The game you had the lowest expectations of but ended up liking the most?

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by Empfmil, May 22, 2014.

  1. Empfmil

    Empfmil Well-Known Member

    Aug 23, 2012
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    #1 Empfmil, May 22, 2014
    Last edited: May 23, 2014
    I remember when one of my friends tried to convince me to buy King of Dragon Pass, an rpg, civ-like strategy, choose your own adventure type game. He was playing it on his iPhone and I said I didn't want to buy it and blow up the screen on the iPad because thats the device I had, and I was convinced it was not my kind of game anyway, but he told me it was worth it. Then one day the iPad version was released and it was on sale so I was thinking I'll buy it now if only just to shut him up. And I ended up loving the game so much I could play it for hours once I started it up, and I was playing it both on my new iPhone and my iPad.

    So let's hear it from you. Any iOS game or games you had very little expectations before going in, but found yourself getting hopelessly addicted to?
     
  2. Either Beat Hazard or Catch the Candy.
     
  3. kmacleod

    kmacleod Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    Jul 1, 2009
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    Heck, I'll go with an easy one: Flappy Bird.

    While it wasn't worthy of the flap-mania that accompanied it, I'd assumed from the TA commenters and the screenshots that it was a terrible game. It was actually simple, straightforward fun with a solidly addicting mechanic.

    It's hard to go back through my entire history of gaming and pick one that fits the bill perfectly, but Flappy Bird is the latest "pleasant surprise" game.
     
  4. JCho133

    JCho133 Well-Known Member

    Jul 27, 2012
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    Mine is definitely Plundernauts.

    I didn't have the "lowest" expectations, so to speak, because I have and always will have at least a sliver of faith Backflip Studios. But, looking at it from the outside, it looks like a horrible free to play grind fest with double currencies and timers. But in actuality, it's not.

    I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was an amazing game, even with the F2P aspects.

    The gameplay is highly strategic, and revolves around hooking up your spaceship with the best weapons and tech, then maneuvering it using the environment and the enemies weaknesses to your advantage in order to beat them.

    The secondary currency only necessary for one thing, which is moving in between galaxies. But, it only costs about 0-5 antimatter (the second currency) to move in between a galaxy. I have over 800 antimatter after beating only the first galaxy, which consisted of around 20 planets.

    Buying things is done with coins, the primary currency, which you earn very quickly. The only thing you buy with antimatter is new ships, which are unnecessary because you can keep upgrading your first ship (which only costs coins). You earn money at a very good rate, and items are sold and reasonable rates as well.

    There is an energy system, you have 5 energy bars (5 games/matches) until you run out of energy, but around 2 bars end up restoring while I'm playing anyway, so it's usually about 6-7 matches. You can boost the time with antimatter, but it's unneccesary. Just go play Dwarven Den while you wait ;)

    Then next (and one of the coolest) parts is the crafting system. There are recipes to craft things in the info labels of items and materials, that show you the gist of how to craft things, but there are still a lot of things left to discover. It gives you the two pieces you need to craft a weapon (called turrets) and then it tells you you just need a random piece of material as the third part.

    So you need to experiment to figure out which parts will create which types of turrets (blaster, laser, torpedo, beam, or missile). Same fighters (yes, you can release mini squadrons of ships to attack!). Tech mods have specific recipes. The longest timer I've encountered in the entire game, has been an item that took 5 hours. There's a reason for this and you probably won't find yourself crafting these too often. 85% of the things I've crafted have taken 20 mins or less.

    Plus, with all the loot types, there's different rarity levels. The rarer pieces usually have a special mutation, like life steal, crit chance, and higher currency drop rates. There's 4 levels I believe: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Epic (White, green, blue, and purple, respectively). The loot levels are for turrets, fighters, and tech mods.

    Also, there's different crew members that give your ship different unique active and passive abilities, but those cost antimatter as well. But, they're unneccesary because you are given one in the beginning, and it's pretty good.


    As you can see, ridiculously high praise from me. This game is frickin awesome.
     
  5. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    Hell yeah! KoDP!

    Mine has to be Pocket God. You've got to be pretty old school to appreciate why, but if anyone remembers Pocket God 1.0 it was so basic we didn't even cover it because it was overly generous to even call it a "game." I don't remember specifically, but I THINK all you could do was tilt to make the pygmies slide or flick them in to the water. That's it.

    I've got to hand it to davecazz though, that dude came through with more content and gameplay in that game than anything I've ever seen before and watching its evolution has been beyond fascinating. Even if it's a little old by today's standards, I'm not sure there's a game on the App Store that offers more content for a buck than Pocket God.

    I still fiddle around in it every few days, as there's so much in it I find myself forgetting the little tricks and interactions in the game and re-discovering them is just as fun as it was the first time.

    Great thread idea, by the way. You should post more. ;)
     
  6. Anonomation

    Anonomation 👮 Spam Police 🚓

    Any Gameloft game.
     
  7. slamraman

    slamraman Well-Known Member
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    Aug 27, 2011
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    Angry Birds - three starred everything and got every game centre achievement even made it to number 1 in my county when Crystal could measure scores by region. I was pleased, my wife was ashamed. My kids couldn't believe I was still playing Angry Birds.
     
  8. Empfmil

    Empfmil Well-Known Member

    Aug 23, 2012
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    Plundernauts does not seem to be available in EU. Such a shame :(

    Anyway I just thought of another game myself but you guys might have to help me with the name. It's a light-hearted arcade game in space where you're a girl working for your uncle on a space station, and you drive around with your spaceship on an open 2D area, mining meteorites for loot and shooting enemies in order to upgrade your ship and eventually beat the game. Is it called space miner?

    Anyway, heck I thought it would be a 20 minute romp and a bit of decent timewaster at best before I tried it, but man that game swallowed me whole for the next few days! I admit there was not much difficulty in the combat but I became sooo addicted to mining all the rocks for loot and upgrading my ship that I would always sit and play for at least an hour each session, often more than that.
     
  9. JCho133

    JCho133 Well-Known Member

    Jul 27, 2012
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    Yeah, I used my CA account to get Plundernauts. It's soft launched there and in NZ.

    And I think everyone has been addicted to Space Miner at one time or another :D Such a fantastic game.
     
  10. sweetdiss

    sweetdiss Well-Known Member

    Jun 15, 2009
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    Hearthstone. I've never, ever been remotely interested in CCGs, but I figured I'd give it a try because free + critical acclaim is hard to pass up.

    I was hopelessly addicted halfway through the tutorial.
     
  11. Touchmint

    Touchmint Well-Known Member

    Oct 19, 2011
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    Tiny Wings

    I saw it on the top of the charts and looked at the screens and was like why are people downloading this.

    Well now its one of my fav games for iOS and what i consider a perfect mobile game. It is so polished and really every element of it is great. It honestly played a hand in inspiring me to become a game developer.
     
  12. Avatre

    Avatre Well-Known Member

    Apr 30, 2013
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    There's two for me. First is Pizza vs Skeletons. An absolutely silly game, the kind I stay well away from. I like deep gameplay and a good story, but I bought that when I couldn't find anything else and its absurdly brilliant, and good fun.

    Second is Tiger & Chicken. I couldn't find anything about it when I stumbled across it. I thought it would end up being one of those games that are really just demo's of good graphics. Instead I found a brilliant arpg that I couldn't put down. Everyone with an iPad should give that one a go.

    I've just found and downloaded PlunderNauts in the UK.
     
  13. PeteOzzy

    PeteOzzy Well-Known Member

    Oct 30, 2013
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    I think mine would be The Room. I played a lot of puzzle/adventure games in the past mostly along the lines of 7th Guest, Starship Titanic and Myst so I know there are diamonds in the genre. But for every one good game there's literally a hundred generic point and clickers that only ever get as complex as hidden objects or looking for the next key to open a door to get the next key etc.

    Absolutely loved everything about The Room, from the atmosphere to the well thought-out puzzles. I don't know why I was so reticent about trying it, but I definitely didn't wait as long once The Room Two came out!
     
  14. dancj

    dancj Well-Known Member

    Jan 25, 2011
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    I really didn't like the look of Threes. I only bought it because I'd picked up 2048 (which I also didn't think I'd like) and wound up loving it. It turns out Threes is even better.

    Also, Bardbarian. From the screenshots it looks like a million other castle defence and brawler type games. Turns out it's a weird blend of the he two with some bullet hell shooter thrown into the mix and is really addictive.
     
  15. SherlockEB

    SherlockEB Well-Known Member
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    Apr 22, 2013
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    Mine would be Kingdom Rush. I never liked TD games before but I was so hooked up with this game and when I first played it I had one week before finals. I will never understand how I passed.
     
  16. smegly

    smegly Well-Known Member

    Mar 27, 2012
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    Hard to say, there are some games I ignored but then by the time I decided to get them, I'd learned enough about them to have high expectations. It's also been my experience that most of the games where there was a big gap between what I was expecting and what I got tended to be situations where I could ultimately appreciate the quality of the games, but wasn't necessarily inclined toward keeping the games in the long run.

    In general, I'm just not very likely to get a game for which I have low expectations. I guess the two best examples are Colossatron and Saturday Morning RPG. I must have had some hope for Colossatron though, because it's not like I got it for free. I was a bit skeptical though, because it's not a very easy game to get a sense for unless you're literally playing it. I actually downloaded SMRPG about three times, due to a combination of liking the theme, but not managing to enjoy the gameplay. I ultimately wound up getting the all-episodes version of the game on a whim and I think it all comes together much better after the first episode to make for one of the best RPGs on the appstore.
     
  17. Empfmil

    Empfmil Well-Known Member

    Aug 23, 2012
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    I was never very impressed with gamelofts fps games. But I have to say when I bought Nova 3 on a 99 cent sale (because its 99 cent) and played it, I was hooked from the start and played the game to the finish on that same day. Very good stuff and now I am actually looking forward to Modern Combat 5 and a new Nova game.
     
  18. Fangbone

    Fangbone Well-Known Member

    Oct 30, 2012
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    I'd have to say that mine is the original PVZ. Shortly after I got my iphone 4 a couple years ago I decided I'd give it a go. I had never played a tower defense game. I had never seen gameplay of PVZ. I only knew that it was a pretty big deal. So after beating it the very day I purchased it I became hopelessly addicted to any and every TD game in the App Store. I still love PVZ but my favorite TD is Kingdom Rush. Just had to give a nod to the TD that started it all for me.
     
  19. Scottlarsen

    Scottlarsen Well-Known Member

    Nov 25, 2009
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    One that really surprised me had to have been Solomon's Keep. I'd never heard of Raptisoft and the game appeared to be very simplistic. Fortunately, that was a major part of its charm and I ended up wasting many hours playing it and replaying it in order to master it's subtle skill combinations.
     

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