Poll: Top 10 most overrated games I?ve ever played *WALL OF TEXT AHOY!*

[Iwata]

I agree with about 50% of your choices, however, I believe that Red Dead Redemption and the Bioshock series in particular are deserving of praise.

 

[kuzaro]

I agree with all apart from I don't know about tomb raider as I haven't played it but it looks pretty good to me.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Did not read a single word of the post, but I categorically disagree with it. Get a blog.

 

[Raijha]

A lot of good points on a number of the games there. The only one I would argue is KoToR, and I think that might mostly stem from a huge like of that style of game, NWN, Dragon Age 1, KoToR and even D&D.

I've been able to play through KoToR a number of times, and I think this mostly is due to trying to make combat more interesting by working with several different builds. A dual blaster Jedi build can be a lot of fun, or putting the difficulty on the highest setting possible and playing a heavy armor pure light side Jedi (which as you know makes force power choices very restricted but all the more important.)

I like min maxing, working with different builds and tweaking a character to something interesting, and that is most of my draw to that type of game I think. You should have seen my necromancer/red wizard from NWN2, LOL.

 

[asinann]

What, no wall of text warning or spoiler tag? Bad list maker! You go to your room without supper!

 

[davros3000]

I skimmed it. How Modern Warfare isn't there when a game like BioShock is, I will never know. The MW series, staggeringly, gets good reviews so could count in such a list. I enjoyed most of those games and spent a lot of time in their company, but I can understand some of the gripes.

Apart from GTA IV. I loved its predecessor, but I could only hack it for 70 mins before I stopped playing and I have never returned. Luckily I was playing a friends copy and didn't spend money on something so dull. so, so dull.

 

[Treblaine]

BioShock ('07)

Yes, that S is meant to be capitalised. Yes, you have been getting it wrong all these years. Yes, it's a little something called CamelCase. You're welcome.

Moving on from title formats, what we've got here is 2007's game of the year for 97% of the planet's population. Folk at the time went on and on about the cool powers, the non-linearity, the "surprising" twist and the fact that various themes rarely touched on in games make prominent appearances. What all these people were apparently unaware of is that very nearly everything BioShock does well was pioneered in much the same manner by System Shock, which I've never even played but can still easily tell you from secondary data deserves all the praise its prettier, more mainstream successor got and continues to get.

Now, I'm fully supportive of taking ideas from the past and making them either better or compatible with some advance in technology or ideology, but BioShock is almost literally a remake with a steampunk makeover. Seriously, you could make a drinking game out of comparing the two! The vague premise of wandering about a place in first-person collecting MacGuffins and getting gadgets can be excused, but when you consider that much of the plot (including the famous twist, which isn't all that brilliant if you ask me) were done to varying extents well over a decade earlier. Of course, a cynic might point out that BioShock was a much higher-profile release and had a larger potential market, meaning that it had a far greater chance of being noticed for its above-average plot and thus earning accolades from the mainstream critics, but that'd just be a mad theory, I 'spose.

But what gets me is that even if we ignore how BioShock hoovered up most of the awards that System Shock truly earned, there are countless grievances that prevent it from being worth more than a single playthrough. For one thing, the original release didn't let you turn off the accursed Vita-Chambers, whose purpose is to bring you back to life with almost no consequence but not restore the health of enemies you've previously attacked. To put it simply, they allowed you to beat the game through relentless attrition, destroying any semblance of skill that might be required. They mercifully heard the outcry about this and added the option to deactivate the buggers, but even then they managed to mess it up by giving the setting the confusing name of "Disable Vita-Chambers On/OFF". Smooth.

And what of the fact that specialisation is all but non-existent? You get so many slots for every category of upgrade that you become insanely overpowered, which isn't helped by the tidal wave (ha) of medkits and ammo. And while the variety of powers you can wield is generally an extremely good thing, some are practically worthless (insect swarm) and a few tip the scales too much in your favour (natural camouflage). You're also encouraged to string complicated combos of different plasmids together, like setting a trap as an ambush, enraging one guy, freezing another and then zapping them all when they step in the water, and while tactics like these can make bringing down a Big Daddy more feasible at times, it's usually far quicker and simpler to zap everyone and then shoot them, perhaps setting somebody on fire for good measure.

BioShock is definitely entertaining while it lasts, and the style and themes are undeniably far above the intellectual level of the great majority of big-name releases, but I say there are just too many constant niggles for it to be the masterpiece so many see it as. I also love how both endings manage to be immensely underwhelming after so much build-up.

What an utterly spurious complaint. Was Ben Hur a bad film because it was a remake? Was the same for The Man Who Knew Too Much?

System Shock and BioShock were made by the same people. They are perfectly entitled to tell a variation on a similar story/theme.

"the original release didn't let you turn off the accursed Vita-Chambers"

What a bitchy complaint, the Vita-chambers patch was very soon and there is a SIMPLE solution. If you do die and spawn from a vita-chamber... then load from a save game. YES you CAN complete the game through relentless attrition, but that would be really really dumb. You can play through Hitman just running in with a gun and shooting everyone but again, that would be dumb. How about you stop being dumb.

And now the bitching that you are given TOO MANY OPTIONS! Oh the awfulness of too much flexibility, that you can experiment a bit with all the options presented to you and aren't forced to travel down an extremely narrow path.

Again, if you just want to be an idiot and simply spam electro-bolt over and over then that is your problem. Spamming electro bolt is only easier for you because you can't comprehend more complex combinations of attacks.

Consider how swarm is a homing attack, how fire can cause enemies to retreat to water, how electro can stun multiple enemies in water, how telekinesis can throw explosives and weights.

You niggles are spurious and entirely based on your personal inability to use the options given to you.

 

[KelsieKatt]

I can agree with most of these, even some of the points about BioShock, which I still liked a lot more than you. Although, I had a lot more fun with the options given than you clearly did which is one of my favorite aspects. That said, it was some degree of a retread and the ending absolutely sucked along with the final boss to reach it.

However, I cannot agree with anything you've said about Knights of the Old Republic whatsoever, and your Dragon Quest recommendation pains me significantly as I would never play the game again if that happened, and it's one of my favorites. The combat, character building and dialogue choices are generally the entire thing I like about it. Sure, I can agree that KOTOR is way too easy on the default setting, which is why I only play it on Hard (which solves most of the button-mashing problems and usually leads to death very quickly if you don't use abilities), however, outside of that I enjoy the tactics quite a bit and it's one of my favorite things.

One thing I have to wonder about a bit is if you played KOTOR on PC, with all the "click click click" mentions, and if that's the case, I can agree the interface was clumsy and should have been much better designed. In particular the lack of a proper hotbar was just awful and it really should have played like the PC version of Dragon Age: Origins and it wasn't even close. On Xbox though, I'm fine with the controls and vastly prefer it to any of the more recent setups BioWare has tried to use on console.

Also, while I dislike or wasn't that impressed by most of these games, some of it is for very different reasons. In particular, you seem to focus on the storyline a lot, which is something I simply can't do. If I were take a perfect story and add it onto a game in score form on a 10 point scale, it wouldn't add more than 1 point in a best case scenario. Story means that little to me in video games and I focus almost entirely on the interactivity aspect.

I also liked the first 3 games in the Metal Gear Solid series and MGS2 and MGS3 in particular are some of my favorite games, but the 4th one was a bit of a disappointment to me, mainly because it was a poorly structure rehash of too much stuff from previous games. The nostalgia references were cute at first, but it eventually became painfully clear that's what the entire game was built around and while I still enjoyed it, it wasn't something I'd rave about and I haven't felt the urge to replay it much since 2008.

 

[Tryzon]

Bloody hell man, 10,000 words? That's longer than any essay they're demanding I write! And I read it all. Huh.

Anyway, OT: Interesting points, no doubt. I can't say I entirely agree with you (although you have my full and undying support on Tomb Raider) you're certainly braver than most to come here and say stuff that's clearly gonna get you some extravagant flaming. Hats off to you.

What can I say? When I ramble, I ramble hardcore. Much obliged for both reading it all AND making a reasonable comment. And another Tomb Raider hater is fine by me

while i could agree on quite a few of those, some of what you said is subjective person to person, so there is that... (kotor is easily in my top 3 games of all time, and while you absolutely loathed the combat, i absolutely love it, the combination of turn based in a real time setting) and i understand that is more of an objective thing, they did that gameplay on purpose, not because they were "slacking" off on it, the same gameplay, just a bit more polished, is in kotor II as well and that was one of the main reasons why i bought the second one and is also why i bought dragon age for the same reason.


but overall, not too bad, i could see why you picked each of those games.

See, that's what I want to see: people who can express differing opinions without feeling the need to ram it down everyone else's throats! I respect that many people love KotOR's combat for reasons I'll never be able to understand. Many thanks.

To put your list (I agree with some of it) in perspective, what games are in your top ten liked games?

Funny thing is that 99% of Tryzon's Nonsensical Gaming Trips is about praising things, like when I did that epic list of my top 25 pieces of game music. This list is very unusual for me in that respect, so it was a bit different. I could never tell you a concrete list of my top however-many games, but TimeSplitters, Legacy of Kain, Galactic Civilizations II, (modded) Oblivion and even Minecraft are probably the ones I go on about the most. Notice the variety of genres there. I like a lot of things, but when I do hate something, I tend to REALLY hate it XD

This is literally the most pretentious, self-serving thread I have ever seen. You, sir, may be the Armond White of gaming but without the actual qualification of being a "critic". You are critical (of the smallest, most insignificant things) but you are not a critic. It doesn't help your cause when you try to use complicated prose to sound intelligent.

I respect different opinions, but a video game is what you make of it. Why ***** about John Marston shooting donkeys or whatever the hell that was when you're the one MAKING him do it? That's not a disconnect between the story and the gameplay, it's a disconnect between the game itself and you.

Stop right there, sir. Did I ever say these were full-on reviews? Trust me, I've done entire essay-length reviews on individual games, so a thousand words each is below-average for me! I respect that you don't enjoy my writing, but bear in mind that this piece is both a simplification of my views AND something I continually added to over a course of several months, so I probably ended up sounded a bit more disjointed than I would normally. Before passing proper judgement on me, I ask you search for some of my praise-filled reviews.

And to be honest, I find this bit slightly insulting: "It doesn't help your cause when you try to use complicated prose to sound intelligent." I'd argue that the mere ability to use complicated prose should be at least evidence of intelligence in and of itself, but that's another matter. I just think you got a bit personal there. Again, I respect your right to complain, and you do at least sound coherent and logical.

 

[Tryzon]

What, no wall of text warning or spoiler tag? Bad list maker! You go to your room without supper!

Fair point. Shall remedy.

 

[seraphy]

I have only played 3 out of your list.

On Bioshock and Halflife 2 I agree with you they weren't nothing special. Then again I don't really like fps games at all, and only played those after my brother insisted. So perhaps I am not best to judge.

However Kotor, it is best Star wars related commercial item that has been published after original trilogy. Of course that is not exactly saying much. But I think it is a solid game.

I however think that Kotor 2 is better game. Even with it's flaws. Only reason it get's so much flak is because lucas arts forced Obsidian to publish it unfinished.

 

[Bocaj2000]

If you want me to read about your bitching, make it sound professional. You came off as a twelve year old shouting at his monitor. Rewrite it as if you were going to send this to your boss and THEN I shall give it a complete read through.

 

[Jowe]

I thought some of your points were good, but disagreed with some parts, like the Bioshock one because I thought the setting was amazing for it.
So I voted:

 

[ResonanceGames]

System Shock and BioShock were made by the same people. They are perfectly entitled to tell a variation on a similar story/theme.

Just a slight correction here. System Shock 2 and Bioshock were similar and made by a lot of the same people. System Shock 1 was totally different than both of them and was made by people like Warren Spector and Doug Church.

As for this blog post...that's all it is. I don't even really see the discussion here. Stuff like this should be on blogspot.

 

[Tryzon]

I scrolled down half way and decided yeh I agree with you mostly then I saw increasing amounts of sacralidge... MGS4,Red Dead,KOTOR and finally Tombraider.

But you took particular offense with the old Tombraider games controls. If you have a problem with the controls well then either you must be pretty bad at the games or you just don't get them. The controls are a core part of tombraider much like Resident evils tank controls are and even Metal Gear Solids. They work, they add to the tension, to the difficulty, they make the game skillful and most importantly rewarding. If you don't have the patience to get used to them and get good at them don't play the games.

Also comments about Lara and sexism are dumb. The games were good that's why people bought them. And to think people bought them to stare at jagged breasts is equally stupid.

Actually looking at alot of these you tend to attack the controls. All of the ones you go for work fine and function well. I don't think you understand how restrictive control schemes actually make games better. Or again you are just not very good at these games.

Regarding MGS4, there are alot of cutscenes granted but if you are a true MGS fan you are more than happy to see them and I found the whole end to the series compeltely satisfying. No more need for ambiguity as it's an end to a saga. Gameplay wise it is brilliant and there is enough to keep you busy provided you play the game properly and play non-lethal, no detections. The running and gunning is there if you want to but it is something which I believe was put in for those whom had completed the game and wanted to just shoot everything for a bit of light relief. If you begin the game and aim to play it as a shooter then you are seriously retarded.

And you were doing so well in the beginning. I wanted to hug you for mentioning how BioShock is inferior to System Shock 2 and for your comments on Black, Halo 2 and Half-life 2. But the latter arguments are just completely off.

Okay, there's a lot to cover here. I appreciate that game controls can be utilised in such a way as to enhance the experience, but from what I've seen, that's VERY tricky to get right. Unless you hit that magical balance, I find myself feeling handicapped and frustrated. For instance, I don't care what argument a developer might make, I think the ability to run in a straight line seems like a fairly simple thing for any normal, non-motor-impaired person to do, so Lara's inability to manage this is evidence of bad controls. I appreciate the controls were of their time, but it's the lack of evolution in Tomb Raider that I hate most of all; making mistakes and learning from them is what I'd like to see.

And I feel I was restrained on the sexism thing. Did I say people bought the games "to stare at jagged breasts"? I don't believe I did. What I meant was that, shockingly enough, sex is the biggest seller in pretty much any industry you care to mention, and I doubt supremely that Tomb Raider would have either sold as well or avoided being ignored as an Indiana Jones knock-off if the protagonist had been a bloke. That's what I meant and that's what I'm sticking by.

Now for MGS. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd call myself a fan of the series so much as just MGS3. Every other one I've played has come across as preachy, full of half-baked ideas and in dire need of someone who could cut out some of the flab. The Legacy of Kain and Watchmen Motion Comic examples show that I'm not simply someone whose attention span is too short to enjoy good dialogue, but that's the thing: I wouldn't call a lot of MGS4's dialogue good, in the sense that it adds nothing to the overall story. I was SO ready for that ending when it finally rolled round.

I didn't play it as a shooter deliberately, but found that doing so was extremely easy. To me, a stealth game should allow for occasional cock-ups without giving you the ability to just rampage. Thief and Hitman do that well, and even Splinter Cell somewhat, but MGS4 not so much. AGAIN, this is all my view, but I just want to dispel the idea that I went into MGS4 wanting to shoot things. I would've thought my visible love of the previous game would make that clear.

At least we agree on those other things you mentioned, though. I hope I've managed to explain myself a bit better now. Comrades?

 

[Bocaj2000]

This is literally the most pretentious, self-serving thread I have ever seen. You, sir, may be the Armond White of gaming but without the actual qualification of being a "critic". You are critical (of the smallest, most insignificant things) but you are not a critic. It doesn't help your cause when you try to use complicated prose to sound intelligent.

I respect different opinions, but a video game is what you make of it. Why ***** about John Marston shooting donkeys or whatever the hell that was when you're the one MAKING him do it? That's not a disconnect between the story and the gameplay, it's a disconnect between the game itself and you.

Stop right there, sir. Did I ever say these were full-on reviews? Trust me, I've done entire essay-length reviews on individual games, so a thousand words each is below-average for me! I respect that you don't enjoy my writing, but bear in mind that this piece is both a simplification of my views AND something I continually added to over a course of several months, so I probably ended up sounded a bit more disjointed than I would normally. Before passing proper judgement on me, I ask you search for some of my praise-filled reviews.

And to be honest, I find this bit slightly insulting: "It doesn't help your cause when you try to use complicated prose to sound intelligent." I'd argue that the mere ability to use complicated prose should be at least evidence of intelligence in and of itself, but that's another matter. I just think you got a bit personal there. Again, I respect your right to complain, and you do at least sound coherent and logical.

Tryzon, please take what this person said into consideration. You would be a complete fool to shrug off a comment like this. Think about what made him say this and what you can make better.

Also, he IS correct on the issue of your use of ten dollar words. It is one of the biggest mistakes for young writers.

http://www.artofblog.com/ten-dollar-copy-words/

 

[jimahaff]

Snip (what an understatement)

OK I won't pretend I read your entire post, but I did read the sections relating to the games I knew; Bioshock, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Red Dead Redemption, and KOTOR, and let me just say you picked some of my favorite games of all time. That being said you make some good points, but despite these flaws I would still suggest all of these games to anyone who hasn't played them.

To use the terminology of of a table top RPG which I can comment on, you have picked out the dump stat for each of these games. A dump stat is the stat or part of development you take time/money/skill points out of to improve the rest of the game/your stats.

I resisted the impulse to go over each of the games and point out where I disagree with you, because nobody cares. But Let me just say that I don't think any of the flaws, or personal distastes you point out are enough to call any of these games overrated. Are they perfect? No. Has any video game ever been perfect? Hell No. Is perfection even attainable? Also no. You are focusing on the few flaws that the games have, and ignoring the many things they do very well. I agree with you on most of your criticisms, but I don't think the fact that Bioshock was ripped off from Systemshock and that it's easy makes it any less good. Or that fact that KOTOR has a repetitive and antiquated combat system, takes away from the story(which is what makes it so good).

These games are considered good, because something about them stands out, not because they are perfect. Do they live up to the hype? No, nothing EVER lives up to the hype. You eat the meat and spit our the bones, take the good and live with the bad, that is life, perfection is an illusion, and our individual perspectives are broken biased and flawed. Wow, that got really preachy there at the end. Anyway that is my opinion on the matter, not that anyone cares.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

while i could agree on quite a few of those, some of what you said is subjective person to person, so there is that... (kotor is easily in my top 3 games of all time, and while you absolutely loathed the combat, i absolutely love it, the combination of turn based in a real time setting) and i understand that is more of an objective thing, they did that gameplay on purpose, not because they were "slacking" off on it, the same gameplay, just a bit more polished, is in kotor II as well and that was one of the main reasons why i bought the second one and is also why i bought dragon age for the same reason.


but overall, not too bad, i could see why you picked each of those games.

See, that's what I want to see: people who can express differing opinions without feeling the need to ram it down everyone else's throats! I respect that many people love KotOR's combat for reasons I'll never be able to understand. Many thanks.

haha yeah, i understood what you were pulling at, and you weren't acting like an elitist prick about it like quite a few people do on the escapist. So fair opinion is fair. since kotor is one of my favorite games it is a bit hard for me to take the love shades off sometimes, but i can say with bioshock/GTAIV/RDR/HL2 i all agreed on quite a few points, they are by far in my top 10 most overrated games of all time also.

 

[Treblaine]

You know what your problem is, you hate games for not being what you expect them to be... rather than appreciate them for what they are!

Also, your post is insultingly meandering and pedantic. You go off on a 3 paragraph spiel about your personal situation before you even start on the actual relevant subject.

And the arrogance to say that games that simply don't suit your personal tastes are "over-rated". Ratings are industry consensus. Over-rated would mean the consensus of the industry isn't really as high as the actual score but that it was somehow inflated for whatever reason.

Black is not Modern Warfare or Rainbow Six, it is like an action movie where you are supposed to empty a long burst of awesome full sounding machine gun fire, not a tight neat burst or single shot. And you have to give appreciation to the sound an effects of explosions, though low res they were just the best ever shown.

You don't even play Tomb Raider games and you call them over-rated. You don't seem to even understand HOW the controls work! It's not supposed to have light easy fluffy controls but very particular controls all about exploiting the long jumps getting them just right. It's a game where you have to THINK about every step you make and think 3-4 steps ahead.