5) Giants: Citizen Kabuto (PC, 2000, PS2, 2001):

   Giants was another one of those genre-blending games that flood the market every few years at times when game unoriginality despair reaches its seasonal peak among game developers. Unlike most of those games, however, Giants managed to brilliantly succeed where so many others had failed. Giants, essentially a blend of action and strategy genres, was actually 3 games in one, since you got to play with a) the Meccs, a group of stranded, tech-savvy, British-accented aliens, b) the Sea Reapers, a magical indigenous species, and c) the title hero, Kabuto, a towering giant creature created by the Reapers but gone out of control. And what did the three have in common? Simple - they all shamelessly abused Smarties - the brainy, but wimpy local populace who looked like distant relatives of the Smurfs. Of course, as each race (or sliver of a race, as the case may be) expanded its little pimpground, conflict between the three was only matter of time.

  And what a conflict it was. Just imagine this melting pot: gadgetry-laden, gun-swinging, jetpack powered aliens on one hand; a spell-casting, scimitar-wielding mermaid-like Sea Reaper Princess dashing around like blue lightnining on the other; and to top it off, a monstrous, Empire State Building sized monster whose favorite pastime is crushing mountains. Smartly, the game really gave you a chance to master the intricacies of playing with each race, starting with basic action and progressing to more advanced weapons, spells and tactics You also got ample time to thoroughly enjoy every aspect of the game. The tactical team combat of the Meccs, the base building, the assassin-like action of the Sea Reaper princess, the sheer mech-like power of Kabuto. And an imaginative cast of local flora- and fauna-based monsters stepped conveniently stepped in to challenge your budding ways. Well, to challenge your budding Mecc and Sea Reaper ways, anyway. You can't really challenge Kabuto. The thing plays Dance Dance Revolution on mountain tops for chrissakes. It's all just about adrenalin-driven fun, that one :)

  What really made Giants stand out from the rest of the pack were probably 3 things: first, the fact that the gameplay between the three races was as completely an utterly different as can be; second, the fact that each of those 3 types of gameplay ruled the pants off everything else out in the market at the time; and third, the absolutely genious, fall-off-the-couch sense of humor, delivered with equally genious voice acting. It is not very frequent that a game actually causes you to not just to giggle, but to literally burst into tears from laughter, and Giants is worth checking out just to have that kind of experience. On top of that, you get beautiful, colorful graphics (more so in the PC version, considering that there is a hack you can apply to make your Sea Reaper princess character topless), excellent action in 3 varieties, as well as the best of strategy/base-building aspects. All in all, the game was incredibly fun, challenging, varied, and above all, entertaining. Several bugs that creeped in at release time for the PC version marred some of the reviews of the game, and caused much of the initial critical acclaim for the game to fizzle by year end. However, all were eventually addressed via patches, leaving this classic fully ready for your belated enjoyment.

4) The Neverhood (PC, 1996):

   As one of the final hurrahs for the now very-dead point-and-click adventure game genre, The Neverhood combined Myst-like puzzle solving with Ren & Stimpy-style nonsensical humor. You played as the aptly named Klayman, a rather limp, very odd-looking fellow made entirely out of clay who awoke in a strange room with little knowledge of, well, anything. As Klayman began to explore his surroundings he needed to solve a number of very bizarre puzzles whose solutions really, really required players to think outside the box (I'll refrain from giving any here, lest I spoil things for those who want to run right out and find a used copy). While doing this, Klayman would periodically stumble across videodisks that could be inserted into various disc players found in Klayman's world. These disks each played a short snippet of a movie narrated by everybody's favorite guy with a loop on the top of his head, Willie Trombone. Finding all of the disks is vital to completing the game, as the full movie explains everything; where Klayman is, how he got there, and the much more important question of who he is.

  While plenty of games before it had used similar plot devices, namely the aforementioned and hugely popular Myst, none had done it with the same brilliant style as The Neverhood. Everything in the game, from its backgrounds to its character's sprites, had been actually sculpted out of clay and filmed, thus almost giving it the feel of a playable Tim Burton movie. And every inch of its clay-goodness had been packed with personality and quirks. Heck, the entire history of the universe was written on the walls of one very lengthy hallway! Though it took days to read through, just like everything else in the game, it was absolutely hilarious. From its five-minute-long burp gag to the giant monster battle towards its conclusion, The Neverhood had the player constantly soiling himself with laughter (on that note, if you decide to play this game you may want to cover your chair with a tarp or some other kind of liquid resistant material). To top it all off, it definitely had one of the best video game soundtracks ever created, filled as it was with plenty of goofy, folksy tunes that perfectly complimented the action on screen (and also made great driving music - should you be persistent enough to track down the CD).

Sadly, The Neverhood license died a death of mismanagement. Both its direct sequel, Skullmonkeys, and its sequel in spirit, Boombots, departed from Neverhood's adventure game roots and both emerged the worse for it. Skullmonkeys was a typical 2D platformer, featuring a more action-hero-esque Klayman battling a horde of evil primates, and while it carried over its predecessor's sense of humor, the lack of exploring and puzzle solving also removed the sense of wonder that had permeated Neverhood. Boombots was a 3-D fighting game in which a team of robots battled aliens to save Earth's housecats. Despite its hilarious premise, the fighting genre just felt all wrong for this kind of a game. After Boombots the development team went under, so we've likely seen the last of the Neverhood.

3) Astro Boy: Omega Factor (GBA, 2004):

   Licensed games have long had a reputation of being utter garbage, as few are the games that do anything but bring shame and disappointment to fans of an otherwise beloved license. Fewer still are the games that, purely by the strength of their gameplay, can actually bring more fans to a license. Astro Boy: Omega Factor, was one of those games.

   Crafted by fan favorite developer, Treasure, Astro Boy seemed destined for greatness right from its inception. Featuring a mixture of brawling, platforming, and shooting stages, the game very loosely followed the plot of the manga and anime of the same name. The titular character, Astro, is a robot boy who must battle nefarious villains as he strives to bridge the gap between the warring humans and robots. While this likely would have provided all the source material needed for a really swell game, the developers went several steps further and threw in tons of other characters from manga writer and artist Osamu Tezuka's massive canon of work. From popular figures such as the rogue surgeon Black Jack, to more obscure ones like Ambassador Magma, they were all in there and had some kind of function in the overall story. Astro needed to track them all down, too, to both power up his abilities and to figure out the incredibly complex, weaving narrative that had the apocalypse take place half way through the game.

  Treasure trademarks such as massive enemies and screen-clearing super moves also featured prominently into the gameplay in a way that made old-school gamers feel right at home. While the game definitely had its greatest appeal for those who were prior fans of Astro Boy, or of Osamu Tezuka's material as a whole, its classic Treasure gameplay involving blasting dozens of monsters and missiles and pummeling humongous bosses in marathon ass-kicking sessions, was easily among the best in the 2-D side-scrolling genre. Unfortunately, the game's license seemed to overshadow it, as many gamers unfamiliar with the spiky-haired little robot overlooked it. If you're lucky, you may still be able to dig up a new copy in the bargain bins of Best Buy or Toys 'R Us. Trust me, you want to bother yourself do this. Just this once.

2) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (Gamecube, 2002):

   One of the very few Gamecube-exclusive games developed by a third party, Eternal Darkness was a game that was seriously revolutionary, and not just because it was set in Rhode Island. The story revolved around Alex Roivas who returned to her family's ancestral mansion in Rhode Island after the grisly murder of her uncle. With the police baffled, Alex decided, just as heroes in horror games, movies, and books have done since time immemorial, to explore the mysterious old house in the hopes of finding some clues as to what lead to her uncle's death. What she discovered was a hidden study containing a hideous, skin-covered book whose pages detailed the battle between the minions of an ancient evil and a few brave humans that has played out throughout history.

   The game was broken up into chapters, each set in a different time period with the player controlling a different character. While they all controlled similarly, each character had a very distinctive feel. For instance, a knight or a Roman centurion would have a large amount of health and fair better at melee combat with the various monsters, while a frail reporter or an untrained monk would likely survive longer relying on ranged weapons or magic. The gameplay itself was a mixture of solving clever puzzles and battling the undead using a silky smooth battle system that allowed you to strategically attack specific body parts on monsters to cripple them before they could inflict serious damage. What made the game really special, though, was its implementation of sanity. Each time your character was spotted by an enemy, his sanity meter would go down slightly. At first this had little effect. It might have appeared like there was blood dripping down the walls, or there might have been monster sound effects even after all the monsters were dead. However, as the hero's sanity got lower and lower, things started to happen that directly affected the player. A bug would appear on screen, but when the player got up to swat it away, it suddenly disappeared. The screen would begin to tilt ever so slightly, until suddenly the player realized he was viewing things nearly diagonally. Tons of zombies would leap out, but before the player could react, a message that the controller had detached would appear on the screen. And most devastating of all, occasionally when saving, the game would say it was deleting all data. Right when the player prepared to go berserk, though, the screen would flash, and all would be as it was, only the surge of adrenaline remaining to remind the player of what had just happened. While you might think players would eventually get wise to the game's shenanigans, there were such a huge number of sanity effects and they were implemented so subtly or suddenly, by the time your brain made the connection to what was happening, it was already over.

   Despite such impressive gameplay twists that have yet to be replicated, even four years after its release, Eternal Darkness has faded from the minds of practically all but the most devoted Nintendo fanboys. Luckily, though, whispers abound that there may possibly be some sequels for a next-generation system. Only time will tell...

And finally, the moment you've been scrolling for!

1) E.V.O. the Search for Eden (SNES, 1993):

   While huge numbers of games nowadays incorporate some form of monster raising and evolving into their gameplay, E.V.O. was really the first and, so far as I know, the only game to make adapting to survive the backbone of both its gameplay and its story. (Well, ok, so there is Spore now. But it took an extra 13 years and a Will Wright to get there, so it doesn't count!).

   Anyhow, the hero of E.V.O. began life as a tiny fish, small, but destined for great things. His quest, given to him by the Earth goddess, Gaia, was to grow and evolve, battling rival creatures on his way to the Garden of Eden. As he swam about the sea devouring other fish he accumulated evolution points. Once he had gained enough points he could use them to purchase upgrades for his fishy body. Bigger jaws allowed him to deal more damage with his bite attack. A specialized tail granted more mobility and speed. New horns granted a plethora of different abilities depending> upon their style. Progressing across each stage and eating bigger, more complex sea creatures, the player eventually did battle with sharks, the mightiest of fish. Once the shark empire lay defeated, he gained feet and an amphibian body allowing him to move about on dry land. Playing out as a 2-D platformer, the continuously evolving hero of E.V.O. made his way through the history of the world, from the age of the dinosaurs, to the Ice Age, right up to the arrival of early human beings, all the while gaining new bodies and new abilities (and, y'know, eating hundreds of giant bugs, dinosaurs, ape-men, and the like).

   Though both its platforming elements and its RPG-like evolutionary system were fairly simplistic, the two combined in a way that made for an incredibly satisfying, action-packed quest. Mixing and matching body parts in an effort to try and craft the ultimate beast never got old. Plus, there were tons of different types of enemies (and therefore, snacks) and a huge number of secrets, including even a hidden flying saucer containing an alien. It was truly a one-of-a-kind game, worth appreciating even after all these years.

   So there they are, the Top-Ten Most Under-Appreciated Games ever, laying bare and naked before your undoubtedly dirty and twisted little mind. Although, to my eternal chagrin, I haven't played every game, so there's always the possibility one or twelve other hidden gems could be out there. So head on over to the forums and let me know how much of a stupid ass I am for neglecting such-and-such game that came out for the Atari Jaguar or the Turbo-Grafix 16. I do so enjoy the abuse.

Mike Zeller


Hey Gamers! With Halloween just around the corner why not get some inspiration for your costumes from your favorite games? Use your imagination and come up with something nobody else would think of. We have plus size costumes for the large and in charge who might design something out of 'Giants: Citizen Kabuto'. Maybe you could try some couples costumes and go as Alex Roivas and a Roman centurion based on the Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem game? Brainstorm with friends and throw a costume party that will be remembered just like your favorite games.