I know for many of us and our friends in the media community, this has been a year of surprises (which I’m sure is obvious if you’ve been paying any attention to our Red Faction: Guerrilla boners of late). So we thought we’d ask you what games over the last few years have really surprised you positively? Whether they were games you’d never heard of that you loved, or games you thought you’d hate that you adore, let us know by this afternoon at 6:00 PM PDT.
So far Red Faction Guerrilla, I had no idea it was this much fun. Running around causing havoc and chaos, without fear of doing something wrong is very appealing to me, more so since the economy sucks, I can blow up shit and not think twice about it.
Geometry Wars got me hooked on it, despite the fact that I’m stuck with the trial version.
I was astonished by Lost Odyssey. I’d never played a JRPG before and it was very much an impulse buy – I heard somebody talk about it on a podcast (possibly 1UP Yours or Major Nelson).
By the end of the the game I’d put some 100+ hours in to the game and I’d gotten really attached to the characters, so much so the ending almost made me cry.
I’ve never looked at a review (or even just a review score) for the game because I don’t want somebody else’s experience to colour my own in any way.
The new Magic: The Gathering game on XBLA. Man, I got so hooked into that. I was a big fan the Pokemon trading card game when I was a kid, but never got around to playing Magic in it’s card form. It makes me sad that I don’t have anyone else to play those kinds of games with anymore, but happy that something like this came along. It’s a lot of fun.
Hell yeah, i too was huge into Pokemon TCG, but i never got into magic. This game coming out on XBLA made me realize how much of a tool i am for not learning about this game along time ago. then again a 10 dollar arcade game is better then 100 dollars worth of cards haha.
Seriously.
I feel bad for my parents and grandma, they shelled out a lot of cash for me so that I could kid my fix for those damn cards. Oh well.
*get
Frontlines Fuel of War. I remember playing the singleplayer demo and thinking just how shit it was. For some reason I tired out the multiplayer demo a few weeks later and fell in love with the game. They had fixed a load of issues and really drew me in because of how similar it was to Battlefield in some ways.
The singleplayer ended up to be a good experience and I just loved the multiplayer.
Mat
Peggle would be the biggest surprise to me. I played the steam demo of nights and was hooked.
Another big surprise to me personally was Beyond Good & Evil. All I knew about it when I picked it up some 5 or so years ago was it was new and it was under $30. I grabbed it and loved every minute of the world and story it convayed to me.
I’ll go with the easy answer and say Portal and Bioshock. These were some of the first games I can think of that take advantage of video games as a medium. A similar experience happened when I finally saw the movie Memento recently, that story could only be done in film, I know it was a book, but I feel it works best as a movie. Just like I don’t think you could experience Portal or Bioshock any other way except for in video game form.
I will agree with Portal. I was expecting a spatial puzzle, and was HOPING they’d continue the humor they displayed in the trailer, but they delivered so much more.
Another was Braid. I was hesitant with the demo, but picked up the full version just due to ubiquitous praise. The game definitely carried beyond the already impressive puzzle mechanics to the subversive climax, another experience that could only be delivered through gameplay. Simply watching it happen is not the same experience, you have to take actions to feel their effects.
Another game that caught me a little off guard was Far Cry 2. The narrative goes places you really don’t expect, and the immersive “in world-ness” of the entire game (map view, etc) was fascinating.
Also, I see I’m not the only person pedantic enough to distinguish properly between PST and PDT.
Chrono-pedants of the world unite!
(On GMT, of course.)
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I think the games that have surprised me the most recently were games like Castle Crashers and Braid. Braid more so then Castle Crashers, mostly because I was already pretty sure I was going to like Castle crashers, just not to the degree I do now (I absolutely adore that game). Braid caught me off guard because I really wasn’t expecting the mechanics of the game to work that well. When you hear “Prince of Persia”-style-time-traveling-2D-side-scroller, that doesn’t really scream out fun to me. But I’ve had a really good time playing Braid, especially with friends around to help out.
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Also I was fairly surprised by Little Big Planet, being the Xbox fanboy that I am. It’s pretty fun just running around and playing in other people’s worlds.
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Zenonia for the iPhone.
It’s probably the best purchase I have made all year. If you have any interest in old school 2-D RPGs similar to Secret of Mana with a whole crap load more to do, definitely grab this.
Its simple….Mirrors Edge, this game is so original..everything from the design of it to the story and flow of the game. I consider this game art and the fact that the game was short added more to the point that the developer was wanting to get across; which is, its a free running game, your goal is to get to the objective safely and as fast as you can.
This game took a lot of people by surprise, not only for the fact that its a EA game, known for putting out the same ip’s year after year, they made a leap and made a new ip…and it took everyone by surprise. So please give EA, and DICE the respect they deserve and mention MIRRORS EDGE.
I know this surprised you guys too, heard you talk about it many of times.
thanks guys. Oh and if this makes it into the show. Throw out my website http://www.whyarewefriends.com…you know you want to cuz im so sexy fatness.
I was also surprised by the Riot Act mod for Half-Life 2. I’ve downloaded a number of HL2 mods lately and been disappointed by most of them. However, Riot Act was a nice change of pace because it was done well :O
For me there are two that really surprised me. The first is BioShock. Before it released I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I remember not really understanding the dynamic/concept of the Big Daddies and Little sisters, and had written it off because of this. After it began recieving so much buzz I decided to played it. I was imediately blown away by the atmosphere, story and tense plasmid battles.
The second is Dead Space. I had no idea that game’s production values would be as good as they were. As a result I was completely sucked into the game world and felt as if I were on the Ishimura. The whole time I was playing I just wanted to find a way to get the hell off that ship.
I agree, Dead Space surprised me last year and became one of my favorite games. I’m hoping for a sequel.
i just bought a ps2 over spring break. i’d never owned a sony console before and thought that because they were so cheap, maybe i could try a lot of the classics that i’d missed out on (shadow of the colossus being at the top of that list) anyway, there is one game that really sticks out in my mind for this topic and it’s Sly Cooper and the Theivius Racoonus. i knew that it was pretty well recieved critically, but i had my doubts. after only 5 minutes of play, i realized i had something really special here. it’s now one of my absolute favorite games. i do wonder though, is the sequel any good? i’m also crossing my fingers for a psp sly, but i know with infamous out, sucker punch is probably not inclined to do that.
The sequel is awesome. Trust me on this one. I was a bit worried about buying it too, because I liked the first game so much and I’d seen my fair share of disappointing sequels, but Sly 2; Band of Thieves is definately not one of them. It leaves in the good— and then adds more. :]
In the past year I would have to say X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Valkyria Chronicles, and Plants vs Zombies stood out to me in that I went into each game with low expectations and came out with a huge smile on my face. Very surprising and fun titles. I would be an ass if I didn’t mention Red Faction: Guerilla since that game deserves more attention than it’s getting right now.
Little long:
Disgaea: It felt like the Stratagy RPG market had made so little progress since Final Fantasy Tactics and then all of a sudden this game felt to me like it got so much right. Tons of room to max stuff to the extremes or play through it with little grinding, Multiple endings and playthroughs, Nice little tweaks like being able to throw characters, all kinds of neat little mechanics that make you go I wonder if I could…, tons of stratagy elements behind the Geo system.
Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, a better game then Prototype a couple years before Prototype(same team) with a lot less attention paid to it and one of the few games to really get a comic license right. Everytime I lift a car up in prototype I try to do something cool with it other then throw it, and get sad everytime when I can’t.
Burnout 3: I blame it on the box out for the previous games making it seem like a very generic racer. When I got Burnout 3 for Xbox it just blew me away.
Mercenaries: First game to understand that open world games would be more fun if you had some real firepower to throw around, and not be impossible to survive once a fight starts. One of the few games where I really felt it was worth getting the Xbox version of after having the PS2 version, which greatly improved the draw distance making helicopters way more fun. Being able to have gear drop in to your location is way better than even being able to take a cab. After Mercenaries I think Crackdown really improved on the “being a badass in an open world” and when I played Red Faction Guerrilla I really felt like I had a truer successor than Mercenaries 2 was (Mercs 2 had a better commercial campaign though). At least in Mercs when someone comes to help me they will man a turret even if they arn’t a rescued hostage.
Maybe the fact that Hulk and Mercs have parallels to two recent games made me think of them, I should go get the Sly Cooper games out of my pile of shame before I play inFamous.
Obvious answer… Crackdown. I, like many, considered it a pack in for the Halo demo. I was never into Halo so I never bothered with it. Years later when I saw it on clearance at Target for $10 I found what became one of my favorite Xbox 360 games.
Agreed. I thought a five-minute test-drive would be enough for me (my friend bought it for the Halo beta). I was still playing through the night after he went to sleep.
Another good choice, I’m in the same boat as you man. I picked up a copy for 12 dollars a few months ago and am now just getting around to playing it. Just goes to show that you shouldn’t judge a game by it’s cover.
Shadow Of The Colossus surprised the hell out of me. After playing the demo, which let you explore freely and fight the first colossus, I was intrigued by the mechanics, but the controls and the PS2′s limited graphical power left me skeptical that the game would be able to deliver on it’s implied promise of intense battles with huge, hulking beasts.
I was interested, though, and bought the game without doing further research. Hey, the game was made by the ICO team, after all.
Oh, did it ever deliver. From the third colossus threatening to crush my tiny skull to the pissed flying eagle colossus not only trying to claw my face off but also shake me off while I fight to hang on to the eel-like colossus threatening to drown me, Shadow delivered on all fronts.
Burnout Paradise is the most recent one that comes to mind. I was a huge fan of Burnout 3 and played it into the ground. I didn’t 100% it, but I had over 90% complete and it was the only game that got me to bring my PS2 online. Burnout Revenge was underwhelming in additions and changes, so I left the series.
After Paradise came out, I simply turned a blind eye, expecting more of the same but in an open world. Recently I traded Gun for it on a swap website. I expected it to be a palette cleanser: short bursts of play to get away from bigger games, but nothing special.
Now, it’s the first game I plug in after a long day. I’ve displayed symptoms of “just one more event” syndrome. I still can’t get over how revitalized and refined it feels. Pure bliss, and it was totally unexpected.
P.S. Catan!! I first watched a friend play and attempt to describe it to me. Being that it was at a party, I was not in the frame of mind to comprehend it and thought, “this seems boring as shit.”
Later, I downloaded the trial to give it a second chance, and after learning the basics, my brain was on fire with strategy and I bought the full version. It still gets regular rotation in my games after a year’s worth of play.
The game that surprised me the most was Prince of Persia for the last gen consoles. When it first came out, the whole concept didn’t interest me. But then I played a demo from an old Playstation Magazine, I was blown away by it. I instantly picked it up. I went from thinking this game was going to be boring and extremely hard ( from playing the original POP) to making it STILL one of my favorite games ever. Let that also be a lesson, a good demo can change someone’s view on a game.
For me, lot’s of PSN games. I have always been sceptical about these kind of downloadable games, but the last year or so I have purchased around 10 of them, and I have to say that most of them have exceeded my expectations.
First one is of course Pixeljunk Monsters. At the time I had only seen a few screenshots, and knew that it was a tower defence game. The pictures looked so-so, and I am not really a Tower Defence guy. But for those bargain prices that some of downloadable games have, I bought it, and was extremely happy about the purchase. The graphics were crisp and they had a awesome art-style, and the gameplay was for at least me, really different from what I expected from a tower defence game.
There are too many good games released now days, both as downloadable and retail…
Love the show!
kitsune
PSN: swe_kitsune
Twitter: olssonm
Like many, my biggest surprise of the last few years was Crackdown. The demo made it look brief and shallow; the Halo 3 demo getting tacked on added further worry. Then I started playing, and a friend leapt in to “demonstrate” his new heat-seeking rockets the only way he knew how. After I revenge-killed and stored them for my own use, I was hooked. It’s also one of a few elite games where achievements are well thought out and (mainly – stunts rings and race pro excepted) fun to get. The sequel better deliver.
iPhone/Touch gaming as a whole comes second; so many amazing games, so damn cheap.
Back in college I had a Dreamcast, and my roommate and I were looking for games to download for it. We kept hearing about ‘Rez’ and how it was really cool, yet really hard to get a hold of. That and a few screenshots was literally the extent of our knowledge of the game. When we finally did get a copy, we weren’t sure what to make of it. We new it had cool music, and interesting graphics, but we didn’t understand how the shooting worked, nor any of the other core game mechanics like the Progression Gates in each level or about the different forms you take as you power up. Needless to say, we were terrible at the game.
About two days of on and off playing later, we learned that you could hold the fire button down to select multiple targets. It was one of those “Ah-ha!” moments where everything suddenly made sense. One revelation led to another, and before long we were hooked to playing Rez daily.
That is easily one of my favorite memories in gaming, because I’d never had the patience to feel my way into a game so blind like that before, and Rez will forever be a special game to me because of that.
I had never liked a Resident Evil game until RE4. My college roomate preordered the game and received a demo of it for the Gamecube. The very instant that we started playing I was hooked. We were both so impressed by the tiny demo that we must have played through it 20 times each. We would make our own minigames out of it like who could survive in the town without killing any zombies. We would try to beat each others time to complete it as well as try to get the most kills. It wasn’t just the demo that surprised me as I have played through that game so many times on so many different consoles over and over.
I played God Hand at my friends house once and I couldn’t get over how stupid fun it was punching dudes over and over.
Most recently though I’ve really been surprised at how much
I’ve liked the Uncharted 2 Multiplayer stuff. With every video game enthusiast putting it down before it even came out my excitement level for it was pretty much a 0. I’m not saying that I’m going to play it over other online multiplayer games, I’m just saying it feels like a competent shooter.
Dude definitely feeling ya on RE4. I actually had no Playstation or PS2, so the RE1 remake for the GC was the first Resident Evil I had ever played. That still might be one of my most played games ever. And then RE4 trumped THAT! With a now iconic 3rd person OTS camera angle, amazing graphics for its time and replayability, it is easily the best non-Nintendo game on GC
Guitar Hero. Mandatory game accessories had always been the kiss of death (with the exception of the GunCon), and I’d never played a rhythm game that required rhythm (I’m looking at you Papa Rappa) so I didn’t look twice when GH 1 game out. The price tag didn’t help. A couple of years ago I was killing time at a Circuit City a tried the GH 2 demo, I was amazed how fun it was, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.
Now my home is littered with plastic instruments and the vast majority of my gaming time is spent on Rock Band (the largest breaks from which are due to Game Club).
I never was interested in Guitar Hero. I played it at a couple parties and in some store demos, but it never grabbed me.
One day a friend had a party where they were playing Rock Band, and I got a chance to bang around on the plastic drums instead of the plastic guitars.
I bought the full game immediately, and now I play it almost every day, generally for about an hour. I went from “man, easy is stupid, but medium is too much!” to “damn, I almost got 5 stars on The Perfect Drug on Expert.” and playing all songs (even ones I’ve never played) on Expert by default. That game builds serious coordination, regardless of how applicable it is to a full set.
Apparently I like the drums. Now I just need to figure out how to get a real (enough) set without disturbing the landlord/wife/neighbors. I’m thinking some electronic set . . .
That was pretty surprising to me, I went from zero interest to obsessed.
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Another game that came out of nowhere was Skate. I’d had passing interest in Tony Hawk’s games, but nothing really ever compelled me to keep playing more than briefly. I’d played a ton of Fight Night 2/3 and had gotten very used to the dual stick solution, so it didn’t take much to adapt to Skate’s control scheme. Everything just seemed to flow so naturally and be so intuitive. I realized that after I’d reloaded the timed demo 3 or 4 times, I should probably just go buy the game.
I was really surprised by my wife once. But not in a good way.
As for games – Dead Space & Uncharted. Thought I’d hate them both but love love loved em.
I would have to say Crackdown without a doubt. Dropped fifty on it as a preorder ONLY to get the beta for Halo 3, and not only did the gameplay satisfy me, but the longevity of the content kept me playing. As an achievement whore, I made sure to get all 800 orbs, win every race, and play again and again with friends in co-op. And to this day it still boasts the smartest use of downloadable content: if one buys it, the other can use it. I don’t know about you, but it was the most enjoyable 1250 Gamerpoints I have ever received. Fat penis
Braid. Rare that a game makes you think.
Crysis. When you play that game well, it is so rewarding. From the story and look I thought it would just be another shooter (which I am fine with) but over time it was a really great game.
Two games:
1. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I was never really into RPGs other than Zelda until I was sucked into Oblivion. I ended up putting 100+ hours into one character. It probably had something to do with the freedom to create my own experiences rather than grinding for levels.
2. Mass Effect. The main surprise here came from the story. I have never been engaged with a game story as much as in Mass Effect. I guess I should have expected this from Bioware.
Crackdown really surprised me in a good way. I preordered the game in part for the Halo 3 Beta and also because I had heard that some of the people from GTA 3 worked on it.
The first time I jumped from the agency tower into the water I had a grin of the shit eating variety for quite some time. Oh yeah, the DLC was even fun, sticking gang members to car with the harpoon gun never gets old
May the fat penis be with you all.
I was really surprised by the XBLA game The Dishwasher. For being an indie XNA game that got picked up by Microsoft to be put on the main marketplace it was great. The art style was interesting, with a very Sin City-esque feel. It was a fun 2d combo driven, ultra violent kill fest that really felt good especially when putting together a huge combo, using the great finishing move animations. The story was definitely a throw away, that although having a cool art style, only served to break up levels and just before boss fights. I put in a good 5-6 hours with it playing through the story, and the challenges. More short, fun, cheap games like this are always a great buy.
Team Fortress 2. I loved TFC and I new TF2 would be awsome, but my time stat at TF2 speak or themselves
Medic- 182.23 hours
Engineer- 127.38 hours
Heavy- 98.56 hours
Spy-53.14 hours
Demoman-48.19 hours
Soldier-46.44 hours
Pyro-38.03 hours
Scout-29.38 hours
Sniper- 17.52
First game I bought when I first got my PS2 was Final Fantasy XII. I’d never played an FF game, so I didn’t know until after I played it that it was so different from the others. Once I got past the Dreadnought Leviathan, everything clicked. I guess some people really didn’t like it, but I love it. I haven’t found another JRPG that has really grabbed me like that one. (Despite the fact that I felt like I’d been video game’d when the Occurians showed up.
I think the other FF games might have been ruined for me. Except for FF Tactics. (See below.)
Burnout 3 also really impressed me. My mom bought it for me because I didn’t have any good multiplayer games to play with my family. I remembered playing it once at a friends’ house, but I didn’t remember loving it anymore than any other racing game. My memory deceived me. I’m like a crack addict with this game. It’s the only racing game that has ever held my attention. I’m currently trying to get gold for every event.
There is one GameStop by my house that sells GBA games. I bought Final Fantasy Tactics a few weeks ago. Within less than the first week I owned it I had logged in more than 20 hours. Need I say more?
If you haven’t played Burnout Paradise yet, it’s well worth $20. It’s got me as hooked as I was with Burnout 3.
One current-gen game that has impressed the hell out of me (and one that I had no intention of playing until I heard it discussed a lot on podcasts late last year) is Dead Space.
Survival horror games not named Resident Evil usually don’t capture my interest, but Dead Space blew me away from the opening moments clear through to the finale. The two things about Dead Space that impressed me the most were the lack of on on-screen HUD which really immerses you into the experience, opposite of the way games with HUDS constantly remind you that you are playing a game.
Secondly, and also helping out with overall immersion, was the sound direction. The ambient spaceship sounds in Dead Space are shockingly good.
The Sam & Max games were a real big suprise for me. I had never played adventure games before or heard anything about Sam & Max, but then I heard Ryan Scott constantly go on about them in some of the GFW Radio podcasts. So I downloaded the demo for the first episode of season one, now I own both seasons of the series and both collectors DVDs.
First I would like to define my concept of ‘surprise’. It is a common occurrence for many to list games that they simply did not have any expectations for. I on the other hand, see a ‘surprise’ as a game that defies the trend of expectation – a trend made by the developer themselves. This is to say a real surprise if ‘game company x’ has a long and maligned history of making terrible games but manages to create ‘game y’ that is great, that would qualify as a genuine surprise.
It is in this reasoning that my biggest surprise would be Mirror’s Edge. DICE has had a deep history of making games centralized around massive combat scenarios – as seen in their lucrative Battlefield series. Yet Mirror’s Edge was a game that discouraged combat and overt violence and preferred agility and motion. On a conceptual level, Mirror’s Edge is my biggest surprise in that its mechanics of motion are the most exhilarating part of the game – versus the developers history of making shooting/combat the centerpiece.
I don’t necessarily agree with your perspective about DICE and Mirror’s Edge, but it could be because I was excited about the game and followed it up to release. It sounded like DICE really wanted to do ME because it was not focused on combat, but still first person.
The gameplay didn’t seem so much surprising, either. It did seem intuitive and a fresh take on movement.
If you talk about ME in terms of EA deciding to publish it (along with tons of other new IPs last year), that would be where the surprise was for me.
Most surprising game recently… I am shocked no one has mentioned the XBLA game/gameshow: 1 vs 100. It was a real eye-opener as to what games could become and what the future of “family” entertainment might be 5-10 years from now.
A massive surprise for me was a Japanese-developed game for the 360 called Earth Defence Force 2017. The game had a minuscule budget, which you could tell form the appalling graphics, dodgy level-design and even the box art. It was the cheesiest thing I’d ever seen. You had to kill giant space ants and their dino-mech overloards. With shotguns. The storyline consisted of “Now there are giant ants in Tokyo” and “Now they have *six* giant robots at a time”
And, after spending countless hours playing the game, I still couldn’t think of one good thing to say about it. Then I realised how much I had been playing the game. This cheesy piece of garbage had managed to keep me amused for over 20 hours and I wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.
To this day I have no idea why the game was so fun, but I would definitely put the piece of crap in my top ten best ever games.
Gravity Bone on PC..its short but fun and creative.the ending i thought was pretty funny
Persona 3 & 4. Persona 3 was the first Persona game I ever played and I thought it was great. It was an RPG with a different twist with great gameplay. It reminded me how those crazy Japanese companies can create something I never thought I would enjoy. I now consider the Persona series my favorite RPG series.
For me it was Beyond Good & Evil(GC)/Bioshock(PS3). The story and the environment in which your in just draw me to these games and made want to find out more and play more.
I would have said something like Shadow of the Colossus, since it was different than I expected, but I already knew it had critical acclaim by the time I played. The only game in the last few years that took me by complete surprise was Bladestorm. A game that got panned by critics, but seemed to be well liked by players, I hadn’t really heard of it when I was introduced to it. When I started playing it (for work), I was like, “Oh, Koei, this is going to be like Dynasty Warriors, which I don’t like at all.” To my utter surprise, I ended up playing the game for some six hours and actually loved it the whole time.
It’s certainly not a great game, but it hits that middle ground between strategy and action that I wish could be found in more games. I generally suck at strategy games, but this one was simple enough that I could get into it, and the action bits were also simple enough to just get into that good kind of grind pattern. But most surprising is the amount of customizing you can do outside of battle, bringing in those RPG elements I love.
Overall, the best surprise I’ve had in a game for the last few years.
One game that wasn’t great but I had a freakish amount of fun with was Earth Defense Force 2017. The physics are horrible, the models suck, and its pretty much a piece of crap all around. Though playing with a friend or just turning my brain off and blasting aliens is extremely enjoyable.
i will second that,i love that game so much,its such a blast
For me, Paper Mario came out of nowhere and completely wowed me.
Years back I was house sitting for a friend and played his GameCube to pass the time. He had just bought Paper Mario before leaving on his trip and said that I can take it for a spin while a watched over his home. I didn’t know anything about the game and judging by the screenshots on the box I was not expecting much but when started the game I enjoyed it game immensely.
The visual style and writing is really charming and a little outside the box for a traditional Mario game, which I liked. The battle system is simplified RPG troupe, but it wasn’t monotonous because of the added sort-of micro games that went along with a given action, like timed button presses for extra damage/combo. For me the micro games within battles kept it from feeling monotonous and it was designed in a way that made and RPG feel like a Mario game.
Paper Mario completely surprised me and made me a fan of the GameCube, which is good, otherwise I wouldn’t have tried Metroid Prime 1 & 2 (which are also freakin’ great). Besides , you get to team up with Bowser in Paper Mario and that’s badassballs.
Uncharted was my surprise. Seeing the first trailer at
E3, I couldn’t see what was the big deal about this game. Some guy wearing a red long sleeve shirt that looked like something straight out of the bad news bears, running around a lush green environment didn’t seem all that appealing to me. Having said that, it is my favorite PS3 game until it gets de-throned by Uncharted 2.
Pokemon Diamond was the real surprise for me lately. Growing up on the early Pokemon games, I looked back on them with the same smile that you look back on eating bugs and worms. Fun at the time, but probably doesn’t keep up with my new diet of games.
Soon, I found that, just like my memory, churning through the Pokemon was just as tasty as it had been in my memory. Delighting in catching and training my various Pokemon is something I still enjoy while I need something mindless to do.
I still don’t think eating worms for six hours a day is entertaining, though.
Valkyria Chronicles was a big surprise last year. The mash-up of third person shooter with a tactical strategy game grabbed me. Sega was bold in taking the much needed step forward for the genre and it paid off. The stylized art grabbed me and the pure fun kept me coming back for replays.
Uncharted – I was very surprised at how great it was. Infamous was another great surprise more recently.
Fishwrangler on facebook, a great game to waste away your day with, & as an added bonus, unlike a lot of other fb games, other players can only enhance the gameplay rather than leave a nasty taste in the mouth as they abuse the system and so ruin your experience
As much as i hate to admit it…bioshock really shocked me (i hate how that shock works there..)From the time i read the game informer exclusive first look to the day it came out i had NO interest and NO intention of getting it.One day i was looking for games and bioshock was pretty much i only option at the store..brought it home,played it,beat it,beat it again,turned up difficulty and beat it again..bought the ps3 edition and beat it again,Bought the DLC and beat it.I fucking love bioshock.Easily one of my favorite games of all time Final Fantasy series being the only competiton
I have to say.. Dead Space. The first teaser looked average, the trailers were cheap horror scares and the whole scenario sounded something that a 12-year-old though was scary. Boy, was a wrong. They actually went somewhere with the space-concept and there were concrete things that affected gameplay. The weapons were original, you couldn’t shoot enemies in the head to kill them (most of the times) and zero-g mixed the gameplay a bit. All that and a great art-direction brought it all together. Best game of 2008.
ps. Zero-g in the tube near the end of the game was one of the coolest things done in a videogame.
I am completely amazed at the change in position between EA and Activision. Just in the past couple of years, EA has really shown great initiative in trying to get awesome IP. For instance: Skate, Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, etc.
Now everyone hates Activision, and they don’t seem to be doing anything to stop it. Tony Hawk Ride and DJ Hero will require more peripherals, and it seems we’re getting new Guitar Heroes every other month.
Who could have predicted that 3 years ago?
Also: I just picked up Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, and I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised, as it’s my first Shin Megami Tensei game.
I would have to say it was a game for my original xbox, Sniper Elite, you were a sniper in world war two. it was great the missions were very divers. there was also a cover system like MGS Snake Eater, that used camo to blend you in to your environment. the game also had co-op through the whole game.
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.
Holy shit, this game great! Absurd, ridiculous, hilarious, and a total rip-off with a completely fucked premise that only 50 would put into a game. Seriously. Two bouncing titties for this one!
Agreed, did not see this one coming, plus Blood on the Sand was the first game I got 1000/1000, so it hold’s a special place in my heart.
I agree. It is a solid game. The most pure fun I had with a game in awhile. You laugh your ass off at the story and at 50 Cent and G-Unit. I wonder if they understand how ridiculous the game made them look.
surely they can’t look any more ridiculous than they already do?
No one in the gaming world hates shooters more than me, first person or third. That being said when it was time for a bigger hard drive for my 360 I had two choices new console or just a new hard drive? With my 360 getting close to 3 years old without a red ring I figured a new console would be my most sound investment. So with a little research I saw that Resident Evil 5 was coming out with a limited edition red 360. Resident Evil 5 changed my outlook on shooters. I loved RE5! Lost way to many hours to it. So with my new found appreciation of shooters of the third person perspective I tried Dead Space after hearing lots of podcasters foam at the mouth over it. Resident Evil 5 got me warmed and then Dead Space came in and blew me away! I still dont like first person shooters but I love me some third person kill ‘em all’s.
When I was in high school I thought those kids who played Magic were complete losers. After downloading the demo for the Magic game on XBLA it turns out I was the loser for not getting in on that sweet card action. I started playing it on a friday night and didn’t sleep until sometime sunday afternoon because it had me by the balls and wouldn’t let go.
Dead Space, when announced at E3 last year the trailer for RE5 had me thinking that Dead Space would be lost to me. After buying the CE of Resident Evil and being completely let down, i picked up dead space when it was priced down to 30$ dollars on Amazon. I was blown away by how much better it was then RE5.
But not my game of ’08 that goes to fallout3, after a half assed try at fallout 2 i didn’t intend to pick up 3, but playing it with a friend had me hooked, again amazon had an amazing deal and i have just been in love with it ever since. Pumping 60 hours into it, around classes, in the first two weeks i got it. And with the steady stream of DLC fallout had me the most surprised and excited about games in a long time.
Mirror’s Edge felt whimsically unoppressive to a degree I didn’t think was possible from a video game – something I’m only used to feeling when solo hiking a cliff or mountain. The game surprised me and kept me coming back until I beat it, and I hate platformers. I didn’t like Mario 64. I can’t wait for Mirror’s Edge 2.
Destiny of an Emperor for NES turned out to be a great RPG.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two: Fight Night Round 3, and Fallout 3.
Fight Night Round 3 changed my mind about EA Sports, showing that they aren’t just a monopoly when it comes to anything football. Using the Right Stick to control the punches feels so unique. In fact, I kind of dislike Fight Night Round 4′s changes to the controls, as it seems to complicate things needlessly.
Fallout 3, on the other hand, wasn’t on my radar at all. I saw videos before release, and knew Bethesda was behind it (I loved Morrowind and Oblivion), but it never considered getting it until I saw a friend in college play it. Everything changed/tweaked from Oblivion seemed to make sense, and it really nailed a depressing, post-apocalyptic world. Even the DLC surprised me. I loved Operation Anchorage (as linear as it is), disliked The Pitt initially (although it grew on me over time–likely due to everything being taken away), found Broken Steel to be a natural extension of the main storyline, and Point Lookout to bring a different atmosphere (although stereotyping Marylanders as a southern inbred was NOT cool). I’ll admit, however, that I haven’t finished the latter two (mostly due to GPU problems).
Two games that stand out to me are Frontlines: Fuel of War, which had a horrible singleplayer demo but the multiplayer sold me completely. Oddly enough when the final product came out the singleplayer campaign was very strong (although a bit short). Also, Cold Fear was a great game that came out of no-where. It offered fun third person shooting, good horror moments, and an all around enjoyable game.
Cave Story – I wasn’t expecting to be grabbed by some random free game
Phoenix Wright (series) – I would never have played it if it weren’t for my roommate. At first look I couldn’t stand the stereotypical anime models. Yet I gave it a try and I was pulled into the game. I’ve ended up losing nights of sleep playing through this series because I need to know what happens next.
Super Stardust HD – This is a game that came out of nowhere, by a company I never heard of, and I’ve spent more time playing than any other PSN title, save Bionic Commando: Rearmed.
Warhawk – The game did not preview well at all, but I bought it on a whim at the suggestion of a podcast, and ended up putting over a hundred hours into it.
Persona 4 hands down. With all the talk of the stagnation in Japanese game development, I’m very surprised this game hasn’t come up more often. Yes it plays like most jrpgs, but the story and the content it tackles is very progressive not even for Japan, but for America as well. It deals with teenagers and their issues, and not issues of “OMG does he like me? Or ‘Like’ me?”. No we are talking issues of confused sexuality, gender displacement, and the whether or not to follow in your parents footsteps. Persona 4 takes the trappings of the jrpg format and molds its story to it in the most effective way possible. My friends have sat down and watched me play most of this game in its 80 hours entirety and get mad at me when I play it when they are not around due to the story and the characters. When you can start talking about video game characters as real people that has to be celebrated.
Picross DS. I heard everyone ranting about it, but I figured it was just good… for a puzzle game. I got it, and found that, not at all exaggerating, it was the single best game on the DS.
And THEN I got Pic Pic, after a 10/10 raving Eurogamer review, and that’s even better than Picross somehow. Despite the horribad name and bablefished english and mediocre artwork, it’s the first puzzle game I’ve ever played that’s focused on testing your creativity and spacial awareness rather than problem solving, math, trivia, etc, and it just feels so fucking good to play it. It’s insane.
The 3D Picross looks great too, hopefully won’t be too long before its release.
Dead Space is by far the biggest surprise of last year. The supplementary content had me worried considering the animated film and comic were both generic and poorly executed. Once I popped the game in, I couldn’t put it down. I actually finished the entire game in two sittings, which really surprised me considering I’m not a huge fan of any horror genre. I fully intend on forcing my roommate to play this game by the end of the summer!
Gears of War 2 actually. I didn’t really like the first one, so I wasn’t expecting to like the 2nd one but I ended up loving every minute of it. It’s all presentation but fuck is it badass. It just needs a good writer to be great game.
Even after hearing the critical acclaim following the initial release of Chronicles of Riddick for the Xbox, I was skeptical. During this time, games based on movie or TV licenses were almost universally horrible (I feel this trend has eased a bit.), and claims that this game based on such a ridiculous movie character was actually in some way playable, let alone good, seemed preposterous. Imagine my shock when the game was not only fun but incredibly innovative.
Demons’ Souls. I followed the game a little prior to it’s release solely because of the western rpg aesthetic but by all accounts the game had a terrible frame rate and there wasn’t much that I saw in previews to be excited about. When the game finally hit there was very little else out that I wanted so I picked it up for the heck of it and was blown away. I pretty much played it and nothing else day in and day out for two months. I’ve clocked something like 300 hours of play and that’s by far the most I’ve played any single game. It is definitely my favorite game ever.
One of the largest pleasant surprises to me in games for the last few years was actually Shadowrun on 360. I, like a lot of other people, balked at the idea of Shadowrun being a Counter-Strike style shooter in the months before its release. One of my favorite Genesis games ever was the Shadowrun RPG. I loved everything about the game, and can even remember the cheat code used for a once-only bonus item, spell, money, or movement speed increase. I was very surprised and very pleased by the multiplayer demo that was released on XBL. FASA did a great job of balancing tech upgrades, magic, and weaponry. I loved the little glider wings that could be used as a super jump and as a way to slow your falls. The teleport spell was also a great method of mobility, you could teleport on any axis just as long as you were moving that direction. My biggest disappointment was that FASA was folded, and no new content updates were even planned so far as I know.
Battlefield: Bad Company. I had played Battlefield 2 for 360, and didn’t like it at all, so I wasn’t looking forward to Bad Company at all. Then, I got an OXM demo disc with a Bad Company demo on it. I played the multiplayer part for a week straight. There was only one map in the demo, but I never got bored of it. I’m really looking forward to Bad Company 2.
Dead Space. After the demo I thought I would never play the full game. I got it from my brother and I was shocked that I liked it almost as much as RE4.
The Darkness. Got it for 7 euros from a sale and my expectations were very low. It turned out to be a really solid shooter.
recently, Bionic Commando. Despite the totally absurd story, and linear levels etc I was surprised at just how fun the core mechanics of this game are.. it has a small learning curve, but when you get it it’s just good fun. Totally underrated IMO.
Same deal with Red Faction really, I got that, thought this game looks like total ass, but the core destruction mechanic is so strong it carries the game.
I would definitely say Portal i mean at first it sounded very odd but i have ended up playing through it like 3 times. Gears of War as well, As hyped up as that game was it had a lot to live up to and it was one of the best co-op experiences I have ever had.
The World Ends With You, a game that was sadly overlooked by too many people last year. At first glance you see a game designed to appeal to the ‘emo’ crowd or the average obsessed Square Enix fan, but under that flimsy surface is the most engaging and unique experience I’ve ever had on the DS. The gameplay requires constant attention and you never really feel like you’re just plodding along like in your generic RPG. The story is not the best in the world, but still very solid and keeps you interested throughout the game. The atmosphere is perfect; between the music that would feel perfectly at home in Shibuya, the emphasis on fashion trends with your equipment, and the general locale, everything about the game feels very fresh and alive in a genre that’s been in need of a few kicks in the ass as of late.
Quantum Of Solace.
It is basically Call Of Duty 4 with a cover mechanic and some stealth sections. The cover worked great, I wonder if Treyarch ever thought of adding it to the Call Of Duty series.
Crackdown.
I played it for hours without really liking it, actually thinking it was shit. But it was just some dumb action game i could play while doing other things. After sinking what seemed to be 30+ hours on to it, it started getting awesomely good. Amazing cars, jumps, throwing shit miles away.
It’s still really shit in most of ways, but damn it was fun for 5 some hours after all the grind.
Scratches- It’s a point and click adventure game that i picked up on a whim about two years ago. Unlike the classics that everyone knows and loves, Scratches has no humor in it, or at least intentional humor. I found myself really enjoying the story of, which is about a writer in England who rents a house in the country. What he finds there is a mystery about an Explorer who had traveled to Africa and brought back a mask he stole from a murderous tribe. There are many puzzles and locked doors with keys to find, but what would an adventure game be without those. Everything has a logic to it, so nothing was impossible to solve. I found myself playing he game for hours every night in the midst of the 2007 holiday season even though I had games like Mass Effect and Assassins Creed to play. Unfortunately, working in Maya fried my graphics card about 3/4s of the way through the game, and i have never gotten back to it. From what I played of it I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a serious adventure game.
It’s waaaaaay back, but Zone of Enders 2 is still one of, if not my top Playstation 2 game. That game just took a great engine from the first game and wrapped it with pure fun. As for this generation, I didn’t think I’d get as into Assassin’s Creed as much as I did. Everyone kept hammering for what it wasn’t instead of appreciating it for what it was. Also, there’s nothing quite like using an instant hidden blade death counter on someone.
If Fallout 3 counts, I’ll say that surprised me in a good way. The world is massive and detailed, the npcs lifelike and believable, and the quests were interesting and added to the experience. Overall, a fantastic game
Banjo-kazooie Nuts & Bolts. This game surprised me in how customizable the vehicals are and how well they are implemented in the game world. It also stayed relevant to the other Banjo’s at the same time… ohh, and its willingness to bully the ease of games now.
Fucking Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom for the NES was the bomb, man. I had no idea! Seriously.
Gonna have to say Red Faction Guerilla, that’s the one that is easiest to recall anyway. I really wasn’t expecting much but after hearing Arthur love it up I decided to give it a shot and I was just blown away, great game all around.
LittleBigPlanet.
Finally got my hands on it, and I was hyped for the offline content but was pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of online content.
Happy Canada Day!
The Natal demo Ricochet surprised me since it was Dreamcasts Cosmic Smash:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/dreamcast%20Cosmic%20Smash/danimal2888/cosmicsmash.jpg
and Milo is of course surprisingly similar to Seaman…
Almost makes you wonder if Sega is going to be announced as a big Natal backer, with how their Mature Wii games have been selling it wouldn’t surprise me, and they could probably still do cute better and have better name recognition than Rare.
Expect to have sword wielding werewolf avatars in the near future? Microsoft wins the furry market back from Playstation home?
I forgot to mention a great old NES title by the name of Shatterhand. I fired it back up for old times sake and it’s still good and still hard.
Bioshock is the one that most readily comes to mind. Seeing the screenshots, watching early vids and reading previews, I had an idea of what I was in store for. Or so I thought. It started off LOOKING beautiful, but once I really saw the details of the world, Rapture really came alive. Mr Bubbles, the gentle giants that went all German school child on you if you shot ‘em, the creepy Little Sisters, everything about the game met and then exceeded my expectations. I thought I was getting another creepy shooter, but Bioshock turned out to be so much more.
Dead Space
During the time of EA’s reawakening I was scared at thr thought of an original IP from such a sequel heavy publisher. Little did I know it would not only scare the crap out of me, but also become one of my favorite games this generation. It really fills the spot that RE 5 left behind in its move to an action game.
Syphon Filter Dark Mirror (PSP Version) really suprised me. After plying Syphon Filter Omega Pain (Strain). I was turned away from the series, but playing Dark Mirror made me wanting more which i did get with the follow up Logan Shadow was also good. Now I want a PS3 version since PS3 doesnt get Splinter Cell.
Although this is going to sound retarded (that one’s for Tyler!) the game that blind sided me the hardest in the last few years is a little indie game called World of Warcraft. I know.. I know… Personally it fits though, in the year leading up to it’s release I didn’t even give it a second thought. I had been a poop socking MMO junkie since UO and was a total EQ fan boy. I was utterly devoted to EQ2, watching for every news break I could get my hands on. I knew WoW was in production but never even gave it a second thought until a friend gave me a beta key.
Almost five years later I just now retired and plan on spending the rest of the summer catching up on all the truely amazing games that have come out since. Yikes!
As far as recent past, your previous two Game Club games, Call Of Cthulu & Bully both surprised me. I’m a fan of retro gaming, but Cthulu is the first game that gave me the heebie jeebies since I played Silent Hill in my dorm room at night. Bully floored me with how fun it was. Never being into the GTA series I found Bully to be fun with it’s side misson selection and seriously, how much of a crazy man-in-training is Gary? He’s like a teenage Ted Bundy.
I know that their is a range of ages on this site but PS2/Xbox/360/Wii games being referred to as retro feels weird to me.
Maybe I really am getting old since I’m still getting over call pretty much anything 3d retro.
Uncharted Drakes Fortune, I didnt even notice this game until it came out. Seen it on the shelf and picked it up. WOW! This game is fantastic, it basically had me hooked from start to finish and now i cant wait until the second one comes out.
I’d say Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Beyond Good and Evil and Katamari Demacy. These games had relatively low hype when they were released and were games I heard was really good so I decided to give them a shot and boy was I blown away at how unique the experience was with these games.
I think that games with relatively little hype and sell poorly, but do really well critically are the ones that surprise me the most.
What games have surprised me?
3.Grand Theft Auto IV was Way better than I expected since I wasn’t expecting much really. Everything was rumored. Nothing was really final till release. I’ve had too many little fun times with it.
2. Kingdom Hearts 2. Rented it in fear of not liking it. Fell in love after the hour long intro. I gotta say this was a nice surprise at how I fell in love with the story and characters.
And my top favorite surprise ever is…
1.Halo 3
I bought my Xbox 360 game for GTA IV DLC. Well I heard some stuff of this game but nothing I liked. My mother rented this game since it was renting well at her work. I feel in love after the rental. I took it back that night and made my mother drive me to Walmart where I gave her my cash to buy it. Halo 3 is now still being played by me. Even my other favorites do not have as much time as I put into Halo 3. About half a year after I got my Xbox 360 and Halo 3 I got a Xbox Voice account. Since May 24th 2008 it has recorded my time in all my Xbox 360 games. I am proud to say I am a gamer with 23 games having been played on my Xbox 360 and Halo 3 having the most in my days played. I have played Halo 3 101 days since May last year. I have put more time into Halo 3 than I have GTA IV which is at 61 days and is my second highest.
Halo 3 is the best surprise I’ve ever had with a video game.
To be honest I am surprised by the games that surprised people. If you are informed (as in read the news and reviews) and know your taste, I would have expected that you can easily know in advance if you will like a game.
Also looking at the comments it seems that surprises really only come from lack of information, e.g. day 1 purchases before reviews are out.
What I personally find more interesting is when people enjoy games that are ‘objectively’ bad (like Koei’s “Warriors” games) or that the start liking games that they didn’t like before (e.g. I love the PSN/Live Arcade Outrun while I never really enjoyed Outrun 2 on the PC/XBox).
Or the other way around, the interesting thing is why people thought that the game would be bad in the first place.
What games have surprised me?
Hmm, I’d have to say the XBLA game “N+”. It surprised me because a game as simple as platforming can put up such a challenge and just be so addicting. Just the feeling you get from completing one episode in that game that has been giving you such a hard time is just phenomenal. Sure some of the levels are buttfuckingly hard but that is just one thing that I enjoy about the game how fun and challenging it is.
Thought of another one.
PEGGLE
Mass Effect was the first time I ever played a western RPG quite like it, previously I have only played JRPGs or occasional shooters so the idea of having dialog options was a foreign idea to me and yet it blew me away so much. I felt like I was in the game, like my choices mattered. I am sucker for science fiction so the games setting instantly engaged me(I read the first three dune novels before played the game so I had the need to read everything) I’ll never have that same experience though playing that game though
a minor surprise was the original saints row you see I never played GTA before and saints row ended up being the greatest guilty pleasure ever until the sequel. it was a demented kids toy box
the last surprise I’ll mention is Full auto, a burnout clone with guns and the ability to rewind time, I never tried the online because nobody plays it now but it’s sad to see that series die so quickly and quietly
Always keeping up with gaming news means that games don’t really surprise me anymore. By the time I have a game in my hands I usually already have a really good idea of its content.
Harvest Moon – One of a couple exceptions, I’d looked at the games for years but never tried any out until one of the ones on Gamecube. I thought I’d play the game for 30 minutes, become disinterested, and leave. So I play for what seems like 30 minutes and finally stop playing only to realize that I’d just dropped two hours on the game. I think I lost it somewhere around the time my first crop of tomatoes turned out.
Crush for the PSP – I firmly believe that this is the most under-appreciated game of this entire console generation. There was basically no press for this game until reviews a couple days before it came out. I rented it and was blown away by how innovative the puzzle concept was, the ingenuity behind the level design, and how perfect the difficulty curve was. Crush could kill if it were on XBLA and PSN.
ARMA II recently surprised the hell out of me IT’S GOOD! THANK GOD! People need to start playing this game. When it comes to scale Operation Flashpoint changed what I thought was possible in games back in 2001. ARMA II totally takes me back to OPF but pushes it a lot further, by adding some modern fidelity through graphics, sound and merciless realism. Sure its ambitious and possibly buggy at times. But it’s a game where I truly feel free from the insurmountable sky boxes, locked doors, walls, rubble piles, chain linked fences, minefields and flesh eating bats that continually thwarted my attempts to “Go my own way” *Feeltwood Mac now plays, then star wipes to Sky Blue*.
People got some short memories here:
Grand Theft Auto 3
It’s been surpassed since, and it’s hard to recall that it wasn’t on anyones radar at all. But out of nowhere it came and nothing’s been the same since.
Anyone who’ll tell you that they knew this game was going to be great or even what it really was before it got released is full of it (unless they worked on it).
This game genuinly caught the entire industry off-guard.
I remember seeing preview shots of GTA3 on IGN and talking to my friend about how it looked like a more interesting game than MGS2, which was the most hyped game at the time.
I had played the computer version of the 2d ones and then thought about how amazing that would be in 3d.
But I guess I’m full of shit.
Probably the biggest surprise, that in retrospect shouldn’t have been surprising, was my undying love for Hearts of Iron 2 and through association the franchise and its creators, Paradox Interactive.
I’ve always been a huge WWII nut, and an RTS wannabe even more so (man, do I suck at RTSs), so when I found this while at a Gamestop for $20 I couldn’t help but indulge myself. What I bought turned out to be the best WWII simulation game yet and probably one of the greatest, yet still comprehensible simulation titles out there.
About 3 years later and I still get a kick out of…
1) Taking up arms as a tiny nation, say the size of Greece or Spain, and taking over the world with my worldly knowledge of history.
and
2) Futzing with reality by joining historically hateful nations together. Probably my most proud achievement of this was joining 1941′s Japan and America together, without cheating or tampering with the natural game, allowing for one of the greatest military alliances the world ever knew. Our capabilities to hit all the continents and nations of the world were un-macthed! Man, I can only imagine the pain Churchill endured as Roosevelt shoved his mighty foot up his biscuit eating ass.
As for other mentions, Burnout: Paradise and InFamous were other huge shockers for me. I (prior to Burnout: Paradise) hated racers, finding the circular race track rather boring, so to find an open world racer with such a superb soundtrack was a god send for my interest in racing (now I’m even curious about Forza 3). As for InFamous, I was just won over by the combination of a fun comic story and superb platforming mechanics, despite their flaws. All in all, I’ve had a good harvest both recently and in the more recent past!