Mine is the Army Men series. Objectively mediocre games at best but the concept of toy soldiers fighting over our yards and rooms has always been cool to me
Hell yeah, the Army Men games are so dope. Terribly clunky, combat leaves much to be desired, mediocre map layouts but goddamn do I still find them fun. Specifically Sarge’s Heroes, would love a switch port.
Good grief! Memory of struggling with the difficulty back in the day. Amd the shattering when you finally unleased the “power” of the auto rifle.
I played a toooon of Sarge’s Heroes 2 on PS2. My next favourites are RTS and PS1 Air Attack
Air Attack rips 🤙
i feel like there are two ways to interpret this question. some games are unpopular because they’re widely known, but considered to be not good, but others are merely niche games that never got widespread recognition.
for the former, Mad Max (2015) got mixed reviews and seems to have been generally regarded as MEDIOCRE, but i still keep coming back to it every so often. for the latter, I wanna plug an old PS2 game called Steambot Chronicles, that has never gotten the recognition it deserves. Its a steampunk mech sandbox rpg, and is legit fantastic, but my partner is the only other person i’ve met that has even heard of it.
I’ve heard of it! I just started my latest playthrough, and I was wondering if it ever got any love on Lemmy.
Maybe not an unpopular game, but my unpopular game opinion is that I prefer Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas. Both are fantastic games, but I prefer the more bleak and desolate Capital Wasteland to the more lived in Mojave Wasteland. Plus I kinda liked the karma system of fo3.
I like both, but Fallout 3 is my favourite as well. I really enjoyed the aesthetic, the music, everything. It was my first game and got me obsessed with the universe.
They have such different atmospheres you can enjoy both the same. I really had fun roaming around the sewers and ruins of DC in 3, while the more pure RPG aspects of New Vegas are great in 3D.
Shadow Man. It was definitely shit, but I played it for so many hours. The mood and the scale of it was incredible, but the controls and gameplay were sorely lacking. Even so, I found it incredibly immersive.
Dragon Age 2. Lot’s of people think it’s the weakest game in the Dragon Age series and there is a lot to not like: dungeons and outdoor areas are largely the same recycled maps with different layouts, story was a bit lackluster compared to the previous title, party controls were a step down from Dragon Age Origins. I still enjoy it for the party dynamics and the main character dialogue wheel had more varied option that didn’t along with previous Bioware titles that had the good, neutral, and evil/jerk responses.
I’m a huge Dragon Age fan, and 2 is my absolute favorite. It gets a lot of (perfectly valid) criticism, but the ‘found family’ themes really resonated with me. And I love how it focuses on the people in this one city instead of having a big, save-the-entire-world narrative like most RPGs. It felt so personal.
Plus, snarky Hawke is one of the most fun protagonists I’ve ever played in a game. It really doesn’t deserve the bad reputation that it got.
Not a series but the Saboteur is an awesome AC/GTA clone set during WW2 that I never see anyone talk about
Edit: special mention for Klonoa 2. My dad picked it up for me when I was a kid and I recently replayed it. It’s a pretty challenging 3D platformer with a story that will draw tears
Is Klonoa not liked. I’ve recently been playing this on Gameboy Advance and PS1 and they’ve been great
I’ve never heard anyone talking about Klonoa. Idk if it just ever took off outside of Japan but out of everyone I know no one else has played it
SSX Tricky
My whole family has put in way too many hours, it’s the only game where we actually are competitive against each other. Even my dad, who plays 0 other video games likes to play with us. I wouldn’t say it’s unpopular, just irrelevant today for most people, but not for us…
For a long time, we each had some PS2s to play, but not I emulate on the steam deck and and play even more than before. I’ve never had a game before where I actually try for high scores and practice.
My oldest brother is definitely the undisputed champion, but I can beat him when my favorite character, Moby, is maxed out, while his, Mac, is default level (which is the case and will remain the case on my steam deck)
Also, I still play Black Ops 1 zombies. I think they added more to the zombies in future games than I’m interested in. I own black ops 3 and hear that Shadows of Evil is amazing but every time I sit down to learn it, I just lose interest. Maybe there’s extra friction because I’m usually playing solo.
Creeper World. It’s like an RTS/TD type game that uses fluid dynamics that is always fun to go back to. The campaign writing and UI are just terrible but the gameplay is great and there are plenty of good community made maps to try.
I played the hell out of this video game called Axis and Allies that I found for like $5 in cheap games section of Office Max around 2008. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it or share my experience. I’m sure it wouldn’t hold up if I played it today but back in '08 I was a pro.
It was actually a board game first, and there have been a number of electronic versions throughout the years. I had one such adaptation on CD growing up in the late 90s, but I’m not sure it would be the same one you played.
Cool game, though. I sunk lots of hours into it.
I’m late to this party, but you might appreciate the open source Axis and Allies engine called TripleA.
My step-dad was a big WWII history buff, and he had the pc version of Axis and Allies installed on the family computer! Loved it and occasionally fire up TripleA for nostalgia.
Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It’s your typical Ubisoft open world game, boring gameplay even on extreme difficulty but the world is so beautiful, and I love just driving around the map with no HUD.
lol the South American road trip simulator (jk, mostly)
boring gameplay even on extreme difficulty but the world is so beautiful, and I love just driving around the map with no HUD.
Hey, this is basically Skyrim and I’ve got 2k+ happy hours in that
I used to log in to armorgames.com to play shitty browser flash games occasionally. There was one “mmo” game called Rise of Mythos. It was a deck building collectible card game. I would play it for a few days then forget about it for 6 months. Over time I had a cool deck from years of occasionally logging in, never spent money on it though. Then one day I logged in and it was gone. I would have paid some money to keep it around.
Armor games was so great. I forgot what the games were called but I used to play one set in WW1 and it’s sequel set in WW2 all the time. There were 3 lanes and different troop types you could send in
Been playing Hero’s Hour recently from the itch summer bundle. Never played any Civilization style games before but this one is really fun.
Russian Fishing 4. I’m not an IRL angler whatsoever but I love games that lean hard into real gear and simulation (as much as possible in a video game).
Rf4 just has a good chunk of content and feels good. The other fishing games out there are a joke in comparison IMO.
It’s unpopular because of grinds and the fish spawning, but I chalk it up to real life …sometimes, the day isn’t yours right?
Eternal Card Game - basically an online MTG clone. It’s always been small, and the userbase has been gradually shrinking since it started. I still think it’s a great game though.
Hey, this is awesome to see. I worked on Eternal back before launch.
I thought it was a great digital version of mtg.
The most unpopular/niche game series I’ve really liked is the Princess Maker series. Japanese games which only received official English translations recently, niche genre (life raising sim), some silly fanservicey elements… but it reminded me of playing with dolls when I was younger, and in some ways the Sims series also.
Another series I liked which is much more well known but still has a small presence in the gaming consciousness is Star Fox. Character cameos in the Super Smash Bros series don’t count.
Daaaaaamn, I found a copy of Princess Maker 2 on the internet all the way back in 2002 or so, only years later I found out about the original translation and failed attempt to release it in the USA. I personally love PM2 and should play 3 sometime properly.
The Princess Maker series are now officially available on Steam! Unfortunately the translation quality is quite poor and the unofficial DOS copy of 2 is much better in that regard, but it’s nice to have access to multiple entries in the series now.
they also cut some content which was against steam rules. (underage nudity and such)