Games "only you understood"

Giant Bomb recently dropped a quick look video of Blood Bowl on the 360. I've been playing Blood Bowl on the PC pretty much since it came out, and while the game has serious UI issues and a steep learning curve it makes no attempt at easing you into, the core boardgame design behind it is so damn good. I was watching their quick look in total dismay as they were fucking up the absolute basics of the game and having a miserable time as a result.

Part of me wants to just scream out that they're "not getting it", but at the same time, you know, it's a board game, so naturally it isn't going to be for just everybody. So i remain (relatively) quiet about it.

Anyone else have games they enjoy that the "rest of the world" seems to just think is absolute garbage? I'm not talking about games that ARE garbage and that you're getting some kind of masochistic joke kick out of, but games you genuinely feel are really great experiences that a ton of people are missing out on.

I can't think of anything like that off the top of my head, I'd need some time to think about it. However, I can talk about a game that was extremely underrated when it was released:

Jet Set Radio Future.

One of the best games released on the original Xbox.

Super Dodge Ball - NES - can't say enough about that game, still fun to play to this day.

Vagrant Story - PS1 - loved it. this game critically did well though hardly anyone seems to have heard of it

Marathon - Mac - this and its sequel were excellent. the player made maps were ahead of its time as well as the multiplayer deathmatchs (we're talking 1994 here)

Dune - Sega CD - this RTS cost me many lost hours of sleep. One of the better representations of Dune in gaming.

That's all I can think of for now...

Today's gaming generation is more or less oblivious to the bliss that was 90's adventure games (and the odd few that came later), but even in the adventure community Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness is overlooked as an all-time classic. It's a part of a well-known Sierra series (which might be part of the problem, actually), but I think the fourth game is in a league of its own. Granted, I'm terribly biased because it was one of the first PC games I'd ever played (which will do the trick), but I still can't objectively compare any other game (adventure or otherwise) of the same period that shares the same qualities that make SoD such a classic in my eyes.

It should be noted that this game is also responsible for many, many nightmares in my youth. I actually had to stop playing at first, and I didn't finish (and fall in love with) it until years later. So that sort of made up for it. Sort of.

Very interesting question that really makes you think.

I'm going to have to go with Ultima Online. I know it's not considered garbage by majority standards, though I was the first and only person to play it among my family or circle of friends. I remember conversations I'd have with my friends while playing...

Friend: "So this is a game about chopping wood?"

Me: "No. I'm just chopping wood so I can make a crossbow. Here, watch!"

Friend: "So it's a game about making crossbows?"

Me: "No. Now that I have the crossbow I'm going to go adventuring."

Friend: "Wait! What is that dude doing?"

Me: "He just killed me..."

Friend: "...and stole your crossbow."

Me: "Yep. This is a game about being killed and losing your crossbow."

I had a hard time explaining the draw of the game, which cost more money per month beyond the box cost, when all they would see is me getting killed and having to replace my stuff only to lose it again.

Maybe if I was the jackass hunting players...

I think the longer time you have to play a game to get into it the harder a time you're going to have selling to your peers that the time spent is worthwhile. My dad made a couple of earnest attempts at understanding the appeal of games, but for every modern game i showed him that i felt did interesting things, all he really saw was a whole lot of fighting between characters he didn't understand. Teeth-gnashingly frustrating to show him Bioshock (which shook me to my core from a narrative point of view) and all he can really make an informed opinion of is the quality of the art.

This is a cliche by now, but when i showed him Wii Sports Resort he thought it was absolutely revolutionary entertainment that my mom should get a chance to try out. Big points to Nintendo.

When you ask people to invest hours of their lives in a game, that is literally their life currency they are spending. Some of us have more of that currency to spend i suppose. Getting a newbie who didn't spend time with boardgames before to check out Blood Bowl is an absolute nightmare, because the core appeal to the game is that the more time you invest the more personal it gets, and the more personal a game gets the more you want to master it. There is no way to sell that to someone beyond making promises.

Really like this question, big ups to you, sunjammer.

For me the games that I feel like fit this category are GitarooMan!, The Secret of Monkey Island, Marathon, OddWorld: Stranger's Wrath, Shin Megami Tensai: Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga, an old old game called Crusader: No Remorse, and Final Fantasy VII.

I know, that last one is weird, but let me explain. Final Fantasy VII is (obviously) a widely popular game, and garners a lot of attention from RPG fans; but I feel like most of the people who sit down to play VII these days... don't get it the way those of us did the first time around. It's not about two characters with "wicked sweet swords" or a dramatic villain, or even a certain thing happening to a certain character. It's about the story that's buried beneath all the graphics and big hair and materia. It's about more than the affection and rejection it gets from the (Very divided) community that plays the game. It's just that... every time I sit down to play through that game I feel like the story just... flows. And when I try to talk to people about it, they go on about how "Sephiroth is a badass" or "Sephiroth is a little bitch" or "It was the best game ever/most over-rated game ever" and I think.... you just don't get it, do you? There's a magic to that story that strikes me in a way few games do (BioShock, SystemShock, and Half-Life being other culprits).

I dunno, I do my best to treat the stories of games the same as the stories in novels and books. And when a story so engaging hits me like that, it irritates me to see people (fans especially, actually) not seem to understand the deeper meaning of what's going on. To me it's like reading The Great Gatsby ,Lord of the Flies, or hell even Lord of the Rings and missing what the author was really trying to say. But of course, that's all just me.

I alone understood Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball, and its secrets are mine.

Microsoft Freelancer Fuzion frenzy demo on halo 1.

How OddWorld The Strangers Wrath never became a huge juggernaut is beyond me.
And the classic M.U.L.E. (I mean space farming with robotic mules.. brilliant!)

I'M Gonna Have To Go With The "Clock Tower" Series For My Pick Of Games I Only Understand,
The Thought Of Being Chased By A Man With A Giant Pair Of Scissors Often Evokes A Morbid Flashback Of Preschool ,Suffice It To Say Billy Did Not Have Safety Scissors, And I Will Always Miss The Right Portion Of Earlobe That Was Unjustly Taken During Billy's Glue Huffing Day's.

Oh Clock Tower,

ftrapture said:
How OddWorld The Strangers Wrath never became a huge juggernaut is beyond me.

Agreed. That game was absolutely fantastic through and through.

I feel like we could interpret this question as cult games as well; games we thought were great but never did well in the market place.

System Shock 2 would have to be on the list; broke my heart to see that it didn't do well commercially. The same could be said for the Freedom Force series as well.

Stepping away from Irrational, I would have to go with Soldiers at War for the PC. An X-com style World War II game; it had a great map-editor too. Out of This World for Sega Genesis; the first real artistic game I think I played. Very frustrating gameplay though. And finally Outcast for the PC; an awesome game that seemed to only be on store shelves for like two weeks.

Oh, and Freelancer? I never 'got' that game.

I don't know that I can think of one game that only "I got" but for some reason Space Quest comes to mind. that series was kind of a mess, if I remember right, but I played that for quite a good while in my Windows 95-era teenage years. ... Oh boy, did Sierra ever have some awful games in the 90's. Remember Sid & Al's Toon Machine?

Also, the Metal Gear AC!D games are in more ways than one an abomination:
1. Side stories set in an alt. universe with a Snake who may or may not even be THE Snake from the canon MG series?
2. Card-based gameplay (What were they thinking?)
3. Generally frustrating gameplay?
4. Convoluted story lines (a MG staple), albeit with rather predictable characters/plot twists

All that said, I was completely focused on the first AC!D for many months. Still go back and play every so often.

I really liked AC!D 2 though. The first one was like a mystical alien device you tried to puzzle out how to work. The second was much more of a real game

True that, and the graphics were a little easier to swallow in AC!D 2 as well.

sunjammer said:

ftrapture said:
How OddWorld The Strangers Wrath never became a huge juggernaut is beyond me.

Agreed. That game was absolutely fantastic through and through.

It still saddens me they cancelled the next OddWorld, and Stranger's Wrath was beautiful. It's also all too true that the AC!D games blew over with less appreciation than they may have garnered.

Let's see... what about the Zork games? God I loved those, Zork: Grand Inquisitor being my favorite.

Rye0077r said:
True that, and the graphics were a little easier to swallow in AC!D 2 as well.

Even if it DID ship with "3d goggles" and a bunch of odd stereoscopic videos of Japanese girls in camo hotpants. Effect was actually quite good now that i think about it.

bdillman said:

Oh, and Freelancer? I never 'got' that game.

I had a blast w/ that.
It felt like Morrowind turned into a space-sim.
Then again, so did X3: Reunion.

Another One Of My Favorites Would Have To Be, Evolution 2:Far Off Promise
For The Sega Dreamcast ,
My All time favorite console
And Most innovative System
The Games Is A Direct Sequel To Evolution: The Sacred Device
Its an RPG with flair and memorable characters That not only warm the heart,
But Take You On A Definitive Journey Of Enjoyment.

A few of my friends didn't quite grasp all of Bioshock's story, so I had to explain it to them. Also, I'm apparently the only person to understand that if I'm not already shooting at you, I don't want to fight.

sunjammer said:

Rye0077r said:
True that, and the graphics were a little easier to swallow in AC!D 2 as well.

Even if it DID ship with "3d goggles" and a bunch of odd stereoscopic videos of Japanese girls in camo hotpants. Effect was actually quite good now that i think about it.

[bitter]Because GameStop brilliantly unwraps the new product and places it on the wall for all to handle, my NEW copy of AC!D2 that I bought did not contain the "Solid Eye." I was hoping they would have it behind the counter. Nope. Then the game got wicked hard to find, and so I've never come across a complete copy of the game again... [/bitter]

Make your own solid eye ;P It's just a box with a separator wall in the middle of it.