I thought the driving in Mafia was still fun chase wise, but yes slow. There was Free Ride and Free Ride extreme, one memorable car had a jet engine on it... that was fun blazing down long stretches. Got old quick though. 

btw does anyone know this old puzzle game from early nineties made by Callisto.
http://www.juegomania.org/pc/8660

It had also a map editor and we made maps for friends to play.. You could have all kinds of nice shooters and triggers and monsters and telepors and bombs and whatnots in it, shooters triggering other shooters. I remember a friend made a level that was very unpredictable with so many effects building up after each other..
Too bad I lost the custom levels when I formatted the old hd of the 386 back then...

I also liked the nice clean and inspired graphics. 

Well it's been 12 years... anything new to add to the list fellas?

I'd probably add Kingdoms Of Amalur: The Reckoning. One of the best free look fantasy RPGs I've played, and who's heard of it? Better than Witcher 1+2.

Very similarly: Two Worlds II.

Transformers: War for Cybertron: it would have fallen into the movie-tie-in stigma so everyone thought it was shit without playing it.
The Avatar game got painted with that same brush but was quite good.

Bionic Commando and Necrovision. Older games probably Enclave which we've all played but did mainstream players?

Also Gunman, it was a Half Life mod turned commercial game but probably no one played it except hardcore Half Life fans.

Also Rune, I think it's long been forgotten about but for it's time was great. 

Kohan and Evolva series, nuff said for me

Barely anyone knows those 

Wow, old thread I never saw.

TA was one of my favorites. I even made a map for it. Was it really underrated? I remember it as being very popular, though it didn't get as much attention as starcraft. 

Recently for me:

Deserts Of Kharak - slick, well presented, nicely streamlined RTS. More fun than the typical style.

Mordheim - brutal, teeth-grinding, but fascinating turn-based tactics with a good style and interesting, if rng-ridden, mechanics. 

Adventures of Van Helsing (The first one, not the others.) Really fun ARPG with comedic elements set in a steampunk/gothic city.

Victor Vran is another ARPG with a strong focus on completing in-level challenges rather than just plowing through main quest dungeons.

Shadow Man is now on steam and I am not sure how much it is has been circulated through the mainstream. Macabre collection/third person shooter/adventure game. It has some Mario 64 mechanics in it where you have to collect certain amounts of "dark souls" to unlock new areas. 

Had Shamblyr tried Gothic 1/2 as Aard recommened, I'm convinced he would've been a better human being now. Alas, here we are... 

I considered trying Gothic not long ago, but I was put off by seeing many complaints about the controls.

I did play Risen, which is from the same company, but newer. I liked it a lot but apparently not enough to buy any of its sequels. 

Wheel of Time: Good variety of gameplay elements, nice music, rich settings, unique 'combat', didn't mind the story, good length in that it wasn't too short or too long.

Wolfenstien: The Raven title that seemed to get dumped on more then it deserved in my opinion. It was actually pretty fun, had some great settings (the farm leading to the big underground complex comes to mind), liked the enemy variety and it was also not too long or too short. A bit grindy backtracking through the hubs but the bolt mauser with a scope helped make the shooting more fun. Was nice to search for goodies as well. I thought the gizmo was coo - added some novelty.

Prey: Or was this not under rated? Not sure but it had a great trippy setting and some fun gameplay novelties like the anti-grav pathways and the use of the spirit walk. Didn't feel high stress because of the lack of proper death but I was good with that despite this being something that most critics pointed out. Also - just the right length again - not too long or short. 

 

I can't deny the controls are somewhat awkward, especially in G1, but it's nothing one couldn't get used to after a while. Probably mostly complains by spastic weirdos whining about not being able to bind the mouse buttons for movement!

The two games are very good despite their flaws. But TBH, not sure I would try them now if I hadn't played them back then as their age shows. Nostalgia does play a role.
There are graphics mods, of course, and even some DX11 injector thing which improves the visuals. 

Total Annihilation was not underrated. It did not garner starcraft levels of popularity though for sure, it is also more complex/games are longer/less accessible.

M.A.X is another fantastic strategy game that never got very popular although consensus was it is a great strat game. (recently re-released on steam or GOG I think, sadly just a dosbox quickie) 

M.A.X. was ok.

Speaking off forgotten/underrated RTS games I can add 2 titles:
War Wind - very nice RTS, Warcraft meets Starcraft with good pixelart graphics;

Z - my favorite RTS. You command robots, capture zones which have factories, produce more robots/tanks and capture more areas, till you get to enemy base. No building mechanics. More area you get, shorter time it takes to create units. Sadly GOG's version is a lame port (PC => Android/iOS => PC), so better to use this open source remake engine: Zod Engine 

For anyone that does not know of this site - just in case and as it is relevant to the thread
http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/featured.php

Thats their best of the best underdogs but there is plenty more to discover on the website, especially the "Top Dogs"

I was most amused to discover the website is founded and run by a middle aged Thai investment banker lady :D 

I still have a TA folder, along with editing tools, and it all works fine on Windows 7.

It actually supports wide screen natively, up to 1920x1080, which is very unusual for a game released in 1997. 

http://theisozone.com 

Eh ? As to what ? A download resource sure, its not about procurement but documentation/discovery. 

Vagrant Story. Squaresoft's best game? More combat focused than their other RPGs. Lacks the party system from Final Fantasy and focuses on a single protagonist instead. Has weapon-dependant combos and damage zones on enemies. Much darker, dungeon-heavy setting compared to Final Fantasy. Almost a fantasy dungeon brawler. Pretty good story too.

Far Cry 2. Significant open-world shooter IMHO. More unique and daring, and less dumbed down than later FC games (fully diegetic interface, for one thing), also again much darker tone. Great African setting. Lots of freedom for the player. If you're bothered by respawning checkpoints, you're doing it wrong. You're not supposed to hang around the same checkpoint all day, you're supposed to be exploring. The game is actually excellent and, IMO, just as iconic as STALKER when it comes to open world RPG shooters. Much better than Crysis anyway. Didn't deserve all the flak it got.

re: Prey: I can't stand the characters and story. Some dope has to rescue his permanently screaming girlfriend from aliens. Really? Does it get any more trashy? Weapons and combat, I'd rather play Bioshock. The spirit walk and anti-grav was cool but underdeveloped. The death mechanic was yawn-inducing. 

I liked Prey, it was pretty good, and most people, Jonas aside, thought it was pretty good, no more, no less.

I forgot this one:

Satellite Reign - isometric real time cyberpunk squad tactics game. All the neon and rain-soaked streets you could ever want, and a very fitting electro soundtrack. Not hugely engaging but nicely done and stylish enough to deserve more acclaim than it got. 

far cry 2 has very good firefights.

they are boring many times, but also many other times they are the best firefights in any game that i played, and they're not scripted fights. 

I really enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics.

Legend of Dragoon is worth hunting down too btw, not Square but still awesome. 

Myth II: Soulblighter. It's a great game in the seemingly niche genre of real-time tactics, with a dark medieval fantasy setting. Unlike in RTS games, there is no base building or resource management, you just have the units you start a level with and (if you're lucky) scripted reinforcements. Individual soldiers (which all have unique names) get buffs based on how many battles they survive and how many enemies they kill, so pyrrhic victories are discouraged. It can be potentially very difficult for this reason, especially since the game does a pretty good job of making you actually feel like the commander of a dwindling medieval army desperately fighting back the hordes of undead. Picking your battles is important, and the levels where you have to hold your ground in the face of a horde are always brutal. The game has a cool physics engine for the time, rendering every projectile as an individual physics object, even subjecting them to weather effects, meaning making effective troop formations and taking advantage of terrain are really important.

Another one is King of Dragon Pass, a sort of hybrid RPG/government sim based in the stone-age high fantasy Glorantha setting. The setting's lore is integrated into the mechanics of the game in some pretty cool ways that aren't immediately obvious.

Finally, this may not be "underrated" so much as a cult thing, but Yume Nikki is the holy grail of weird-ass arty indie games as far as I'm concerned. 

Myth TFL was great and Myth 2 was good too; they were almost as big as Quake was for me in 90's gaming shenanigans.

Fingers crossed that http://store.steampowered.com/app/346930/ has some of that same gameplay flavor; it's pretty rare. 

Well Myth TFL & Myth 2 were my favorite games when I was a child, never get into multiplayer, I tried it recently but it is super hard to learn.. and I don't believe everyone has that much patiency.

Third one, Genesis Ghostbusters. Only genesis game I have beat too many times, something about it just feels right to me.