Most MEDIOCRE Game You've Ever Played

[Talon_Skywarp]

Warhammer Space Marine.

Was really liking it at the start...then 4 hours in I was in a trance not really playing attention to anything.

All together, a really bland game

 

[Wolfram23]

I guess Kingdoms of Amalur or maybe Deus Ex: HR. Or Oblivion, but that's too passe.

 

[hooksashands]

All the Mass Effects. I didn't think traveling the galaxy could be so boring until I found out 2/3rds of it can't be explored. When you're not being talked to by redshirt NPCs or deciding who to execute, it's chest high walls and the art of sitting behind them waiting for your biotics to recharge. ZZZzzzzzZZZz

 

[Rawne1980]

Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood.

It's not a shite game but neither is it great. It's okay to stumble through when i've nothing else to do.

 

[Soopy]

Skyrim: It's a mile wide and an inch deep. There is no replayability either.

 

[Lunatic High]

HUNTED. I tried to take it back but EB games said no. I can't even give the fucking thing away. Also the first 2 Fear games just the first two to hell with the third.

 

[Lunatic High]

Final Fantasy 13. Really was mediocre, i did finish it though because I payed 60 euros for it, but still. It's a game i played because I had nothing else to do.

I payed half price for it thinking, "It can't possibly be that bad" how wrong I was. They really shit the bed on it. I could only really play it for any length of time half drunk.

 

[Drummie666]

I'd say skyrim. I was going to say Mass Effect 2, but I have something of a hate on for it as there is actually bad design choices, not just average ones.

Skyrim is just plain mediocre. Stealth, magic, combat, smithing, dialogue and everything else is as simple as you could possibly make it. There's nothing particularly interesting or complex about it. It's all that's really required and that's it, there's nothing more to it that actually makes it interesting. It's pretty much the definition of mediocre.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Huh. Gaming mediocrity. Good question.

The Halo series comes to mind. It's competently executed, it's pretty enough to look at, but the actual shooting just feels rote. It's all perfectly stuck together and it all works very well, but it's turned into such a masturbatory subculture I just can't work up any kind of enthusiasm.

The same with Gears of War. We can credit it for the now standard cover-based mechanics, but what makes the whole package mediocre for me is the contradictory mechanics and design choices. The game favors protracted firefights, and yet you still look like a 'roided up supersoldier? Dafuq?

Most of the Need for Speed games of the last decade are also mediocre. They seem to be perpetually stuck in "The Fast and the Furious" mode, and everything just seems like they're trying insanely hard to ooze personality - but nothing really comes through. The only positive comments I could think of would concern how the NFS series kept FMV sequences going in an era where everything that was not part of the actual gameplay was usually relegated to pre-rendered cutscenes.

You could also add sports games to the mix. Pick any license and switch the roster around year after year after year, with minute changes and innovations thrown in here and there. It all very much feels like a paint-by-numbers design job.

Then, and I hate saying this, you've got a lot of what comes out of some smaller European publishers, specifically Kalypso Media. Everything these guys produce ends up being resoundingly bland, or is utterly destroyed by a small army of bugs that render their products unplayable.

Who here remembers Dungeons, for instance? It was billed as a sort of spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper 2, but the mechanics were not only completely different, but badly thought out and implemented.

Another thing that really gets on my nerves is when publishers figure everything can be remade as a shooter. Syndicate is a sufficiently clear indicator that the public mindset isn't quite as consumed with the desire to shoot down mooks as investors and project pitchers seem to think.

 

[Absolutionis]

Bioshock.

-Heralded as a 'spiritual successor' to System Shock, the story and item system was so dumbed down that it was tremendously underwhelming.
-Weapons upgrades looked awesome for a few seconds, but then they were so sparse it didn't matter. Plus, weapons felt weak.
-Big Daddies were terrifying in that first scene. Then you fight one and it's a game of cover-hugging or danging around a pillar.
-Rapture looks really cool at first, but then all the areas begin to look the same.
-The artist ripped out of House of Wax was an interesting diversion, but had nothing to do with anything.
-The last boss was a typical last boss with many forms.
-The 'famous' scene with Ryan was just bland.
-For a game that bragged about 'choice', it was a bland execution.
-The endings were just slideshows.
-Turning into a Big Daddy yourself got me a bit excited, but then all it does is up your resilience to damage and change your footstep sounds.

Mediocre.
I'd play it again, but there are so many better choices.

People's excitement over Bioshock Infinite is mind-blowing.
Just bring back System Shock. That series actually is left open for a sequel.

 

[Antonio Torrente]

Perfect Dark Zero

Such a shame really, because Perfect Dark on the N64 was awesome.

What did you expect? Rare is already in it's last legs as a great developer after jumping from Nintendo to Microsoft.

And then they followed it with two disappointing titles namely Kameo: Elements of Power which is Mediocre (not good, not bad) and Conker: Live and Reloaded which let's not talk about it.

 

[deathbydeath]

Borderlands, Jesus Christ. That game was so ... dull. Pew pew, jump in a car, hit something, ???, Profit. The monochromatic brown perpetual desert sure as hell didn't help, either.

 

[Ratboy1337]

I am torn between two games. They are Red Dead Redemption and Final Fantasy XIII. Strangely enough I bought both of those games at the same time. Anyway, here is what I didn't like about them.

Red Dead Redemption looked like it was going to be this awesome, action packed western. It did have moments of awesome, it did have action, and it was definitely western. However, It took way too long to get from place to place, with very little going on in between. I was expecting my half hour horse rides from one settlement to the next to be interrupted by bandits, or Natives, or something. They weren't. It was just me staring at a horses butt for thirty minutes at a time. That's when the game lost me.

Final Fantasy XIII was just ridiculous. It had a convoluted plot that would throw in characters in a cutscene, act like you're supposed to know who they were, and then kill them in a long, drawn out, boss battle of attrition. I very much enjoyed the combat at first. But after twenty hours it just got tedious. Then after another twenty hours they gave every playable character every class. Basically, a character that started off as a DPS/Tank could now be a healer/buffer/debuffer. It was just a mess and extremely dull.

Anyway, those are my top two mediocre games

 

[Raika]

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception comes immediately to mind. After the stellar second game, the contrived setpieces, idiotic retreading story, and wasted potential of the third really underwhelmed me. It's not bad by any means(well, okay, the story is pretty terrible), it's just... bleh.

 

[Ratboy1337]

Borderlands, Jesus Christ. That game was so ... dull. Pew pew, jump in a car, hit something, ???, Profit. The monochromatic brown perpetual desert sure as hell didn't help, either.

I found Borderlands fun for one play through. I enjoyed the multiplayer with friends, but that was about it. Your description of it is perfect.

 

[rob_simple]

I know it's been mentioned several times but Skyrim. I actually took the time to platinum it, and in doing so realised that the whole experience had been designed around you being able to do everything in one playthrough, pretty much destroying any feel of true immersion.

I had completed half of the Thieves Guild missions when I joined the Dark Brotherhood, yet when I visited the guild for the DB missions nobody had any idea who I was, leading to one very odd conversation wherein a thief treated me as a stranger in one dialogue tree and then two seconds later congratulated me on finishing the TG mission I'd taken from him a few hours previously.

In short: by trying to let you do everything at once you never really built up an allegiance to any one particular faction, which resulted in an experience that wasn't bad but just bland across the board.

 

[AgentLampshade]

Assassin's Creed Revelations. It was somewhat enjoyable, I suppose, but only because it kept the combat of Brotherhood.

The story was completely forgettable and I felt nothing for any of the paper-thing characters, nor did I care for the hookblade or the bomb-crafting.

It wasn't a bad game by any means, just bland.

 

[IPunchWithMyFists]

But CoD is the very definition of Mediocrity. If we're judging the games on their own merits, they are functional shooter with competent execution but are also overwhelmingly bland. A "military plot for dummies" approach for a story, cookie cutter characters, uninspiring combat and anything that deviates from it's standard shooting gallery gameplay, feels forced or disjointed from the actual game.

Nothing aggravates me in CoD, it's just nothing makes it a notable experience. It's decidedly meh.

To drive that point home, looking back on all the CoDs I've played, nothing distinguishes them from each other... apart from thematic differences (WW2 vs Modern Warfare)... and I literally can't tell you what happens in which game... it all seems like one big blob of the same thing.

Agreed.

 

[IPunchWithMyFists]

I'd discount Bodycount for myself simply for being BAD. I thought it'd be mediocre, but it pissed me off a little.

I came here to say Bodycount. And I'll say Bodycount. Even financially it ended up neutral, as I traded it back in a different store for the exact same ammount that I payed for it in the first place (20 bucks).

Yeah, but the 'innovative' controls and poor level design actually got me a little frustrated. I didn't have that "'bluugh.... should I keep playing or not" feeling i got with Sonic 4: Episode 1.

 

[IPunchWithMyFists]

I'm aware this is going a little against the OP, but Call Of Duty 4. It's one of those games I keep forgetting I actually played - it was just dull. There was occasionally potential, but it was never good, never so bad I wanted to stop playing, just... dull. Glad I didn't pay for it.

No worries man, I was just using CoD as a hot button. People love to complain about that shit. I think it's super mediocre too.