Games you consider overrated

[Woodsey]

Grand Theft Auto IV.

Bad writing
Bad pacing
Massive gameplay/story disconnect (far more than usual)
Bad combat
Bad cover system
Crap use of a decent physics engine (Niko has the turning circle of a truck)
Bad controls

RDR also, although I quite enjoyed it. It still has absolutely dreadful pacing though.

The ending:

Spoiler

The argument that he lets them kill him so they'd leave him alone is not totally outlandish, granted - but considering the FBI used him to get the others, and they seemed threatening but rather incompetent at tracking down anyone themselves, he could have just run away.

Furthermore, Marston is inconsistent as fuck. And not in a "he's a complex character" kinda way, but in a "we don't know how to write him consistently" kinda way. First off, he's presented as being respectful towards women, but then later in the game there's a number of occassions when they're taken off to get raped, and he doesn't even bat an eyelid.

Then there's the fact that EVERYONE fucks him about, and constantly, and very rarely does he do anything about; he rarely even grumbles about it, in fact. This is especially an issue in Mexico (as with the women issue), where the two leaders wave the carrot in front of him mission after mission after mission.

Deus Ex: HR. One dimensional characters, average gameplay and it seems to be a 3rd person shooter with chest high walls. Not to mention, you always seem to be chasing your next new ability, as in receive a quest that is easily completed with an ability that you need to level-up for. Perhaps it gets interesting when you can throw vending machines?

Uh... how much did you play?

 

[DarthSka]

Left 4 Dead and Angry Birds. Pretty much the case with both of them was that I got bored with them after the first few levels. Left 4 Dead did much better thanks to the co-op, but it didn't take long for me to ask, "Is this it?"

 

[Denariax]

Every Bethesda and Bioware game, as well as all Modern-esque shooters, and the "EA Strategy" (sans Alice, my favorite game of last year by far with literally no contest because most everything else was crap).

 

[Dagda Mor]

I could just list every popular mass market and cult game here but ill just list a few:-

FFVI/VII/IX - just listing these three as they seem to get the most attention and while I loved playing all 3 especially VI and VII they dont deserve all the praise they get (or hate either actually but thats usually at VII because it has/had the most market penetration while VI and IX tend to have more cult followings).

Overall, these games need less credit, but I refuse to call FFVI overrated until it and FFVII are held in similarly high regards.

I recently watched a lovely epic movie. It had been out for a few years, so I wanted to see what the fuss had been about. It was a little long, and the plot had something incomprehensible regarding snakes and nanomachines, I can't quite recall, but it was rather fun as a whole. Nevertheless, there were these strange moments from time to time where I was forced to push a few buttons on my remote to make the movie carry on. I was quite upset, but thankfully these were over quickly and the movie could carry on. Imagine my surprise though when I saw this movie receive vast acclaim in the category of video game.

Thats sort of the example I thought of now when reading this topic.

To me, the only really outstanding flaws with the Metal Gear series are the poorly done dialogue and the way it dumps long cutscenes on you so often. Almost every cutscene is skippable, and the gameplay is fun, so you're just coming off as someone who doesn't like games.

 

[Launcelot111]

Red Dead... I hated that killing your horse was a crime (this is my biggest complaint).

Wouldn't have been such a problem but for the parallax aiming problems from the first Third-person perspective, you could clearly aim past the horses head but the actual path of the "bullet" (actually a hitscan line) is to the left or right and down. They could have fixed this, made the bullets clip through your horse head as who ever wants to shoot their horse in the head WHILE RIDING IT!

Honestly, I had never even thought about shooting your horse while riding it, but now that I know I can't do that, I'm mad. Whenever I got frustrated with my horse, I got off and shot it in the head on the spot, so I really didn't appreciate that this was a five dollar fine. In all honesty, my favorite thing to do in the entire game was to find where the cougars lived and laugh as they came out of nowhere and killed my horse in one swipe. One random touch about Gun (Gun was better than RDR) that I loved was that if you spurred your horse too much, it would die on the spot. I don't like horses.

Hmm, bold seems like an understatement considering everything else.

RDR really doesn't seem like the game for you, as it's a cowboy game and that is all about horse riding and enjoying that. I accept it's dishonourable murdering your horse but even a cowboy knows sometimes it's the honourable thing to shoot your horse like if it's lame and suffering. And the game doesn't even distinguish if it's an accident.

PS: I think at least Niko Bellic passes the Red-letter-media characterisation test. that is, be able to describe a character without listing their physical attributes nor specific role in the plot.

I like cowboys, so I can accept horses as a necessary evil of the cowboy setting, but if a virtual horse frustrates me, I will not hesitate to take out said frustration on it.

As for Niko, I guess I will describe him as "a Serbian war refugee who escapes the violence of his homeland in search of the American dream, only to find disappointment when he realizes that the same violence exists in America as well." I suppose that applies as characterization under your criteria, but all that is established in the first few missions, and the remaining 90% of the game is essentially just him doing random stuff to make money with only token references to some poorly explained drama back in Serbia. If this is all presented seriously and we are supposed to be earnestly interested in the story, then this level of characterization is not even close to sufficient for Rockstar's aims

Cowboys without horses is like max-max without cars.

In fact, mad-max swap out the cars for horses and you've got cowboys.

(you shouldn't take out frustration on creatures that break their back trying to help you, that's worryingly sociopathic. Take it out on the bad guys)

"a Serbian war refugee who escapes the violence of his homeland in search of the American dream, only to find disappointment when he realizes that the same violence exists in America as well." I suppose that applies as characterization under your criteria

Nope, you've just looked at the plot of the character. You fail to mention any (lack of) inherent things about him that you might say "oh Niko wouldn't do that, it's so out of character".

You are entitled to your opinion that he isn't very well characterised but I can't really see why you hold that position. You just seem to be repeating it in various different ways without any explanation nor comparison or contrast. In other words, it's JUST an opinion, not an argument. So I can't dispute what you are saying as you know your own opinion better than anyone, but it isn't convincing anyone.

Example: contrast the characterisation of Niko with, say, CJ from San Andreas, or another character you might say is well characterised.

The only thing I see Niko doing the entire game is to look at a situation, complain to Roman about how this isn't what he imagined America to be like, and then to go out and continue the cycle of violence with the flimsiest of justifications. I can't extrapolate how I feel Niko would react in any other situation because I see his character as inconsistent and illogical. I feel CJ is only slightly better characterized, but the tone of San Andreas is different enough that I focus less on the characterization.

Also, on the topic of horses, I've been around horses for the majority of my life, and I find them to be filthy, crushingly stupid animals. I've had multiple neighbors get seriously hurt or even killed because of accidents while riding horses. The popular image of horses as some beautiful, graceful creature that forms meaningful bonds with little girls or cynical old men or whoever really rubs me the wrong way. I see people who ride horses as the same as people who free climb rock faces or skydive or whatever in terms of putting their life on the line, but at least in the other cases, you don't have to rely on a creature who will rear up or throw you or otherwise panic at the sight of a plastic bag or something. They may be breaking their backs for us, but they break their share of backs as well, so I really won't feel sorry for any virtual horse that happens to end up at the other end of my gun barrel.

 

[Dagda Mor]

See , i told you . I asked the question about Deus Ex : HR .and most were as ambiguous as you . Ima edit this post and link my thread when i get home . Keep pondering , if you find a better answer lemme know.

Also 4 quotes already ... Oops?

Edit : here is there thread , i also put it in my original post . http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.337898-Can-someone-explain-why-Deus-Ex-HR-is-so-great

- Ending wasn't just terrible. It was downright criminal in how badly it was executed. Nothing got resolved, the way the endings were selected were just terrible (and gave no exposition about what it would mean), in the same way that Metal Gear Solid 2 cocked up it's epilogue (though not the ending).

The difference is that Hideo Kojima never wanted to make MGS2. He deliberately used meme theory in MGS2 to deconstruct the very idea of a video game, went out of his way to insult the player, and made the ending so deliberately confusing and indecipherable that you would just give up on trying to understand it. This was all part of his insane plan to get fans to hate him so he wouldn't have to make more games. Comparing that to something where the game cocked up the ending that badly, while actually trying to do well, is insulting.

 

[rangerman351]

Arkham City. I always liked the first better and my friend (an Arkham fanboy) disagrees with me and says that the second is better. Don't get me wrong, its an okay game but I just don't see it.

 

[D0WNT0WN]

Mass Effect to me is super boring. Everyone seems to think that it is some sort of game made by God though. I just don't see it.

Oh God someone who shares my opinion. Mass Effect to me seems like a pretty crap third person shooter with some okay characters, it isn't even an RPG. Also the Uncharted games; the shooting is crap and the on rails platforming rub me the wrong way. The set pieces are nice though and it looks pretty.

But yeah Mass Effect as a whole can go stuff itself, I played the demo and I hated it.

 

[Ryu-Kage]

I tried Secret of Mana for the first time over the fall. The friend I was playing with was having fun. I hated it.

I hated the super-linear plot with precisely TWO sidequests in the entire game that could be completed in about two minutes and around the same time (once you can fly around the world).

I hated how this game is an "active" RPG with "real-time combat", because it's a bold-faced lie. The idea that you could only swing your weapon at full power after resting for a few seconds? I'm actually fine with that part. When all of the eight weapon types have you rest for the same amount of time, and that length of time never changes over the course of the game, this mechanic starts to look a lot more shallow. And when every enemy in the game is stunned by a hit for the same length of time it takes to recover full strength with weapons, then you might as well have made this game a turn-based RPG.

The magic in this game acts weird, too. Two of the characters you control can learn seven schools of magic each (all the same schools, except while the girl gets Light magic, the sprite gets Dark magic; the other six are Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Moon, and Mana / Nature). In order to make the schools of magic more potent, you have to keep using them. Your MP starts terrifyingly low, however. The mentality is to be conservative with the spells, especially since when you first get magic, the magic recovery items are more expensive to buy than ANYTHING ELSE at that point. So, you have to grind to level up the magic, stopping the game dead in its tracks. You can only grind your magic a level equal to the number of schools you have unlocked. So, I guess this isn't so bad when Water and Earth are your only magic types, but by the time you've unlocked Mana magic, you're going to have to sit for hours trying to level that up. And I wouldn't complain so much about having to grind up Mana magic since it's pretty much useless for the most part.

...except that you need Mana magic to beat the game! You cannot HURT, much less KILL, the final boss without Mana magic - which I remind you is the last and probably weakest magic you find - being at a decent level, possibly the maximum level.

EDIT after fifteen minutes: Actually, I just saw a video where somebody beat the Mana Beast without using Mana Magic even once; although the method he used seems like it would consume craptons more magic faster after going through a dungeon that doesn't give you any breaks at all.

And I desipse it when the game glitches out for no good reason. During my playthrough of it, the game crashed on me. Twice. I'm not sure how or why; maybe one character was too far away from the rest. But I can't stand it when an RPG crashes or glitches with such little effort (hence why Red and Blue are my least favorite Pokemon games).

Bottom line, in my opinion, Secret of Mana sucks. (sigh)

...well, see ya, Square. Thanks for the fucking steak.

 

[Treblaine]

The only thing I see Niko doing the entire game is to look at a situation, complain to Roman about how this isn't what he imagined America to be like, and then to go out and continue the cycle of violence with the flimsiest of justifications. I can't extrapolate how I feel Niko would react in any other situation because I see his character as inconsistent and illogical. I feel CJ is only slightly better characterized, but the tone of San Andreas is different enough that I focus less on the characterization.

Also, on the topic of horses, I've been around horses for the majority of my life, and I find them to be filthy, crushingly stupid animals. I've had multiple neighbors get seriously hurt or even killed because of accidents while riding horses. The popular image of horses as some beautiful, graceful creature that forms meaningful bonds with little girls or cynical old men or whoever really rubs me the wrong way. I see people who ride horses as the same as people who free climb rock faces or skydive or whatever in terms of putting their life on the line, but at least in the other cases, you don't have to rely on a creature who will rear up or throw you or otherwise panic at the sight of a plastic bag or something. They may be breaking their backs for us, but they break their share of backs as well, so I really won't feel sorry for any virtual horse that happens to end up at the other end of my gun barrel.

You're almost touching on admitting Niko's characterisation and you hit the nail on the head in comparison with other Rockstar characters being similarly weak. That's not the selling point of said game. The character that sells is the city, the open world gameplay, the style, the soundtrack, the blend of gameplay modes and variety.

Oh I won't dispute the remarkable and awe inspiring stupidity of horses, I'm surprised "stupid as a horse" is not an idiom, as they seem to have no canny sense that most other domesticated and work animals have, they are still slaves to their animalistic flight-instinct at the most benign provocation breaking peoples backs.

But I don't hate them for that. I can't. Maybe it's just me but I can't hate any man or beast who fails because of their lack of intellectual capacity. I don't hate stupid people, I hate stupidity itself. I despair and get angry but I NEVER TAKE IT OUT ON THEM! If anything I hate myself for failing to control what should be a simple creature from factors that confound their functionality. Read the story of Moby Dick, all about a man seeking vengeance on a creature that knows no reason, and his folly.

But people who know better and still wrong me, knowing they wrong me... then they will taste my righteous wrath.

 

[SycoMantis91]

Dragon Age: Origins - I do think it's a horrible game. Personally. I can't think of a nicer way of phrasing this, but I really, really don't get what people can like about it. For me the story was uninteresting, the world was bland and far too closed, it shamelessly rips off Warcraft in more ways than I can even list, I never felt any care for the characters, having a silent protagonist with that kind of conversation system made it difficult for it to feel immersive, how much it forced overpriced day-one DLC in my face so much really pissed me off... you get the idea. I don't like it. Although I'll admit it handled character advancement pretty well. I liked leveling up my character and choosing new abilities and stuff. Lots of options there.

Blue Dragon - This game got really positive reviews, and I really.. really don't get why. If this game was aimed at little kids I'd understand, but the age rating is 12+. It's for teenagers. Supposedly. Playing it was just painful for me. The game patronizes the player over and over (typical Dora the Explorer fashion. Pointing out the most obvious things imaginable, in an almost insulting way), the scripts had to have been written by toddlers, the boss theme is cheesy as hell, the dramatic moments fail massively and just end up awkward to watch, and the game overall is just really childish. To make the game even more awkward, jiggle physics. One of the characters has jiggle physics. On a kiddy game like this it's just disturbing.

Dark Souls - If try to spend any more time playing this game I will have no controller or TV. This game laughs at me. It hates me. It's... hard. Very hard. To a point where I can't play it. I like feeling powerful on games, and I don't quite get that feeling on Dark Souls. Heh.

Typing this is taking longer than I thought it would so I'll just leave it with those three.

Any Final Fantasy after X. They've just plain sucked.

Have you played XIII? I hated the Enix ones too, but I really liked that one.

I did. Was not a fan. Maybe it doesn't suck, persay. But it's not good to me. The characters are all just plain annoying, the story's boring til halfway in, then not far after that it gets absurdly convoluted, and the combat system is boringly simplified. It kills the engaging thing they're trying with the pace when you have jack shit to choose from. It's really just a graphical spectacle covering up a painfully average game. In my opinion.

 

[Treblaine]

I hate to get on the band wagon but I have serious reservations with Metal GEar SOlid 4

Now I'm a huge Metal Gear fan and I bought a PS3 pretty much for MGS4 and have played through it 2 times now and though I never hated it, I never loved it and really didn't like how it ended.

Now Metal Gear has always been a bit off the wall (evil clone twin brother with outrageous British accent in MGS1) but MGS4 took it too far with the melodrama and the melodrama didn't serve the game, the melodrama served itself. It was self-indulgent whereas previous entries it was a flamboyant (almost camp) show of over-the-top awesomeness yet at the edge of credulity.

MGS4 just went too far, things like Raiden leaping in front of a ship to try to stop it. Sorry, too much, it doesn't matter how strong you are, you cannot stop a ship that is already shattering the dock you'd brace your feet against. And catapulting onto said ship and landing without anything to soften the fall, it comes off as contrived. And it was amazing how some things were rushed yet other trivial details pandered over. Like WHY did the game have to move from Unnamed Middle East Location to Unnamed South American Location, when the enemies, items and even environment are either very similar or identical.

But what REALLY killed this game for me was the gameplay itself.

MGS1 had a great formula:

Stealth
Environment challenge
Boss fght

Stealth
Environment challenge
Boss fight (harder and more daring than previous)

[repeat about 7 more times]

HUGE BOSS FIGHT
High speed escape!
Final showdown

That formula wasn't revolutionised to try something new, it was just hugely watered down.

The stealth mechanic was broken from the start as the octocamo and radar and other sensors were just too effective. Then the Tranq gun was just too overpowered the worst part is you could shoot a guard in sight of another guard without there being an alert. The barrel and cardboard box were worthless compared to octocamo. And of course if you were discovered even from the first level they were easy to dispatch with the earliest weapons.

Then the boss fights, how few! And too many derivative of old fights and very poorly characterised the bosses had no role in the plot, they were temps with post-battle exposition that belongs in the character description on wikipedia, not IN GAME! They just weren't that good.

And then the final fight, oh lord, no big boss battle with a giant mech, the chase we had in the middle rather than here. The final fight was so contrived and pointless. There was so much riding on beating Liquid Snake at end of MGS1... but pointless for MGS4 as Old Snake had achieved his mission and he would be dead within days anyway. And of course Ocelot was just a deluded maniac, he had no personal goal, he was manipulated by a thousand characterless faces. MGS4 effectively had no antagonist, no intellectual opposition, it was pointless. In fact if Old Snake had just not gotten out of the truck... would it have been that bad? It's not like he was trying to prevent a nuclear war, just something to do with blowing up a satellite for some really vague threat of The Patriots.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Dead Rising 2.

Two of my friends raved about it, I saw ratings of 8.5 on websites, so I figured what the hey and picked it up. I want my money back.

The timed nature of the missions created a feeling of urgency, which would have been great if that were what the game was about. The crazy custom equipment and random wacky zombie kills created a sense of mindless fun that would have been great if that were what the game was about. Instead, DR2 tries to be a zombie-kill-of-the-week playground AND a tightly urgent survival story at the same time. The result is the game fails miserably in both areas.

I couldn't take the story seriously when boxing gloves and a machete could be turned into zombie-slicing Wolverine claws. On the other hand, I couldn't enjoy the wacky fun for more than five minutes before some damn story mission would pop up and drag me to the other side of the mall.

And that's not all. The weapon combos felt arbitrary, nothing I made lasted longer than two minutes, none of my special combat maneuvers worked more than 10% of the time, and the psychos were nothing short of unkillable.

I slogged through roughly six hours of play and enjoyed about ten minutes. The one thing I can say in DR2's favor is if you find the game too hard (and you will as soon as you're forced to fight The Twins), you can restart the story and keep your levels. But why would you bother?

Biggest waste of my time in a long while. I give it a 4 out of 10.

 

[Launcelot111]

The only thing I see Niko doing the entire game is to look at a situation, complain to Roman about how this isn't what he imagined America to be like, and then to go out and continue the cycle of violence with the flimsiest of justifications. I can't extrapolate how I feel Niko would react in any other situation because I see his character as inconsistent and illogical. I feel CJ is only slightly better characterized, but the tone of San Andreas is different enough that I focus less on the characterization.

Also, on the topic of horses, I've been around horses for the majority of my life, and I find them to be filthy, crushingly stupid animals. I've had multiple neighbors get seriously hurt or even killed because of accidents while riding horses. The popular image of horses as some beautiful, graceful creature that forms meaningful bonds with little girls or cynical old men or whoever really rubs me the wrong way. I see people who ride horses as the same as people who free climb rock faces or skydive or whatever in terms of putting their life on the line, but at least in the other cases, you don't have to rely on a creature who will rear up or throw you or otherwise panic at the sight of a plastic bag or something. They may be breaking their backs for us, but they break their share of backs as well, so I really won't feel sorry for any virtual horse that happens to end up at the other end of my gun barrel.

You're almost touching on admitting Niko's characterisation and you hit the nail on the head in comparison with other Rockstar characters being similarly weak. That's not the selling point of said game. The character that sells is the city, the open world gameplay, the style, the soundtrack, the blend of gameplay modes and variety.

Oh I won't dispute the remarkable and awe inspiring stupidity of horses, I'm surprised "stupid as a horse" is not an idiom, as they seem to have no canny sense that most other domesticated and work animals have, they are still slaves to their animalistic flight-instinct at the most benign provocation breaking peoples backs.

But I don't hate them for that. I can't. Maybe it's just me but I can't hate any man or beast who fails because of their lack of intellectual capacity. I don't hate stupid people, I hate stupidity itself. I despair and get angry but I NEVER TAKE IT OUT ON THEM! If anything I hate myself for failing to control what should be a simple creature from factors that confound their functionality. Read the story of Moby Dick, all about a man seeking vengeance on a creature that knows no reason, and his folly.

But people who know better and still wrong me, knowing they wrong me... then they will taste my righteous wrath.

You're completely right that characters are not the selling point of GTA, but I also didn't like the gameplay. The recreation of NYC was phenomenal though. In my mind, that's the one really exemplary thing about the game.

On the topics of horses again, I am under no illusion that horses can be trained in any way to make them anything more than crushingly stupid (my mom has been trying for years with no luck, which is again not surprising). What does frustrate me is that they are treated as much more than they are by most people, with little girls all wanting riding lessons and Black Beauty and War Horse having so many idealistic portrayals of horses as caring creatures. Real horses care about you only because they think you have food or because you are sitting on their back and kicking them, and it's misleading to people who have no other experience with horses to perpetuate that horses are anything else.

Thus, it frustrates me to see so many people spending so much time on a creature which can easily crush an experienced rider by responding to its instincts. I can't really tell people not to ride because it's something they enjoy and it's their life to live, but nonetheless you obviously cannot exert perfect control over any situation, so putting your life in the hands of an animal which will always act instinctively and that is 1000 lbs more than you- it drives me nuts. I've tried to have as little to do with horses as possible since the age of 9, but I nonetheless think about them and all their issues more often than I would like, and dead horses in RDR is just my twisted way of getting some of my frustration with horses out on some virtual surrogates.

 

[Calum9218]

Mass Effect and Fallout 3/New Vegas. I've purchased and played both with high expectations, I was disappointed with both. I don't see what all the hype is about.

 

[vivalahelvig]

All of the games that you like SUCK! My opinion is always correct and most important! COD, hl2, bioshock, etc. are all crap! I'm not going to use any facts or somewhat irrefutable opinions, I'm just going to use COMPLETELY SUBJECTIVE STATEMENTS to say why i don't like a game, and that anyone else who plays it is a mindless sheep being lead around by da corporations, maaaaaan.

Ugh, i hate threads like these. Hives of scum and villany! This thread, this site is all about HATE. Hate hate hate hate hate.

We all need to lighten up and stop hating everything.

That'll never happen, though.

OT: Skyrim is a great game and stuff, but a TAD overtalked about....when it first came out.

 

[Lunar Templar]

whole series:
GTA
The Elder Scrolls
Halo
Call of Duty
Battle Field
Mass Effect

the above are series that, around, at and after launch, with out fail, the fanboys go nuts about, for MONTHS on end (though Halo and GTA to a lesser extent anymore) and frankly, if i had any desire to play them before hand, well good job, now i want nothing to do with them, unless your Mass Effect, then, congrtz, you where to boring for me to give a shit

single games:
Half Life 2
Final fantasy 7
Knights of the Old Republic
Bioshock

these games, are the single shots people REALLY need to shut the fuck up about, no, they aren't bad games, but thanks to the braying of the fanboy mules, I have zero desire to play them, ever, or in KotORs case, get off the first planet. these are the games the fanboys have poisoned me against, and at this point, there's little hope of me ever giving them a legitimate shot, or, in FF7s case, ever LIKING it again

 

[Xannidel]

FF7, I tried to play it through but just could not get into the game.

Skyrim, I think it is mainly the vast openness that I do not like

Arkham City, I did not like how they made it so open that I felt overwhelmed with everything I could do.

ME2, now this might be because I did not play the first mass effect but I gave the PS3 version of ME2 a chance and I was just lost on the whole storyline.

 

[Radelaide]

*ahem*
Mass Effeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!

I played the first one for an hour or so, giving it a good long chance to impress me and it fell flat. I've seen game play of the second one and everyone creaming themselves over the third. Stop calling it a space opera, it's not. Stop hailing it as the second coming of the gaming Christ, it's not. And stop jamming it down my throat. It's not something I'm comfortable having that far down my jugular.

 

[Rheinmetall]

Tomb Raider - I see no appeal in this series other than BOOBS! Of course I gave it a change, and I still didn't like it. It was dull.

Have you played the first TR games on the Playstation developed by Core Design? These games are completely different from the modern ones created by Crystal Dynamics.