games most people dismiss but actually have cool depth

[UnboundByJunk]

I was looking at gameplay of older Spider-Man games one day and I found this combo video of the DS version of Web of Shadows.

It made me think of the games I played that people don't really remember for its depth. The PS2 Warriors Orochi games came to mind. Those games got some neat mechanics like canceling attacks by switching characters or using a super. I honestly got obsessed with the combat. It felt simple but can feel sick if you dig deeper.

Not to shill a low effort video I made months ago, but I feel this is the best way to show how much I enjoyed the combat.

 

[Pseudo64]

Vampire Rain is mocked endlessly as bad and way too hard. But if you take time to play the tutorial you will realize you are supposed to avoid the vampires. Not sneak by them or kill them. The entire thing has surprising amount of depth, but most people dismiss it because early youtube game reviewers made fun of it because they couldn't bother to play and understand what the tutorial was trying to say.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Vampire Rain is mocked endlessly as bad and way too hard. But if you take time to play the tutorial you will realize you are supposed to avoid the vampires. Not sneak by them or kill them. The entire thing has surprising amount of depth, but most people dismiss it because early youtube game reviewers made fun of it because they couldn't bother to play and understand what the tutorial was trying to say.

View attachment 57558

I feel like that's a common issue with early video game reviewers, no? I remember people talking about the Werehog stages in Sonic Unleashed being button mash-y and boring, but now I see people playing it like it's Devil May Cry.

 

[Pseudo64]

I feel like that's a common issue with early video game reviewers, no? I remember people talking about the Werehog stages in Sonic Unleashed being button mash-y and boring, but now I see people playing it like it's Devil May Cry.

Oh yeah same thing with Resident Evil 4. I remember back in the day a lot of these early youtube reviewers saying that ashley was annoying and would die easily. Fast forward I play the game, and if you are smart enough, ashley would do as you command. If ashley gets kidnapped then that means you gave her the wrong command. In that case it is less about ashley being annoying and you having skill issues. XD
But that's nothing new. Apparently some higher up in Sony thought Demon's Souls was garbage because of how tough it was. Heck when it was released, it wasn't automatically embraced by the youtube reviewer community. Many like that sony executive said the same thing and dismissed it. It wasn't until Dark Souls two years later, that people started to change their tune about Demon's Souls, and now consider it one of the most important games in history. But then, that's nothing new for games media as a whole.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Oh yeah same thing with Resident Evil 4. I remember back in the day a lot of these early youtube reviewers saying that ashley was annoying and would die easily. Fast forward I play the game, and if you are smart enough, ashley would do as you command. If ashley gets kidnapped then that means you gave her the wrong command. In that case it is less about ashley being annoying and you having skill issues. XD
But that's nothing new. Apparently some higher up in Sony thought Demon's Souls was garbage because of how tough it was. Heck when it was released, it wasn't automatically embraced by the youtube reviewer community. Many like that sony executive said the same thing and dismissed it. It wasn't until Dark Souls two years later, that people started to change their tune about Demon's Souls, and now consider it one of the most important games in history. But then, that's nothing new for games media as a whole.

View attachment 57562

I remember all that talk about the Water Room in RE4 being one of the hardest segments put in a shooter, but I cleared it first try on a keyboard (it was the old Ubisoft PC port). Maybe game reviewers should just give up.

 

[GEORGE?W?BUSH]

Pinball! Oh my god Pinball in general has *insane* depth and if you're into shmups, you owe it to yourself to check out what that medium has to offer. It combines aim and dexterity with rulesets that need to be engaged with properly in order to get a high score. Most "pinball" video games haven't helped this genre's bad reception, as most try to reinvent the wheel and fail, or are just under baked tables cranked out with preexisting assets akin to shovelware.

 

[Pseudo64]

Oh that also reminds me. Some souls YouTuber Iron Pineapple made a video on King's Field (obviously giving it a title, THE FIRST SOULS-LIKE for click-bail) and he played King's Field 2 instead (which was named just King's Field in US). At first I thought maybe he got confused because it was title just KF in US, but then in the video he mentioned that he knows the existence about the actual first King's Field game from 1994 (which was a ps1 launch title i believe?) but decided not to play it because "it had bad reviews at the time". I wanted to give him a pass, thinking that maybe since it never left japan, it might not have a translaion. Turns out there is a finely working fan translation. I thought, maybe it is just lengendarily bad. Like unplayable or something. So I decided to play the ACTUAL King's Field 1 on the emulator, and not only does the game work, it is actually a great game. Sure the level design is not as open as later king's field games as it is more linear in a way, and has a weird 5 floor structure to it, but it is still never confusing to traverse, and in everything else, it plays like the king's field we all know and love. Alongside the famous subtle way of storytelling that we know FromSoft for. Like in one section a person may say that he is trying to find his son who went adventuring and to let him know if you find him. He will give vague hint to the location that his son went to. Then if you go there, you will find the son's corpse near the new enemies you find. There will never be an exclamaition from the main character that, "Oh this dead body must be the son of that dude i met", you just have to piece it together from the hint of location given to you by the npc and from you observing the dead body.
But yeah, I was really disappointed in that YouTuber for skipping the first King's Field. Like yeah, early reviews were negative, but they were also negative for Dynasty Warrior games, Demon's Souls...or like every FromSoft game before Dark Souls. Like, if you consider yourself a fromsoft fan, I think you should know to not trust early reviews. XD

I remember all that talk about the Water Room in RE4 being one of the hardest segments put in a shooter, but I cleared it first try on a keyboard (it was the old Ubisoft PC port). Maybe game reviewers should just give up.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Pinball! Oh my god Pinball in general has *insane* depth and if you're into shmups, you owe it to yourself to check out what that medium has to offer. It combines aim and dexterity with rulesets that need to be engaged with properly in order to get a high score. Most "pinball" video games haven't helped this genre's bad reception, as most try to reinvent the wheel and fail, or are just under baked tables cranked out with preexisting assets akin to shovelware.

And after all these years, the best pinball video game is still a freeware Windows XP game.

 

[Pseudo64]

And after all these years, the best pinball video game is still a freeware Windows XP game.
View attachment 57565

Lol, we used to play this at the school computer lab all the time XD

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Oh that also reminds me. Some souls YouTuber Iron Pineapple made a video on King's Field (obviously giving it a title, THE FIRST SOULS-LIKE for click-bail) and he played King's Field 2 instead (which was named just King's Field in US). At first I thought maybe he got confused because it was title just KF in US, but then in the video he mentioned that he knows the existence about the actual first King's Field game from 1994 (which was a ps1 launch title i believe?) but decided not to play it because "it had bad reviews at the time". I wanted to give him a pass, thinking that maybe since it never left japan, it might not have a translaion. Turns out there is a finely working fan translation. I thought, maybe it is just lengendarily bad. Like unplayable or something. So I decided to play the ACTUAL King's Field 1 on the emulator, and not only does the game work, it is actually a great game. Sure the level design is not as open as later king's field games as it is more linear in a way, and has a weird 5 floor structure to it, but it is still never confusing to traverse, and in everything else, it plays like the king's field we all know and love. Alongside the famous subtle way of storytelling that we know FromSoft for. Like in one section a person may say that he is trying to find his son who went adventuring and to let him know if you find him. He will give vague hint to the location that his son went to. Then if you go there, you will find the son's corpse near the new enemies you find. There will never be an exclamaition from the main character that, "Oh this dead body must be the son of that dude i met", you just have to piece it together from the hint of location given to you by the npc and from you observing the dead body.
But yeah, I was really disappointed in that YouTuber for skipping the first King's Field. Like yeah, early reviews were negative, but they were also negative for Dynasty Warrior games, Demon's Souls...or like every FromSoft game before Dark Souls. Like, if you consider yourself a fromsoft fan, I think you should know to not trust early reviews. XD

Honestly tired of all the reviewers sort of clickbaiting with Dark Souls when talking about any FromSoft game. "OMG DARK SOULS WITH MECHS!!!"

 

[Graw]

Pinball! Oh my god Pinball in general has *insane* depth and if you're into shmups, you owe it to yourself to check out what that medium has to offer. It combines aim and dexterity with rulesets that need to be engaged with properly in order to get a high score. Most "pinball" video games haven't helped this genre's bad reception, as most try to reinvent the wheel and fail, or are just under baked tables cranked out with preexisting assets akin to shovelware.

The vast majority of my pinball experience comes from the old space cadet pinball that used to come with windows. But I watched a youtube video reviewing the Nightmare on Elm Street pinball table that randomly appeared in my recommendations a little while ago and I was sort of blown away by how in depth the gameplay was and from what I recall from the video, the Nightmare on Elm Street table wasn't really looked upon very highly in the pinball world.

I never realized pinball tables were basically full blown video games with objectives and an endgame. I also thought crazy gimmicks were an invention of video game pinball games but real tables have all kinds of insane stuff built into them. It's something I've wanted to learn more about since I watched the video. The craftsmanship and skill that goes into the construction of higher end tables is pretty insane.

 

[GEORGE?W?BUSH]

The vast majority of my pinball experience comes from the old space cadet pinball that used to come with windows. But I watched a youtube video reviewing the Nightmare on Elm Street pinball table that randomly appeared in my recommendations a little while ago and I was sort of blown away by how in depth the gameplay was and from what I recall from the video, the Nightmare on Elm Street table wasn't really looked upon very highly in the pinball world.

I never realized pinball tables were basically full blown video games with objectives and an endgame. I also thought crazy gimmicks were an invention of video game pinball games but real tables have all kinds of insane stuff built into them. It's something I've wanted to learn more about since I watched the video. The craftsmanship and skill that goes into the construction of higher end tables is pretty insane.

I don't blame you for not realizing any of that, I think that it's part of the medium's larger issue of how "cheap" it appears. Like, due to the cost required to manufacture tables, everything has to have preexisting licenses attached to them. There are *some* unique tables, but especially now, they're marketed towards the sort of people who can afford to drop $8K on an arcade machine, and those people are unbelievably lame Gen Xers who haven't emotionally matured past the Predator movies. I also don't see it really changing anytime soon, there are digital only tables that have potential, but I haven't seen any that really took advantage of their canvas without turning into something like Xenotilt (which is a cool game for what its worth).

 

[UnboundByJunk]

The vast majority of my pinball experience comes from the old space cadet pinball that used to come with windows. But I watched a youtube video reviewing the Nightmare on Elm Street pinball table that randomly appeared in my recommendations a little while ago and I was sort of blown away by how in depth the gameplay was and from what I recall from the video, the Nightmare on Elm Street table wasn't really looked upon very highly in the pinball world.

I never realized pinball tables were basically full blown video games with objectives and an endgame. I also thought crazy gimmicks were an invention of video game pinball games but real tables have all kinds of insane stuff built into them. It's something I've wanted to learn more about since I watched the video. The craftsmanship and skill that goes into the construction of higher end tables is pretty insane.

It sucks even more that most pinball video games just don't get the feel of pinball correctly. They could honestly do a lot more with those objectives you were talking about. Like how in Pokemon Pinball you can hit specific spots to upgrade your pokeball or to change the environments to be able to catch different types of Pokemon.

Imagine a Dragon Quest type RPG, but when a monster appears, you play pinball on a table themed around that specific enemy. Actually that sounds like an idea that could go very wrong.

 

[TotzOnGaming]

I was looking at gameplay of older Spider-Man games one day and I found this combo video of the DS version of Web of Shadows.

It made me think of the games I played that people don't really remember for its depth. The PS2 Warriors Orochi games came to mind. Those games got some neat mechanics like canceling attacks by switching characters or using a super. I honestly got obsessed with the combat. It felt simple but can feel sick if you dig deeper.

Not to shill a low effort video I made months ago, but I feel this is the best way to show how much I enjoyed the combat.

I agree with this. There's much to love on the Warriors formula when you give it a chance. No wonder why various IPs adapts games with it.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

I agree with this. There's much to love on the Warriors formula when you give it a chance. No wonder why various IPs adapts games with it.

I feel like except with the new game Origins, the general opinion on the gameplay is that it's mindless and just button mash-y, but it's kinda overlooked that you can do some pretty stylish stuff if you do learn how the moves and the juggling work. Even within the Warriors community, it's rare for me to see anyone talking about the depth of the combat.

 

[bjork]

Another chance for me to mention The Witness, so I'll take it. You hear people dismiss it as a dumbass maze game and how it's pretentious or whatever, but you can see the game's ending without discovering

Spoiler: the island's secret

the environmental puzzles that make you look at the entire island and the concept of perspective in a way the game didn't allude to previously

, and it takes it from potentially being a dumbass pretentious maze game to a holy crap this thing is incredible game.

 

[J0_]

Monster Hunter Dos. Most people dismiss it entirely because of it's dated combat and janky controls, but if one were to deep dive into the game they'll find that it has the richest and most immersive environments in the entire series. The way the mechanics of Dos all chain together creates a unique and rewarding gameplay loop that begs the player to master the environments themselves. The monsters are simple and the combat is undeniably stiff, but utilizing environmental knowledge to maximize your use of downtime between fights, subsequently making the fights easier, is what makes MH2 truly special.

You might be thinking that this enviornment stuff sounds similar enough to other MH games, but the complexity Dos brings to the table is unrivaled in this regard.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

Monster Hunter Dos. Most people dismiss it entirely because of it's dated combat and janky controls, but if one were to deep dive into the game they'll find that it has the richest and most immersive environments in the entire series. The way the mechanics of Dos all chain together creates a unique and rewarding gameplay loop that begs the player to master the environments themselves. The monsters are simple and the combat is undeniably stiff, but utilizing environmental knowledge to maximize your use of downtime between fights, subsequently making the fights easier, is what makes MH2 truly special.

You might be thinking that this enviornment stuff sounds similar enough to other MH games, but the complexity Dos brings to the table is unrivaled in this regard.

Man, Monster Hunter combat has always fascinated me, but I could never really get into it. Not really cuz I find it hard, but cuz I can't really get my friends to play the games with me. I should really improve my persuasion skills, cuz all these mechanics really interest me.

 

[Graw]

It sucks even more that most pinball video games just don't get the feel of pinball correctly. They could honestly do a lot more with those objectives you were talking about. Like how in Pokemon Pinball you can hit specific spots to upgrade your pokeball or to change the environments to be able to catch different types of Pokemon.

Imagine a Dragon Quest type RPG, but when a monster appears, you play pinball on a table themed around that specific enemy. Actually that sounds like an idea that could go very wrong.

Have you tried Metroid Prime Pinball? It's actually a pretty decent pinball game if you can handle the double screen.

 

[longestseason]

As simple as it looks, Downwell has a lot of depth. Even though the game doesn't mention it, it encourages you to maintain a huge combo chain until you get rewards (gems, ammo and hp), but I feel like many players underestimate how important this mechanic is. And I bet most don't even know you can wall jump in this game.

 

[Ikagura]

I feel like that's a common issue with early video game reviewers, no? I remember people talking about the Werehog stages in Sonic Unleashed being button mash-y and boring, but now I see people playing it like it's Devil May Cry.

I'll still say that a beat'em up gameplay has no place in a franchise known for its high speed.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

God of war franchise has to be the biggest example of this it seems everyone aside from GOW fans forgot the game had actual story and choose to focus on how GOW4 was the first game to have a story like????? Greek saga has decent story about how kratos kept getting screwed over by the gods of olympus and why he became so angry in 3 but no uh no forget kratos is white cuz he has the ashes of his wife and daughter as his skin to forever remind him of the crime he dead no no dismiss all that and just say he actually became a good charcter in 4 and throw everything else in trash.

 

[UnboundByJunk]

I'll still say that a beat'em up gameplay has no place in a franchise known for its high speed.

Nah, I totally get that. Calling it out of place would still be a better way to put it than calling it mindless.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 3:55 PM

God of war franchise has to be the biggest example of this it seems everyone aside from GOW fans forgot the game had actual story and choose to focus on how GOW4 was the first game to have a story like????? Greek saga has decent story about how kratos kept getting screwed over by the gods of olympus and why he became so angry in 3 but no uh no forget kratos is white cuz he has the ashes of his wife and daughter as his skin to forever remind him of the crime he dead no no dismiss all that and just say he actually became a good charcter in 4 and throw everything else in trash.

Ye dude, the guy was manipulated to kill his own wife, daughter, and mother, and watched his brother die. It's almost as if the guy had reasons to be angry at the Olympians. Maybe people saw the closer camera angle and went "OMG, there's so much emotion and character here."

Honestly, I like this reply a lot cuz with all of us were thinking of gameplay depth, but I like that you brought up the depth in the writing too.