video game meme - 2

OK I am too tipsy to actually write anything of substance after a friend's bachelor party (where I ran into leora who mentioned LJ-support and we realized we had a bunch of friends in common, some IRL and some internet, like lady_angelina. It's a small internet.) So I will continue this meme.

( Video games: Day 2 - Your favorite character )

( The rest of the days )

video game meme - 3 - underrated game

First, for the RPers, my HMD meme thread.

And this isn't that long, so no cut.

Day 3 - A game that is underrated

I love a lot of games that are obscure, old, niche, or just plain underplayed, but underrated? That's a bit of a puzzle. Most of the games I've liked have gotten a fair shake in the press/blogosphere/whatever.

I think I'll go with a game and a series from an indie developer that I spent a lot of time playing at the end of college and through grad school: Nethergate (link goes to the updated version that will run on modern machines; I actually like the original better for some finicky gameplay reasons and nostalgia), but it's a great game. As is their Avernum series, although I've only played the first three of those. I sort of stopped hanging on every game they came out with when I bought my PS2, and that's kind of a shame.

They're old-school dungeon-crawler RPGs, with a party you pretty much come up with on your own, although Nethergate adds some significant limits to your more generic D&D-style smörgåsbord. They were coming out when everything was moving to stories where all the protagonists had stories, rather than just the world. Voice acting and graphics have taken some freedom away; usually I don't mind, but this game is a nice reminder that freedom can be rewarded. They're BIG games -- the world is huge, full of little things, and in all of them you end up playing a bunch of semi-nobodies who get Swept Up in a massive story and the focus is on the epic.

( The rest of the days )