JohnnyTheWolf on 22/12/2008 at 20:00

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Die Hard on NES. Yeah, talk about retro.

Don't believe the AVGN on this one: it's actually better than it looks.

baeuchlein on 22/12/2008 at 23:44

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There was a somewhat similar thread a few months earlier. Click (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123013) here (and scroll down a bit) to see what I said about Tomb Raider, then. I could have written it here as well.

There were other games with similar stories, of course. When a friend told me about something which sounded like "Jack the Lions", I thought of some guy keeping lions at bay in the zoo or a circus. Only later I realized he meant Jagged Alliance, and it was not long until I was hooked to that game back in 1996. One strange reason for playing it was the fact that I was low on hard disk space back then, wrote almost an entire hard disk driver on my own to install a second hard disk with only 40 MB of space, and discovered that disk access was incredibly slow (about the same speed as accessing floppy disks) due to some quick & dirty coding of mine. But Jagged Alliance installed just a small part of the game on the hard disk while loading most contents directly from the CD, meaning it fit nicely on that small hard disk, and it did not use that hard disk too much, meaning its slow access wasn't a problem either. But I liked the game as well, not just its "hard disk related properties".

Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games, which is more or less "Jagged Alliance 1.5", was the other way round: I thought it would be as good as the first game, but multiplayer mode never worked reliably (meaning my brother and I were pissed off in record time), and the single-player campaign became frustratingly difficult (I have not completed more than one mission in the last nine years now!), so it's located on one of my bookshelves, collecting dust most of the time.

Another game that seemed so boring that I did not even remember reading the first (preview) article about it in my favourite games magazine was something called The Dark Project. The only picture they had at the time was that of a strange bearded guy in a funny red suit called a "Hammerite", working for some religious group worshipping a hammer (oh yeah, sure, and tomorrow they're going to worship dragon feces...). And he was lying on a floor, too. The player was suposed to be some thief and there was some kind of dark project going on. Looked like a FPS, but with a thief (OK, so he's got lousy weapons, and everything else is just a new kind of DOOM - too bad I still have the old DOOM here and don't need this thing!) instead of a space marine (DOOM again), a soldier against the Nazis (Wolfenstein 3D) or a mage (Catacombs of the Abyss - some kind of predecessor to Wolfenstein 3D, with EGA graphics instead of VGA, and fantasy-themed).

Some months later, this "Dark Project" thing was ready, and the game magazine published a review. When I read about torches being extinguished by the thief and re-lit by the guards, and heard of castles with guards on patrol and things to steal, I realized that perhaps this was not an ego-shooter at all, and found a playable demo on the internet. The rest is history.

Meanwhile, I had heard something about a game called "System Shock", but could not get its demo to play - if there ever was one, the CD I got from the games magazine contained a lot of mixed up information about several games. For example, a picture, supposedly from System Shock, displayed some kind of Mayan statue's head with large eyes and mouth. I did not get much information about that game from the magazine. So, when I was already a Thief and Thief 2 addict in 2000, I heard something about System Shock 2 using the Thief engine.(Oh great, a non-FPS game somehow turned into a game with a Mayan statue and... a space-FPS with some role-playing elements? No thanks!)

Much later I downloaded a demo of System Shock 2, and you can imagine what happened... I obtained the game, then, and played it until being in the final rooms of The Many, where I'm stuck until today. Another time, perhaps...

One last game. When I read about Daggerfall back in 1995 or 1996, it looked great (yay, real 3D cities where one can walk through!), but I forgot about it for some reason. In 1999, I stood before its case resting on some vendor's shelf. A thing looking like a skull without flesh, yet still alive, was depicted on the front cover. (Oh great, a FPS game with undeads and stupid skulls... rest in peace, piece of trash!) Somehow, I later made a connection with what I read about the game earlier, dug out a playable demo on one of my games magazine's CDs, and spent the next few hours attempting to get it to work (successfully). Some days later I bought exactly the box I rejected earlier, and I still play Daggerfall from time to time these days, for I have not finished the main quest up to now. Daggerfall has its drawbacks, but I have accepted them. One day, I' m going to finish this game, just you wait...:cheeky:

There may be one or more examples, but I do not remember them right now. And this post is already long enough...:p

CCCToad on 23/12/2008 at 03:33

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For me, MDK 2 was a pleasant surprise. While I expected a crummy, B game, I got one with simple but well polished gameplay and a wacky sense of humor.

Deus Ex was also one. Unaware of the hype, I expected your typical dystopian shooter. I was very wrong on that one.

Mirror's edge was also a surprise. With my expectations dampened by the mediocre press, I was expecting a rent and return game. Although it was too short to convert to a purchase, I had a blast the whole time through (save for two or three frustrating sections). Its like the critics thought that because this game was in first person, its supposed to play like any other shooter.

Fallout 3 also surprised me. Although it still doesn't make anywhere near as coherent a story and setting as the first two games, I didn't actually expect it to be any good. It is still Oblivion, but like......Good.

A minor surprise was Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. I rented this one knowing that all anime/TV/movie based games are bad, and was proven wrong. Its got a fairly solid adventure component, and a fighting system that rewards skill over luck, but is also simple enough for people who are not willing to dedicate their lives to memorizing dozens of combos.

Fringe on 23/12/2008 at 06:09

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Another vote for Painkiller for me (just beat Trauma difficulty).

On the list of games I'm surprised I don't like, the Galactic Civilizations series. I've tried and tried, but get bored a few days in.

saatana on 23/12/2008 at 12:20

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Penumbra: overture and was something I wanted to try because it was said to be scary and I wanted to play something scary. Since games like Dead space and Condemned are considered scary by the majority, I wasn't really expecting much from this indie game. Well the damn thing had me inching my way through the abandoned mines for the first few hours too damn scared to use the flashlight most of the time. When the best weapon of the game is a pick axe (which isn't very effective) you don't feel very confident about taking on the unknown. Great atmosphere, storytelling and characters.
The sequel (black plague) crancked up the fear factor a notch and removed fighting completely.
These games have that thing which is so highly regarded on TTLG: Immersion.