Most will be familiar with the feelings of frustration that comes with waiti🍬ng for an anticipated new game release. At best, you may have to wait months before getting your hands on the game, and at wo♔rst, several painstaking years. Then there are the games that get released within the very same breath that they’re announced.
Every once in a while, a game will drop out of nowhere. Just as soon as an announcement trailer of a cool new game finishes, the glorious words “Available now” will flash across the screen - to the glee and delight of inpa🐈tient players around the world. Shadow-dropped games are often met with huge succes💧s and great favor from the gaming community at large. Here are some of the most memorable.
10 Unravel 2
Just as quickly as it was announced, Unravel 2 was available to download right after EA’s 2018 E3 press conference. Fans of the weird little anthropomorphic creatures made of yarn could now engage in the game’s fun physics-based platforming and thoughtful puzzle-solving 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:with another player in co-op.
The first Unravel title was released under the EA Originals banner and became quite a success in the indie scene. In an industry filled with🎀 lonesome s💜ingle-player experiences and persistent live service games, having an honest-to-goodness co-op platformer was a nice surprise and a welcome addition to many a gamer’s library.
9 Halo Inf𝕴inite Multiplayer
What better way to celebrate twenty years since the release of Xbox and Halo: Combat Evolved than with free access to the newest Halo’s multiplayer? After much rumor and speculation, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo Infinite's free-to-play multiplayer was shadow-dropped alongside Xbox’s 20th-anniversary stream - a good one month or so before it was initially slated.
For Halo fans, this was a pretty big deal, as it gave gamers a chance to get their hands on one of the most highly anticipated Halo games in years. Initially, the game was met with much praise due to its great shooting mechanics and map design. Since its launch, Infinite’s multiplayer has been riddled with a myriad of issues that 🐓have seriously hampered the experience for a lot of tཧhe player base. A lot needs to be done to improve and salvage the game, but it’s still hard to deny the impact of its initial release.
8 ♌ Hollow Knight On Nintendo Switch
Right after Nintendo’s E3 Direct in 2018, players were given the opportunity to play 16🏅8澳洲幸运5开奖网:one of the best indie action adventures ever. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hollow Knight was released😼 the year before on other platforms, but it really found its home on Nintendo’s brilliant hybrid home console.
The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:mysterious and sprawling cave network of Hallownest is the perfect backdrop for the game’s Metroidvania nature. The tense boss fights and explorative backtracking is particularly suited to handheld play. Here’s hoping that its much-anticipaꦍted sequel, Silksong, will get the same shadow drop treatment someday very soon - pretty please, Nintendo?
7 ✨ Persona 4 Golden On Steam
For the longest time, the only way to play the brilliant 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Persona 4 Golden was on PlayStation Vita. Originally released exclusively for Sony’s handheld, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the portable RPG was a greatly enhanced port of the already beloved Persona 4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:with new party members and demons to recruit, significant additions to th♔e plot, and more fleshed-out 🌱characters.
As the most definitive way to play the game, it was a shame that only a niche audience could play it. That wasꦕ until itꦛ was launched as a surprise release on Steam in early 2020. It immediately broke sales records on the platform and was an extremely lucrative venture for Atlus and SEGA. It was such a success, it prompted an even wider release on pretty much every other platform in early 2023.
6 Tetris 99
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tetris 99 is a game that absolutely no one aske﷽d for but actually ended up being someth🅘ing really special. Released as a surprise during a Nintendo Direct at the beginning of 2019, Tetris 99 was Nintendo’s unique answer to the ever-pervasive Battle Royale genre.
It’s basically what it says on the tin - you are pitted against 99 other Tetris players as you use a variety of defensive and offensive block-placing strategies to become a Tetris God. The game was used to push Nintendo’s new online service, and players were granted access at no additional fee as a way of promoting their new online initiative. It paid off, as it’s still one of the most played♏ multip🥀layer games on the platform.
5 P.T.
Rather than an actual game, P.T. was more of a glorified tech demo of what an eerily atmospheric horror title from the brilliant minds of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del♍ Toro would look like. Announced (and then quickly released) at Gamescom 2014, players co🐼uld hop onto their PS4s to experience a short-lived horror escapade.
It had amazing photo-realistic visuals, which added to its incredibly creepy atmosphere. It turns out it was all an elaborate promotion for the next 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill game starring Norman Reedus. Unfortunately, plans fell through, and the game never came to be. It led to🐷 the bizarre occurrence of Kojima removing the demo from PSN entirely, which led to many fan remakes of this short-lived horror piece.
4 Hades
Before Hades came along and became the darling action indie juggernaut that it is, Supergiant Games already had a fantastic pedigree and brilliant backlog of classic games under its belt. As soon as the game was announced at the Game Awards in 2018, fans could immediately get their hands on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:an Early Access version of the game.
Hades was met with a very positive reception right out of the gate and was praised for its beautifully vibrant visuals, frantic top🔯-down combat, and its brilliant story and characters based on Greek mythology. The popular action roguelike game was surprisingly polished and content-rich for an early acܫcess title, ultimately leading to its successful sales and critical acclaim upon full release.
3 M🌠etroid Prime Remastered
After much speculation, and the rumor mill running rampant for several years before its inevitable announcement, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metroid Prime Remastered for the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch couldn’t have come soon enough. Announced and dropped during a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Direct in February 2023, fans new and old could finally g🅰et their hands on one of the best shooters in history.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:As a proper remaster, the graphics have been updated and improved to meet mod🥃ern standards, while further control option๊s and animation upgrades to its cutscenes were added. The gameplay is virtually wholly unchanged, which is at should be - Nintendo knows not to mess with perfection.
2 Hi-Fi Rush ꦍ ൲
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush is an example of a shadow-dropped game done right. Comingꦉ out of nowhere dꦗuring the Xbox and Bethesda Developer Direct in January 2023, this awesome rhythm-action title was released just after its announcement trailer was dropped during the stream.
Despite releasing on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game Pass to huge success, it didn’t stop the game from climbing up Steam’s charts at an impressively rapid pace. There’s an argument to be made that Game Pass is a brilliant promotion tool for sm🅰aller games - clearly, the wider community saw the buzz and acclaim the game was getting elsewhere and wanted to dip in to see wha⭕t all the fuss was about. What they found out is that Hi-Fi Rush is a fantastic action game with vibrant visuals, satisfyingly snappy controls, and a killer soundtrack.
1 Apex Lege𒀰nds
As big of a game as it is now, it can be hard to remember that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends came completely out of nowhere to the surprise of absolutely everyone. Riding on the battle royale coattails of Fortnite and PUBG, Respawn brought their first-person shooter pedigree to the widely popular multiplayer ge💙nre.
It enjoyed an extremely successful launch and managed to attract a huge player ⭕base from the word go. As a free-to-play live service title, the game has had countles🐻s updates throughout its many seasons and still regularly tops many ‘most played’ charts across a variety of platforms.