We're getting close to March which means 1 month away from April Fool's Day.
Who all is interested in doing a Secret Satan gift exchange this year?
If you haven't heard of it before, it's like Secret Santa except the aim is to get someone a game they will absolutely hate. Then we all play it on April 1st and share our misery (or surprise joy).
Going to put a $10 price charting value minimum like last year. In fact, last year's rules worked pretty well so I'll keep them the same:
Your game must have a minimum value of $10 based on Price charting for a game in similar condition. (If it's on the cusp, take a screenshot for proof). That makes things interesting so that we don't just buy the cheapest craptiest game in the gamestop bargain bin. Note you don't necessarily have to pay $10, that just needs to be its pricecharting value. If you have a poop game already that fits the bill, by all means feel free to use it
You can send multiple games if you want, but at least one of them must individually meet that $10 threshold. (So a $10 game plus a $2 bonus game is fine, but sending five $2 games by themselves is not).
Creativity in packaging or sending bonus items may be fun and hilarious, but is by no means required. If you do receive something creative, please take pics and share, it will be more fun for all of us.
Post a message saying you're in, or send me a PM and I'll get you on the list! If we get at least 8 participants (we had 10 last year) it's a go!
We'll get everyone assigned in the first week or so of March, and then everyone will have 2-3 weeks to find and send something to their target.
As a reminder, one of the survey questions will be whether you are uncomfortable being paired with any of the other participants. That way if there is a certain user (or multiple users) on the site, you can privately let me know. I will keep that request confidential and make sure that they won't be your Satan.
Pretty amusing as I was actually just having quite a lengthy discussion about bad games on discord last night. Without getting too much into it here, a lot of people haven't played truly awful games. Like if you are saying FF8 is the worst JRPG you've ever played, then you have simply avoided the truly heinous ones (and I am by no means an FF8 defender or fan).
Can't join this time around, but I'll be sure to view the discussions here. There are some awful and torturous games out there. Hope everyone enjoys. 😈
Giving s couple more days if anyone else wants to sign up. Will be sending out surveys on the 1st, then everyone has a week to complete them. After the week is up (or sooner if everyone gets them done quickly) I'll send out the assignments.
You should make sure to have your game shipped by May 23rd to give it enough time to reach its destination by April 1.
> How do you feel about steam/digital codes for this? We have had a user request only
> steam games from their Satan.
>
> It definitely makes it harder to go by pricecharting value in that case, since you
> can't resell digital games once the code is used.
>
> Looking for group feedback before I decide how to proceed.
>
>
I've never even bought a steam code before and don't have an account there. I wouldn't want to make one either, but I think you can get codes through other sites?
The idea itself seems fine since the person wants a steam code. Would just have to go off the current price and do a $10 minimum I guess. Though true CRAP might be cheaper.
> How do you feel about steam/digital codes for this? We have had a user request only
> steam games from their Satan.
>
> It definitely makes it harder to go by pricecharting value in that case, since you
> can't resell digital games once the code is used.
>
> Looking for group feedback before I decide how to proceed.
>
>
For that special case, I'd say the game has to be accepted by you, before being purchased for the recipient. That way you can see if it hits this exchange's limit.
I'd say steamdb.info is a good rough gauge for the current value of a Steam game.
Ok I'm going to allow digital if it's something people specifically request. But I'm lowering the threshold to $9.99 purchase price for digital instead of $10 pricecharting because (a) digital games typically end in .99 and (b) no used copies so no real means of pricecharting them.
I suppose you can research it's lowest sale price or how often it goes on sale, but it's simpler just to say if your victim is OK with digital, and you are sending digital, you're spending $9.99 or more (but you don't have to pay shipping, so there's that).
If you don't have a digital account and need to send someone a game, you can either send a gift code for that game, or a digital currency code for that amount with instructions on the game to buy, or we can work something where someone else buys and gifts the game on your behalf and you reimburse them (lots of people have steam so that should be easy)
The real problem is actual crapty games are usually only obtainable digitally, and if it exists physically it might be some stupid expensive LRG release.
> The real problem is actual crapty games are usually only obtainable digitally, and
> if it exists physically it might be some stupid expensive LRG release.
Yeah i'm really glad we are having the option of a digital gift if the person is ok with it. It opens up some real possibilities. Like i use Steam and there are a TON of options on Steam that would make for some true torture.
In about an hour, I'm going to go to a couple of used game stores and see if they have the sweet gem that I've picked out for my victim fellow gamer. I've got to try this game out too, just to get a taste of what I'm going to be putting that person through. I like to know what kind of experience they're going to have.
Game obtained! I look forward to shipping it out. Should we send our games at the earliest opportunity? Or should we all send them around the same time?
Last year, citizen zane had me as his victim, and since that element of surprise was gone, he sent me snippets of reviews of the game he was sending (obviously with any info identifying the exact game removed).
As a way to keep the fun energy in this thread going, feel free to post them here once you've decided on the game you are sending to your victim.
And for anyone reading, don't do a Google search on the snippets and spoil the fun (at least not until after April 1).
So here is my first snippet:
[GAME] for the [SYSTEM] is one of many [POPULAR IP] games that is just a wonder. As in, it's a wonder how this game ever passed quality control. ~ N. Durham on Amazon.com, rated 1 star
> Last year, citizen zane had me as his victim, and since that element of surprise
> was gone, he sent me snippets of reviews of the game he was sending (obviously with
> any info identifying the exact game removed).
>
> As a way to keep the fun energy in this thread going, feel free to post them here
> once you've decided on the game you are sending to your victim.
>
> And for anyone reading, don't do a Google search on the snippets and spoil the fun
> (at least not until after April 1).
>
Wonderful idea! I was wanting to do this again, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I plan on doing this until April 1st.
Graphics were a nightmare, choppy, and the levels and character models I could have done in Photoshop! The sound was just as horrid! Bad music, bad voice acting, and well it was just bad!
Updating the OP next to the victims' names once I have confirmation that the gift to them has been sent. That way no one can use this info to deduce who their Satan is
"The story is far, far, FAR too short. It feels like fanfiction written by a fourth-grader"
“I would suggest you not get this game. It was really bad. The only thing that was good was the change in the quality of the graphics compared to the other games"
"Anything that can be wrong with a game is in this one. Looks like [redacted] released this game before they even tested it because as far as I'm concerned this game is unplayable."
"This game is, simply, bad, in just about every way, from the uncomplicated, dated control system to the limited play boundaries surrounded by invisible walls, the poor camera, and unsatisfying play mechanics and the sometimes-disturbing graphics."
"The gameplay mechanics are chaotic, at best, the AI is plain dumb, the level-design is muddled, the scenario is boring… Well, there’s nothing to save here."
This game feels like some executives were out drinking one night and came up with a hairbrained idea for a video game. They then took it to the design team and just gave them a bunch of random ideas they had scribbled on the back of some cocktail napkins. The development team didn't really understand what the executives were hoping for and were too embarrassed to ask any questions. Plus, they didn't have the technical skills to execute it anyway, so they just phoned in the whole project to get the executives off their back...
May I name a few games I had to pass up because they didn't meet the price requirement? Don't worry, you won't be able to tell who I'm assigned to based on the list--it's pretty varied system-wise.
> May I name a few games I had to pass up because they didn't meet the price requirement?
> Don't worry, you won't be able to tell who I'm assigned to based on the list--it's
> pretty varied system-wise.
Sounds fun. Honestly the price requirement does make this a bit trickier. I understand the reasoning behind it but a lot of AMAZING KUSOGE is appropriately priced because no one wants that crap.
Largo Winch might be the worst game I've ever played, and it's a sub $5 PS1 game on pricecharting even now...
Sadly, there is no reason for anyone to play through [GAME]. The storyline is one that [LICENSED IP] fans already know; the gameplay is below that of Quest for Camelot; and better graphics and sound exist in 20-year-old Colecovision games. Furthermore, the game's password save system requires you to reach the end of a level before it offers you the ability to rejoin the quest, almost forcing a person to play the game. If [PUBLISHER], [DEVELOPER], and [IP OWNER] are lucky, people will forget this stinker quickly. [GAME] is quite possibly the worst [LICENSED IP] video game ever produced.
"While xxxxxxxx is a horrifically terrible experience, at least it's extremely short. What seems like a decade of isolation and cruelty is more like two and a half hours."
Bad news: I've been testing my NES throughout the day, and it is seriously on the fritz. It's a pain getting the image to display at all, and after about 15 minutes of play, the color goes and everything rapidly turns to static.
So if my Secret Satan bought me an NES game, I may not be able to play it at all.
The game that I bought arrives today. I can't wait to try it out!
"Abysmal in every way. The only possible reason there could be for purchasing it is to give as a present to a particularly hated relative - but that might be considered a little harsh."
I'm out of review sites. I could grab another review or two from Amazon, but everyone else reviewed the PC version (which is quite different) instead of this port.
There were plenty of games I wished I could send, but did not meet the price threshold. Some of the best include: The Cat in the Hat (based on the horrific Mike Myers movie--sounds peachy!) Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey (an educational Phantom Menace game for young children) Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (the most uninspired, dreary beat'em-up you'll find) Shrek (the funniest SM64 clone you'll find) Men in Black: The Series (easily the worst 2D action game I've played first-hand) Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (a pitifully poor entry in a prolific, respected series)
There are many others, but I don't want to eliminate too many possibilities.
Well, I've tried the game that I got for my victim. The good news is that they won't be punished nearly as much as benstylus was last year. The bad news is that this game still royally blows.
I would try the game I bought, but it came wrapped in protective plastic. If my SS is wise, he/she will admire its elegant wrapping and avoid opening it.
Even with for 15 bucks this game isn't worth buying! After five minutes, I understood that I won't play that game anymore. The graphics are very basic and simple but the animation... aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh! How a game can be so choppy even with one caracter on screen??? The game engine is crappy... I won't even talk about the gameplay... so much slowdown don't make the fighting easier... [STATEMENT POSSIBLY IDENTIFYING GAME REDACTED]... good luck killing enemies...
~ icecicle, Amazon.com reviewer 1 out of 5 stars
Note: All the "..." are from the actual review - they are not editorial marks from me denoting something was removed. The only edit I made was redacting one line with reference that would be a major clue as to the identity of this game.
I wouldn't change anything else about the review, even with for 15 bucks.
The controls are horrendous, relying on an uncontrollable camera angle that seems to mostly face the wrong way in a 3D game. The end result is that you won't know what you are up against or where you are headed until it's too late.
[Game] is, at best, a brave attempt to try to [description]. At its worst it’s a poorly designed and ultimately frustrating mess that really isn’t worth any of your time. Don’t be suckered in by the credentials of the developer; there’s a very good reason why you’ve never heard of this game.
This is the worst game ever, definately not a good game. Kids may like it a little, but if you all are 10 and over dont buy this. This is the easiest game ever and incredibly BORING. Trust me, this is not worth buying, and if you get it, go trade it in at Gamestop, I got 11 dollars for it and I got it for 10 dollars at Massachusetts.
Where to even begin... The graphics lag often. The story is far, far, FAR too short. It feels like fanfiction written by a fourth-grader. The controls are slightly wonky, especially if you've been playing [redacted] on the [redacted] all your life. Unless you have plenty of money to throw around, don't purchase this game NEW. Purchase it USED, preferrably for no more than $5, because that is all it's really worth. If you want it for game-playing purposes, you will be sorely disappointed, especially if you are a fan of the previous games.
Both of these reviews are approximately 9 years apart from eachother
"Flawed gameplay and camera issues means you'll be fighting twice as much, but more with the crazy camera as it spins all over the place during fight sequences. Neither rent nor buy this title; save the cash for something else."
Meet [character]. [...] He is red, as are his enemies and their projectiles. Yet his environment is green! Red and green are opposing colors, providing for a stark contrast between the background and interactive objects. For once, the action in [game] is VISIBLE.
5 out of 5 stars ~ CAV, Amazon.com reviewer and verified purchaser Reviewed on October 20, 2017
Does he, though, CAV? Or are you the kind of parent who abuses their child if they show any sort of dissatisfaction with what you provide them?
Does he love the game, or does he pretend to love it because he can't handle ten more whips from the belt, especially after you threatened to use the end with the buckle next time?
Does he love the game, or just doesn't want to go back into the cage in the back room of the trailer and be forgotten about for three days while you get drunk and pass out on the floor in a pool of your own urine?
Does he love the game or does he want to avoid ending up like his little sister that you hit too hard that one time and she lost consciousness, and in your panic you refused to call for an ambulance and instead you grabbed a shovel and prepared to take her out into the woods if she didn't wake up?
@benstylus On April 1, will you update the OP to tell which game each person receives (as they reveal them, of course)? That way we can watch them suffer more easily.
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."
> I am always fascinated by genuinely awful games that command high prices.
>
>
>
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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).
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!
@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?
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.
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.....
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? [imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKFcWi5XoAEPvEJ?format...[/imgt]
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! [imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKFcWi9XUAA1HY-?format...[/imgt]
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.
I beat both my games. Satan had moderate success with one, less with the other.
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKF7tcfXUAwDeMG?format...[/imgt] 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.
[imgt w=1536 h=2048]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKGHlGmXgAApZK3?format...[/imgt] 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.
> Not the WORST rated game, but have fun with that story.....
>
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 the mod is a mess and the Leader (Berkan Denizyaran) of it was basically torturing and crunching the whole team and blah blah blah, but the Mainly reason of why is so hated is because it was so bad that Valve had to remove the Steam Greenlight and Berkan got a job in Activision for doing nothing (He does what Activision has been doing for years so that was a good decision i guess) and it cost more money than HL1 and HL2
It's a really terrible Half-Life fangame. That on its own shouldn't be an issue, there's plenty of bad fangames out there, some even worse than HDTF, but what people have an issue with is
The fact you have to pay money to play it
It's falsely advertised; despite having his name in the title, him being a heavy part of the marketing and the game's plot being all about him (the main character wants to hunt him down and kill him as revenge for beating him up during the Black Mesa incident, hence the title), Gordon Freeman is barely in the game, if at all
The developer's crapty actions; he still hasn't paid certain people who helped him work on the game
And, while this isn't a reason to hate the game, it's just really funny. Half the characters are voiced by YouTubers who do a pretty terrible job. Like, the president of America is voiced by fudging Keemstar. That's even funnier than him being played by Kevin James in Pixels.
This might be controversial coming from me: It's a scam. It was marketed as an official expansion for a while. Despite its failures it is still a paid product.You can still see it on Twitter sometimes. RR began using the fact that it sucks and is broken as a selling point once the jokes and memes picked up.
But the thing that really got to me and still gets to me was the way they treated their consumers on the Steam forums after release and on Twitter (it still happens on Twitter, i see it occasionally). Paying consumers were verbally abused, laughed at and treated like complete dirt and it still happens. It's just a big dumb joke to them and it grates on me because they are taking your money.
People joke about the game which just further perpetuates the scam. It just serves to trick more new players into buying it and giving them money. It's dumb and childish. It's a big insufferable blemish on our community and it has become inescapable.
It's a borderline unplayable fan-game that's riddled with bugs and terrible gameplay design.
And more importantly the game is an asset flip with assets taken from other fan source projects without credit or permission from the original creators; and the main developer of the game is also a conman that never fully paid the other devs working for him or some of th voice actors. So by buying the game you're supporting a scammer.
All of this under the mantle of a storyline that has enough edge to cut steel; with a theme that takes itself too seriously and thinks it's a gritty and dark game when in reality the plot is laughable.
All of this is why it's essentially a meme in the community.
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.
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.
Jokes on me, turns out to be a bunch of seeds. Those were immediately eaten disposed of. Cudos for including the manual. I'm a packrat and will likely save the box to torture another unsuspecting soul.
Now this... this shocked me. This was LITERALLY the game I was considering buying for him but ultimately went a different route. I figured Spyro being bad is a bigger blow, since it's a good franchise. This... looks awful. You know what to expect right away.
> 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.
After sailorneorune played this one I tried it with a goal to get either the $1 million case or the $0.01 case. With 26 cases, then i should have a 1 in 13 chance of getting one of those two if the RNG is fair
So far, no luck. I'm still well within the margin of error, but i also suspect it's probably not the truest RNG out there. Given the somewhat shoddy touch controls in the game, I don't think QA was the highest priority here, and they probably also slapped in the quickest rng generator they could find or make.
@Frank - I was heavily considering getting you what you got me, but had to get Charlie's Angels because of how ridiculous it truly is. Even though the game that you blessed me with will take me three times longer to beat, your punishment is almost ten times worse than mine, so I believe I win this round!
BTW, I did play Charlie's Angels for a little while and have just started playing the superb Spyro game. So far, I'm not impressed, but it beats the hell out of Charlie's Angels!
I won't really be able to put some time into playing this until Wednesday, so I give my thoughts on it after I have done so.
Sorry about that @benstylus I've been way too busy.
That said I did fire up the game. Battlemage on PS1. I will say it is truly awful. I struggled at first to even figure out how to start the damn game because it wasn't very intuitive. The initial menus make sense it's after I went in to try and start a campaign that I had issues. Almost had to look it up.
In general this game would be more playable on PC. It wouldn't be good there either but holy hell the console controls are bad. The game makes no damn sense though...it's...an rts???
An actual good version of some of the concept here ended up being made when Shandalar happened. That game is actually fun. This game is...horrible. I ended up playing some Shandalar after lol.
I got a game called Agony for the PS4. I gave up after about an hour. Awful, awful game. It may be the ugliest game I've ever played and I'm not even being hyperbolic. It's also needlessly graphic. Like some of the imagery is disturbingly explicit. I guess that must have been the selling point. The survival horror genre is one of my favs and I've put up with plenty of mediocre and even bad games, but this is something truly special. Only played it for about an hour and it crashed on me 3 times. The gameplay is buggy and glitchy and there are stealth sections that either don't work or I was too stupid to figure them out. The game makes you hold your breath so enemies don't detect you. You hold your breath and they still detect you. Add to that the terrible level design, unintuitive controls, bad voice acting, and environments that all look the same because it was just a copy/paste job. Honestly just a bad time.
The only thing it has going for it I guess is that it's conceptually a pretty interesting take on Hell. But the execution is so poor and I don't know if I've done justice to just how poor it is. It's all shock and zero substance. I went and looked through some reviews on Steam and Metacritic. Anyone who gave this a positive review was paid off or something. It's honestly that bad.
The game has a PS4 Metacritic of 37 and that's too high. Nice work, Satan. I'm actually worked up about this lol. I was going to make some playful puns but this game doesn't deserve it. It belongs in the trash which is exactly where it is going.
> Looking at that return address... Pretty sure the entire state of Ohio is "Satan's
> Butthole" not just one city
>
>
Hey, Ohio isn't so bad after some changes passed in the fall. Almost became one of the worst states in the country though had things gone the other way.
I'm playing my Flatout 3 now, so far its crashed on me 4 times just booting it up and finally got it running. I hate racing games.... and i think i hate them even more now so mission accomplished.
Oh man you are in for a treat. King's Knight was the stuff of legends when I was in grade school.
Think of the clunkiest scrolling shooter you've ever played, slow it way down, and add easily missable hidden items that are required to beat the game.
> Oh man you are in for a treat. King's Knight was the stuff of legends when I was
> in grade school.
>
> Think of the clunkiest scrolling shooter you've ever played, slow it way down, and
> add easily missable hidden items that are required to beat the game.
>
Further details emerged in mind. I also remember this game was the reason we created the fictional KSOB radio station. They just played the sound of people sobbing 24/7 (except for the unsettlingly upbeat station identification stingers. K-SOB RADIO! GET SOBBING! 🎶)
Hunt Down the Freeman: Imagine someone made a fan game based off Half Life and it's nothing like Half Life. There are cut scenes, an actual story of some kind and it's sort of probably like CoD with level design. It's pretty bad, I've had to look at a guide a couple of times to figure out what I'm supposed to do to progress. It sucks. Might just call it quits, put 2 hours into this abortion.
> Hunt Down the Freeman: Imagine someone made a fan game based off Half Life and it's
> nothing like Half Life. There are cut scenes, an actual story of some kind and it's
> sort of probably like CoD with level design. It's pretty bad, I've had to look at
> a guide a couple of times to figure out what I'm supposed to do to progress. It
> sucks. Might just call it quits, put 2 hours into this abortion.
All I know about it is that they cheaped out on hiring actual voice actors and instead resorted to getting YouTube personalities (many of which had novice voice-acting experience) to read character lines. The most embarrassing I've heard was that they requested a YouTuber with a thick British accent to voice an Asian character.
> Thanks for playing everyone. I'm gonna have to step it up next year, some people
> were really satanly.
Thanks for hosting this! I had a blast!
With the exceptions of Charlie’s Angels and Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, I haven’t heard horror stories about most of these. Perhaps that’s for the best—it would get stale if everyone sent out the agreed-upon worst games ever. Finding King’s Knight in the wild made this more fun on my end. (@ryanflucas My next choice was Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool , but my local store didn’t have it. Lucky you.)
For next year, I recommend a minimum price of $8 for a single game. If that’s too low, it could be $8 + another game to reach a $10 value overall. There’s a ton of garbage out there in the $8 range that should be considered.
Whoever gets me next year had better pray they don’t have an original Xbox!
> I should clarify that I really did mean that I want to “see” a high roller version
> (not participate) :)
I suspect most people feel the same way. But just in case I'm asking well in advance so people can't say they would have participated if they had more notice.
So I've spent some quality time with Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly. While this is really a bad game, it isn't too bad. Thankfully, the controls are okay (with a few odd decisions), which I"m okay with. I've played four levels so far, which have been okay, but overly simple. The only real challenge comes in the form of, well, challenges that the game let's you partake in if you so choose in order to obtain dragonfies. Which reminds me, each level contains 10 dragonflys. It's kinda like the stars in Mario 64. You need to obtain enough dragonflies go get access to different areas. Also, there are a butt-load of gems just scattered around every level. It's a huge collectathon with those, but I've only spent some of that sweet mula like one time. I've got over a 1,000 of whatever this currency is and no where to spend it as of yet.
The camera in this game messes with me a bit, especially if I'm rotating it. I don't know how to explain it, but it's as if the world is slightly warped sometimes as I rotate the camera. Not a problem, but just something that I've noticed. The framerate can really suck at times, which is one of my biggest gripes. The sound is stupid and unforgettable. I was playing a flying challenge, when all of a sudden, I noticed that the music had stopped. A few seconds later, it restarted again. Another sound issue I noticed is that when you break vases, sometimes they simply don't make a sound. It actually happens quite often. Overall, this game seems rather rushed.
A few other things: Never having played a Spyro game, I don't know if this particular mechanic was present in the previous games, but there's one that bothers me. When you jump in the air, you can then press and hold the jump button in order to glide, which comes in handing with trying to jump from one platform to another. This would be fine, except for the fact that there are some edges you won't be able to make it to unless you tap the Y button at the very end of your jump, which gives you a little upward movement necessary to complete to jump. It's kinda stupid and unecessary. Another thing that I've noticed is the voice acting. I swear, every set of NPCs that you interact with have distinct accents. The first world had an oriental theme and all the masters that I rescued had stereotypical Asian accents. Plus, they were all named after movie martial artists! (Jacki, Jet, Bruce, etc...). There's one level that is a farm setting with super-hick farmers who's cows were being abducted by aliens (actually a pretty fun level). I've also come across tourist pigs who sound like they may be from New Jersey. I wonder what other accents I will come across next.
As annoying as the voice accents can be, the dialog made me laugh a couple times, which is much more than I could say about Charlie's Angels! So, @Frank , How far have you gotten so far? Have you at least completed the first level? I'm curious as the how your experience has been so far.
> I'm both glad and also disappointed you aren't having a miserable time.
>
>
While I'm not experiencing any misery, I am having some trouble progressing. I think I need to find the Ice attack to progress, but I'm not quite sure where to find it. I may have to check an FAQ. In the meantime, I've been going back to some of the levels and searching for it as well as all the dragonflies that I missed. The enemies aren't so bad, but some of the timed challenges are very difficult. I might pass on a couple of those. I'm hoping to maybe beat the game this weekend.
> King's Knight is so bad. It makes me actually want to go to work.
Mwa ha ha, I won.
King's Knight claims to be a shmup, but it's really about destroying as much terrain as possible and collecting the mandatory items buried under it, while barely-visible enemies and projectiles fly around the screen.
I'm currently playing a level in Spyro that takes place in the clouds. Funny thing is that the voice of the NPC beat that I've been interacting with in this level has suddenly changed! Never had that happen before in a game where they all of a sudden went to a different voice actor. The enemies in this game are rather simple. Just a single attack on them does a trick. This is the fourth level I've finished and there's not missing a boss battle. What a lame game.
Edit: Just adding a few more thoughts about this game. While it isn't a terrible game, it's just off in a lot of ways. For instance, there are portals to challenges within all the levels, but there are also portals that are used to exit each level. I can't tell these portals apart, so when I go into what I think is a challenge portal, it actually takes me out of the level and back to the homeworld. You would think that the portal that takes you home would be at the end of the level, but no, I've actually had to pass the portal home in order to get to challenge portals. It's laid out in a ridiculous manner. It sucks to have to go through an entire level again becuase I accidentally exited before I was finished with it. It looks like I'm about halfway through it, which is a relief. From what I've read about this game, I'm glad I'm not playing the PS2 version. Apparently, that version is full of game-breaking bugs.
Overall, I do not like this game, but it is tolerable. I'll be glad when I'm done with it.
>> I'm currently playing a level in Spyro that takes place in the clouds. Funny thing
>> is that the voice of the NPC beat that I've been interacting with in this level
> has
>> suddenly changed! Never had that happen before in a game where they all of a sudden
>> went to a different voice actor. The enemies in this game are rather simple.
> Just
>> a single attack on them does a trick. This is the fourth level I've finished and
>> there's not missing a boss battle. What a lame game.
>>
>> Edit: Just adding a few more thoughts about this game. While it isn't a terrible
>> game, it's just off in a lot of ways. For instance, there are portals to challenges
>> within all the levels, but there are also portals that are used to exit each level.
>> I can't tell these portals apart, so when I go into what I think is a challenge
>> portal, it actually takes me out of the level and back to the homeworld. You
> would
>> think that the portal that takes you home would be at the end of the level, but
> no,
>> I've actually had to pass the portal home in order to get to challenge portals.
>
>> It's laid out in a ridiculous manner. It sucks to have to go through an entire
> level
>> again becuase I accidentally exited before I was finished with it. It looks like
>> I'm about halfway through it, which is a relief. From what I've read about this
>> game, I'm glad I'm not playing the PS2 version. Apparently, that version is full
>> of game-breaking bugs.
>>
>> Overall, I do not like this game, but it is tolerable. I'll be glad when I'm
> done
>> with it.
>
> You know the glitch about the final boss portal, yes?
No, I actually haven't read a whole lot about it, other than the fact that the PS2 version is much, much worse. Based on what I've seen so far, I will not be surprised if I encounter one.
no metacritic score
no metacritic listing
(an educational Phantom Menace game for young children)
(the most uninspired, dreary beat'em-up you'll find)
(the funniest SM64 clone you'll find)
(easily the worst 2D action game I've played first-hand)
(a pitifully poor entry in a prolific, respected series)
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.
, but my local store didn’t have it. Lucky you.)
