Defend a game that nobody but you cares about

I just received a notification from Steam that The Guild 3 is now available for Early Access. Great news!

For the few (most) of you who don't know, the Guild series is basically a medieval Sims business and family simulator. It's very detailed, very German in design, and the gameplay can be mundane, repetitive, slow and methodical, and quite boring at times.

I love it.

But nobody else seems to care about the game. And those that do know the series usually don't like it.

I know this can't be an isolated incident. There has to be other games out there that only you know about. So for the rest of the goodjer community, please inform the rest of us ignorant folk about a game you feel is overlooked or underestimated.

Links couldn't hurt to make your case, so here's a couple for The Guild 3.

Marathon.

Bungie.

Enough said.

Singularity. "When living half your life in alternate history Soviet Russia, bio shocks YOU!"

Seriously if this game is derivative it's derivative of some pretty damn good stuff and actually shows them up somewhat in terms of gameplay. The weapons are all fun - try not to smile using a sniper rifle that slows time so you can steer your bullets around obstacles to their targets. The time-shift mechanic and theme keeps the downtime between fights just interesting enough and fun enough to look at even if it doesn't create any particularly deep puzzle action. And even if the ending is a little predictable, the USSR aesthetic is great and alternate history commies are so underutilized in games compared to alternate history Nazis.

I've been waiting near a decade for a new Culdcept game. Fell in love with Culdcept Saga on the show floor of PAX in 2007. Bought it on day-1, and played the ever living crap out of it.

Billed as "Magic meets Monopoly", it's a digital boardgame/CCG blend. It's weird, very Japanese, and great.

*looks at steam library.....Wonders how anyone wouldn't love all these games I love....Must be communists....

I'll need to try and recall who doesn't like what I like and what hills I will consider dying on.

Good call Middcore-Singularity was a blast and never really got it's day in the sun. From what I recall I think Sands did a nice article on it as it being a great call out to so many wonderful things.

Mine is Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Jericho by Clive Barker.

I really loved the character design and gameplay. Looking back, it suffers from the late 90's trope of getting a team of special people together to throw them against monsters, but I'm willing to forgive that. Typical shooters have you being a single guy carrying around either an entire armory of weapons or only 2 weapons. The former is absurd, and the latter can feel too limiting. In Jericho, you basically play a character that can take control of individuals in a squad. Do you want to snipe someone? Possess the sniper. You want to mow down a bunch of enemies? Possess the minigunner. On top of their primary weapon, each character had interesting special skills that made them more than just weapon switches.

I've been waiting for another game to come along that uses this type of squad mechanism -- especially in a first person shooter.

But nobody else seems to care about the game. And those that do know the series usually don't like it.

The Guild and The Guild 2 were awesome games, pure distilled fun. The problem was that they were terribly buggy, and almost certainly would irreparably crash long before you could finish a playthrough.

With better programming (and, I assume, a more reliable engine), they'd be mighty classics. As is, they're mostly forgotten.

The game I love that nobody cares about is Microprose's DOS game, 1830. I love it because the AI is so sharp. Sadly, it needs a really fast PC to run well at the hardest difficulty, typically 700MHz+, and that kind of speed isn't easily achievable on modern PCs. 16-bit DOS code doesn't run natively anymore in 64-bit mode; not even Intel's VT-x will run 16-bit code on a 64-bit host, although AMD's Pacifica virtualization will. DOSBox typically maxes out at about 100Mhz, and only if you have a fast PC.

So, it's really hard to get a hard-mode 1830 game running that doesn't take glacial epochs between late game turns, but man, when it finally moves, it's going to give you a hard time.

edit: The big problem with the DOS version is that you can't see everything going on at once; it's kinda hard to just visually inspect the game board any time you want. They do a pretty good job of letting you see context, but it's not a windowed system, and they don't have very many pixels, so it's a lot harder than it should be. A high-res, windowed version, where you could see everything going on at once, but which retained the same strong AI player, would be very appealing.

Breakdown for Xbox. Loved that game and I can't remember anyone ever bringing it up.

Tom Clancy's Ruthless.com

What is ruthless.com? I have no idea! It's a franchise I cared nothing about, but this strategic game about running a corporation is one of my favorite games of all time. It's turn-based game and plays more like a board game than a traditional PC strategy game.

You run a corporation and the core game is developing products of sufficient quality to take over squares (aka "market share") but the paths to that objective are varied and remarkably detailed. You could focus on R&D and build a better product, or you could just market your products a lot so people think they're better, or you could craft a virus to take out your opponents products, or you could just kill, kidnap or discredit their CEO so they can't run their business effectively. Or maybe you'd rather just blow up their buildings, or possibly you want to just save a lot of cash and buy them out? Or maybe you want to patent a square you owned so even once another person starts to beat you in the market, they can't take over the square anyway cause... you came up with it first.

Not all of these paths to victory are equal and balanced, over the years I definitely found there were certain paths that were more reliable than others, but generally speaking a selection of each activity is needed to bring victory--no single path is right for all games.

It's a shame this franchise didn't do better. I can only assume that's related to it's clunkiness and probably just the fact that Tom Clancy strategy board game appeals to fewer people than Tom Clancy military shooter. Especially at the time of it's release.

I think the only way to play this game multiplayer is through MPlayer (so that's not an option), but it still runs on Windows 10 (though just barely) if you have a disc and want to give it a shot.

I keep hoping someone will re-release it or make an open source version, or maybe just adapt it for the table top. Maybe some day.

Wings of Vi is an awesome Metroidvania-ish game heavily inspired by I Wanna Be The Guy.

Dogfight on the... PC? Apple? I forget. But 8 players on one keyboard in front of a 14" screen was unforgettably silly.

Star Wolves: A crazy Russian Homeworld knock-off. Objectively as good a game as Homeworld? No way. More fun than Homeworld? Hell yes. One of the few games where leveling a character can make them massively more powerful (This goes to a pet peeve of mine - a lot of modern games have these incredibly sanded down power curves where your character gets like 1% better at something and you can barely tell that your character has improved. This, coupled with Oblivion/Skyrim style dynamic difficulty systems, makes a lot of modern games feel incredibly 'flat'.)

The UFO series: X-Com but with simultaneous turn resolution - sorta, kinda like the original Rainbow Six games. You can play the missions in a deep, tactical way and then once the main threat is neutralized you can clean up the map like an RTS. I lose interest in almost all turn-based tactical games once I get to the point where the interesting threat is dead and I'm burning through turns searching the map - it just seems like a total waste of time.

Okay. Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. Euro Jank you say? Well it is true. Progressive? Nope. It is a fun RPG with multiple pathways and a branching story.

The Heroes of Might and Magic where it is a walk around RPG. Maybe not the best story but when you can defeat almost the whole game by kicking enemies into spiked walls or off cliffs it can be real fun!

Rings of Power, Genesis/Megadrive. Such an ugly, technically deficient game, and reviewed almost universally as a stinker at the time by video game publications. But something about it was mysterious and charming, enough that a friend and I played through it together.

polq37 wrote:

Star Wolves: A crazy Russian Homeworld knock-off.

Man, I love those games. Have all three of 'em.

So mine:

Parkan II - Another crazy Russian space game, but you could land on planets, board other ships and more! Still love it so much.

Star Crusader - Got released between Wing Commander III and TIE Fighter, and in some ways is better than both of them.

Millennia: Altered Destinies - The only game I've ever played where time travel actually worked, and worked well.

Star Wars: Rebellion - Sure it's ugly, sure the tactical combat is a joke, but the strategy game itself is fantastical.

SWAT 3/4 - Yes it's better than any Rainbow Six game, I said.

Is The Order: 1886 too recent? I reallly enjoyed that game, its world and its mechanics. Possibly because I hardly play any shooters so I'm not jaded at all. I thought the concept was great and spent so much time being a tourist in that world and taking in all the details that by the time I was done I felt like I had really been to that place and time, which is not something I can say about most games.

I'll also defend the Power Glove if peripherals can count. It was sold to me for $5 back when it was new because my friend thought it didn't work. Turns out he just had the sensors on the wrong corner of the TV. I spent a lot of time playing Mike Tysons Ounchout with that thing... never found it to be unplayable inaccurate or anything. Or maybe as a kid I just had a lot of patience.

Count me in as a wannabe lover of The Guild games. I'm typically very forgiving of buggy games, but seemd to have worse than average luck running those.

My pick: A Tale in the Desert. There is a grindy nature to the game, but you can choose to tech up to remove those grinds. Depending on what you want to do, you can skip a lot of the grindy stuff as well. Many of the 'Tests' are pretty clever and fun to attempt to pass. A lot of the 'social puzzle' aspects are solved, but they do tend to come up again at the beginning of each game restart. It is probably still my favorite game of all time.

For me it's Ultimate Chicken Horse - it made a small splash when it came out but i don't see a lot of people playing nowadays. However, my son and I have hours of entertainment watching cuddly creatures meet their hilarious doom.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption.
Everyone loves Bloodlines (with good reason, it's the better game), but Redemption barely ever gets mentioned. I think part of that is that its mechanics only vaguely resemble V:TM's, but they were still fun, and I really liked the story. Also its multiplayer had great potential but was about a decade too early.

Jonman wrote:

I've been waiting near a decade for a new Culdcept game. Fell in love with Culdcept Saga on the show floor of PAX in 2007. Bought it on day-1, and played the ever living crap out of it.

Billed as "Magic meets Monopoly", it's a digital boardgame/CCG blend. It's weird, very Japanese, and great.

Dude, I friggin' loved that game. Played the heck out of it, spent hours making all sorts of weird gimmicky decks, it was great. I wish they'd make another one.

muttonchop wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I've been waiting near a decade for a new Culdcept game. Fell in love with Culdcept Saga on the show floor of PAX in 2007. Bought it on day-1, and played the ever living crap out of it.

Billed as "Magic meets Monopoly", it's a digital boardgame/CCG blend. It's weird, very Japanese, and great.

Dude, I friggin' loved that game. Played the heck out of it, spent hours making all sorts of weird gimmicky decks, it was great. I wish they'd make another one.

A fellow Goodjer PM'd me after this post to inform me that Culdcept Revolt is coming out on 3DS next week.

Which, on the one hand, hurray for timely wishful thinking , but on the other, having bought a Switch on release, I have no need of a 3DS....

Stengah wrote:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption.
Everyone loves Bloodlines (with good reason, it's the better game), but Redemption barely ever gets mentioned. I think part of that is that its mechanics only vaguely resemble V:TM's, but they were still fun, and I really liked the story. Also its multiplayer had great potential but was about a decade too early.

I really need to try this again. I had some sort of game breaking bug the last time I tried, and I didn't want to start all over.

Jonman wrote:

A fellow Goodjer PM'd me after this post to inform me that Culdcept Revolt is coming out on 3DS next week.

!!!
I'll definitely have to check that out

JeremyK wrote:

Breakdown for Xbox. Loved that game and I can't remember anyone ever bringing it up.

I really liked Breakdown's premise, but the clunky controls - so critical for the game to fulfill its promise of hand to hand fps combat - became a huge stumbling block. Couple that with some (as I remember it) way above average difficulty, and I never got too far into it.

muttonchop wrote:
Jonman wrote:

A fellow Goodjer PM'd me after this post to inform me that Culdcept Revolt is coming out on 3DS next week.

!!!
I'll definitely have to check that out

I was halfway through writing you a PM to see if you wanted to blow the dust off your 360 and challenge me to a game, when I realized that that would mean ponying up for Xbox Live, and then I was all like, nah, I’m good.

Ecstatica II

It was a wonderfully weird voxel-based game that did a great job of simulating 3D for it's day. The combat was garbage, it was hard to control, and it was confusing where to go or what to next. It was a blast.

I don't even remember where I got it from, but I remember spending way too much time with this game. Wish I could find a copy.

I have two!

Stuntman: Ignition - You're a stunt driver for a movie. As you go, the director will call out various stunts you need to do. You do them. There's a time limit. You're going for points by doing extra stuff between stunts to add to your combo. It demands precision, and you're trying for the perfect run, but retries are absolutely instant, so there's no time to get frustrated. The levels are split up among five or six movies, and each movie has a stereotypical director for that genre. The directors are great. This game is great. I hate Tony Hawk-style "get the perfect run" kinds of games, but I loved this one to bits.

Wet - This was probably my GOTY when it came out. It's unapologetically a pretty campy B movie. You're a girl with a gun and a katana, and you hurdle, wall run, and slide around, shooting and chopping dudes up. You can get into a great sense of flow zipping around the levels. It's like what John Woo's Stranglehold was trying to do, and Wet does it better, plus adds a katana.

Stengah wrote:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption.
Everyone loves Bloodlines (with good reason, it's the better game), but Redemption barely ever gets mentioned. I think part of that is that its mechanics only vaguely resemble V:TM's, but they were still fun, and I really liked the story. Also its multiplayer had great potential but was about a decade too early.

I liked it. I cheated a bit at the end.

Incubation: Time is Running Out

What is that you may ask? Most likely the best turn based small squad combat game you never played. According to wiki, only about 5k copies were sold in the US when it was released in 1997. More were sold overseas but it was obviously a massive bust.

I had a blast playing this game and found the combat was better than XCom while lacking that strategic component. The graphics, even at the time of release, were nothing to write home about. But the tactical layer was wonderful if challenging in a puzzle kind of way. Some of the alien creatures were downright intimidating for the time.