What games have actually surprised you? (either fell short or surpassed)

Usually I know beforehand whether or not something is worth getting.  But, do you ever get a game that you thought was going to kick ass, but it ended up sucking?  I have – many times.  Every once in awhile, though, I’ll get one that I’m skeptical about that ends up being surprisingly good, or even ends up as a favorite.

Like?

Onimusha- I was expecting some half-decent game. But ended being up at least one of my favorites. Nothing has suprised me so much.

Rune Viking Warlord- I rented this game thinking , sweet! You know, My friend says the computer game is kickass. So, I\'m like- Why wouldn\'t this? I was wrong. Worse framerate, graphics, it just sucked.

Ehmm... recent games I bought... The Getaway surprised me ;
I was charmed by it from start, but I was pretty scared by all
the negative publicity it got after E3 about the nagging framerate
and such. Now I\'ve played it imo it\'s pretty good afterall, not
perfect but I\'ve had very much fun playing it. I give it 87 % score.

Besides that I bought F1 2002 by EA. Ohh hell, that one surprised me immediately when I saw it\'s on cdrom instead of dvd rom. Then I played it and it has the worst framerate for an F1 game ever ! I think it hoovers around 20 fps and it drops here and there as well. Damn ! I payed € 39 for that CR@P !!!

Starcraft.. I thought it would suck major ass.. At first it did, but when I got used to it.... I still play it everyday, even more than my PS2.

This was a couple years ago but.....Worms....


I still remember the day a bunch of my friends ran to me in a frenzy ranting about a game they were playing all night.  So i asked them what it was all about and their reply was:

"ya, um.. you like get to control little worms"


As you can expect my expectations were not that great but i went home and played Worms armageddon.... and im still playing it daily.  The fact that it support online play is the kicker... me and my friends still play a couple of games everyday and every game has the potential to be so unique that we take about games we have played together when we arent even playing....

< Worms Geek

[Paul2]

Final Fantasy VII - the first RPG i ever play.  I seen FF3 in SNES and those 2-D sprites base and stuff.  So when I first borrow ffvii, i thought it will be some enjoyable 2-D sprite based.  But it surpassed me, this amazing 3-D landscape, characters, CG movies, story, gameplay, music, almost everything goes beyond my expection.   The best RPG i ever play.

FFVIII-  After seeing FFVII, i thought ffviii will be more amazing.  Instead, it went the opposite.  FFVIII story suck, lame battle system (hate draw mode), boring and annoying side quests, annoying load time on psx, but the card game is fun though.

MGS2- i thought this game will be very amazing.  instead, it\'s a very good game, but not that spectacular though.  Annoying and confusing story, boring background design.  The tanker is fun but the shells is boring looking, they should have some more clever bosses and puzzles like they have in MGS1.  Gameplay is very good though.  this game is under my expectation.

Suprise Hits:

NiGHTS
Samba De Amigo
Skies of Arcadia (I knew it would be good...but damn)
Sonic Adventure
Mario Sunshine
Jak & Daxter
Devil May Cry
Kingdom Hearts
Grandia 2
Final Fantasy IX (best game ever, IMO)
Metroid Prime
Zelda: OoT

Note: Those games went above and beyond my expectations.

Suprise Flops:

Metal Gear Solid
Final Fantasy VIII
Grand Theft Auto 3
Ratchet and Clank
Tomb Raider 3-Chronicles
Phantasy Star Online

Note: Didn\'t meet the hype surrounding the titles.  That or they just didn\'t play well for me.

[GmanJoe]

Games that surprized me :

PSX
Gran Turismo (hadn\'t read anything about video games for awhile and then someone said I should get it) To my surprise...I was blown away.

PSX
Colony Wars : I thought the game couldn\'t match the hype. It did.

PS2
Shadow of Destiny : jeez....where do I start? It\'s a completely different game where eye hand coordination is not needed whatsoever! Yet....the idea was excellent! And it really pulled me into the story!

PS2
Dynasty Warriors 2&3 : repetitive....yet addictive!

I was hoping Dark Cloud would be a much more compelling game, but it started to slow down quite a bit after the first town.  Disappointing.

And I knew ICO would be good after playing through the demo several times, but I never knew the full game would be the incredible experience that it was.

Suprise hit!

PC:
Everquest: When I first tried this 4 years ago, I had never seen anything so impressive and so original, and I had never heard about it (I thought it was not posible to make a game of this type yet)
Starcraft: Also a game that I just heard about a week before it was released.. never been a big fan of wc2, I didnt except it to be something big, but as we all know.. I thought wrong.
Command & Conquer: My first rts game, it was not impressive... but when I started to play it with a few friends over lan, it was a revolution in pc games from my part
Quake: Nothing had looked so good before, it was all polygons 0.o ! And the gameplay surpassed everything.

PSX:
Ridge Racer: This was the reason for why I bought the console... it was the most impressive game I had ever seen.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Was not sure what it was.. it didnt look good, but since it was FF it had to be good... and yupididooo did I have right about that One of the best FF games ever

PS2:
Nothing yet. Nope, not one single game have suprised me... impressed me yes, but not suprised. Since I already know what titles that will be big and what will not.

Suprise Flops:

PC:
Tiberian Sun: They spent so much time making this game, and I thought it would be the best rts game ever. Well, it was not.

Quake 2: Utter crap, a good single player game.. but the all too important multiplayer part was crap crap and more crap. I still played Q1 after 2nd was released.

Anarchy Online: A very impressive engine, new ideas and it just looked to be the new EQ. Well, unstable servers.. boring character classes and too boring overall..

Black&White: This game just seemed to be very cool and original, but in general.. it was just boring

PSX:
Tomb Raider 3: The first 2 games was great, but 3rd one was just too similar to the 2 others.

Mortal Kombat 4: Almost embarrassing... but yea, I was looking forward to this game

PS2:
Ridge Racer 5: I guess Im not the only one

Twisted Metal Black: Because they took away all the ending sequences, the cool plane crash on one of the maps, all story and mostly anything else that makes a game worth playing through. PAL just sucks when it comes to videogames

Surprisingly I was a bit dissapointed with Socum. Dont get me wrong I enjoyed the game but I think I expected to much. I finished about two levels than put it down. I have yet to play it online though so Im sure thats where most of the fun is.

MGS2, again another great game but not quite what I was expecting. I played this through though and still enjoyed it. I was dissapointed by the fact you only played as Snake through the ship.

Ugh, cant remember the name of this other game but it was by Rockstar Games. Where ur kind of a part of a gang and you try to take over the city. No not GTA! Anyways, this game was way overly hyped and ended up just being repetive and soo boring.

Suprise  hit:
Jax and Dexter...I never did like platform games much..but I actually finished it with 101 power cells!!

Suprise flop:
Suikoden 3 - the review was good, expectaction was high, but it\'s a piece of crap to me.

[Bobs_Hardware]

Ugh, cant remember the name of this other game but it was by Rockstar Games. Where ur kind of a part of a gang and you try to take over the city. No not GTA! Anyways, this game was way overly hyped and ended up just being repetive and soo boring.

State of Emergency.

Tokyo Xtreme Racing Zero- best racing game on the planet, every time I buy a racing game I\'m disappointed because of this titles amazingness.  Even GT3 is shadowed by this little gem.  And if Xbox ever releases a sequal to it, I will make sweet love to it.