5 Games Everyone Should Regret Not Playing

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While many excellent games become popular, sometimes truly great ones are overlooked. Whether due to ineffective promotion, bad luck, or simply unfortunate timing, these gems don’t always find their audience, despite being among the best in their category. Here are three such games that deserve more recognition. If you give them a chance, you’ll likely wonder why you hadn’t played them sooner.

Here are five games that everyone should regret never playing.

5) Spec Ops: The Line

Marketing Spec Ops: The Line must have been a real challenge for its publisher, 2K. At first glance, the game looks like many other shooters of its time – it has that typical tan and orange color scheme. You play as the leader of a highly trained Delta Force team on a covert mission in Dubai, and it even includes a standard multiplayer mode.

But Spec Ops quickly subverts everything you think you know about shooters. It evolves into a surprisingly deep look at violence in games, cleverly playing with your assumptions to deliver a captivating story that evokes unexpected emotions for a game of that era. As for the multiplayer? It was added later by the publisher, developed by a different team, and generally considered a disappointment by both fans and the game’s creators.

4) Jade Empire

BioWare is a renowned developer behind some of the most popular role-playing games, including titles like Baldur’s Gate 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. While many remember those games, Jade Empire, released in 2005, often gets overlooked despite being just as deserving of praise.

Let’s be clear: Jade Empire is a great game. It boasts a wonderfully creative world and offers a lot of reasons to play it again and again. While the fighting isn’t incredibly deep, it’s perfectly enjoyable. The real problem isn’t the game itself, but when it came out.

BioWare created Jade Empire with Microsoft, and it was released only on the original Xbox. Unfortunately, the game came out in 2005 just before the Xbox 360 was released, meaning many gamers were already looking forward to the next generation of consoles. Being tied to older hardware ultimately hurt the game, despite it being one of BioWare’s strongest titles.

3) Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

The GameCube game Eternal Darkness introduced a really cool idea – ‘Sanity Effects’ – but Nintendo patented it. Because many people didn’t play the game, we never saw this feature used in other titles. It’s a similar situation to the Nemesis System in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Both games had innovative concepts, but patents prevented those ideas from being further developed in future games.

Besides its innovative “Sanity Effects,” Eternal Darkness remains a truly exceptional horror game. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen a sequel or similar game, and Nintendo hasn’t yet released it on Nintendo Switch Online. Hopefully, that will change in the future, as more gamers deserve to play this classic from Silicon Knights.

2) Ico

Sony’s Japan Studio has a history of creating fantastic games that haven’t always found a large audience, especially outside of Japan. Titles like Wild Arms, Um Jammer Lammy, and Dark Cloud are all examples of this. However, Ico is perhaps the most notable case of a game from the studio that didn’t achieve the commercial success it deserved.

Fumito Ueda’s directorial debut was the game Ico. He and his team followed it up with the critically acclaimed but often overlooked Shadow of the Colossus, and later created The Last Guardian after leaving Japan Studio. While Shadow of the Colossus has gained more recognition recently with its remake, Ico still deserves to be considered a masterpiece.

Fumito Ueda’s games have quietly influenced many of the titles you love. Game developers like Eiji Aonuma (known for The Legend of Zelda), Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid), and Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) have all cited Ueda and his team as inspiration for their most celebrated work. Even director Guillermo del Toro points to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (SotC) as having a significant impact on his filmmaking approach. It’s a pity more people haven’t experienced Ueda’s games firsthand.

1) Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

Ninja Theory’s Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a futuristic retelling of the classic story Journey to the West. Andy Serkis, known for his motion capture work, provides the voice for the main character, Monkey, and delivers a compelling performance. He’s joined by Lindsey Shaw, who many will recognize as Moze from Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide, playing the character Trip.

Enslaved was remarkable when it was released because of its beautiful, colorful world, strong voice performances, and fantastic music. It really stood out from other games of the time, which often used a lot of dull, brown colors – Enslaved’s lush, green landscapes felt like a welcome change.

Beyond its flaws, Enslaved featured a surprisingly realistic and engaging relationship between its two main characters, Trip and Monkey. Despite somewhat awkward combat, the game was truly special and deserved a wider audience. Sadly, low sales prevented a sequel, and now the Horizon series feels like it’s filled the void. Enslaved was simply a game that arrived before its time.

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2025-11-19 02:13