10 Video Games You Gave Up On (That Are Actually Great)

Under Nintendo's contracts, Rare were one of the most respected developers in the industry. After signing with Microsoft, that reputation began to slip fast.

Around 2009, Microsoft put the team to work exclusively on Kinect titles. The legendary Rare working on games for a failing gimmicky peripheral just felt like a total waste and key staff members left the company fast.

As such, Sea of Thieves was Rare's real comeback. This high-sea exploring pirate adventure looked at the state of multiplayer online titles and saw to inject the genre with something unique.

After a delay the game finally released in 2018 and, as an always-online world, Sea of Thieves encountered the common but no less dreaded server issues. Furthermore, when players did finally get into the game many of them found themselves eventually asking "well, what is there to do?" and began to move onto something else.

A thoughtful roadmap kept the core audience engaged and convinced players to return in a year's time when the content and progression system was much deeper. Since then, Sea of Thieves has only gone from strength to strength. Now, if a player was to jump in, they'd find a game fit to burst with experiences from random encounters with ghost-ships to story-driven adventures, as well as pretty impressive crossovers with the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean.