Your underrated games

[Robsoie]

It happens, you buy a game because you enjoyed the demo, play it, then as you like it a lot, you play it often and maybe for years.

But sometime you notice that this game had only (very) bad reviews everywhere, and globally on the internet this game is deemed at most as average or mediocre.

Basically you are enjoying a complete underdog, a very underrated game.

So how about sharing some name of games that you feel never had the success they deserved in your eyes ?

I will start with Conquest Frontier Wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_Frontier_Wars

That's a RTS setup in space, using 3 classic races (human-hitech aliens-organic aliens), in which the basic concept is to create fleets led by admirals with their specific characteristic and beat your opponent(s) as usual.

The first suprise i had with it is that once i installed my european version, there was no need of CD in drive without me having to hunt for something to get rid of that annoyance by myself, that was great to see this choice from the publisher of not annoying me.

The originality of this RTS was that the battles took place on several maps in the same time, all connected by wormholes.
The balance was very good, some ships had their special weaponry, you could employ a lot of tactics as each ships had their usefullness and the admiral concept was allowing for more specialised strike forces.

The universe had several kind of nebulae and asteroid fields that had various effects , good or bad, and so you had to take that in account before engaging enemy or defending a location.
The supply feature was simply great, as your ship were not able to fire unlimited ammo or use their specials indefinitively.
You needed either a supply line from a nearby planet or bring back some supply ships along your fleet to not get out of ammo too quickly so you could fight without having to retreat early back to your planet supplies to rearm.

Protecting your own supply ships and destroying the enemy ones could make the difference between a victory and a defeat in an encounter, even if you were facing stronger fleet, if their supply ran out, you could have a chance.

The AI was very competent, and very interesting to play with.
While i never got in MP, i enjoyed playing in SP , the main campaign was good enough with some nice twists, and the skirmish against AI was configurable and had enough variation to get me busy for a long time.

But Conquest Frontier Wars had mediocre reviews, never i read a single one in which CFW was said as a good game, everywhere it was reviewed only to be qualified as either average boring, or mediocre and bad.

[Captain Vlad]

Though it got decent reviews and still has a decent-sized fan base, I have to say that, when I played it, Arcanum seemed like a much better game than most folks give it credit for.

Usually people talk about it like it's Fallout's unattractive cousin, but I found the plotline and the many, many routes to having a successful character to be quite compelling.

[stabiz]

For me its Soldiers: Heroes of WW2. Most people have never heard of it, but I think its (still) the best WW2 rts ever made.

PS: Steam has a deal on it now.

[antikristuseke]

Originally Posted by Captain Vlad

Though it got decent reviews and still has a decent-sized fan base, I have to say that, when I played it, Arcanum seemed like a much better game than most folks give it credit for.

Usually people talk about it like it's Fallout's unattractive cousin, but I found the plotline and the many, many routes to having a successful character to be quite compelling.

If the combat system was so completely broken it would be a great game, but due to that it is only a good game, though the game world and story are bloody grand.

[Captain Vlad]

I never had any real issues with the combat system.

[Stealth Hunter]

Originally Posted by stabiz

For me its Soldiers: Heroes of WW2. Most people have never heard of it, but I think its (still) the best WW2 rts ever made.

PS: Steam has a deal on it now.

I loved that game.

Ever played Faces of War? It follows along the same lines of SHWW2, but it has more modernized graphics and a great modding community.

[stabiz]

Yes, I bought it on release expecting a sequel. I was bitterly disappointed (except the graphics). I hate the squad-thingy, the chaos and all the AI allies. I loved the micro management of SHOWW2 ad the slow pace. Men of War seems to be a bit more like the original, so spirits are high.

[nikimcbee]

I love Cossacks II, play on hard has the British or French.

[oche]

One of my favorites of all time and IMHO one of the most unappreciated pirate games is "Cutthroats! Terror on the high seas", this one's far much better than the 2004 cartoonish Sid Meier remake.

It really gave me the same satisfaction as the the original 1987 Pirates!. They really went beyond with Cutthroats by the time it came out..., this is a great example that you don't need eyecandy and other @#$% to have a great game.

[Max2147]

Sports Car GT! It's old and gone now, but it was my favorite game for a long time.

From the 'Top 5 PC games' topic: Nobody's ever heard of it, but this game was as fun as it gets. It was the little game that could. It started as project by a then-unknown studio called ISI. It bounced around between three publishers while it was in development, and the series it was meant to simulate went broke before the game came out. After all the delays the game was cobbled together and released as a low-budget game by EA. Nobody really paid any attention to it. It was a hodgepodge of random cars and tracks with outdated graphics and no clear market. It wasn't realistic enough to be a pure simulation, but it was too realistic to drive off the pure arcade crowd.

And it was absolutely brilliant. It was easy enough to sit down and drive a race without any preparation, but challenging enough to keep you interested. The AI was superb for its day - the AI cars felt like humans, since they could beat you but also make mistakes.

But the best part about SCGT was the mods. Anybody with a modicum of computer savvy and Notepad could edit the game. The SCGT community was small, but the modders were talented and prolific. They made hundreds of tracks and thousands of cars. If you could dream it, they probaby made it: 1000 mph dragsters, RV's, boats, blimps, F1 cars, anything. One SCGT mod ended up morphing (via a VERY long process) into a full retail game (the GTR series).

ISI didn't intend for SCGT to be modded, but they realized that it had turned their little unwanted game into a legend. When EA chose ISI to make their F1 games, ISI made sure to make the games mod-friendly. When ISI went independent again, they made rFactor, the ultimate mod-friendly racing sim. A lot of us like to think of it as Sports Car GT 2.

[kiwi_2005]

Battlecruiser 3000AD
Battlecruiser Millennium
BC Universal Combat

Derek Smart's Battlecruiser series got bad ratings average score was 4/10

I still play BC Universal Combat now and then. The first one Battlecruiser 3000AD which Derek Smart released free to the public on the internet before 'Take Two Interactive' got hold of it and released the retail version that was worse than the free one. One thing i liked about the first Battlecruiser is it had a very cool cockpit for its time in the dos days, buggy as hell yet playable then for some reason in his next games he took out the cool cockpit and put in a flatscreen one which killed the realism of being in a Cruiser for me but i still played on!. First game was 9 years in the making, .

Once you get past the 10 Zillion keyboard commands and can overlook the graphics know when to fight and when to flee BC Universal Combat IMHO is one of the best space sims to ever come out.

All 3 games are Full Free Downloads.
http://www.3000ad.com/site/free_games/

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by oche

One of my favorites of all time and IMHO one of the most unappreciated pirate games is "Cutthroats! Terror on the high seas", this one's far much better than the 2004 cartoonish Sid Meier remake.

It really gave me the same satisfaction as the the original 1987 Pirates!. They really went beyond with Cutthroats by the time it came out..., this is a great example that you don't need eyecandy and other @#$% to have a great game.

I still remember how I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately I never got to play it.