Dust Them Off: Underrated Action Games That Hit Different in 2024

The Graveyard Nobody Asked For

Every year, a handful of games get buried. Not because they're bad — sometimes because they shipped the same week as a juggernaut franchise entry, sometimes because the publisher ran out of money for marketing, sometimes just because the algorithm had other plans. The result is a growing backlog of genuinely great action games that most players have never touched.

That's a shame worth correcting. Because some of these titles weren't just good — they were ahead of their time in ways that make them look almost prophetic from where we're standing now. And thanks to a combination of emulation, re-releases, and dedicated modding communities, a lot of them are more accessible than they've ever been.

Here's a case for giving some of these forgotten kings their crowns back.

Breakdown (2004) — The Body-Feel Game Nobody Remembers

Nameo's Xbox exclusive Breakdown is one of the strangest action games ever made, and it came out two decades ago. The entire game is played in first person — not just the exploration, but the punching, kicking, and hand-to-hand combat. You could look down and see your character's body. You got hungry. You got tired. Your vision blurred when you took hits.

For 2004, this was genuinely radical stuff. The kind of physical, embodied action game experience that developers are still chasing today was sitting right there on the original Xbox, largely ignored.

Why did it get overlooked? Partly timing — it launched in a crowded window and received mixed reviews that focused on its repetitive structure rather than its innovations. Partly because first-person melee combat was considered a gimmick rather than a design philosophy.

Play it now through original hardware or emulation and it's still rough around the edges. But the core idea — that action game combat should feel physical, should make you aware of your body — is something modern developers are still wrestling with. Breakdown figured that out first.

Otogi: Myth of Demons (2002) — FromSoftware Before FromSoftware Was Cool

Before Demon's Souls made FromSoftware a household name in American gaming, the studio was producing action games that barely registered on US radar. Otogi: Myth of Demons is arguably the best of them — a fast, brutal, visually stunning Xbox game built around Japanese mythology and a combat system that still feels satisfying to play.

The environments were destructible in ways that felt genuinely chaotic. The enemy design was inventive and often terrifying. The difficulty was punishing but never unfair. Sound familiar?

The game sold modestly, got a sequel that also sold modestly, and then quietly disappeared. Meanwhile, the DNA of its design philosophy went on to define one of the most influential studios in modern gaming. If you want to understand where FromSoftware came from, Otogi is essential viewing — and it's a great action game on its own terms, not just as a historical artifact.

Emulation has made it accessible again, and a small but passionate community has kept walkthroughs and fan translations of supplementary materials alive. It deserves a proper re-release, but until that happens, the determined player can still find their way in.

God Hand (2006) — The Joke That Wasn't Joking

Okay, God Hand has developed something of a cult following over the years, so calling it completely forgotten would be generous to us and unfair to the people who've been screaming about it since 2006. But it still hasn't gotten the mainstream recognition it deserves, and in 2024 it feels more relevant than ever.

Clover Studio's PS2 swan song is a deeply weird, deliberately campy brawler that plays like a serious fighting game disguised as a comedy. The difficulty system — where enemies scale in real time based on how well you're playing — is one of the most elegant design solutions in action game history. Get cocky and the game punishes you. Play scared and it lets you breathe. It's responsive in a way that most modern games still can't match.

The humor is aggressively absurdist. The combat is deep enough to reward hundreds of hours of practice. It was reviewed poorly on release because critics didn't know what to do with it — IGN's infamous 3/10 review remains one of the most embarrassing pieces of games criticism ever published.

It's available on PS3 via the PlayStation Store, and if you haven't played it, fixing that should be somewhere near the top of your list.

Geist (2005) — The Possession Mechanic That Never Got a Sequel

Nintendo published this GameCube FPS from n-Space, and it introduced a mechanic that should have launched a franchise: you play as a ghost who possesses enemies, animals, and objects to solve puzzles and fight through levels. It was part action game, part puzzle game, entirely original.

The execution was imperfect — the shooting sections felt generic compared to the possession gameplay — but the central concept was remarkable. Imagine that mechanic with modern level design and production values. The genre it could have spawned never materialized because Geist sold poorly and Nintendo moved on.

With the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack now offering GameCube games, Geist is more accessible than it's been in years. It's worth revisiting not just for what it is, but for what it suggests about roads not taken.

What the Modding Community Is Doing About All This

Here's the genuinely exciting part of this story: players aren't just waiting for publishers to rescue these games. Communities have formed around preservation, enhancement, and revival in ways that would have seemed impossible ten years ago.

High-resolution texture packs for Otogi. Balance patches for God Hand that smooth out some of the rougher edges without compromising the design. Preservation projects ensuring that games only available on discontinued storefronts don't disappear entirely.

This is player liberation in its most literal form — refusing to let corporate indifference or the passage of time erase games that deserve to exist. It's the kind of work that doesn't get enough credit, and it's the reason any of us can still play these titles today.

The Lesson for Modern Developers

Every game on this list took a swing at something different. First-person physicality. Mythology-driven brutality. Self-aware difficulty scaling. Possession-based puzzle action. None of them were rewarded for it at launch.

But the ideas didn't die. They filtered into the work of developers who played these games, thought about them, and eventually built on them. The action games that feel most vital today are standing on the shoulders of titles most players have never heard of.

If you're a developer reading this: the forgotten games are worth studying. If you're a player: go find them. The chains holding these games in obscurity are easier to break than you think.