VideoGame_Discussion

TES IV aka Oblivion.

I’ll start, I guess. I was (and still am, technically) an admin on Kirby Wiki for a decade, and when Kirby: Triple Deluxe launched, I was pumped. It was a sequel to Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, the best traditional platformer IMO. It had new Copy Abilities to use, giant bosses to bash, a new story to experience in a whimsical world, and so much more. What could go wrong?

Then I played it. At the time, I was disappointed. The new Hypernova ability that replaced KRtDL’s Super Abilities was pretty dull and repetitive, and not optional at all. The story didn’t really go anywhere until the last two cutscenes, where both villains reveal themselves to be two-dimensional. The world itself was pastel-colored to an annoying degree, with the volcanic area looking like neon ketchup rather than boiling lava. KTD dug up as many references to past Kirby games as it could, almost feeling afraid to have its own identity. And the Dedede’s Drum Dash mode was a rhythm game that I couldn’t get good at. I was unimpressed at first, angry by the end.

Since I was an admin on the site, though, I couldn’t just stop playing it. I had to help write articles and facilitate our coverage efforts. So I didn’t get a respite from it for about four months, and as a result, I ended up hating it for years. I’ve since softened on it and even like the game now, but I can still remember why I despised it all those years ago.

State Of Emergency for PS2.. SOOOO Much hype... SOOOOOO Terrible..

Twelve Minutes. I don’t even know where to begin, but the true ending is all kinds of messed up.

Oh Twelve Minutes - what utter trash. It sure got lots of hype thanks to the voice actors they swindled into their dumpster fire of a joke.

Batman Arkham Origins - I hit a game breaking glitch, I cant recall how many hours in but my save file was corrupted so the only option at the time was to restart the game. I enjoy every other game in the series but I have never gone back to Origins.

Slickriven wrote:

What’s Twelve Minutes, besides the average Super Mario Land playthrough?

mattyg00013 wrote:

Ouch, that stinks. I think I knew about the bug and made sure to play on a different platform, but maybe I'm not remembering correctly. I actually liked Arkham Origins - it wasn't as good as City but I felt it was decent enough and maybe would've been better received had it come out before the superior City title.

mattyg00013 wrote:

A friend recommended it as more Arkham. Is it significantly worse than the Rocksteady ones?

SupremeSarna wrote:

It's more of Arkham Asylum with some open world like City. It's likely the worst of the whole series, but only barely. I loved Asylum and City and Knight was solid. Origins was good enough that I wasn't wasting my time, but Rocksteady was the better studio. The studio that did Origins went on to do Gotham Knights... so the quality is a step down for sure.

Samurai Legend Musashi - the sequel to my favorite PS1 game of all time.

It was just... so... bad.

Even IGN gave it a 5.2. And they are so famous for inflated review scores that earlier this year they actually published an article trying to explain why they have so many games scoring 7 or above...

https://www.ign.com/articles/another-7-ign-why-so-...

mattyg00013 wrote:

Damn. I had two glitches I remember where I couldn't progress the game at all as-is (can recall other times where I was able to power through). Assassin's Creed 2 (shortly dropped the series after this anyway) and then Red Dead Redemption which I did like enough to attempt to patch which worked and I was able to play the game.

benstylus wrote:

A 7, the lowest score a video game can receive.

Complete agree with this one. Was actually talking about it recently and said I'd give BFM a 9 and SLM a 5.5. I didn't know about the IGN review at all so that's kind of funny..

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue - Encountered a game breaking glitch at the end where I couldn't beat it. Didn't want to start over either.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 - Just a bad game compared to the first.

Super Mario Sunshine. I want to love it like I love all of the other Mario games, but I just don't. I think if I had played it when it first came out, I probably would have enjoyed it (not sure if I would have LOVED it though). But, since I wasn't really gaming much during that time and didn't even own a GC until after the Wii was already out, it took a long while before I finally found time to try it, and by then, it just didn't hold up. I tried again a few years ago and this time really tried to power through, but I still ended up quitting in the 2nd world because I just wasn't enjoying it. I'm going to give it one last chance on Switch. Playing SM64 on Switch felt like a huge upgrade with the controls, so I'm hoping the same will be true for Sunshine. A large portion of my frustration was the controls, so if they can be improved, it would help a ton. I still think the level design sucks though.

Saints Row 2022 the game wasn't as fun as the previous 4 games and the spin offs. The gameplay wasn't an improvement and the story and forced side activities were a drag. The dialogue and characters were also lacking. The game wasn't as bleak as previous games and lacked weapons as well.

Plants Vs Zombies 2. The original is still fun to play. The sequel is mobile fremium garbage.

benstylus wrote:

I never knew Brave Fencer Musashi had a sequel...

For me I guess a good example would be Lunar Dragon Song; I had played the PS1 remakes of Silver Star and Eternal Blue, and went in expecting this game to be amazing, but instead it ended up being quite possibly the worst RPG I've ever played.

shadyfozzie wrote:

This.

I remember not liking Super Mario Galaxy at all.the first time I played it for like 30 minutes. I thought the controls were crap and so was the camera, and I was convinced that Nintendo would never learn how to get the camera right in a 3D platformer. I went back to it a couple of weeks later though and my whole opinion changed and now I would rank it in the Top 5 of 3D platformers on Wii.


The opposite was true for Super Mario Sunshine. I rented it in summer of 2002, this was when Blockbuster had this pass promotion thing going where for the whole month you could rent a game and return it for something else as many times as you want for the entire month instead of being stuck with a game for 5 days. I played Super Mario Sunshine for a few hours and kinda enjoyed it despite the camera sucking moose nuts, never finished it though, I returned it to Blockbuster 2 or 3 days later to get Madden 2003. I revisited Super Mario Sunshine almost 20 years later when Nintendo released it on Switch as part of Super Mario 3D All-stars and I played a couple hours and refused to play more, I don't know how I ever liked it. The camera is just bad and I feel the game in general, like Super Mario 64 which is also included on the Super Mario 3D All-stars collection, it simply didn't age well.

mattyg00013 wrote:


What were you playing it on? I played it on Wii U originally, got around 75% through it, then during a boss fight cutscene the game froze while in the middle of autosaving my progress. I had to power off the system and then when I started it up again the data was corrupted. A few weeks later I restarted it on Steam this time and had no issues with it. It's not a bad game at all, but if I didn't already own it on Steam as well, I never would have given it another chance on Wii U.

Otaku100 wrote:

I try to burn this one from my memory. Sooo bad.

Read Dead Redemption - found the open world devoid of anything. I get that it's the wild west, but if the setting is so sparse why make it open world. The plot was pretty boring and the mini games atrocious. Forced myself to beat it to see the hype and never found it.

Resident Evil 4 - Horrible story that moved away from the survivor horror series I enjoyed.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I loved the first game and played the second game for like a week before getting rid of it. To me, it essentially looked like a PS4 game, but played like a PS2 game.

God of War (2018) - I disliked the new camera angle, axe, and RPG elements (skills and equipment). And nothing explains how Kratos went from Greece, with an Olympus blade sized hole in his chest, to Vikingland. I dislike vikings and Norse mythology in general - vikings were parasites on civilization with no redeeming qualities that I can think of. I'm unfamiliar with the Norse mythology, so I couldn't relate to anything, recognize notable figures, or appreciate the developer's artistic take on it. For similar reasons, I have little to no interest in AC: Valhalla.

Dragon Age Origins - the game felt like 10% combat and 90% talking simulator with meaningless dialog trees and choices (but my OCD makes it hard to just roll with it). I read a plot synopsis and I'm glad I didn't continue playing - I'm not interested in gritty/angsty dark fantasy stuff. I didn't have fun for the few hours I played it.

PizzaTheHutt wrote:

I also didn't get into Galaxy the first time I played it. I didn't hate it, but idk, it just didn't hook me. It seemed like the whole game was just going to be shooting from tiny planet to tiny planet, running quick circles around them, and I really didn't like it that much. Thankfully, I came back a couple years later and ended up loving the game!

It's kind of tuff, but Circus Maximus (Original Xbox). I like the concept it looked like fun but it had a hell of a learning curve and was just sloppy. The music and modern taunts felt out of place. I remember this game being the reason I traded my Xbox for a Gamecube back in the day. I was so disheartened by the complete lack of software that this was the straw that broke the camels back. I made the trade and said I would get one one again when it got games. I did, went through 12 systems I believe.

Honorable mentions:
Shenmue - piss poor voice acting killed it for me.
RAD - Again, voice acting killed it for me, it was probably the worst I have herd, it got some more runway that Shenmue did because it had robots and stuff.. but ultimately was a bad game.

Finn wrote:

The voice acting and bad writing in Shenmue are the big things that I really liked about it (other than Space Harrier). So bad it's good sort of thing. The game really fell flat for me otherwise. To be fair though I did buy it and Jet Grind Radio on the same day... and that one may be my favorite game of all time

I need to try and find Chaos Wars again... that was a masterpiece of terrible voice acting.

Arc Rise Fantasia is another one with a heinous dub. A game I really enjoyed, despite that fact.

Damian254 wrote:


I bought an Xbox (whatever) specifically for this game. I hated the main story line. It felt like a rail shooter, where you couldn't deviate from the intended path. I get why they did it, but your mates were complete asshats. Rob a bank? Streets lined with armed citizens? Bank has a back door? Naw, can't use that exit. Escape out the side? Naw, mission failed nearly immediately because your retard posse goes straight down main street while you escaped behind cover straight to your unprotected horse. Fudging garbage.

I also hated Mario 64. The game killed the Mario series for me until Galaxy. I specifically remember playing it thinking there was nothing to do, and it killed all of video games for me as an adolescent. Funny enough it was WCW vs NWO World Tour that got me back into video games.

Diablo IV. Great game, I do want to say that, but the way Blizzard has messed with gaining experience and nerfing things and buffing very few things and them taking their sweet ass time doing anything to enhance the player experience after doing terrible patches and then I need to make a new character every season on top of this? I don’t know if my character is a season character or not but if I need to make a new one, I’m not even going to bother. Oh and I need to be always online for a single player game? The hell?

Honestly, a lot of live service type games suffer from this type of bullcrap and I’m tired of it. I understand that when I get the game I am buying it as is at that particular point in time, but that doesn’t mean I want the game to fundamentally change after it’s been released and it’s not like we have any recourse to get our money back when/if that happens. We’re fudgeed. It’s also never going to get any better, so I guess I better get used to it. Still sucks.

Dawn of Mana on ps2. Was expecting Secret of Mana and got utter crap. I tried the game for a few hours, stopped, put the game back in the box and tossed it in my collection never to be played again. It is one of those games that is set up into stages and every new stage you start at lv 1. The controls are bad and everything about the game was just a huge let down.

BucketofJustice wrote:

I've had a few games pull that (The Crew 2, Dirt Rally 2, and Gran Turismo 7).

It's to a point where I have to carefully check nowadays before buying them, and if it's got online required for single player, I'll pass. Maybe pick it up used when it hits the discount bin at $20 or less. But even then maybe not.

Ubisoft in particular has been and about this with their racing games lately. At least codemasters only pulled it once with Dirt Rally 2 before coming back to their senses with Dirt 5.

The more I play modern games, the more I like the classics.

Bleed_DukeBlue wrote:

This. I was so hyped for this game. What a disappointment.

benstylus wrote:

Yeah I’ll take the hit for not doing my research for the online only requirement. I didn’t really follow Diablo IV at any point before I got it with my Series X. That said, I’ll definitely be doing more research on the always online part. I dislike being forced into it, and maybe I shouldn’t see it as an issue because I’m always online with the consoles anyway… but I still don’t like it.

Orlandu wrote:
I was disappointed by PvZ 2 also, compared to 1. 1 was great, fresh, and fun.

The game kept things feeling new, having modes like walnut bowling and other minigame style stages.

Even had a 2P mode where the second player could throw butter at zombies to slow them down.

PvZ 1 actually had an ending.

PvZ 2 seemed like a clone of 1, but with new plants. And the devs just kept on adding new worlds, over and over, with seemingly no end. For me personally, that wasn't what I would want. I stopped playing the game a long time ago. Perhaps by now there's an ending?

But Crazy Dave is great in both games. Ribbee robber. Rara rohhhhhh!

On an unrelated note to the games themselves, I get a bit sad when I think of PvZ 1. I played it with a kid relative of mine who back then was much happier. He's since gotten very quiet. Hardly talks. Shuts himself away from the world when he can. So when I think of Plants vs Zombies, it's bittersweet. I picture a fun time with a happier person and I also think of the sadder person he now seems to be. But he'll crack a smile if you sing "there's a zombie on your lawn" :)

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk starts off with a whimper. Close quarters tutorial stuff makes it feel like a demo, character models up close look absolutely terrible and somehow the cel-shading gets pixelated, the dialogue is dumb and there's a lot to button press through, and it takes far too long to get going. It feels like a $10-15 game at best and nothing near $40. It gets better once you hit the open-ish world so I'm going to stick with it a bit. But so far it's very disappointing.