Topic: Games that were pleasant surprises

I picked up Marvel Ultimate Alliance the other week and really was surprised how good it was. Felt the same about Mario Tennis Aces, Mario + Rabbids and really all of the Kirby games. What games have you had low expectations for, but they ended up being better than you initially thought?

Ratchet & Clank games on PS3 & PS2
Sly Cooper Collection PS3
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time PS3
Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival Wii U

I need to try Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival. I have it, but never played it.

@rockodoodle Amiibo Festival is one of the worst games I've ever played.

I loved Marvel Ultimate Alliance. The second one was ok and I have yet to play the third one though, I heard mixed reviews of that one. But yeah Marvel Alliance was a great game for it's time.

Final Fantasy VII Remake - Square Enix really struggled to make an engaging Final Fantasy after X-2. So my expectations were pretty low with regards to the battle system in Remake(especially after XV which really was dull in that area). They knocked it out of the park though.

King of Fighters XIV - The art style really didn't inspire confidence, but the combo system is so addictive. It brought back my love of fighting games, after the disappointment of Street Fighter V.

Ys VIII it looks like a PS2 game, and I'd never played an Ys game before. I got it on sale, and it's easily the best RPG on Switch. Great Metroid lite progression system, a story that for the most part makes sense(rare in JRPGs), and fun counter based combat.

Yakuza series - If you mixed The Godfather, with Mario Party, and a Dash of Phoenix Wright humour. Completely Unique, and really enjoyable.

Yeah Marvel Ultimate Alliance is decent, it's not flashy but is solid enough, has lots of easter eggs and the bosses are fun.

The announcement to Mario + Rabbids, a crossover with the annoying Rabbids but not Rayman where Mario has guns in a genre that neither game is known for, did sound horrid but once people saw it they quickly turned around.

For me and my Switch I'd probably say South Park: The Fractured But Whole as it improves a lot upon the previous game to become legit great SRPG which I actually prefer over Fire Emblem 3H. Human Resource Machine which is simple and probably boring to most but it's good for forcing the brain to think. Cadence of Hyrule which is actually really fun and unique, I personally enjoyed it more than alot of the proper 2D Zeldas.

Also Star Fox Guard still remains one of my favourite games and is a huge reason I keep my Wii U hooked up as it's just a fantastic blend of action and strategy. It's chaotic and fasted paced whilst forcing you to think about the next move.

Conduct Together. It's a train based puzzle game very similar to Urban Flow.

I brought it on sale thinking it would be some small shovelware to occupy me on a Sunday afternoon but turned out to be one of my favourite Switch games that I've put over 15 hours into and still not finished or unlocked all the trains. Very cool unlocking my local train to play with (London Underground) The soundtrack is amazing too. Great jazz music and some 80s type pop.

Brought Mario Tennis Aces and was quite surprised how much I liked it despite a lot of negativity around the game.

Paper mario OGK.

Picked up Astro Bears Party on a 90% discount for £0.79, and it’s become one of my most played party games. The premise is simple, it’s spherical ‘Snake’ with a jump button, but it’s a premise that works. Not a huge amount of content, but I can confidently say it was worth every one of its seventy nine pennies.

Caladrius Blaze; might be the best shmup available on Switch, the soundtrack gives me PSO vibes.

Carrion; you don't get to play the bad guy all that often in video games, a great nod to The Blob.

The Persistence; a new addition to my Halloween rotation, a terrific first person survival horror.

Recently I’ve picked up and played a couple of hidden gems on the GameCube:

Peter Jackson’s King Kong is a really well made 1st person action/survival games. Really surprising for a licenced game, possibly one of the best ones I’ve played outside of the Star Wars games. Cheap too.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is a great third person shooter. Bit rough around the edges but plays well and has a great voice cast (including cast members from the Simpsons and Family Guy). Apparently the multiplayer is brilliant too.

So, my sister's orthadontist has a gamecube. When we would go there, I would usually play. There was this one game, 1080 avalance i think, it's actually super fun.

When i first ordered Diablo 3 I was excited because I think a review or game description said it was playable with offline and online co-op. Then once ordered I questioned whelther I would even like the gameplay or not because im not a fan of grindy games.

When I unlocked the fourth attack, the second passive skill slot, alternative versions of half of my unlocked attacks, the second legendary item, I knew this game was not only a good purchase but one of my best purchases ever.

Diablo isnt perfect but so many rpgs fail to dedicate as much to the powers and abilities as Diablo does. It does take a minute to unlock stuff and get going but once you get the ball rolling the game is unstoppable.

Plus on top of being one of the greatest rpgs of all time it offers offline and online for up to four players each. The game is mostly a dungeon crawler but it cements itself as one of the best dungeon crawlers due to its legendary customization systems. You can spend days weeks months trying all the powers and in combination with different gear.

Simply put Diablo 3 is overly generous in one of the most important parts of the games and the game is all the better for it.

I didnt have low expectations for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 because I have Xmen Legends 2 and ultimate alliance 2 and i know how well super hero team up games can lend themselves to dungeon crawlers.

What did worry me though was how I never got to play as the best versions of characters due to the traditional leveling systems and stat allocations of those games. I needed a simple and more rewarding system that allowed fully powered heroes and MUA3 did that for me at least before the level cap increase.

Plus(ultra) it added a simple system to further customize characters in fun and unique ways via the iso system, which I feel may be even better than the legendary item Diablo system. (I only wish you could turn them off when you get enough i spend too much time throwing them away and the game will not let you even play if you have too many which is a critical game issue that needs to be addressed by giving iso spawn ing an off button)

And those are just gameplay features which like Diablo make them some of my best games ever owned and played not to mention the story plot and characters of the games which in both are so well done that you really didn't expect them as isometric dungeon crawlers to go that hard. Especially Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I just wanted a believable reason for all the heroes to get together and the game. I have watched several recent Marvel shows and I like that the game almost feels like and extension or movie of them.

Wow almost forgot Borderlands. Lol. I prefer third person shooters and just being able to see my character in general so i just am experiencing borderlands for the first time. Ive only got my feet wet in the original 1st game on switch and wow just wow. It plays kind of like of like the lovechild of Diablo and a first person shooter.

It,like Diablo, is very rewarding with customization and abilities. The real thing that gets me though is the enemy variety. Honestly i hate the skraggs they are too numerous and short for a clunky first person shooter game but ever since fighting the more powerful and cooler versions of skragg I been thinking to myself how cool they are. I wish for solo gameplay you could have a pet skragg or droid/drone make those solo sessions more complete able.

I often think of how cool it would have been to have diablo 3 and borderlands on the 3ds or ultimate Alliance 3 and diablo on the Vita or Vita tv, or a better optimized spinoff of borderlands.

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night on Switch.

Having never played a Castlevania game before, I only ever gave this game a shot because it was available on Game Pass (which I had bought a month of for £1).

Deciding I'd like to continue, I picked it up for the Switch despite warnings about performance. I'm glad I did, because the game is great and the performance didn't bother me at all (I hear it has improved significantly since launch).

I thought Splatoon 2's art style looked so kid oriented that I thought, "there's NO way that could be that good of a shooter". But my friend nagged me, "You really should try it". It's one of the best game's I've ever played. 3 years later, it's still my most played game (until Rocket League takes the lead in hours-played).

I thought there was no way Rocket League's soccer with rocket powered cars could be interesting.... until I tried it. Apparently, that's a thing with Rocket League. The idea doesn't sound compelling, but it's mechanics, physics, and game play, are really compelling & fun. Its fun as a newb, and there's a vast stratification of skill regarding your finesse with car/ball phsycis. Rocket League is just 20 hours short of becoming my most played game, and I'm still having a ball playing online matches.

I don't even like turn based combat, but really liked Mario Rabbids. It was very surprising. Sequel please.

I like ratchet deadlocked and q force, but i love ys. Been waiting on physical switch games to become in stock and reach more agreeable prices if they ever will.

I must admit i was on the fence when i got my first and only ys for the vita, but it proved an excellent purchase for my gaming preferences.

When this website first started doing articles on hypercharge unboxed a pic or two would catch my eye but I thought that just wasnt for me plus its a first person shooter. Now it too is one of the games I am most estactic to have in my switch collection.

Personally I dont have a call of duty itch but I have played one of the games in local splitscreen multiplayer against bots with friends and that type of gameplay resonated with me. Its intense and fun taking on enemies with friends in a shooter game and hypercharge unboxed is a really good and quality 4 player splitscreen/tower defense first person shooter plus at the end of the day the playable characters and enemies are just toys so it has that universal non super gore appeal.

Personally it could use more invetory space for a third weapon or super powerful melee weapon, more enemy types and jetpacks as default inventory especially when playing solo or a grappling hook but those are just personal nitpicks of mine. Speaking of which playing this solo is quite a challenge if not impossible it could benefit from a pet system as well or something.

However they put so much into this game with constant updates and design that its hard to believe that the levels are so big and open, how good it looks, and how frantic it gets during later waves of enemy.

For me, it’s an odd one... BOTW. It was my first non-mobile game (and I don’t really play a lot of those except for the Room, and similar, games) in about 15 years. My wife wanted a switch and I had heard nothing but great things about the game so I thought it would be fun to check out. It was such an amazing way to really get back into gaming. No going back now!

I was never that interested in pokemon, and I got XY for Christmas with a bundle of games, I thought meh I'll check it out, kablooey kablam, turns into pokemon fan