I don't think this quite fits the decade, but it's close enough.
Metal Gear Solid.
The hype made it sound like the game was a mix of orgasm and chocolate. STEALTH ACTION! AWESOME BOSS BATTLES! CINEMATIC STORYLINE! IT POOPS KITTENS!
Now, to be fair, it did deliver on some of the promises. The boss battles were pretty cool, especially Psycho Mantis. And, along with FF VII, it really pushed the medium towards that summer blockbuster cinematic feel.
But, man, the story was a needlessly convoluted mess, and the voice acting (sans Cam Clarke, who could make Movie Phone sound legit) and characters just sucked. I'm sorry, but David Hayter's Snake sounds like the 1990's X-Men cartoon's Wolverine. As in, shitty, one note cartoon voice. As I played, I just kept wondering why I even bothered.
I bought and played through most of MSG2 in the hopes that it would tone down the bullshit and focus more on the Tactical Stealth portion of the game. Man, was I wrong. Hearing about Otacon's little fling with his stepmom in the middle of saving the world just ended it for me. Completely unnecessary, dumb, and mind boggling.
Nightslyr on
PSN/XBL/Nintendo/Origin/Steam: Nightslyr 3DS: 1607-1682-2948 Switch: SW-3515-0057-3813 FF XIV: Q'vehn Tia
I would label the "controversial" games as OoT, WW, and TP. There's few people who feel mildly about all three. For the most part people feel strongly in varying ways about them. This is just from my observation, I could be wrong.
OoT was the first to head toward that more "serious and epic" feel.
Wind Waker makes people mad because it's got a light-hearted presentation but is way more epic than OoT. So whatever.
TP I think just made people realize they're tired of Zelda games? I haven't played it. I wouldn't be tired of them as a result though.
I don't know, dude. The first three zeldas were all pretty dark and gloomy for their time.
Hyrule in Zelda 1 was bleak and kind of abandoned. Few friendly people, no towns, just a wild and dangerous countryside with monsters around every corner. Then you go into the Underworld/Dungeon levels and its these old, creepy, decrepit temples filled with scary monsters, traps and a very haunting soundtrack.
Zelda 2 had a bit more adventure-y feel to it, and the towns offered some respite, but the overall aesthetic was still relatively serious. The dungeons were still dark and were very easy to get lost in. I still remember being like, four years old, going down into the first dungeon and seeing all those blood-red windows with the rat-headed men charging at me and trying to kill me.
LttP was a little more bright and colorful, but you spent most of it in the dark world, where everyone is turned into a twisted mutant, all the buildings and towns lie in ruins, and even getting turned into a pink bunny can be a pretty scary experience. There was a little comic relief in LttP but not as much as in later games.
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
EDIT: I barely need an excuse to post this track, but I think it sums up the atmosphere of the original games as good as any summary I can give.
Every Silent Hill after 3. 3 is barely making the cut. It's like they forgot what made the game great and then completely screwed up everything else, too.
Tokyo Extreme Racer 3 - whatever. They seriously couldn't of made it more obvious that htey didn't give a shit about the series. The car models that were regular cars were 2 - truck and car. The added highways were BLAND and unexciting. The villians were terribly made and seriously the biggest dicks ever (purposefully exiting highways to give "Draws") or refusing to battle me even though I meet the requirements. The best was that they could push me all they want and it worked but I couldn't do the same to them.
Auto Modellista - God, what they could've done and didn't. The game was a joke and ridiculously easy. The controls were horrid. I beat the game in, like, 1 fucking hour. WTF?!
If you've ever seen the back of the box, you know what I mean.
It's got a ton of personality. Full of weird characters, unusual classes, stealing people's clothes and whatnot.
The gameplay is sad though. The combat was supposed to be a break from oldschool stuff, but it came out at around the same time as FFXII, which had a way, way, way, WAY better autobattle system. Your character has an INCREDIBLY small mana pool, and the only way to gain more is to kill enemies, so instead of using skills, you are just going to be watching your character trade blows with the enemy. It's especially bad if you are using a slow weapon, and get interrupted.
The stats were supposed to change based on your actions. So, basically, FFII. You feel like you have very little control over how you actually develop, at least, in my case.
The cooking and fishing aspects were supposed to make the game unique. In reality, it is just a ton of grinding. Still oddly pleasant, but they could have been so much more.
The second worst boss battles in any game I've ever played. (The worst is killer7, also a Suda 51 game. [He did work on Contact, right? It's Grasshopper.]) I don't even know how to describe them. At least in killer7, they were cool in concept, if not in practice.
Despite all this, the unique bits shine through, and you've got a bomber jacket and a lightsaber, and you're playing though an homage to Akihabara, which has fantastic music and is by far the best dungeon in the game. You're resigned to being single because you just figured out that the game has a pretty clever relationship minigame that you fucked up. The dungeon ends a bit weakly, but then you're back, and... it's the final dungeon. Then the only cool boss battle happens, and it's game over, right when the game was picking up.
It could have been so much more. SO MUCH MORE.
At least it has the best ending in any game ever.
Jurg on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
I loved Wind Waker and still don't understand why people were "let down" by it. Were you let down by Link to the Past? Link's Awakening (Still my favorite Zelda of ALL TIME)?
Every Silent Hill after 3. 3 is barely making the cut. It's like they forgot what made the game great and then completely screwed up everything else, too.
I really enjoyed Shattered Memories, sure it had its flaws such as not feeling in danger at all until the world around you changes but I found it to be a pretty darn good game. I only played 1 and 2 before SM though.
TheBana on
Monster Hunter Tri - TheBana/FZVK6U; Skype - TheBana84;
Every Silent Hill after 3. 3 is barely making the cut. It's like they forgot what made the game great and then completely screwed up everything else, too.
Oh man Silent Hill. I don't think its that they forgot. Far as I can see, they basically tried to make a horror game, realised it was kind of pants and slapped Silent Hill: The Room on it to get sales, tying it into the main SH universe. After that, they started farming it out to western development studios for some bizarre reason I don't quite understand who took that opportunity to revisit and tell the story of one lone, fucking truck driver and how he was involved with Cheryl somehow despite it really not a story that needed to be told. Then Homecoming which took its influence from the film, which wasn't a bad idea visually, but those visual transformations were all scripted so that they could happen teh way they could. They also included Pyramid Head, a silly and obvious story and annoying human enemies despite PH being a part of James SH experience and noone elses.
Then Shattered Memories, revisiting again a game thats already been told, taking out any combat whatsoever and any tension with it since you're never at harm unless in the Otherworld.
IMO, SH works best when it doesn't try to have continuity or overarching plot but instead is an individual tale about the current protagonist and their descent into their own, or someone elses, Hell. SH2 had nothing to do with 1, i dont think it even mentioned the Cult and it was all the better for it like SH1 was good on its own merits. SH3 had some good moments but nothing particuarly memorable about the story and it gets worse as the games progress.
Theres so much potential there but its being wasted.
Mario Kart Wii - because of all the stupid little changes they made, or removed from the series.
Battle mode - want to play with friends and family locally? sure, but you only get to play in teams and with a dozen bots. You don't get any choice.
Bomb mode - gone. My kids love this mode since it is easy and looks cool.
Want to change your kart or rider - back all the way out of the game you have set up and start over. A lot of fun if you were just playing online.
Its all those little things that just left me scratching my head wondering "why did they take that out..." I can understand wanting to add stuff, but removing options just didn't make much sense.
Ghostbusters looked excellent on the Xbox 360. Don't see how anyone could complain about the visuals..
I tend to avoid games I think will be disappointing, so I don't really have many disappointments.
I'm going to throw out GTA IV. Here I thought, "Finally, a Grand Theft Auto game that moves beyond the crappy drawing and rendering limitations of the PS2! Who knows, maybe they'll fix the mechanics so driving and shooting aren't such a chore!"
Except they didn't. And a lot of the engine limitations are still there.
Also throwing out Spore and Devil May Cry 4. Incredibly disappointed for the former, and the later....sucked.
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
Unfortunately, I never got to play any of the post-MM games, because I haven't owned a Nintendo console since the N64. I'm just saying that the Zelda series has always had a gloomy streak, and I think that's why a lot of people had a kneejerk reaction when they saw the first WW screens.
I get and completely agree with just about every complaint leveled at Oblivion, but I still found the game very enjoyable and it still remains one of my favorites.
I would like to see a bunch of changes for the next one, if it ever comes.
Bioshock is easily the most disappointing game for me. I was so looking forward to exploring the gameworld of a Nazi genetic experiment gone wrong, populated with a revolutionary, dynamic AI ecology.
Instead I got a linear, watered down System Shock 2 combined with baby's first Ayn Rand experience and fake moral choices.
This. How could the same designer make a "spiritual sequel" TEN YEARS later in such a simpleton fashion? Good audio and atmosphere but about as complex as Half-life or doom. All of the things that made System Shock 2 AWESOME were stripped out. Dead Space was more System Shock than Bioshock was. Never played Bioshock 2 because I hated the 1st one so much.
I felt Bioshock was a lot more System Shock than System Shock 2 was. SS2 put in RPG mechanics, Ultima Underworld style, but instead of making your character more awesome they tended to just make you suck less (e.g., weapon degradation, being able to fire guns you pick up off the ground). The scarcity and constant scavenging kind of sucked the joy out of my first playthrough, and the body of the Many generally does it for my following runs.
Both SS2 and Bioshock (as well as Dead Space) gave up a lot of SS's exploration in favor of a more detailed plot, which was bad in the first game, but ends up with a lot more leading you by the nose towards objectives that aren't very far away. On the other hand, SS2 had co-op, and SS is saddled with a floating reticle, so there's that.
Orogogus on
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ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
In addition to Spore, I have another.
The Starcraft 2 Beta. What a piece of shi...
I'm kidding, it's awesome.
For realz, though: Descent 3.
I was a huge Descent fanboy in my early years. I was brought up on Descent 1, and Descent 2 brought me into the forays of online gameplay, back on Heat.net and other websites. It was glorious.
Descent 3? Well, the gameplay was okay... it lost the harsh and rugged edge of the first two; everything seemed cartoony and brightly lit. The graphics were awesome in development; by release, they were pretty behind the times (god, the polygon count on the models are so low it hurts, on everything but the evil robots.
And the evil robots - The plot was terrible. They kind of had a good thing going - the evil corporate empire taking over the world (solar system?) - generic, but workable. Then it got... emotional, and random sidequests and nonesensical levels For isntance, a robot gladitoral pit! What? Why are they watching me fight, instead of eating my ship for dinner? I thought the robo-virus made them homicidal maniacs, not gentlemen.
The multiplayer was good for the time, at least. And the AI was amazing, as reported. But so many flaws. Really killed the game for me. Thank god the Descent 2 modding community is still going! D2X-XL is just amazing.
Apogee on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
Unfortunately, I never got to play any of the post-MM games, because I haven't owned a Nintendo console since the N64. I'm just saying that the Zelda series has always had a gloomy streak, and I think that's why a lot of people had a kneejerk reaction when they saw the first WW screens.
That, and people are resistant to change.
It's not a gloomy streak, it is not a single thing that defines the series, it's a streak of mixing those two elements. OoT and MM removed one of them (the light-hearted elements) way too much, and people suddenly started having this fucking expectation of the series ignoring everything before (and current singe the Oracle games were coming out, etc). Even OoT and MM have some presence of charm to them!
My friend hyped it up to hell and high water before I started playing it. I expected the most engrossing, well written, dynamic RPG of all time. What I got instead was a game that was good but by no means great. The dialogue choices were always hit or miss, leaving me with an either blatantly good, neutral, or evil option. Half the time the line you picked isn't even really the line you say. I found myself getting frustrated with Shepard's inability to say what I wanted him to say rather than being impressed with the so called "choices." The morality system was a complete joke. I mean good, neutral, evil may have felt fresh and new about ten years ago, but it's no longer worth hyping up since it's been played out so many times. There was never any real "choice" in the game; nothing really made me sit there and think about what path I should take. Though I think that had something to do with the horrible bland characters.
The characters in that game were awful. I can't think of another RPG I've played where I cared so little about the cast of characters. They're all introduced so poorly and for no real reason. Why the hell do ashley, rex, and garrus join your elite squad? What qualifies them? Why are they important to the plot? They're not. The game gives you your entire team within 5 or so hours of the game with little to no real back story on any of them. Every single added member of your team is there just because. Oh sure, they might give you some kind of throwaway reason. Sure, you'll be able to cite something. But none of them are so intrinsically tied to the plot that you can't see the game progressing without them.
Compare mass effect to a chrono trigger, a game over 15 years old. In CT, every single character is woven so thoroughly into the story of the game, they're always the one driving the progression of events. Conversely, mass effect just felt like a story with characters that just so happen to be around when it happens. The most game ruining moment for me was having Liara participate in some mind numbingly bland and irrelevant banter after killing her mother while running back to the ship. So let me get this straight...you've just killed your mother, the person you probably look up to more than any other person in existence, and you're going to be cheery and chummy immediately after?
The game drove me up the wall...not with how necessarily bad it was but with how painfully short of awesome it turned out to be. The writing as a whole in that game was mediocre at BEST. Bland sci-fi story, bland universe, bland aesthetics, bland characters, bland game. My favorite part of that game was the battle system, and even then, that wasn't anything worth writing home about.
Guek on
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
HL2 is getting dated-feeling now, but there still isn't much out there that does what it does better.
Or, if there is, people should clue me in so I can go buy it.
Roger that. Hard to believe that HALF-LIFE 2 and DOOM 3 came out around the same time, it's like they exist in different universes. They just mailed it in for DOOM 3, while HL2 was such a step forward in every area.
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
I loved Wind Waker and still don't understand why people were "let down" by it. Were you let down by Link to the Past? Link's Awakening (Still my favorite Zelda of ALL TIME)?
The biggest let down in WW were the dungeons. Don't get me wrong, I actually think that they're great, if not the best in the series. There just wasn't enough of them.
Guek on
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Dr_KeenbeanDumb as a buttPlanet Express ShipRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Definitely Halo 2 for me. When it hit I fired up the campaign thinking to myself 'this is going to be soooooo pretty' and it was, when I wasn't waiting for models of characters who were actively fucking talking to draw in and then the textures to slowly and painfully load all the different LOD levels.
And then I got to the first encounter with the Flood. If ever ODST did something so amazingly wonderful, it was eschewing the god damn Flood. The campaign collected dust for months as I worked up the urge to deal with the Flood again.
And how can one forget the ending?
(Paraphrased)
Lord Hood: "Master Chief, what are you doing?"
MC: "Sir, finishing this fight."
Me: "Oh fuck me running this level is going to be the hottest fucking shit....wait, what?"
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
I loved Wind Waker and still don't understand why people were "let down" by it. Were you let down by Link to the Past? Link's Awakening (Still my favorite Zelda of ALL TIME)?
The biggest let down in WW were the dungeons. Don't get me wrong, I actually think that they're great, if not the best in the series. There just wasn't enough of them.
Wind Waker will always be my favorite. I enjoyed the sailing, exploration and mini dungeons.
Cantido on
3DS Friendcode 5413-1311-3767
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited May 2010
Heh. I laugh because in ODST I kept waiting for the Flood to appear and actually make the game interesting.
My friend hyped it up to hell and high water before I started playing it. I expected the most engrossing, well written, dynamic RPG of all time. What I got instead was a game that was good but by no means great. The dialogue choices were always hit or miss, leaving me with an either blatantly good, neutral, or evil option. Half the time the line you picked isn't even really the line you say. I found myself getting frustrated with Shepard's inability to say what I wanted him to say rather than being impressed with the so called "choices." The morality system was a complete joke. I mean good, neutral, evil may have felt fresh and new about ten years ago, but it's no longer worth hyping up since it's been played out so many times. There was never any real "choice" in the game; nothing really made me sit there and think about what path I should take. Though I think that had something to do with the horrible bland characters.
The characters in that game were awful. I can't think of another RPG I've played where I cared so little about the cast of characters. They're all introduced so poorly and for no real reason. Why the hell do ashley, rex, and garrus join your elite squad? What qualifies them? Why are they important to the plot? They're not. The game gives you your entire team within 5 or so hours of the game with little to no real back story on any of them. Every single added member of your team is there just because. Oh sure, they might give you some kind of throwaway reason. Sure, you'll be able to cite something. But none of them are so intrinsically tied to the plot that you can't see the game progressing without them.
Compare mass effect to a chrono trigger, a game over 15 years old. In CT, every single character is woven so thoroughly into the story of the game, they're always the one driving the progression of events. Conversely, mass effect just felt like a story with characters that just so happen to be around when it happens. The most game ruining moment for me was having Liara participate in some mind numbingly bland and irrelevant banter after killing her mother while running back to the ship. So let me get this straight...you've just killed your mother, the person you probably look up to more than any other person in existence, and you're going to be cheery and chummy immediately after?
The game drove me up the wall...not with how necessarily bad it was but with how painfully short of awesome it turned out to be. The writing as a whole in that game was mediocre at BEST. Bland sci-fi story, bland universe, bland aesthetics, bland characters, bland game. My favorite part of that game was the battle system, and even then, that wasn't anything worth writing home about.
I'm actually kind of with you on ME1, thing is though sometimes stories are about characters that kinda happen to be in a setting where shit goes down
I mean, CT was a real fantasy epic type of thing, and ME kinda did get hyped that way, but if you ignore the hype and just play it it's definitely not horrible
but yeah Liara is a stupid bitch
and straight up ME2 rocks so hard, give it a whirl
Man RE 5 for sure. Ignoring the co-op aspect that was annoying in zero. The story was sucktastic, and chris and shiva were boring as hell. I mean Leon was a fun main character, Chris was super annoying. At one point my wife screamed "SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT JILL!" And the boss fights in 5 were also aggravating. On top of that the game felt short as hell. RE 4 I played the hell out of. RE 5 I finished played some co-op and sighed at what could have been.
Also hella nitpick but Dead Space used a similar control scheme as 5 but decided that letting the player side step while aiming should be allowed and 5 still didn't have that and it came out afterward!
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Though, to be fair, I'm more disappointed in myself for letting myself become lashed to it for so long
No other game comes close.
WoW is at the top of my list when I think of the shittiest gaming communities that have ever existed. The game runs on greed and inexplicable man hours that shouldn't exist in video gaming anymore. The game's design is to keep you spending months of playtime to get a new shiny graphic and bigger numbers on your random number generator.
But for me the was a letdown gradual. Blizzard would release their awesome plans for the next patch, it would take a few months, and then what we got would usually be pretty cool. And then the community complains or Blizzard suddenly has a change of heart. Blizzard responds and waters down whatever they were doing that used to be so awesome. Then Blizzard walks away.
Just some things that come to mind, World PVP, Death Knights, etc etc.
McAllen on
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
I tend to get hyped by reports from the forum that a game is awesome, and these have severly let me down:
Metroid Prime
Hyped up as one of the best games ever, and I bought into the idea that it would be an amazing world to explore. Instead it was a wasteland with zero interest or wonder blocked off in nonsensical ways that forced you to trudge though it time after time after time after time, all the while battling the same enemies in the same places with the same clunky-ass combat mechanic. I've learned that I'm not a fan of forced backtracking ala Metroid/Castlevania, but this is the only example of that genre that made me actually loathe it. I just can't find anything fun or engaging in there.
Gears of War
I just don't get it. I usually end up trying to play shooters in that 'pop out and shoot someone, then hide again' way even if that's not how they're built at all. Somehow the entire system just felt clunky and akward. I think that's probably because I played it immediately after a massive EDF 2017 kick (which is a much, much better game IMO) and the arcadey style made an impression of me. It didn't help that everything about the aesthetic of the game turned me off. I got this for free and I still wish I hadn't bothered. It's not a bad game, it's just somehow not for me, which I don't get because it should be dammit!
Bioshock
Boring weapons (except for the tripwire crossbow, which made the most fun part of the game completely trivial), powers that are useless 90% of the time because the boring weapons actually work better, unispired mechanics, straightforward level design...not seeing what made this such a hit. The game completely lacked tension after about the halfway point, when I got the plasmid that lets you turn invisible just by standing still and the crossbow bolts and became functionally immortal+. It falls into the category of "we promise dozens of ways to achieve your objectives and kill your enemies! Of course, we'll actually only provide a handful and you'll only ever have to actually use one..." which pisses me off to an unreasonable degree. The atmoshpere was A+, everything else was decidedly mediocre.
Dragon Age
The Landsmeet and it's leadin were some of the best gaming time I had in 2009 or early 2010 (I forget), and what I expected from the rest of the game. Too bad that was only like 1% of the game. The combat and skill progression systems are easily the worst I can remember playing recently (and that includes Too Human, which has a retardedly limiting skill tree system), the enemies are incredibly boring and repeated, the equipment is bland, the side quests are entirely skippable, your companions range from merely annoying to actively rage inducing in their stupidity, and the conversation/decisions in the actual dungeons are terrible.
But, without any doubt whatsoever, the crowned king has to be...
The Xenosaga Series
Just to be clear, I love Xenogears. It was the first game I played I actually gave a crap about, and while I recognize it's nostalgia talking I still love it to death. I convinced myself I was going to get the same feeling from this series, and hoo boy was I wrong. That's my own fault, but I think that's where the biggest dissapointments come from.
JihadJesus on
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Alfred J. Kwakis it because you were insultedwhen I insulted your hair?Registered Userregular
See the thing with playing on xbox live though, run across some silly gooses and you can swap servers. An mmo? Well outside of paying to transfer or throwing away your time and rerolling your stuck with that goosery. Made worse in recent mmos with the tradition of "Go guild or go home."
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
WoW is at the top of my list when I think of the shittiest gaming communities that have ever existed.
Nuh-uh, someone clearly hasn't played DotA/Heroes of Newearth. But man, Blizzard-related games tend to attract the worst kind of human beings.
I'll agree, there are probably worse games. But I never played that DotA game, but I imagined it was very pick up and play. Or was it a grindfest that you needed to level your characters and gain gear for as well?
I never had a lot of trouble with Call of Duty's multiplayer, or the people playing it. Out of most online FPS's , the biggest cluster of syndromed people I have met constantly was in Left 4 Dead.
This is one of the reasons why I think Diablo 3 will be so much better. It will have dungeons and intense bosses without all the so-called "teamwork" that they implemented in WoW. I would be able to see endgame content without having to wait years after it's release or spending half an hour making a group of people who also want to see it.
McAllen on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Biggest, hugest letdown of the decade? Damn, that is such a tough call.
...
Oh man, I am so going to get reamed for this one.
Morrowind.
I came to it pretty late... three years after release or so. It sounded awesome. Open world. Tons of customization. Lots of neat-o RPG goodies. Go wherever you want. Do whatever you want. It was basically all the things I loved about D&D, except I didn't have to wait around for my friends to play. Instead I loaded it up and was assaulted with the most awkward game I have ever played, populated by the ugliest creatures in the universe. I never moved exactly the way I expected. My point blank shots with arrows missed constantly. I was, for whatever reason, constantly assaulted by ninjas that won simply by default. And instead of finding the volume of choice liberating, I found it paralyzing. It's not that I could not decide where to go; rather, the game summarily punished me for each transgression outside the box. One time I fell down a hole and never found my way out again. Rather than a hero, I felt like the goddamn peasants the fantasy archetypes are always going out of their way to rescue.
I tried it again when Steam released the game, but my results were no less different.
In short, every experience I've had with that game is awful, and as a result I can't stand it. But don't mistake my ire to be directed at the fans. If anything, I am jealous of their enjoyment, and I've asked myself a number of times what exactly is wrong with me that I can't take advantage of all the goodies locked inside that game.
WoW is at the top of my list when I think of the shittiest gaming communities that have ever existed.
Nuh-uh, someone clearly hasn't played DotA/Heroes of Newearth. But man, Blizzard-related games tend to attract the worst kind of human beings.
I'll agree, there are probably worse games. But I never played that DotA game, but I imagined it was very pick up and play. Or was it a grindfest that you needed to level your characters and gain gear for as well?
It's a team-oriented player vs. player game that can last for a good hour per match. If someone even slightly screws up, picks up the wrong item, gets ganked by the enemy heroes, doesn't know every item combination or hero skill in the game by heart, flamewars will start, because even a small mistake can lose the match for you and the whole team.
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Metal Gear Solid.
The hype made it sound like the game was a mix of orgasm and chocolate. STEALTH ACTION! AWESOME BOSS BATTLES! CINEMATIC STORYLINE! IT POOPS KITTENS!
Now, to be fair, it did deliver on some of the promises. The boss battles were pretty cool, especially Psycho Mantis. And, along with FF VII, it really pushed the medium towards that summer blockbuster cinematic feel.
But, man, the story was a needlessly convoluted mess, and the voice acting (sans Cam Clarke, who could make Movie Phone sound legit) and characters just sucked. I'm sorry, but David Hayter's Snake sounds like the 1990's X-Men cartoon's Wolverine. As in, shitty, one note cartoon voice. As I played, I just kept wondering why I even bothered.
I bought and played through most of MSG2 in the hopes that it would tone down the bullshit and focus more on the Tactical Stealth portion of the game. Man, was I wrong. Hearing about Otacon's little fling with his stepmom in the middle of saving the world just ended it for me. Completely unnecessary, dumb, and mind boggling.
Switch: SW-3515-0057-3813 FF XIV: Q'vehn Tia
Hyrule in Zelda 1 was bleak and kind of abandoned. Few friendly people, no towns, just a wild and dangerous countryside with monsters around every corner. Then you go into the Underworld/Dungeon levels and its these old, creepy, decrepit temples filled with scary monsters, traps and a very haunting soundtrack.
Zelda 2 had a bit more adventure-y feel to it, and the towns offered some respite, but the overall aesthetic was still relatively serious. The dungeons were still dark and were very easy to get lost in. I still remember being like, four years old, going down into the first dungeon and seeing all those blood-red windows with the rat-headed men charging at me and trying to kill me.
LttP was a little more bright and colorful, but you spent most of it in the dark world, where everyone is turned into a twisted mutant, all the buildings and towns lie in ruins, and even getting turned into a pink bunny can be a pretty scary experience. There was a little comic relief in LttP but not as much as in later games.
Zelda's been a pretty dark series from the beginning. I think that's why so many people reacted adversely to WW's art style when they first saw it.
EDIT: I barely need an excuse to post this track, but I think it sums up the atmosphere of the original games as good as any summary I can give.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_c_rA2s4q8
I like stats as much as the next guy, but like someone said before, it's just max-maxing and not min-maxing.
That and geopanels are retarded.
The optional stuff after beating the game is awful unless you like the idea of spending hours and hours grinding to beat a 20 minute battle
Tokyo Extreme Racer 3 - whatever. They seriously couldn't of made it more obvious that htey didn't give a shit about the series. The car models that were regular cars were 2 - truck and car. The added highways were BLAND and unexciting. The villians were terribly made and seriously the biggest dicks ever (purposefully exiting highways to give "Draws") or refusing to battle me even though I meet the requirements. The best was that they could push me all they want and it worked but I couldn't do the same to them.
Auto Modellista - God, what they could've done and didn't. The game was a joke and ridiculously easy. The controls were horrid. I beat the game in, like, 1 fucking hour. WTF?!
If you've ever seen the back of the box, you know what I mean.
It's got a ton of personality. Full of weird characters, unusual classes, stealing people's clothes and whatnot.
The gameplay is sad though. The combat was supposed to be a break from oldschool stuff, but it came out at around the same time as FFXII, which had a way, way, way, WAY better autobattle system. Your character has an INCREDIBLY small mana pool, and the only way to gain more is to kill enemies, so instead of using skills, you are just going to be watching your character trade blows with the enemy. It's especially bad if you are using a slow weapon, and get interrupted.
The stats were supposed to change based on your actions. So, basically, FFII. You feel like you have very little control over how you actually develop, at least, in my case.
The cooking and fishing aspects were supposed to make the game unique. In reality, it is just a ton of grinding. Still oddly pleasant, but they could have been so much more.
The second worst boss battles in any game I've ever played. (The worst is killer7, also a Suda 51 game. [He did work on Contact, right? It's Grasshopper.]) I don't even know how to describe them. At least in killer7, they were cool in concept, if not in practice.
Despite all this, the unique bits shine through, and you've got a bomber jacket and a lightsaber, and you're playing though an homage to Akihabara, which has fantastic music and is by far the best dungeon in the game. You're resigned to being single because you just figured out that the game has a pretty clever relationship minigame that you fucked up. The dungeon ends a bit weakly, but then you're back, and... it's the final dungeon. Then the only cool boss battle happens, and it's game over, right when the game was picking up.
It could have been so much more. SO MUCH MORE.
At least it has the best ending in any game ever.
Their goal with Zelda from the start was to create a game that was a blend of charm and menace, and the soundtrack for the first game was the best way they were able to convey it (with the overworld theme vs. the dungeon music).
You see that? Two things. Charm. Menace.
If Wind Waker was wrong for delivering on those two fronts, people are out of their mind.
MoO3's release marks the exact moment I lost the ability to love
I loved Wind Waker and still don't understand why people were "let down" by it. Were you let down by Link to the Past? Link's Awakening (Still my favorite Zelda of ALL TIME)?
I really enjoyed Shattered Memories, sure it had its flaws such as not feeling in danger at all until the world around you changes but I found it to be a pretty darn good game. I only played 1 and 2 before SM though.
Oh man Silent Hill. I don't think its that they forgot. Far as I can see, they basically tried to make a horror game, realised it was kind of pants and slapped Silent Hill: The Room on it to get sales, tying it into the main SH universe. After that, they started farming it out to western development studios for some bizarre reason I don't quite understand who took that opportunity to revisit and tell the story of one lone, fucking truck driver and how he was involved with Cheryl somehow despite it really not a story that needed to be told. Then Homecoming which took its influence from the film, which wasn't a bad idea visually, but those visual transformations were all scripted so that they could happen teh way they could. They also included Pyramid Head, a silly and obvious story and annoying human enemies despite PH being a part of James SH experience and noone elses.
Then Shattered Memories, revisiting again a game thats already been told, taking out any combat whatsoever and any tension with it since you're never at harm unless in the Otherworld.
IMO, SH works best when it doesn't try to have continuity or overarching plot but instead is an individual tale about the current protagonist and their descent into their own, or someone elses, Hell. SH2 had nothing to do with 1, i dont think it even mentioned the Cult and it was all the better for it like SH1 was good on its own merits. SH3 had some good moments but nothing particuarly memorable about the story and it gets worse as the games progress.
Theres so much potential there but its being wasted.
Battle mode - want to play with friends and family locally? sure, but you only get to play in teams and with a dozen bots. You don't get any choice.
Bomb mode - gone. My kids love this mode since it is easy and looks cool.
Want to change your kart or rider - back all the way out of the game you have set up and start over. A lot of fun if you were just playing online.
Its all those little things that just left me scratching my head wondering "why did they take that out..." I can understand wanting to add stuff, but removing options just didn't make much sense.
In the end we just play Double Dash instead.
I tend to avoid games I think will be disappointing, so I don't really have many disappointments.
I'm going to throw out GTA IV. Here I thought, "Finally, a Grand Theft Auto game that moves beyond the crappy drawing and rendering limitations of the PS2! Who knows, maybe they'll fix the mechanics so driving and shooting aren't such a chore!"
Except they didn't. And a lot of the engine limitations are still there.
Also throwing out Spore and Devil May Cry 4. Incredibly disappointed for the former, and the later....sucked.
Also Silent Hunter V. God, what a let down...
Unfortunately, I never got to play any of the post-MM games, because I haven't owned a Nintendo console since the N64. I'm just saying that the Zelda series has always had a gloomy streak, and I think that's why a lot of people had a kneejerk reaction when they saw the first WW screens.
That, and people are resistant to change.
I would like to see a bunch of changes for the next one, if it ever comes.
I felt Bioshock was a lot more System Shock than System Shock 2 was. SS2 put in RPG mechanics, Ultima Underworld style, but instead of making your character more awesome they tended to just make you suck less (e.g., weapon degradation, being able to fire guns you pick up off the ground). The scarcity and constant scavenging kind of sucked the joy out of my first playthrough, and the body of the Many generally does it for my following runs.
Both SS2 and Bioshock (as well as Dead Space) gave up a lot of SS's exploration in favor of a more detailed plot, which was bad in the first game, but ends up with a lot more leading you by the nose towards objectives that aren't very far away. On the other hand, SS2 had co-op, and SS is saddled with a floating reticle, so there's that.
The Starcraft 2 Beta. What a piece of shi...
I'm kidding, it's awesome.
For realz, though: Descent 3.
I was a huge Descent fanboy in my early years. I was brought up on Descent 1, and Descent 2 brought me into the forays of online gameplay, back on Heat.net and other websites. It was glorious.
Descent 3? Well, the gameplay was okay... it lost the harsh and rugged edge of the first two; everything seemed cartoony and brightly lit. The graphics were awesome in development; by release, they were pretty behind the times (god, the polygon count on the models are so low it hurts, on everything but the evil robots.
And the evil robots - The plot was terrible. They kind of had a good thing going - the evil corporate empire taking over the world (solar system?) - generic, but workable. Then it got... emotional, and random sidequests and nonesensical levels For isntance, a robot gladitoral pit! What? Why are they watching me fight, instead of eating my ship for dinner? I thought the robo-virus made them homicidal maniacs, not gentlemen.
The multiplayer was good for the time, at least. And the AI was amazing, as reported. But so many flaws. Really killed the game for me. Thank god the Descent 2 modding community is still going! D2X-XL is just amazing.
It's not a gloomy streak, it is not a single thing that defines the series, it's a streak of mixing those two elements. OoT and MM removed one of them (the light-hearted elements) way too much, and people suddenly started having this fucking expectation of the series ignoring everything before (and current singe the Oracle games were coming out, etc). Even OoT and MM have some presence of charm to them!
My friend hyped it up to hell and high water before I started playing it. I expected the most engrossing, well written, dynamic RPG of all time. What I got instead was a game that was good but by no means great. The dialogue choices were always hit or miss, leaving me with an either blatantly good, neutral, or evil option. Half the time the line you picked isn't even really the line you say. I found myself getting frustrated with Shepard's inability to say what I wanted him to say rather than being impressed with the so called "choices." The morality system was a complete joke. I mean good, neutral, evil may have felt fresh and new about ten years ago, but it's no longer worth hyping up since it's been played out so many times. There was never any real "choice" in the game; nothing really made me sit there and think about what path I should take. Though I think that had something to do with the horrible bland characters.
The characters in that game were awful. I can't think of another RPG I've played where I cared so little about the cast of characters. They're all introduced so poorly and for no real reason. Why the hell do ashley, rex, and garrus join your elite squad? What qualifies them? Why are they important to the plot? They're not. The game gives you your entire team within 5 or so hours of the game with little to no real back story on any of them. Every single added member of your team is there just because. Oh sure, they might give you some kind of throwaway reason. Sure, you'll be able to cite something. But none of them are so intrinsically tied to the plot that you can't see the game progressing without them.
Compare mass effect to a chrono trigger, a game over 15 years old. In CT, every single character is woven so thoroughly into the story of the game, they're always the one driving the progression of events. Conversely, mass effect just felt like a story with characters that just so happen to be around when it happens. The most game ruining moment for me was having Liara participate in some mind numbingly bland and irrelevant banter after killing her mother while running back to the ship. So let me get this straight...you've just killed your mother, the person you probably look up to more than any other person in existence, and you're going to be cheery and chummy immediately after?
The game drove me up the wall...not with how necessarily bad it was but with how painfully short of awesome it turned out to be. The writing as a whole in that game was mediocre at BEST. Bland sci-fi story, bland universe, bland aesthetics, bland characters, bland game. My favorite part of that game was the battle system, and even then, that wasn't anything worth writing home about.
The biggest let down in WW were the dungeons. Don't get me wrong, I actually think that they're great, if not the best in the series. There just wasn't enough of them.
And then I got to the first encounter with the Flood. If ever ODST did something so amazingly wonderful, it was eschewing the god damn Flood. The campaign collected dust for months as I worked up the urge to deal with the Flood again.
And how can one forget the ending?
(Paraphrased)
Lord Hood: "Master Chief, what are you doing?"
MC: "Sir, finishing this fight."
Me: "Oh fuck me running this level is going to be the hottest fucking shit....wait, what?"
3DS: 1650-8480-6786
Switch: SW-0653-8208-4705
Wind Waker will always be my favorite. I enjoyed the sailing, exploration and mini dungeons.
I'm actually kind of with you on ME1, thing is though sometimes stories are about characters that kinda happen to be in a setting where shit goes down
I mean, CT was a real fantasy epic type of thing, and ME kinda did get hyped that way, but if you ignore the hype and just play it it's definitely not horrible
but yeah Liara is a stupid bitch
and straight up ME2 rocks so hard, give it a whirl
You are me.
i guess they were just trying to push the expansion pak and all the levels, but the minigames were not good and were the whole game
Also hella nitpick but Dead Space used a similar control scheme as 5 but decided that letting the player side step while aiming should be allowed and 5 still didn't have that and it came out afterward!
pleasepaypreacher.net
No other game comes close.
WoW is at the top of my list when I think of the shittiest gaming communities that have ever existed. The game runs on greed and inexplicable man hours that shouldn't exist in video gaming anymore. The game's design is to keep you spending months of playtime to get a new shiny graphic and bigger numbers on your random number generator.
But for me the was a letdown gradual. Blizzard would release their awesome plans for the next patch, it would take a few months, and then what we got would usually be pretty cool. And then the community complains or Blizzard suddenly has a change of heart. Blizzard responds and waters down whatever they were doing that used to be so awesome. Then Blizzard walks away.
Just some things that come to mind, World PVP, Death Knights, etc etc.
Nuh-uh, someone clearly hasn't played DotA/Heroes of Newearth. But man, Blizzard-related games tend to attract the worst kind of human beings.
Clearly, CLEARLY you've never played a Call of Duty game on Xbox Live.
Metroid Prime
Hyped up as one of the best games ever, and I bought into the idea that it would be an amazing world to explore. Instead it was a wasteland with zero interest or wonder blocked off in nonsensical ways that forced you to trudge though it time after time after time after time, all the while battling the same enemies in the same places with the same clunky-ass combat mechanic. I've learned that I'm not a fan of forced backtracking ala Metroid/Castlevania, but this is the only example of that genre that made me actually loathe it. I just can't find anything fun or engaging in there.
Gears of War
I just don't get it. I usually end up trying to play shooters in that 'pop out and shoot someone, then hide again' way even if that's not how they're built at all. Somehow the entire system just felt clunky and akward. I think that's probably because I played it immediately after a massive EDF 2017 kick (which is a much, much better game IMO) and the arcadey style made an impression of me. It didn't help that everything about the aesthetic of the game turned me off. I got this for free and I still wish I hadn't bothered. It's not a bad game, it's just somehow not for me, which I don't get because it should be dammit!
Bioshock
Boring weapons (except for the tripwire crossbow, which made the most fun part of the game completely trivial), powers that are useless 90% of the time because the boring weapons actually work better, unispired mechanics, straightforward level design...not seeing what made this such a hit. The game completely lacked tension after about the halfway point, when I got the plasmid that lets you turn invisible just by standing still and the crossbow bolts and became functionally immortal+. It falls into the category of "we promise dozens of ways to achieve your objectives and kill your enemies! Of course, we'll actually only provide a handful and you'll only ever have to actually use one..." which pisses me off to an unreasonable degree. The atmoshpere was A+, everything else was decidedly mediocre.
Dragon Age
The Landsmeet and it's leadin were some of the best gaming time I had in 2009 or early 2010 (I forget), and what I expected from the rest of the game. Too bad that was only like 1% of the game. The combat and skill progression systems are easily the worst I can remember playing recently (and that includes Too Human, which has a retardedly limiting skill tree system), the enemies are incredibly boring and repeated, the equipment is bland, the side quests are entirely skippable, your companions range from merely annoying to actively rage inducing in their stupidity, and the conversation/decisions in the actual dungeons are terrible.
But, without any doubt whatsoever, the crowned king has to be...
The Xenosaga Series
Just to be clear, I love Xenogears. It was the first game I played I actually gave a crap about, and while I recognize it's nostalgia talking I still love it to death. I convinced myself I was going to get the same feeling from this series, and hoo boy was I wrong. That's my own fault, but I think that's where the biggest dissapointments come from.
No, you're indeed right, but I am also sure you never tried Uno on Live. :winky:
pleasepaypreacher.net
Ah, touché, mais vous sont exacts.
I'll agree, there are probably worse games. But I never played that DotA game, but I imagined it was very pick up and play. Or was it a grindfest that you needed to level your characters and gain gear for as well?
I never had a lot of trouble with Call of Duty's multiplayer, or the people playing it. Out of most online FPS's , the biggest cluster of syndromed people I have met constantly was in Left 4 Dead.
This is one of the reasons why I think Diablo 3 will be so much better. It will have dungeons and intense bosses without all the so-called "teamwork" that they implemented in WoW. I would be able to see endgame content without having to wait years after it's release or spending half an hour making a group of people who also want to see it.
...
Oh man, I am so going to get reamed for this one.
I came to it pretty late... three years after release or so. It sounded awesome. Open world. Tons of customization. Lots of neat-o RPG goodies. Go wherever you want. Do whatever you want. It was basically all the things I loved about D&D, except I didn't have to wait around for my friends to play. Instead I loaded it up and was assaulted with the most awkward game I have ever played, populated by the ugliest creatures in the universe. I never moved exactly the way I expected. My point blank shots with arrows missed constantly. I was, for whatever reason, constantly assaulted by ninjas that won simply by default. And instead of finding the volume of choice liberating, I found it paralyzing. It's not that I could not decide where to go; rather, the game summarily punished me for each transgression outside the box. One time I fell down a hole and never found my way out again. Rather than a hero, I felt like the goddamn peasants the fantasy archetypes are always going out of their way to rescue.
I tried it again when Steam released the game, but my results were no less different.
In short, every experience I've had with that game is awful, and as a result I can't stand it. But don't mistake my ire to be directed at the fans. If anything, I am jealous of their enjoyment, and I've asked myself a number of times what exactly is wrong with me that I can't take advantage of all the goodies locked inside that game.
PSN: Threeve703
Interactive LoTR, no thanks. Been there, seen that.
It's a team-oriented player vs. player game that can last for a good hour per match. If someone even slightly screws up, picks up the wrong item, gets ganked by the enemy heroes, doesn't know every item combination or hero skill in the game by heart, flamewars will start, because even a small mistake can lose the match for you and the whole team.