Timesplitters, Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters Future Perfect are the most underrated shooters out there, I say. They had great game-play classic arcade shooters, with interesting characters, funny dialogue, an amazing soundtrack and multiplayer you could play forever. The games were well received at the time, but I still don't know many people who played them. And sadly, the latest game (I think was going to be a remake of all 3 in one game) seemed to have faded away.
Screamer 1 and 2 for the PC! I loved these games and which sparkled my love for racing games! Never ever mentioned on any list of best driving games...
The Gravity Rush franchise, mainly the second game. Fun characters, great soundtrack, best traversal mechanic in any game ever, and really nice art style. The game is just plain fun, and it's such a shame that it hasn't gotten more exposure.
What an amazing game with a great city, brilliant driving physics, good combat controls and a well told story. I feel this game ALWAYS gets overshadowed by GTA San Andreas (a massively overrated game IMO) which is a real shame. The car customization was also leagues ahead of what GTASA was doing and it never suffered from the many difficulty spikes I experienced playing San Andreas either.
Also the 70's soundtrack for PL is one of the best video game soundtracks ever.
It's a simple, yet fun puzzle like game from the late 90's. Position a car, rev up the launcher, and then launch the vehicle and do as much damage as possible. If you're familiar with the Crash Mode in the Burnout series, well it's quite literally the same concept as that, albeit a much earlier version of it. In some levels if you manage to hit some things just right, it causes a rather amusing chain reaction of things that's fun to watch. Though it is pretty old, it's still worth a try in my opinion, however make sure you adjust your volume before playing because the sound effects are pretty loud!
Seeing how no one has mentioned the name Tokyo Xtreme Racer here I'll just put it out here because that series is just way too underated even for it's time. Genki did a fantastic job with the franchise, too bad it won't be getting a proper sequel, but I guess that's my hopes.
Honorable Mention: Racing Lagoon, that's also a quite awesome game. The customization is endless, and it's a Car RPG. You can unlock cars just by racing them, engine swaps, drivetrain swaps, etc. The game has it.
Seeing how no one has mentioned the name Tokyo Xtreme Racer here I'll just put it out here because that series is just way too underated even for it's time. Genki did a fantastic job with the franchise, too bad it won't be getting a proper sequel, but I guess that's my hopes.
Honorable Mention: Racing Lagoon, that's also a quite awesome game. The customization is endless, and it's a Car RPG. You can unlock cars just by racing them, engine swaps, drivetrain swaps, etc. The game has it.
Barring the absolutely atrocious job Crave did with coding TXR3, but it says a lot that even though you cannot complete the game, it's still the best title. Reminds me of another racing game...
Timesplitters, Timesplitters 2 and Timesplitters Future Perfect are the most underrated shooters out there, I say. They had great game-play classic arcade shooters, with interesting characters, funny dialogue, an amazing soundtrack and multiplayer you could play forever. The games were well received at the time, but I still don't know many people who played them. And sadly, the latest game (I think was going to be a remake of all 3 in one game) seemed to have faded away.
What an amazing game with a great city, brilliant driving physics, good combat controls and a well told story. I feel this game ALWAYS gets overshadowed by GTA San Andreas (a massively overrated game IMO) which is a real shame. The car customization was also leagues ahead of what GTASA was doing and it never suffered from the many difficulty spikes I experienced playing San Andreas either.
Also the 70's soundtrack for PL is one of the best video game soundtracks ever.
Great pick, I played this game to death myself and I have to say, while it doesn't beat San Andreas in terms of content, it more than makes up for that with the map, storyline, soundtrack, graphics and the cars.
Sometimes I just want to drive cars, and this game does it nicely for me, also the driving physics + softbody damage physics were great for its time.
I can hardly believe this was a PS2 game at all.
Also the streets feels lively, there's a lot of traffic on the bridges that leads to Manhattan and I love that kind of detail.
I wouldn't say gun controls are good, but they aren't bad either, a massive improvement from Driv3r that's for sure.
It definitely deserved to fare much better than it did.
It's a real shame the series ended up in the hands of Ubisoft, they ruined all characters and made a game which you couldn't leave the car when that was one of the greatest things in the series besides the attention to detail with the cars. Don't get me wrong, Driver SF is a good game on it's own but not good enough when compared to Parallel Lines.
I do wonder when this series will make its TRUE comeback.
Well, I don't know about most underrated in any genre, but I do have two I feel are underrated. Maybe three.
For the longest, I still think Enthusia Professional Racing is an underrated title. Sure it came out around the time of Gran Turismo 4 and maybe even Forza Motorsport, but EPR just hit me in a certain way that made me love it about as much as a Gran Turismo game. Some games just have that certain charm to them. I even sometimes go back to it either to relive old times or maybe add to my racing/driving game blog.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 was fairly underrated to me as well. "X-Play" gave this game a 1 out of 5, but I think TXRD2 was another game with a unique charm to it. In no way am I any great drifter. To me, I think if you look at TXRD2 more as a rally racer than a drifter, you can appreciate it more. Even the game's sort of quirky storyline was interesting. You were part of this online message board having to deal with the likes of the Thirteen Devils and Kingdom Twelve.
Now for that "maybe three" game. I didn't really think of it as underrated much, but it was (American Name) Car and Driver Grand Tour Racing '98. Why I feel this game is underrated is because of the team aspect. You're trying to be the best in five different racing disciplines mostly with one of eight different teams. You had to race with sports cars, rally cars, dune buggies, rally raid (Dakar) vehicles, and Indy cars. Some of the tracks get to be pretty nuts once you get into the deeper races. The one strategy is... pick a team and stick with it. So if you went with the American team, you'll have to stick with that team to unlock all the different races. Switch teams, and you're basically starting over. But it's the team aspect that makes this game sort of underrated.
This was an all-racing game post, but those are some underrated titles to me.
Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 was fairly underrated to me as well. "X-Play" gave this game a 1 out of 5, but I think TXRD2 was another game with a unique charm to it. In no way am I any great drifter. To me, I think if you look at TXRD2 more as a rally racer than a drifter, you can appreciate it more. Even the game's sort of quirky storyline was interesting. You were part of this online message board having to deal with the likes of the Thirteen Devils and Kingdom Twelve
Yeah, I watched that X-Play review, it somehow made me mad at some points, but the series has a mixed reception in America and Europe mostly, in Japan these were the hit games, but ended pretty shortly. And, due to critics trying to **criticize** the series, but they fail in the most ways possible. But the critics usually hate those TXR games by default, or they didn't play up to Aso/Zao to give a opinion on it.
Racing Battle C1GP: Another Genki title that is underated, or not talked about mostly. Had some good fun. You can now engine swap Honda's on this game. It's really fun. If you know pixel art and do good designs, your golden.
Unfortunately Free Radical pretty much died after the... thing that was Haze. Well I say died but they were bought and became Crytek UK.
Strangely enough there was a sort of HD remake in the form of an easter egg in Homefront: the Revolution of all things. In one the bases there is an arcade machine that lets you play two levels from the Timesplitters 2. However I haven't heard anything about them being allowed to re-master or re-release any of the games since then.
On the wikipedia page for TimeSplitters the head of what was Free Radical mentions that now-a-days it wouldn't work because the marketing team needs a singular character to sell on the box and Time Splitters wasn't that. Seriously. They didn't want to make a game just for their fans because they didn't think that was a large enough number of people to be profitable/worth it. They didn't think non-fans would buy into the franchise at this point. Like it was a cult classic or something.
Before I mostly became a racing/driving game fan, I was big on RPGs. Here are a few titles I see as underrated...
I think the Lufia Series is pretty underrated. It may not be from the heavyweight formerly known as Squaresoft, but the two Lufia games on the SNES were very good.
The other RPG I think is pretty underrated is the PS1 RPG Thousand Arms. What was cool about this game was that you powered up the main character, Meis, by dating women! Give some girl the right gifts and say the right things, and you can upgrade your character and your magic. This game had an interesting mix of 3D and 2D. The worlds were mostly 3D, but there were a lot of 2D characters and such. It had a pretty nice soundtrack also.
A game I rented a long time ago for the SNES that was quite good was Illusion of Gaia. The game had great graphics, some wonderful music, and some pretty intense action. I think this game was made by Enix (just off the top of my head). Of course, Enix is nowadays SquareEnix. Unlike the other titles I mentioned in this post, Illusion of Gaia is a straight action RPG. So any of you into something like the Zelda games would probably find something to love about this title.
These would be titles I'd recommend if you're seeking some old school RPGs. Even more so if you're talking about RPGs that probably didn't get as much fanfare and adoration in their time.
For those of you whove played through tokyo xtreme racer drift 2, does the new game + have a harder difficulty? Or is exactly the same with more money?
For those of you whove played through tokyo xtreme racer drift 2, does the new game + have a harder difficulty? Or is exactly the same with more money?
Numerous futuristic racers. Wipeout omega Collection, Grip: Combat Racing, Redout, none of these games can manage to get in the spotlight, and only see moderate success at best. Online is basically dead at launch as well. Its a real shame, especially with some games like Grip trying so hard with their post-launch support.
Vanquish. I bought this 3rd person shooter masterpiece on the PS3. It is now out on the PS4 in 4K and 60fps. The first boss is worth the £19.99 cost all on it's own.
