10 Underrated Video Games Nobody Appreciated In Their Time
7. Vampire: The Masquerade Should Be Up There With Half-Life 2
One of the first games to use Valve's Source engine, Vampire: The Masquerade was a technical marvel when it released back in 2004.
Unlike other first-person shooters, Vampire put the focus on interacting with NPCs and enemies, requiring a system that far exceeded what other games in the genre were capable of. Where those releases would feature around 20 character models, this ambitious title had around 150, with an animation pool that reached 3000 individual assets.
Consequently, characters in the game looked better than ever, boasting lifelike animations and facial expressions, but unfortunately so much time was spent perfecting these systems that the game itself wasn't finished on time, and was eventually rushed out.
Suffering from a truncated development period, the title was already handicapped when it hit shelves, and it didn't help that its direct competition was Half-Life 2. It crashed and burned, but while players didn't miss out on not having any future instalments in the series, it should still be remembered for pushing the medium forward when it came to lifelike character models and emotional expressions.