The critics were wrong- this game rocks

[noiseredux]

not even on metacritic, but A Nightmare On Elm Street for NES is one of my favorite games of all time. And most ppl write it off as a crappy platformer. I think it's brilliant. The two planes of reality (awake vs dreamworld) the changing characters (ninja, wizard, athlete) the non-linear gameplay (you go to levels in different order randomly each time you play) and the MUSIC! The music is amazing in this game. PLUS it supports 4-player co-op. So great.

[RCBH928]

I must ask. Who has time to check out "low scored" games where there are a ton of good games?
Not to mention invest money in them. I really find that really hard. But...

Red Steel. I got this game pirated off some cheap place just to check if the softmod worked. Also check how this Wii sword thing works. I completed the game because it was fun. Graphics are cheap and the controls are dumb sometimes, but it was a ton of fun. If you are willing to be lenient it is a lot of fun and I thought it was creative in level design too.
You can easily redo the game after fixing it and polishing it and it can score something like 8/10 easy

[lisalover1]

Cat In The Hat on the PS2/XB/GC. No, I'm serious. It wasn't great, but it held my attention for a long time thanks to its great backgrounds, perplexing [in a good way] level designs, and abundance of shiny things. I have no idea why I like this game. It's just fun.

[noiseredux]

I dont buy games based on ratings, so the whole "who has time to buy badly rated games" thing doesn't really apply. I investigate things I think look cool, no matter the rating.

[fast]

Saberwulf - GBA - Most critics didnt even review it, so the aggregate are a bit skewed, and it was one of the three Rareware titles to be released on the GBA after Microsoft bought them. An excellent puzzle platformer that I still think is the best on the console and is in my top 10 games of all time.

Ribbit King – Cube/PS2 – Its cutesy, its silly, its golf with mallets and frogs. But it is also strangely addictive. Ack can attest, I have brought this out at lanparties and even hardcore Counter Strike and Starcraft guys got in on it. Its just bizarre kitschy fun.

[ejamer]

My top pick: Capcom Classics Mini Mix (GBA) is a collection of three awesome old Capcom NES games, and well worth picking up. Maybe it hit before retro became cool again, or maybe reviewers wanted something more... but I think that this game was much better than the (higher rated) Classic NES titles that Nintendo released.



Also, I think Wii gets this a lot recently.

Many critics don't like shorter games, or motion controls, or mini-game collections, or party games... so non-traditional games suffer in their critical reception. Is it really fair to compare all games to traditional, AAA-caliber blockbusters? What about when it's a budget game to start with, or targetting a different market?

The games below might get ignored due to mediocre ratings, but are totally worth playing. They aren't perfect game and often do have flaws, but are all worth the price of admission - especially when many can be found new for under $20.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Sam & Max Season One
Medal of Honor Heroes 2
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Endless Ocean
Deadly Creatures
Scarface: The World is Yours
Munchables, The
Tenchu: Shadow Assassins
Conduit, The
Ghost Squad
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
Dragon Quest Swords: The Mask Queen and the Tower of Mirrors
Mario Party 8
Cooking Mama: Cook Off
Wii Play
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings

[crux]

Space Giraffe is the epitome, to me, of the ignorance of so many game critics. The metacritic scores should give a good idea of the discrepancies in reviews for Space Giraffe.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... %20giraffe

From 100 to 20. Fucking 20. Even Tempest 2000 never received the laurels it truly deserved, but a score of 20 for Space Giraffe is just goddamned ridiculous.

[crux]

Don't take this too hard, but good games don't *need* to score over 80. 75 is a rather good score.

Of course, if one notes how infrequently games get scores below even 60, then we sort of realize that in effect the dynamic range for actual grading is smaller than 0-100 and that might be why some of you guys are feeling games under 80 aren't even good.

Grading games is a complicated issue, although I can see it is somewhat useful for some people who just don't have the time to read actual reviews or try the game out for themselves.

I absolutely agree with this. I was even pleasantly surprised to see Space Giraffe with a score of 68, even though I would score it much higher (I cannot find fault with that game). 50 is supposed to imply an average, therefor anything above it should be considered above average. A lot of the games already mentioned in this topic seem perfectly reasonable to score around 70-75.

If they're fun games in their own right, but have issues that deter from the overall greatness, below 80 doesn't seem unreasonable whatsoever. I consider 80 or above to be the upper tier of titles and 90 or above to be the best of the best. In comparison, 70 isn't low at all. It just means it won't appeal to everyone and could have been improved.

[Weekend_Warrior]

I was one of those who liked the original Killzone despite its glaring flaws. Nowadays of course thanks to the prevalence of the grey colour palettes in shooters I don't care much for its sequel.

The only thing I had against Killzone (PS2) was its repetitive dialogue. There's only so many times I can hear "We NEED support!" and "Grenade.. scatter!" before I get a headache and have to turn off the console.

[Jrecee]

I didn't even realize there was a 3D shinobi game. I was just reading a review of shinobi for the VC recently and got to wondering what happened to that franchise, and thought since ninja gaiden has been popular they should make a new shinobi. Guess they have.

As for underrated games, a review that has pissed me off for over a decade:

A review of Mischief Makers for N64. I can't remember what the magazine was called but I think it was australian. They ripped this game to shreds, mosty because it wasn't 3D enough. It got something like a 3 or 4 and virtually the only complaints they had was the graphics. They also had a pointless system where they would go back and re-review games every month to see if they were still good.

They weren't the only ones to trash mischief makers though, I think the general consensus at the time was that if it was on N64 it had to have blurry low poly graphics or it wasn't impressive. I think egm gave it a 6 or so.