Games that never became popular

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2005
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Netherlands
Hi,

I'm just woundering about some games, why they never became popular?
There are several games that I've played a lot yet they never became that widely known.

Examples are the first 3 Cossacks games wich are essentially the same.
The game Port Royale 2,
and the codename panzers series.

Imo the cossacks was MUCH ahead of it's time and I still love to play it today, never understood why it never became as popular as lets say age of empires. It's amazingly addicting due to the pretty much inexistant population limit.

Port royale 2 is a great game, one of the most addicting tycoon like games, it's about transporting goods across the Carribian to make money, build businisses, take cities for your country, sea battles, piracy, etc...

Codename panzers, again an awesome game imo, although less addicing as cossacks because of being battle only without building a base etc, it was highly realistic and the only game that remotely came near it was Desert rats vs africa korps imo.


Anybody else agree with me or has games that you've played but never became popular ?
 
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hype = popular!

Far too many games now are hyped to death, loads of people pre order it before there is even a demo out and then are usually disappointed because the game doesnt live up to the hype. You only have to look at crysis to see this in action, lots of hype about how pretty it is etc but tbh, its Far Cry with different bad guys and updated gfx.

One game that became very popular a long time after its release was Deus Ex. It received very little advertising and hype, didnt sell very well upon release. It was only when people had played it and then word of mouth kicked in and lots of people started buying it. Unfortunately it doesnt always work like this.
 
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Prey was pretty miserable in terms of success after 10 years in the making... Multiplayer was laggy in both connection and framerate, and people didn't seem to really like the mavity stuff. I enjoyed quite a lot of the online play but there were only ever about 10 people playing in the whole world at any one time. Combined with (and probably caused by) the lag it was pretty poor.
 
Another classic shoots to mind: Knights and merchants : the shattered kindom and KaM : The peasant rebellion were also 2 awesome games imo, still have a fanbase but they were never hyped or really well sold oddly :(, probably because of settlers directly compeating to it.
 
thought crysis was pretty good, no hype there :p

On a serious note, the game 'the thing' on ps2 and pc, was probably a game which scared me more than any other game ive ever played it was terrifying, really like the film aswell. Cracking game which although it got a 9/10 in the offical ps2 mag at the time, nothing else really recognised it.
 
howdydoody said:
They have just released this on GameTap so i may resub and have a play!
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It's great if you like a semi-mindless arcade shooter. The graphics are stunning even today and it was probably the most well optimised game out at the time, the special powers were brutally win as well. :)
 
i agree, that port royal 2 sounds quite good, might check that one out! so thank you muchly ;)

i used to play cossaks quite a lot, only the origional though, but then moved onto other games etc...

a game that didnt have much hype upon release and still doesnt really considerign how big it is outside of europe, is Starcraft/Starcraft: Brood Wars expansion. i think its abrilliant game, amazingly well balanced RTS, hasnt really taken off in the UK, but is quite big in USA/Canada/Germany/Poland and is professionally played in Korea (recognised as Korea's 2nd national sport...behind football) - but again this has never had hype, particularly in the UK!
 
I made a thread about a couple of FPS a while back, Chrome and Chaser: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17664510
Techland seem to have gotten a bit more attention lately thanks to Call of Juarez, but I'm surprised that more people didn't pick up on Chrome considering the fact that it came out in 2003 making it arguably the best looking FPS around on launch. Likewise Caldroun got more attention from SoF:Payback than they did from Chaser.

Interesting to see Cossacks mentioned, my housemate at uni was a fan of that. I think the RTS/Stategy genre as a whole probably has a whole host of quality titles that just haven't got a lot of publicity for whatever reason. I've only ever really bothered with the mega-hyped franchises (Westwood/Blizzard/Relic/Sid Meier/Peter Molyneux/Chris Taylor etc) and hence have likely missed out on a lot of good'uns from lesser known developers. Must be great to be an RTS fanatic because there's a huge backcatalogue of 85%+ titles out there.
 
Yeah a lot of RTS games but there's always room for improvement.
Tbh imo RTS was ruined by 3d for a long time, the graphics in 2d were actually nicer to look at that the early 3d gfx.


Port Royale 2, I just dunno why so few people have heard about it, here the game made it even to a tv review on a game review program.
PR2 is @ start mostly about trading and later on about businises, combat can come in from the medium game ( you need to have enough cash to buy warships and buy cannons etc.).
It has 4 main views:
Strategic map wich is a RTS interactive chart but you are able to set the game speed so later in the game you have more time to do stuff.
City: Manage busisiness & extra's ( quests, missions ).
Sea battle: Speaks for itself, 3d rts battle, not really the greatest, but not bad either, some skill involved.
Land battle: pretty primitive, shame, but it's not really abotu combat in this game and land battles are rare.

I play PR2 mainly for the trading & business part, it's quite a long game and has a medium learning curve.

Shame it wasn't that advertised, a lot of people know about sid meiers pirates but compared to PR2 it's rubbish.
 
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Clive Barker's Undying. Didnt sell well and got mediocre reviews. Thought it was very good.

ShadowMan by Acclaim. Got slated at reviews but imo was a very misunderstood game. Very difficult and a harrowing theme, the scariest game (if there is one) I have played, the sound effects and some of the art was very disturbing. A hidden classic.
 
Zogger said:
Prey was pretty miserable in terms of success after 10 years in the making... Multiplayer was laggy in both connection and framerate, and people didn't seem to really like the mavity stuff. I enjoyed quite a lot of the online play but there were only ever about 10 people playing in the whole world at any one time. Combined with (and probably caused by) the lag it was pretty poor.
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Prey is so under rated.
The portal stuff was amazing,anyone who liked Valves new portal game really should try the real deal.
 
Sm00gel said:
Prey is so under rated.
The portal stuff was amazing,anyone who liked Valves new portal game really should try the real deal.
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I agree, Prey is a fantastic game. Awesome visuals combined with both an excellent narrative and fun features made me love this game, and I still do! Screw the mp, singleplayers where its at!
 
snowdog said:
Another classic shoots to mind: Knights and merchants : the shattered kindom and KaM : The peasant rebellion were also 2 awesome games imo, still have a fanbase but they were never hyped or really well sold oddly :(, probably because of settlers directly compeating to it.
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I bought KaM upon release for some reason, played it a bit, enjoyed it, failed miserably once I got past the first two levels, and gave up.

Lost CD now, where can it be bought?
 
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