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With so many games coming out all the time, it can be all too easy to miss even exceptional titles, especially in banner years like 2010 or 2017. It’s also surprisingly easy to completely write-off projects that are actually innovative due to industry trends. Something like, say, a sci-fi shooter could have both great characters and satisfying gunplay features, but if it’s coming out at the tail-end of the action-shooter wave of the late 00s/early 10s, it’s probably not going to do so well. Then there are games that miss out due to licensing and legal shenanigans. Still, classics like the following are classics all the same, even if it’s taken the gaming public a little while to realize it.
Beyond Good & Evil
One way a game can wind up underperforming is by being too different from everything else. Such was the case with Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil. It’s premise of undermining an evil sci-fi organization by exposing it via the Press was something that was neither easy to market nor terribly enticing to an audience that was busy being wowed by the likes of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. As those who’ve played it since know, though, Beyond Good & Evil easily could have stood alongside such giants had it been given a proper chance.
While the game does thrive on variety, Beyond Good & Evil is primarily a stealthy, puzzle-solving affair. Jade and her buddy Pey’j aren’t exactly defenseless and do indeed share some slick moves between them, but they’re no match for the encroaching alien force: the DomZ. They shouldn’t have to be doing anything, but their planet’s defenders, The Alpha Sections, don’t seem to be doing their job and could actually a front for the aliens themselves. So, with direct confrontation being out of the question, Jade and her allies spend their time infiltrating Alpha Section bases in the hopes of gathering evidence and exposing them to the populace.
As Jade, players sneak through air vents, snap photos of illicit dealings and confront monstrous DomZ creations as they work to wake up their fellow citizens as to what’s really going on. Along the way, they’ll get to know a ton of charming characters, document the world’s wildlife, race hovercrafts and learn to dominate at a odd version of air hockey. It’s all integrated well, is backed by a sweet soundtrack and leaves one wanted more once the credits role. Fortunately, the HD version released back in 2011 is still available on the Xbox Marketplace so it’s still accessible.Beyond Good & Evil 2 hasn’t been cancelled yeteither, so there’s still some hope for a proper resolution to Jade’s story.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Ace Attorneyfans have long been accustomed to dealing with everything surrounding court proceedings, so the suspected crimes are usually long over by the time they get involved. Series director Shu Takumi’s other game, “Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective,” on the other hand gives them the chance to not only solve the mystery of their own death, but prevent other crimes from happening in the first place. One would think that such a game would sell well, andit was the top DS game in Japanwhen it launched. Still, 24 thousand copies isn’t exactly a lot. It also didn’t help that it arrived near the end of the DS' lifespan in 2010. People were still buying them, but it’s probably safe to say that interest had waned enough that only major releases would see real success.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is primarily an adventure-puzzle game. Players jump into the shoes of the recently-deceased Sissel, a ghost who’s able to influence the real world and save lives. His story plays out across several chapters, most of which opening with him finding someone’s corpse and possessing it. This sends him four minutes into the past, wherein he can try to manipulate the environment to change the future and prevent the death from happening.
This is done by finding which objects need to be manipulated in order to get the living characters to react in the right way. It takes a bit of trial and error, but seeing how everything plays out is entertaining enough to keep it from becoming annoying. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is actually due to makea comeback on the Switch this summer,so those looking for a novel puzzle game should soon be feeling happy.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game initially released as an Xbox Live Arcade title back in 2010. It was generally well-received and apparently did alright for an Arcade release, enough to earn it some DLC packs in 2010 and 2013, but not so much that it made it into the general buzz of the time. Oddly enough, it was the game’s 2014 delisting from PSN and Xbox Live Arcade that would elevate it to a wider audience. Only those who already had Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game could play it anymore, making it a hot item and an even hotter topic on YouTube for a little while.
Fortunately for fans of arcade brawlers and Anamanaguchi soundtracks, enough interest was generated that Ubisoft releasedScott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game - Complete Editionin 2021, enabling latecomers to finally dive in and satisfy their curiosity. In a way, it’s worked out even better for newer fans as they get to enjoy the game with full online capability right from the get go.
Picking up Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game nowadays means enjoying a retro-styled beat ‘em up adventure that offers a colorful roster of characters, satisfying progression and silly scenarios prompted by the “Evil Ex-Boyfriends,” and it’s all backed by some the best chip-tune music Anamanaguchi has ever produced. The brawling itself takes a while to get good, and the experience is boosted by having friends to play with.
Solo players can still get plenty of fun out of it, though, as Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game succeeds greatly in carrying on the film’s and comic’s goofy, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. It could arguably do it better since said comedy is baked-into the gameplay along with everything else. This probably isn’t the absolute best retro-brawler out there, but fans of the genre would be remiss to leave Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game unplayed.
Binary Domain
Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is known chiefly as the creators of theYakuza,andJudgementgames, but this doesn’t represent the developer’s full body of work. Back in 2012, the studio diverged from its mainstay series and usual formula to release Binary Domain, an third-person shooter set in a gritty futuristic world wherein humans are at war with their former robotic work force. Despite a genuine effort on the part of SEGA to market the game, attempts to pull the interest of Yakuza fans with special tie-in DLC and largely positive reviews, Binary Domain nonetheless wound up being a commercial flop.
There isn’t a lot of speculation as to why it failed to capture much interest, but considering the timing, it probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to surmise that it was simply a victim of the action-shooter fatigue that’d been growing among gamers at that time. It’s a shame too, as Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio had actually managed to make an FPS that offered players something different.
While one might be able to take or leave its overall story, Binary Domain does a good job in terms of both its shooting gameplay and major characters. Gameplay primarily revolves around third-person, cover-based shooting which pits players and their squad against various configurations of robotic enemies.
So far so normal, but Binary Domain doesn’t really let players settle into the usual, shooting-gallery loop like many similar games of the time. The AI-controlled enemies actually punish lazy tactics by attempting to flank or bombard long-held positions. Anticipating this and counteracting it with smart squad commands and proactive movement is what wins the day, and doing so becomes more important the further into the game one gets.
Binary Domain’s “Consequence” system also comes into play throughout the experience. Squad members react and behave differently depending on how they’re treated and how well the player performs in battle. Sour relationships, bad decisions and poor leadership all result in less effective units since, well, no one wants to fight for a bad leader. The opposite is true too, and it will of course also be reflected in which ending one winds up getting too. All this is to say that Binary Domain, while perhaps derivative in the broad strokes, still makes for a shooter experience that’s a cut above those of most other members of the genre.
It’s kind of funny to think of a game released as recently as 2017 as a “cult classic,” yet it has all of the hallmarks of one. It released to rave reviews from a great many outlets,this one included;it has a rock-solid gameplay loop, a unique premise, an impressive amount of player freedom, great atmosphere…and it still failed to capture the attention of the wider gaming populace. Prey did make it pretty highin the sales charts in the UKand Japan upon release, but it seems initial sales were disappointing nonetheless and only fell-off further after launch week.
AlongsideDeathloopand possiblyAlien: Isolation,Prey currently sits at the pinnacle of the “immersive sim” style of game. It presents players with simple, even vague objectives and then leaves them to figure out everything from how best to execute it, to how they’re going to get where they need to go. Say there’s an key item sitting in the middle of a cargo bay filled with enemies.
Players could just charge in, blast everything with their shotgun and grab it, but that’s just one option. Instead they could silently creep in through an air vent, use a noisemaker to gather all the enemies up and then suck themandany other inconvenient barriers into a temporary black hole.
They could even just turn themselves into a pen and roll right up to the thing with nobody being any the wiser. Prey is a game of myriad possibilities, and players are fully encouraged to explore as many of them as they can. Add onto that fairly thought-provoking themes andthe excellent Mooncrash DLC,and you’ve got a game that many gamers out there won’t believe that they’ve been missing out on.
It really is a shame that these games, and many others like them, didn’t get the early success and recognition that they deserved. In a perfect world, good ideas and great gameplay would always get rewarded, but unfortunate reality is that they often aren’t. Still, this situation is, in a strange way, kind of a boon for gamers. Sure we might not ever get more of something like Ghost Trick or Beyond Good and Evil, but in exchange we get to have something unique and special to enjoy and remember. A little morewouldbe nice of course, so here’s hoping some of the features and ideas seen in these and other cult classics are carried on in future releases.
