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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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.
If you like the toy soldiers idea you may want to check out HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed.
I would say Rebel Galaxy and especially Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw, which reminds me of Wing Commander: Privateer for the "Good game with little recognition".
For the "Objectively bad but I still love it" type, Lichdom: Battlemage and Technomancer are deeply flawed but wonderfully fun gems that require you to ignore some pretty big problems to find your enjoyment in them. Same with DarkStar One and the Starpoint Gemini series.
Tomba! on the first playstation. The first game is better than the second, but both are very fun platformers, maybe metroidvania in a way? Since there's some backtracking as you gain new stuff and abilities.
A possibly not very known title from the PSP that's totally worth the time: Kenka Bancho. There's only 1 in the series that was localized in english, which is the one I played and enjoyed it a lot. You're a high school japanese student on a quest to be the ultimate high school badass.
Neither is mediocre, they're possibly just "hidden gems", really.
I had the demo of Tomba 1 (or Tombi as it was called in certain regions) on PS1. Used to play the shit out of that demo when I was a kid.
Shepherd's Crossing 2, for the DS. I've put a truly ridiculous number of hours into it over the years, and keep coming back.
It's not popular in the farm sims because a key part is butchering your meat animals so you can feed your dogs.
I’ll take it “unpopular” as in, literally dead and not “not liked”… but mine would be Obsidian Conflict. I have a 24/7 server that runs on my server just for the sake that once every few months a random player can join it.
I love all the community mods and spent sometime years ago scraping every map I found online for it.
Shadow Man. It was definitely shit, but I played it for so many hours. The mood and the scale of it was incredible, but the controls and gameplay were sorely lacking. Even so, I found it incredibly immersive.
Penny Racers was the jam, way back in the day. It was our family game, but unfortunately I played too much, and no-one could keep up.
Circuit Breakers is a really good Micro Machines clone. I still take it with me when the old ps-systems get carried around.
Biofreaks and WU-TANG:enter the pain are so much fun. Stupid gory party fighters with more jank than a dump site, but I don't care.
While they sell millions, typical „Ubisoft formula“ games are critically unpopular because they‘re dumbed down treasure hunts, and I enjoy them (in moderation) exactly because of that. Sometimes I just wanna turn my brain off and walk to map marker #312 while taking in the sights.
Red Dead Online has a ~5 jobs that you can maintain or choose to ignore.
One of the jobs is Collecting. All you do is wander the countryside hunting for treasures, then return to the collector and sell them. That's the entire job. But it was my girlfriend's favorite because you just stare at the scenery as you wander the map
Mine is Alpha Protocol. While it has some minor cult status its really Obsidians least known modern title.
Its clunky and ugly, but one of the best espionage RPGs with tons of meaningful choices and really unbalanced combat (looking at you pistol head shot god). I would kill for a sequel.
Game had a great pistol.