Video Games you wish had been a bigger deal.

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Ares
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Video Games you wish had been a bigger deal.

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Some video games become so popular that they get sequels, then become franchises, then become household names. The Super Mario Bros, Pokemon, Megaman, Halo, Street Fighter, World of Warcraft, these guys rake in untold numbers of dollars, get adapted into various types of media, and spawn characters that are well known the world over.

Some franchises don't achieve that level of success, but are still well know big names in the gaming community that also get translated into other media. Tomb Raider, God of War, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Metroid, the games all become very big deals in their own right that will just occasionally take time off to revitalize themselves.

Then you get the other games. The one shots that maybe get a follow up game or two if they're lucky. They never really become a major franchise, you sometimes have to even remind other gamers that the game existed at all. Whether it was a lack of funds, poor design decisions or even just being released at the wrong time, I imagine there's a few games out there we've played and thought "Man, I wish X had been different and this game could have hit it big".

For me, the game that made me thing that was Dark Void, a lesser known game by Capcom about a WWII era pilot who gets sucked into another universe by the Bermuda Triangle, meets up with a dimensionally displaced Nikola Tesla, who then gives you a jet pack so you can fight aliens that want to help the Nazi's win World War II. That description alone should have made this a blast to play, and it's the kind of game I wish had become a big hit.

Sadly, it's easy to see why it wasn't. You obviously can't be in your jetpack at all times, so you need to have a type of playstyle for when you're just on the ground doing stuff. Unfortunately, they went with the "stops all forward momentum" cover-based-shooter style of gameplay, which feels really at odds with the "I'm using my jet pack to get into dog fights with alien UFOs" feeling of excitement the other half of the game gives you. It would have been better served with a more "Run and Gun" style of gameplay that emphasizes moving, jumping, getting into melee, etc.

It also feels like the game needed more development time and more funds. It's very short for what it is, so much goes unexplained and it feels like there should be so much more to do. So a bit more time to cook, a bit more stuff to do and very different flavor of non-jetpack gameplay.

Thinking about Dark Void honestly makes me kind of sad, wanting some sort of Pulp Crossover game with either the actual characters or obvious stand ins for various Pulp heroes, each of whom has some kind of unique gimmick along with having the same kind of "over the shoulder shooter/3rd person close combat" gameplay. Like, have a Rocketeer type person with a jet pack. But also have some kind of Masked Mystery Man who has a stealth/disguise power like the Spy from Team Fortress 2, or a Kato style martial artist who, when he gets close enough to bad guys, forces them to stop shooting and get into melee combat with him, and he can have Batman: Arkham City style combat. Probably be expensive as hell, but it'd potentially be frickin awesome.


So what'er some games that you guys wish would have been bigger deals, have become household names, why do you think they didn't and what do you wish would have been different?
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Davies
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Re: Video Games you wish had been a bigger deal.

Post by Davies »

I would really have liked to see a direct sequel to L.A. Noire, ideally set a generation later in the 1970s.
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