PO5: Your favorite sleeper/under the radar games of the moment

not console specific, mainly because i always seem to have a bunch of these and i dont want to keep cluttering up the rolling console threads with them. shit like COD and fallout need not apply. oh and also age is not a factir, if you want to stump for some old thingy go wild (although i will prob stick with current gen stuff because otherwise i will spend all day talking about MDK

so in no order:

Metro 2033
Bulletstorm
Nier
Deadly Premonition
Mafia II

actually considering how much ive yapped about deadly premonition already, maybe sub in Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit?

I guess everyone opted out of El Shaddai after that demo, but it's a really cool game.

i should probably give that a try then. i am glad to hear the demo was not representative because oh man that demo was terrrrrible. betting that the price drops will be fast and furious from here on out as well.

played coop online bulletstorm for like 3 hours last night. such an amazing fun game.

my two favorite games of all time are Darkstalkers 2 and One Must Fall:2097

i dont think ive ever even heard of the second one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Must_Fall:_2097

if you liked 2D fighters, this game was essential IMO; it isn't the full-on hardcore FIGHTING SCIENCE of stuff like SF/DS but it was so so so so fun

oh man that wiki just reminded me of EPIC MEGAGAMES who put out some stuff i absolutely loved back in the day

RIP Jazz Jackrabbit

kiloblaster 4eva

i have yet to find a fighting game after like tekken 3 that i really like. mainly because i am horseshit at them tbh

those guys were my Black Isle/Capcom before Black Isle existed and Capcom started making money off of Resident Evil

xp: have you looked at Soul Edge/Soul Calibur? those are mad fun with bonus bonkers storylines; also check Marvel vs Capcom because they are tons of lols, esp the newest one

i should probably give that a try then. i am glad to hear the demo was not representative because oh man that demo was terrrrrible.

I'm not saying that it's not representative because that is actually a level from the game, but it's just one level, and every level is different, and also it makes more sense after the tutorial and yadda yadda.

But like if you liked Deadly Prem, you have to play it. It is similarly weird and glorious.

i suppose i should prob sum up why my 5 are good:

Metro 2033: maybe the first post apocolyptic game that eschews all humor and hope - no reservations about killing characters you become fond of or that try to help you, constant sad post world conversations in every populated area that are really well written, the HUD is awesome, cracks in the gas mask and your ragged gasping breath ratcheting up the tension, and just a bleak despondent feel. Also forces you to work through levels logically and methodically, because if you waste your limited ammo you are going to get killed, and if you try to power shooter your way through, u gonna die. admittedly the shooter mechanics are spotty at best, but its still worth it. also its really hard.

Bulletstorm: i am going to evangelize this game until someone else plays it. its the best fps (sorta) i have played in years, and you can tell that the designers were actually eschewing reality and logic and everything else "serious" in favor of making it as fun to play as humanly possible. The world looks gorgeous and bright and shiny, the mechanics are flawless, and the humor while juvenile is actually funny. Pretty much everything from the violence to the setpieces is completely OTT and well executed and constantly in flux, whether that means kicksliding dudes in the face while wrapping them in a grenade bolo and using them to blow up their buddies while escaping a collapsing skyscraper or remote controlling your own personal mechagodzilla while leashing peeps out of one man helicopters at the same time. Probably going to be my game of the year.

one must fall 2097 is so fucking fun. in my early teen years i played the shareware (never got the full version) with the focus and avidity that only early teens can muster (can prob still run thru all of dark forces w/ my eyes closed) and was straight up dominant with the light chassis and upgraded legs. spin kicks.

i find nier very intriguing but am wary of long jrpg style cutscenes/exposition

metro 2033 is my next gamefly so I will be reporting soon.

damn i got an abandonware full version of OMF in undergrad sometime and ruined that shit. jaguar is still the best robot, but it ain't that much fun. the weird ones like flail and katana are not cost effective at all but are pretty neat to learn all the tricks of. there was that one who was like screwball or grinder or something mechanical like that and he was fun too. sick game.

one hugely overlooked game was bungie's ONI, back from 2001... this was hands down the nicest game i ever played. apparently ppl didn't think "it lived up to the hype" or something back when it was released, cuz there was clipping, but mainly cuz everyone was a huge puss about difficult-to-reach save points. anyways, this game had it all: melee, guns, and platform elements, all seamlessly balanced and surprisingly deep. nice ghost in the shell steez too.

i don't game anymore cuz i'm in law school but snuck an hour the other day to play this new arty game trauma, and it was fucking precious. i'm down with arty games but this one was too much.

looked it up, the robot's name was shredder. #beastmode

here are 5 recent games i rep for btw. these are indie "hits" to varying degrees but i figure they classify as sleepers just cuz they aren't AAA titles

jamestown
don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story
recettear: an item shop's tale
machinarium
terraria

Ha, I found posts of mine about OMF: 2097 on here from 2002, 2005, 2006 & 2008. Loved the RPG-ness of the campaign mode with the robot/pilot upgrades, and the robot designs were fun - Chronos (that port through the wall kick thing was hilarious with fully upgraded agility), the Gargoyle's dive-throw thing was fun when playing split-keyboard against friends (keyboard lock when losing/stunned!), and the Shadow had heaps of style points (especially when you got the upgrade to let you to the shadow hold thing in mid-air) but yeah, the Jaguar was easily the best all-rounder - I got my only triple-flawless victory against Ice on single-player mode's highest difficulty. Only shareware game I sent away for to register, IIRC.

Really enjoyed the music, too - kind've amazed there's videos on YouTube of people playing the main theme on guitar/piano!

Power Plant theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLlraUOlSVI

Solar Winds/Tyrian are my other Epic Megagames picks; I'd recommend the former to Star Control II fans.

OMF was dope, loved that game, especially as the PC has always been pretty starved for good fighting games (well, at least until the doujin explosion)

I loved Shredder, Shadow, Jaguar and Gargoyle

i have been playing stubbs the zombie recently and it totally holds up and is fun

lol I can't believe Stubbs is only 6 years old

I haven't played OMF since the late 90s and it's still probably in the top 10 games I've spent the most total time playing. I remember especially loving the "news reports" between fights for some reason.

The Binding of Isaac (~$5 on Steam) is so good

fyi, it's by the guy who made Super Meat Boy and it's a cross between a roguelike, zelda, and something deranged

been playing the hell out of saints row 2 recently - so lunkheaded and yet so charming

really tried to enjoy that game, the freeroam parts were great and loved some of the silly hidden missions. but car driving, particularly bike riding, was just awful and threw me off completely.

You can turn a cheat on that makes people constantly fall from the sky and die when they hit the ground. Therefore the game is brilliant.