The Most Underrated Games of the Decade

[Heraklitus]

OT:
I thought Star Wars Episode 3 was fun.
But then I'm a sucker for messing with the canon and slicing body parts off Storm Clone Troopers.
EDIT:
HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN OKAMI?[/quote]

[HEADING=1]IT HASN'T CHANGED DECADES[/HEADING]
We're in the second year of our current decade, 2010-2020. The last decade ended 367 days, 2 hours and 4 minutes ago (using British timezone).
[HEADING=2]2011 is not the start of a new decade.[/HEADING]
I'm sick of this swarm of "x game of the decade" threads like it's just ended. Ignorance really rubs me up the wrong way.
Sorry, and thank you.
[/rant]

OT:
I thought Star Wars Episode 3 was fun.
But then I'm a sucker for messing with the canon and slicing body parts off Storm Clone Troopers.
EDIT:
HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN OKAMI?

Incorrect. You're one of those people who thinks there was a year 0.

 

[hermes]

Best game all critics loved but noone played: Psychonauts

Best game some critics hated but I loved: God Hand

 

[ChipSandwich]

-Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio Future, a fairly interesting game with a nice touch to it. Easy and a bit repetitive gameplay wise, but it was cool enough to ignore those faults.

-Metal Arms: Glitch in the System - If I had a dollar for every person who has even heard of this game, I'd be worth 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars. Although tbh, it wasn't really original or spectacular, but it played well and was a decent amount of fun.

-Best game critics loved but everyone else hated: Deus Ex Invisible War - it may have been burned in the shadow of it's ridiculously awesome predecessor (DX1 has aged very very well, I still play it repeatedly and so do many others), but a lot of people don't want to realize that it's still a lot better than most of the other stuff that came out at the time or even 5 years later.

 

[Talon_Skywarp]

Nier

It's great.
Truly great.

 

[Anchupom]

Incorrect. You're one of those people who thinks there was a year 0.

I believe that the year before "Year 1" was the start. Not necessarily a "Year 0", maybe 1 BC instead of AD.

But applying years that close to the whole centre of our calender system is dodgy anyway.

Did AD start at the birth of christ or the death? If so, then was the year of his death/birth 1 AD or was it the year after? We all could be 25 (or how ever old Jesus was before he was crucified) years ahead or behind what we should be.

I personally believe that the year that started AFTER his death/birth was labelled year one, giving the year in which the new state of Christ's being (either alive or dead, depending on whether AD was after his birth after his death) was the "Year 0" you called it.
I personally prefer "Flux Year", but that hasn't really caught on.

 

[Al Wainwright]

super mario sunshine
i hear psychonauts talked about ALL THE TIME and everyone liked it
nobody says anything bad about psychonauts
the same goes for okami
lots of people hated sunshine and i was glad it took a different direction instead of sticking with the INCREDIBLY powerless mario
i hated that after the generation of luigi's mansion and sunshine they went back to mario having nothing but a spin
hooray an extra jump

 

[Kill100577]

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Great Horror game...really fucks with your mind and as its on the Game Cube...very underrated

 

[PhiMed]

Incorrect. You're one of those people who thinks there was a year 0.

I believe that the year before "Year 1" was the start. Not necessarily a "Year 0", maybe 1 BC instead of AD.

But applying years that close to the whole centre of our calender system is dodgy anyway.

Did AD start at the birth of christ or the death? If so, then was the year of his death/birth 1 AD or was it the year after? We all could be 25 (or how ever old Jesus was before he was crucified) years ahead or behind what we should be.

I personally believe that the year that started AFTER his death/birth was labelled year one, giving the year in which the new state of Christ's being (either alive or dead, depending on whether AD was after his birth after his death) was the "Year 0" you called it.
I personally prefer "Flux Year", but that hasn't really caught on.

He was 32. Your belief is immaterial. The fairly well-documented and relatively self-evident FACT is that the church labelled the first year of his life 1 AD (anno domini i.e. "the year of our lord", meaning how many years Christ has been "alive"). Whether they were correct in the date is beside the point. It's convention. Therefore, the first decade "of our lord" consisted of years 1-10. The second consisted of years 11-20.

I was always under the impression that decades started on a year ending in 1, the first decade being years 1-10. Thus, 2011-2020 would be the 202nd decade. But even assuming that you're correct that the decade began in 2010, wouldn't the last year of that decade be 2019, not 2020?

Yeah, 2019 would end with that decade, thats the general idea.

Well, you just said 2010-2020 would be a decade, so... That's eleven years = not a decade.

 

[Goldeneye103X2]

Does anyone recognise this cathphrase:
HENSHIN A GO-GO BABY!
If you don't, then I rest my case. My avatar gives a rather large hint.

I will keep on saying this until people get the message: For all it's lack of gameplay and emphasis on story, the Another Code/Trace Memory series is an absolute gem. A very fine (if occasionally slow) story, with good characters.

I think Timesplitters 2 may have been under-rated. Well, it certainly is now.

 

[ImprovizoR]

The Punisher (2005). It was overlooked because people thought it was a movie tie-in cause Tomas Jane voiced Frank Castle. But the game is awesome. It has everything a third person needs and none of that boring stuff like health regeneration and cover based combat. Instead it had dual wielding any weapon you want, gruesome interrogations, hostage shields, a lot of stuff to do with hostages like throw a hostage through the door to get killed by his own guys, use of environment to your advantage etc. It had a cool story based on original Punisher comic book characters like Jigsaw, Bullseye, Fisk, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Iron Man cameo.
Levels were great, music was surprisingly awesome (orchestra, and it fits the game perfectly). A lot of cool weapons and upgrades for weapons, health, armor etc. You could buy all those upgrades by using points that you earn by killing and interrogating enemies in various ways with various types of weapons. The higher the difficulty the more points you could achieve. Point collecting was addictive as hell. It was one of the reasons I kept replaying levels over and over again. Replay value is great. And after you finish the game you could play various challenges. All in all Punisher blew my mind. It's one of the best third person shooters I've ever played. Too bad almost no one knows about it.

 

[parasyteFMA]

ALAN WAKE! It was a bad decision to release it the same week as RDR, but this is has the best story in any game I have played. I hope there is a sequel.

 

[Tohru_Readman]

Jet Set Radio Future (xbox)
Suikoden V (ps2)
Okami (ps2)

There are probably more but these three deserve more attention, all great games.

 

[Anchupom]

*Super Snip*

Hey, I've already rectified my mistake, and I've never cared about the yearing system to actually research it.

And still, if they named the first year of his life AD, shouldn't that mean the new year and Christmas share the same date?

Or if the people who say he was born in march were right, then new year should be in March.

 

[northeast rower]

The Kane and Lynch games. Yes, both of them. I genuinely enjoyed them for the story and characters. Any game can have shooting, and these had mediocre shooting. However, it was the little moments in the games that completely hooked me. Whether it was rappelling down a skyscraper, beating your wife's killer to death with a shovel, wandering around shell-shocked in the first game, seeing Lynch completely break down in A Thousand Cuts, watching the incredibly akward opening in "Welcome to Shanghai", or seeing Kane completely freak out after Lynch kills Shangsi, these games have always thrown something at me that comes out of nowhere. Seeing them both develop over time, seeing their relationship evolve, seeing the oddly tender moments of both games... it's pretty shocking. I really like how a psychopath acts as Kane's conscience as Kane keeps Lynch from letting his emotions take over. Their relationship is symbiotic, whether they like it or not.

You might ask "how can there be tender moments in games like these?" Well, I'll just pull out one example from each game. Look up the cutscenes on Youtube if you want to know more.

"Jenny, I wrote you a letter..."

"Lynch... don't look."

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Probably lacking the proper hindsight to give proper nominations, but I'm leaning towards Metro 2033 and Risen -- or as I like to call them, "the games that Bethesda should be forced to play until they learn how to create towns that aren't horribly unnatural abominations populated by uncanny valley zombies".

 

[PhiMed]

*Super Snip*

Hey, I've already rectified my mistake, and I've never cared about the yearing system to actually research it.

And still, if they named the first year of his life AD, shouldn't that mean the new year and Christmas share the same date?

Or if the people who say he was born in march were right, then new year should be in March.

It's convention. The calendar year was established (with slight modifications afterwards) by Julius Caesar. It's a Roman calendar that we've been using since well before Christ's birth. Convention prior to the church (retroactively, based on tradition) establishing the B.C./A.D. system was to number years based on the reigning form of government, usually the reign of the emperor at the time. So it would be, say, year 3 of Nero's reign.

The Church based its numeration of years on tradition, not actual knowledge. The selection of December 25th as the date of Christ's birth was really just an effort to incorporate the winter solstice festival into the new Catholic festivities. Most people who study this sort of thing believe that he was actually born some time around January 6, 4 B.C.

But that's beside the point. It's convention. The church declared that they would begin numbering years based on a certain date, and that's what we did. Everyone on the Julian calendar uses the same numbering system today, and based on that numbering system, the first decade A.D. (or, more commonly now, C.E.) is, BY DEFINITION, is years 1-10. Therefore, all decades begin with a year ending in 1 and end in a year ending in 0.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Dynasty Tactics 2.
Fantastic strategy and tactical gameplay, many storylines that branch out, very good replay value, fun multiplayer, and it was made by KOEI.