I am a sucker for underdog stories. But one thing that bugs me about some games is how badly they match the losing story to the winning game play.

Many games will have you play a level or a mission were you utterly lay waste to the enemy without taking a scratch only to have the game narrative say something l "We successfully held the line here but others areas were not so luck, we have to retreat."

It seems forced, I wish more games actually let you feel like you were the underdog who could fail at any moment.

That is one thing I loved about the game Myth: The Fallen Lords. After each mission you really felt like you just barely won by the skin of your teeth (and often you did) and when the game narration tells you that you need to retreat you whole heartedly agree with it. Or if a battle else were was lost you really believe it because the enemy feel like a real threat.

What other games out there are good about capturing that underdog fighting a lost cause feel.

There are many of that type, and of course any game without different levels won't have the exact issue you mentioned. I'm not sure where your interests lie, but you might want to investigate a game called AI War: Fleet Command, as it does a good job of keeping the player on the verge of defeat right up until they win. It's also currently 75% off on the developer's site to celebrate the fifth (!) expansion.

My Dungeons & Dragons campaign, although I assure you that this is more due to my players making decisions ranging from retarded to truly bizarre than to my intentions as dungeon master.

EDIT: Oh, and IL-2 Sturmovik. Fucking hell.

You are absolutely right. A lot of strategy games irritate me with this. How come the last mission is the most difficult? I already control 95% of the world I should have had so many resources, superior technology, unstoppable army and reinforcements arriving from every direction. And yet only a few games justify it properly.

My beloved Age of Wonders is a good example. Ok, ok it's not so good when you are playing the undeads because Lord Inioch is on your side and that only leaves humans superiority to explain it and I'm just not buying it ;) Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne makes it better because this time Inioch is definitely not on your side.

I love how Emperor: Battle for Dune cope with it. In your second last mission you need to destroy a homeworld of your opponent and it's quite reasonable that it will be a hard battle. And then, the last mission is perfectly justified because you actually have to... oh, wait. No spoilers! Those who have played it knows what I mean and those who haven't should be ashamed ;) But I will not spoil it for you nevertheless. But believe me - it really is justified that this mission is hard.

And Myth: The Fallen Lords is a perfect example. I wish we had it here... perhaps it's a good time to dig the retail version. But I have no idea where did I put this. Anybody knows whether it works on Win 7?

Excellent choices right there.

Incubation and Space Hulk (1993) come to mind. Both are similar in that, for the most part, it's just your squad desperately trying to maneuver through a very ugly situation, meet it's objectives, and get out alive. Quite a few games try it, but these succeeded. Very intense gameplay and as you win you'll be left with a "no rest for the weary" type of feeling.

Veering away from tactical games, I couldn't help but think of Half life 2. The game kept me convinced that the the main character and human survivors were in pretty dire straits for most of the game. If you should end up feeling overconfident near the end of Half Life 2 Ep.2, you'll be in for a rude awakening at the very end.

The Disciples games do this pretty well.

Do you play with the Knights of the Dinner Table? :-)

http://www.kodtweb.com/

The original arcade Commando.

Wing Commander isn't a good example to me. In the sense of the overall campaign, maybe (the arching narrative of WC3 is that Confed is like the Confederacy in the Civil War; rigged to fight a losing war from start to finish). During in-flight missions, not so much, since it's you and your wingman hosing dozens of enemy. 2 ships taking out 20, 30, sometimes more over the course of a mission doesn't exactly feel like the odds were balanced or that you were a scrappy underdog barely getting by the skin of your teeth. One of the only good things about Wing Commander Prophecy is that they tried changing that dynamic a little bit with massive dogfights of numerous pilots on each side.

Also Christopher Blair isn't some anonymous scrub like many of one's nameless wingmen in Wing Commander IV or Prophecy. Even in the first game he was a top-of-his-class hotdog who became one of the big-boy pilots in just a few weeks. Even that limp schmuck Casey you play in Wing Commander Prophecy came descended from greatness (Iceman's kid) and was an academy superstar.

I barely remember Freespace (mostly my boredom) so I can't comment on it.

Actually the Oddworld games always captured the underdog feel for me the best. Nothing says underdog like the clumsy, gangly, weaponless molasses-mouthed Abe.

Demon's/Dark Souls of course. Surprised no one has beaten me to it yet.

P.S.: You might want to ask someone from the staff to rename your thread. There's something wrong there.

I don't understand the title, this made me actually read the OP. =)

Good call. Freespace, and even more so FS2 did a great job of making you feel like you were definitely fighting a losing battle, especially given the size and firepower of some of the capital ships in FS2. Nothing like spending a whole mission scrambling to protect one of your own capital ships from waves of enemy bombers, just to have a massive enemy capital ship show up and destroy it in a matter of seconds. Being told to retreat after that definitely didn't elicit any arguments.