Overlooked multiplayer games

[Sno]

I've been thinking about this topic for a while, but never got around to posting it. I went back and forth on whether i should post this in the networking sub-forum, but i'm thinking about it as more of a discussion topic, so i'm putting it here.

It occured to me that there's a handful of games i love as multiplayer games that are games with virtually no community around them, no visible following at all. I mean, you know how it goes, right? Games that come out and are just dead on arrival, with things only getting worse from there.

You know, i don't mean "Sure doesn't seem like a whole lot of people are playing Brink" or "I like this game, but i hate its community." I mean the games that are, for all intents and purposes, completely flat-lined. Multiplayer games that were never even on the radar for the vast majority of gamers.

The game that got me thinking about this, and one game that i personally kept going back to after having successfully talked a handful of friends into giving it a shot, is Guilty Gear 2: Overture. It's kind of got a dota thing going on, but it's all built up around a pretty nuanced 3d combat system. At a glance, you could probably mistake it for a Dynasty Warriors clone, but it definitely isn't.

Still, people kind of hated it when it came out, and i think a lot of it can be chalked up to being incredibly obtuse and being billed as a sequel to a cult 2D fighting game. Fans of the series hated it because it wasn't that fighting game, and people who might have liked it never gave it a look because they thought it was a fighting game. (Putting aside for a second that it is also, inarguably, kind of a really janky and cumbersome game.)

So it was a game i tried out on a whim and, for whatever reason, i kept messing around with it and sorted out a lot of strategies and combos and ultimately really got into playing it against friends.

That's one for me.

[pabosher]

It's not a multiplayer only game, but I had hours of fun with 007: Nightfire's MP mode, and yet no-one seems to remember it -- rather, Goldeneye is often cited. I think so many more people should play Nightfire; playing as Oddjob was incredible fun.

[Gwardinen]

Well since you mentioned Guilty Gear anyway, I have whiled away many an hour with a friend playing on some hacked community-run lobby server with Guilty Gear XX #Reload for the PC. It was never exactly hugely supported by the developers and at this point is basically abandonware, but hell I have had some fun times with that game. You do pretty much require a gamepad, though. Trying to play what is basically an arcade port with a keyboard is nonsense.

[Sno]

I'm looking forward to the Guilty Gear XXAC+ remake for XBLA/PSN.

I never got super into Guilty Gear when it was relevant, but through BlazBlue i have developed much more of an appreciation for ArcSys's games.

[TheLastBaron]

It's not a multiplayer only game, but I had hours of fun with 007: Nightfire's MP mode, and yet no-one seems to remember it -- rather, Goldeneye is often cited. I think so many more people should play Nightfire; playing as Oddjob was incredible fun.

That is one of my most played ps2 games