Sometimes reviewers are blind to the awesomeness of some games. They bash them left and right and only a few people happen to play and enjoy such experiences.
I'm not sure about that particular statement, generally, the games I really enjoy but which were panned are game I see plenty of issues with, but where I can look past those because I enjoy another aspect of them. Some review outlets try to write reviews from the position of what the general audience is likely to think of the game, and then it's probably hard to praise something that is pretty much made strictly for a niche group. Or for that matter, the reviewer may not personally like that kind of game, which is fine too. I try to find critics whose views are similar to mine, so that something they personally like or dislike is likely to be true for me to, doesn't make the others blind to some games' awesomeness, but, opinions and stuff.
As for games like that, I think Dark Horizon is a really weird but still good space combat game. The translation is among the weirdest google translate-y things I've ever heard, bordering on incomprehensible. It's unmistakably Russian, and is really atmospheric and fun to play, despite dialogue like this:
I also really loved Dune 2000, which it seems the majority didn't think was very good (on flip side, the Red Alert series is pretty much my least favorite Westwood games, and they seem to be the most popular among everybody else). And, yes, I had played both Cryo's Dune and Westwood's Dune II beforehand.
I also thought Armor Command was a pretty good early 3D-RTS. Not exactly on par with stuff like Homeworld, Ground Control or Warzone 2100, but it was released two years prior to them, and still managed to get the camera controls to work better than just about any of the present day polygonal RTSes (like Dawn of War, Company of Heroes or StarCraft 2).
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