Under-appreciated Games

I never said the exploration is bad, to the contrary. I said the exploration was too good, too much to explore. And by that I don't mean randomly generated stuff that gets boring after you've seen it the third time, I mean actually interesting systems that make you want to explore. And that's where the game killed me, there was just too much to explore. The game was literally too big and interesting for me because, as Pere mentioned, my OCD flares up and I want to, no I need to, explore everything.

So yeah, Freelancer is definitely a game very worth playing. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point when in need for a nice space game, since there aren't that many good ones out there.

V wrote:Minecraft

^^Over $80 million in sales.

Dark Souls is a name that I have thrown around very often. The game has a workable story, impressive NPC interactions, a wide array of bosses, entertaining combat, innovative multiplayer, and a wide range of environments to explore.

The story of the game is tough to find if you don't know what to look for to get the information. It for the most part goes like this; You are a man who was killed and cursed with the darksign, granting you eternal life as an undead. You are thrown into a jail cell to rot away for eternity, but the guard with the key is killed and knocked in. With new hope, you make your way out of the jail to the world where four different lords control the world and cover it with darkness. On the way out, you find a dying knight who notices that you haven't gone crazy and started attacking everything the way the other undead have, so he charges you with a quest to ring the two bells, one above and below undead burg, to see if it can remove your curse.
After the bells have been rung, a giant opens up a large, trap filled castle. You pass through that, and eventually are told that you are the true Lord of the world, and that the other Undead Lords were trying to keep you from rising to power. You then receive a powerful tool that lets you warp between your checkpoints, and can talk to two different serpents. One tells you that you are destined to replace the current lord Gwyn and link the fires (checkpoints), and the other tells you that you are destined to defeat him and keep the fires from being linked. You can't judge which is the good ending, and which is the evil ending. In the end, you make your choice.

The serpents are the only un-killable NPC's in the game as far as I know. Everything else is killable and has item drops related to them. Killing them is a bad idea though, because as you progress they give you advice, can offer you to join guilds, can assist you in boss fights, and can sell you items at different points of the game. They appear/reappear just as you start to feel alone in the large world.

Every boss has a unique type of attack weakness, different attack moves, and a different strategy to defeat. Not only are they difficult, but defeating them is ENTIRELY skill based. The game has been beaten at level one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyVAuiW6vc4

There are many different types of enemies to fight in the game. Every time you heal at a checkpoint, every non-boss and non-miniboss comes back to life. The challenge is not if you can beat the enemies, its whether you can beat them and keep enough equipment to handle the bosses. You are limited in the amount of healing items you can get, and the main way requires you to rest at a checkpoint. Each enemy has a unique style and many different ways to kill. They all have their own limits, as you do, so you feel equal to them, and feel like skill is the difference between you two. You can parry attacks and counter for massive damage, backstab for massive damage, break an enemy's guard by having a weapon that has more stunlock than their poise, or simply stand back and shoot spells or throw fireballs at the enemies.

The game has multiplayer unlike any other game. When you are in the world, you can see transparent versions of other players in the same area as you, and what they are doing. It keeps you from feeling lonely while you struggle through. There is an item called humanity that you use to make yourself look like a human instead of undead. It opens new dialogue with NPC's, and if you are human other players can invade your world to kill you for your humanity. Many of the guilds you can join have unique PvP styles. Generally, if you are in an evil guild, you attack people in good guilds, and vice versa. One guild is based around cooperative play with a unique golden summon sign that works better for summoning others in your guild. Another is a mutual PvP where you fight for blacksmith materials. The game lets you build your character in any way you like, and is remarkably balanced to give you many options between different weapons, armors, spells, pyromancies, and miracles. The question is, what stats do you need for certain items, and what do you put the leftover stats into? More damage, more stamina+equip weight, more health, or something else?

The environment ranges from jail, forest, castle, crystalline jail+castle, lake, inside a tree, lava filled, sewer, otherworldly, in a church, in a painting, and even more.