VideoGame_Discussion

I received mine, but I’ll stay in suspense until April.

I can confirm receipt of my satanic package, and no, it is NOT ticking this year!

Looks like my game will arrive on Monday. Looking forward to seeing what misery my Satan is about to unleash on me. Last year was pretty brutal. I got Unbox: Newbie's Adventure and it is easily the worst 3D platformer I have ever played. Tried but just couldn't get through it. Awful, awful game.

It was tough finding a game for my person this year. I had 3 frontrunners, but 2 were below the PriceCharting value and the 3rd was too expensive even for a loose copy which was a bummer. But I found one last night that I think may be even better than the others I had in mind. I was able to grab it from Amazon and pay for expedited shipping so it should be delivered middle of next week. It has a Metacritic score in the 20s and here are some quotes I loved from reviews:

"Awful, unfinished, broken and completely unworthy of your time and attention"

"Please, for your sake and mine, stay far away from this game. Even if you get it for free. Even if you get paid to take it."

Enjoy!

Heavyd814life wrote:

Curious what this Golden Turd is...

I am always fascinated by genuinely awful games that command high prices.

benstylus wrote:

It’s Ed, Edd n Eddy: Scam of the Century (fitting title). It’s not like Devil’s Third outrageous or anything but it’s $40 for a loose copy on eBay and about $50 on Amazon.

Heavyd814life wrote:
That's probably why. Nostalgia bites hard, especially for tie-in merch like that.

There’s a Dexter’s Laboratory GBA game that contains a game-breaking glitch that you’re more or less expected to run into. I was tempted to seek that one out for my Satan, but that seemed unfair.

SupremeSarna wrote:

I know that there is a way that my victim can potentially run into some trouble, but it will only happen if they are irresponsible. I'll explain later.

Game crashing bugs are awesome.

You aren't expected to beat your game necessarily, just suffer from it.

The one in Dexter’s Lab is a softlock, not a crash. But it happens in the final stage, so it’s more infuriating.

Admittedly, one of my favorite games ever has a notorious crash glitch that was accidentally introduced in the North American version. Still a brilliant game if you can circumvent that issue (of play the PAL or JP versions instead).

benstylus wrote:
I didn't beat last year's game, lol
I didn't even suffer. I'm just not too into horses.

Oduomega wrote:

Hopefully Satan has learned from past mistakes

benstylus wrote:
Doesn't look hopeful.

I guess everybody is so thoroughly disappointed with their games that nobody wants to post, lol.

I haven’t opened mine. I figured we’d all rip off the bandage on April 1.

Oduomega wrote:

I photographed the packaging when it arrived and will post on the 1st

It's here it's here! Satan really IS real!

Frank wrote:
Same

This is what my Satan sent me. Something probably hazardous to my health?

Nope! It's something genuinely interesting. I absolutely adore the attempt to put Han Zimmer's classic work into 8-Bit chiptune form, lol. Nice try, Satan!

Honestly, I'm pretty hard to torture, I guess?

@Oduomega I believe you mean John Williams. I'm curious what your experience with the game will be.
@benstylus Are we supposed to keep our identities secret at this stage? Or can we reveal who sent what as the games start getting posted?

SupremeSarna wrote:
I might have to look into that…it’s the same composer that did Indiana Jones and Harry Potter.

SupremeSarna wrote:

It's up to you if you want to reveal yourself

Eagerly opening my gift, I discover what's inside...

image

Wow, I must have been REALLY good this year for Satan to want to punish me with this!

I've always been morbidly curious about this game but would never actually spend my own money on it, so this is absolutely perfect!

The 23 on metacritic is promising too!

SupremeSarna wrote:
It wasn’t too bad. Certainly doesn’t hold my attention very much (most Gameboy games will likely be in this vein).

A couple of weeks ago, this package arrived at my doorstep:

I hadn't realized that I had anything coming in from Limited Run anytime soon, so I was pleasantly surprised. That was, until I noticed from whom the package was.

Frank TZ?! More like Prank TZ! It appears as though my no-longer Secret Satan was off to a great start. After battling through many plastic backs and intimidating paper wrapping. I was blessed with the following:

Now, you may be thinking," Spyro? What's so bad about that? I love Spyro!" Sadly, I already know that this is about to get real ugly. The thing is, I have already read about this game because it was on the short list of games that I was considering for my victim, so I already have a pretty good idea as to what I'm in for. What's funny is that I've never played a Spyro game, but it is a series that I'm thinking about giving a shot. This entry, however, is one to avoid like the plague! Not how I wanted my Spyro cherry popped.

On the plus side, I really appreciated the nod to Urban Champion is Satan's wrapping paper.

Maybe Satan isn't so bad afterall.

Looking at that return address... Pretty sure the entire state of Ohio is "Satan's Butthole" not just one city

I don't mind if my "victim" knows who I am. He told me he enjoyed some styles of shooters and was looking for a shortish game he wanted to play thru completely so i thought i'd try to ruin the genre with - https://store.steampowered.com/app/723390/Hunt_Dow...

Not the WORST rated game, but have fun with that story.....

On the flip side my Satan sent me a real gem with a 18% overall rating on Steam which is - https://store.steampowered.com/app/201510/Flatout_...

I hate racing games and this should be somewhere between a proctology exam and a root canal...

Satan has gifted me with some old tech! Given the excruciating pain of getting my NES to work, the demon is off to a good start.
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I dig into it to find two NES games. That explains the weight of the package. I figured it would be N64 based on the density. Looks like a bad skater and an early edutainment title. This’ll hurt, won’t it?
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There was also a Pet Simulator toy included, whatever that is. Satan did an acceptable job getting me excited for a decent one, only for me to open the unicorn one. The horror!
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@benstylus My games were Rollerblade Racer and Mickey’s Safari in Letterland (both NES).

Props to my Satan. I’m pretty impressed. https://postimg.cc/gallery/FLk19Vr

The package included a UK blanket (which is not as offensive as a UNC blanket but definitely up there as a Duke fan) and Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX on Switch. Its Metacritic score isn’t actually that bad, but my Satan clearly knows me, because this is a game I beat last year on two other systems for a badge in the Beat a Game thread and hated both times lol. Third time’s a charm? At least this version is portable so I can watch TV while I suffer through this.

Well played, Satan. Well played.

I beat both my games. Satan had moderate success with one, less with the other.

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Rollerblade Racer is the worst of the two games I received. It reeks of minimum effort. I know the dev team had six whole people on it, but dang. Kirk bought rollerblades and wants to join a competition. You race through a suburban street, a city, a beach, and a park, occasionally playing bonus stages. You’re timed, of course, and you have nine HP total (which is poorly conveyed). Lose it all or run out of time and you get a game over.

Kirk sometimes loses momentum even when you’re holding the +Control Pad (though that could just be my controller). Some obstacles, most notably the frisbee, don’t line up with the isometric perspective, so you’ll get hit even when you shouldn’t. You can jump over obstacles with A, which works fine. If you hold B and then press A, however, you do a marginally higher jump and then immediately take damage when you land. There’s also one droning tune throughout the game and a pretty gross color palette.

The beach stage is the worst, easily. Your intended path is so low on the screen, you have very little visibility. Fortunately, you can sacrifice some health to damage-boost your way onto the upper path, which has fewer obstacles and is a straight shot. The park is almost as bad, but by preserving some health from the beach, I managed to skate past the bratty babies throwing projectiles and the old folks reading newspapers with their legs kicked out in front of them.

Once you’ve qualified for the competition, you play a single stage that is just a combination of the three easy bonus stages. You then get a single screen where Kirk holds up a trophy and claims he won the race (I didn’t see anyone else competing). It even contains a typo (“I can’t wait wait”). I know the journey is supposed to be the destination, but I was expecting a bit more—at least in terms of frustration.

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Mickey’s Safari in Letterland is an improvement. It’s a braindead easy platformer where an invincible Mickey Mouse visits various countries and collects gems containing letters of the alphabet, then nabs a stone tablet. Goofy puts it through Willy Wonka’s gum-making machine and it deciphers a letter. You then have to identify which letter it is, slowly assembling the whole alphabet. Once you get them all, the forgotten Ludwig von Drake stares at the jumbled pile as the Alphabet Song plays.

The game is full of charming animations that would delight a young child or endear a jaded adult. You can bounce off a hippo or crocodile snout to reach higher ledges. Mickey will dust himself off and readjust his pants after crawling through a narrow passage. It’s cute if nothing else.

You don’t have to collect all the letter gems (I learned that by accident), but if you do, Mickey will sound out the three-letter words they spell and illustrate them with a picture. Yes, the game contains actual voice samples! And some of the pictures are nice nods to Disney’s pre-Renaissance library—I was amused to see the word “fox” represented by an image of the fox from The Fox and the Hound.

The game isn’t worth playing more than once, and it becomes a chore quickly. But it clearly had more effort put into its presentation than Rollerblade Racer did.

Quite frankly, the game I sent out is waaay worse than these. I’m eager to see it be uncovered.

SupremeSarna wrote:

He can't wait for you to do it again.

DO IT AGAIN.

benstylus wrote:

Oh-nooo my NES broke again looks like I caaan’t

brian9824 wrote:

ahem, so I've played some of this, and while it's so far not the worst thing I've played I did some research on it and there's a lot of controversy:

(all taken from random reddit posts on the game)

so, yeah, game sounds like it was made as a giant scam and the developers blocked/denied it being an asset flip that they stole from other games.

Sounds like Satan himself had a hand in it!

benstylus wrote:


Cleveland... it's Cleveland. Spent 1 week there for work. Not 1 thing good to say about it.

Work over for the day, I head home, ready to play my one game, all the while sailorneorune dreading her PILE OF GAMES.

So Homie Rollerz, what u got? Obviously I erased the save data first. I want this turd fresh, not someone else's leftovers. There are a bunch of characters, I pick the playa with a fro, obviously. Get to his menu and I have three options: Wizard Race, Challenge, and Garage. Let's hop into a race first. Only one track is unlocked. It's one of those kinds of games.

8 Racers, I start at the back of the pack naturally. And here we go! Hey this isn't awful, the framerate isn't amazing but it's bearable. The music is pretty funky. Then I have to turn. Controls are really twitchy! Let's see figure out stuff... L button makes me lean left, R button makes me lean right. Not sure how much use that will be but OK. There are some ramps, and boost pads... some items high up in the air after the ramps... is there a way to jump? Hm..Hmm... L and R together makes you hop! It also fills up a bit of a gauge on the left side of the screen.

Oh there are item pickups like Mario Kart! 3 different colors, do they mean anything different? I got a basketball. It bounces around when you throw it. So that's the green shell analog.

Anyway I jump off a ramp get a little too much air and now I am stuck on a wall, pointed up. I can drive about halfway up the wall before I start to slide back down. I stop accelerating, and I'm stuck here. Hop around a bit and finally free myself. That took a while so now I'm 30 seconds behind everyone else and I finish in last place.

Race 2, same track (last place isn't good enough to unlock a new track but I did get some reputation points). More flailing about, this time jumped down some stairs and landed on my side, after several seconds the game righted me and out me back on track. I pushed hard and nearly caught up, still last only 5 seconds behind the next guy. A little more respect.

Race 3, same track. Getting better, but getting pounded by traffic in the tight corners. And the items are always taken when I get to them. I did do a little better. 6th place and a few hundred respect.

I switch over to the garage, everything costs at least 2000 respect and I just don't have enough. I try challenge mode and it lets me wager my respect in a one on one race. I put up 5% and go, this is a different track at least. I come in second place! But it's out of two so last. Back to the Wizard Race.

Race 4. Same track. I am getting better as I learn the track more, this time I snag 4th Place.

Race 5, same track. a nasty hit with a swapper near the end of the race has me slam into a wall and drop to 5th place. I was running in third for a while.

Race 6, same track. Finally in the top 3! And my next race is finally nope nevermind. still not unlocked.

Race 7, same track. 2nd Place. I have about 6,000 respect now thanks to a top 3 and top 2 finish, so I head back to the garage to buy a new engine for my ride.

Race 8, same track. I immediately take a pretty commanding lead, and easily take first place thanks to being overpowered. Another big chunk of respect and finally the second race unlocks.

How will the next race go? We'll find out later.

Other items i found while playing: oil (banana), a wall (¿ block), invisibility (boo), fire (invincibility) and a couple others that don't have a Kart analog. There's a swap which immediately swaps your position with the Racer in front of you, and a lighning thing which slows down any Racers within a short radius of you.

Other than the music, this game is an average mariokart knockoff. Meaning it's bad but at least they didn't try hard.

So I also decided to participate in this farce... and my Satan wrecked me.

They sent me books: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and I am the Girl with the Nah Mate), and Inheritance (way to go Satan, sending me the last book in a series that I might actually read).

Then they sent me a rather nice wooden box with games in it:

1st: Spice World an indecipherable Wannabe of DDR that definitely did not Spice Up My Life. IT STINKS
2nd: Smurf Racer not terrible, but the sound clips and slippery controls got on my nerves.
3rd: Sesame Street Sports This was actually the best of the lot. Again, the sound clips were annoying but points for creativity for having a variety of events and Ernie's Bathtub Boat.
4th: Deal or No Deal 2011 Special Edition Craptacular The nicest thing I can say about this is that I now have a replacement DS case.
5th: The Dukes of Hazzard: The Return of the General Lee Rated E for Ex-Boyfriend. This is exactly the kind of gun-oil-and-armpit-scented macho bullcrap I thought I got away from many years ago. I have to wash my brain out now, you jerk. Thanks for the (bad) memories.

Crapfully yours,
sailorneorune feat. Valtteri Bottas