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Games that you absolutely despised

Started by Subtle Mocking, February 27, 2011, 08:27:53 PM

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Still Not George

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on February 28, 2011, 03:08:31 PMExcept for Goldeneye 64 and Spider-Man 2.
Point, sir. Everything else is gash.

Quote from: Treguard of Dunshelm on February 28, 2011, 03:36:59 PM
X3. After several people I know raving about it, I downloaded it recently expecting some space-trading goodness and mein Gott it is Scheiße. Admittedly it's a few years old now, but it has an asinine plot, boring combat, crap trading and one of the most punchable leads in existence. I'm sticking to Oolite man, at least there's no whiny american teens there.
I'm sure the best space-trading game ever written hates you too. Like most people who dislike the X series, I figure you were just rubbish at it and therefore never had the joy of owning several space stations and a huge motherfucking fleet of ships.


Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: Still Not George on February 28, 2011, 03:43:15 PM
I'm sure the best space-trading game ever written hates you too. Like most people who dislike the X series, I figure you were just rubbish at it and therefore never had the joy of owning several space stations and a huge motherfucking fleet of ships.

Genuine LOL. It's one of the easiest games I've ever played. So easy it's broken.

Still Not George

Quote from: Treguard of Dunshelm on February 28, 2011, 04:11:03 PM
Genuine LOL. It's one of the easiest games I've ever played. So easy it's broken.
Hahaha. Please explain.

...

Oh, wait. You mean the missions, or "the tutorial" as the rest of us call them, don't you?

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: Still Not George on February 28, 2011, 04:16:44 PM
Hahaha. Please explain.

...

Oh, wait. You mean the missions, or "the tutorial" as the rest of us call them, don't you?

No, Julian Fucktard and his shitbrained galactic retard friends[nb]One of the characters is called "Ban Danna" HAHAHAHAHAHA kill me. There is a space slag, a space mystic, and the only reason the aforementioned Julian Closetrapist is not the worst character in videogame history is because Tingle just edges him. [/nb] made me want to hurl myself through the nearest window.

Seriously dude, it's a game for brain damaged children, and even they would probably feel patronised by it.

Still Not George

Yeah, you entirely missed the point of the game. Well done, dude.

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: Still Not George on February 28, 2011, 04:48:00 PM
Yeah, you entirely missed the point of the game. Well done, dude.

No, I get what you were saying - the missions are not important. I didn't expect them to be, I expected to explore the X Universe, trade, pirate, whatever. Which you can do, but I found it to be a joyless slog rather than any real challenge, if you persevere enough you can't help but succeeed in whatever you want to do because it's so predictable.

Though you could probably say the same about Elite, in fact even more so, and yet that never gets boring to me.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Halo is hardly characterless, the environs are lush.

And anyway. That's hardly enough for it to be despised.


mobias

There are some games that are absolutely adored by people that I despise simply because I think they're hugely over rated and I wish people would just shut up about them. The Uncharted franchise on the PS3 is one of them. Uncharted 2 is an incredible game on some levels but it's simply not an absolute peak of video gaming genius and originality and I wish people would stop talking about it like it is. Some people go on about it like it redefines gaming like GTAIII did last gen. I mean fuck off - why? Simply because Sony have poured millions into making it a flagship PS3 game? 

And I completely agree that Halo is also hugely over rated. The production level is clearly right there at the top but everything else about it just screams mediocrity. I've never understood why out of all the myriad of first person shooters out there Halo is the one that has become the phenomena that it is. I guess maybe because its just utterly middle of the road. 

I think I genuinely despise Pro Evo, purely for the way it dominates 'lad nights'. Despite the fact I'm actually better than most people at it due to intrinsic talent, I find it an entirely joyless, formulaic game which attracts the worst kind of game-hatin' rotter. I'm all like, yo, bros, let's play some WarioWare and they're like 'not arsed mate, Master League'.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU-

Mister Six

Quote from: mobias on February 28, 2011, 06:07:31 PMAnd I completely agree that Halo is also hugely over rated. The production level is clearly right there at the top but everything else about it just screams mediocrity. I've never understood why out of all the myriad of first person shooters out there Halo is the one that has become the phenomena that it is. I guess maybe because its just utterly middle of the road.

I think the sequels are shit and its success as an OMG MUST HAVE MEGA TITLE!!!!!!!!!!! is almost entirely down to Microsoft fanboys being desperate for any kind of Xbox-only 'killer app' to lord over the PS2/Gamecube crowd, but the first Halo game is an extremely well put together game. No, 'space marines vs aliens' isn't groundbreaking stuff, but the enemy AI is excellent (or was for the time), the setting is brilliant and the swerve into proper space opera epic silliness is rather wonderful.

The sequels were unbalanced, short, overly flashy and far too in love with their shit derivative universe (and had nigh-incomprehensible storytelling; I was totally lost by the end of Halo 2, and that was a 70% retread of the first game) but the original is very well put together. I played it again a couple of years back and it still held up.

Little Hoover

Quote from: mobias on February 28, 2011, 06:07:31 PM
There are some games that are absolutely adored by people that I despise simply because I think they're hugely over rated and I wish people would just shut up about them. The Uncharted franchise on the PS3 is one of them. Uncharted 2 is an incredible game on some levels but it's simply not an absolute peak of video gaming genius and originality and I wish people would stop talking about it like it is. Some people go on about it like it redefines gaming like GTAIII did last gen. I mean fuck off - why? Simply because Sony have poured millions into making it a flagship PS3 game? 

And I completely agree that Halo is also hugely over rated. The production level is clearly right there at the top but everything else about it just screams mediocrity. I've never understood why out of all the myriad of first person shooters out there Halo is the one that has become the phenomena that it is. I guess maybe because its just utterly middle of the road. 

I really liked Uncharted 2 at times, but Uncharted was a game that made me genuinely angry, there's a sudden moment in Uncharted when you suddenly realise that hiding behind walls and shooting at people 5 times in the head before they die, even though you're on easy mode is the whole game. The sequel to it's credit seemed to make people a little easier take down, integrated the puzzles and platforming better and had some thrilling set-pieces. And just generally had better pacing and variety to make the shooting from behind walls less tedious, though still highly flawed and frustrating at times.

It's technically well above average in some of it's presentation, it's acting and animation, there's one or two lines in it that are mildly amusing. But yeah the high praise it gets just make me want to hate it.

Big Jack McBastard

The thing with the X series is that it's so damn lonely and taking a serious fight to the Xenon/Khaak (or whoever you take a dislike to) involves getting at least 4 fully loaded capital ships (Boron Rays FTW) plus fighters and a high end, well shielded middle road ship for yourself so you can bug the hell out if needs be.

Getting the funds for, and controlling all of that effectively is only a snippet of the problem, it's getting the fuckers not to crash into the damn station they're attacking!

"Oh fuck me there goes 2 million quid on daft AI... again." <-- Me in every iteration of the game so far at least 20 times.

I do love the game though, the loneliness and abandonment were real motivators for me in the first one and I was gutted to find the
Spoiler alert
gate home
[close]
was
Spoiler alert
knackered
[close]
. Still it gave you a universe to play in and do as you would which I enjoyed immensely, finding derelict ships, taking them over or selling them on to upgrade your fighter, warring on pirate stations smuggling dodgy cargo through buzzkill sectors and riling up the local pigs. Having massive rucks with the Xenon and seeing my fledgling solar stations be hauled to the location of my choice and left with a wee automated fleet to keep it stocked and me in the black. Then onto mining and seeking out every last inhabited and uninhabited bit of the massive map. It was charming and elegant in places, though granted you'd have to be pretty damn anal to try genocide or wipe out every Xenon/hostile system and keep it under your heel with patrolling fleets but the option was there if you were so inclined.

The other games took what worked and built on it in the sandbox part of the game at least, can't recall if I finished the second one without cheating like a bastard (which I certainly did when I re-installed it) but the first game was an honest run. By the time I got round to Reunion I already had the next game waiting in the wings so it never got much of a look in.

I maybe saw four or five missions of Terran Conflict before I got caught up in the notion of going out on a killcrazy rampage and being a titanic cheatmeister. Whacking 16 PPCs a head on 5 Boron Rays, loading them up with missiles and every tune-up and add-on they'd need, grabbing the best ship I could cheat out of the console for me, loading it up and looking for trouble.

Fuck even with 'invulnerability' turned on they got their asses handed to them after about two sectors of clean-up. either it was a stupid kamikaze ram into a station or a sodding great crash at a jumpgate when some big bastard capital ship decided to pop in behind them, thus making the sector I was retreating to hostile to me cos my bloody daft AI ship bollocksed one of their bloody daft AI ships.

Still like the game though; masochist you see.

Benevolent Despot

More X bitching.

I started playing X2: The Threat a couple of weeks ago, having not played any space/trade/dogfight games for a long time. I'm afraid I don't get it. I find it completely joyless. I've spent the first 6 hours of game time doing four or so missions and attempting to navigate in an unsignposted maze of largely empty sectors which take an age to cross (even with 10x time compression and autopilot). It pains me that you have to discover all jump gates and stations before you can target them, necessitating a lot of wasted time 'exploring' empty volumes of space sparsely populated by identikit boring stations.

I had to look up a map of the universe online to get some sense of direction (maybe I'm missing something?), only to discover the most off-putting map ever. It did help but there's no way I could memorise any more than a tiny fraction of it. 50 or so cubes of space, linked in a maze fashion. Not very memorable.

The way the ship handles is atrocious, with either mouse or keyboard. So rigid, jerky and unresponsive. Apparently this improves if you earn a lot of money and improve your ship. However it seems the only way to earn money in the early stages is bulk trading with a tiny cargo bay, necessitating a lot of boring back and forth autopilot trips through areas of nothing. Very satisfying.

The menu systems. Oh my god. Fussy, complex, only navigable by keyboard, at least a dozen unintuitive keyboard shorcuts to memorize. It's like trying to control a fast moving advanced spacecraft in real-time through a badly designed spreadsheet.

I read in reviews that the story and voice-acting were above-par. I've certainly not experienced much story but I have sat through horrendous droning sythesized-sounding voice-acting and been so frustrated that I had to skip the cutscenes. I have also met Ban Danna.

My overwhelming gripe is the crushing sense of boredom and pointlessness as you travel forever and ever across areas of nothingness to the next shit cutscene, with nothing to do but stare at the unchanging scenery. This should have been fixed with at least something to do while you travel - some sort of GTA-style interstellar radio station list would help, or mini-games! An arcade machine in your ship, with classics like space invaders to play.

In short: it's not the game I expected.

Benevolent Despot

I was like this guy for hours. It's completely offputting for newcomers. I'm sure its great when you've got armadas and such, but I don't think I can work up the enthusiasm to reach that point. Way too much slog to get there.

(~2.20 in)
Let's play X2: The Threat - 2 - Getting lost in menus, controls and space

QuoteHalo.  Characterless load of auld erse.

No love for Cortana? Also I'd argue that the different species that make up the covenant have their own characters - in speech (with the grunts), and in differing behaviour, tactics and style. Also covenant and forerunner weapons, vehicles, ships and architecture have plenty of character. Sure it ain't all original but its certainly got clearly defined purpose and consistent style. Again I'm just talking about the first game here.

Zetetic

Quote from: Mister Six on February 28, 2011, 11:54:29 PM
I think the sequels are shit and its success as an OMG MUST HAVE MEGA TITLE!!!!!!!!!!! is almost entirely down to Microsoft fanboys being desperate for any kind of Xbox-only 'killer app' to lord over the PS2/Gamecube crowd, but the first Halo game is an extremely well put together game. No, 'space marines vs aliens' isn't groundbreaking stuff, but the enemy AI is excellent (or was for the time), the setting is brilliant and the swerve into proper space opera epic silliness is rather wonderful.
The enemy AI's not particularly brilliant (in that it's not capable of anything 'tactical' on its own or any such thing). In fact:
Quote from: Some bloke at BungieIf you're looking for tips about how to make the enemies in your game intelligent, we don't have any for you we don't know how to do that, but it sounds really hard.
But what Halo was notably good at was making Covenant forces appear more capable than they actually were. I can only find this article - the source links are down, alas. Edit: Here's the original presentation The Integration of AI and Level Design in Halo from GDC 2002, in PPT format. It's very short, but it's remarkable for showing both how incredibly simple the AI is, but importantly how driven the design was by interaction with playtesting; it's perhaps even a little depressing to see things like 'Things to Avoid: Subtlety'.

In terms of story, and illustration of that story, it's no Marathon[nb]which it must be admitted relied on reading terminals above all else (although, it's better than that makes it sound), and was space opera silliness too albeit of a far deeper kind.[/nb], but Halo was an enjoyable, good game even if characterisation was almost entirely limited to Cortana and Guilty Spark (and, frankly, only the latter was of interest). The hype and the subsequent mediocrity of the sequels tends to mean that it's judged more harshly than it deserves.

Treguard of Dunshelm

I'm a pretty big Halo fan - possibly even to the point of being a bit of a fanboy - but even I can't see why Bungie spent so much time and attention on the backstory. The initial premise was decent enough for a game, despite being completely unoriginal, but instead of actually developing it and differentiating it from other work they instead focused on a load of pointless little details like the organisation of the UNSC or the history of the Spartan programme. In the first game you had to fill in the gaps in the backstory on your own, from Halo 2 onwards they gave far too much away and consequently the setting lost a lot of its (admittedly somewhat cheesy) charm.

Still Not George

Quote from: Benevolent Despot on March 01, 2011, 05:19:54 AM
I was like this guy for hours.

(~2.20 in)
Let's play X2: The Threat - 2 - Getting lost in menus, controls and space

What, a complete idiot?

Actually, there should me more videos of people being completely useless at games, it's kinda funny to watch.

Zetetic

^^

I fear a lot of that does derive from having 5 years between Marathon: Infinity and Halo:CE in which an awful lot of ultimately useless work was done; at least up until 1999, there appears to have been no clear vision about what the game, or its story, should be, only the vague feel of the universe (which is hodge-podge of various bits of sci-fi literature). Following Microsoft's acquisition, I can only assume that they were rather rushed into knocking out a FPS in that universe without much idea of why and where the game should take place and so settled on a moderately traditional epic without a great deal of elaboration on the plot itself.

Nik Drou

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on February 28, 2011, 03:08:31 PM
Except for Goldeneye 64 and Spider-Man 2.

Concurred, I was just about to say that.  Spider-Man 2 is one of my favourite games.

Well, despised is a strong word, but I've never managed to get my head around the Resident Evil series, particularly part 5, which I got on the strength of good reviews and excellent graphics.  It never stopped being an utterly frustrating experience.  Your character moves somewhat like a tank.  It's the 21st century, people in games shouldn't move like tanks, it doesn't add to the experience.  It's a chore to get your character from one position to another.  It's a chore to aim, because for some clever reason you aren't allowed to move while doing so.  Your 'companion' throughout the game pretty much only gets in the way, and exacerbates the need to constantly open an in-game inventory just so I can get access to ammunition I already picked up.  It pretty much came to a head once I reached a level set in some kind of underground caverns, where the only source of light is from a lantern that your AI partner carries (fun times).  There's very little ammo in this area, so it isn't long before I completely run out.  Unfortunately, it's practically impossible to complete the level without any ammo, so as far as I'm concerned, the game was broken and I haven't played it since.

Has anyone else played the Dragon Age 2 demo?  I don't get it.  It was about 30 minutes or so of extremely ripe cutscenes and combat that involves spamming the X button (which doesn't always seem to have an effect) to a bunch of enemies that don't react at all to being attacked (and neither do you) until their energy runs out.  Oh, occasionally you can press O button and do a larger attack, or the triangle button if you're lucky.  It quickly becomes an incredibly tedious slog, broken up by yet another cutscene and a chance to pick one of three incredibly mundane things to say that, presumably for the most part, wouldn't have much of an effect on the proceedings. 

DJ Solid Snail

Quote from: Ignatius_S on February 28, 2011, 03:43:47 PM
Aye, and I would also include the Riddick games.
The Blade Runner game is utterly superb. And The Thing is not incredible, but certainly decent. Oh and Toy Story for the MegaDrive (though I will admit my preference there is quite possibly clouded with nostalgia).

I hated this game purely for the reason that it took a ridiculous 20 minutes or so to save (and possibly to load) and when it did it took up all 15 blocks on the PlayStation's memory card:



The game simply wasn't good enough to justify all the wasted time. I mean, no other PSX game did that, did it? How could they have possibly managed it?!

Brigadier Pompous

Half Life 2

A boring, near-plotless on rails generic FPS that would have been largely (and justly!) ignored if it wasn't called half life 2.   

Subtle Mocking

There's a lot of FPS games I could add to this thread. Killzone 2 was bloody boring, with the exception of the first 5 minutes of seeing the graphics. That's about it, after that you're left with that same familiar FPS greyish-brown colour scheme, repetitive enemies, dull locations etc etc.

mcbpete

Quote from: Brigadier Pompous on March 01, 2011, 01:14:50 PM
Half Life 2

A boring, near-plotless on rails generic FPS that would have been largely (and justly!) ignored if it wasn't called half life 2.   
Whilst I agree that the plot was hardly Proust, not once did I ever find it boring (Nor the following two episodes)

glitch

Quote from: DJ Solid Snail on March 01, 2011, 11:52:08 AM
Oh and Toy Story for the MegaDrive (though I will admit my preference there is quite possibly clouded with nostalgia).

Nope, it was bloody brilliant.

madhair60

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on February 28, 2011, 05:25:09 PM
Halo is hardly characterless, the environs are lush.

And anyway. That's hardly enough for it to be despised.

I don't despise it.  Nobody despises any of the games in this thread.  I just dislike it a lot, because it's bland and unappealing with characters who might as well be action figures.  Gameplay's probably fine, but I'll never really know because I'm so turned off by the setting that I can't enjoy it.

Jemble Fred

Quote from: madhair60 on March 01, 2011, 08:09:27 PM
Nobody despises any of the games in this thread. 

Ah well they've probably got the wrong thread then, judging by the title. I nominated the last Leisure Suit Larry because I genuinely despise the fact that it was ever foist on the general public, and I feel the core developers who thought some elements of the game were good ideas should be at the very least kicked in the face. It's an absolute disgrace on every level, not just 'a game I wanna diss'.

madhair60

Quote from: Jemble Fred on March 01, 2011, 08:32:16 PM
Ah well they've probably got the wrong thread then, judging by the title. I nominated the last Leisure Suit Larry because I genuinely despise the fact that it was ever foist on the general public, and I feel the core developers who thought some elements of the game were good ideas should be at the very least kicked in the face. It's an absolute disgrace on every level, not just 'a game I wanna diss'.

Your choice is the closest to despisable, I'll admit.  That and the predecessor "Magna Cum Laude" were horrible.  I just think that "despise" is a bit strong for video games.

Nik Drou

Quote from: glitch on March 01, 2011, 04:51:25 PM
Nope, it was bloody brilliant.

I think Aladdin onwards, Disney put a bit more effort into their game adaptations, as the ones preceding them (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast:Belle's Quest/Roar Of The Beast) were a bit ripe.  The Lion King game was also pretty good.  While we're here, The Super Star Wars series of SNES games were also a decent film port.

Playing Half-Life 2, I remember being more or less fine with the gameplay aspects, but the actual world of the game is so depressing and repulsive that I'm utterly fine with never playing another Half-Life again.  Plotwise, the first game worked as a nailbiting survival horror, where for the most part you were just trying to work out what was happening and try to escape the facility.  In Half-Life 2, you're already regarded as a 'freedom fighter', the world is already irrevocably fucked up and the now-tedious 'G-Man' is just a Diabolus Ex Machina-type who only serves to avoid them writing decent endings.  It takes a lot of the fun out of it.

madhair60

Quote from: Nik Drou on March 01, 2011, 09:13:34 PMThe Lion King game was also pretty good.

Nah, it was bobbins, that.  Hated it.  Aladdin is ace, though I'd say it was one of the last good ones.  After all, the BEST GAME EVER Castle of Illusion (Master System) had come and gone, as had several sequels.