Video game reviews are big business now. And while I really didn’t want to get into the games review business when I started Lungfishopolis, I feel a need to bring peoples’ attention to a few games which got a lot of terrible reviews, but which I found to be very good games. I’ve played all but one of them more than once, and I’ll likely go back and play most of them again. I’m silly like that.

Firstly, Enter the Matrix. It got an abysmal Metascore of 58, but I remember liking it. I haven’t replayed it for perspective, and I remember hating many of the driving sequences, but the combat was fun. Running up walls and diving through the air in bullet-time while shooting at enemies, then beating the snot out of them in over-the-top hand to hand is a lot of fun. The hovercraft-piloting segment was just plain stupid and broken, but that was at the very end of the game such that you could completely skip it and miss nothing.

You got to play the role of either Niobe or Ghost, and in a design choice similar to Resident Evil 2, this gave you two separate angles on the same story, adding to replay value. In the car segments, Niobe always drives and Ghost always shoots, so you’re either only shooting or only driving.

By far the best part of the game is the movie footage. They filmed footage for Enter The Matrix at the same time they were filming the second and third Matrix movies, so there’s a ton of movie footage that never appeared in the films. Some of it is pretty damn good. My favorite: the scene where Ballard fights Seraph. It’s great mostly because of the fantastic quote at the end. There was a funny scene where Ghost talks about onanism too.

Another game I really enjoy is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. PC Gamer panned it for being buggy and repetitive, and 1UP made fun of the kick mechanic and character development. But although I’ll agree that the plotline isn’t exactly inspired and the slutty demon chick is annoying, I liked Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It has the best FPS swordplay mechanics I’ve seen – definitely better than Oblivion – and some fairly fun stealth gameplay. I actually really enjoyed the oft-maligned kick mechanic, and thought that the exhaustion meter and the fact that more powerful enemies can block a kick limited the kick enough that it was not overly powerful. The kick simply introduces a way to use the environment to your advantage. If there’s not a ledge to kick an enemy off, there may be a spiked wall or a support beam to kick him into.

I enjoyed Dark Messiah’s environments and level design, and really had a lot of fun sniping enemies from a distance with my bow. And somehow, sneaking up behind an orc and stabbing him in the neck or kicking him off a thousand-foot cliff just never gets old. There were some fairly intense chase sequences early in the game which at first annoyed the crap out of me. Somehow, going back through the game a second time, I’m not finding them nearly as bad.

I started replaying the game not long ago, and although I stopped when I started playing Crysis and Mass Effect, I’ll likely go back to it soon. Warning: I’ve heard that the console version of this game is far worse.

Next up, Fallout Tactics. First off, I’ve got to let it be known that I was huge a fan of the original two Fallout titles. The storyline and the open world were fantastic. The turn-based combat was excellent, and the only thing that (to me) could have made it better is to allow the player to control a party of characters, a la Baldur’s Gate. One of the reasons I loved Baldur’s Gate so much was because of the strategic combat. Fallout Tactics allows me that strategic combat that I crave so much.

Yeah – I’ll totally agree that the storyline isn’t nearly up to the standards of the first two games. But this game was largely about gameplay rather than story. I absolutely loved sneaking four of my men into position, having my shotgun guy lie prone and crawl around a corner into the raiders’ hut and blast him point blank, or positioning the guy with the rocket launcher up on a fire escape. Surrounding the enemy before they know you’re there is a lot of fun. And then kneeling behind a barrel or having a firefight through a window or standing in a trench for cover, trying to take out that Deathclaw before it gets close enough to rip your head off – it’s what makes the whole game fun.

I like being able to control an entire squad, and specialize the different members in different skills. Having one member who can drive the vehicles well and make tight turns, and another who can sneak up right under an enemy’s nose, a lockpicker/safecracker, and maybe a sniper. And having someone who’s good with landmines is always useful.

Temple of Elemental Evil, despite its many flaws, was a really fun game. My biggest complaints about it was that the a huge optional ending segment of the game was so buggy that I could never complete it, and that like Throne of Bhaal, the final boss is nearly unbeatable.The critics’ biggest complaints were the bugs and the complexity. There have since been many patches to fix the bugs and to correct the incorrect implementations of rules detected by a horde of D&D fanatics, but I still don’t think 100% of the bugs are gone.

Like Fallout Tactics, the biggest single thing that I liked about this game was the excellent strategic combat. It used 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, implementing rules that many D&D players may not even have been aware of, thus the complaints about complexity. but I loved it. You could wait to delay your initiative, ready your bow so that as soon as any enemy spellcaster started casting a spell you could shoot them to interrupt it, double move, run, charge, cast a counterspell, and perform many other strategic actions. You can even craft magic items using the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset.

I’ll admit that the coolest-looking fight in the game was one of the first, against the giant frogs. Watching them jump out of the swamp and hop up to your party, then snag your wizard with its tongue and swallow him simultaneously sucked and was awesome. You lose a wizard, but hey – at this point you’re first level and you can go roll up another one. Besides, didn’t that look freaking cool when he got… digested?

Once you’re in the temple, the game lets you pit temple factions against each other and play up the intrigue and politics, but I generally just run through killing everything. And yes, I’ve replayed this game, and added all the Circle of Eight patches. There’s actually a lot of really good user-generated content too. Now that I’ve got a 3.0ghz dual core machine, I’ll probably go back at some point and see if the game plays any better.

The final game on my list is Thief: Deadly Shadows. Although it generally seems to be considered the least of the three Thief titles, it’s the only one I’ve truly loved. I’m playing it now, and loving it.

Amongst stealth games, it’s in my top five, alongside titles like Beyond Good and Evil and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. Worth a play if you’ve never tried it.