Some games are just misunderstood when they first hit the public eye. There might be weird stories surrounding their development, or early reviewers may just not “get” what makes a game special. It happens!
However, there are many absolutely amazing games that players avoided or didn’t stick with, because of these misunderstandings, and if one of these games below is one you’ve been avoiding because you had the wrong idea about them, it might be time to give them a fair chance.
8
Death Stranding
I’m willing to bet you probably knew that Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding would be the first title on this list. Following the auteur game creator’s departure from Konami, leaving behind the Metal Gear franchise that made him a household name, it was time for something new and different.
However, Death Stranding might have been a little too different for people to actually understand what the game was. Panned as a “walking simulator’ it seems people think this is a game about simply carrying packages from point A to point B, which is technically correct. However, that’s like saying DOOM is about walking from the start of a level to the end. You’re leaving out the rather important set of obstacles in the way.
Traversal in Death Stranding is your main enemy, but there’s also plenty of action to be had, and this is a game where you get out of it what you put it. You can play it as a stealth action game, a survival horror game, or a weird third-person city-builder game. It doesn’t really care how you fulfill your deliveries, and it gives you heaps of toys, skills, and tech trees to play your own way. Once the game clicks for you, there’s nothing like it, and I’m certainly hyped for the upcoming sequel.
7
Spec Ops: The Line
Unfortunately, this game was delisted from online stores in 2024, but if you already bought it on Steam, for example, you can still load it up and play it. You can also find used Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 copies floating around, though these might be going up in price as a result of the delisting!
As for the game itself, Spec Ops: The Line is widely considered one of the most important military shooter video games of all time, but not because of the game’s mechanics or minute-to-minute gameplay. It’s a perfectly-serviceable third-person cover shooter, but what really sets the game apart is how it treats the subject of war and combat, which is in stark contrast to how so many games in this vein glorify armed conflict.
So you may have dismissed this game because, on the surface, it looks like just another brown shooter from the 7th-generation of consoles, which were known for some very brown and drab games indeed. If that sounds like you, then it’s time to go back to this game, and be ready for something very special.
6
Nier Automata
I’ll just come out and say that Nier Automata is one of my favorite games of all time, so I might be a little biased towards it after about 200 hours of play time split across Steam and my Nintendo Switch. Still, I’m not alone in my love for this quirky niche title, and the game has received plenty of critical acclaim.
And yet, I see plenty of gamers who dismiss this game because they really misunderstand what it is. To an outsider looking in, Nier Automata can come across as another anime-inspired, flashy, style-over-substance game, which might turn people away who are looking for a deeper experience. Which is ironic since this game is one of the deepest experiences I’ve had in the medium on multiple levels. From the depth and flexibility of the combat system, to the heart-wrenching, philosophy-laden story, and the haunting music and art, Nier Automata is as close to a gaming masterpiece as I can think of. If you had any doubts about it based on trailers or screenshots, believe me when I say this is an essential title to play.
5
Dark Souls
Dark Souls and the “soulsborne” genre it’s a key part of may be the most misunderstood game on this list. People tend to think of Dark Souls as simply being a punishing, difficult game meant for masochists, and it doesn’t help that many people who play these games are in fact masochists who like to show off that fact online as some form of gamer street cred.
The truth, however, is that Dark Souls isn’t actually a difficult game, it’s just a game based on a death mechanic where you’re supposed to learn from your deaths before attempting that part of the game again. Players have been trained to think of progress as moving on quickly, and that death is failure, but Dark Souls measures progress differently and death is just another part of the game; it’s not a signal of failure at all. Once you get into the right mindset, the game is rewarding and fun.
4
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 8 is, for some reason I can’t fathom, poorly-regarded by modern Final Fantasy fans. Despite the fact that it sold almost exactly as well as the famous and beloved seventh installment, and that it reviewed well at the time, for some reason over time the game’s reputation has been tarnished.
This is a real pity, because, if you ask me, this was a better game than Final Fantasy 7 when it came out, and it still is today. A lot of the criticism of the game revolved around the magic junctioning system and how people simply didn’t get along with it. That’s the main way this game is misunderstood, and if you actually pay attention to the in-game tutorial and information, you’ll realize the junctioning system is one of the most rewarding JRPG systems to mess with in history. Sadly, it seems many players just spend a lot of time following an inefficient, grindy path to junctioning magic and building their characters, completely ignoring the tools that the game offers them.
If you’ve been skipping this entry in the seminal JRPG series, it’s time to give it another look.
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3
Prey (2017)
Prey is a 2017 immersive sim by legendary immersive sim specialists Arkane Studios that, somehow, people who love this style of game didn’t buy. I’m not entirely sure where the misunderstanding happened, because I’d expect that people who loved their previous games, such as Dishonored and Arx Fatalis, would flock to it. Part of it may be that the game shares a name with a 2006 game by Human Head Studios using the same game engine as DOOM 3 and Quake 4.
That 2006 game puts you in the shoes of a Native American character who gets abducted by aliens along with his girlfriend, and had you playing with portals a year before GLaDOS did.
Apart from the idea that you wake up on a space station and need to fight aliens, the two games are unrelated, but I guess a lot of people simply thought it was a reboot of the original game, which was a pretty divisive game when it came out in 2006. Whatever the reason for the poor sales and lack of attention from players, Prey (2017) is an amazing game and quite possibly Arkane’s best work to date. So if you care about imsims at all, you owe it to yourself to play this one.
2
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs looks like another GTA clone on the surface, but this game has a completely different lineage (it was originally part of the True Crime series) and has very little in common with Rockstar’s open-world crime simulators. Sleeping Dogs is a much tighter experience, with a smaller world to explore, but the story and gameplay make up for it when it comes to quality and drama.
The game has relatively little gunplay, but lots of martial arts and driving. So even the gameplay feels very different from a GTA game. This is rather like playing a John Woo film. The good news is that the remastered “definitive” edition is widely available and often goes on sale for very little money. It’s worth playing for the story alone, but the game is a blast whether you care about the narrative or not.
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1
No Man’s Sky
No Man’s Sky got a very raw deal when it launched, thanks to a mix of overhype and misunderstandings between the game people expected, and the one that actually launched. To say this hurt No Man’s Sky is an understatement, but today there’s nary a trace of that original game left as the developer has been chipping away at making it the game that people thought they would originally get.
If you were “burned” by what No Man’s Sky was almost a decade ago, then there’s never been a better time to give it another try. It’s even on more platforms now, though the promised iPad version still hasn’t come out, despite my constant letters demanding an explanation.
That’s certainly only the tip of the iceberg, and I could come up with plenty of honorable mentions, like the 2008 Prince of Persia reboot or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Both games didn’t get their due thanks to misunderstandings about what they wanted to achieve, or audiences with the wrong expectations. All of these games teach us an important lesson about second chances.
