Patient Gamers

Hell yeah, the Army Men games are so dope. Terribly clunky, combat leaves much to be desired, mediocre map layouts but goddamn do I still find them fun. Specifically Sarge's Heroes, would love a switch port.

Mine is Alpha Protocol. While it has some minor cult status its really Obsidians least known modern title.

Its clunky and ugly, but one of the best espionage RPGs with tons of meaningful choices and really unbalanced combat (looking at you pistol head shot god). I would kill for a sequel.

Guild Wars 1. Unlike other MMOs it is entirely separately instances in combat, the level cap was very low, it had a focus on narrative storytelling, and a max parysizr of up to 8(depending on area of the game). It also came from the era where subscriptions were the model for MMOs and it didn't require (or even have) subs. You just bought the game and you got to play. There were multiple campaigns (basically separategames worlds with different proffestions and skills) that you could cross between with any of your characters assuming you owned that campaign. Very different game from gw2.

Dynasty Warriors, They are my "Dumb fun" game. I usually just turn off my brain and "grind" even though I usually call out every game for grinding or unnecessary combat.

But something about that series makes me pick up every one and waste tens of hours just killing the same-ish soldiers over and over.

Creeper World. It's like an RTS/TD type game that uses fluid dynamics that is always fun to go back to. The campaign writing and UI are just terrible but the gameplay is great and there are plenty of good community made maps to try.

I played the hell out of this video game called Axis and Allies that I found for like $5 in cheap games section of Office Max around 2008. I've never heard anyone talk about it or share my experience. I'm sure it wouldn't hold up if I played it today but back in '08 I was a pro.

Not unpopular back in the day but it sure is now -- Battlefield 1943. I play on xbox all the time, the servers are still online and you can still find full lobbies. I've been playing it on and off for a decade. Its just chaotic low-stress fun.

Dragon Age 2. Lot's of people think it's the weakest game in the Dragon Age series and there is a lot to not like: dungeons and outdoor areas are largely the same recycled maps with different layouts, story was a bit lackluster compared to the previous title, party controls were a step down from Dragon Age Origins. I still enjoy it for the party dynamics and the main character dialogue wheel had more varied option that didn't along with previous Bioware titles that had the good, neutral, and evil/jerk responses.

Does Diablo 3 count? It got panned at launch and I do understand why. The story was predictable and dumb. Making the whole game revolve around a damn auction house made it unsatisfying. But man, the game itself played so well - I loved smashing my way through a dungeon as fast as I could wiping whole screens at a time. And they did do "loot 2.0" with the expansion, which killed the auction house and made the gear you picked up actually worthwhile sometimes.

Diablo 4 feels kinda meh to me by comparison.

Clash Royale. I think Supercell, a billion dollar company, simply assigned all their least competent personnel to that one dev team.

The core gameplay, unfortunately, is still sharp as fuck though. ~sigh

New Super Mario Bros U. Many people may hate it for being the same as the others NSMB games but it was the first Mario game I played and I very much enjoyed it. I revisit it to collect all the star coins.

Not sure how unpopular it is, but "The Settlers 2: 10th Anniversary" is a great remaster of a game which I think is a bit forgotten now. It's still a really fun and charming citybuilder with unique mechanics.

I feel like I'm guilty of this within the Borderlands series -- I love all the things about 2 that OG fans seemed to dislike, namely Anthony Burch's writing and the weapons spread, and I actually think 3 is pretty respectable as a shooter; it's a lot of fun to play, it's just a weak sequel to 2. The things that fans seem to love about The Pre-Sequel (the ice and the butt slams and the new player characters) left me cold, and I think the first game pales in comparison to the second.

While they sell millions, typical „Ubisoft formula“ games are critically unpopular because they‘re dumbed down treasure hunts, and I enjoy them (in moderation) exactly because of that. Sometimes I just wanna turn my brain off and walk to map marker #312 while taking in the sights.

Eternal Card Game - basically an online MTG clone. It's always been small, and the userbase has been gradually shrinking since it started. I still think it's a great game though.

Maybe not an unpopular game, but my unpopular game opinion is that I prefer Fallout 3 to Fallout New Vegas. Both are fantastic games, but I prefer the more bleak and desolate Capital Wasteland to the more lived in Mojave Wasteland. Plus I kinda liked the karma system of fo3.

i like a couple games that are not really obscure, but are far from the most popular MMOs or well received sequels:

• Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis
• Fallout 76

SSX Tricky

My whole family has put in way too many hours, it's the only game where we actually are competitive against each other. Even my dad, who plays 0 other video games likes to play with us. I wouldn't say it's unpopular, just irrelevant today for most people, but not for us...

For a long time, we each had some PS2s to play, but not I emulate on the steam deck and and play even more than before. I've never had a game before where I actually try for high scores and practice.

My oldest brother is definitely the undisputed champion, but I can beat him when my favorite character, Moby, is maxed out, while his, Mac, is default level (which is the case and will remain the case on my steam deck)

Also, I still play Black Ops 1 zombies. I think they added more to the zombies in future games than I'm interested in. I own black ops 3 and hear that Shadows of Evil is amazing but every time I sit down to learn it, I just lose interest. Maybe there's extra friction because I'm usually playing solo.

i feel like there are two ways to interpret this question. some games are unpopular because they're widely known, but considered to be not good, but others are merely niche games that never got widespread recognition.

for the former, Mad Max (2015) got mixed reviews and seems to have been generally regarded as MEDIOCRE, but i still keep coming back to it every so often. for the latter, I wanna plug an old PS2 game called Steambot Chronicles, that has never gotten the recognition it deserves. Its a steampunk mech sandbox rpg, and is legit fantastic, but my partner is the only other person i've met that has even heard of it.

The most unpopular/niche game series I've really liked is the Princess Maker series. Japanese games which only received official English translations recently, niche genre (life raising sim), some silly fanservicey elements... but it reminded me of playing with dolls when I was younger, and in some ways the Sims series also.

Another series I liked which is much more well known but still has a small presence in the gaming consciousness is Star Fox. Character cameos in the Super Smash Bros series don't count.

Been playing Hero's Hour recently from the itch summer bundle. Never played any Civilization style games before but this one is really fun.

Too Human

The development of it made the game not live up to it's hype, but it was still a really playable ARPG.

I really enjoyed the control scheme too which used two joysticks for combat, instead of the buttons, the idea was to put less stress on the player over long gaming sessions and I think they got very close to that. It's a shame no other games followed that control scheme

I haven’t played in years, maybe over a decade at this point, but I used to play a shit ton of the absolutely terrible Anarchy Online. I never got very far, I never really understood much, but I liked playing it for some reason.

Disc Space. A small 3v3 ultimate frisbee game built in the Unity engine. It's silly and not realistic at all. But had just right amount of learning curve with a high ceiling. Had a little player surge during covid and promptly died. It is what actually led me to playing Rocket League

Revelations: Persona.

No, the Persona series didn't start with 3. There were three episodes before it (one 1, and two 2s 🤓 [did I mention the prototype, Shin Megami Tensei: If?]), and Revelations is the Americanized version of the very first Persona, with characters suddenly becoming hamburger-eaters in an American town, and at least one of them doing a reverse Michael Jackson.

Even for the elitists who spit on what the series has become under the direction of Katsura Hashino, Revelations isn't liked that much, thanks to the localization and the amputated Snow-Queen quest. Nevertheless, I enjoy this game partly for its peculiar 90s charm (dubious localization included; it was the style at the time), and partly because of the qualities that survived the ocean crossing, like the OST and that sweet, grindy hardcore gameplay.

It would probably have to be Sniper Ghost Warrior 3. Bad game, poor reviews, overall considered to be a flop, but I still had a ton of fun with it and played the heck out of it a few years back. It would be hard for me to recommend it honestly, but if you could get it for free or super cheap and you’re looking for a sniper game where you don’t have to think about a story (since it’s bad and doesn’t really make much sense), I’d say it doesn’t hurt to try. I had a lot of fun with it, so maybe you could have fun with it too. If my very mediocre review has somehow convinced you to try it, I do believe it’s currently on sale on steam for a couple bucks

Aranock-Online; Still available, but nothing like its earlier days, predictably.

I used to log in to armorgames.com to play shitty browser flash games occasionally. There was one "mmo" game called Rise of Mythos. It was a deck building collectible card game. I would play it for a few days then forget about it for 6 months. Over time I had a cool deck from years of occasionally logging in, never spent money on it though. Then one day I logged in and it was gone. I would have paid some money to keep it around.

Russian Fishing 4. I’m not an IRL angler whatsoever but I love games that lean hard into real gear and simulation (as much as possible in a video game).

Rf4 just has a good chunk of content and feels good. The other fishing games out there are a joke in comparison IMO.

It’s unpopular because of grinds and the fish spawning, but I chalk it up to real life …sometimes, the day isn’t yours right?

Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Fear Effect: Sedna

I played the first two way after release on PS Now and the picked up the third on sale for $2. Sure, they have reputations that range from so-so to war crime but I think Hunted is a diamond in the rough and find ORC and Sedna to be the perfect games to play after another one is a huge disappointment.