Great Games You Think People Forgot About

It's so easy to remember and recommend the big, true classics of games. But what are some of your personal favorites over the years that may be caught in the shadows of some bigger releases?

Personally, I always think fondly of both Puzzle Agent games and wish they had a chance to make more. I also really love Gunpoint and would die to have it on the Switch.

Ghost Trick. My answer will always be Ghost Trick. I feel like someone could pump out mobile versions and sequels and spinoffs using that one mechanic for ages and id play every one.

Good news.

I have many, but I feel like a lot of them would be games people didn't know existed the first time around.

So my go-to answer would be Gladius. Especially in the current world where Fire Emblem fucked up their soup, I miss that game a great deal.

Kya: Dark Lineage is a great example. The game is a very solid platformer with a theme based around the element wind. It got positive reviews across the board, but the game was mostly overlooked because it came out around the same time many big AAA titles were released. The game also ended in a cliffhanger, which means its due for a sequel that will likely never happen.

@cornfed40: Your answer will always be Ghost Trick even though they announced a remaster? Kind of hard to argue that a game is forgotten when it's getting a remaster, which got prominent placement during a Nintendo Direct.

@daavpuke: Gladius was great, though it's available on Xbox via backcompat. I don't think it's quite the same thing as Fire Emblem though.

My personal choice is going to be rain. It's available to stream on PS+ but nobody talks about it and it's just a really tight, fun, sort of stealth game with a great aesthetic. I feel like a lot of PSN and Wiiware games got forgotten because they never came forward via backwards compatibility like most, but not all, of the best XBLA games, Journey is remembered because it got a PS4 port and Tokyo Jungle because it was so weird, but something like rain.? Nope. Add in games like LostWinds on the Wii (which does have a PC port) and they're just gonezo.

You could also say Zak and Wiki, though it has a cult following. Boomblox got forgotten quick considering Spielberg's involvement, and it would be a perfect game to port to Switch.

We're well past due for a new Motorstorm game.

I loved the Runaway series and have had maybe two conversations about those games in a decade, which is unfortunate. They're solid even today.

Wadjet's newer games are generally well regarded but almost no one talks about Blackwell, one of their series and some truly fantastic games.

More recently, Phoenix Point came and eent, and I think it's great.

Lost in the Persona-fication of the SMT franchise, the Devil Survivor games are also really good, and I can't help but question why Sega hasn't brought that one back with the small resurgence of tile games we've seen of late.

Here are the franchises/IPs I can think of:

• Richard Burns Rally
• NASCAR Racing 2003 Season
• Rallisport Challenge
• WRC (Developed by Evolution Studios from 2001 to 2005)
• Enthusia Professional Racing
• Dirt Track Racing (Developed by Ratbag Games)
• Project Gotham Racing
• Racing Jam
• Sega Rally
• Dirt Dash (Published by Namco)
• Ridge Racer
• Test Drive series
• Motorstorm
• Driver
• Burnout
• Blur
• F-Zero
• WipEout
• Quantum Redshift
• N.Gen Racing
• Spy Hunter series (published by Midway)
• Gradius
• Raiden Fighters
• Transformers (2004) (Developed by Atari Melbourne House)

Megaman Legend. The way they came up for moving and shooting with just one stick on the controller should still be experienced.

Hey Stampede, how bout a poem?

Honestly, this is the one new game I want out of the Activision purchase.

Ironically, not many people remember Remember Me anymore. I played it in 2020 and thought it was pretty good, if a little short. I've yet to see a third-person action game with a fighting system I've liked more than Pressens.

Okami. It got a DS game and an HD remake, but it is all over 10 years old, and it is about time for a proper sequel.

Sorry homie, I don't live video games, I just enjoy playing them. I don't watch every conference or developer video, especially for a company I don't own any console for. See the response directly after my post on how to interact without unneeded snark and civility.

Funnily, now that Tarkovlikes are becoming a big thing, I've been thinking about how completely forgotten DayZ has gotten. Not that I played it that much myself, but ho boy did it disappear.

@retris: Not really, it has its highest ever player population right now. Avg 34k players, peak 60+k on PC alone, it's on Game Pass on XBox and there's plenty of Playstation players too. Just had a big stability update, 1.20, and is still receiving regular updates, 9 years on. DayZ rules. There's nothing to really compete with it.

Speaking of, Devil Summoner was pretty cool, and you don't hear about it much either.

The one I think of when asked this question these days is Heavy Metal: Geomatrix. Technically an arena shooter, but plays more like an arena brawler. Similar gameplay to Power Stone when you break it down. But it was a discount license game quietly released in the final days of the Dreamcast. Poor thing had no chance.

Licensed Konami games on NES that aren't TMNT.

• Bucky O'Hare
• The Lone Ranger
• Mission: Impossible
• Monster in My Pocket

Absolute bangers all of them.

@vulpius: The NES Mission Impossible game frustrated me as a child, because of how hard it seemed. It wasn't until many years later I realized how ahead of its time that game was.

@judaspete: Summoner's cool too. I still haven't finished the second one. They're a little simple in terms of modern action RPG standards, but they could definitely bring that back in a more modern sequel.

For whatever reason, I still want Kessen to be super good. Somebody should do that.

While it's not exactly forgotten, I don't think people give enough credit to the impact that Grand Theft Auto V had on the gaming industry. Its massive open world, immersive storytelling, and addictive gameplay made it one of the most popular and successful games of all time.

@daavpuke: i remember gladius , i don't recall anything about it , but i do remember liking it .. that said its of a genre of stuff i really go for so no suprise there...

idk for me i guess maybe sleeping dogs. its not that ppl didn't talk about it so much as its rare to hear these days. the combat was great the story even if a bit common was good , and i loved it to the point that the driving in it felt so good to me that when gta5 came out not too long after i was disapointed with how the driving felt . .. its also one of the extreme few games i've double dipped on and even more rare actually replayed when the remaster came out for ps4 ... also my first uk copy of a game cause my ex from scoland mailed me a copy with that artbook that if i recall we couldn't get here at the time or something ... not sure .... either way its a shame we never got that sequel.


i guess another game that comes to mind is that godfather the game 1 not 2 (2 was bad if i recall) ...like gladius it was another game i aquired via shady means for my og xbox honestly for a 'gta clone' that was a fun one , even tho it was what it was story-wise the side crap with the stores was pretty fun n it had a good ( for the time?) character creator imo.

The HG101 Top 47k games podcast this week has a great candidate, Liberal Crime Squad. The other great Bay12 game and the game Austin Walker doesn't want you to know about.

As someone who relatively recently played through all Wadjet Eye games, the Blackwell games are great but they don't hold up nearly as well as the rest of their stuff (publishing or development.) That says more about the high quality of the rest of their catalogue than the Blackwell games, but there's still only one or two Wadjet Eye games that I'd prefer over every Blackwell game. I'd say something like Puzzle Bots or the criminally obscure "Da New Guys: Day of the Jackass" would be true hidden gems of the Wadjet Eye catalogue.

The Blackwell games do fit with this thread though, as they're important historical games (transition from AGS forum freeware to high-polish commercial product,) that are sadly largely ignored outside of their niche.

Largely just bumping this because of @zombiepie's call to bump interesting threads, but I did want to say I was surprised to see Golden Sun get at least a second's worth of acknowledgement from Nintendo. It'd be great to see that series make a comeback and would have been a contender for this thread just a few weeks ago.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Thanks for answering the call!

I would like to put my nostalgia for The Mark of Kri and The Suffering to the test. For Mark of Kri, I loved the almost rhythm-based combat of Mark of Kri, and there's something about it that I feel like the Batman: Arkham franchise owes a debt to when you compare how those Batman games play to Mark of Kri.

For The Suffering, I know its depictions of mental health and mental health support services has aged like milk, but the game has such great atmosphere and Dr. Killjoy is so fucking funny and good, I'm probably still willing to overlook those problems today.

@zombiepie: Mark of Kri is on PSN so it's easy to put your nostalgia to the test. So is the sequel Rise of the Kasai, which is even more obscure though maybe not great.

I see where the Arkham comparison comes from but Kri's combat was much more involved in a lot of ways and, of course, clunkier. Batman's true innovation was in streamlining everything to make you feel like a badass. I think in many ways it owes more to Assassin's Creed than anything else.

• Valkyria Chronicles
• The Saboteur

• Lollipop Chainsaw
• Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch
• Heavenly Sword
• Fat Princess
  
  There are many game that are talked about HERE that do not get much play on other forms, for instance Jeff would bring up MAG and SOCOM. The crew would have a chuckle about Binary Domain from time to time. I have talked about my desire for The Saboteur to come back. So the above are thing that did not even get talked about in the last five years.
  
  Is Lollipop Chain saw good? Maybe not, but it good for a "Oh, THAT game!" for sure.

@monkeyking1969: Lollipop Chainsaw is getting a remake. Valkyria Chronicles did get a remake and recently got an action spinoff for the series. Ni No Kuni recently had a mobile game though I think it might be shutting down, not sure.

@monkeyking1969: I loved Fat Princess so much. Thanks for the reminder haha. Giantbomb introduced me to so many little cool games like that back in the day.

@broshmosh: Remember Me is really solid and I replay it from time to time. Don'tNod also made the equally forgotten, but more interesting and flawed Vampyr. That's a game where your choices can have an immediate and harsh effect on the world and the character. I would love for them to take another stab at a story/choice-driven character action game because they're SO close to making something great.

In the same vein, I want someone to make another Gravity Rush with similarly wholesome vibes, but with better controls, a less convoluted story, and better/more side content. Loved the treasure hunt / photography in GR2 but you can't even do those quests anymore since they shut down the servers...

Edit: Wadjet Eye should have so much more exposure. I've enjoyed every single one of their games, more or less.

Sorry about double post but I wanted to gush about Vampyr a little.

It's set in London across 6 or so sections. You play as a doctor recently turned vampire and try to figure out who did it to you, while the city is under siege by vampires and a plague. There are dozens of named NPCs with their own quest lines.

Here's the thing - the only real way to gain enough experience to get any decent skills is to drink the blood of named NPCs, killing them in the process. And as you complete a person's quest line, the more XP they are worth. Killing an NPC or making certain decisions will 'destabilize' a section. If a section becomes too destabilized all NPCs and shop owners there die permantly.

There are multiple endings mostly depending on how hard you fall into your vampire instincts. In my mind, playing the game on hard was the way to go, since it basically forces you to actually make some hard decisions unless you want to be woefully underleveled.

It is the only game to make me feel like a vampire/psychopath who is constantly weighing options and how much a person is literally 'worth' to me like 'I really like this character but I really would like another level before the next boss' or accidently condemning a whole block to death.

On my first playthrough on hard I honestly tried being 'good' but still had to do things I wasn't proud of and failed getting the 'good' ending. The game is flawed but I think it deserves some time in the sun so to speak.

I don’t think Trauma Center ever gets brought up when people wax nostalgic about the DS, but I’d put it up there as one of the fun, weird uses of stylus controls. Plot is anime nonsense and eventually all of the surgeries are boss battles against a “virus” that is clearly a massive parasite and not even remotely a virus, but the game is good weird fun.

Still a little sad that I never bought that later entry Trauma Team on the Wii that was apparently a little more inventive but I guess sold quite poorly so the series ended.

Bushido Blade.

The most recent Samurai Shodown got close as did For Honor, but I want a fighting game about positioning, mind games, and singular, devastating attacks. But the industry just keeps going "YOU SAY YOU WANT MORE COMBOS?!?!?!?! AND BIGGER COMBOS?!?!?!?!?!"

It's why Nidhogg and, yes, even you Divekick were such revelations for me, but the online for them dried up quick.

@undeadpool: Check out Die by the Blade. There's a demo on Steam. Mechanics are a bit different, but it's 3D, has samurai with different stances, and one hit kills.

Edit: also Slice Dice and Rice.

I'll give those a look, thanks!

@judaspete: Follow-up: these do indeed look like they'd scratch the itch, I'll see if the online is still active! Also: for WHATEVER reason, looking up "Die by the Blade playstation store" immediately brings up custom softcore porn-y Resident Evil game covers...

Just a random observation on this strange internet of ours.

Legend of the Dragoon always pops in my mind when topics like this come up. It's super compelling and had a very interesting battle system that may not have aged well. Would love a remake.

Hellish Quart is also one of those games. I remember Neckslanderers playing it in some stream and it seemed janky but promising.

Oh and Your Only Move Is HUSTLE is pretty cool too. It's not what you're looking for, but it's basically a turn-based (or a programming, if using board game terms) fighting game all about mind games and reading your opponent.

The Operative: No One Lives Forever

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way

They are abandonware now due to licensing issues. They are not totally forgotten, as there is a fansite out there that did the work of making a custom installer that enables them to run on modern systems--but without those custom installers they are also really difficult to get working on modern systems in addition to being abandonware. They were some of my favorite games at the time, and I think both games hold up surprisingly well. They are also kind of secretly immersive sims: there are tons of gadgets and environmental interactions, and an emphasis on stealth iirc. I don't know how well the humor holds up, but I also remember them being rare games that attempt humor and succeed.

I know! I'm so excited it's getting ported to PS4/5 tomorrow! I have been reliving it through an AOLP podcast that's in the middle of playing it.

Here are my games that I would love to get a sequel or reboot, but nobody really talks about.

*Comix Zone - I absolutely love this game. It is still incredibly unique.

*Greatest Heavyweights - I don't know if this could be remade. We have much more realistic boxing/MMA games, but dang is this game fun.

*Cyborg Justice - Comix Zone at least has been ported to iOS and Sega collections. Cyborg Justice is just lost to the ether. This is a 2D beat-em up, but you can rip off the limbs of other robots and put them on yourself to upgrade/replace your weapons.

I will also advocate for Gravity Rush 2 which I honestly think is the best game Sony has ever produced.

@nobody_nowhere:

I replayed the NOLF games a few years ago and while some of the voice acting is too over top, the criminals talking amongst themselves is still pretty hilarious. They often talk about the mundane reality of being an employee in a criminal organization, or diagnose what happened in their history to turn them towards a path of crime. Code phrases are cheesy pick up lines that the spies are embarrassed about using towards Cate and enemies ask deep questions like why religions and governments look down upon hedonism. Actually, all the great dialogue is the nr 1 incentive to stealth through every encounter, because you don't want to miss that good stuff. These games are great (NOLF1 is a 9, NOLF2 is an 8)

• Shogo: Mobile Armored Division (By playing both on foot as in the mech, the game offered a great sense of scale and there were some very enjoyable guns. Especially the Juggernaut.
• Giants: Citizen Kabuto (Probably the best 'a bit of everything' game, Offering 3 different styles of gameplay.)
• Drakan: Order of the Flame (enjoyable action-adventure with weapons to pick up and being able to fly & fight on top of a dragon)
• The Sexy Brutale (enjoyable loop-puzzler that manages to unfurl quite a inception-esque storyline that has stuck with me.)
• Shining Force ( Fire Emblem casts a long shadow, in which Shining Force probably dissapears from the discourse)
• Dungeon Keeper ( There was a small resurgeance in Dungeon Keeper awareness back when every other kickstarter tried to make their own dungeon keeper, but ever since that awful mobile game happened, i feel like dungeon keeper chatter is at a minimum.)
• Gabriel Knight 3 (Yes, it's ugly early 3d. Yes it is that game with a few bad puzzles in it. But it's also a game with some great puzzles in it, and a very captivating story. It was not critically panned at all, and definitly deserves to be played.

Einhänder!

@undeadpool: Ha! That is very intertety alright.

Unfortunately, Slice Dice and Rice for PS4 is dead online (and actually had no online for PC), but I have fun playing the AI.

@theonewhoplays:

I also enjoyed Vampyr quite a bit. While I didn't like it quite as much as fellow overambitious French AA RPG Greedfall, it was still quite enjoyable. I always keep an eye on what Don't Nod is up to. Between their narrative driven adventure games like Life is Strange and Tell Me Why and their RPG stuff, they always seem to have something interesting going on. You mentioned wanting to see them take another stab at an action game, I think that's what this is:

There was a series of games called Dungeon Hunter that were essentially Diablo clones back in 2011. I played them on my iPod Touch at the time. The first one was a legitimately fun, well-designed dungeon crawler. By the third game, Gameloft had fully embraced the type of annoying, bland, typical mobile game design that is common to this day.

@ll_exile_ll: Completely forgot about that one!

LucasArts: The Dig

Its a point and click adventure game with a cliche but well done scifi story, voice acting (including robert patrick as the main voice) and really cool world. It has the same issue that a lot if not all of those games had with puzzles being the wrong sort of difficult (obtuse rather than clever) but in the modern era of easily googled guides to get past the obtuse ones thats hardly the problem it once was.