggest criticism was usually levelled at its Boss battles, which were described as “shallow”; I myself would describe them as “pretty much the same as most boss battles.”  

 

3 - Alpha Protocol: I’ll never understand why this game didn’t fare better. Made by RPG gods Obsidian, the company behind such greats as Knights of the old Republic 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, it received many average and poor reviews upon release. I loved the dialogue stance  system, this gave the player the option of choosing three distinct styles when speaking to other characters: there was the smooth as silk, James Bond ‘sauve’ option; the robotic, by the book, Jason Bourne ‘professional’ option; or the wild eyed, ‘scream aggressively in your face then electrocute your testicles’ stylings of Jack Bauer - the ‘aggressive’ option (yup, the three J’s). There was also the game’s Mass Effect like ability to romance several characters, good RPG elements, combat abilities with cooldowns (including a bullet time chain shot - my personal favourite), character customisation and a complex political plot. Just writing this is making me want to reinstall the game and give it another playthrough.

 

Unfortunately the poor production values, bugs, dated graphics, sometimes comically bad enemy AI, and the flawed, repetitive combat were some of the complaints levelled at Alpha Protocol. Seems it doesn’t matter how good a game is, if it’s buggy and the enemies start randomly threatening walls, then it’s not going to win game of the year. Some of the combat abilities did feel vastly overpowered at times, even with the cooldowns. Plus, like so many other games, the boss battles were slated (seriously, why do developers so often get these wrong?) From my own standpoint I feel these issues never detracted too much from what was, and still is, an excellent game - so there. Maybe that wall deserved to be threatened anyway.

     

2 - Fear Effect : It may have been a release on the original Playstation way back in 1999, but I still vividly remember being blown away by this action-adventure game. Cell shading! Wow! Adult themes! Gasp! An EKG based life bar - the more scared you became the faster it pulsed! Jeepers! and it came on FOUR CDs! Bugger! Added to this was the amazing story: a tale of Chinese mythology, triads and journeys into hell - I admit that at the time a lot of it went over my youthful head. It contained some really intelligent puzzles, dark anti-heroes, multiple endings based on the choices you made - this game really was ahead of its time, which makes me wonder why so many people have never heard of it.

 

One of its biggest problems was the combat. The game used the familiar - and not always user friendly - ‘tank’ style of controlling the protagonist, so often utilised in survival horror games such as Resident Evil. Fear Effect added to this system by enabling the character to both run and shoot simultaneously, and also incorporated the ability to duck and roll; if you struggled with this control method before, then you’d have no chance with the way it’d been implemented here. I actually remember almost giving up on the game myself, before finally getting the hang of its fiddlyness. And let’s not forget this was 1999 - adult themed games were still viewed with a bit of a raised eyebrow. I remember one puzzle where Hana - the femme fatale I was controlling - was covered in nothing but a towel to hide her modesty, and now confronted by a goon pointing a gun at her. If I didn’t find a way out of the situation in a set time limit, then he would fire, and an insta-kill would occur. I was stuck on this puzzle for ages before I figured out the solution: simply drop the towel, exposing my ‘definitely not inspired by Lara Croft’ naked body to him, and while he was paralytically stunned - obviously having never seen a naked lady in his life before - make my escape.

Interesting side note: In 2004 infamous German ‘filmmaker’ Uwe Boll bought the movie rights to Fear Effect. The man behind such game to celluloid masterpieces as Bloodrayne, House of the Dead, and the teeth shattering awful Alone in the Dark, sadly ended up dropping the project; the world wept at what could have been. 

1 -Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines: I realise this a controversial number one, for the fact that it’s now generally thought of as being a well appreciated game. My point, however, is that it’s not appreciated enough! It should be spoken of in the same awed tones as Deux Ex and Half-Life 2 (which was released on the same day), and when it did hit the stores back in 2004, people didn’t realise what a masterpiece had been created.

 

I’ll give you a (tragically sad) example of what this game means to me: several years ago I was forced to attend a horrific team building seminar. The David Brent-esque presenter asked us all to think about a happy experience from our past, and surely enough, I thought of when I was playing Bloodlines. This led to a rather embarrassing moment later, when we had to recount to the group what particular moment we’d thought of; imagine having to follow “The birth of my son”, with “Has anyone ever played Vampire: The Masquerade?” - I’ve led a sheltered life.

 

So, what makes it my number one? Well, there’s the multiple ways available to tackle missions, fantastic RPG elements, huge character creation options, amazing story, beautiful writing, detailed characters, great graphics (for the time), the fantastic music (I’ll always remember Lacuna Coil’s Swamped playing over the end credits) and THAT haunted house level. It’s the first thing people always seem to talk about when discussing the game, and with good cause, truly one of the finest examples of how to create atmosphere, pacing and scares.

 

So why was Bloodlines not instantly regarded as being one of the all-time greatest, and why is it so few people’s ‘favourite game ever’? As mentioned before, coming out on the same day as Half-Life 2 is always going to be a bit of a problem, talk about getting overshadowed. Then there was the fact that it needed a monstrous PC - for the time - to run it at an acceptable level; I recall having to knock the resolution down on some sections just to get a frame-rate above 15 FPS. There was also the annoying boss fights (again!), agonisingly slow loading times, the general consensus that the second half of the game never matched up to the first, and then there was the game’s biggest issue: the bugs. These were a bit of a pain - one in particular caused a section to become impossible to progress from, resulting in a required patch to fix it. Eventually, as more patches came out and PCs became more powerful, Bloodlines finally started to resemble what the makers had envisioned, but by this time a lot of people had just given up on it. Maybe it was this slow journey from buggy release to to fully playable game that resulted in so many people today feeling the same appreciation that I do.

 

Despite its few initial shortcomings, Bloodlines still had a lifelong effect on me. Most people struggle to answer the ‘favourite ever game’ question, but I don’t. It’s such a shame it wasn’t made at a time when PCs could handle its demands better, and in an age when required patches are instantly downloaded; maybe then the studio wouldn’t have had to shut down, and the Vampire series be subsequently abandoned.

 

It may of gotten me compared to The Simpson’s Comic Book Guy in the eyes of my former team-mates, and contribute towards the break-up of a former girlfriend, but Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines is in my opinion the most under-appreciated - and also my favourite - game of all time. So if you ever get the chance to play any of the games on this list, and you’re hesitant to try as you’ve not really heard much about about them, just dive right in - you may learn a new appreciation for something.

 

Special mention goes to: Call of Cthulu: Dark corners of the earth, The Darkness, Beyond Good and Evil, Darksiders 1 and 2.