Hidden Gems? Not so much.

[excelsior]

Seeking out undiscovered, yet thoroughly worthwhile games, those named 'hidden gems' is something that was an eye-opening discussion back in the day (and still can be in some circles). For those looking to delve more deeply into a platform library, or for a specific type of game to fill a particular itch, the type of content found across streaming platforms, blogs etc gave an opportunity for those interested to find out about some truly great games they might not have known about. At some point, however, the well of gems became dry, yet this kind of content or request for a recommendation was still in demand. This is when the term hidden gem took on a new meaning of 5-6/10 game you might happen to like. Here we shed light on those so-called hidden gems that perhaps should have stayed hidden. The games given the term that really don't deserve a second look. To put it more succinctly, which games were you informed was a hidden gem and upon trying it found only regret. I'll get started with a three.

Gotcha Force - I feel like the reason this game gets highlighted is that it's a Capcom game on Gamecube. The library is slim, and other Capcom games, though often niche, are genuinely worth a go. Perhaps people were looking for the next Custom Robo? But Gotcha Force offers such a shallow experience, with a weirdly lengthy single player campaign it quickly becomes unbearable. For some reason this game fetches good money nowadays. If you want to fork out for it as a collector, fair enough. Just don't ever make the mistake of putting this on.

Okami - OK, it is genuinely beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, Okami is one third tutorial, one third dialogue and only one third playing. The gorgeous art design here isn't doing much good when so little time is spent interacting with it. There's good stuff here, for sure, but most of the game is a real drag and that's before you get into the imprecise paintbrush mechanism. 

Fast Racing Neo - People were just really struggling to find anything to play on Wii U and would grab onto any release that found it's way to market. Shin'en's Fast Racing Neo was one such game, with added awareness since Nintendo distributed a physical version of it. As a rule Shin'en is able to impress with their technical prowess, but fail to stand out in the gameplay department. This, may just be their worst game. Despite the demanding twists and turns in tracks the vehicle handling just doesn't compliment this design, especially when it comes to the DLC. 

Any more?

[Apollo Chungus]

Dunno if I'd ever say a game is "undeserving" of being called a hidden gem; every game's rad as heck to someone, and I really can't be an arbiter of taste considering my list of hidden gems includes Overblood, The Good Life and Balan Wonderworld. But I've played a few games where I just couldn't quite see what the folks who loved it saw, so I guess I can mention a couple of those.

Ninja Five-O - I deffo need to revisit this, but I found it a bit too tricky and clunky with its grappling hook system whenever I tried to get into it. It's always been considered a GBA cult classic, and I've never really understood why.

Shadow Complex - This is admittedly more a case where the context has changed so much that the novelty of this one's way harder to appreciate. At the time, this was the first big(ish) profile game in a while to do the Metroidvania style, which gave a nice sense of progression and discovery to an otherwise bland and functional game. But now there's so many Metroidvanias available that it's hard to really recommend this one.

[excelsior]

Jul 23, 2024 16:31:57 GMT -5 Apollo Chungus said:

Dunno if I'd ever say a game is "undeserving" of being called a hidden gem; every game's rad as heck to someone, and I really can't be an arbiter of taste considering my list of hidden gems includes Overblood, The Good Life and Balan Wonderworld. But I've played a few games where I just couldn't quite see what the folks who loved it saw, so I guess I can mention a couple of those.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that these should be games nobody should like, I even mentioned that in the OP, there's an audience for any piece of media. That said, I do think standards have fallen, mostly due to content creators looking for their next hit video, which makes these suggestions harder to accept at face value. In a similar fashion, this is very much a follow up to my previous gripe thread (Your I don't get it games) which was more popular than I expected here, and I thought people might like another. Perhaps this will prove much less popular than the first - more popular games are easier targets for sure. That would probably be fitting.

[retr0gamer]

Enslaved: mid tier PS360 action game with combat from a mediocre PS2 game and uncharted climbing. It's fine, has some great voice acting and a bat shit insane story and ending but it's mostly forgotten because of how forgettable it is.

[spanky]

I've encountered tons of this type of games over the years...and nearly all of them escape me at the moment. I guess I'm not remembering them for a reason!

Well I did remember one I played a few years back:

The Messenger - Modern gaming platforms are lousy with "faux retreaux" type games. "What if Ninja Gaiden was a Metroidvania?" is the question that was asked here. It does have an interesting gimmick time travel gimmick - the game starts in "8-bit" style but when you jump to the future everything changes to "16-bit" which is kind of cute...but I just found the general gameplay very by the numbers and not incredibly fun and memorable. Plus the script really goes overboard on the cute self-aware writing and I got tired of it very quickly. I remember it getting quite a bit of press and good reviews when it came out but seems completely forgotten now.

[ommadawnyawn2]

King Arthur's World (SNES) - This basically retools Lemmings into a wargame. Some might have more tolerance for the very clunky controls/interface than me, but there are other issues like gold not being particularly useful, slowdown and not being able to destroy buildings.

3D World Runner (NES, 1987) - Beyond the novelty of an on rails platformer/shooter hybrid and it being technically competent for the NES (although the draw distance for sprites is limited), it's not that good. The idea of colliding with pillars to find power ups breaks flow, controls are limited, there's heavy trial & error and the game gets much harder by level 6. It's also quite repetitive, pretty quickly repeating boss fights and later just adding more of them per fight.

Golden Axe Warrior (SMS, 1991) - This would be improvement on Zelda 1 just doesn't quite get the basics of combat mechanics right. There's a short/narrow attack range combined with short knockback for you and the enemies - sometimes none if you hit them from the side - and no strafing or charging (as in holding out the sword while moving into enemies). It is helped by alternate weapons later on but it means the game starts out pretty hard and annoying to play. Besides that, you also start off having to grind as AFAIK there's no hidden stash you can get to. There are also some cryptic moments and you have to backtrack out of most beaten dungeons.

A few more:
Radia Senki/Tower of Radia (NES, 1991)
Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston (NES, 1992)
Willow (NES, 1989)
Xexyz (NES, 1989)
Getsu Fuuma Den (NES)
Cosmo Police Galivan (NES, 1988)
Captain Skyhawk (NES)
Asterix and the Secret Mission (SMS, 1993)
Desert Speedtrap (SMS, 1993)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SMS, 1992)
​Shadow of the Beast III (AMI, 1992)

[dsparil]

Was Okami obscure enough to be considered a hidden gem? Although on that note:

Darksiders II - I do not get the love for this at all. I never played the first one or the third (which I think is supposed to be bad?), but everyone seemed to sing II's praises. I picked it up super cheap on Wii U when the real THQ was imploded and practically giving away their games to scrounge up some cash. It's okay for a Zelda clone, but I mainly thought it was bland.

[spanky]

Oh another one. CRYSTALIS! Ever since my late 90s NES collecting days, people have acted like this was the secret best action-RPG type game on the system. BETTER THAN ZELDA, people would claim! But I've always found it too grindy and the movement is too quick and slippery. I never found the combat very satisfying and hate having to switch swords and bracelets all the time.

[retr0gamer]

The Legend of Dragoon - what was considered a laughably bad JRPG is now making its way on to hidden gem lists. I can only guess that the people making these lists have never played the game as it's a miserable experience. It has a very generic rpg storyline that tries to ape the emotional beats of better 32bit RPGs and fails hilariously. It's just really dull as well with the additions system being 'what if Mario rpg but rubbish and 80 hours long'. There's pretty much no strategy and the timing based button presses don't even compensate for the lag caused by the poor framerate.

[lurker]

Okami always felt like the kind of game that would work best with some sort of touch screen implementation. Mimicking brush strokes with joystick movements has a tendency to just end up feeling awkward.

Legend of Dragoon I mostly blame on fond memories playing the demo disc.

[Woody Alien 2]

Jul 24, 2024 6:14:26 GMT -5 spanky said:

The Messenger - Modern gaming platforms are lousy with "faux retreaux" type games. "What if Ninja Gaiden was a Metroidvania?" is the question that was asked here. It does have an interesting gimmick time travel gimmick - the game starts in "8-bit" style but when you jump to the future everything changes to "16-bit" which is kind of cute...but I just found the general gameplay very by the numbers and not incredibly fun and memorable. Plus the script really goes overboard on the cute self-aware writing and I got tired of it very quickly. I remember it getting quite a bit of press and good reviews when it came out but seems completely forgotten now.

Have to agree with that, I played it and I loved the Ninja Gaiden homage part in the first half, but the second half is just mediocre as a metroidvania with all that backtracking and retreading already visited areas, despite the great idea to represent the future as a more advanced graphic style (so the far future would be a 32-bit style a la Kolibri or something?), so much that I stopped caring, never tried to finish it or even revisit it. Inexplicably on the r/Metroidvania subreddit it's still held in high regard and hailed as a masterpiece by many users, instead of the decent but unmemorable game that it is.

As for my choices, I will refer to two games hailed by HG101 itself as two unsung Japanese gems: Gunple - Gunman's Proof and Holy Umbrella: Dondera no Mubou!! They're not bad in and of themselves, their colorful graphic styles are lovely and the goofy humour is nice too, however as Zelda-like top-down action title and platformer they're too easy and repetitive to be memorable, the gimmicks are uninteresting and they have no replayability. Holy Umbrella is mostly known nowadays for the involvement of famed mangaka Tatsuya Egawa as chara designer. But even if I liked the Golden Boy anime back in the day I'm not a huge fan of the man either.

I usually agree with HG101's choices and it made me find some very interesting titles, but I remember being left disappointed by these two...

[Apollo Chungus]

I quite liked Gunple for how breezy it was, though I admittedly was under a lot of stress at the time and wanted to have straightforward easy games I could beat and talk about for the Game Finish Challenge. I can see how that might make it less interesting and memorable, for what it's worth. Also, I feel like Okami's not really been a hidden gem in a long time, because it's ported to plenty of places and has always been pretty beloved, like a good few "supposedly hidden gems that everyone and their mum knows about" like Beyond Good & Evil or Earthbound. (I really liked Okami, but it might be that it's a game that works really well as something you can invest in as a big epic adventure when you don't have other games or things going on, where its slower pace might be a problem rather than a positive.)

I remembered a couple other games I didn't quite get the reverence for.

DoReMi Fantasy - it's a pretty neat cute SNES platformer, but that's all I can really say about it. Not sure how it got so coveted for a time, though it was nice that it got released on the Wii Virtual Console internationally back in the day. : )

Trip World - genuinely no clue what the praise for this one is going on about. Tried it a couple times and it never clicked with me in any notable way. I'd rather play any other GB platformer cuz those'll evoke some kind of emotion outta me. I prolly just don't get it.

Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time - tried this recently, and found it to be a bit of a slog. I generally had this issue with a bunch of developer Behaviour Interactive's licensed games, where I'd read about them being cool on Racketboy, TV Tropes or whatever and then give them a bash, only to find they'd be decent enough in terms of visual or audio fidelity to their source but be otherwise unremarkable.

[JDarkside]

Jul 24, 2024 6:14:26 GMT -5 spanky said:

The Messenger - Modern gaming platforms are lousy with "faux retreaux" type games. "What if Ninja Gaiden was a Metroidvania?" is the question that was asked here. It does have an interesting gimmick time travel gimmick - the game starts in "8-bit" style but when you jump to the future everything changes to "16-bit" which is kind of cute...but I just found the general gameplay very by the numbers and not incredibly fun and memorable. Plus the script really goes overboard on the cute self-aware writing and I got tired of it very quickly. I remember it getting quite a bit of press and good reviews when it came out but seems completely forgotten now.

Ah yes, The Messenger. I had quite a day finding out what no longer a doctor the devs are fans of and referenced in their game. I'm trying to find a funny segway to point out they are fans of Jordan Petersen but honestly that man is so ridiculous that it's hard to nail down just one good joke.

Anyways, if indie games are on the table, and you may already know this from my initial lukewarm article on it posted here eons ago:

Her Story - I genuinely do not understand why this became a indie darling for awhile. Barlow's writing is pretty trite and ultimately pretty dumb once you realize what the plot actually is, and the novel interface ended up just dragging the pacing. The search engine and tag stuff would be better used in later games like Hypnospace Outlaw, and with writing that could actually make you feel something. Barlow's games always seem to be good at gesturing towards some deeper meaning or theme, but once you start thinking about it, they're usually pretty shallow and require the use of a plot twist or reveal to trick you into thinking it was something more (ad I do include SH Shattered Memories in that, feel free to mix that in here).

Otherwise, it's hard for me to pin down something else like this. I tend to find most games I bounce off of initially more enjoyable on a return when I better understand how they want to be played. I think Her Story was the only time I genuinely did not click with it nor understand why anyone did beyond the trick of the non-linear narrative via database clips.

[excelsior]

I agree that The Messenger is awful, but I disagree that it's forgotten. It had much to do with the success of the teams follow up, Sea of Stars. The games are even set in the same world.

I wouldn't say Okami was obscure, but it did an odd 360 where it was well known on release and later had been ported enough to be a commonly known game. Between those times, however, it was featured in many of the lists/articles I'm referring to in the OP.

[ruysan]

I absolutely love The Messenger. For me games are always more than the sun of its parts. You might argue, and you would be right, that the exploration part of this Metroidvania isn't great, to say the least.

But I absolutely love how it looks, it sounds, and it feels. It just feels great to play. And the soundtrack and overall vibe of the 16bit era have a bit of an Amiga feel to it, so it is easy to fall in love to it. This is a tier 1 Metroidvania for me.