Age of empires 3. The civilizations are packed full of unique units, cards and mechanics compared to previous games. The card deck mechanics and treasures speed up the early game and allow for a lot more flexibility and adaptivess. The game looks beautiful the 2005 version kind of runs like shit but the definitive version has made a lot of balance and performance improvements.
Anddddd shooting formations of infantry with cannons is fun as.
It’s my least favourite of the Age games, but that’s only because it’s such a highly competitive field. It still ranks very highly with me. Fantastic game.
Which was your favorite civ to play? I used to be a Dutch player but now I almost exclusively play Russian. I’ve been meaning to try out Malta and Ethiopia they look cool.
Hells yeah! I also mainly played Russians. Loved the strelet rush: it was the only build order I ever really put any serious effort into in AoE3. Also played a fair bit of Japanese.
I never played them more than a few times to test them out, but special shout-out to the Italians and the DaVinci Tank, which is an absolutely hilarious inclusion.
Destruction Derby 2 was loads of fun. I was going to say something like Choplifter, but I saw some video the other day that seems a perfect fit.
Not underrated, but I would love to have a next-gen SOCOM, and wouldn’t say no to another Wipeout.
But hey, who doesnt need 43 new JRPGs?
Spore and Impossible Creatures
Kind of similar but these games are conceptually genius. How tightly Creativity and Strategic Interest are packed together is hardly seen ever again.
And animals are always a good idea. Even horrible games like Pokémon survive just because we like funny little friends.
Lugaru and Overgrowth.
Drakan series needs reboot. I played Drakan; Ancient gates. That game was so much fun. The seamless transition from fighting on a dragon to fighting on your feet. The next level spell casting where you had to trace out the symbol to cast. The lore felt really deep like there was a lot of secrets they never fleshed out and ever since I’ve had an itch that never got scratched.
i want another midnight club
It was a really boring game, that I somehow never got bored of
Freelancer
omg YES. Nothing I have found since then has quite scratched the same itch of flying around with a friend on some random dude’s server. So much fun!
Everspace 2 is really close in terms of combat and overall gameplay, but it lacks the immersive simulation aspects. Freelancers idle radio chatter did some heavy lifting back in the day.
I’ll have to give that one a try!
Word. The closest I found to the feel of Freelancer was X3 back in 2010, but the differences were glaring.
There this Underspace that seems to be a “Freelancer meets Cthluhu”, I’ve yet to play the demo to get a feel of the space.
Oni by Bungie West. Ran circles around the Tomb Raider franchise. If it did not get caught up between Bungie West selling off to Microsoft, and an IP mess between Microsoft-owned Bungie, Take-Two and Rockstar, this would have been one of the greatest titles ever. Oni community and mod scene is still alive, 20 years later.
Oni was the basis for Halo and GTA’s open world system. And its release had to be rushed without multiplayer and a few bosses and levels. Still one of the greatest titles that can be played. Aced the third person hybrid gun-handheld combat system. There is no cyberpunk game of this level made to this date, and there are very few to begin with.
Star Wars: X-wing vs TIE Fighter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_X-Wing_vs._TIE_Fighter
I think this one was surpassed by X-Wing Alliance.
Absolver. It was the precursor to Sifu, but with slightly slower and more methodical combat (more like a Soulslike, almost).
The coolest part of it is, as you play and fight players and NPCs, your character will slowly learn and unlock the moves that are used against them, which you can then put into your moveset and chain together with other moves to create your own style. If you don’t want to do that, you can join a player-run school, and be given the fighting style of that school’s master, which your character will learn as they use it.
The story mode is pretty short. It’s mainly about PvP (although, before development stopped, it DID get a free DLC with a co-op dungeon run that’s worth killing a couple of hours on). Of course, a PvP-focused game with nobody playing it isn’t exactly the most entertaining thing to spend your time on, so- outside of a small collection of diehards- it pretty much stays a ghost town.
It had heart, it had ambition, and it had creativity. My friends and I were really hoping the success of Sifu would mean people might start going back and maybe breathing a little life into it, but that didn’t happen. We hoped maybe they’d announce a second one, but that hasn’t happened yet, either. It’ll probably just be another Sifu. That one was a proven success, so it makes more sense.
The servers are still up for now. No idea how much longer it’ll be supported. But, if you’ve got friends you can play it with, it might be worth looking into and seeing for yourself what the game offered, and what could’ve been.
Ngage Bounce Boing Voyage. I played it a couple of times but never finished it. It was great for the time and hardware.
Yoku’s Island Express. Before playing it, I didn’t like pinball or search-action games (metroidvanias). I ended up loving it. I still don’t really enjoy pinball on its own, but I now have a deep love for search-action.
It’s definitely the best pinball-metroidvania postal service simulator available.
Alley Cat for sure
Alley Cat actually got a second chance! Look up “Alley Cat: ReMeow”
Happy to see some fellow Alley Cat fans around!
Cue the tune in my head. Thank you, it’s so lovely. 😍
kenshi is the post-apocalyptic life/ant sim that I never knew I wanted. There is no story other than what is in your head, and that’s beautiful.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
An awesome RPG by Sierra (Fallout1+2). It was a bit unfinished, but you had such a great roleplay-experience. A second part was planned using Source-Engine.
Also:
FCK GNMFor isometric RPGs Arcanum truly was unique. The dialogue and story was polished to a brilliant shine in a fantasy world going through the industrial revolution. The soundtrack composed entirely of a somber string ensemble added so much to the narrative and feel of the world, as if its magic was slowly dying out to make way for industrial expansion and exploitation. It stands up there along with the original Fallouts and Planescape: Torment. It’s a tragedy a sequel was never made. The only modern game that comes close to the aesthetics is the Pillars of Eternity franchise.
