5. Primal Rage (1994)
This game was dismissed as a Mortal Kombat clone, which, admittedly, it is, but I found it cooler than Mortal Kombat because it is giant dinosaurs and apes fighting instead of humans. And being a boy I had a huge dinosaur phase, so yeah, it was a great arcade game.
Atari was planning to make a sequel, but they scrapped it after "fears it wouldn't generate enough sales." I guess it's hard for knock off games to generate enough money to warrant a sequel, even though this is as good as a "knock off" game can get. Here's the intro movie clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYypXCmPmdM
And some gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuQQXgnYPUIn addition to being an arcade game, it was also made for the PC, although it was for DOS, so I don't know if it would work on today's PCs. It's also on an arcade game bundle made for the PS2, so that's what I play it on today.
4. Dark Messiah (2006)
Dark Messiah is a first person action RPG game, set in the Heroes of Might and Magic universe. You play as a young knight named Sareth, who is sent on a quest to get a powerful magical item on a faraway island, you know, typical fantasy RPG stuff. It looks like if someone mixed Hexen and Oblivion together and called it a game.
This game is really good for a couple of reasons:
- Combat. It is an action adventure game, so its gotta be good in this aspect, and Dark Messiah delivers. Enemies are rather tough to take head on all the time, so the game forces you to fight smart and be creative in order to beat them. And Dark Messiah has the environment and skill sets for you to do this. It's not like Diablo 2 or Skyrim where many enemies you just hit once or twice and they're dead. And this makes sense, because Sareth is young and hasn't fought before, so he's a novice. However, he learns pretty quickly and towards the end of the game you can freaking wreck havoc on enemies. People have complained that the game's combat is too hard. It's supposed to be hard, that's what makes it fun and challenging, but it's not "too hard" that its not fun.
- Storyline. I've read in online reviews that people said the storyline is boring and dull. I guess I just have to attribute that to a difference in opinion because I thought the storyline was excellent. It's cool that you can choose your own ending based on your choices in the game, and some of the plot twists at the near the end of the game come out of nowhere and you're like "Ohhhh shit."
It didn't sell too well in the U.S., but did better in Europe. This makes sense because Ubisoft is based in France, so they tend to make games that suit European tastes more. Plus, the developer, Arkane Studios, left Ubisoft, so Ubisoft doesn't have a developer to make a sequel. Also, this game came out around the same time that the Elder Scrolls, Oblivion, did, and many people often compared the two, as they both drove for the same market. While Oblivion is a better game, they are different types of RPGs, so I really don't think its fair to compare them. So those factors combined explain why it didn't get a sequel.
To end, here's an awesome gameplay trailer showing all the best elements of fighting in this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwocEzg8OYI
3. Hellgate London (2007)
Hellgate London is set in the future, where Demons invade Earth and reduce most of the planet to rubble. Humans are forced to live in small, underground communities and have to fight to survive. It's a hub based RPG game, so you get to make your own character. You get to choose a fighting class, collect and sell weapons, etc, standard RPG stuff. It's kind of like Diablo in first person view.
Strengths of the game:
- Ton of weapons and customizable options. It's a RPG game, so this kind of one of its major foundations. The weapons are really cool and unique, because its in the future, but there's still magic. So you have lava spitting rifles and spells coming out of devices you attach to your hands. In addition to lots of weapons, there are a ton of runes and artifacts you have attach to your weapons to make them stronger and give them more abilities. In total, you have a huge amount of customization available to you to suit your fighting style or just to have sick nasty weapons that are cool.
- Strong atmosphere that is dark and gritty. I like games with a good atmosphere that really immerse you in the game, and Hellgate London does that. The music combined with the decadent visuals of the environments present a unique mood for the game.
- Levels are very long. You can only save at HUBS and you have to complete a mission before you save, otherwise your progress is not saved and you have to start at the beginning of the particular mission. This is kind of annoying because as an adult with a job and a life, (sorta), I sometimes don't have 45 minutes or an hour in a one block to play video games. The fighting gets hard pretty soon in the game, so its intense and draining to do it for what I consider a long amount of time.
- Sort of glitchy. C'mon, it was released in 2007, the developers should have known better by then how to get rid of basic glitches.
- Environments can get repetitive after a while because there's like a ratio of 40 different levels and 7 different location types so after the 5th time of going to a sewer system that looks exactly the same as the last four, that can get annoying.
I don't know how available this game is, I still have my CD when I bought it back in 2007, so yeah, just do a Google search or something if you wanna buy it. Here's the intro movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHSgjez6RuE
2. Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)
This game is a remake of the 1987 version, which I played on the original Nintendo. So technically it's not a sequel, it's a remake, so that's why its on this list. You play as a pirate, (imagine that!), in the Caribbean in the 1700's. You can pick 1 out of four nations to be aligned with, (British, Spanish, French, or Dutch), although you can change that alignment whenever you want to. The game is a set of mini games, coupled with sailing around the Caribbean to get to these mini games. You duel, fight naval battles, land battles, dance, etc, you know, piratey stuff.
Strengths:
- Never gets old. This game will always be fun to play, as each time you play, you can do something different. Do you wanna fight for the English and conquer Spanish cities in the name of the crown? Or do you want to focus on being a pirate hunter and knocking off Blackbeard to get his treasure? Or do you want to find your family and seek revenge against their captor? Or you can try to and do all three and really be busy all the time.
- Good music. Music is a must for a really top notch video game, in my opinion. None of my top favorites have a mediocre soundtrack. It helps add to the immersion and atmosphere of the game. Here is a playlist on Youtube of the Pirates! soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1LiGSe86eAE4AFCmS_cOu49a0dJ1NXGE
- At the end of the day, even though its a very good game, its still just a collection of mini games.
- No customization of pirate. I mean, you can make up his name, nationality, etc, but he still looks the same? C'mon, I want some variety here.
- The higher difficulties are annoyingly hard, even for me, so that takes the fun out of it sometimes just due to bad luck.
- Why is dancing so much harder than sword fighting a pirate to the death? That doesn't make much sense.
1. Titan Quest (2006)
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| You never actually fight this Hydra anywhere in the game. So why would they put it on the front cover?! |
Titan Quest is my favorite action RPG ever, and is one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. If you want to spend hours hacking away at enemies in the ancient world and not get bored in the slightest, then this is your game. I have killed days playing this game and don't regret it in the slightest.
You're a ordinary guy just walking about Ancient Greece, and a series of events puts you in a big war between humans and monsters, and ultimately your goal is to kill a renegade Titan who doesn't want to follow the rules of Zeus and the Gods. Just look at the intro movie clip, it's cool!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U48lPpyj52E (And you do actually fight these monsters!)
Strengths:
- As I said above, never gets old.
- History nerds will love this game, as it has a lot of lore from the cultures you visit. You visit cities that actually existed hundreds of years ago, which is pretty cool.
- Tons of different weapons and weapons mods. Like Hellgate London, Titan Quest offers a plethora of different weapons, spells, and effects to add to your weapons to fit your fighting style. Flaming swords of fire? You got it. Poison arrows? Check.
- Top notch soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLcfCuP1Rro&list=PL01B9B50A09A36A7E
- Long game. This game is not something that you can beat in a couple of weeks, even if you know exactly what to do. It will keep you occupied for a very long time, and with the Immortal Thrones expansion pack, that adds even more levels and quests. I think the last time I beat it I clocked in around 96 hours total, so that's comparable to Oblivion and/or Skyrim, and this came out 5 years before Skyrim.
- This game gets really flipping hard around 3/4s through it. It's actually annoying how hard it gets. You run into a group of monsters and you'll get your ass handed to you before you even realized what had happened. And its not due to glitches or bugs, as this game virtually has none, its due to how the game works when its working the way it was designed. I clocked in at 96 hours, not because thats how long the game is from start to finish, but because I had to spend so much time re-doing areas to get more experience and better gear. It's safe to say that this game is also on my top ten hardest video games of all time. But is it still fun? Yeah. Is it still beatable? Yes. This is just a warning lol.
- No customization of character. Well, you can choose gender....and tunic color. That's it.
- That's about it. There's a reason why this one of my favorite games, because it has little weaknesses.
Sorry for all the cursing lol. I can respect peoples' opinions on gaming that is different than mine, to an extent, but criticism that literally makes no sense I can't stand. I would really want to watch someone objectively explain to me why the inventory system in Titan Quest is "hard or unworkable." I just don't get it.
Titan Quest is for PC and works fine for Windows XP but I had major problems getting the CD version to work on Windows 7, so I bought it off Steam for cheap, and it works flawlessly, so Steam is the way to go for this glorious game.
In conclusion, you might have noticed that the majority of these games came out around the same time, 2004-2007. This is because the opinion of the mainstream, majority of gamers started to shift farther away than my own around that time. I have never been a mainstream gamer, but I was closer to their opinion pre-2006-ish. Afterwards, the stereotypical fuckboy wearing OBEY shirts and SWAG hats became the mainstream gamer, and they like games that I think are total shit, (Call of Duty, Borderlands, Assassin's Creed, etc). So that's part in why these 5 games, which I think are great, didn't sell too well, because they were not what the typical gamer wanted to play at the time.
But hey, don't let me influence what you want to play. If you wanna check out these 5 games, be my guest, but if you wanna stick with the games you already play, that's great too. Everyone likes their own thing.
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