The Most Overrated Games that Aren't

[loa]

Sneaking is only useable when the enemies are easilly dispatched, otherwise you have forced combat. The only real gameplay is the spells, which there is a nice selection for, but not really any remote balance.

You should try sneaking. With a bow. As a khajit because nightvision.

 

[Starbird]

Resident Evil 4. Have replayed this endlessly. Never gets old. Pacing, challenge, atmosphere and nearly everything besides the voice acting and story are absolutely brilliant.

God of War 2.

Half Life.

Baldur's Gate 2. Every time I think 'man, when I play this again it's going to suck'...it doesn't.

Batman: Arkham Asylum. Feels shorter every time I play it, but just as good.

Diablo 2.

So... "My Favourite Games That Some Meanyhead Once Had The Gall To Criticize"?

Meh.

How about I just argue with other other people over their choices instead?

Spec-Ops: The Line: (Do we still need spoilers for this? Alright...I'll put it in just in case so spoiler free until the spoiler box). I loved this game. I went into it not exactly knowing what to expect (I just heard that it was really good) and was pretty unimpressed for the first few hours. Then...shit got real. The game sinks you deeper and deeper into the mind of Walker and the cracks that are appearing in his mental state. It's like Silent Hill invaded my Call of Duty game.

Spoiler

and then the White Phosphorous happened. I swear that the WP scene became a huge knock against the game MONTHS after the game came out. For whatever reason, that scene went from a powerful blow that destroyed Walker's psyche and a real look at the mirror for the player into a "the game forced me therefore it's stupid!". As a fan of the Military FPS genre, that scene blew my freaking face off. It is so reminiscent of the AC-130 levels in CoD and the same kind of glossy-look came into my eyes as I just mindlessly blew the living hell out of anything and everything. Maybe that's why people turned against the scene later; non Military FPS people jumped into the game and didn't have the same mindset I had going in...

Even disregarding the whole trying-to-make-me-feel-guilty-about-a-scripted-event aspect, I still had problems with That Scene.

I mean, the driving point struck me as pretty infantile. "What's that you say game, mindlessly blowing people away from a position of remote invulnerability is kind of fucked up? Gosh, thank god I have you to tell me that game, never would have figured it out otherwise. It's not like I realised that while playing CoD4, or hell, while watching actual gun-cam footage."

Insightful, cutting commentary it is not.

Can't really commend it on a storytelling level either. You never get to know anything about Walker before he goes loopy. He's just Soldier Guy Voiced By Nolan North. So when the cracks start showing... so what? I don't know this guy. I am not remotely invested in his sanity or well being.

Also, the behaviour of his comrades makes no sense. In the flashbacks it shows them watching as he talks into the silent, broken radio and giving each other WTF looks. Why are they still following this guy?! He's clearly gone loopy. Military chain of command does not require a soldier to obey a raving nutcase who hears voices.

What's more, why does nobody even think to just retreat and ask for orders when they find themselves echanging fire with "friendly" troops? At first I assumed the sandstorms were blocking communication, but at one point Walker mentions the possibility of calling for evac, so they evidently have a method of communication, yet nobody ever thinks to use it.

That bit was not what got me about The Line. It was more the progressive decline into madness that did it for me, the breakdown within the squadron and constantly doing things that you think are right but have horrible consequences.

 

[Prince of Ales]

All the caves are the same, all the dungeons are the same.

The same in what way? Morrowind has many cases of repetition. Certain caves have the same exact interior. Same with towers, ruins, houses. The capital city is a giant copy/paste job. I can't think of any repeated interiors in Skyrim. As far as I'm aware, each location has a unique layout.

 

[RubyT]

The Morrowind style of questing forced the developer to make a memorable world, a world where each location is different and you can go by a description. Skyrim's world is dull and lifeless. Wherever you go, you find almost the same thing. All the caves are the same, all the dungeons are the same. The character have almost no backstory or story at all. The cities are almost non-existing. For the biggest city in Syrim to have less than 20 houses, that's just freaking ridiculous.

I agree. The scope of the towns is ludicrous.
Like that one place, where every NPC wonders if you wonder about the big cemetery they have. So I looked for that cemetery. Imagined a huge ass gothic masterpiece with lots of crypts and fog and undead creatures. And then I find this stupid little gathering of 20 tombstones that looked just about the right size for a small village like the one it was in.

Also, Skyrim has got to have the worst animations of any non-trash game of the last 15 years. It's astonishing how they can be so bad. Takes me right out of the immersion. Starting with that dragon attack in the intro. Actually, there were at least a handful of horrible animations before that. It feels like they are mostly reusing animations from Oblivion and Morrowind. The game came out in 2011 and the NPCs have no facial animations at all.

And how come the engine isn't capable of rendering the interior of houses in the same plane as the rest of the world? Gothic could do that 10 years earlier!

To me, Skyrim is actually a really disappointing game when you consider where they were with Morrowind in 2002 and how financially successful Oblivion and Fallout 3 have been for Bethesda. But it has been an overwhelming success for them again. So here's hoping that for TES VI they'll shoot for contemporary standards.

 

[RubyT]

All the caves are the same, all the dungeons are the same.

The same in what way? Morrowind has many cases of repetition. Certain caves have the same exact interior. Same with towers, ruins, houses. The capital city is a giant copy/paste job. I can't think of any repeated interiors in Skyrim. As far as I'm aware, each location has a unique layout.

A few of the Jarl's houses are exact copies. And a lot of the houses/inns/shops are very similar, especially in the smaller towns.

As with Morrowind, the samey look is excacerbated by Skyrim's eerily FPS-like color palette. Everything is brownish-grey and few of the towns/settlements have a particular look and feel about them.

 

[Rayce Archer]

Also agree with Skyrim.

It's really stupid too because when it first came out, almost EVERYONE was singing its praises. Talking about how great it was for RPing and how much it improved Oblivion's/Morrowind's combat and etc.

And then after a while, everyone just started to hate it.

The same thing happened with Oblivion too.

It happens with all Elder Scrolls games.

1. Game announced. Press goes gaga for early screens and meaningless trailer. Fans opine "this looks like it will solve all the problems with the last one! Especially the goofy run cycle!"

2. Game is released and sells like fucking wildfire. Everyone loves it, proclaims it to be "just like the last one, but better."

3. Player base laments things missing from past release after all. Modding community steps in to transform game into system-killingly beautiful work of art. Players loudly proclaim it not worth playing without Missy's Skimpy Undies for BBOSHTMF or whatever player model mod they use. Game is roundly decried as an insult to the past installment, wherein running looks no better after all.

4. A new game is announced. Press goes gaga for early screens and meaningless trailer. Fans opine "this looks like it will solve all the problems with the last one! Especially the goofy run cycle!"

 

[SKBPinkie]

Spec Ops deserved all that hate, to be honest.

I hate it when games try to be conversation starters first, and actual games second. It's possible to do both, you know. Being a conversation piece works a lot better for other media, like movies, TV, books, etc. seeing how they don't have any interactivity. I've never liked games where the only / dominant hook is the story.

Also, the gameplay was just boring as all fuck; I understand that this might have been a design choice, but holy crap - I was the one who had to actually play through that stuff.

TLR - Gameplay >>>>> Story.

 

[Gladion]

The problem is that they chose to share that moral by assuming every player was playing the game because they wanted to feel like a hero, and having the game constantly try to beat you over the head with their message because of that.

You're absolutely right. But, you see, that's actually the reason why I think it's so good. This was not made for people who are already critical of these types of games. And why would it, what's the point? To get a bunch of like-minded people together to generally agree that, yes, war is a bad thing and the modern military shooter genre is kinda embarrassing? Preaching to the choir, and frankly, not exactly a revolutionary idea. So reversing that was pretty much the only sensible option - how else would you be able to tell that moral, anyway? And it was sensible for them to assume that most players weren't going to pick up some random TPS set in some desert country for the story.

Of course, in the end it turned out that the game resonated extremely well with reviewers, and the handful of people who did buy the game were all at least partially in on the message before they even started it. If you or me or anyone didn't play it to feel like a hero, then why did we? Well, because other people told us that it's been such an exceptional experience for them. It's not the game's fault, though, that we were told it was up to something before we even gave it the chance to do anything.

Being a conversation piece works a lot better for other media, like movies, TV, books, etc. seeing how they don't have any interactivity.

Could you specify why?

 

[SKBPinkie]

Being a conversation piece works a lot better for other media, like movies, TV, books, etc. seeing how they don't have any interactivity.

Could you specify why?

I'm of the opinion that games should prioritize gameplay first, and story / characters second. The primary difference between games and other media is interactivity. If that isn't important for some people (and that's perfectly okay), then being a conversation piece is perfectly sufficient over being a good game. For example, Gone Home has a great message about a family and society deal with sexuality with a great 90s backdrop.

However, is it a good game? No, because its gameplay is severely lacking, and it doesn't really tell its story through its gameplay. If I watched a YouTube playthrough of the game (with no commentary), my experience would've basically been the same. Same goes for TLOU and Bioshock Infinite.

Then again, there are games that combine both story and gameplay really well. Brothers, Shadows of the Colossus, the ending of Halo:Reach, etc. All I'm saying is - the story shouldn't feel like a separate entity when it comes to games. If you do want to tell a story through the medium, make use of the interactivity aspect.

 

[Skin]

Halo.

The only sin Halo committed was not being first and foremost a PC game. If Halo had been released as a PC game instead of an Xbox game, it would bolster universal praise just like the HL games. This especially applies to Halo:CE which in many respects is still far ahead in terms of game design than the other Halo games and most FPS games in general.

 

[RubyT]

The problem with the "you chose to keep playing" argument is that, regardless of whether or not you personally see a story through to the end, the end of the story still exists. It's like saying that, if you don't want Harry Potter to suffer a life of misery and chaos, you shouldn't read the Harry Potter books. Regardless of whatever the player wants, everything in Spec Ops goes to hell anyway, and thus it's not the player's responsibility if things get worse when there is no option to have the player character do something sensible.

I didn't keep playing because I expected things to get better (in terms of outlook in the setting or the quality of the game's writing), but because I wanted to get to the end of the story, much like I do for any story I commit to.

Very well put!

The only sin Halo committed was not being first and foremost a PC game. If Halo had been released as a PC game instead of an Xbox game, it would bolster universal praise just like the HL games.

I think it's the other way around. Had it not been *the* Xbox-game, it would have never been praised as much as it was.

 

[Skin]

I think it's the other way around. Had it not been *the* Xbox-game, it would have never been praised as much as it was.

Well, it literally was the reason people would purchase an Xbox. That really says alot. I doubt alot of games that PC gamers circle jerk it too would be able to do the same thing.

 

[deathbydeath]

Surprised nobody mentioned the Lorebombing Wankfest McLotRipoff that is the Dragon Age series.

That's basically Bioware games in general. Bioware has yet to actually make any above-average games; they just make excellent nuggets of writing mixed in with a bog-standard story, then wrap it all up in an experimental* gameplay model that's never polished enough to truly shine.

*-Up until ME2, at least.

Unrelated: I have yet to actually play Spec Ops, and while the concept is up my alley to a degree I still won't touch it because as far as "self-aware, semi-deconstructist games that comment on the questionable tropes their genres rely upon" go, I sincerely doubt Yager can beat Katawa Shoujo.

 

[RubyT]

I think it's the other way around. Had it not been *the* Xbox-game, it would have never been praised as much as it was.

Well, it literally was the reason people would purchase an Xbox. That really says alot. I doubt alot of games that PC gamers circle jerk it too would be able to do the same thing.

Erm, PC gamers are regularly buying new graphics cards that cost the same as a whole game console for a certain game.

But no, nobody bought a 2000 dollar PC in 1998 just to play Half-Life...

 

[deathbydeath]

I'm of the opinion that games should prioritize gameplay first, and story / characters second. The primary difference between games and other media is interactivity. If that isn't important for some people (and that's perfectly okay), then being a conversation piece is perfectly sufficient over being a good game. For example, Gone Home has a great message about a family and society deal with sexuality with a great 90s backdrop.

However, is it a good game? No, because its gameplay is severely lacking, and it doesn't really tell its story through its gameplay. If I watched a YouTube playthrough of the game (with no commentary), my experience would've basically been the same. Same goes for TLOU and Bioshock Infinite.

Then again, there are games that combine both story and gameplay really well. Brothers, Shadows of the Colossus, the ending of Halo:Reach, etc. All I'm saying is - the story shouldn't feel like a separate entity when it comes to games. If you do want to tell a story through the medium, make use of the interactivity aspect.

Huh, my take on GH is almost the opposite.

When the story is all said and done it's just another tale of star-crossed lovers (an archetype that's been stale since Romeo & Juliet), but the act of exploring the house is in fact one of the better examples of that sort of "archaeological storytelling".

Granted, the actual story isn't told through the environment but instead through the magic audio logs, and that single ball-less cop-out on the dev's part hits the game like a shotgun to the knees. The cop-out you find in the attic (which changes the story from a bittersweet struggle in a broken world to a tryst in which everything turns out perfectly fine and nobody grows or changes in any way) hits the game like a shotgun to the heart.

 

[Prince of Ales]

A few of the Jarl's houses are exact copies. And a lot of the houses/inns/shops are very similar, especially in the smaller towns.

Might be right with the Jarl's houses now that you mention it. Can't remember exactly. The one in Winterhold is like this log-house kind of design and they have a similar one in Morthal from what I remember. I'd have to check to see if they're exactly the same. The inns and shops are always going to be similar (but not identical), because they're using the same palette. All the modern TES games use a palette system like that.

Ok, are there any two caves in Skyrim, and by caves I mean the dungeons using the cave symbol on the map, that share the same layout? I've never found two the same, and I've found plenty the same in Morrowind.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Dragon Age 2.

A lot of people seem to hate this game. Dragon Age: Origins was about this whole world which was evolving and changing. Dragon Age 2 was about the individual journey of Hawke and her friends. So, obviously two different experiences. But different shouldn't be coded as bad. Dragon Age 2 is an amazing game. It is not some long, massive arching story that ends with that fight you've been leading up to this whole time. It is smaller stage. It is about the various things in life that shape us, twist us, torture us, delight us. There really are three "main plots" in Dragon Age 2 and this is what seems to bother people the most. I think it is more realistic for character development. I think the way it progressed made Hawke a more real character than The Warden. The lack of travel to a bunch of places can be read as a problem but it's more of a sandbox style game than an open world. It's different and bold. It tried something new.

More games should take chances with their sequels.

THANK YOU! Jeez, I thought I was the only one who, while well aware of the issues Dragon Age 2, thought it was quite a solid game in its own right. I wouldn't say "great" (the repeating mobs and environments got old fast), but I actually quite liked the story, and LOVED how they handled party interaction. For that matter, I enjoyed 95% of the party members as characters, and still regularly hold up Aveline as an example of how to do a successful female character without making her overly feminine or a "man with boobs". *shoots the first person who snarks about Aveline's lack of attractiveness*

Anyways, yeah, DA2 would get my vote. Probably the worst Bioware game, but that doesn't make it a bad or even mediocre game, to me. It's just that it had huge shoes to fill, and didn't entirely succeed. Does that make it bad?

 

[Glongpre]

Suprised that FF7 hasn't been mentioned yet so I'll go: FF7. You rarely ever see FF7 mentioned for praise, other than in specific Final Fantasy threads (now addmitedly I do like FF7, but it's a way from being one of my /favourites/), instead, when it is mentioned it's just people ragging on it being overrated for bizarre reasons that defy what the game actually was.

It's become Flanderized far past the point of rational, to point where even Square Enix remember it wrong. People who've played it, remember it wrong and people who play it now, are determined to percieve things that were never there.

A primary point of contention is that it's an emo brood fest, which is a flat out lie. None of the characters brood, except perhaps Sephiroth when he's in that library. Cloud is not a grumpy loner and does actually have a laugh with his friends who he trusts to the ends of the earth and sees as brothers in arms. He's cold at some points, but that's quite the opposite of emo, he is supposed to be a professional mercenary, wherin he "lies" about his past in order for people to percieve him as cool and himself trustworthy. Even if Cloud does at one point brood, it would be completely justified due to his character suffering from delusions and PTSD.

Ironically it's right before FF8, which really was a broodfest, Squalls brooding was part of the plot, as was teenage angst. Even with that in mind, FF7 broke from tropes before it and was actually quite revolutionary at the time, people have /copied/ it, which somehow makes it retroactively generic.

Now I'm not necessarilly praising the game here and you're welcome to have not liked/enjoyed it, just make sure it's for the right reasons and you haven't been sucked in by the hatedom and Advent Children.

This. I don't get the complaints, I think it is just people who couldn't get into it and are trying to make it seem like it just wasn't that good. Guess what, not everyone likes every game, that doesn't mean it is overrated or whatever.

 

[The Madman]

Someone else already mentioned it but I'll say it again:

Tomb Raider​

Seriously, mention the original series nearly anywhere online and the majority of comments will be all 'lol triangle boobs' followed by stupid debates over sexism and whatnot. It's ridiculous. It's like there's this entire invented narrative that the only reason Tomb Raider was successful was cheap titillation because it's a game with a female protagonist, which is one of the most stupid things I've ever heard. It's not like there were then or are now are any lack of games out there that try to achieve success through cheap thrills alone and they don't all become mega-blockbusters with comic, book, and movie tie-ins.

Tomb Raider was successful because they were really good games. Some better than others obviously and honestly the first few games haven't exactly aged all that well, but there's no denying that Lara Croft's adventures were so influential as to have changed gaming as we know it. Puzzle-platforming wasn't a new concept but it's one that was revolutionized with Tomb Raiders 3D take on the idea, giving players massive and elaborate levels that tested their reflexes as well as their brains. Even today some of Tomb Raiders levels can be held up as amazing examples of level design that few games can match.

Add in a charmingly cheesy B movie style plot and protagonist and Tomb Raider was a hit. A hit that unfortunately seems to have been completely glossed over in recent years to the point where the popular new reboot of the franchise has about as much to do with the original games as Game of Thrones does to The Princess Bride, and people love it for that...

 

[Gladion]

Then again, there are games that combine both story and gameplay really well. Brothers, Shadows of the Colossus, the ending of Halo:Reach, etc. All I'm saying is - the story shouldn't feel like a separate entity when it comes to games. If you do want to tell a story through the medium, make use of the interactivity aspect.

I believe that gameplay and story should be on the same level. Other than that, I totally agree with what you said there. If you're not utilizing gameplay, why make it a game to begin with?
Now, do I think that Spec Ops did this badly? Not really, even though, as you said, the shooting itself is really bland. But it is part of the overall narrative the game provides, and the team was faced with a huge dilemma when they decided to tell an anti-war story with traditional TPS mechanics: if it had actually turned out fun to play, the story would have been completely absurd, kinda like what happened with the Tomb Raider reboot, but even worse.

No, because its gameplay is severely lacking, and it doesn't really tell its story through its gameplay. If I watched a YouTube playthrough of the game (with no commentary), my experience would've basically been the same. Same goes for TLOU and Bioshock Infinite.

Though I also think that those three games didn't really excel in gameplay (least of all Bioshock), all of them did tell some aspect of the story with their gameplay, and all of them were better for it. More than half the point of Gone Home was the mystery imho, and that just worked better when I wasn't provided with a predetermined flow of events, but had to figure stuff out by myself - even if there were very few actual puzzles.
The intro of TLOU is actually an even better example, I think. It just wouldn't have had the same impact had I not been able to walk around and examine stuff at my own pace, constantly being worried about what might just happen to me.
Just walking around in Infinite being able to look at things enhanced it in my opinion. Sure, that's nothing special, but still better than just watching a longplay on Youtube. There was also this scene where Booker and Elizabeth make music together that's completely out of place, but put in between those over-the-top gunbattles I thought it stood out as a semi-cutscene and was all the better for it.

Now I admit, none of them pulled it off perfectly, not by a long shot, and I think that's the #1 challenge for gaming in the future, especially for those games that want to tell a serious story without being total shit in the gameplay department.

I keep churning out these walls of text, I apologize. Jeez.

Unrelated: I have yet to actually play Spec Ops, and while the concept is up my alley to a degree I still won't touch it because as far as "self-aware, semi-deconstructist games that comment on the questionable tropes their genres rely upon" go, I sincerely doubt Yager can beat Katawa Shoujo.

Spec Ops isn't nearly as subtle and extensive as KS. If you're into that kind of thing, though, that shouldn't be reason not to play it, though. The two do things differently, most importantly because Spec Ops can utilize gameplay instead of "just" text.