Inspired by the "Greatest Disapointment" thread.
What games did you run across in a dollar bin? Download from Gamers Gate for 50 cents? Have a friend give it to you because they were simply done with it?
How many of you looked at those games and thought "This is going to be the biggest waste of time.....period .
Then to your surprise BAM! It is the most entertaining game you have played in a while.
What games would those be?
For me it is :
Sins of a Solar Empire - Bought it as a whim from Walmart. I was convinced it was going to be bad but I had nothing to lose. I was very wrong.
American Conquest - I bought this from Target for 10 bucks for a Christmas gift for a friend. I was meant to be a gag/joke gift but after we both played it (ignoring the bugs and flaws of the game) it was really not that bad at all. Especially for the price.
Diablo 2 - Even after not playing it for years I went back to it to get a friend of mine into it. I had completely forgotton how great of a game it was. I can remember now how addicting it all was.
Baldur's Gate.
I was pretty young when I played it first time and didn't know what I was doing (D&D ruleset and all). Decided to replay it after Baldur's Gate 2, and was amazed at how much of it I didn't remember and how much more sense everything made.
I didn't even realize Koveras = Sarevok the first time around. /shame
Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Secret of the Silver Blades FOR THE WIN.
Left 4 Dead
I remember a friend recounting a preview of it over skype with several of us and me laughing at him how the previewer was having a litteral orgasm over it. How wrong I was to laugh.
Coming accross a game in the arcades on what must have been a 40" screen, 2 people seated rotating the arcade stick to the sound of the characters on the screen going "Hadoken!". Someone explained to me this was a special move....wow.
For me, it was No One Lives Forever & Hitman: Codename 47. I bought the 2 games on the same day (I was feeling gamy that day). My first thought was that No One Lives Forever was gonna be just another FPS, and Hitman: Codename 47 was gonna be awesome. Let me tell you, was I wrong or what, No One Lives Forever turned out to be THE BEST FPS EVER and Hitman was one of the worst game I have ever played!
After a few months, I got rid of Hitman (garbage bag was quite happy receiving this trashy game)
and once every year, I still play No One Lives Forever!
I bought a space RTS game called O.R.B. from half-price books for 5 bucks. It's a pretty cool game, but I'm not a very gifted RTS player, and it was pretty complex, including 3d placement of ships/structures. I'm sure it would be a really great find for some of the more gifted RTSers.
Sins of a Solar Empire fits this for me as a recenty buy. I bought on a whim due to owning Stardock's Galactic Civilizations II. I figured a $30 game would be mildly enjoyable for a couple evenings. I knew nothing about the reviews or awards, and I wasn't looking for a serious game, just something to fix my boredom for a little while. What a gem. Ironclad did a great job.
Vampire: The Masquerade I bought years back. I hadn't heard of it and was wandering around bored looking for a game. I was pleasantly surprised. I was playing it while tired one night and I was in a haunted house. As I was moving, a girl passed through a corridor in front of me. I moved forward to follow her around the corner and there was nothing there, just a dead end. It sent shivers down my spine, and it's not even a horror game.
I have to list these two as they are my all time favorites. Call me a loon, but whatever.
Shining Force
Shining Force 2
Both on Sega. I loved the game play. I loved the story.
Shining Force CD had an amazing story. With it's two parts (one per CD) that were 20 years apart it was just great to come back and see all of your old characters from the first part grown up. With your two main characters (The ones you named that represent you) teaming up at the very end to fight the final boss and one of them has to be sacrificed, simply a tear jerker moment. Unfortunately they completely eliminated the "walk around, explore, talk to villagers" aspect and the game went from battle to battle to battle. This was the death of the game.
I never got a chance to play Shining Force 3 as it was on the Sega Saturn. I could never talk myself into buying an entire system for one game.
Sigh.
There was a game for Nintendo Gamecube called Geist. It has a surprise and a disapointment one after the other. The theme of the game was that you played as a ghost and you can frighten people and when they because scared enough, you can possess them and control their body and get control of their actions. A lot of the early game was genious. theres a scene with showering women, and you can control the mirror to make her appear to age really fast to freak her out, then rattle the locker doors or something, and turn the faucets on and off. You eventually possess her while shes still wearing just a towel and her body resists letting her run out intoa hallway without clothes on. its amusing.
spoilers
Later on in the story you find out that you are a ghost to become a spectral operative, basically a ghost assassin. you enter training simulators where you have to kill a senator behind a locked door with armed guards all around him, using your unique abilties. I was thinking to myself, all right, something exciting now. You can scare him to possess him into jumping down an elevator shaft, or possess a guard and shoot your way in, it was a neat experience. The next mission was to assassinate the president from a parking garage, this was a litle more mundane shooter affair, but right after this sequence the story gets back on to tracking down your own body to take recontrol of yourself. that was the disapointing part. The potential for being a spectral operative was a nice surprise followed quickly by a massive disapointment.
Total annhilation.
Still the best RTS of it's generation IMHO, it's more interesting to play than starcraft. Plus you get a ton of mods todiversify gameplay.
Geometry Wars at MSN gaming zone. It's definetely worth the $3.95...
(It's a bit of cheating though, since I bought it on steam already before I got it from the zone. Why did I buy it twice? Oh.. I moved and was gonna be without internet for 3 weeks, so I figured I needed a version that'll run without an internet connection... And I was right )
Gotta love the Gold and Silver games...I wasted soooo mucht ime playing those...God the memories.
But for me it was the day that I picked up Stronghold: Crusaders for 4.99. Didn't actually load it and play it for about another year after I bought it...but once I did, I was so hooked that I wasted a good chunk of time to that game...still play it every now and then.
Civ 4 Beyond the Sword with the Fall from Heaven 2 mod. Oh how I long to play it multiplayer, AI can't do the game justice.
Battle for Wesnoth, its free and fun.
Dominions 3. I'm sad the battles are uncontrolable (beyond initial set up and basic orders) but still find it a ripper of a game.
Space Empires 5. Groovy battles with your own designed ships.
And how could I forget....... SOLDAT! If you have not played this action game do so, its free and it is amazing. Playing online beware of the Barret, I hate Barret players
for me it's gotta be the Age of Empires series (every release from AOE to AOM)
and Dungeon Seige/LOA and DSII/Broken World.
though I spend close to $250+ for these games the hours of play were WELL worth every penny. played them so much that the entetainment value is pennies per hour. Not to mention the ease of Modding DS/DSII.
I'Ve had a few but one of the most memorable ones was Great Naval Battles Vol. II: Guadalcanal. I bought it dunno how much it was dirt cheap. It's was only a CD case with the CD inside no box no manual. Very complex for a game of the time 4th month after starting playing i vas still leaning about features.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/great-naval-battles-vol-ii-guadalcanal-1942-43
World of Goo was one of those "this is probebly going to be meh" buys for me. I was so very pleased.
I bought sins of a solar empire also not expecting very much from it, however I bought it specifically to support stardock because I knew they were working on a then-unannounced psudo-MoM sequel. I've purchased a few indy game titles almost entirely for support of the industry as well.
Another better than I expected game purchase was one called "Aquaria" which looked really cheap to me at 1st glance. The story is a bit trite for my tastes, but the levels are fantastic.
*SMACK*
I almost forgot a good one!
Star Wars - Galactic Battlegrounds!
It was simply Age of Empires 2 with a Star Wars skin, planes added in, and better AI.
We still fire this one up now and then and laugh hysterically when we blast a group of peasants with a Air Cruiser.
I had initially bought it for 20 dollars a long, long time ago (not in a galaxy far far away) but lent it out. I picked it back up again about 2 years ago from EBAY for...oh...I think 5 bucks. I am glad I did as I forgot how much I liked that game.
Combat Mission series - I just this jewel by accident...
Shadow of the colossus - Or: why I should have bought my PS2 years ago...
Dwarf Fortress - It looks horrible, the controls are horrible and I needed about a month to get into that. But OMG it is one of the best free games I have ever seen! It's so awesome I can't even describe it... Better you check it out yourself:http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/Just be sure to download a tileset if you are alergic to ASCII!
Hearts of Iron series - Another jewel, WW2 grand strategy.
Europa Universalis series - From the same developers as HoI, a great grand strategy series!
Mount and Blade - Like MTW, but with more RPG and free travel on a world map. Really cool for being the first game of the developer!
Sins of a Solar Empire - duh.
For it was Master of Orion 2, Lords of Magic Special Editon, Outpost 1 and 2, and Homeworld 1 and 2
Outpost was an awesome game...never played 2 though.
You keeping an eye on number 3? I don't know if it will be all that awesome....but it looks beautiful.
I loved Lords of Magic SE. I had lost my copy and re-downloaded the game for free from "The Underdogs". Darn thing wouldn't work without the CD. I was so sad.
Gal Civ 2... I mean I was looking for sci fi Rts at the time and I was like hey why the hell not try out a TBS SCI FI game so I tried the demo for Gal Civ 2 out and BAM I LOVED IT... Still do! Thanks Stardock.
Ok I was visiting family and we went to a mall. There was a game store there and they had a demo for Homeworld running... OMG The best FIND EVER! Came back home bought it... our Pentium 1 sucked and couldnt play it so I yelled at my dad and we got a new pentium 4... few months later, I realized... THAT GAME WAS AMAZING!
Wait cheap finds... well I went off topic but hey can you blame me... yep.
I'm thinking my favorite is Fall From Heaven 2 (although unlike MichaelCook above, I am playing the version for Vanilla Civ4). I was expecting to like it before I started playing, but damn, I just could not believe the amount of modding they had actually done to the game. It is unreal.
In recent memory? Starscape. Stupid little game that appeared on sale in Impulse for some silly amount of money. Kept me going for a few weekends and for less than a cinema ticket.
Homeworld 2. Made me hunt down Cataclysm and the original.
Before that? Deuteros. Picked it up at a computer fair (back in days of yor when 16bit and 512KB of RAM were swish) still fire it up in HATARI from a Pompey Pirates image. Must try and find Magic Fly as well... never did beat that thing.
A long time ago, when I bought Ascendancy. The clerk told me that if I like the game, come back in a month when MOO2 comes out. I did enjoy Ascendancy and came back to get MOOII. While in line I also got Civilization II. I think I played CIV2 first.
I don't think I ever played Asendancy again...
From the Big Disappointment thread I was reminded of the classic Atari 2600 game Yars Revenge. I remember when I actually saw the secret message thingy (When you shoot the spiral missle with your mega bullet after its been fired at you), or at least I saw something, I ran into my parents bedroom and excitedly told them "I saw it!". They would have had no idea.
Civ2, classic fun. If you played it and loved it check this page out. I especially like the "garrisoning extensive armies on the polar icecaps" bug/feature of the AI.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/aistupidities
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