Your Top 5 Most Overrated/Underrated Games

[nobody]

Overrated at that time

1.GODS
2.XENON 2
3.POPULOUS
4.BLOOD MONEY
5.FINAL FIGHT

(BUBBLE BOBBLE, CHASE HQ, CHUCK ROCK, BEAST, ROBOCOD, FIRE AND ICE were candidates but didn't make it)

Underrated

1.LIONHEART
2.NITRO
3.RISKY WOODS
4.SUPER CARS 2
5.SWITCHBLADE 2

[Dastardly]

Your underrated list all seem to be generally highly regarded games.

[john1979]

Yes that would fit with the idea of the thread though.

Quick overrated list off the top of my head

OVERRATED:
1. Gods
2. Chaos Engine
3. Lotus III
4. Yo Joe!
5. Superfrog

But yeah Gods definitely. How that game gets the praise it does is mind boggling.

[Twiggy]

Overrated:

1. Turrican II
I never understood the love for this game, it's good, but not great. Never really got the feel for this game or the mechanics. Give me Lionheart, Zool, Ruff N Tumble etc instead.

2. North & South
I really like this game, but I do think it is a touch overrated for what it is.

3. Superfrog
Overrated, overhyped. Maybe Zool was more overhyped, but people don't seem to overrate the game a great deal (or maybe they do, I don't know).

4. Shadow of the Beast
Ok, the controls aren't that great and the game is way too hard, but I also think the graphics/music is overrated. Don't get me wrong, they're nice, but I think Agony gets knocked down way more than SOTB for being pretty but no gameplay. I think Agony has acceptable gameplay/difficulty, but SOTB doesn't.

5. Laser Squad
The Amiga version isn't all that great. It's uglier and buggier than the 8-bit versions, overrated on the Amiga. I'd play the C64 version over this.

Other mentions: Alien Breed, Zool


Underrated:

1. Hunter
Probably not as underrated any more, but when I played it a few years ago, not many had heard of it, a fantastic 3D running around killing stuff and doing missions game. The fun of flying helicopters and destroying stuff can't be beat, not to mention tanks n stuff.

2. Tanx
Right, it isn't Worms or Scorched Tanks, but it is a very fun little two player game that deserves a little bit more attention.

3. Death Mask (CD32)
Ok, it is no DooM killer or even a Wolfenstein 3D killer, but give it a chance! On the CD32 with strafing it actually is a very playable game with a fantastic soundtrack and atmosphere. Take it for what it is, a 3D maze crawler (following a grid) with guns and you may learn to (sorta) enjoy it.

4. Behind The Iron Gate
Takes a little bit of getting used to. Played with the mouse in a 3D enviornment, collecting keys to open doors, get guns and shoot stuff. But yeah, excellent FPS game that runs on an A500 with some nice/weird graphics very smoothly.

5. Extreme Violence
The nearest thing I can find to C-Dogs on the Amiga. Two player kill each other in a randomly(?) generated map, lots of power ups etc. The only game of it's type I've found on the Amiga, thus underrated.

Other mentions: Knights, Agony (the gameplay actually is quite good!), Alien Bash 2, Torvak, Biplanes, Super Bob Dylan

[DisposableHero]

I think the Turricans mainly deserve praise on the technical side, especially as they were much before Lionheart or Ruff 'N' Tumble. Personally I think they're only Quite Good on the gameplay side, and that always bothered me more than graphics or music.

[Twiggy]

I guess you could say similar for SOTB, as it was created before Agony, it kinda gets a pass for the not so good game play.

[Shatterhand]

Underrated

1) Apidya
It was released at the same time as Project-X, which was super overhyped, and eclipsed Apidya. In a system with so few good Shoot'em ups, Apidya shines as the best game on the genre for the system. It has a killer soundtrack, great controls, a nice weapon system with interesting, balanced weapons, great level design... It's not just the best game of the genre in the system, IMHO, it's also one of the best games on the genre I ever played, and the best game on the genre to come up from Europe.

2) Lethal Weapon
Being a movie tie-in, most people would probably look past this. And then if you check out the SNES version, which is awfully horrible, you will believe the Amiga version will be even worse. Well, it's not the best game in the world, but it's a very nicely design platform game, with some really nice level design, nice controls.. everthing works nicely in this game, and the soundtrack is awesome!

3) Z-Out
I always see the prequel, X-Out, getting more praise than this and that's really unfair. X-Out it's a mediocre game at best. Z-Out, while not being the best shmup ever, it's a pretty good one that deserves to be checked out.

4) ATR - All Terrain Race
This is bloody brilliant and never seems to get any love,maybe because it was released so late in Amiga life. Or maybe because its furiously hard. Get good at it though, and you get an insanely fun racing game with a cool AI who get shortcuts, make mistakes and overall try to screw you as much as it can, and some really develish track design

5) Benefactor
I am not sure this is underrated, since it got some real good reviews, but I rarely ever see people mentioning it, and it's a brilliant platform/puzzle game with some real good puzles throw there.

Others that should be mentioned: Arabian Nigths, Uridium 2, Push Over, Mc Donald's Land, Woody's World, Global Gladiators, Tearaway Thomas, Hudson Hawk, The Addams Family, Vroom, Captain Dynamo, Road Rash, Sierra Soccer, European Champions, Wizkid, Fury of the Furries.

Overrated

5) Project-X . Bad controls (Inertia on a shmup is never a good idea), real bad level desgin, unbalanced weapons, no in-gameplay music, boring boss designs, uninspired-cliched graphics... did this game make anything right? The level design here is atrocious: Have one type of enemy attacking you for a determined amount of time, after time expires, another type of enemy attacks you, and go on. I don't think you are ever attacked by more than one type of enemy at time. Also, when you are being attacked by some of the bigger enemies this gets really silly, as you can kill it just so another identical one appears if the time alloted for it hasn't expired yet... and when the time ends, it just LEAVES. There's no reason to even try to kill it, just dodge its attacks and wait 'til it leaves. It's not an awful game at all ,but it doesn't deserve half of the praise it gets.

4) Shadow of the Beast. Great graphics, great atmosphere, great music, absolutely garbage gameplay. I find really amazing how people could get so amazed with its graphics to get to the point of actually finishing the game. I couldn't bother, the gameplay was just too dreadful to make my time worth.

3) The Great Giana Sisters. It's not a bad game at all, but it's eons below the game its shameless try to copy.

2) Gods. Could never undertand what's the fuss about. Considering what I'll put as number 1 here, I probably should just put "Every Bitmap Brothers game"

1) Xenon 2.

This is awful. It's not just "Above Average that gets more love than it deserves". This is really a bad, atrocious game. Shoot'em ups are my fav genre, I've certainly played more than 200 games on the genre, and I find very difficulty to name 10 professional shmups that are worse than Xenon 2. I will never understand how this get so much love. Bitmap Brothers obviously bribed magazines to get good reviews for their games, and I think everyone got into colective hysteria about that game, I just can't believe how many people actually bought the overhype from magazines.

The game runs at a pathetic framerate, its graphics are really not good at all. The ship moves at a ridiculous pace and its vertical speed is different from its horizontal speed which makes it really wonky. The "scroll backwards" feature is really silly, and they used it to make some real bad level-desing decisions. The enemy design makes it look like a bad 8 bit game, the levels have no flow (Much like Project-X), you are just attacked by some enemies that just move forward, then other enemies that just move forward again and it keeps going. The game is slow, boring and very easy (I think I finished it on my 2nd or 3rd go), the shop breaks any hint of flow the game could have. The weapons are stupid and unbalanced and ridiculous, and since most of them can picked up in-game, the shop is even more of a bad idea. The way auto-fire breaks the game is really hilariously bad. Even the intro is ridiculous made, it lookes like an amateur demo made by people learning how to code and trying to do a starfield or something.

The soundtrack is awesome, but not originally created for the game.

The gameplay doesn't have one single redeeming, good feature. Project-X at least is fast and smooth, this is slow, jerky, boring.. Sometimes I think Xenon 2 get its love because the Amiga is severly lacking in the Shoot'em up deparment.. but damn, this was released AFTER Amiga already had Hybris and Battle Squadron. I mean, compare Xenon 2 to Battle Squadron. Battle Squadron is fast, smooth, its level design is pretty cool with you being attacked by flying enemies, tanks, ground bases, etc, it has some amazing weapons, simultaneous 2 player action, a cool smart-bomb, a nice difficulty setting.. it looked and felt like an arcade game and it was coded by a 17 year old kid. Battle Squadron is everything Xenon 2 wasn't, and it was released BEFORE Xenon 2.

I remember when I finally loaded Xenon 2 for the first time on my A600, after reading all the hype about it. I swear, I thought I had a faulty copy of the game, that it was bad cracked or something, I couldn't believe how bad the game was. How the heck could that really awful game get so many good reviews? That was the first time I thought about magazines having adverts instead of reviews when they got the money.

IMO Xenon 2 is not just the most overrated Amiga game ever, it's the MOST OVERRATED game EVER in Gaming History, more than God of War, Call of Duties, Final Fantasies, more than anything ever.

At least I know the game only gets love around the Amiga community, since shmups lovers and other people just badly bash the game as it deserves. It's a big pile of poo and should never be played again by anyone.