Creeper World. It's like an RTS/TD type game that uses fluid dynamics that is always fun to go back to. The campaign writing and UI are just terrible but the gameplay is great and there are plenty of good community made maps to try.
This game series is the best. Somebody suggested the 3rd one to me when I was looking for a game which simulated the feeling of moving across the map with a seige tank line in StarCraft. It was perfect. The move th 3d in the 4th one worked very well too. Excited for the wide scrolling looking one they have coming out next too
Guild Wars 1. Unlike other MMOs it is entirely separately instances in combat, the level cap was very low, it had a focus on narrative storytelling, and a max parysizr of up to 8(depending on area of the game). It also came from the era where subscriptions were the model for MMOs and it didn't require (or even have) subs. You just bought the game and you got to play. There were multiple campaigns (basically separategames worlds with different proffestions and skills) that you could cross between with any of your characters assuming you owned that campaign. Very different game from gw2.
Played GW1 when it first came out and it was a rush. You actually depended on each other to win campaigns and sometimes get the bonus. MMOs were still young then so botters were practically non existent. I loved the story. Felt like I was playing a DND campaign with all the cutscenes!
Still one of the best MMOs in my opinion. At the time, the landscapes were beautiful, especially in Old Ascalon (sp?)
I played the hell out of this video game called Axis and Allies that I found for like $5 in cheap games section of Office Max around 2008. I've never heard anyone talk about it or share my experience. I'm sure it wouldn't hold up if I played it today but back in '08 I was a pro.
It was actually a board first, and there have been a number of electronic versions throughout the years. I had one such adaptation on CD growing up in the late 90s, but I'm not sure it would be the same one you played.
Cool game, though. I sunk lots of hours into it.
Axis and Allies was a board game too I think?
Hell yeah, the Army Men games are so dope. Terribly clunky, combat leaves much to be desired, mediocre map layouts but goddamn do I still find them fun. Specifically Sarge's Heroes, would love a switch port.
Not sure how unpopular it is, but "The Settlers 2: 10th Anniversary" is a great remaster of a game which I think is a bit forgotten now. It's still a really fun and charming citybuilder with unique mechanics.
I don't think it's unpopular as in "people don't like it". I get the impression that very few people in the US have ever heard of this series, which is a shame.
I feel like I'm guilty of this within the Borderlands series -- I love all the things about 2 that OG fans seemed to dislike, namely Anthony Burch's writing and the weapons spread, and I actually think 3 is pretty respectable as a shooter; it's a lot of fun to play, it's just a weak sequel to 2. The things that fans seem to love about The Pre-Sequel (the ice and the butt slams and the new player characters) left me cold, and I think the first game pales in comparison to the second.
That's funny, because I love 1 and Pre-Sequel the most in the entire series. 2 just feels so dated, and I can't stand listening to the dialogue anymore, but Pre-Sequel has that something about it that I loved about 1.
Exactly, seems like I came to the right thread :P
I loved 3. Granted, it was my first Borderlands game, but I thought it was a lot of fun.
Not unpopular back in the day but it sure is now -- Battlefield 1943. I play on xbox all the time, the servers are still online and you can still find full lobbies. I've been playing it on and off for a decade. Its just chaotic low-stress fun.
i feel like there are two ways to interpret this question. some games are unpopular because they're widely known, but considered to be not good, but others are merely niche games that never got widespread recognition.
for the former, Mad Max (2015) got mixed reviews and seems to have been generally regarded as MEDIOCRE, but i still keep coming back to it every so often. for the latter, I wanna plug an old PS2 game called Steambot Chronicles, that has never gotten the recognition it deserves. Its a steampunk mech sandbox rpg, and is legit fantastic, but my partner is the only other person i've met that has even heard of it.
New Super Mario Bros U. Many people may hate it for being the same as the others NSMB games but it was the first Mario game I played and I very much enjoyed it. I revisit it to collect all the star coins.
Dynasty Warriors, They are my "Dumb fun" game. I usually just turn off my brain and "grind" even though I usually call out every game for grinding or unnecessary combat.
But something about that series makes me pick up every one and waste tens of hours just killing the same-ish soldiers over and over.
Lu Bu has entered the battlefield!
Same here. And if they come out with another one I’ll grab it. Although I didn’t play 9 because of bad reviews.
But I did recently replay DW8 Empires yet again. Love it!
I picked up a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms to read finally.
Dragon Age 2. Lot's of people think it's the weakest game in the Dragon Age series and there is a lot to not like: dungeons and outdoor areas are largely the same recycled maps with different layouts, story was a bit lackluster compared to the previous title, party controls were a step down from Dragon Age Origins. I still enjoy it for the party dynamics and the main character dialogue wheel had more varied option that didn't along with previous Bioware titles that had the good, neutral, and evil/jerk responses.
I'm a huge Dragon Age fan, and 2 is my absolute favorite. It gets a lot of (perfectly valid) criticism, but the 'found family' themes really resonated with me. And I love how it focuses on the people in this one city instead of having a big, save-the-entire-world narrative like most RPGs. It felt so personal.
Plus, snarky Hawke is one of the most fun protagonists I've ever played in a game. It really doesn't deserve the bad reputation that it got.
Not a series but the Saboteur is an awesome AC/GTA clone set during WW2 that I never see anyone talk about
Edit: special mention for Klonoa 2. My dad picked it up for me when I was a kid and I recently replayed it. It’s a pretty challenging 3D platformer with a story that will draw tears
Maybe not an unpopular game, but my unpopular game opinion is that I prefer Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas. Both are fantastic games, but I prefer the more bleak and desolate Capital Wasteland to the more lived in Mojave Wasteland. Plus I kinda liked the karma system of fo3.
I like both, but Fallout 3 is my favourite as well. I really enjoyed the aesthetic, the music, everything. It was my first game and got me obsessed with the universe.
The most unpopular/niche game series I've really liked is the Princess Maker series. Japanese games which only received official English translations recently, niche genre (life raising sim), some silly fanservicey elements... but it reminded me of playing with dolls when I was younger, and in some ways the Sims series also.
Another series I liked which is much more well known but still has a small presence in the gaming consciousness is Star Fox. Character cameos in the Super Smash Bros series don't count.
SSX Tricky
My whole family has put in way too many hours, it's the only game where we actually are competitive against each other. Even my dad, who plays 0 other video games likes to play with us. I wouldn't say it's unpopular, just irrelevant today for most people, but not for us...
For a long time, we each had some PS2s to play, but not I emulate on the steam deck and and play even more than before. I've never had a game before where I actually try for high scores and practice.
My oldest brother is definitely the undisputed champion, but I can beat him when my favorite character, Moby, is maxed out, while his, Mac, is default level (which is the case and will remain the case on my steam deck)
Also, I still play Black Ops 1 zombies. I think they added more to the zombies in future games than I'm interested in. I own black ops 3 and hear that Shadows of Evil is amazing but every time I sit down to learn it, I just lose interest. Maybe there's extra friction because I'm usually playing solo.
These are both great games that are highly lauded, though. Unless I'm crazy, SSX tricky is/was incredibly popular and BO1 Zombies, specifically Kino, was also prolific.
Damn, I wish I had friends to play pls Zombies with 😭
Eternal Card Game - basically an online MTG clone. It's always been small, and the userbase has been gradually shrinking since it started. I still think it's a great game though.
Hey, this is awesome to see. I worked on Eternal back before launch.
I thought it was a great digital version of mtg.
I was genuinely unaware for a long time that P.N. 03 on the Gamecube was pretty strongly disliked, and now seemingly forgotten.
I love everything about this damn game - the ridiculous "inside a macbook" looking aesthetic, the Drum n Bass-esque soundtrack, the fact that it's a game based on getting a high score (which is probably the one game mechanic I miss the most in a lot of more modern games), what more could you want?!
Section 8 and Section 8 Prejudice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_(video_game)
A fantastic pair of games which died too quickly because everyone saw the power armor and thought it was going to be a standard run and gun Halo style game. When in fact it had a mechanic that required dropping shields with certain types of weapons before you could then use other types to penetrate the armor. It also had a power management mechanic allowing you to move faster or use other abilities if you had the power remaining to do so.
As a result all the Halo/COD bro's bounced off the game because the few of us who took the time to understand and master those mechanics would just absolute wreck their faces. This unfortunately also included many critics/reviewers. Which results in a whole lot of "this game sucks". In this case the bliss of ignorance killed both games.
I enjoyed them immensely if briefly. They died too soon.
I remember playing at least the first one back in the day. It was a solid shooter for sure. The problem now is that the video game market is so huge that unless you are providing a quality product which is being constantly updated people will move onto the next big thing.
Aranock-Online; Still available, but nothing like its earlier days, predictably.
Does Diablo 3 count? It got panned at launch and I do understand why. The story was predictable and dumb. Making the whole game revolve around a damn auction house made it unsatisfying. But man, the game itself played so well - I loved smashing my way through a dungeon as fast as I could wiping whole screens at a time. And they did do "loot 2.0" with the expansion, which killed the auction house and made the gear you picked up actually worthwhile sometimes.
Diablo 4 feels kinda meh to me by comparison.
its playerbase fell off so hard, but i still really liked nickelodeon all star brawl. hopefully a sequel comes out sometime
i like a couple games that are not really obscure, but are far from the most popular MMOs or well received sequels:
Been playing Hero's Hour recently from the itch summer bundle. Never played any Civilization style games before but this one is really fun.
I used to log in to armorgames.com to play shitty browser flash games occasionally. There was one "mmo" game called Rise of Mythos. It was a deck building collectible card game. I would play it for a few days then forget about it for 6 months. Over time I had a cool deck from years of occasionally logging in, never spent money on it though. Then one day I logged in and it was gone. I would have paid some money to keep it around.
Armor games was so great. I forgot what the games were called but I used to play one set in WW1 and it’s sequel set in WW2 all the time. There were 3 lanes and different troop types you could send in
Azure Dreams. A PS1 Konami game that mixes elements of RPGs, roguelikes, dating sims, and creature collectors.
I've never known anyone else IRL who's heard of it, but it's always been at the top of my favorite games list.
Russian Fishing 4. I’m not an IRL angler whatsoever but I love games that lean hard into real gear and simulation (as much as possible in a video game).
Rf4 just has a good chunk of content and feels good. The other fishing games out there are a joke in comparison IMO.
It’s unpopular because of grinds and the fish spawning, but I chalk it up to real life …sometimes, the day isn’t yours right?
Too Human
The development of it made the game not live up to it's hype, but it was still a really playable ARPG.
I really enjoyed the control scheme too which used two joysticks for combat, instead of the buttons, the idea was to put less stress on the player over long gaming sessions and I think they got very close to that. It's a shame no other games followed that control scheme
Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It's your typical Ubisoft open world game, boring gameplay even on extreme difficulty but the world is so beautiful, and I love just driving around the map with no HUD.
Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Fear Effect: Sedna
I played the first two way after release on PS Now and the picked up the third on sale for $2. Sure, they have reputations that range from so-so to war crime but I think Hunted is a diamond in the rough and find ORC and Sedna to be the perfect games to play after another one is a huge disappointment.
Disc Space. A small 3v3 ultimate frisbee game built in the Unity engine. It's silly and not realistic at all. But had just right amount of learning curve with a high ceiling. Had a little player surge during covid and promptly died. It is what actually led me to playing Rocket League
A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
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