Underrated Video Games

[Snoopy Fan 3,484]

Are there any video games out there that you think are underrated? I kind of think that the original Tak and the Power of Juju trilogy is underrated, at least when compared to other video game franchises.

[Megas 27,871]

God Hand got screwed from IGN's infamous review when it released but it's a fun game especially if you're a fan of old school beat-em ups.

Also Fist of the North Star Lost Paradise. It's literally just Yakuza with FotNS characters, its awesome

[Mothra 737]

Not sure how underrated these 2 are in general, but of their respective series, I always felt like Metroid Fusion and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap didn't get the recognition or respect they deserved. I might be biased though, I grew up on the GBA

[Tao 8,296]

For me its Okami:

• Interesting Story
• Nice game play
• Pure eye candy
• Its a mix of a RPG with platforming 

[Mothra 737]

2 hours ago, Tao said:

For me its Okami:

• Interesting Story
• Nice game play
• Pure eye candy
• Its a mix of a RPG with platforming 

Genuinely one of my all time faves, hoping the second one is just as good when it releases!

[Tao 8,296]

17 hours ago, Mothra said:

Genuinely one of my all time faves, hoping the second one is just as good when it releases!

Me too, I plan to go back and replay it in a bit on my Switch.  

[tomatopotato 140]

This is probably going to be controversial but I feel like I need to say this.

War Thunder is underrated. Most people’s impressions of it are all of the ads and sponsorships that they’ve done. Seriously though, give it a try. It’s completely free and available on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And, if you like it, feel free to DM me

[Cash In 22,700]

Gunpoint is one of my favourite games ever. The main focus is stealth + puzzle solving and because of that, you have a lot of freedom in how you play the game. It's also relatively short!

The dialogue trees can also lead to some pretty funny moments.

[Espy Vibe 4,535]

There's a game called "The Beginner's Guide" which is really difficult to talk about without spoiling it. I'm not sure if it's underrated-underrated, but I don't hear much people talking about it, understandably so.

It's made and narrated by Davey Wreden, one of the primary people who made The Stanley Parable (if anyone knows that game, it's very fun and nonsensical and was one of the first "game gets very meta" games before other games started doing it) but is very different in tone. Actually, he was the one who made the original mod for it, which first got popular before he was urged to turn it into a full game (and later it got re-launched as "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe" which is actually the same game but with more randomness).

Random fun fact: he's the brother of a fairly popular streamer and content creator named DougDoug.

 

 

They're both walking simulators but The Beginner's Guide is a much more serious experience and is difficult to really talk about without spoiling it for people who haven't played it. Like, you gotta experience the game yourself and come to your own thoughts. It's definitely not for everyone, though I recommend it especially for anyone who likes doing anything super creative.

I've heard some people call it pretentious but I personally never got the feeling of that. The premise of it is literally someone who was enthusiastic and wanted to share someone else's work with other people.

 

Basically, Davey (the narrator) compiled a bunch of games together by someone he knew named Coda and put it onto Steam for people to play. The reason? He wants Coda to make games again since they were very odd and abstract; very different from what's out there to play. Coda never published them onto the internet and only shared them with some people he knew (Davey being at least one of them) or kept them to himself. The timeline given is 2008 - 2011, with Davey saying he met Coda in 2009 who stopped game development in 2011.

You as a player just walk around and listen to Davey's thoughts and interpretations of Coda's works, where he's hoping people will spread the word and it will eventually get to Coda.

 

 

There's SO MUCH more to it than that but then talking about it literally spoils the point of the game.

I think @Ice Princess Silky <3 would like this one as it covers some very interesting topics, especially around creative and personal ones.

 

It's one of those things that really got me thinking hard about stuff.

Spoiler alert:

Spoiler

The main point of The Beginner's Guide is the relationship between artist, creation, and audience, as well as death of the author. Less so, yet still very important, would be stuff like personal boundaries and trust. The topic of projection, depression and hopelessness is also a big one.

 

If you couldn't guess, Coda isn't real, nor is the in-game version of Davey. IRL Davey did a great job making it convincing (props for straight up giving an email; a Gmail no less, which apparently he does actually check), but then the premise set up at the beginning gets torn down when you get to the Epilogue and how Davey speaks in that part of the game is very much not what someone would really do if they're trying to reach someone. After all, why record those kinds of lines and keep it in the game, which is essentially a narrative collection of games by a person that doesn't actually exist?

It's also way too cinematic to be a "real" compilation of works by someone even if they did exist. The usual route that people would actually do would be to just put them freely available on a website or something like that as a collection, not to monetize it on Steam.

 

If anyone picks up on the tarot cards "Devil Tower Star" then good on you! That's a recurring message starting in the game with the notes. One note says those specific words with no further explanation, then later at "The Tower," the code for the stairs is "151617" which conveniently are the numbers for these tarot cards: The Devil, The Tower, The Star.

Tarot's a bit up to interpretation, but the general meaning is the Devil is basically bad, destructive, toxic vibes; The Tower is sudden change; The Star is growth, healing, hope, optimism.

That directly ties to how the last few games are presented, especially with the Tower game. Starting with the Housekeeping game, something happened in-universe where Coda had been trying to give in-game Davey a message to stop (it's revealed that the game was supposed to go on forever but Davey altered it to end and shared that version with people, which made Coda reasonably upset), but for The Tower he made it intentionally despicable that he knew only Davey would play and want to finish it, so at the end of it he gave a very blunt and sudden message that he didn't want Davey to be around him anymore. After that in the Epilogue, that's Davey finally coming to the realization that maybe "he just liked making prisons" and that he wished he didn't tell people that Coda was depressed or mentally unwell; it was actually Davey projecting. Maybe a lot of those games never had any deep meaning and they were just random creations that reused game assets and nothing more. Then he leaves to contemplate while you as a player are left to traverse the rest of the level and digest what you just experienced on your own before you enter the beam from the game "Escape From Whisper" again and begin floating into the sky. There you get to see the virtually infinitely long labyrinth/maze, which is open for interpretation.

 

"Coda" also has a meaning.

It basically refers to anything leading up to an ending, like in music it refers to the passage leading up to the end of a composition.

Interpret that one however you want!

 

There are also those 3 dots that reappear constantly. While Davey tries to give a meaning for a lot of things, such as the lamp posts (which is revealed that he was the one who added those in), he completely ignores those 3 dots. It's revealed at the end that he tried asking Coda what those dots meant, but he never gave an answer for it, so Davey felt it was too abstract for him to get a meaning out of. Though, I have seen the theory that this is related to the "Therefore" symbol in mathematics and is also used in syllogism, but shorthand. Coda's is slightly lopsided and upside down, however.

Syllogism is basically deductive reasoning, flawed or not. Just as Davey was doing.

I guess a way to look at it would be that it's the IDEA or LONGING to wanting to connect dots. You don't know what it means or where it's going, so you try and connect the dots to make it make sense even if it isn't supposed to actually make any sense.

My personal theory is that it's Coda's signature or logo. Nothing more.

 

What's funny about all of this on my end is that I'm doing what Davey did to Coda. Interesting isn't it?

Although... he was obsessive with Coda and acted like he deserved games from Coda, who tried to tolerate him until he couldn't do it anymore. The only person who deserves anything (a proper apology) is Coda.

 

The meaning behind the game title according to IRL Davey is this:

 

It's based on various events that happened to IRL Davey, specifically around the popularity and overwhelming success of The Stanley Parable. I'll let his own blog post and comic strip about his feelings around the initial popularity of The Stanley Parable speak for itself. Once you play The Beginner's Guide and then read this, everything makes sense as to why this game exists at all:

https://medium.com/@HelloCakebread/game-of-the-year-cb4214f98c13

Funny enough, the author's note made in 2022 is really funny and really ironic. People literally misinterpreted the accidental removal of this blog post and comic as him being embarrassed or upset about something, even though the reality was much more mundane and unremarkable. Which is why it's not hosted by him anymore, he put it somewhere else for anyone to see so it doesn't accidentally go missing again.

Seriously, it's really good layers of "...wow" especially if you like narratives and anything thought provoking.  

[Ice Princess Silky <3 15,105]

28 minutes ago, Espy Vibe said:

There's a game called "The Beginner's Guide" which is really difficult to talk about without spoiling it. I'm not sure if it's underrated-underrated, but I don't hear much people talking about it, understandably so.

It's made and narrated by Davey Wreden, one of the primary people who made The Stanley Parable (if anyone knows that game, it's very fun and nonsensical and was one of the first "game gets very meta" games before other games started doing it) but is very different in tone. Actually, he was the one who made the original mod for it, which first got popular before he was urged to turn it into a full game (and later it got re-launched as "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe" which is actually the same game but with more randomness).

Random fun fact: he's the brother of a fairly popular streamer and content creator named DougDoug.

 

 

They're both walking simulators but The Beginner's Guide is a much more serious experience and is difficult to really talk about without spoiling it for people who haven't played it. Like, you gotta experience the game yourself and come to your own thoughts. It's definitely not for everyone, though I recommend it especially for anyone who likes doing anything super creative.

I've heard some people call it pretentious but I personally never got the feeling of that. The premise of it is literally someone who was enthusiastic and wanted to share someone else's work with other people.

 

Basically, Davey (the narrator) compiled a bunch of games together by someone he knew named Coda and put it onto Steam for people to play. The reason? He wants Coda to make games again since they were very odd and abstract; very different from what's out there to play. Coda never published them onto the internet and only shared them with some people he knew (Davey being at least one of them) or kept them to himself. The timeline given is 2008 - 2011, with Davey saying he met Coda in 2009 who stopped game development in 2011.

You as a player just walk around and listen to Davey's thoughts and interpretations of Coda's works, where he's hoping people will spread the word and it will eventually get to Coda.

 

 

There's SO MUCH more to it than that but then talking about it literally spoils the point of the game.

I think @Ice Princess Silky <3 would like this one as it covers some very interesting topics, especially around creative and personal ones.

 

It's one of those things that really got me thinking hard about stuff.

Spoiler alert:

  Reveal hidden contents

The main point of The Beginner's Guide is the relationship between artist, creation, and audience, as well as death of the author. Less so, yet still very important, would be stuff like personal boundaries and trust. The topic of projection, depression and hopelessness is also a big one.

 

If you couldn't guess, Coda isn't real, nor is the in-game version of Davey. IRL Davey did a great job making it convincing (props for straight up giving an email; a Gmail no less, which apparently he does actually check), but then the premise set up at the beginning gets torn down when you get to the Epilogue and how Davey speaks in that part of the game is very much not what someone would really do if they're trying to reach someone. After all, why record those kinds of lines and keep it in the game, which is essentially a narrative collection of games by a person that doesn't actually exist?

It's also way too cinematic to be a "real" compilation of works by someone even if they did exist. The usual route that people would actually do would be to just put them freely available on a website or something like that as a collection, not to monetize it on Steam.

 

If anyone picks up on the tarot cards "Devil Tower Star" then good on you! That's a recurring message starting in the game with the notes. One note says those specific words with no further explanation, then later at "The Tower," the code for the stairs is "151617" which conveniently are the numbers for these tarot cards: The Devil, The Tower, The Star.

Tarot's a bit up to interpretation, but the general meaning is the Devil is basically bad, destructive, toxic vibes; The Tower is sudden change; The Star is growth, healing, hope, optimism.

That directly ties to how the last few games are presented, especially with the Tower game. Starting with the Housekeeping game, something happened in-universe where Coda had been trying to give in-game Davey a message to stop (it's revealed that the game was supposed to go on forever but Davey altered it to end and shared that version with people, which made Coda reasonably upset), but for The Tower he made it intentionally despicable that he knew only Davey would play and want to finish it, so at the end of it he gave a very blunt and sudden message that he didn't want Davey to be around him anymore. After that in the Epilogue, that's Davey finally coming to the realization that maybe "he just liked making prisons" and that he wished he didn't tell people that Coda was depressed or mentally unwell; it was actually Davey projecting. Maybe a lot of those games never had any deep meaning and they were just random creations that reused game assets and nothing more. Then he leaves to contemplate while you as a player are left to traverse the rest of the level and digest what you just experienced on your own before you enter the beam from the game "Escape From Whisper" again and begin floating into the sky. There you get to see the virtually infinitely long labyrinth/maze, which is open for interpretation.

 

"Coda" also has a meaning.

It basically refers to anything leading up to an ending, like in music it refers to the passage leading up to the end of a composition.

Interpret that one however you want!

 

There are also those 3 dots that reappear constantly. While Davey tries to give a meaning for a lot of things, such as the lamp posts (which is revealed that he was the one who added those in), he completely ignores those 3 dots. It's revealed at the end that he tried asking Coda what those dots meant, but he never gave an answer for it, so Davey felt it was too abstract for him to get a meaning out of. Though, I have seen the theory that this is related to the "Therefore" symbol in mathematics and is also used in syllogism, but shorthand. Coda's is slightly lopsided and upside down, however.

Syllogism is basically deductive reasoning, flawed or not. Just as Davey was doing.

I guess a way to look at it would be that it's the IDEA or LONGING to wanting to connect dots. You don't know what it means or where it's going, so you try and connect the dots to make it make sense even if it isn't supposed to actually make any sense.

My personal theory is that it's Coda's signature or logo. Nothing more.

 

What's funny about all of this on my end is that I'm doing what Davey did to Coda. Interesting isn't it?

Although... he was obsessive with Coda and acted like he deserved games from Coda, who tried to tolerate him until he couldn't do it anymore. The only person who deserves anything (a proper apology) is Coda.

 

The meaning behind the game title according to IRL Davey is this:

 

It's based on various events that happened to IRL Davey, specifically around the popularity and overwhelming success of The Stanley Parable. I'll let his own blog post and comic strip about his feelings around the initial popularity of The Stanley Parable speak for itself. Once you play The Beginner's Guide and then read this, everything makes sense as to why this game exists at all:

https://medium.com/@HelloCakebread/game-of-the-year-cb4214f98c13

Funny enough, the author's note made in 2022 is really funny and really ironic. People literally misinterpreted the accidental removal of this blog post and comic as him being embarrassed or upset about something, even though the reality was much more mundane and unremarkable. Which is why it's not hosted by him anymore, he put it somewhere else for anyone to see so it doesn't accidentally go missing again.

Seriously, it's really good layers of "...wow" especially if you like narratives and anything thought provoking.  

If you think this game is something that I would find thought provoking, then I am happy to give it a try on my free time. Is the game on steam or any easily accessible platform? Maybe we can all have a stream together. 

[Espy Vibe 4,535]

3 hours ago, Ice Princess Silky &lt;3 said:

Is the game on steam or any easily accessible platform? Maybe we can all have a stream together. 

@Ice Princess Silky <3 It's on Steam! Maybe yes, but I got up from a nap and remembered that there's some mild swearing, though it's not directed at anybody.

And, there's one game that has a risque title but there aren't actually any adult themes present. Most of the game titles are just meant to be bizarre, intentionally confusing or strange.

Just thought you should be aware of that. 

 

[Ice Princess Silky <3 15,105]

10 minutes ago, Espy Vibe said:

@Ice Princess Silky <3 It's on Steam! Maybe yes, but I got up from a nap and remembered that there's some mild swearing, though it's not directed at anybody.

And, there's one game that has a risque title but there aren't actually any adult themes present. Most of the game titles are just meant to be bizarre, intentionally confusing or strange.

Just thought you should be aware of that. 

 

I appreciate you letting me know. For the record, I am personally not against swearing. It is just not my personal preference as someone who wishes to be as succinct in her communication style as possible. But your keeping that in mind as a courtesy is appreciated. We do have a section for people who are okay with such content being streamed, so long as it is not public or involving a shared space with little ones, etc. 

Anyway, I am totally game to try this when we are all free and available for it.

[Bright Honor 2,720]

Imo Knack 2 from PS4. Solid action platformer imo.