10 Critically-Acclaimed Video Games That BOMBED

Normally, in any other commercial sector, if your products sell well and receive critical acclaim... they're considered outright successes, and your company will subsequently flourish.

Does your sandwich shop make great sandwiches which Sandwich Monthly's Bob Ploughman refers to as "a lunchtime tuna mayo de force"? Then, your sandwich shop will do well.

Unfortunately, however, the video game industry has scaled to a point very few other sectors have even come close to matching, and as such, critical praise and even huge sales volumes don't equal profitability. Games are now so enormous that some publishers don't even expect to make any money until several years after a game's release (and when success is never guaranteed, two to five years without breaking even is a big gamble to take).

It's not an outrageous claim to say the gaming industry has grown too bloated to fit into its own jeans, and that judging games to be "failures" if they only make tens of millions is maybe indicative that the AAA space needs to be taken down a peg or two.

Even so, this is the system we're currently playing with, and as such we can only expect more excellently-reviewed games (some with millions of copies sold) to still be considered "bombs."

There are very few development teams considered a "sure bet" in this industry, but one such team is Insomniac.

Masters of fine, fluid traversal and unorthodox movement mechanics mixed with wacky and inventive weaponry, Insomniac's action-platformer roots with Ratchet And Clank and Spyro can be felt in a lot of their newer games, and the most recent SpiderMan titles are widely considered to have some of the finest player locomotion in the biz.

So, then, it's bizarre that Sunset Overdrive, considered "proto-Spidey" in movement and "meta-Ratchet" in combat, fared so poorly in terms of overall sales.

Sunset Overdrive launches the player into a gaudy world of energy drink-fueled zombies and tells them the only way to survive is to bounce off parasols, grind along power lines, and fire records out of an LP submachine gun (relatable stuff). From saving a squad of LARPers to battling the literal developers of the game, there genuinely is nothing quite like it. So, what went wrong?

Unfortunately, the game was an Xbox One exclusive at launch, and really felt the shockwaves of the poorly-received console reveal event which drove fence-sitting gamers away from Microsoft's box over to the PS4. And, despite some serious petitioning, gamers never saw a Sunset Overdrive release on PlayStation consoles, dramatically reducing the game's reach and appeal.

Nowadays, it's often discounted on the Xbox store and Steam, so keep an eye out for Insomniac's overlooked gem.