Bad games of gaming's past. Are they still bad now?

[Dalisclock]

Part of me hoped you would say Final Fantasy 2, 8, or the 13 Trilogy

I'm not sure I'd call FF2 bad, but it's certainly frustrating. It has a lot of interesting ideas, it originated a lot of the series iconic things(Chocobo, Dragoons, etc) and the plot(at least, on it's surface) is interesting.

It's just rather poorly implemented overall and the idea of "Learn by doing" is so easily abused to break the game because otherwise it's really fucking annoying. I think the issue is it's really ambitious and those ambitions didn't quite translate into compelling gameplay, but from a game design perspective it's interesting.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It still does not change the fact that the game's "racism is bad" message is tone deaf, barely explored, and uses little understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and America's racism.

You're not going to find a game that does a decent exploration of the effects of racism or even a decent "racism is bad" message outside of the indie space, if even there. There's way too much money involved to make a lot of white people uncomfortable.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I heavily disagree. All of his plots are shit or the game's don't explore enough and use the shallowest parts without having message to stick by or drop it later on out of convivence. Too bad Telltale (at one point) and the Until Dawn developers do a better job than whatever Cage could muster. Even his "best game", Detroit: Become Human, he was mostly hands off with the writing, so some better parts could slip in. It still does not change the fact that the game's "racism is bad" message is tone deaf, barely explored, and uses little understanding of the Civil Rights Movement and America's racism. Let alone the racism Detroit actually had in the past. So the weird and bad Cagism still gets in through the cracks.

hmm, maybe it was my imagination that DBH was an amazing game. Probably because of Heavy Rain's annoying controls.

 

[BrawlMan]

You're not going to find a game that does a decent exploration of the effects of racism or even a decent "racism is bad" message outside of the indie space, if even there.

Wolfenstein: The New Order and New Colossus did a great job, all things considered on the AAA end.

There's way too much money involved to make a lot of white people uncomfortable.

Sucks to be those specific white people. They're oversensitive pussies who don't want to think or only think of themselves. Yet plenty of books, comics, movies and TV shows explore racism just fine, and still make the money.

 

[Dalisclock]

So, in other words, games that were regarded as being bad at release, but have been re-evaluated since then?

Well, combination of personal and general stuff, I guess I can nominate:

-Assassin's Creed: Unity (this seems to have been re-evaluated favourably, could be wrong)

Browsing the AC Subreddit from time to time a of people seem to adore it, and it sounds like a lot of the problem at launch was just how poorly it launched and how fucking bug ridden it was. It does have one of the best settings in the series(Paris is wonderfully depicted and in general it looks really good still) though the plot is super uneven and it weirdly treats the revolution as an afterthought despite being a central part of the setting. The whole thing about Arno and Elise working together as Templar and Assasin feels like it never really gets the attention it deserves and you almost never get to actually do missions alongside her.

-Dragon Age II (seems to be more favourably regarded these days)

It's got a lot of issues for sure, though I think the fact it was super streamlined from Origins and a like 1/3 of the length probably didn't help either. Don't get me wrong, it's got legit issue(nothing you do really matters much, it was super rushed, there's way to much filler combat) but it sounds like people do appreciate it more than at launch, especially since it sets up a number plotlines for DAI(One big one in particular).

-Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (dunno if this was ever regarded as "bad," but seems to be better regarded now than when it first came out)

From what I can tell, people were MAD because Snake wasn't the main character after the Tanker(To be fair, Konami did edit the trailers to show Snake in scenes he wasn't actually in during the actual game so there was some lying). Once that wore off I think people really did appreciate what it did right and it's a lot better to play then MGS1 was. Also the whole thing about people only consuming information they agree with to create echo chambers feel spoolily prescient.

 

[BrawlMan]

hmm, maybe it was my imagination that DBH was an amazing game. Probably because of Heavy Rain's annoying controls.

DBH has its fans, but even hardcore Cage nuts admit was nice playing a game where he was not involved as much with the writing. Hence what I meant with his "best game".

 

[BrawlMan]

-Sonic Unleashed (mostly crashed and burned when it came out, these days, it seems to be regarded more fondly - true for myself as well)

I never had fond memories of Unleashed. Critically the game crashed and burned, but still sold more than enough to make a good profit. It was kids who mostly didn't have a problem with the Werehog sections. My feelings are more or less the same they were back in 2008.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Sucks to be those specific white people. They're oversensitive pussies who don't want to think or only think of themselves. Yet plenty of books, comics, movies and TV shows explore racism just fine, and still make the money.

Do they though? Seriously question, the big budget stuff that I'm aware of that deals with racism and the like often has to tiptoe around (or completely miss the point and sabotage their own messages), but that's not to say that there's some impressive stuff that I've just missed.

 

[BrawlMan]

Do they though? Seriously question,

They do, but depends on what you're looking at. For example, The Watchmen TV series that aired on HBO Max, got really deep into the racism and was not afraid to hide or shove it under the radar. In fact, it explored real racism acts that happened in real life that was nearly forgotten about/or certain people tried to hide. The good news is people found out about because of this show, or wanted to know more. Watchmen became a huge success, because the people on the show did their own thing, but was not afraid to get political or go deeper.

The Purge movies after the crappy first movie deserve proper credit too. Anarchy and Election Year especially, were ahead of the curb. Minus EY's who wins the election bit.

​

 

[Drathnoxis]

No, of course games get better as they age, they're like wine. In a couple more years Superman 64 will become one of the greatest games of all time.

 

[sXeth]

I still can't see fps games outside of Halo working with a controller. I mean, I know they do ever since Halo showed devs how to make them work, but it still seems foreign and weird to me.

Consoles have had KB/m support for like ... 6? years now (other then Nintendo). I pull it out for the odd Warframe thing that might require a bit more precision despite more generally finding the controller comfortable to use.

Although developers are not so great at letting you rebind keys.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Throw in another vote for Duke Nukem Forever and Doom 3. It helps that both games were pretty good in the first place. DNF got struck with sky high expectations that it couldn't possibly live up to, but if a person is a fan of Duke or it's kind of vulgar humor it's what you'd expect and enjoy. Gameplaywise the two weapon rule was the only issue it really had, and it wasn't much of a problem.

Doom 3 got it far worse though. It was a very good game and future entries in the series should've continued on along the same lines. However, people didn't want a horror shooter, they wanted a mindless action shooter like the Doom games that came before it. Doom 3 was pretty much Dead Space before Dead Space existed. They share a lot of the same mechanics but Doom 3 a little more action over horror. Ultimately the whole reason people didn't like it was because it was trying to deepen a series that the fans expected and wanted to be mindless action, so it went back the other way in future entries as a direct result... and I don't know about anybody else became very very boring because of it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I'm not sure I'd call FF2 bad, but it's certainly frustrating.

I would. FF2 is bad.

 

[Silvanus]

I would. FF2 is bad.

FF2 is the only mainline single-player FF I have yet to play, don't tell me that...

 

[BrawlMan]

Doom 3 got it far worse though. It was a very good game and future entries in the series should've continued on along the same lines. However, people didn't want a horror shooter, they wanted a mindless action shooter like the Doom games that came before it. Doom 3 was pretty much Dead Space before Dead Space existed. They share a lot of the same mechanics but Doom 3 a little more action over horror.

And Doom 3 was trying to be System Shock. And before Doom 3, it was Doom 64 that was the slower-paced, atmospheric horror shooter of the franchise. D64 still had a bit more action by comparison.

 

[CriticalGaming]

FF2 is the only mainline single-player FF I have yet to play, don't tell me that...

Dont worry about it.

 

[Samtemdo8]

I have another game in my head right now that I wonder if its still bad today or its now a "good" game by today's standards compared to current bad games

Deus Ex: Invisible War, the direct sequel to the first original Deus Ex. Its a massive downgrade from the original Deus Ex in terms of gameplay and an example of "hardcore and mechanically deep PC game being dumbed down to work on filthy consoles" kind of thing. But the game as on its own merits, is it still bad?

 

[BrawlMan]

I have another game in my head right now that I wonder if its still bad today or its now a "good" game by today's standards compared to current bad games

Deus Ex: Invisible War, the direct sequel to the first original Deus Ex. Its a massive downgrade from the original Deus Ex in terms of gameplay and an example of "hardcore and mechanically deep PC game being dumbed down to work on filthy consoles" kind of thing. But the game as on its own merits, is it still bad?

View attachment 7645

All I can tell you is that by the 2010s, feelings had softened on the game, and it just became a case of either you love it or hate it.