The Worst Games of the Worst Year Ever
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Snowrunner I felt was mechanically flawed. I put it better in my Impressions thread for the game. But I felt that the mud mechanic doesn't really work and is far too punishing. I'd be fine with some skill being required to navigate through the muddy trails, if there was a reasonable method in doing so. But the game seems to make it impossible to skillfully navigate any muddy patch, you are 100% going to get stuck regardless of skill level and the game seems to be built around how good you can tow yourself from point to point.
Snowrunner is bad because it's concept doesn't work and it's mechanics are unexplained towards anyone except possibly a muddy truck enthusiast. Which I guess has some merit, but there should be at least some trade off to that in order to give the layman player a reasonable way to learn and come to grips with what they want you to do. Instead the game is a slog which is enough for me to put it on the list.
It isn't the worst game of the year, but it is one of the worst gaming experiences I had.
The Last of Us 2 is a polished and well built game, but it also ended up on this list merely because I drastically hated the story. So it's not like my criteria isn't wildly out of place because of Snowrunner.
The game looks a bit like Death Stranding but with trucks. Truck Stranding I guess. I'm sure there's an audience for it.
Didn't Borderlands 3 come out this year and no one liked it? I played the shit out of the first 3 with my gaming group and we all unanimously vetoed playing the new one because it looked so bad.
September of 2019 actually. People liked it. They didn't like the story as much as previous games, but the actual gameplay was liked. And they keep making DLC so I assume people are still invested in it to some extent.
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I had more fun with it then the other Borderlands games, but I'm also not really into loota shootas like that. My friend who loves the series has been playing BL3 almost exclusively since it came out and even got it a second time on steam. But another friend who likes the series hated BL3, but I think thats because she ended up with a bug that messed up her campaign progress when she was playing with her friends and missed a story quest.
OT: Fuck, worst game... I guess Doom 64... I don't think I played any bad games this year, or at least ones that come to mind. I can only base Doom 64 based on playtime since I only did a few levels before getting distracted by other things.
Ahahaha! Yeah, no. Certain aspects of the game may have not aged well, but it's still a good game. Better than a lot of the crap that came out this year.
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What was the crap that came out this year? Since I moved I haven't really kept up with the gaming news for the last few months.
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Plenty of people have other things on the list, but as far as I am concerned the new Avengers game is the worst game of this year for me. It performed worse than Anthem! Worse than Anthem!
The Avengers game had the "honor" of being the first obviously low-effort cash grab in recent history that didn't somehow break sales records regardless. I could almost start believing that gamers are learning....
I'd chalk it more up to the constant stop-start of their hype on it. Being released as a years too late tie in (to say nothing of not getting even the likenesses of the known actors) didn't help it either. So by the time they got there, one of their characters was already dead in the mainstream, and most of the rest substantially altered, to say nothing of the missing roster. Then they had their weird cheap knockoff Civil WAr plot with a bunch of points more suited to X-men then Avengers.
Probably compounded by showing their ass to the world with the public beta.
Jesus, I totally forgot that not only did I buy that game on Steam release, I bought the digital deluxe edition when it was half off (29,99€ for the game and season pass was a steal). I've still played only 2 of the 4 DLC that have been released to my knowledge. I just can't muster the will to play. Well, part of it was that it gave my PC too much of a workout (struggling to maintain stable 45 fps at low settings), and in a game that hectic 60fps is basically a must.
It's honestly sad, because Borderlands is one of my favorite game series of all time, and BL3 basically did everything right: the gameplay was tighter, the environments incredibly varied and beautiful, the weapons were crazier and even more distinct, the new sound effects were a special highlight. Yet it all came down to 3 aspects that ultimately caused the game to lose me.
- Weapon drop rates. This was always my main complaint about BL2: the drop rates in that game were, and still are, simply too strict. If you want to get a legendary, farming is basically mandatory, no ifs, no buts. And on UVHM it turns the game into a retarded grindfest. Not fun, not well designed, not good. So when I saw BL3 had fixed this, at first I was extatic. But it soon turned into a monkey's paw scenario when I realized that they'd flipped the coin: now legendaries are vomited up like candy from the word go, faster than I can try them out. By level 25 I was selling everything below a purple rating as vendor trash, and it utterly ruined one of the key aspects I enjoyed in the game. In BL3 getting a legendary feels utterly hollow, because you know you'll have gathered 5 more by the end of the level. I'm not even fucking kidding when I say that once a non-boss enemy dropped no fewer than 3 legendaries, 2 of which were the same weapon.
- The story. This was always a "could take it or leave it" aspect for me. BL2 did the right thing by focusing more on bombastic character personalities than any real narrative. But it seems that they completely ran out of ideas with BL3, and just couldn't come up with a new Mr Torgue or Handsome Jack or Tiny Tina. The player characters acting as legacy NPCs fleshing the story out worked in BL2, because BL1 had barely any story to begin with. But here there are just too many familiar characters which both dilutes the weight of the story, and overshadows the new characters. It didn't help that the story itself was also nonsensical, at times actively annoying, and chock-full of unskippable, worthless non-cutscenes.
- The effects. I have no idea how on God's green earth this game doesn't have a strobe or epilepsy warning on it. I'm not photosensitive, and neither is anyone in my family, but at times I was having to pause the game to rub off some serious eyestrain. Playing Zane at a high level turns the game into basically a rave, and the sensory overload is just too much. And remember, I was playing on low settings, so most of the effects weren't nearly as flashy as they could have been.
Oh noes! I asked my kids to get me this for the holiday (at least it is on my wishlist!) Soooo sorry you were un-plussed about it.
Ok, this is going to get things thrown at me, but seeing as this is the only game I bought this year that I actively dislike...sigh...Ghost of Tsushima.
I've said this over and over but I'll say it one more time before I just stop talking about it. The game is technically fine. Its really pretty, the combat is fun for a while and the story is there. But it is so fucking dull, other than story and the occasional collectable or roaming gang of 5 or 6 guys. What else is there to do, this open world is dead and offers nothing of value outside of missions. Why is this game open world? It doesn't need to be open world when a load of structured levels you could approach either stealthily or aggressively would of worked a hell of a lot better than the open world. But hey, open world is popular right, even if there is nothing in it.
I played until the end of the first chapter, rescued Uncle Dickbag and got a "Sorry Jin, but our Mongolian brute is in another castle" and it was around that point that I was done. I played a bit more, I tried to be enthusiastic about it, I tried to force myself through the story but I just didn't care. I would turn the game on, look at the gorgeous scenery for a minute or two, at the cold dead world, sigh and turn the game off again.
God, even Mad Max, a game I hold up as "the most ok game ever" is better than this game, at least in Mad Max the world feels alive with stuff to do. But hey, those loading times right?
And while I'm rustling jimmies, I'm going to preemptively throw The Last of Us 2 in here too. No, I haven't played it yet, are you insane? But this saves me having to find this thread again when I get bored enough to borrow the game from my friend. Everything in this game looks like everything I hated about the first game with the misery factor turned up to 10 and added dog killing. Seriously, I like dogs more than I like anyone in this game. So fuck every character in this game that isn't a dog.
I've enjoyed pretty much everything else I've played that was released this year.
I've said this over and over but I'll say it one more time before I just stop talking about it. The game is technically fine. Its really pretty, the combat is fun for a while and the story is there. But it is so fucking dull, other than story and the occasional collectable or roaming gang of 5 or 6 guys. What else is there to do, this open world is dead and offers nothing of value outside of missions. Why is this game open world? It doesn't need to be open world when a load of structured levels you could approach either stealthily or aggressively would of worked a hell of a lot better than the open world. But hey, open world is popular right, even if there is nothing in it.
I played until the end of the first chapter, rescued Uncle Dickbag and got a "Sorry Jin, but our Mongolian brute is in another castle" and it was around that point that I was done. I played a bit more, I tried to be enthusiastic about it, I tried to force myself through the story but I just didn't care. I would turn the game on, look at the gorgeous scenery for a minute or two, at the cold dead world, sigh and turn the game off again.
God, even Mad Max, a game I hold up as "the most ok game ever" is better than this game, at least in Mad Max the world feels alive with stuff to do. But hey, those loading times right?
And while I'm rustling jimmies, I'm going to preemptively throw The Last of Us 2 in here too. No, I haven't played it yet, are you insane? But this saves me having to find this thread again when I get bored enough to borrow the game from my friend. Everything in this game looks like everything I hated about the first game with the misery factor turned up to 10 and added dog killing. Seriously, I like dogs more than I like anyone in this game. So fuck every character in this game that isn't a dog.
I've enjoyed pretty much everything else I've played that was released this year.
Oh, no need to worry, I have no doubt it'll be great for mostly everyone else as there's little to nothing negative said about the game so far. I'm just in an especially awkward situation with any of EA's online "integration" currently. Plus it's supposed to be way better in VR, so I'm not really bothered about waiting or missing out till VR is obtained. It was a brief disappointment at most. If you have VR too, definitely go for it!
I mean, there's an audience(presumably) for Bus Simulator(where you simulate driving a city bus around) so one can only imagine there's one for this.
I didn't play a lot of games that came out this year and none of them were awful, so I'll list my "meh/okay" games.
Inmost: It looks pretty for it's gameboy color-like style and the game is pretty solid. It's just so vague that it feels like the entire point is to figure out what's the symbolism and what's real and what the point of it all is. Which is too bad because I wanted to like it more then I did.
Rime: Think Journey. Now think of a Journey clone that goes on for far too long and keeps hinting it's got something to say but never seems to really get around to it until the very end and when it does it seems to come mostly out of nowhere. That's Rime.
Carrion: So the whole "You're a shapeshifting blob/teeth monster wrecking havoc in a big complex full of tasty humans" is a fun and pretty well executed idea. It's biggest issue is that all the areas tend to look the same after a while and it feels like an hour or so could have been lopped off without sacrificing anything.
Child of Light: I think this would be more fun to play with a child in the seat next to you or at a younger age. It's very pretty and solid and honestly not a bad game, it just never grabbed me so I got halfway through and kinda just stopped playing.
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