9 Underrated Games to Procrastinate With

So for me, the second year of uni is coming up fast. And it is being met with equal amounts of anticipation and anxiety, the anticipation of easy socialising, and the anxiety of work, and a step closer to proper adulthood. Oh dear.

With games being one of the best forms of escapism for everyone, if you're after a game which you haven't encountered yet, and will be dirt cheap, then look no further than this conveniently placed list. I mean, granted, you probably wouldn't have paid full price for some of these titles, but as inexpensive and involving time-killers, you can't really go wrong. I could be working, I'd much rather be gaming.

If you don't have a week to sink into Fallout or the effort to uncover all of GTA V's intricacies, or the money to fork out for The Phantom Pain, one of these will do as a saving grace to your boredom. And while I realise that 'underrated' is a completely subjective term, you'll just have to trust me on this one.

And apologies PC users, you may be better off looking at pre-owned console games in this list.

Rage

I have utterly no idea why this game didn't get as much recognition as it deserved. For some reason, I was all over this game from the very beginning; I loved the idea, and the execution. But not many people seem to agree with me in that regard, passing the game off as a mash-up of genres which succeeds in creating a mess, rather than emphasizing it's enticing world and levels. 

It's nothing special, but you can boomerang people to death.
Courtesy of the RAGE Wikia

Granted, the game had a few flaws upon launch, especially for the PC player-base. Graphical inconsistencies were frequent, but once they were patched, you had a good single player game with lovely gun-play which you could spend hours immersing yourself in.

Little touches, like the animation of enemies when shot, or how they traversed the landscape, made this otherwise average title stand out. The cars, and car combat, harked back to Mad Max, and a plethora of mini-games made the otherwise linear, hub-based shooter feel larger and more alive than it actually was, catching an atmosphere somewhere between Fallout and Borderlands.

Brink

Saying that you in any way endorse this game, is essentially equivalent to saying you're a fan of the EDL. With the exception of a very select few, this is one of those titles which has been both critically and commercially shocking.

I beg to differ. Upon release, it did atrociously, so I can't really argue with that. What I will argue with, is that the game is awful; it certainly isn't, we just got off on the wrong foot.

One of few flaws about the game was its original price, it retailed at a full £39.99 on consoles. For that price, the lone mode it had wasn't good enough. A single player mode placed you into matched with bots, progressing through the same multiplayer maps, which didn't warrant the price tag.

But of course, the game doesn't cost that much anymore; it costs about £2 now, so if you can convince them, getting a few friends on board would make for a cracking game or two.

If I was to give my impressions of Brink now, rather than four years ago, I'd have far less complaints. I'd take note of the lack of multiplayer presence, but apart from that, Splash Damage gave us quite a grand multiplayer shooter. It's classes are very well organised, it's remarkably balanced, and it's got some lovely customisation. That being said, I'd probably push you towards Dirty Bomb, purely because people are actually playing it.

Take into account all the other little features, the great level design, or the free-running system, which was done quite a bit before the likes of Titanfall or Dying Light, and surely you can see why I'm not as harsh on this title as many, many others. Right?

Vanquish

I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I originally thought that Vanquish was going to be dreadful. As in, bottom of the bargain bin dreadful, in there with all the PS2 launch titles.

My reasoning was justified, you see. It was a single-player only shooter from a company I hadn't yet heard of. Obviously I was still unaware of Platinum's past games, and it turns out my first impressions were woefully incorrect. Admittedly, the fast-paced action, and the controls did take some getting used to, but once I did, I discovered a great game full of excessive, somewhat stereotypical action. I mean, you fight robots on a space station, and one of your superiors has a giant robot arm which frequently wields a mini-gun.

It's smooth, snappy gameplay is peppered with boss fights; this was one game which made me resort to looking up tutorials when I encountered one particularly tricky boss. If you're not a fan of highly stylised, cartoony mecha-action, don't be put off, because that's why I was initially hesitant towards Vanquish.

Platinum's frantic third-person shooter is critically acclaimed, and rightly so. If you can withstand an occasionally drab colour palette, (which shouldn't be a complaint, as it makes enemies very easy to see), or the need to bring your reflexes back up to scratch, you'll enjoy it, and kill a lot of time in the process. Also, bid your social life farewell, if you're one who likes to head up scoreboards.

Grid

Is this the best racing game of all time? I don't know, but what I can tell you is that Racedriver: GRID is the best in the series, easily. Yeah, it had some kind of yellow filter over the top of everything, but the graphics, (as of 2008) were great, and the handling was fantastic, thanks to their EGO engine which was brought in from the previous year's Colin McRae: Dirt.

I'd been waiting for a spiritual successor to all those ToCA games from my childhood, and with Grid, I found it, and thankfully, it was everything I expected it to be.

Never before had I felt so emotional over sacking a team-mate who hadn't even appeared as a face, just a silhouette in another touring car. Say whatever you fancy, but managing a race team was tough for a 12 year old me. 

Lime green means business.
Image from the Grid Wikia

To try and give you a sense of how invested I was in this game upon its release, I spent a good few hours just deciding how my cars should look. I was ruthlessly dedicated to ensuring that every sponsor was positioned correctly, and that every colour scheme was noticeable and striking, yet subtle and tasteful; there was no lime green and black combinations in my garage. 

Was this due to my earlier obsession with racing games? Probably, but many fans and awards will also state that Grid is a stellar racing game, and one which was very highly anticipated by myself and innumerable others.

Split/Second

Apologies, I may have oversold Grid, a tad. But the unnecessarily stylised Split/Second was also a good game, honestly.

This made it onto my list for similar nostalgic reasons. It was good, but it also captured an essence for destruction which few other racing games had previously. One of few examples would be the excellent Burnout: Paradise, a game which seldom draws comparisons nowadays. 

Split/Second manages to evade my childhood anxieites of "Oh God, how many people have died in this race?", by passing the experience off as a game show, which given the very shiny production, is entirely possible. It may be excessively shiny in its graphics, and I suppose you could view it as a tad too generic, what with the lack of character the game seems to have, but then again, it's like £3 so stop complaining.

To quickly evaluate, sure, you could have a Subway, but alternative you could have the best racing game inspired by Michael Bay to this day; a prospect which must surely tempt you. 

Sleeping Dogs

With the more recent, and arguably better release of GTA V, I can forgive you for forgetting about this valiant effort from Square Enix and United Front. Although I must also suggest ModNation Racers if you're in dire need of a endlessly customisable MarioKart by United Front. Countless hours have been sunk into that kart-racer, and it's equally as cheap too.

But Sleeping Dogs does have a few key features and quirks that the monolithic GTA does not. In harking back to the likes of the long forgotten True Crime series, and utilising a much different setting than GTA, Sleeping Dogs ends up being a rather different product indeed. 

For example, environmental finishers for the Arkham-esque combat were fantastic. Sure, the level of violence made this version of Hong Kong seem utterly false at times, but the ability to throw people into the boot of their own car, or more gruesomely, to throw them face-first into an air conditioning unit, made this game stand out among the rest of the open-world possibilities which were present in GTA.

If you're after something else to sink your teeth into, there's even karaoke. Or if you need something a bit less tasteful to get you going, you can beat a man with a fish. No pictures required here...

Starhawk

It is entirely possible that all the games on this list simply strike a chord with me, and while I know that's not the case with titles like Vanquish and Grid, both of which received copious amounts of critical acclaim, I do have to wonder whatever is the matter with Starhawk.

The single-player was a tad bland, there were few interesting characters present in the story, but the core gameplay mechanics were pretty grand. Many reviewers proclaimed it to have the best multiplayer of 2012 on the PS3, a entirely reputable title which it certainly deserved.

To give you a quick run-down of what Starhawk actually is, it can best be nailed down to the spiritual successor to 2007's Warhawk. If you didn't play Warhawk, I'll try again. 

Starhawk is essentially a third-person shooter which relies heavily on base-building and vehicular combat. Think of Battlefield, unfortunately, you're nowhere near. Imagine Battlefield, but then in space. And you can just spawn in a tank, or a giant shield, or a massive cannon. Then you're getting somewhere.

Starhawk offers soemthing which I haven't experienced before; incredibly seamless gameplay which manages to intertwine multiple genres in a coherent manner. Like the well-polished driving and shooting of the GTA series, Starhawk did pretty much all of it's components rather well. And critics tend to agree with that sentiment too.

My only issue with this game, should you be inspired to take part in it's organised chaos, you'll have a hard time getting online. To my knowledge, the servers for the game are still alive and well, but as with many games from three years ago, the multiplayer community has dwindled severely.

If you still want to dive on in, I wish you the best of luck trying to find other players on this refreshingly different multiplayer title.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Here's a rather apt solution to Starhawk's multiplayer woes. With a campaign which lets you tear down buildings and bridges, Red Faction: Guerrilla may seem a bit dated in comparison to Santa Monica Studio's excellent online variant, but it's a lovely little game all in all. 

Never drink and drive, kids.
Image from Tom Francis on Flickr

Unlike Starhawk, which emphasises construction, Guerrilla is quite the opposite, embracing the primordial fun of smashing stuff up. Essentially all buildings are built to perish, and their demise can be achieved through a satisfying variety of good ol' man power or slightly more civilized plastic explosives.

Granted, occasionally the physics can be aggravating; buildings can be propped up with a single support, until you decide to slowly waltz underneath the structure of impending doom. But, this looming death is seldom a worry, thanks to the fun of breaking things, or driving cars into things, or smashing people with Mjolnir. Well, it's not Mjolnir, but it's a hammer which instantaneously snaps spines in twain.

Bulletstorm

Bulletstorm is a first-person shooter from the folks at Epic Games. It is completely unremarkable, thanks to its average visual fidelity, the lacking multiplayer mode, and the forgettable story. So why is it even mentioned here?

Within the linear levels of Bulletstorm, you will find few things of interest. The one redeeming factor of the game are the rather fun mechanics, which aren't even wholly original. The main distinction here is the 'skillshot' system, awarding you points for particular unique or otherwise interesting kills.

The rest of Bulletstorm has been done before, but the return of such a crude and simple game has been long awaited. What's not to understand when it comes to shooting a bandit in the face with a Quake-esque quad-barrelled shotgun? 

Some of the environmental kills in Bulletstorm are particularly satisfying; take 'Fan-tastic', for example, which entails you drilling an enemy into the ceiling, causing them to spin like a typical ceiling fan. Or, for the more childish of you, ejecting an enemy from an airlock in one of the final missions will reward you with the 'Ejeculated' skillshot. I mean, technically you didn't fire a shot, you merely pulled a lever, but it works.

There's nothing too mentally taxing about Bulletstorm, and there doesn't need to be. Just like many of the games on this list, it offers a much-needed dose of stress relief. Sometimes you don't want to manage virtual empires, or learn the intricacies of an in-game system of currency. Sometimes you just need to shoot someone in the arse, and be rewarded for doing so.