Cult classics (or "underrated games") that you found underwhelming.

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

There's tons of games out there, a select few are really popular, others not so much. If you've been on gaming forums for any length of time then chances are you've heard about less popular games that nonetheless have an intensely devoted fanbase: games like Ico or Phoenix Wright, for instance.

So I'm wondering: have you ever played any of those cult classics and thought to yourself "Eh, it's not that good!" or something along those lines? This topic is about that.


Some of mine:

Beyond Good & Evil: Lots of gameplay variety, none of it satisfying. A bog standard "Fight the power!" story, floaty controls. Yeah, I didn't care for this much. I would have finished it had it not been for the fact that the game suddenly turned into a fetch quest akin to Zelda: Wind Waker.

Oh, and the title is super misleading since the story's conflict is black-and-white as can be.

Spec-Ops: The Line: Praised by some as - to paraphrase - ''a condemnation of the use of violence in video games'' or ''a relentless takedown of military shooters like Call of Duty''. Personally, I found the game's story to be little more than a self-righteous, blatantly manipulative bait-and-switch. And the hypocrisy of the game chewing players out for finishing it, while the developers don't acknowledge their own part in it still baffles me. It's every bit as one-sided, manipulative and devoid of nuance as the games it so viciously mocks. It just has the opposite message.

PlatinumGames - Yes, a developer as opposed to just one game. They're hailed as one of the best action-game developers working today, and even though I'm a huge fan of action-games I just don't see it. They focus on style over substance, what with the constant QTEs and barely-interactive setpiece moments so many of their games have. The actual mechanics of their games tend to be sloppy or poorly thought out (MGR's parrying, W101's drawing) and their games tend to have enough padding to supply a football team. Their games are, to me, decent at best; they're on par with things like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow or the God of War series as opposed to something like Ninja Gaiden Black. Hell, I'll even take flawed efforts like Ninja Gaiden II or Devil May Cry 4 over anything Platinum's ever made.

So, those are my stories about supposedly ''underrated'' games I don't find underrated at all.

Care to share yours?

 

[veloper]

Shouldn't that be "OVERrated" as in I didn't like it, but the reactions elsewhere were overwhelmingly positive.
Because if the ratings were low and you don't like the games either, then everything is just as expected.

Taking the phrase '90% of everything is shit', it doesn't just apply just to novels, but to games as well I think.
If a metacritic score is LOW I can simply trust the game is shit and I won't ever bother to play it.
If the average score is high, a game can be anything between bad to great (usually mediocre).

That only leaves mixed reviews...
So I played Alpha Protocol. It scored a mediocre 72% on average. I found the game is very flawed but not terrible. Underrated? Maybe by Jim Sterling who gave it a 2/10, but nah, I think I can even see where Jim was coming from ('did I personally enjoy it?' and the gameplay does indeed suck), but generally not.

Finding truly underrated games, may be a monumental chore, now that I think on it. If most people think it's shit, the game probably is.
Now all the overrated games would make a very long list (with Galciv2 somewhere near the top).

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I wanted to like Alpha Protocol more and honestly, if I had played it right after KoTOR those many years ago my mind would have been blown. It wasn't terrible but it just didn't work for me like it did with some other people.

Then there's Eternal Darkness...I didn't like Eternal Darkness. I made it through a couple of levels and, saw a few of the more interesting sanity effects but it just couldn't stay interested long enough to want to see it through to the...midpoint.

I couldn't get into Killer 7 either but honestly, I only gave it about 2 hours. I may like it if I gave it more time but I had other things to play at the time.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I played Psychonauts a few years back and didn't see what the big deal is supposed to be at all. Yeah, it's a cool idea, some funny characters etc. but the gameplay is as standard 3D jump 'n run as can be, and as there tends to be in these games, way too many fucking collectibles that exhausted me when I had barely started playing.

 

[Pink Gregory]

PlatinumGames

Isn't it nice that we live in a world in which we can all disagree without consequence?

*twitch*

That being said you've clearly had negative experiences with fans on top of having a perfectly rational dislike, so I can hardly blame you for that.

Then there's Eternal Darkness...I didn't like Eternal Darkness. I made it through a couple of levels and, saw a few of the more interesting sanity effects but it just couldn't stay interested long enough to want to see it through to the...midpoint.

I couldn't get into Killer 7 either but honestly, I only gave it about 2 hours. I may like it if I gave it more time but I had other things to play at the time.

I've watched a full Let's Play of Eternal Darkness, and clearly I'm not going to have the same experience as playing it; but it feels like there's a lot implied complexity that didn't quite work out. Insanity effects really are a bit tame compared to the mindfuck some make it out to be. But then again the kind of mindfuck I'm thinking of would probably make quite an annoying and tiresome game, but one that specifically I would love.

Killer7...well, I do like it. But gawd it could have been, I 'unno, built better. None of the shooting feels very, uh, 'physical' shall I say; it's alright in concept, but just things like actually decent puzzles or some more creative not even enemy design, just placing what where. Definitely flawed, but you're not going to forget it in a hurry.

For me, it *does* make up for the gameplay flaws with its design, because I enjoy being in that world. But the flaws are glaring at times.

 

[StriderShinryu]

The first one that jumps out to me is Earthbound. I played it back when it first came out on the SNES and before it became the sensation that it is now, and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. It's a bog standard JRPG that doesn't compare at all with it's contemporaries and subsists solely on being quirky and "funny." It's actually one of the few SNES JRPGs that I can recall actually getting totally bored with in a time where that was almost all I ever wanted to play.

 

[Pink Gregory]

The first one that jumps out to me is Earthbound. I played it back when it first came out on the SNES and before it became the sensation that it is now, and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. It's a bog standard JRPG that doesn't compare at all with it's contemporaries and subsists solely on being quirky and "funny." It's actually one of the few SNES JRPGs that I can recall actually getting totally bored with in a time where that was almost all I ever wanted to play.

I really liked Earthbound.

But I've never played Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, basically any SNES RPG that's not a Final Fantasy.

To be honest it's one of the only JRPGs (well, JRPG by association only) that I've ever finished.

It most of it's infamy from Giygas, I imagine.

 

[Callate]

System Shock 2- but I've been down this road before. It's not a bad game, it just made some gratuitously player-unfriendly choices.

 

[MysticSlayer]

The early Fallout games. I just can't get into them despite numerous attempts at trying to. Maybe they were good for their time, but they haven't aged well at all, and for the most part, they just want to make me go play Fallout 3 or New Vegas where I can get a similar world that is still well-written and well-presented while being able to actually enjoy myself while I'm experiencing that world.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't recall playing a cult game and not liking it. Ico, Okami, Beyond Good & Evil, Killer7... I liked them all. I suppose I'm not that big a fan of No More Heroes? It's fun and a very unique, entertaining experience, I just fail to see the genius behind it. It seems to have been made primarily as a joke reaction to the popularity of GTA games.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Hard to say, since I don't really keep up much on ratings. Would Final Fantasy Tactics count? I keep hearing that the story was pretty good, but I personally found the gameplay to be too frustrating to continue past the halfway point...though mainly for a personal pet peeve. Why give me so many character options if you're going to so severely limit the ones I can use?

Spec-Ops: The Line: Praised by some as - to paraphrase - ''a condemnation of the use of violence in video games'' or ''a relentless takedown of military shooters like Call of Duty''. Personally, I found the game's story to be little more than a self-righteous, blatantly manipulative bait-and-switch. And the hypocrisy of the game chewing players out for finishing it, while the developers don't acknowledge their own part in it still baffles me. It's every bit as one-sided, manipulative and devoid of nuance as the games it so viciously mocks. It just has the opposite message.

Playing that game was like arguing with a particularly obnoxious troll. It was someone trying to Socratically convince you that you're a jackass, while not laying out all their premises and pretending it's intentional, then ignoring you when you point out that you took every premise they offered (even the flawed ones) and still came up with an entirely different, rational conclusion.

Also, giving control back in the final cutscene and not telling you. That was just mean.

 

[the_great_cessation]

As much as I tried to like it, I found myself getting bored with Jet Set Radio rather quickly. It seemed like a title I would love due to it's great sense of style but I found it to be quite clunky and just not fun to play - especially when compared to something like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (although this could just be because I'm not very good at JSR).

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Alpha Protocol - I still feel kinda bad about not enjoying Alpha Protocol. List out all of its features on paper, and it would read like a damn-near perfect game for someone like me. But in practice... ugh. I've tried playing through the game three or four times now, and I just can't get into it. The wonky controls, the crazy bugs, the incredibly unbalanced skills, and the hilariously bad voice acting by the player character all add up to ruin the game for me. I want to like it, I really do... I just can't...

Alan Wake - Another game that I was very much looking forward to. I can't say I hated this game or anything like that... it had its moments, sure... but boy was it boring. And I mean REALLY boring. The writing really wasn't all that great (funny, given that the protagonist is supposedly a somewhat successful writer), and the combat was ridiculously repetitive to the point of being tedious (it's also the vast majority of the game experience).

Dead Island - I have no idea how this became such a successful franchise. The first game was utter crap. The characters were incredibly unbalanced (yay for having one character's skill set revolve around throwing their best gear and HOPING to be able to find it again, and another character's skill set revolve around weapons that are fairly rare until the last half hour of the game!), the combat was kind of a joke ("KICK KICK KICK KICK KICK STOMP!" being generally more effective than weapons or skills anyway), the characters were completely forgettable to the point where EVEN THE GAME FORGETS ABOUT THEM (remember that time you left Sinamoi and the rest of your friends in that bunker to go get supplies/help, and then just never returned or acknowledged their existence again?), and it constantly tries to impact the player emotionally but in nearly every case trips and stumbles over its own general incompetence (oh no... something horrible just happened to that girl that we met like... five minutes ago... which wouldn't have happened if she'd actually behaved like a rational human being...). Then there's the health items... good lord, the health items. So every time you level up, your health pool increases. Pretty standard. Except the enemies also hit you equally as hard, so really, your effective health pool never changes. But what does change? THE HEALING ITEMS DON'T SCALE. So the more you level, the more damage you take, and the less effective you're able to heal. Yeah... fuck this game. Seriously.

Crysis Franchise - All style, no substance. Carrier battle at the end of the first one was pretty badass, though.

F.E.A.R. Franchise - One of my college roommates built this series up as being downright terrifying. Like "don't play this at night!" level terrifying. I thought it was aggressively boring. Nearly all of the horror came from jump scares, and all of the jump scares are so hilariously telegraphed that they aren't even really jump scares anymore. That wouldn't be so bad if the gameplay was good... but really it's just little more than a fairly mediocre shooter. I picked up the bundle on Steam during a sale for like $10, so I don't regret playing them for that price. But I definitely would have been disappointed if I paid full price for all of them.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Franchise - Another series, like Alpha Protocol up above, that I should absolutely adore. To the point where I keep playing them whenever a new one comes out on the sheer hope that it'll be better than the last, but I always come up disappointed. I will say that the one thing I can't fault them for whatsoever is atmosphere. Holy shit do they succeed at setting up the world they take place in. Beyond that, though... glitches galore, non-existent story/characters, and some incredibly mediocre/borderline bad shooter gameplay. These games are salvageable with mods, but on their own... ugh. Just couldn't get into them.

 

[Zhukov]

Okami.

Heard people talk about it for years.

Saw it got released on PSN.

Bought it.

Played it for a couple of hours.

Promptly uninstalled it.

It started off with a long and unskippable slideshow with text that scrolls at the pace of a lethargic snail and makes you button press through each slide while it sets out the story background and setting.

Then it gives you another long unskippable slideshow with text that scrolls at the pace of a lethargic snail and makes you button press through each slide while it sets out the exact same fucking story background and setting that the last fucking slideshow was about.

After a brief cutscene in which things threatened to actually bloody happen it treated me to an interminable and utterly asinine dialogue. Which also involved text scrolling at the pace of a lethargic snail and made me button press through each line of dialogue. I presume this requirement to confirm that I have in fact managed to read the text that scrolls at the pace of a lethargic snail is the game's way of ensuring I don't miss anything by falling asleep.

The above took a combined 40 fucking minutes to get through. Yes, I timed that shit.

If you think I'm being overly fussy about the text that scrolls at the pace of a lethargic snail and makes me button press through each line of dialogue, then I invite you to click on this spoiler for an object demonstration.

Spoiler: Not actually a spoiler

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read?

After wading through that crap I was rewarded with some utterly unremarkable fetch quests interspersed with dialogue and humour that could be generously described as childish and non-generously described as dear-God-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life.

Oh, there was some combat. It consisted of mashing one button, then when a sufficient level of mash has been achieved you pause the game and run a curser over your enemy to kill them. I shall charitably presume that it gets more complex later on, but any game that thinks I need an hour to master the intricacies of mash-mash-mash-mash-mouseover isn't worth sticking with long enough to find out.

 

[AtomChicken]

Some people will banish me to Hades for saying this, but I found Persona 4 rather underwhelming and over-hyped. And the fandom? I couldn't wrap my brain around how they function XD.

 

[AuronFtw]

The early Fallout games. I just can't get into them despite numerous attempts at trying to. Maybe they were good for their time, but they haven't aged well at all, and for the most part, they just want to make me go play Fallout 3 or New Vegas where I can get a similar world that is still well-written and well-presented while being able to actually enjoy myself while I'm experiencing that world.

Pretty much this!

I got FO1 and 2 for free from a gog giveaway, installed and started each... I was like "wow, this is a really neat TBS, I could totally see it being good." And then the niggles of an old game started coming out in storm. Terrible party member AI that will mow you down with SMGs *you gave them* trying to kill a rat with 2 hp. Every bit of wall looking pretty much the same except sometimes they have hidden goodies, so you have to run around clicking on each section and reading the text popup that assures you it's just a wall. And those fucking energy barriers in mariposa.

Just wish I'd played it when it was current.

 

[Dragonheart57]

I didnt like either Persona 3 or 4, which made me really sad because I really loved the first 2. Forced progress, lack of control in combat, getting really bored with the high school setting. I found myself dying because of stupid AI where I would have been fine in other JRPGs where you have full control, that would often spiral me into a dimension of being pissed off that made me turn off the game.

I've liked none of the 3 Persona games I've played so far. P1 has awful characters and combat, P2 has somewhat better combat and much better characters, and P3 has excellent characters but it's slower than dripping pitch, and they had to compensate for the stupid AI allies by making bosses too easy.

Persona was a massive disappointment for me, especially because I love the SMT series.

 

[RavingSturm]

Ive tried playing the DQ series and Phantasy Star games but I found waaay too grindy compared to say FF4 and up.

The early Fallout games. I just can't get into them despite numerous attempts at trying to. Maybe they were good for their time, but they haven't aged well at all, and for the most part, they just want to make me go play Fallout 3 or New Vegas where I can get a similar world that is still well-written and well-presented while being able to actually enjoy myself while I'm experiencing that world.

Pretty much this!

I got FO1 and 2 for free from a gog giveaway, installed and started each... I was like "wow, this is a really neat TBS, I could totally see it being good." And then the niggles of an old game started coming out in storm. Terrible party member AI that will mow you down with SMGs *you gave them* trying to kill a rat with 2 hp. Every bit of wall looking pretty much the same except sometimes they have hidden goodies, so you have to run around clicking on each section and reading the text popup that assures you it's just a wall. And those fucking energy barriers in mariposa.

Just wish I'd played it when it was current.

I dont fault players of the newer FO's for not being able to get into the FO1/2. I played the original FOs when they came out and they were brutal and glitchy even back then. You had to reload and save often. Some glitches include having your car or part of it disappear or some npcs would just become permanently hostile. Other times the dice rolls behind the scenes wouldnt go your way and you'd get killed by an smg burst even while wearing POW armor.

Ive also tried the Megaten/Persona games and the time investment required for these is not something I can afford anymore.

 

[lacktheknack]

System Shock 2- but I've been down this road before. It's not a bad game, it just made some gratuitously player-unfriendly choices.

This. I had to restart the game twice before ragequitting because "lol you didn't choose the skillset that makes proceeding physically possible".

Dat soundtrack, tho.