Have you ever been addicted to a game you didn't expect to enjoy so much?

[Ballas]

Assassin's Creed II: Bought this game because my PC couldn't handle GTA IV at the time and I wanted a good open-world sandbox game. Came across this game on an internet list ranking the bet open-world cities, with Venice somewhere in the list. Then read some reviews and bought it, still not knowing what to expect. Turns out, after some initial problems I had with UPlay it had a quite a lore, played it more and started to get the hang of things, started liking it more and more and then the story unexpectedly twisted from a happy family to betrayal, and things just leaped up from there.

The more I played it, the more I loved it. And then I unlocked Venice, my god what a breathtaking moment it was. It dazzled me the first time I stepped out from the ship with its glimmering canals and beautiful architecture. And it was only going up from there, till the finale, one of the best missions in any open-world game I've played. AC II is now among my favourite games of all time, which I played only due to my PC not being able to play GTA IV at the time. Thanks Rockstar, you did it again!

Killzone 2: I was not a fan of FPS games, and I hadn't heard great things about the Killzone series. Killzone 2 was on a huge discount so I decided to try it. The moment I started the game I was blown away with the intro CGI, then the in-game graphics blew me away and the solid gameplay mechanics, fantastic AI and great level design kept me hooked. To this day it remains one of my favourite FPS games. Killzone 3 is better, but I expected it to be good after playing Killzone 2. But I didn't expect this one to be so good.

NFS: Hot Pursuit: I love open-world racing games, thanks Bunouts Paradise and NFS: MW. I couldn't care less about circuit racers like NFS Underground. So I wasn't expecting much when I bought this game for a discount. I bought it due to some of the internet love and the great reviews it had, but I couldn't really believe them. But when I played it? Completely. Blown. Away. The core racing mechanics were incredibly solid to boot, the graphics were beautiful and the option of playing as either racer or cop was a fantastic idea that unbelievably translated even better in actual gameplay. The tools at your hand never feel overwhelmingly powerful or too weak, nor were there too many or too little of them. The difficulty was spot on, and while the game was hard it did a great job at never feeling cheap, thanks to the mechanics, physics and AI, when you lost it felt like it was your lack of skill rather than the game throwing insurmountable odds at you, and I've lost a lot, but enjoyed even when I did. The soundtrack was just incredible and complementred and enhanced all those intense gameplay moments perfectly. What an amazing game.