Actually not so much underrated so much as unfairly utterly panned and reviled is 'Enter the Matrix' its one of the games I'm playing at the moment and I find it a fun little romp to dip in and out of that doesn't play quite like anything else, I usually take FPS games very slowly, picking off the bad guys one by one and obsessively saving every blinking time but The Matrix somehow makes you peg it around like a loon and you can only save at the end of a section, I'm actually glad the sections are pretty short because how long do you want to go before a save? Plus it helps with the dipping in - making progress - dipping out way I'm playing it
It must be just about the only game with full on FMV and regenerating health - just caught the overlap of one going out and the other coming in! (although they've still put health packs in out of the way places so you health has probably regenerated by the time you get to them - pointless!) Also its got 'bullet time' because its The Matrix but the play style doesn't make it anywhere as useful as it is in Max Payne
Still, I like it!

Overrated:

Planescape Torment: Well-written, some great ideas, characters, and dialog; lousy gameplay, poor endgame, philosophically dubious, and now that they have a Kickstarter going, every third post seems to be about how Torment considered the question "What can change the nature of a man." Well it didn't do that well. I mean, I liked it (and backed the Kickstarter), but given the way gamers go on about it, a game can be overrated and still be good, which I think is the case here.

Final Fantasy 7: I liked it as a kid, but I never had an idea that I was playing some kind of immortal classic. Replayed it as an adult, still didn't; laughed at loud at the death of Aeris, not because I hated her character (although, come to think of it, I sort of did) but because it was so badly done. Are there really adults who get emotional over that?

Ocarina of Time: Wow, 3D. But all I can remember from playing this is how immensely empty the game world felt. In Link to the Past or Link's Awakening, it seemed like there was always something going on; maybe bombing that blocked up cave won't reveal anything super important, but maybe it will. Exploration! OoT I would characterize as "empty overworld hub connecting together dungeons that aren't that great." Seriously, don't get it.

Including overrated games but not any underrated games seems a little pessimistic, but, sadly, I have to run. Games that I consider underrated exist.

I hate New Vegas as well, although I think that my opinion of it would be significantly improved if I hadn't insisted on completing the piece of shit. I kid you not, it took me two weeks to play through the last thirty minutes of New Vegas because the game took a habit of crashing, freezing, chugging and generally making my life miserable. I am an Obsidian fan and I do think of myself as tolerant of buggy games, but the parts that I remember of New Vegas were absolutely unacceptable.

Can't be bothered with lists so gonna just 1
Overrated- Uncharted (3 especially)- They are all good, 1 being best, but 2 and 3 are way too scripted and hand hold you 90% of game

Underrated- Alpha Protocol- This game was a great RPG even if buggy. Funny enough the main complain I saw in reviews was the shooting was too random i.e. the point

Yup. That's the gist of it. :-)

I'm not entirely sure why would GTA 4 get treated as a 'too serious' - it has just moved the humor elsewhere, and wasn't as silly, but that is kind of the point. When you look at it for what it is, it's a very satirical game, very cynical, but it
quite obviously doesn't take itself all that seriously. I actually like a lot of what it has tried to achieve, I guess it would have done better without being called GTA.

^This
- Two Worlds
- Nox (not so much underrated but under the radar

Overrated
Sorry GOG but Psychonauts and POP WW

To put some perspective on this, I own a fair number of GOG games and all the others are highly rated and deservedly so.

Yeah, it's very satirical. People seem to call it serious because it lacks the over-the-top zany gameplay of San Andreas, which Saint's Row took to the extreme afterward.

Personally I liked the more dry, satirical tone of IV. I think it's also the same tone most Rockstar games have had, including GTA3 and Vice City. It's really only San Andreas that got super crazy, and some people have expected that from every Rockstar game since.

I didn't say any of these games was unplayable on PC. I said that using the widescreen mode in GTA 3 does make it unplayable because of the crosshair issue. And i don't know about you, but i feel that the GTA series were meant to be played with a controller and autoaiming.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. But for all these games i certainly wouldn't choose the PC version. I already made the mistake of playing GTA 3 on the PC, which was far from a smooth experience. Since i own a console, i see no reason to insist on playing awful ports. I'd rather play these games the way they were initially designed. Take FFVII, for example. I can buy the original PS1 version on PSN for my PS3 for about the same price as the Steam version. There's no reason for me to go with the PC version.

The same goes for old games. I'd much rather buy Blood Omen on the PS1, for example, than trying the PC version which has known compability issues on modern hardware. Yes, the PC version is superior, but i don't even know if it will work on my PC, why bother? Not to mention that the PC version is much harder to find.

I like GTA IV, too. It has kept his humour. And that's what GTA was all about beside the big open world. It lacks of a good story and its telling but it's fun though.

Remember Vice City's commercials:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx8hCFbZuZE

Soooo hilarious!

@Topic: There are too many overrated and underrated games to count outhere. Everybody got his own reasons to rate a game like he did.

I agree with you there, but i understand why people didn't like it that much. It was not the proper Fallout RPG everyone wanted.

Funny how opinions differ on this one. I'm playing it right now and to be honest, it's boring me to death. It's even worse than I expected it to be. But I'm glad you had fun with it.

Totally underrated:

Haze

It's considered to be one of the biggest flops on PS3. The aftermath almost led to shutdown of Free Radical Design and them eventually being purchased and renamed by Crytek. This game seems to be cursed and I expected nothing but an awful FPS when I popped it in my console last year. Surprisingly, I liked it. It has a very sophisticated, almost dystopian plot, dealing with issues like totalitarian military dictatorship vs. underground resistance and methodical government-funded drug abuse. Just compare that to all the mindless 'have to kill bad guys for survival' stories in shooters in recent years. Gameplay mechanics and level design are more than solid, and it has a distinctive graphic style. Haze is in every aspect worth playing and shurely didn't deserve its fate.

It's a common thing with me : the least expectations, the greatest wonderful surprises (did you read my piece about Fallout 2 ? :)

Man, i thought i was the only one who had enjoyed Haze. Actually, i loved Haze. I don't understand why it got so much hate. It was a solid shooter with an interesting story (which is pretty rare for a FPS). I really liked the premise of the Nectar drug and how it affected gameplay. The fact that Nectar alters the soldiers' perception of reality was really cool. Oh, and the soundtrack was amazing. Sometimes i pop my disc in just to listen to the main menu's music.

The only issues i can see on it is that the graphics are subpar for the PS3. Some of the textures look like they were taken from a PS2 game. Oh, and the netcode for online multiplayer was horrible.

EDIT: here's the main theme song i was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BLBUIgmhM

HL 2 is the first thing I think of when the subject is overrated games.
It takes ages of scripted cutsescenes before there's any action, and then the action is pure pop-a-mole. The enemy is always lying in ambush, pops up and then Gordon pops them down. Poor Gordon never gets to be the hunter, which would have made a nice change. Also the physics engine was wasted since it never or rarely led to any emergent gameplay, but instead was used for lowly Adventure type gameplay when you had to push a washing machine or something down from a ledge to create an exit to the next area.

I only played until Ravenholm or whatever the zombie infested place was called.

Underrated: IGI2- Covert Strike.
Some very good area design, with open, unlinear levels. Reminds me of Deus Ex, but not quite as good.
Let down by rather poor AI: they are almost blind, but have godlike hearing. But still one of my favourite FPS games.