The Not Quite Best Games of 2011

[DioWallachia]

I wonder if we could ever get a worst games of all time list. You see best games of all time lists with things like X-Com and Super Mario Bros. always near the top. But what games are so wretchedly bad as to be remembered years later as having caused pain to so many?

Wouldn't be possible. You'd have to look at:

1) The "blockbusters" that are carbon copies of older, better games, with none of their charm or energy, that we seem to get so many of nowadays (ditto sequels, etc).

2) Going back a bit, you'd need to include what I like to call "coin-op conversions from hell", the likes of which "Double Dragon" for the C64 would represent nicely. You have an entire legion of Golden Axe, Space Harrier, Afterburner etc imitators that were just awful.

3) Then you have the whole "granny games" section, by which I mean games that barely classify as such and that only your grandmother could think would be fun ("Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool". Yeah, I played it. Yeah, it really is that bad. Worse than "Barney's Hide and Seek". Reportedly worse than the "Barbie" games on the Sega Megadrive. Not that I would know. Ahem...)

4) Then you have what I like to call "the curse of the adventure game". Early on this would be text-based, later point-and-click, but this is the kind of "game" where the only way to ever progress would be to try using every object on every other object within the game. And even then the logic would be obscure. Text-based is worse because sometimes the game wouldn't recognise what you were trying to do, even if it was right. Basically the kind of game that you have to use a walkthrough to solve, and even then it's not worth it.

5) Bible games. Just bible games. If you've ever played one of these wretched things from the 8-bit era ("Super Noah's Ark", anyone?) then you'll know what I'm talking about.

6) And then you just have the legendary failures: "ET the extra terrestrial", "Superman 64", "Kane and Lynch 2", etc.

Add in the fact that everyone has a subjective viewpoint and everything's gonna be hated by SOMEBODY.

Now go through all of that and tell me how the heck you're gonna sort out a definitive list of "worst games of all time"? I mean, there's so much bad, so much mediocre. It's like any art form: a helluva lot of it will always be produced solely for the money, with no real creative vision behind it, sometimes under extremely stressful or hurried conditions, getting shoved onto the shelves for Christmas without being properly finished, etc. You just gotta know where to look for the good stuff.

Why did you put "ET the extra terrestrial" for the Atari 2600 along with Superman 64?? ET is a bad game for the wrong reasons. It looks and acts as shitty as the Indiana Jones game from the Atari but no one marks it as the worst game ever. ET has bad reputation rather than being a bad game because Atari thought that they could sell it like hot cakes and end up making more cartidges than they could sell and that is it. Worse of all, they rush the game just as they rushed the Pac Man port from the arcades to the Atari in the last year and that failed too, and somehow they made the same fucking mistake TWICE of releasing a rushed game on Chrismast and overproduce it.

Superman 64, however, just plain sucks. It doesnt have the same excuse as an Atari game

 

[The Crazy Legs]

I'm actually playing through Deus Ex:HR for the time now. My character is diversionist (damn I just made up a word), and going through a police office building without anyone seeing you is pretty fun, but you know what's not, that first fucking boss fight against an augmented dude with a minigun on the end of his fucking arm and when he isn't shooting you he spams grenades that kill you instantly if you get too close to the blast and that's very difficult when your in a small room with lots of obstacles playing with sluggish controls! *takes a breath*, but yeah, otherwise a good game. (I hate you Barrett).

Trust me... I despise Barrett and his stupid minigun/grenade combo. I also despise that second boss, the one that can use the Typhoon AND cloaking. I also hate that third boss, because seriously? A plasma rifle when all my augmentations are shut off? And I especially hate the last boss. Why the hell do you put THE EASIEST BOSS IN THE GAME AT THE END OF IT?! PUT BARRETT THERE, AT LEAST WE WOULD FEEL LIKE WE ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING!!! But, I digress.

 

[The Crazy Legs]

Yeah... I was a bit surprised to not see Call of Juarez: The Cartel on the list. Everyone I know (me included) disliked that game. But Yahtzee has a point. I don't hate the game, I just get depressed whenever I think about it. Is that hatred? ... It's entirely possible.

I never played it, but if Extra Credits is to be believed (about the game twisting how the Cartel worked and passing it off as fact) then it's certainly one game I don't need to play to know I hate it. Even if the gameplay wasn't purportedly mediocre, it's still offensive.

Yeah... Never play the game. If the messages it tries to rub into your brain won't offend you, the goddamn AI will. "You don't have to do this all by yourself, you know." I DID ALL THE WORK, YOU SARCASTIC SON OF A *****!

 

[SiskoBlue]

I think the list is fine, although it wouldn't match mine. What it does seem to be is a big FU to publishers and developers to stop making the same crap over and over, stop restricting player interaction, and try something different rather than safe.

As he says, he doesn't hate BF3/MW3 because of how they play but of "what they represent". It's the same as BF3 fans gives 0's on Metacritic to MW3. It's resentment at being peddled the same crap over and over.

But as Rich Hall once said "Good things come to those who wait. Sh1t comes straight away"

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

If you're going to say that Arkham City is a step in the wrong direction at least back it up. Or at least put it in a way that doesn't make me say 'Who the hell are you and what do you mean by wrong direction?'

 

[MonkeyPunch]

The reason he never reviews multiplayer is because everyone's experience online is different, based on who you are playing with, and no two people will have the same experience.

Person 1 may get a team the works together well, some opponents who work together well, and have a jolly good time all around.

Person 2 may get a game full of people lobbing grenades every 2 seconds, or get permanently spawn trapped, or play against a team of raging 12 year olds with the language of a dirty sailor, and have a terrible time.

So which one is the correct multiplayer experience?

Critics have to look at the things that don't change for the average person. The single player campaign doesn't change based on who is playing.

I don't agree at all. From what you're saying there's no possible way to review a multiplayer game. And that's not the case.

Sure you everyone's experience will be different depending on the people you play at a specific moment but you can still * "review" * the basic framework and functionality of the game and what it has to offer.

Also from the way you put it that's someone forming their opinion on a single game of multiplayer.
If you're to play the game any length of time, you're bound to run into both people who are fun to play with and people who are not. The one thing that won't change on the other hand is the actual game. The mechanics etc.
Basically off what you're saying it would be impossible to review a game like Team Fortress 2. Which it obviously isn't.

So no. That's not grounds to fob off the multiplayer altogether and you sure as hell can review the multiplayer component of a game or a multiplayer only game.

* I don't see Yahtzee's videos as being true reviews in the first place. They are more of a comedic show with humours quips about a game. He tends to be "negative" about most games just because it's fun to ***** about stuff like that. He himself admits that he's sometimes overly harsh on games just to get a good pun. And that's fine because it makes for good entertainment.
I've enjoyed ZP's since the first one he released on YouTube, but I think you'd have to be a bit silly to base whether or not you're going to buy a game off one of Yahtzee's shows.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I wonder if we could ever get a worst games of all time list. You see best games of all time lists with things like X-Com and Super Mario Bros. always near the top. But what games are so wretchedly bad as to be remembered years later as having caused pain to so many?

Wouldn't be possible. You'd have to look at:

1) The "blockbusters" that are carbon copies of older, better games, with none of their charm or energy, that we seem to get so many of nowadays (ditto sequels, etc).

2) Going back a bit, you'd need to include what I like to call "coin-op conversions from hell", the likes of which "Double Dragon" for the C64 would represent nicely. You have an entire legion of Golden Axe, Space Harrier, Afterburner etc imitators that were just awful.

3) Then you have the whole "granny games" section, by which I mean games that barely classify as such and that only your grandmother could think would be fun ("Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool". Yeah, I played it. Yeah, it really is that bad. Worse than "Barney's Hide and Seek". Reportedly worse than the "Barbie" games on the Sega Megadrive. Not that I would know. Ahem...)

4) Then you have what I like to call "the curse of the adventure game". Early on this would be text-based, later point-and-click, but this is the kind of "game" where the only way to ever progress would be to try using every object on every other object within the game. And even then the logic would be obscure. Text-based is worse because sometimes the game wouldn't recognise what you were trying to do, even if it was right. Basically the kind of game that you have to use a walkthrough to solve, and even then it's not worth it.

5) Bible games. Just bible games. If you've ever played one of these wretched things from the 8-bit era ("Super Noah's Ark", anyone?) then you'll know what I'm talking about.

6) And then you just have the legendary failures: "ET the extra terrestrial", "Superman 64", "Kane and Lynch 2", etc.

Add in the fact that everyone has a subjective viewpoint and everything's gonna be hated by SOMEBODY.

Now go through all of that and tell me how the heck you're gonna sort out a definitive list of "worst games of all time"? I mean, there's so much bad, so much mediocre. It's like any art form: a helluva lot of it will always be produced solely for the money, with no real creative vision behind it, sometimes under extremely stressful or hurried conditions, getting shoved onto the shelves for Christmas without being properly finished, etc. You just gotta know where to look for the good stuff.

Why did you put "ET the extra terrestrial" for the Atari 2600 along with Superman 64?? ET is a bad game for the wrong reasons. It looks and acts as shitty as the Indiana Jones game from the Atari but no one marks it as the worst game ever. ET has bad reputation rather than being a bad game because Atari thought that they could sell it like hot cakes and end up making more cartidges than they could sell and that is it. Worse of all, they rush the game just as they rushed the Pac Man port from the arcades to the Atari in the last year and that failed too, and somehow they made the same fucking mistake TWICE of releasing a rushed game on Chrismast and overproduce it.

Superman 64, however, just plain sucks. It doesnt have the same excuse as an Atari game

Ah, I'm not thinking of the Wolvenstein ripoff, I'm thinking of the game where you play Noah and have to run around platforming sections carrying animals into an ark. Over, and over, and over...

FTR I've played every game I've mentioned EXCEPT the three in part 6, so I have no idea if E. T. is as bad to play as it looks like on YouTube. But I think you've overstating things when you say "no one marks it as the worst game ever". A lot of people put it pretty high up there. And I don't give an 8-bit game a "pass" for poor design when there are so many fantastically-designed 8-bit games out there.

Come to think of it, the only thing I WOULDN'T say qualifies for "worst game ever" would be something from the "mediocre blockbusters" section. You might not like the "Modern Warfare" series or the effect it has on gaming in general, but I don't think you can call it the "worst game" when hundreds of thousands of people still play it and enjoy it. (Again, just using an example at random here of something that gets a lot of flak for what it represents. I've never played any of the "Modern Warfare" games so I'm not equipped to pass any judgement, good or bad, on it.)

FTR "The Great Waldo Search" on the Sega Genesis is the only game I can recall that fits into four separate categories above (if that game doesn't count as a "legendary failure", I don't know what does.) You have to use your joypad to move a pointer over a guy in a red and white top, then click one of the fire buttons. Five times (yes, there were exactly five levels in this shitpile.) Worst game ever? I think it has a strong claim.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Forgot to mention that "The Great Waldo Search", which could literally be finished in two minutes (and probably WOULD be finished in close to that), cost £40 when it came out. £40!!! You could get, for the same price:

- Street Fighter 2 Champions Edition
- Jungle Strike
- A gamepack featuring Golden Axe, Streets of Rage and World Cup Italia 90

...And many, many more.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

The reason why I'm annoying by his Worst Game of 2011 pick is because it felt like he was only doing it to make a "Big Statement." It just felt kind of condescending. That's not what I watch his videos for. I watch them to laugh, not to have someone wag their finger at me and and chide me for having the gall to enjoy something he doesn't necessarily approve of.

It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars.

 

[ChupathingyX]

So lets try to be honest here and see what we can work out. Why you think that Resistance 3 ISNT a rip-off? Because for me it feels like the developers were going for the nostalgia cash in since R3 isnt like R2 in terms of gameplay (as Yathzee pointed out, it isnt as brown and boring) You will think that they will just have the same as R2 but with some innovation but the change of mechanics makes me believe that it IS a cash in in nostalgia.

I believe that R3 is not a rip-off because it was Insomniac keeping to a formula that they are good at and know well with tweaks and additions to make the game more faster paced and action oriented.

The first Ratchet and Clank game was released before HL 2, and the simple formula of fast paced, explosive action without taking direct cover along with non-regenerating health has been a staple throughout the series with other things such as platforming and collectibles. Resistance: Fall of Man was almost like a more serious and gritty Ratchet and Clank game that still contained wild weapons, no weapon limit, non-regenerating health and imaginative weapons.

Some aspects of R2 was criticised by fans and Insomniac sought to improve those aspects (such as the weapon wheel) in R3, which they did.

 

[Warforger]

I recall Yahtzee's main criticism against Arkham City was that he got too distracted by all the sidequests and question marks.
If you're not suffering from ADD, you will notice not only the bossfights are better, but the overal encounter design in the second half of the game is also much improved. No longer can you get away with just pressing block when the signs appear and stunning the occasional armed villain with the batcloak. The game still starts out that way for players to learn to game, but later mixed groups of armored and shielded baddies with guns and stunbatons lying around, force the player to use more varied moves and consider tactical positioning.

It's simply a better game than the original, for the combat alone.

Side quests and puzzles can even be completed after doing the main storyline, if you care about the pacing of the story or about roleplaying the batman. The transition from the end game to the aftergame works pretty well and is worth seeing.

Yah that's what I thought, except for Asylum being all counter counter counter, play it on hard, you won't get far just doing that.

Not only were the boss fights better but they were amazing in their own right, I don't remember any boss fight in any recent games as good as they were (probably because most games nowadays don't have boss fights) each boss fight was different and unique in their own ways giving you a different experience each time whereas the bossfights in Aslyum were either beat up some big dude, beat up a horde, or both with the exception of Croc, who was worse than that. In City while there are bosses like that they are so spread apart and each have their own unique character to them like the one with Joker.

 

[DioWallachia]

The reason why I'm annoying by his Worst Game of 2011 pick is because it felt like he was only doing it to make a "Big Statement." It just felt kind of condescending. That's not what I watch his videos for. I watch them to laugh, not to have someone wag their finger at me and and chide me for having the gall to enjoy something he doesn't necessarily approve of.

It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars.

Actually, Yathzee is like a film critic that criticizes Avatar for being Dances With Wolves in SPACE and having a very obvious manipulative narrative where the bad guys are unremediable assholes without any dept to them and the "noble savages" are perfect masturbation fantasies mixed with Mary Sue topia traits to have the people rooting for them to the point that even seeing them suffering is painful for the audience. After all, they look like puppies eye's with cat noses and the rest is human looking, but the point is that they were designed to trigger that instic of the humans of caring about the innocent puppies.......so we can have the evil military open fire execution style on the innocent puppies so you can feel bad about it.

So if Yathzee hated the games its because they are lazily designed and relied of flashy lights to distract from the plot holes and still manage to get millons of dollars when other games with better traits are bitting the dust.

And since we are into the movie analogy, Citizen Kane + John Carpenter's The Thing + Blade Runner must be the most shitty movies of all times because they didnt make money in the box office, right?? Oh wait, they are cult classics now that people have taken the bloody time to realize that they have been tricked into seing shit. Not that they will ever admit that.

 

[DioWallachia]

So lets try to be honest here and see what we can work out. Why you think that Resistance 3 ISNT a rip-off? Because for me it feels like the developers were going for the nostalgia cash in since R3 isnt like R2 in terms of gameplay (as Yathzee pointed out, it isnt as brown and boring) You will think that they will just have the same as R2 but with some innovation but the change of mechanics makes me believe that it IS a cash in in nostalgia.

I believe that R3 is not a rip-off because it was Insomniac keeping to a formula that they are good at and know well with tweaks and additions to make the game more faster paced and action oriented.

The first Ratchet and Clank game was released before HL 2, and the simple formula of fast paced, explosive action without taking direct cover along with non-regenerating health has been a staple throughout the series with other things such as platforming and collectibles. Resistance: Fall of Man was almost like a more serious and gritty Ratchet and Clank game that still contained wild weapons, no weapon limit, non-regenerating health and imaginative weapons.

Some aspects of R2 was criticised by fans and Insomniac sought to improve those aspects (such as the weapon wheel) in R3, which they did.

Right, so the mechanics are something that they already did before and that is fine; But what about the plot that reasembles Half Life 2?

 

[ChupathingyX]

Right, so the mechanics are something that they already did before and that is fine; But what about the plot that reasembles Half Life 2?

That's the part where they took inspiration from, however, I do think that the story in the Resistance series got weaker as it went on, it was better back when it had more mystery. I'm not going to say that Insomniac didn't take inspiration from HL2 as far as story goes, but they didn't just rip it off or else they would've done that back when they made FoM.

 

[DioWallachia]

So the problem, and you should really understand this without me or anyone else having to spell it out for you, is that you've judged a game with a 90% focus on multiplayer on its single-player experience. Perhaps if you'd given the award to the "BF3 and MW3 Single Player Campaigns" instead of the games as a whole, people would understand.

So why aren't these games just released as multiplayer online arenas, and they don't even have to bother with their linear, set piece to set piece, badly-written single-player campaigns?

This is a very good point. I understand the reasoning behind the shift towards focusing on multiplayer, since they generally involve a lot less effort to develop than single player campaigns and yet have much more replay value. But that just brings up the question of why the same developers who operate on that logic still do pour all that work into making the campaigns at all.

I remember Yahtzee complaining about developers focusing on multiplayer and singling out Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament as targets of blame, and I didn't bother to argue with it at the time, but now's a good time to bring it up again: He was wrong about that. Really, if anything, those games (and all of Valve's multiplayer games from '99-'07) did it the right way: If you wanted to play a game against other people, you would buy one of those games. If you didn't, you wouldn't. It was pretty cut-and-dried and nobody forced you to buy what was essentially two games if you only wanted to play one. Sadly, they have always been the exception rather than the rule, and the only game I can think of to do it since 2007 was Brink, and given how much its "single-player/multiplayer integration" was hyped I'm not sure it counts.

You know, i mostly compare the multiplayer of any kind like seing a bad movie with friends for snark fun or drinking game. In other words, the "multiplayer" can make any game entertaining regardless of their flaws. But since these games come with a bad single players campaings just to appeal to the people that ***** about not having both, then i guess is fair to say that they suck, but probably people wont care because they already wasted money on it by being lead to buying it thanks to the marketing (as always)and they HAVE to make their money worth instead of just admitting that they made a mistake and could have buy another game.

Besides, Yathzee already said in another Extra Puctuation that the games have to stand up as a single player game on their own rather than the multiplayer so i dont know why people just forget this.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

The reason why I'm annoying by his Worst Game of 2011 pick is because it felt like he was only doing it to make a "Big Statement." It just felt kind of condescending. That's not what I watch his videos for. I watch them to laugh, not to have someone wag their finger at me and and chide me for having the gall to enjoy something he doesn't necessarily approve of.

It's like a movie critic naming the big-budget 3D movie that made a billion dollars and got mostly positive reviews as his worse movie of the year simply because it was in 3D and made a billion dollars.

Actually, Yathzee is like a film critic that criticizes Avatar for being Dances With Wolves in SPACE and having a very obvious manipulative narrative where the bad guys are unremediable assholes without any dept to them and the "noble savages" are perfect masturbation fantasies mixed with Mary Sue topia traits to have the people rooting for them to the point that even seeing them suffering is painful for the audience. After all, they look like puppies eye's with cat noses and the rest is human looking, but the point is that they were designed to trigger that instic of the humans of caring about the innocent puppies.......so we can have the evil military open fire execution style on the innocent puppies so you can feel bad about it.

So if Yathzee hated the games its because they are lazily designed and relied of flashy lights to distract from the plot holes and still manage to get millons of dollars when other games with better traits are bitting the dust.

And since we are into the movie analogy, Citizen Kane + John Carpenter's The Thing + Blade Runner must be the most shitty movies of all times because they didnt make money in the box office, right?? Oh wait, they are cult classics now that people have taken the bloody time to realize that they have been tricked into seing shit. Not that they will ever admit that.

I was planning on writing this long reply to your post but after reading it over a couple of times realized it would have been a waste of time because it's quite obvious you missed the point of my post, the whole "You must hate Blade Runner because it didn't make a lot of money!" part of your reply just reinforces my point.

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

You can't say Arkham Asylum is "in fact" better than Arkham City because that's not a goddamn fact, it's an opinion. Yahtzee's been utterly dismissive of other opinions lately.

He's always been dismissive of other peoples opinions? The whole Anti-Wii thing, for instance.

And yes, he can say that MW3/BF3 is shit, because he only plays the singleplayer. So you people feel that the multiplayer is "70% of the content"? Fine, but he isn't reviewing that content, now is he? So every time he starts a review, imagine a big neon sign flashing before your eyes saying "THIS REVIEW IS BASED SOLELY ON THE SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCE OF THE GAME", and then maybe you could stop complaining about it?

That's not AT ALL what I wrote about. Your projecting pretty hard. I NEVER even hinted at the single vs multiplayer thing.

His anti-Wii thing: he merely says he hates it and gives strong reasons. He never stated it as fact. But, you got a point there. He is dismissive, and that wasn't the phrase I should have used.

This, on the other hand, what the fuck? You can't say that, especially as a professional.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I remember considering The Cartel, and realizing I couldn't summon much energy about it. Bad enough for the bottom list is more than just bad, it has to spark some fiery passion in me, a real active hatred, the polar opposite of the passionate support I would give a game I really liked. But I just don't feel anything like that for Call of Juarez. It doesn't make me angry, it just makes me kinda depressed. Perhaps, in a way, that makes it the worst game of all.

It's frightening when a destruction of a fairly promising franchise into a bland, 'gritty' shooter doesn't invoke passion from one of the most strident and outspoken, as well as high-standarded critics to ever walk the face of the Internet.

The Cartel hits every note to make Yahtzee rage, and yet it doesn't. Have we found the benchmark for gaming's biggest fails?

 

[Sabinfrost]

I'm glad you gave Resistance 3 a honorable mention in this article its nice to see others who like that game besides me

Yeah, I agree, I really enjoyed it and found a lot of the press just spat it out as they were salivating over Activision's upcoming penis delight. Much like children who waste a perfectly good steak because they just want ice cream. You know what happens to those children? They get fat and people pick on them.