Topic: Your Personal Sleeper Hits

A personal sleeper hit being something that you might have ignored and not expected too much from. Maybe you picked it up much later because you did ignore it for so long. Then once you played it, you were blown away by it. These can be popular titles that you just ignored or lesser known ones that no one pays attention to.

Some of mine include...
Kingdoms of Amalur
Shadow of the Colossus
Madworld
Mass Effect
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Catherine
Lost in Shadow
Dante's Inferno
RUSE
Battalion Wars

So what are some of your sleeper hits.

Only Henry Hatsworth in The Puzzling Adventure on the DS comes to mind right now.
And i didn't really expect much from Destruction Derby Raw on the PS1 but an online version of that would be the one game i'd kill for today.

Resident Evil Revelations(especially on Raid Mode)

The most prominent one I can think of, would have to be Metal Arms: Glitch in the System for all 6th gen consoles. That game was better than Halo, IMO. The only benefit Halo had, was online after the first, and maybe the 1st person perspective. Otherwise, Matal Arms was arguably better than than Halo.

While some users here appreciate it, Bird Mania 3 D was way better than I expected it to be!

Looney Tunes Space Race has to be mine. Never would had guessed it would be good.

Lesse, off the top of my head:
Hotline Miami (Steam)
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (Steam)
Excitebots Trick Racing (Wii)
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)
DK: King of Swing (GBA)
Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog (GBA)

Disney infinity: Now that I have it, it is my favorite game EVER!

Rayman Origins, I didn't think it could be that good (don't like Rayman's character design) until I got it on PS+ and found it is awesome

Knights of the Old Republic
Magical Drop series
Guilty Gear
Virtua Fighter
Fate/EXTRA
Life Force
Civilization IV
Total War series
Rayman Origins
Front Mission 3

Starcraft 2: Learning curve is steep and you really only get into the strategy when you learn the basics
Sleeping Dogs: Rushed through the story missions as fast as possible. The story wasn't great, but the world was fun to explore.
Resident Evil Revelations: Didn't enjoy it at first because I was trying to take it seriously. Halfway through, everything just clicked.
Bullet Hell games in general
Visual Novel games in general

Lost magic and donkey Kong: Jungle Climber come to mind.

there's Ocarina of Time 3D for me too I expected a pretty good, but outdated and badly aged, Zelda game and got my third favorite Zelda game yet.
and Nintendogs expected a boring pet game and got a good pet game
SteamWorld Dig BEST ESHOP GAME.
and just to explain my previous Resident Evil Revelations answer I expected something slightly better than Pokémon Dash because I usually hate this kind of game(I get bored) as much as I hate plain bad games(Pokémon Dash) but this one was special.

Pretty Much none of the games posted are sleeper hits.

Anyway Alpha Protocol fits the bill properly I guess.

Correct. A sleeper hit is when a form of media (video game, album, film) is not reviewed or marketed by critics, is expected by those who actually know about it not to be received well, and does the exact opposite. For example, Napoleon Dynamite was a movie that got mixed positive reviews, and a very limited theatrical release after Sundance, but still grossed roughly half a billion dollars in the box office and has a huge cult following.

Demon Souls is an example of a sleeper hit. Wasn't marketed at all, but was well received and led to the creation of the Dark Souls games. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is probably the best example of one that I know of, no one expected that game to be as well received as it was, but it was huge.

^well then it can be called "your would have been sleeper hits if only you counted, not the critics and not the sales only you" I guess

I agree. Rayman, Guilty Gear, Mass Effect, etc. weren't really sleeper hits. They may not have been as popular as we might have expected them to be, but were still widely known games.

I still say Metal Arms was a sleeper hit, though. I can guarantee you that not even 5% of Halo fans have played that game, and it was better than the first game, IMO.

PERSONAL sleeper hits. Games that you yourself ignored or wrote off.

Except we're talking about games that surprised us as an individual. Unless you can think of a better term for that, everyone's posts still stand, because they're talking about games that exceeded their own personal expectations and knowledge.

With that in mind, I can list a bajillion games. Believe it or not, there were some big periods in my life where lots of games used to surprised me.

Some examples:

Okami - Yes, I had never heard anything about it before I found it in the rental Store. The back said it was similar to Zelda, but I still didn't know what to make of it. Luckily it turned out to be incredible, one of the best I had ever played.

Metal Gear Solid 3 - Outside of some VG Cats strips, I had never even heard of Metal Gear Solid. All I knew about it was that it was a stealth game (which I had very little experience with outside of Sly Cooper), and you can hide in boxes. Luckily there turned out to be a lot more to it than that, from an interesting and complex story, to survival-like gameplay mechanics and huge boss fights.

I thought about that after I posted, so ya...

I don't really have any sleeper hits as much as I do sleeper duds.