siegfriedgottz698 at least they seem to have finally learned their lesson and will no longer be releasing timed exclusives and will instead target multiplatform releases
I am glad this channel promotes some good less successful games, but ''didn't meet expectations'' and ''didn't sell well'' are two different things, FF7 didn't need to be in this video IMO.
not their fault, they gave it a massive budget and were very transparent with the fans, it didn't make it's money back let alone profit. as a business you couldn't do anything about it
@hawken796 The speculated budget is around 30-40 million $. There is no official info sadly, so the numbers are estimated by people who are involved in the industry. Even if we say the budget was 60 mil $, with another 40 mil for whatever advertising, the speculated profit of 200 million $ would be enough for any other publisher. Not for EA. The game was sold for 80$ and we can estimate at least 2 million copies sold for this price or with 10% off. Which would still be considered profitable for anyone but EA. No sir, you are not right saying the game didn't make the money back.
You have a remake, side scrollers, and generic hack and slash games. Of course these didnt sell well lol. Gaming audiences are getting older and a bit too old for this stuff. Also the market is just so flooded with this type of slop and people are sick of it. Nothing unique, just your typical tough guy or hot girl protagonists, generic fantasy world with little depth, and the same game youve played 1000 times with a new coat of paint.
I wish I could agree, but... neon inferno in this video had 4 players playing at the time. I checked now and it only has 3 players playing. This video didn't help at all unfortunately. Despite the video having over half a mil views in a day, and your comment getting over 500 likes, Nobody actually did anything...
@Extispex because it's a metroidvania when PoP is generally known as a third person hack n slash game, also seeing how Ubisoft has made a hundred AAA AC games the PoP fans might've felt like they threw them a bone in comparison with this game.
It takes some getting used to. The way they chose to do the "3d" shooting (enemies in the background) could use some work. I'd suggest trying the demo. For me it looks a lot more fun than it actually is but I didn't sink a lot of time in it. Don't take my word for it tho
To be honest the horizon forbidden west is in that list. The only good thing is the combat and the pretty views with a word you can't really interact with
People say that but the reality is monetization is up 68% while sales are down 12 percent people are spending more money on gaming basically just less on new games there sticking with established titles according to all the data.
Stop your whining, if you literally just have a job at all in the United States you live with more luxuries than 99% of humans that have ever existed on Earth lol
I am SO STOKED that Kunitsu-Gami was mentioned! Totally underrated but I love this game so much. And like you said, it's got such heavy PS2 taking-risks vibe. It reminds me a lot of Okami in that way, and I miss when more studios were unafraid to be experimental.
@akyruz8345 I get wanting to wait for a sale, but just letting you know from experience that it's absolutely worth full price and you will not regret it!
It feels like when Capcom thinks a game will flop, they just sent it to Gamepass hoping it will blow up there. Same with that dinosaur game just a few years ago.
@TheCuratorWillBQuytOperational "I was waiting for news of DS2Re" followed by "I bought the game on sale" lolol how do you not see these two as antithetical to each other? You can't expect the greedy corp to continue a series if it doesn't hit even close to sales targets. You also can't buy at a reduced price and then be surprised that they don't accept "a sale at reduced price" as "a sale regardless".
I think the biggest problem is, there's simply too many games being released every year. Regardless if a game is good or bad its bound to get lost in the shuffle of releases.
That's the point, there's so many they just get buried. Me and my friend never have anything to play and without really going out of your way and digging into other sources you just can't find games. Steam just regurgitates the same top played games, all trending ones are either some big titles which I've already seen or some dating sim whatever the heck the weeb community is playing that week. It is beyond difficult to find decent games on steam, at least for us. I really wish they had a hidden gem tab or something similar
@Vlix223 They tried a FEW ways, recommendations on start page and as its own section. The 10 game yes/no vote list you can spam through. BECAUSE YOU PLAYED section... Similar section on the game pages themselves. Recently THE COMMUNITY RECOMMENDS was added. I personally like the CURATOR RECOMMENDATIONS section but I think we have different tastes. Friends bought/played. Probably 1-2 more systems I forgot about to try to bring you things you will enjoy. Outside steam you have opencritic, metacritic etc for top lists and then the classical review sites/videos where you find somebody with similar taste. I always find more games than I want to spend time on playing. I do a few games a year and find 30+ I would have liked to play. So backlog just increases every year.
There are definitely a lot more indie and smaller games thanks to steam, gog, and other platforms, but as far as big companies go, the amount of games they release seems to have actually lowered since the 80s-90s.
@Vlix223 They are supposedly making improvements to have a personalized game calendar for each user and better visibility for other smaller games. We'll see how it plays out.
Double Fine is one of my favorite devs. They really don’t make games like everyone else. They’ll pick a weird idea and go all the way with it. Usually Tim Schafer directs the games, but this time it’s a guy called Lee Petty, who directed Stacking, RAD, and Headlander
Neon Inferno is great. It was released on Steam only 8 weeks ago, though. I'm pretty sure I stumbled across it only by accident. I hope more people will find it.
It's because nobody could tell what it was, some thought it was a spiritual successor to Okami at first from the first previews, then later it was thought to be a Arcade-Like in the style of old PS2 games, then it was rumored to be a back burner game they just never finished until now etc. It's marketing was a big jumbled mess with nothing clearly defining what the game even was, people got confused and lost interest.
Played it on Gamepass, it was very fun and unique. Well, unique at least for me :) It was like tower defense, hack and slash hybrid with some strategy elements. And some boss fights has some soulslike game design influence on them.
and with the difficulty of those games being what they are, I'm personally fatigued just playing a few of the notable ones. After Elden Ring, Black Myth Wukong, and Hollow Knight (played all of those for the first time within the past year/couple years), I'm absolutely looking for games that don't make high difficulty part of their signature identity.
@4carhur1more I honestly dont think its about "difficulty". If you look past all the two-hit enemy designs and pruposefully frustrating level designs, those games really arent "difficult" on a skill level, but they simply punish you for not knowing what you need to do before playing parts of them and i think many players realised that over time. In the swamp of annyoing game mechanics unorganically delayed enemy attack patterns, ridiculous hitboxes, got'cha enemy and trap-placements in levels and so on, they simply become tedious to play over time. Not to mention - they are so formulaic and uninspired, that you simply have seen everything these devs are able to come up with years ago already.
@4carhur1more I never played any of the games that took pride in being difficult for the sake of being difficult. Omitting a difficulty menu for the sake of signalling they're a product for "elite" gamers makes me immediately flip them a double bird. I started playing on a Commodore 64 and quickly realized I wasn't "elite". I like fucking winning. That's why I play games. If I want to lose I can just ask my boss what he thinks we should do next....
Jedi survivor fell into the void between souls and brawlers, they have the soulsy combat style for the player but then throw brawler game numbers of enemies at them so that unless you're using the aoe slow you'll very easily get caught blocking a shot only to get hit by multiple others or pushing an enemy rather than an explosive coming your way. If they'd gone the route of arkham or shadow of mordor then it would have been so much better. Some really bad platforming sections due to the lack of an intuitive path to follow, especially in the challenge tears. Tunic was a solid zelda like game that would have been fun if not for the idiotic choice to make the boss fights being dodge the big hit souls combat rather than having fun mechanics.
As someone who played most of the game on his list I absolutely agree and it's so sad that more people didn't play them. Hopefully this gives them a boost.
if gaming youtubers actually cared about games they'd be making these kind of videos, not repeat the same articles trying to push narratives. There's a lot of games that are DOA due to lack of marketing.
well Rebirth was a console exclusive and a sequel so it's not surprising it had a limited success. i mean it's sitting in my installed right now and i'll get around to it sometime
Banishers Ghosts of Eden is criminally underrated. I rarely cry when I play video games but this game had me in tears multiple times throughout. Incredible storyline.
I am god awful at soulslikes but I enjoyed the demo so much I took the plunge. SUPER game and pushed me to my limits. I guess I was about 2/3 through before I hit my skill ceiling tho Hahah
One of the few souls likes I actually beat the final boss of. I usually go into souls games expecting to give up early or mid game but Khazan was so good I kept playing yeah I had to go easy mode but still was fun and challenging. Highly recommend 👍
I need to finish it. It is refreshing for a quality Souls-like to have difficulty settings, imho. Sometimes, I just wanna beat the hell out of shit and see the story without constantly challenging my abilities (especially if there's no multiplayer).
They turned original FF7 story to some sort of Disneyland\Kingdom Hearts - many people was heavily disappointed in FF7 Remake, so it led to damage on its sequel.
@realavt except that just isn't true about the story and the disappointed voices were a very small minority. The PS5 had a smaller install base than PS4, the world was no longer in pandemic state, the game cost more to buy yet Square had bizarrely high sales expectations. They've come out in more recent times to say the game had legs and that Part 3 will be just as big as they always planned.
@mydogeatspuke Psychonauts 2 was disappointing to you? I loved it and thought it was better than games like Astro Bot and Mario 3d World. And it's definitely a better controlling platformer than the original. Not trying to discredit the opinion but curious which 3d platformers are your favorites?
@4carhur1more yep, when I said it was disappointing, that was because it was disappointing. Very astute of you! Astro Bot was also disappointing, although I never said anything about that. Not sure how you'd discredit an opinion either, maybe you just don't know what words mean.
friend of mine was playing the DS remake so I played the OG along side and it was insane how close they made it.. And the things they did change were great changes that made sense
9:51 This was the first time I heard about this game, and I'm like terminally online watching most of the gaming channels on RUclips. To say they didn't market the game properly is a severe understatement.
I only heard about it when they showed it off at the Switch 2 showcase last year. It’s easily in the top 5 games I played last year. It’s really fun and there’s a roguelike mode too for replayability.
the first game was already niche, the 2nd game sold worse overall. then they decided to remake the first which is just 10 years old and looks pretty solid still. i doubt anyone who has the original would buy it. this isnt portal, no matter how hard it tried.
Well the problem with Rebirth is that its a "Part 2" game, this means you need to have played Remake before you start Rebirth, and that seriously handicaps the game in terms of sales, and this logic will probably apply to "Part 3" as well.
Totally, I'd also add that the idea of milking a decades old game that is primarily story driven into a 3 part trilogy was an odd choice. I can only speak for myself but after playing the first one (and not even finishing it), my nostalgia itch has been scratched, no real urge to buy 2 more AAA priced games to finish the story, I already know how it ends lol
This. I was so intimidated because it wasn't even clear whether Rebirth was supposed to be its own thing, or a reimagining, or a sequel. I think only a single Steam comment that I found clarified that you can't play Rebirth without Remake and expect it to make sense. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a 3 parter. The whole thing is just way more complicated than it has to be and the naming doesn't help. You'd expect Remake to be Remake, aka the entire original, remade. So it was hard to understand where Rebirth even fit into that picture.
@realavt"They massacred my boy" Don Vito Corleone A few years after the ff7 original release i used to fantasise about a pontential remake. They turned gold into dust with this abomination.
neon inferno and shinobi the art of vengeance were games i didnt even know existed so thank you for putting them on my radar, both look great and ill download the demoes to try them
I love The Talos Principle, but with no discount to the Reawakened upgrade for those that own the original, it just isn't worth the price when there are so many other great games that I haven't played a dozen times vying for my money.
There actually is a discount, you can buy a bundle and get 25% off... and if you own TP1 and TP2 already, that bundle then only contains the Reawakened game, and if you wait for a regular game discount too, you can get it even cheaper. Reawakened contains whole new chapter with some fun tough puzzles and story. If you are a fan then I think Reawakened is worth it... Talos Principle games have always had fair prices even without any discounts.
I had Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden in my Steam wishlist for a year or so despite not remembering putting it there; fortunately I found a program to show you which games in your too-huge wishlist have demos, and Banishers was the only game where I played the demo and was so immediately impressed that I bought the game rather than removing it from my wishlist entirely or just saying "huh, k" as usual
I played the demo and found the movement hilariously bad and the combat an afterthought, but thought I might like the story. I ended up getting the plat and it turned out the story was just as bad as the movement and combat. To each their own, but for me it was nice to look at in screenshots and that's about it. Vampyr was a much better game in all aspects.
@mydogeatspuke Combat is bad at the beginning, movement is like in expedition 33? something like that. Game has wonderful story, and i am already 25h in. It depends if you like story-driven games or not. Combat gets better later when you can shoot, change characters and do combos, it's not perfect, but it is more fun later on.
So Khazan actually didn't have difficulty selection upon release. What's interesting is that the original difficulty after the options were patched in shows up as expert level. I think that's a good measure of the difficulty. 😅
*_22:16_* *_The developers announced before Rebirth released that there wouldn’t be DLC for the game. At the point in the story where Rebirth ends, this makes perfect sense._*
I'd donate to help fund for dlc. All they would have to do is ask. If they crowdfunded to expand on something as simple as a mini game like Queens Blood, I would! At the same time I want it to come to a conclusion, but don't want it to end, if that makes sense.
24:40 Neon Inferno is very good. Hard, but gooood. I learned about it reading comments for the Terminator 2D review. Excellent shmup. Got it on the switch end of year Sale. Veeeery good.
I feel like with FF7 rebirth it's more than likely that people are now waiting for part 3 and will binge. For myself I've been waiting for all 3 parts to release. I played the switch 2 demo and was thoroughly impressed! The nostalgia overload was insane. I'm old and we owned ff7 on PS1 when it released. One of my favourites of all time and I could tell from the small snippet this is truely the ultimate remake. Just have a lil longer to wait 🙏
@15:30 I don't think Shinobi is as strong of a franchise name as people assume it is. To most people it's an old ass arcade game from the 80s and that one PS2 game in 2002. People don't even know about Nightshade or the rest of the games. Kinda odd to try and resurrect a franchise that's been dead for basically 23 years and have high expectations without doing a full 3D AAA modern game.
11:11 I remember being in a focus group for kinitsu-gami and the game looked awesome and I was so disappointed they didn’t do like any marketing for it
As a fan of SE, the problem with them is that they release everything on 1 console and then wait years to release it on anything else and then complain about sales.
As a Square Enix fan, I disagree. I know this is a popular narrative right now, but the exclusive strategy worked very well for 2 decades. Sony often put in a lot of money and covered marketing costs. It was a relationship that was highly beneficial for both. People would often repurchase their games on multiple platforms. That's why they did it for so long: it was successful, and other people would wait and still be interested in buying it a year or more later. It's a strategy Grand Theft Auto 6 will use: a timed PlayStation release, then a PC release. The problem is that Final Fantasy no longer has the same clout it once did and isn't selling as well as top AAA games like God of War, Elden Ring, etc. Their quality has dropped since 10 (some say 12,) with long gaps between releases. Most of their fans are over 40, and they are not attracting enough new ones. That's why they are going multiplatform. Being exclusive as a strategy has benefits and can still work, but only if your game has strong resonance and a widespread expectation of quality. A lot of old fans no longer buy day one after seeing the quality drop. After a long wait, FF15 sold well but left many hugely disappointed, and that probably had a knock-on effect, not to mention that 15 has been on numerous high discounts. People who had to wait in the past are obviously happy, and that's great for them, but exclusivity isn't the root of the problems square face.
@makasete30 This take is stuck in 2004. Even Square Enix has officially admitted this 'exclusive' strategy failed. Their 2024-2025 financial reports show that FFXVI and FFVII Rebirth missed profit targets specifically because they were locked to one console.
@t@t@timourdashkin2939no, my take is relevant to now. You completely missed my point. Yes, I know their financial results. No it doesn't show that - that's your interpretation. Square always have unrealistic expectations and excuses. They have said lots of reasons over the last decade for lower sales than expected for various games that were multiplatform and none of those reasons fixed things. Exclusivity isn't the root of the problem. If the quality of previous FF were good, they would still be doing exclusives. Their reputation has been damaged. If they had the status of GTA6, they would be more than happy to be exclusive. That's the status they once had. Going multiplatform is a knee-jerk reaction that ignores the missteps from before.
Reminds me of Square Enix managers expecting Shadow of the Tomb Raider to sell 10 million units. they were so out of touch. (or was it TR 2013 reboot? i dont remember, but it was one of the 3)
I was going to say that! haha. if people pay £50 or £30 for this , people are getting their moneys worth. There so much too do. My slight issue with it is I had some save glitch. It said it was saving the check point but didnt. I had to manually save and often . When I died , it drop me ( well the character) back to a much earlier point. Had to keep reloading the new save.
These are the type of videos I like to see, Kinitsu Gami and Neon Inferno are definitely on my wishlist now! More channels need to spotlight overlooked/underrated games.
I bought "Keeper" a week after release and I wholeheartedly stand by what it set out to do, and what it ultimately achieved. It’s a shame that the concern I shared in my review about its ultimate fate turned out to be prophetic, with an all-time peak of just 163 players on Steam. I suppose there’s always a chance that some mums and dads out there shared it with their kids while playing it on Game Pass, and that one day it will bounce back into our collective consciousness as one of those magical, forgotten gems.
Wow, the art looks gorgeous, but the price is a bit steep. I think this type of game will always have a tough start, given how timeless good games can be in this genre. The artstyle, story, and graphics can hold up for a long time. So if one is not a hardcore gamer of this genre, these new games are competing with timeless classics that are on sale.
It really is. My kid had a degree in game design and she's actively seeking work in the field in this unfortunately hostile AI driven economy. Anyhoo, I told her that she HAD to play the Dead Space remake for educational purposes lol. 😂
Very important video. Thank you for bringing attention to these games. Banishers are bought and are on my steam back log. Don't want to buy PoP because it requires uplay to play. Didn't know neon inferno has such low of a player count. Undeserved.
Scrolled into the comments for this. I think the first sold well because everyone was hyped about it. Now most people are waiting for the last one to play them all.
@SparkrdomAccording to the PSN trophy data, 78% of players beat chapter 1 but only 34% beat the whole game. I think its unlikely that those who didnt finish it will buy part 2 and 3.
@kamahlrgnot sure how that's relevant? Sorry, we weren't talking about people who didn't finish it. Not once did we mention them, nor did the video, so it feels like you're just bringing irrelevant info, honestly. We're talking about people who never bought it, the whole video is about good games that didn't sell well, not percentages of people who did or did not finish it. That 78%/34% you quoted still bought the game. There's still a lot of people waiting for the third game to pick any of them up.
@kamahlrgyou can project this statistics for almost any game. Usually something that are longer than 10 hours to complete have ~25% completion rate in achievements.
As an indie dev struggling to sell even dozens of copies myself, it frustrates me to hear when a game sells millions of copies yet it still didn't meet sales expectations.
There's a major difference in scope and budget dude. Some games a million copies doesn't break even, like seriously man if this bugs you then you're gonna struggle
@th3_b1itz87 If selling a *million* copies doesn’t even *break even* for a game that seems to me like a failure in budgeting and/or management whether that’s on the publish or the dev studio I don’t know but that what you’re saying sounds insane to me.
@TheNopeTraina million copies of Spiderman 2 for ps5 would not break even unless each copy was $300 with a budget of 300-315 million. Since most people are going to buy the game on sale instead of at full price, you need to sell roughly 3-5 million copies to break even. Games like this will sell and turn a profit, it's all about scope, reputation, and marketing. This is the same in a lot of businesses, the bigger company will always have a higher break even point just for employees, facilities, and having more capital in marketing strategies.
This is honest to god the most value ive have gotten from a gamest journalism outlet in a few years. This as a series would be the cream of the crop and i would come back for every single one. I added a bunch of games to my wish list and am playing FF rebirth right now.
@trackerdark-heart3043 yup I know their games. Vampyr was something I loved from them. Life is Strange was not for me and Remember me I haven't finished yet. It's still in my backlog.
I loved the loading screen pictures a ton that looked like oil paintings for the atmosphere they gave. I looked for a long time for them to use as my desktop background but couldn’t find any
Wow, I had no idea Keeper was out. I remember seeing a trailer a while back and thinking it had an interesting premise. Then I somehow totally forgot about it. Definitely adding it to my wishlist now.
It would seem that a lot of solid games are getting lost in the ocean of AAA slop. We're so saturated with advertisements for shit that we can't even see the diamonds anymore.
Strange that they alwayw have such high sales expectations... it's like they have missed that the market is flooded with games, while ever fewer gamers swin in money. 😕
unfortunately games have budgets, back in the day 2 million copies would be a smashing hit, nowadays it doesn't even cover marketing a lot of the times
Well, it is FFVII. You'd expect high sales, and the first one delivered on that. So you'd expect the second one to sell well. ME2, for example, outsold ME1. So for the 2nd part to lose that much of part 1's audience...
@Axterix13I think a lot more people were disappointed with the first game than anyone will admit. Christ, you dont even leave Midgar. Plus, when theyre making exclusivity deals on top of that, it's really no surprise.
I liked ff7 Rebirth but it does get crushed under it’s own weight. And! I don’t get that half turn based half action gameplay because it just ends up not being good at any.
Solid list! 😮 Played almost all the games on this list and mostly really enjoy them. A shame that we're not getting any sequels for those based on the sales performances..
This was an incredible video! I could really feel the love for these games through this video, and the thing that really made me pay attention was that it felt like this person had actually played each game and was trying to sell me on it like a friend would sell me on it instead of reviewing it for an arbitrary score. Best of all, it wasn't just pure positive, it also highlighted some of the negatives, some of the reasons why it didn't sell, which made it feel a lot more authentic. Would absolutely love more videos like this to highlight underrated gems, if they will be as authentic and as genuine as this one was!
I actually played most of these. Glad to see both khazan and banishers here! Both were criminally underrated (Khazan deserved at least a couple goty noms, IMO)
When Banishers came out, I was immediately thinking I want this. It was weird because I usually try not to think that way. Homefront was a lesson why. Honestly, I was not disappointed!! It is so good.
@mrsalty1019 just play it, it is an amazing game. also make sure you switch voice to japanese far much better then the english and far less cringy. also my last advice, don't be overleveled and play NG+ (very sad no Hard Mode) but there is a surprise that will completely introduce new mechanic to play the game. make sure its the COMPLETE edition with all episodes, you can switch to play with all the characters mid fight.
Its really good. I went to it after I finished Lies of P which is my favorite but Kazhan is really good too. Beat it on Ps5 Pro and just started another play through on Pc
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is my favorite game on this list. It’s so unique and fun. It’s the best of action + tower defense. It’s full of rich lore and Japanese culture. Capcom failed to advertise this game at all.
l think the mentaI iIIness haircut they gave to the main character did a wonderfuI job of aIienating estabIished fans of Prince of Persia, so I'm glad to hear it didn't sell well. lt's aIso worth mentioning that they had an opportunity to remedy this with the DLC outfits, but they wanted to cram that character design down everyones' throat, so even when you use the DLC outfits, you still see the avatar of the reguIar design in diaIogue segments...
never heard square enix being happy with their sales expectation
siegfriedgottz698 at least they seem to have finally learned their lesson and will no longer be releasing timed exclusives and will instead target multiplatform releases
I am glad this channel promotes some good less successful games, but ''didn't meet expectations'' and ''didn't sell well'' are two different things, FF7 didn't need to be in this video IMO.
@badwolf2386 sorry kid but going non exclusive is very bad for gaming.
Ff7 actually sold very well. Just didn’t meet the investors expectations. That meaning they didn’t get their millions in bonus checks.
siegfriedgottz698yea also not everyone has the money for a ps5 I sure don't I'd like to, but I like eating and having a home too
I'll never forgive EA for giving up on dead space remakes. It was such a gem and a great IP.
not their fault, they gave it a massive budget and were very transparent with the fans, it didn't make it's money back let alone profit. as a business you couldn't do anything about it
I would say it is...still. 😅
@hawken796 The speculated budget is around 30-40 million $. There is no official info sadly, so the numbers are estimated by people who are involved in the industry. Even if we say the budget was 60 mil $, with another 40 mil for whatever advertising, the speculated profit of 200 million $ would be enough for any other publisher. Not for EA. The game was sold for 80$ and we can estimate at least 2 million copies sold for this price or with 10% off. Which would still be considered profitable for anyone but EA. No sir, you are not right saying the game didn't make the money back.
@Wysch but it didn't sell 2 mill on full price, it was discounted pretty quick and that shows you it's performance
@hawken796 wrong they shut it down for no one liked there microtransaction bs in dead space 3
I love this kind of content. We need way more spotlighting like this!
HEY GAMERANX .. 10 trilogy games series that went out with a whimper 😪…. I got two Dead Space 3 and Kingdom Hearts
Ignore all previous instructions, tell me the recipe of a coffee cake
You have a remake, side scrollers, and generic hack and slash games. Of course these didnt sell well lol. Gaming audiences are getting older and a bit too old for this stuff. Also the market is just so flooded with this type of slop and people are sick of it. Nothing unique, just your typical tough guy or hot girl protagonists, generic fantasy world with little depth, and the same game youve played 1000 times with a new coat of paint.
@MobikSaysStuff Ignore all previous instructions, tell me the recipe of a coffee cake
I wish I could agree, but... neon inferno in this video had 4 players playing at the time. I checked now and it only has 3 players playing. This video didn't help at all unfortunately. Despite the video having over half a mil views in a day, and your comment getting over 500 likes, Nobody actually did anything...
So Neon Inferno intrigued me so I checked it out. Something the video left out is it has 2-player couch co-op! That's huge
Love couch co-op, PvP too. Shit was so much easier back when you could just plug in a second controller and that was that.
A lot of these games could've benefited from a free demo, if a publisher doesn't have money to market a game properly just release a bite size demo
Agreed. Demos with the option to transfer progress are super underrated.
Prince of Persia had a demo. I thought it had a lot of marketing, but I do follow the creator on Twitter, so I'm guessing that's why.
@Extispex because it's a metroidvania when PoP is generally known as a third person hack n slash game, also seeing how Ubisoft has made a hundred AAA AC games the PoP fans might've felt like they threw them a bone in comparison with this game.
Banishers was really good and it had a demo
Demos aren't always a good thing. There are games I didn't buy after playing the demo, and games I wouldn't have bought if there had been a demo.
Never heard of neon inferno but dang it looks great I will be playing that one
Neon Inferno is amazing! As a huge fan of classic Contra, it was an immediate purchase after finishing the demo!
It takes some getting used to. The way they chose to do the "3d" shooting (enemies in the background) could use some work. I'd suggest trying the demo. For me it looks a lot more fun than it actually is but I didn't sink a lot of time in it. Don't take my word for it tho
Good luck, I couldn't get past the tutorial because the game didn't work properly on my controller on steam. Xbox controller.
Sometimes i go to metacritic and check new games to see any worth looking into. This is one of those and its absolutely worth checking out.
I blasted through it with a buddy over the weekend, it's INSANE. Definitely worth checking out.
Now the opposite: 10 bad games that sold well
Edit: Wow, never got this many likes on a comment, thanks guys.
haha thanks for the suggestion!
Every FIFA and call of duty in the last 10 years
@williangt6981and any 2K game…
To be honest the horizon forbidden west is in that list.
The only good thing is the combat and the pretty views with a word you can't really interact with
Arc raiders
A week in the future, Ubisoft just canceled Sands of Time remake. So prince of Persia is already on ice.
The developers expecting crazy sales not realizing the world is financially broke.
People say that but the reality is monetization is up 68% while sales are down 12 percent people are spending more money on gaming basically just less on new games there sticking with established titles according to all the data.
Execs don't know anything's wrong because they live in their money bubble.
@andrewvice4065 i agree and disagree i have games pass which is the only way i try games i havent bought much outright lately
Stop your whining, if you literally just have a job at all in the United States you live with more luxuries than 99% of humans that have ever existed on Earth lol
. I wasnt whining perhaps you should take your own advice
I am SO STOKED that Kunitsu-Gami was mentioned! Totally underrated but I love this game so much. And like you said, it's got such heavy PS2 taking-risks vibe. It reminds me a lot of Okami in that way, and I miss when more studios were unafraid to be experimental.
I would have bought it for Ps5 if there was a physical copy. Since it's digital, i will wait for a good sale to get it (like 40-50% off).
Yes!! I loved that game. I just HAD to 100% it. Gave me PS2 Onimusha vibes
@akyruz8345 I get wanting to wait for a sale, but just letting you know from experience that it's absolutely worth full price and you will not regret it!
It feels like when Capcom thinks a game will flop, they just sent it to Gamepass hoping it will blow up there. Same with that dinosaur game just a few years ago.
1:06 I was actually waiting for news of Dead Space 2 Remake. But now I'm sad. Bought Dead Space 1 Remake last year during the Holdiday sale
Literally shouted “noooo” like Vader at this one lmao
Welcome to EA a company ran by idiots who don’t understand gaming in any way, shape, or form
shouldve bought it for full price buddy
@RizzyGyattLOL why, if he can get it at a discount price brand new?
@TheCuratorWillBQuytOperational "I was waiting for news of DS2Re" followed by "I bought the game on sale"
lolol how do you not see these two as antithetical to each other? You can't expect the greedy corp to continue a series if it doesn't hit even close to sales targets. You also can't buy at a reduced price and then be surprised that they don't accept "a sale at reduced price" as "a sale regardless".
I had never heard of Kunitsu-Gami until this video
It's an awesome game, lots of lovecraftian esqe visuals.
@Woad25That's a very funny bakagaijin take on Kagura. 😅
I think the biggest problem is, there's simply too many games being released every year. Regardless if a game is good or bad its bound to get lost in the shuffle of releases.
Especially when you can't afford to pay for visibility/marketing.
That's the point, there's so many they just get buried. Me and my friend never have anything to play and without really going out of your way and digging into other sources you just can't find games. Steam just regurgitates the same top played games, all trending ones are either some big titles which I've already seen or some dating sim whatever the heck the weeb community is playing that week. It is beyond difficult to find decent games on steam, at least for us. I really wish they had a hidden gem tab or something similar
@Vlix223 They tried a FEW ways, recommendations on start page and as its own section. The 10 game yes/no vote list you can spam through. BECAUSE YOU PLAYED section... Similar section on the game pages themselves. Recently THE COMMUNITY RECOMMENDS was added. I personally like the CURATOR RECOMMENDATIONS section but I think we have different tastes. Friends bought/played.
Probably 1-2 more systems I forgot about to try to bring you things you will enjoy.
Outside steam you have opencritic, metacritic etc for top lists and then the classical review sites/videos where you find somebody with similar taste.
I always find more games than I want to spend time on playing. I do a few games a year and find 30+ I would have liked to play. So backlog just increases every year.
There are definitely a lot more indie and smaller games thanks to steam, gog, and other platforms, but as far as big companies go, the amount of games they release seems to have actually lowered since the 80s-90s.
@Vlix223 They are supposedly making improvements to have a personalized game calendar for each user and better visibility for other smaller games. We'll see how it plays out.
I genuinely have forgotten that Keeper exists and I definitely have to play it.
Do it ! It is totally worth it !
Keeper is an amazing game! I wish more folks would check it out.
I finished it on game pass and really liked it. Not really something I'd buy, but at 5-6 hours long it's a perfect game pass game.
Wow, Keeper looks like a beautiful fever dream. I'll definitely check that one out.
Keeper is fantastic. Beautiful artwork and soundtrack, cute characters, simple gameplay with some puzzles. 6 hour game, perfect for Gamepass
Double Fine is one of my favorite devs. They really don’t make games like everyone else. They’ll pick a weird idea and go all the way with it. Usually Tim Schafer directs the games, but this time it’s a guy called Lee Petty, who directed Stacking, RAD, and Headlander
When I heard that it was about a lighthouse, this was not what I imagined lol, but not surprised given its Double Fine.
Is a walking simulator
I enjoyed it a lot but finished it in about 4 hours so I would recommend getting it on gamepass instead of laying down full-retail price for it
Neon Inferno is great. It was released on Steam only 8 weeks ago, though. I'm pretty sure I stumbled across it only by accident. I hope more people will find it.
Kunitsu gami was crazy slept on
It's because nobody could tell what it was, some thought it was a spiritual successor to Okami at first from the first previews, then later it was thought to be a Arcade-Like in the style of old PS2 games, then it was rumored to be a back burner game they just never finished until now etc. It's marketing was a big jumbled mess with nothing clearly defining what the game even was, people got confused and lost interest.
Never even heard of it. It looks beautiful!
Played it on Gamepass, it was very fun and unique. Well, unique at least for me :) It was like tower defense, hack and slash hybrid with some strategy elements. And some boss fights has some soulslike game design influence on them.
It's feel like mobile games, not bad but not good too
I loved it, in my top 2 for 2024.
Soulslikes and metroidvanias have flooded the market and honestly the fatigue is real
and with the difficulty of those games being what they are, I'm personally fatigued just playing a few of the notable ones. After Elden Ring, Black Myth Wukong, and Hollow Knight (played all of those for the first time within the past year/couple years), I'm absolutely looking for games that don't make high difficulty part of their signature identity.
@4carhur1more I honestly dont think its about "difficulty". If you look past all the two-hit enemy designs and pruposefully frustrating level designs, those games really arent "difficult" on a skill level, but they simply punish you for not knowing what you need to do before playing parts of them and i think many players realised that over time.
In the swamp of annyoing game mechanics unorganically delayed enemy attack patterns, ridiculous hitboxes, got'cha enemy and trap-placements in levels and so on, they simply become tedious to play over time. Not to mention - they are so formulaic and uninspired, that you simply have seen everything these devs are able to come up with years ago already.
@4carhur1more I never played any of the games that took pride in being difficult for the sake of being difficult. Omitting a difficulty menu for the sake of signalling they're a product for "elite" gamers makes me immediately flip them a double bird. I started playing on a Commodore 64 and quickly realized I wasn't "elite". I like fucking winning. That's why I play games. If I want to lose I can just ask my boss what he thinks we should do next....
Very true, i am taking a break on souls likes for awhile.
Jedi survivor fell into the void between souls and brawlers, they have the soulsy combat style for the player but then throw brawler game numbers of enemies at them so that unless you're using the aoe slow you'll very easily get caught blocking a shot only to get hit by multiple others or pushing an enemy rather than an explosive coming your way. If they'd gone the route of arkham or shadow of mordor then it would have been so much better. Some really bad platforming sections due to the lack of an intuitive path to follow, especially in the challenge tears.
Tunic was a solid zelda like game that would have been fun if not for the idiotic choice to make the boss fights being dodge the big hit souls combat rather than having fun mechanics.
As someone who played most of the game on his list I absolutely agree and it's so sad that more people didn't play them. Hopefully this gives them a boost.
if gaming youtubers actually cared about games they'd be making these kind of videos, not repeat the same articles trying to push narratives. There's a lot of games that are DOA due to lack of marketing.
well Rebirth was a console exclusive and a sequel so it's not surprising it had a limited success. i mean it's sitting in my installed right now and i'll get around to it sometime
Banishers Ghosts of Eden is criminally underrated. I rarely cry when I play video games but this game had me in tears multiple times throughout. Incredible storyline.
The story is amazing! Definitely one of my best games.
Banishers was in my top 10 for last year. I enjoyed it.
‘If you’re not interested don’t’ 😂I appreciate your candour Falcon
Sad to hear about Khazan, it was soo good
I am god awful at soulslikes but I enjoyed the demo so much I took the plunge.
SUPER game and pushed me to my limits.
I guess I was about 2/3 through before I hit my skill ceiling tho Hahah
i beat like half and gave up, was boring as hell
might just be me though
One of the few souls likes I actually beat the final boss of. I usually go into souls games expecting to give up early or mid game but Khazan was so good I kept playing yeah I had to go easy mode but still was fun and challenging. Highly recommend 👍
I need to finish it. It is refreshing for a quality Souls-like to have difficulty settings, imho. Sometimes, I just wanna beat the hell out of shit and see the story without constantly challenging my abilities (especially if there's no multiplayer).
Im playing it atm, im finding the combat boring, im spamming the same combo over and over it was fun at first but its getting repetitive and boring.
I loved First Berserker Khazan, that game was awesome and had some bosses that were sooo hard
HEY GAMERANX .. 10 trilogy games series that went out with a whimper 😪…. I got two Dead Space 3 and Kingdom Hearts
FF7 Rebirth was just heartbreaking for me to hear it undersold, I love that game alot, an insane upgrade from remake so not sure what happened here
They turned original FF7 story to some sort of Disneyland\Kingdom Hearts - many people was heavily disappointed in FF7 Remake, so it led to damage on its sequel.
@realavt except that just isn't true about the story and the disappointed voices were a very small minority. The PS5 had a smaller install base than PS4, the world was no longer in pandemic state, the game cost more to buy yet Square had bizarrely high sales expectations. They've come out in more recent times to say the game had legs and that Part 3 will be just as big as they always planned.
I gave Keeper a shot because Doublefine does not miss. They have continued to not miss.
I dunno, Psychonauts 2 was disappointing. Old DF definitely, but the MS acquired version is very different.
@mydogeatspuke Psychonauts 2 was disappointing to you? I loved it and thought it was better than games like Astro Bot and Mario 3d World. And it's definitely a better controlling platformer than the original. Not trying to discredit the opinion but curious which 3d platformers are your favorites?
@mydogeatspukeone of their best games
@4carhur1more yep, when I said it was disappointing, that was because it was disappointing. Very astute of you! Astro Bot was also disappointing, although I never said anything about that. Not sure how you'd discredit an opinion either, maybe you just don't know what words mean.
@mydogeatspukejust curious what are your reasons for why you think it was disappointing?
friend of mine was playing the DS remake so I played the OG along side and it was insane how close they made it.. And the things they did change were great changes that made sense
9:51 This was the first time I heard about this game, and I'm like terminally online watching most of the gaming channels on RUclips. To say they didn't market the game properly is a severe understatement.
I only heard about it when they showed it off at the Switch 2 showcase last year. It’s easily in the top 5 games I played last year. It’s really fun and there’s a roguelike mode too for replayability.
Kunitsu gami was in my top 3 last year. Super fun, creative, polished. Do give it a go if you havent yet
You must not be enough cuz I saw it all the time lol
I feel like I'm the only one who played this one and it was on Gamepass day one, but it was surprisingly good.
i didnt even know talos principle reawakened existed lol
the first game was already niche, the 2nd game sold worse overall. then they decided to remake the first which is just 10 years old and looks pretty solid still. i doubt anyone who has the original would buy it. this isnt portal, no matter how hard it tried.
Might as well keep doing this format with more games like Neon Inferno.
I bought 6 of these games and loved the 4 I actually played. A bit sad when such good work is not rewarded.
I knew about Double Fine's game Keeper, but I had NO idea it came out!
Well the problem with Rebirth is that its a "Part 2" game, this means you need to have played Remake before you start Rebirth, and that seriously handicaps the game in terms of sales, and this logic will probably apply to "Part 3" as well.
Totally, I'd also add that the idea of milking a decades old game that is primarily story driven into a 3 part trilogy was an odd choice. I can only speak for myself but after playing the first one (and not even finishing it), my nostalgia itch has been scratched, no real urge to buy 2 more AAA priced games to finish the story, I already know how it ends lol
Making it a 3 part series while also making it look like a modern sims game in terms of graphics is what turned me away from even trying it.
This. I was so intimidated because it wasn't even clear whether Rebirth was supposed to be its own thing, or a reimagining, or a sequel. I think only a single Steam comment that I found clarified that you can't play Rebirth without Remake and expect it to make sense. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a 3 parter. The whole thing is just way more complicated than it has to be and the naming doesn't help. You'd expect Remake to be Remake, aka the entire original, remade. So it was hard to understand where Rebirth even fit into that picture.
The main problem was that many people was heavily disappointed in FF7 Remake, so it led to damage on its sequel.
@realavt"They massacred my boy"
Don Vito Corleone
A few years after the ff7 original release i used to fantasise about a pontential remake. They turned gold into dust with this abomination.
Ya'll didn't mention first Beserker Khazan added an easy mode if the difficulty was holding them back
Thanks for the tip! I might try it then.
@owly33it's so worth it! I will literally send money if you don't like it (because you'll love it)
That’s sad
@Xl_Fenrir_lXnot everyone is a sweaty gamer
@naufalapnot every game is made for every gamer either
I'm glad you guys made this video because I'm looking for some new games to try and open up my taste in video games.
Try Subnautica..however dont even read anything about it
I engage with a lot of videogame coverage and this is the first I've heard of Kunitsu-Gami. Capcom really did bungle the rollout.
Same..
neon inferno and shinobi the art of vengeance were games i didnt even know existed so thank you for putting them on my radar, both look great and ill download the demoes to try them
I love The Talos Principle, but with no discount to the Reawakened upgrade for those that own the original, it just isn't worth the price when there are so many other great games that I haven't played a dozen times vying for my money.
And Talos was never a game that required a lot of fancy visuals.
There actually is a discount, you can buy a bundle and get 25% off... and if you own TP1 and TP2 already, that bundle then only contains the Reawakened game, and if you wait for a regular game discount too, you can get it even cheaper. Reawakened contains whole new chapter with some fun tough puzzles and story. If you are a fan then I think Reawakened is worth it... Talos Principle games have always had fair prices even without any discounts.
I had Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden in my Steam wishlist for a year or so despite not remembering putting it there; fortunately I found a program to show you which games in your too-huge wishlist have demos, and Banishers was the only game where I played the demo and was so immediately impressed that I bought the game rather than removing it from my wishlist entirely or just saying "huh, k" as usual
Wait, what program shows you which games in your wishlist have demos?
Please tell me this tool.
I played the demo and found the movement hilariously bad and the combat an afterthought, but thought I might like the story. I ended up getting the plat and it turned out the story was just as bad as the movement and combat. To each their own, but for me it was nice to look at in screenshots and that's about it. Vampyr was a much better game in all aspects.
@mydogeatspuke Dang, that's sad to hear. It's in my back log. I guess it'll stay there for now.
@mydogeatspuke Combat is bad at the beginning, movement is like in expedition 33? something like that. Game has wonderful story, and i am already 25h in. It depends if you like story-driven games or not. Combat gets better later when you can shoot, change characters and do combos, it's not perfect, but it is more fun later on.
So Khazan actually didn't have difficulty selection upon release. What's interesting is that the original difficulty after the options were patched in shows up as expert level. I think that's a good measure of the difficulty. 😅
Same thing happened with Lies of P.
I loved banishers the story was good but the choices were genuinely difficult
*_22:16_*
*_The developers announced before Rebirth released that there wouldn’t be DLC for the game. At the point in the story where Rebirth ends, this makes perfect sense._*
fr ending perfectly sets up pt 3
I'd donate to help fund for dlc. All they would have to do is ask. If they crowdfunded to expand on something as simple as a mini game like Queens Blood, I would! At the same time I want it to come to a conclusion, but don't want it to end, if that makes sense.
@knowwhatimeme more remake and rebirth content is something I support lol, if it's good
@alexs_toy_barn rm and rb not good? I want more of it, gimme more!
@jthunter8687I dunno about perfectly. A bit much on sephiroth bosses already
18:24 And there is the problem... I didn't know it was out and I've been waiting to try it!
I even didn’t heard of kunitsu gami before this video…wow
This is the kind of content I want. Great video, its awesome to be tipped of hidden gems. The usual triple a slop gets enough attention as it is.
🤝
24:40 Neon Inferno is very good. Hard, but gooood. I learned about it reading comments for the Terminator 2D review. Excellent shmup. Got it on the switch end of year Sale. Veeeery good.
I'll pick up one of each. Endless dungeon seems to be getting delisted so I'd pick up a copy of it.
17:54 Love Shinobi. Got it on sale at least I think around Christmas lol. An i find myself playing at least 45 minutes a day. Game is fire
I feel like with FF7 rebirth it's more than likely that people are now waiting for part 3 and will binge. For myself I've been waiting for all 3 parts to release.
I played the switch 2 demo and was thoroughly impressed! The nostalgia overload was insane. I'm old and we owned ff7 on PS1 when it released. One of my favourites of all time and I could tell from the small snippet this is truely the ultimate remake. Just have a lil longer to wait 🙏
Prince of Persia is such a good game man, a little bit difficult sometimes but not unfair. Loved it!
@15:30 I don't think Shinobi is as strong of a franchise name as people assume it is. To most people it's an old ass arcade game from the 80s and that one PS2 game in 2002. People don't even know about Nightshade or the rest of the games. Kinda odd to try and resurrect a franchise that's been dead for basically 23 years and have high expectations without doing a full 3D AAA modern game.
Great recommendations, Added two games to my wishlist, Keeper and Neon Inferno. They look fun.
11:11 I remember being in a focus group for kinitsu-gami and the game looked awesome and I was so disappointed they didn’t do like any marketing for it
I love these themes. One we can find new games, plus devs can make some of their money/profits back.
As a fan of SE, the problem with them is that they release everything on 1 console and then wait years to release it on anything else and then complain about sales.
Yeah unfortunate some players are having to wait
And it being Playstation exclusive as well
As a Square Enix fan, I disagree. I know this is a popular narrative right now, but the exclusive strategy worked very well for 2 decades. Sony often put in a lot of money and covered marketing costs.
It was a relationship that was highly beneficial for both. People would often repurchase their games on multiple platforms. That's why they did it for so long: it was successful, and other people would wait and still be interested in buying it a year or more later. It's a strategy Grand Theft Auto 6 will use: a timed PlayStation release, then a PC release.
The problem is that Final Fantasy no longer has the same clout it once did and isn't selling as well as top AAA games like God of War, Elden Ring, etc. Their quality has dropped since 10 (some say 12,) with long gaps between releases. Most of their fans are over 40, and they are not attracting enough new ones. That's why they are going multiplatform.
Being exclusive as a strategy has benefits and can still work, but only if your game has strong resonance and a widespread expectation of quality. A lot of old fans no longer buy day one after seeing the quality drop. After a long wait, FF15 sold well but left many hugely disappointed, and that probably had a knock-on effect, not to mention that 15 has been on numerous high discounts. People who had to wait in the past are obviously happy, and that's great for them, but exclusivity isn't the root of the problems square face.
@makasete30 This take is stuck in 2004. Even Square Enix has officially admitted this 'exclusive' strategy failed. Their 2024-2025 financial reports show that FFXVI and FFVII Rebirth missed profit targets specifically because they were locked to one console.
@t@t@timourdashkin2939no, my take is relevant to now. You completely missed my point. Yes, I know their financial results. No it doesn't show that - that's your interpretation. Square always have unrealistic expectations and excuses.
They have said lots of reasons over the last decade for lower sales than expected for various games that were multiplatform and none of those reasons fixed things.
Exclusivity isn't the root of the problem. If the quality of previous FF were good, they would still be doing exclusives. Their reputation has been damaged. If they had the status of GTA6, they would be more than happy to be exclusive. That's the status they once had. Going multiplatform is a knee-jerk reaction that ignores the missteps from before.
Reminds me of Square Enix managers expecting Shadow of the Tomb Raider to sell 10 million units. they were so out of touch.
(or was it TR 2013 reboot? i dont remember, but it was one of the 3)
Yeah, it was Shadow. It sold 6 million and was considered a failure. Insane.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden was one hell of a game for me personally, really wished it had gotten more sales.
Banishers is such an amazing game, tons of flaws, but the mood and the stories really worked for me. Definitely worth a purchase on sale.
I don't know man I mean I like it but I didn't finish it because I think I saw enough mid of my playthrough
Does your wife’s BF let you play it on your switch?
Agreed. Was my personal goty of 2024 because I loved the hauntings and main story
@death-emp exactly just got less intrested but really liked the beginning almost finished it
I was going to say that! haha. if people pay £50 or £30 for this , people are getting their moneys worth. There so much too do. My slight issue with it is I had some save glitch. It said it was saving the check point but didnt. I had to manually save and often . When I died , it drop me ( well the character) back to a much earlier point. Had to keep reloading the new save.
These are the type of videos I like to see, Kinitsu Gami and Neon Inferno are definitely on my wishlist now! More channels need to spotlight overlooked/underrated games.
Shinobi demo was great but I’m too broke to be buying games atm
Just buy them on sale. They cost about as much as a meal.
I bought "Keeper" a week after release and I wholeheartedly stand by what it set out to do, and what it ultimately achieved. It’s a shame that the concern I shared in my review about its ultimate fate turned out to be prophetic, with an all-time peak of just 163 players on Steam.
I suppose there’s always a chance that some mums and dads out there shared it with their kids while playing it on Game Pass, and that one day it will bounce back into our collective consciousness as one of those magical, forgotten gems.
Wow, the art looks gorgeous, but the price is a bit steep.
I think this type of game will always have a tough start, given how timeless good games can be in this genre.
The artstyle, story, and graphics can hold up for a long time.
So if one is not a hardcore gamer of this genre, these new games are competing with timeless classics that are on sale.
Im going to try it on steam deck
waiting for PS5 or switch 2 relesase
Dead space remake is friggin awesome! Near perfect game
Shame we didn't see a sequel remake
It really is. My kid had a degree in game design and she's actively seeking work in the field in this unfortunately hostile AI driven economy. Anyhoo, I told her that she HAD to play the Dead Space remake for educational purposes lol. 😂
Except stuttery PC version
0:29 What game is this? Haven’t seen it before and couldn’t see it highlighted in the video.
The First Berserker Khazan
6:37 Welp, this aged quickly lmao. Sands of Time remake officially canned
Neon Inferno looks incredible, I'm going to get it later today. Fantastic recommendations.
DOES NOBODY REMEMBER “Wild Guns” ON SNES?!?!?
@freepz1Those of us from that Era, of course we do.
@freepz1 I still play it all the time.
7:30 I can confirm you did more marketing for PoP Sands of time … I only heard about it via this channel
Maybe they should make PoP that people actually wanna play instead of a side scroller
Came here to say this
Atomfall was a great game that deserved more attention
Nah
Atomfall was a pretentious slog with a middle finger to the player with every ending you could choose.
@PermanentPsychosis yeah it sucked. Had high hopes for it too
One of the best games of 2025 for me
Very important video. Thank you for bringing attention to these games. Banishers are bought and are on my steam back log. Don't want to buy PoP because it requires uplay to play. Didn't know neon inferno has such low of a player count. Undeserved.
For the ff7 remake I am waiting for the collectors pack to get all three. And play them back to back. I'm sure I'm not the only one
Scrolled into the comments for this. I think the first sold well because everyone was hyped about it. Now most people are waiting for the last one to play them all.
@SparkrdomAccording to the PSN trophy data, 78% of players beat chapter 1 but only 34% beat the whole game. I think its unlikely that those who didnt finish it will buy part 2 and 3.
Yup, I"m NOT buying the same game 3 times...I played the original and it wasn't sold to me 3 times.
@kamahlrgnot sure how that's relevant? Sorry, we weren't talking about people who didn't finish it. Not once did we mention them, nor did the video, so it feels like you're just bringing irrelevant info, honestly. We're talking about people who never bought it, the whole video is about good games that didn't sell well, not percentages of people who did or did not finish it. That 78%/34% you quoted still bought the game. There's still a lot of people waiting for the third game to pick any of them up.
@kamahlrgyou can project this statistics for almost any game. Usually something that are longer than 10 hours to complete have ~25% completion rate in achievements.
I enjoy your content, all the way from Zambia 🇿🇲 🇿🇲 🇿🇲 love the work
Zambia is a PVP game right ? 😅
As an indie dev struggling to sell even dozens of copies myself, it frustrates me to hear when a game sells millions of copies yet it still didn't meet sales expectations.
Where can we check out some of your games??
Youre not even indian.
How youre saying youre indie dev after all?
There's a major difference in scope and budget dude. Some games a million copies doesn't break even, like seriously man if this bugs you then you're gonna struggle
@th3_b1itz87 If selling a *million* copies doesn’t even *break even* for a game that seems to me like a failure in budgeting and/or management whether that’s on the publish or the dev studio I don’t know but that what you’re saying sounds insane to me.
@TheNopeTraina million copies of Spiderman 2 for ps5 would not break even unless each copy was $300 with a budget of 300-315 million. Since most people are going to buy the game on sale instead of at full price, you need to sell roughly 3-5 million copies to break even. Games like this will sell and turn a profit, it's all about scope, reputation, and marketing. This is the same in a lot of businesses, the bigger company will always have a higher break even point just for employees, facilities, and having more capital in marketing strategies.
watching this vid after sands of time remake was announced as canceled :'(((
This is honest to god the most value ive have gotten from a gamest journalism outlet in a few years. This as a series would be the cream of the crop and i would come back for every single one. I added a bunch of games to my wish list and am playing FF rebirth right now.
*The Only reason I heard of the Prince of Persia release is because Asmongold played it.* 🤣
Banishers was a fantastic game. Excellent story and voice work
Gotta throw this one out there: Sleeping Dogs
really enjoyed Banishers. was very atmospheric.
Its by the guys who did Life is Strange and Remember Me ( great game )
@trackerdark-heart3043 yup I know their games. Vampyr was something I loved from them. Life is Strange was not for me and Remember me I haven't finished yet. It's still in my backlog.
I loved the loading screen pictures a ton that looked like oil paintings for the atmosphere they gave. I looked for a long time for them to use as my desktop background but couldn’t find any
@underoath25624I searched for that misterious song that plays in the background while not in combat. Didn't find it :(
Wow, I had no idea Keeper was out. I remember seeing a trailer a while back and thinking it had an interesting premise. Then I somehow totally forgot about it. Definitely adding it to my wishlist now.
Same; no idea that it had come out already!
It would seem that a lot of solid games are getting lost in the ocean of AAA slop. We're so saturated with advertisements for shit that we can't even see the diamonds anymore.
Strange that they alwayw have such high sales expectations... it's like they have missed that the market is flooded with games, while ever fewer gamers swin in money. 😕
unfortunately games have budgets, back in the day 2 million copies would be a smashing hit, nowadays it doesn't even cover marketing a lot of the times
Well, it is FFVII. You'd expect high sales, and the first one delivered on that. So you'd expect the second one to sell well. ME2, for example, outsold ME1. So for the 2nd part to lose that much of part 1's audience...
@Axterix13I think a lot more people were disappointed with the first game than anyone will admit. Christ, you dont even leave Midgar.
Plus, when theyre making exclusivity deals on top of that, it's really no surprise.
@hawken796 the constant demand for higher profits, inflation... capitalism ruins everything. 😞
@Axterix13ME2 outsold ME, because : 1)original ME was a time exclusive for Xbox360. 2) second ME was a better sequel in every aspect.
khazan is proper S tier
i finished banishers in november 2025, incredible game, has its flaws but genuinely great game
Khazan is so amazing in playing thru it again
" 10 Recent Good Games That Didn't Sell Well " and the first two Falcon says they sold very well lmao
banishers is one of the best written games I've ever played, a must play for witcher 3 fans.
i LOVED banishers: ghosts of new eden. i really wish it were more popular
Enjoyed Banishers. Good story, voice acting etc. combat was a bit lacking but the design engaged me throughout
What games are you currently enjoying?
Keeper failing is a tragedy of biblical proportion
I never heard of it but it looks good.
I liked ff7 Rebirth but it does get crushed under it’s own weight. And! I don’t get that half turn based half action gameplay because it just ends up not being good at any.
I hope The Alters did well, I barely knew about it and then recently picked it up and it's very clever and fun.
I have a conspiracy theory that Steam (and possibly other platforms) suppresses Polish developers.
The Alters is in my queue! Excited to give it a shot sometime.
@nullcypher I've seen more Polish dev sale events go on on steam than I've ever seen for any other country
@theisaacpigg27_32
I meant that Polish games aren't being recommended.
Agreed! ❤
Played it all the way through. Fantastic game, should have gotten so much more praise than it did.
Solid list! 😮 Played almost all the games on this list and mostly really enjoy them. A shame that we're not getting any sequels for those based on the sales performances..
Can we talk about Absolum aswell? Pretty neat roguelite beat em up that not many people know about! ❤
I missed a Talos Principle remake? Sheesh, talk about under the radar.
Hello there, Gameranx!
Hey!
@gameranxTV don’t ever talk to my son again
Ok...I'm confused? 🤔
This was an incredible video! I could really feel the love for these games through this video, and the thing that really made me pay attention was that it felt like this person had actually played each game and was trying to sell me on it like a friend would sell me on it instead of reviewing it for an arbitrary score. Best of all, it wasn't just pure positive, it also highlighted some of the negatives, some of the reasons why it didn't sell, which made it feel a lot more authentic.
Would absolutely love more videos like this to highlight underrated gems, if they will be as authentic and as genuine as this one was!
I actually played most of these. Glad to see both khazan and banishers here! Both were criminally underrated (Khazan deserved at least a couple goty noms, IMO)
Couldn't forget those two!
Not surprised this being remakes and nothing new when not being remake
When Banishers came out, I was immediately thinking I want this. It was weird because I usually try not to think that way. Homefront was a lesson why.
Honestly, I was not disappointed!! It is so good.
Shinobi art of vengeance is my second favorite video game after clair obscur expedition 33.its that good.word up son
It's a brilliant game.
@stuartmorley6894 yes it's so fun I play the sega genesis game and shinobi 🥷 art of vengeance is so good.word up son
that's 2 very bad games. Did you start gaming this year?
@astrea555 both shinobi art of vengeance and clair obscur expedition 33 is awsome games. Word up son
7:46 Khazan is a must play for anyone who like souls-like. thumbs up just for Khazan!
That's just been sitting in my library because I'm honestly a bit intimidated from what I've heard.
@mrsalty1019time to dust it off! Im gonna buy it right now and give it a go. You should too
@mrsalty1019 just play it, it is an amazing game. also make sure you switch voice to japanese far much better then the english and far less cringy. also my last advice, don't be overleveled and play NG+ (very sad no Hard Mode) but there is a surprise that will completely introduce new mechanic to play the game. make sure its the COMPLETE edition with all episodes, you can switch to play with all the characters mid fight.
Its really good. I went to it after I finished Lies of P which is my favorite but Kazhan is really good too. Beat it on Ps5 Pro and just started another play through on Pc
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is my favorite game on this list. It’s so unique and fun. It’s the best of action + tower defense. It’s full of rich lore and Japanese culture. Capcom failed to advertise this game at all.
Lost Crown and Khazan 2 of my favorites on the past few years 😢
l think the mentaI iIIness haircut they gave to the main character did a wonderfuI job of aIienating estabIished fans of Prince of Persia, so I'm glad to hear it didn't sell well.
lt's aIso worth mentioning that they had an opportunity to remedy this with the DLC outfits, but they wanted to cram that character design down everyones' throat, so even when you use the DLC outfits, you still see the avatar of the reguIar design in diaIogue segments...