Games you feel that only you played

[Poetic Nova]

I never hear the name 'Demolition Racer' drop. It's a insanely fun Destruction Derby clone that I personally find better executed.

PC port is horrible since it runs on the Test Drive engine. Playstation version runs on a in house one I believe.

 

[Something Amyss]

Superbrothers: The Sword and Sworcery EP. It's a cute little fantasy game that looks like an Amiga game and sounds like Pink Floyd did the soundtrack. I love it and despite my trying haven't been able to convince anyone else to play it. And I've yet to meet anyone else who knows it exists.

Odds are, if it's been in a Humble Bundle or two, someone else knows it exists.

I think I technically "own" it multiple times because of bundles.

I didn't play it very long, I only bring it up because I imagine a bunch of people have it. Especially since one of the bundles included Limbo and Psychonauts.

 

[RavingSturm]

Singularity. Activision left this game out to die as well as the other Wolfenstein game before New Order.

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

When it comes to talking about The Elder Scrolls, my favourite all time series, everyone talks about either a) Skyrim b) Online c) Morrowind or even d) Arena or Daggerfall. No love for Oblivion?

Oblivion is still one of my favourite games. Haven't played too much of Morrowind at this point (seems like a great game with way more depth than later Elder Scrolls entries, but way less accessible and thus harder to grow accustomed to in this age) and Skyrim was a big disappointment for me. I can't wait until I get a decent PC and am able to play Oblivion with mods.

Radiata Stories is my answer. It's a quirky PS2 JRPG developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix that no one knows about. Which is pretty strange...Square Enix published a lot of lesser-known JRPGs back then, but they all seemed to have some kind of cult following, no matter how small. I've never seen Radiata Stories talked about by anyone. I haven't played it in years, but I do intend to go back to it one of these days, especially since I have a much greater appreciation of its genre now than I did when I was in my early teens. It's not one of the best games ever (I remember way more running around than there should have been, for instance), but it's certainly decent. It also did a branching path storyline before it was cool; about halfway through the game you're presented with a choice that changes the way the rest of the game will progress quite a bit. I haven't played much of the Tales series, but I would describe the combat as a rudimentary version of that. There were also a bunch of characters you could recruit to be in your party, mostly as a result of doing side-quests.

To a lesser extent, Spyro: A Hero's Tail and Crash: Twinsanity carried the names of their franchises quite respectably yet not many people acknowledge them. They might not have been as good as the games made by their original creators on the PS1, but I would have been happy if those series had continued going in that direction. Far better than what Activision did with the licenses later, at least.

 

[404notfound]

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi-Ops:_The_Mindgate_Conspiracy]

It wasn't a great game execution-wise but damn if it wasn't fun.

I had forgotten the name of this game, I remember playing it and like you say, it was really fun to play.

OT: Pacific Storm: Allies, like Psi-Ops, the game itself isn't great quality but I enjoyed playing it for what it was and I had fun with it.

 

[Jeremy Dawkins]

Aliens Versus Predator: Extinction for Ps2, although it was also for Xbox. It's not bad for a console RTS, and all of the types of Aliens and Predator Gear it has to show off are really cool if you are a fan of the universe.

 

[Autumnflame]

Survival the ultimate challenge.

A disaster survival game that had good crafting and skill mecahnic while you built tools to survive and escape.

 

[Candidus]

Seriously, this. Did anybody else at all play this? Bonus points if you completed it. I think that's a very small club.

 

[Grizzly_Bear_1]

Darkstone

The Diablo clone I liked and played way more than Diablo.

 

[lechat]

I feel like i am the only person who has played blades of time


essentially a budget hack and slash but your ability to rewind time and have multiple versions of your self continuing doing what you done before you rewound sets it apart from any other game ever made.
It wasn't a good game but if it only got a bit more attention we could see more games like it and with a bit of polish it could have been great.

 

[Scarecrow1001]

Anyone else ever play Zapper, on the Playstation 2? Well, Zapper: One Wicked Cricket anyway... I must play that again.

 

[awkwardangel]

The original Evolution: World of Sacred Device on the Dreamcast. It seems like a lot of people have played Evolution Worlds on the Gamecube because it came out when the Gamecube was starved for RPG's. However the original game had the most potential, promise, and in general charm to me. Yet it seems like I never meet anyone else who has ever played it.

Then again, Dreamcast.. and it was poorly reviewed and I can't say it didn't deserve those reviews. I just apparently like bad games if they have a bit of charm.

 

[Pete Oddly]

This badboy right here:

And this hilarious bastard right here:

I'm sure other people have played these, but whenever I mention them (even to people in their 30s) I usually get blank looks.

 

[Pete Oddly]

I played Dino Crisis and I greatly enjoyed it.

As to the question at hand, one of the "Cool concept but lacking execution" games that I played as a lad was

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psi-Ops:_The_Mindgate_Conspiracy]

It was a fun game that gave you psychic powers! It was always fun to grab that one guard and just UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN like a psychotic little kid playing with his action figures!

It wasn't a great game execution-wise but damn if it wasn't fun.

Psi-Ops is a game everyone should play. It was ahead of it's time, but clunky, and deserved a sequel way more than most games from that era.

Telekinesis + Soldier + Giant Fan = Fountains of Awesome

 

[gigastar]

Im literally the only person i know that has played AI War: Fleet Command.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

What game comes to mind?

Personally, for me, it is the Dino Crisis series. Back in the day when Resident Evil and Silent Hill were super popular, this series was also running alongside them. RE had zombies. SH has all sorts of creatures. Dino Crisis had, well, dinosaurs, and it was great. A lot of people were turned off by it because it seemed like an RE knockoff, and it sort of was. They even promoted RE3 with a demo in the original launch of DC1. That didn't stop CAPCOM from, maybe accidentally, creating one of their finer series.

In my personal opinion, the tank controls that made these kind of games play the way they did were perfected in the Dino Crisis series and never matched again. They also made that transition with DC1-DC2 from survival horror to action before RE and did it just as well. It has a bit of a cult following, but it honestly does not get enough praise. Dino Crisis 1 was the 2nd best survival horror game (behind SH2) and Dino Crisis 2 is one of the best action games the PS1 had to offer. Let's ignore DC3 like we do RE6, alright?

Anybody else play it?

I recently played the first one and when I was much younger (middle school) I had the second one. Sadly, I also had a non-Sony memory card so I never made it very far. I love the first one since the emphasis is more on outsmarting the dinosaurs and using laser grids to keep them away from you. I don't remember too much about the second one...I remember it being Resident Evil 3-ified (ie: tons more ammo and a greater emphasis on killing things). I haven't made it very far in Dino Crisis 1 yet as other games keep taking me away from it.

Also, Syphon Filter. Just doesn't get talked about.

Syphon Filter was amazing. That opening level is still one of my favorites ever.

And the air taser is the best weapon ever.

The taser in general is one of the most satisfying weapons I've used in an action game. I haven't made it far in this game either but when I do get around to playing with it, good times are had. I've only ever played the first one though and as far as I know there are sequels spanning all the way to the PSP.

---

A ton of people will sing the praises of Psychonauts but another game that came out around that same time but was somehow given even less attention was a platformer called Voodoo Vince.

I've talked about Otogi and its sequel and that series is one of the Xbox exclusives that do seem to have a small following but NOBODY else seems to have played Voodoo Vince. Vince is a voodoo doll who has come to life and who must save his creator from a neck-beard. The game is made up of clever platforming, imaginative boss fights, a couple of semi-fun vehicle sections, items to collect etc. This is about as Rare as you can get without having your game made by Rare. The big gimmick for this game is a focus on combat and the ability to use screen-clearing Voodoo attacks. They're randomized outside of boss fights but they're still pretty cool little animations. The game is packed full of some pretty good humor as well. It wasn't all dark humor but remember, this game came out when Invader Zim ruled the Earth and it was impossible to escape the awesomeness that was dark humor. Sadly, this is only on the original Xbox and if you own a working one than you're actually in luck since it's inexpensive. It may be available on the Xbox Live store but I have no idea how well it might run. If you have a chance to play it, definitely do so. If you can't, it looks like someone did a lets play of it. It was fairly well received, Game Informer was the nicest to it giving it an 8.5/10, and Gamespy gave it a 3/5...on Metacritic it's sitting at a 73% so use that information however you chose in assessing its worth.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I actually DID play Dino Crisis and Syphon Filter a bit. The former in arcades (I think? That or I'm confusing it with Time Crisis/Resident Evil/Area 51/Etc.) and the latter on the original PlayStation.

As for my own titles?

Nox stands out.

Just looking at the GOG [http://www.gog.com/game/nox] link shows that, yes, a fair number of people played it, but the very first review is quite telling:

"You know what I am talking about. You log in one morning to find that game has just gone up for sale. One of those obscure games that stole many hours from childhood. You try telling other people about it and they just stare at you blankly. Its game that you swore that if you ever saw it again, you would buy it post-haste. Nox is that game for me."

This describes it exactly.

I spent years trying to remember the damned title and nobody I talked to had any idea what I was talking about.

Spent maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaany hours doping around in this top down diablo-esque title. Still one of my favorites too.

 

[Veldel]

When it comes to talking about The Elder Scrolls, my favourite all time series, everyone talks about either a) Skyrim b) Online c) Morrowind or even d) Arena or Daggerfall. No love for Oblivion?

Oblivion is still one of my favourite games. Haven't played too much of Morrowind at this point (seems like a great game with way more depth than later Elder Scrolls entries, but way less accessible and thus harder to grow accustomed to in this age) and Skyrim was a big disappointment for me. I can't wait until I get a decent PC and am able to play Oblivion with mods.

Radiata Stories is my answer. It's a quirky PS2 JRPG developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix that no one knows about. Which is pretty strange...Square Enix published a lot of lesser-known JRPGs back then, but they all seemed to have some kind of cult following, no matter how small. I've never seen Radiata Stories talked about by anyone. I haven't played it in years, but I do intend to go back to it one of these days, especially since I have a much greater appreciation of its genre now than I did when I was in my early teens. It's not one of the best games ever (I remember way more running around than there should have been, for instance), but it's certainly decent. It also did a branching path storyline before it was cool; about halfway through the game you're presented with a choice that changes the way the rest of the game will progress quite a bit. I haven't played much of the Tales series, but I would describe the combat as a rudimentary version of that. There were also a bunch of characters you could recruit to be in your party, mostly as a result of doing side-quests.

To a lesser extent, Spyro: A Hero's Tail and Crash: Twinsanity carried the names of their franchises quite respectably yet not many people acknowledge them. They might not have been as good as the games made by their original creators on the PS1, but I would have been happy if those series had continued going in that direction. Far better than what Activision did with the licenses later, at least.

Omg you named and said what I was going to.

It's among my favorite games of all time.


Ot: Soul Nomad and the World Eaters that game was so much fun and the evil path was insane. Then you had Gig who is so damn fun to listen to for all his crazyness

 

[cleric of the order]

I mean, it was okay, wasn't anything spectacular, an alright tower defence game with a decent story, but it was fun for what it was, I played it to the end which I don't usually do with games I pick up on a whim. Never seen anyone else talk about it, so I think it fits this thread.

I played it too, I loved the game myself.


For me It'd have to be, nostalgia, wipeout 64 and every non 40k table top game I own.

 

[Storm Dragon]

There was this one game on the PS2 called "Scaler" that I played years ago. It was all right, but I got stuck on one level and never beat it. I think I might still have it lying around somewhere, I should see about finishing it one of these days.