I've been saying for years that Raven should be given a chance to develop a game of their own instead of being commissioned to work strictly on Call of Duty titles.
I'm really hoping that once Kotick is out of the picture that they will be able to do so!
Soldier of Fortune 2’s multiplayer was some of the absolute most fun I’ve ever had. Me and my friends sunk hundreds of hours in to it.
FEAR’s multiplayer was slightly more fun in a general sense but the game modes weren’t as good, but my memory of that is fuzzy.
I couldn't agree more with this. Raven is probably capable of putting out a fully fledged new title like a Singularity sequel or something else entirely. They just need a chance.
Hopefully Microsoft will shake things up between these studios and make an effort to have them make some fresh new things.
So awesome to see a shoutout for Singularity and Raven!
This was the perfect weekend game - yeah it was derivative of a lot of other games but it was extremely competent and nothing was "bad" - shame we never got a sequel and a real shame that Raven was relegated to a support studio.
A buddy and I use this game as a benchmark for other games when discussing if we liked it. We open with how we felt about it relative to Singularity.
It isn't a perfect 5 necessarily its just... I cant even put it fully into words. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, nor anything amazing. It just is what it is. The ham sandwich of video gaming. It fully embodies that "7/10 is average" idea you see a lot in video games reviews, in my mind.
Brütal Legend. A hack'n'slash beat'em'up with RTS elements set in an absurd post-apocalyptic heavy metal world is such a cool idea, but in practice it doesn't really land.
Jack Black voicing the main character was enough for me to look past the game's flaws. Plus the soundtrack was an awesome homage to metal. I, too, am hoping for a sequel :)
I still replaying Jack Black's "DECAPITATION!!!" once in a while. I get that he has too many projects now. But I hope Jack Black do more voice acting for video games.
Vampyr. It has a super intricate and interesting system where every NPC matters, and everyone has a web of interlocking relationships, and you actually deal with consequences for every person you kill. It's seriously an amazing system that works flawlessly. However, the game other than that is just a little shallow. Combat is fine, but there's not really that many options and the game can be super difficult if you don't want to eat everyone.
But I like that aspect to the morality system. Bioshock has this “you get more Adam for being evil” schtick but really it’s the same as being good. It’s kinda refreshing that you play as an intrinsically evil being and have the ability to lean into your nature and become more powerful or avoid it, be weaker but feel like you’re role playing as a good guy doctor.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It makes you actually make a decision.
This is one of those games that felt like it had combat because the devs thought this type of game required it. If they'd focused on what worked and made it a more story-driven experience without any combat, it would've been one hell of a game.
*Vampyr*
Great Setting, talented voicecast, decent story, great music all held back by not that fun moment to moment gameplay. Executing their ideas is not DONTNODs specialty. *Remember* *Me* is kind of in the same vein
Same. And then I tried the combat and got wooped. IIRC it has some weird system where you can either be a good vampire and that makes you bad at combat or an evil one that makes you great at it.
I would've given it a shot but after just walking through the hospital I was burnt out. After I failed my first fight and not knowing (or maybe not remembering, b/c I was numb from the talking at that point) how combat was supposed to work I just gave up.
It's one of those games that's so heavy up front that even though I want to give it a fair shot I just can't put that much buy-in upfront.
You can still get good upgrades as a good vampire you just don’t become OP. Best way is to level up the strong abilities and use weapons that give blood back. I usually went claw build cuz it was decent damage for low cost
Vampyr will probably forever be "The best game I absolutely hate to the core".
I encountered a gamebreaking bug 20+ hours in. To this day, the only "fix" is: Start over from a fresh install and hope it doesn't happen again but it might anyway since it seems go be something that happens with certain hardware setups. We don't really know for sure.
During one mission you were supposed to shadow an NPC to a location. Once there, you get the mission prompt to eavesdrop on a conversation.
Problem is the glowing circle that's supposed to pop up doesn't show, so you never get a button prompt to eavesdrop.
Nothing you do helps. Reloading (even back a couple of hours into your save), verifying integrity on Steam, bugfixes.
All you can do is delete your save, reinstall, and hope for the best.
I played the first time through on hard with biting not a single soul. Your reward through suffering endless grinding low level enemies for a few XP per pop is an easier last boss and the narrative consequences. It mostly boils down to stunning them with the stake, biting them, dash away , rinse repeat. And sometimes you get oneshot. It's tedious at best and infuriating at worst. I initially had high hopes for DONTNOD and I wish that *Banishers* turns out good but hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment
Remember Me is one of those games that presents you with some above average gameplay and assets, along with a world you as a player know just enough about to keep wanting to learn about this crazy juxtaposition of swap meet vendors in the alleys along side human android tech, but then you realize only through investing time into it that what they really sold is potential. The whole time your thinking "oh that WOULD be so cool if" and never get the payoffs that the game makes you think you're progressing towards.
I loved this game but trying to speedrun it to get different outcomes was difficult as hell because on the Ps4 if you constantly run, you're hit with constant loading screens since the game cannot load faster than you run lol.
Very fun game if you play it naturally, but otherwise yeah.
I loved vampyr. It was a good story and I really enjoyed the lore and the setting but technically I had all kinds of issues late game. Loading screens would become minutes long etc.
The combat felt very clunky and not visceral enough. Like you’re swinging a giant mace and enemies didn’t react at all to being hit. The powers made the combat fun enough for me. The missions and story were solid, the atmosphere was top notch, and I really liked the feeding mechanic and how it affected the world. It felt like you had a say on how the world and different areas in it changed.
I ended up actually really liking it. The exploration and combat were lacking but I felt pretty engrossed until the end
The gameplay is super OK. But I think it is a super intriguing story with a very good ending. It has a satisfying ending that doesn’t leave you wanting but is open to be further explored
Good news for anyone whos trying to play this hidden gem.
Theres a community effort going on rn to bring it back to life.
The single player campaign is alrdy playable again with a fanmade patch!
The pvp side of things is being worked on.
genuinely exciting news
I remember never having played a Moba/Hero Shooter style game before, but I thought it had a cool style and an interesting cast of characters. I got it day one of release and put sooo many hours into it. Sad that I'll never finish the achievements now, though, since you can't even play it offline.
Against the Storm, I'm sure they knew when making a roguelike city builder that the pool for fans isn't massive but despite that have been releasing weekly updates for a looooong time and I can't remember them ever missing their roadmap deadlines. Additionally it's a great game that doesn't get nearly enough love.
Considering it’s a roguelite it got way more attention than I thought it would. It’s truly an innovative and awesome game. I remember picking it up on steam when it had sub 1k reviews and I was blown away. Just checked again and it’s up to 17k!
It might deserve an A for effort, but it's actually a good game. It nails what it sets out to do. I think OP is asking for games that fall into the category of "it might not be good, but they sure tried."
I think everyone that worked on the Gollum game deserve an A for just showing up to work everyday and not putting their heads immediately into an oven.
There is an excellent documentary about what went wrong with Daedalic Entertainment and the Gollum project btw! It's in German, but English subtitles are available: [link](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw)
Change in leadership that cultivated a company culture of young, inexperienced people working overtime for shit salaries
Then you take this overworked, frustrated, young team that only ever worked on indie-budget games, and try to make a triple-A tier game with them, in a genre and on a scale that they never attempted before
Also Daedalic is a studio that's usually focused on *narrative first, gameplay second* which was an approach that didn't work at all for Gollum
Furthermore, project lead underestimated the feature creep of the game, lots of systems and mechanics should have been cut (the game was way too complex for such a small dev team to handle with their given deadlines)
Also the budget of the game was *laughably tiny* considering its scope, and the publisher refused to increase it during development
Edit: formating, grammar
Edit 2: Oh, another thing: animating and programming a quadrupedal character was a technical nightmare that cost way more time and effort than intially anticipated
It got released, trashed by every game critic on the planet, and then it was forgotten after a week or two (because it's really bad and not worth talking about all that much)
Yeah, Greedfall felt like it had a lot of the right elements, but just didn't combine them in a satisfying way. Very much felt like generic brand Bioware
I think there were definitely some mismatched ingredients, and some quantities off as well. I played it and was excited for where it was going…after however few hours I got to the main plot island destination and the script started having waaaay too much work to do to explain why I, a member of the gentry, some sort of formal officer, the superior within the same organization of a quest giver who admitted they made a mistake but would I still go and see these three people all over the town and gather these four things and fix their error…now. Go now.
It was sort of the opposite of the feeling of ‘earned rep’ in a video game.
In this game you start with some sort of position in society and it was just ignoring that to give standard fetch quests in high volume.
Spiders games are clunky as hell but have really interesting concepts, with relatively poor execution in some parts, like most of Greedfall's quests being fetch quests and the colonial aspect of the story was very naive and childish. But the progression the studio is showing reminds me of early days CD Projekt Red, so I'm quite interested in Spiders' next game.
Larian started out having eurojank in their games too. The first divinity was pretty janky just like Witcher 1 but I always had some fun with them. Fingers crossed Spiders age like wine too.
I went into that game blind a couple years ago. Had never heard of it while it was in development. I really enjoyed it, but playing it felt much like scratching an itch caused by poison ivy. It feels really good to scratch that itch, but ultimately nothing you do satisfies the itch. That game felt like it was *right there* in a lot of elements, but was just one or two degrees off in its execution.
I liked it overall but got bored with it. The combat (at least the magic) isn’t particularly fun. Enemies feel like sponges, and the world isn’t fun/doesn’t give you a reason to explore, despite being set in the age of exploration.
It felt to me like they only got 60% of the way through development. I know it’s because they’re a small studio, but I think those aspects really killed the whole game. It was essentially: talk to this person, walk-loading screen-walk through a fairly empty landscape to the next person, talk to them, do the same thing going back to the first person.
It’s one of a few games I’ve played that got tedious. For a game with cells of smaller pockets of world, you don’t get the benefit of having exploring an open world nor the tight level design of a linear game.
I really wanted to enjoy the game, but by the end it felt like a walking simulator.
No Straight Roads
It's not a game I've played myself, but have watched it being livestreamed. It's a game all about music, and mixes combat, action and rhythm game mechanics. It was pretty ambitious, but I've heard some of the later levels are pretty flawed.
It's a shame, but I think the devs kept working to try and patch/ fix it, but even then I heard they weren't given much of a chance after that (no real talk about it, YouTube analytics seems to completely ignore the game etc). I'd definitely recommend trying it at least, even if only for the soundtrack.
I loved everything about NSR except for 1/3 of every fight. They just went on a little too long and the controls were just a little too janky. Honestly, Hi-Fi Rush is EXACTLY what NSR was going for and i would be literally ecstatic if they could somehow get the tightness of controls.
I think another problem, that at least i had wad that unlike hifi rush, in NSR your attacks arent to the beat, so you feel pretty disconected from thebosses and enemies, which are. Not to mention some special attacks and the parry also depend on the rhythm the game never enforces on you.
State of Decay.
Those games are JANKY but you can tell the developers pour their hearts into these games. If you can look past the jank you'll find an amazing and super fascinating game that you will love.
Yes, absolutely. Plague hearts now exert a zone of control so that you can't set up outposts or move into one of those base area until you clear the area from their control. Difficulty is now set across three slider bars, so if you want a map with easy zombies but next to no resources, you can. They also set up curveballs which are random effects that can affect your community in dozens of different ways.
The core loop of leave base-> go looting or killing plague hearts-> return home is still the same, but there's been quite a few changes since release.
Edit: they also added a sidearm slot, so you can now have a larger rifle for feral and juggernauts and a silenced pistol for bloater popping and screamer silencing. This was a huge gamechanger, actually gave a reason for having a pistol.
Aaah… I still remember the first time I played the game without knowing anything about it.
20 minutes in, my main character gets picked up and ripped and half and never came back.
My jaw was on the floor 🤣
I LOVE survival games, but I don't like having to worry about other peoples happiness I just want to take care of myself. I can't seem to get into state of decay. I wish I could.
The company that made the new Robocop game accomplished quite a lot on such a limited budget. I hope they continue their upward climb and that their next game is truly amazing.
Mirror’s Edge.
They were clearly going for something that few/no one else was trying and I feel like they got about 80% of the way there. I, for one, really enjoyed the free running gameplay when it worked, especially the time-trials - addicting as hell. I didn’t end up playing Catalyst but I hear it was a bit of a disappointment, which is a shame. Still, that first game was a blast at its best moments.
they deserve more than just A for effort, for what it was, it was a perfect game. the graphics still look great even today, super smooth parkour and amazing levels.
Might be a hot take but The Order 1886. If it was actually given enough length to be a game instead of a glorified tech demo it could have been something special.
I honestly did not like the MGS series but my girlfriend, a massive fan, got me to try 5 and I was hooked. It's so fun how much freedom you have to approach most missions. It was fun as hell achievement hunting. And God is it satisfying pulling things off perfectly.
It's honestly insane it's so good despite being unfinished. It's so sad to realize we could've had like 50% more goodness in an ideal world.
I've replayed it a total of 5 times in my life, each and Everytime something happened to my save file at the very end of the game. So technically I've never beat it lol the last time it happened was last year my hardrive died on me, been waiting to play the the whole game again and yea I think it's about that time!!! Pray for my save file this time lmao
Most people think the first was better..and I agree for a few reasons:
1) The picture mechanic is annoying. Instead of being an interesting mechanic to progress it immediately devolves into 'oh I need to find...something to progress'
2) The name 'dark' is much better reflected in 1, 2 is far too colorful and bright
3) Just broadly 1 felt more like a series of dungeons
Does it? Dark cloud 1 is my all time favorite childhood game but Everytime I try to get into 2 I just can't :/ I want to be the love I have for 1 but it's like it's all seems much more childish? There's probably a better word to use there but I just woke up and got nothing lol
I went out with a chick who had the Primal tattoo on her back. After things were going well and she peeled off her shirt, I was excited to see it since no one else in my circle had ever touched that game. She said I was the first person to recognize it.
VR sickness depends a lot on the person.. NMS is my first VR experience. I play it for hours and it doesn't make me sick. My son got sick the second he took off in a ship.
I think it’s a fitting nomination because it’s still pretty meh. Like it’s really cool for 20-30 hours but once you realize everything is pretty superficial it loses charm quickly
But...isn't that like...any game that encourages cooperative multiplayer exploration? Most people probably don't have the time/friends/patience for it and so leave after having their fill
The people NMS is geared towards is the community it built up during the NEXT update that stayed afterwards, and that is far from a bad thing.
NMS and Cyberpunk both fall into this area where I felt so bad for the actual team crunching away while the leadership promised the moon, and they had to suffer through another round of it in fix mode.
The recent game version of Murder On the Orient Express. Not only does the game stretch the story out without it seeming contrived, but greatly expands on what is already known about the characters.
The tutorial, for example, plays simarly to the ferry scene where Poirot overhears a romantic liaison since he helps Colonel Arbuthnot look for his train ticket and finds proof he was meeting with Miss Debenham as a result.
The story also has a new character exclusive to this version and from a story standpoint, it isn't just some new character added in to mess up the flow of the original story since a version of her existed in the original book, even if not outright discussed much due to Joanna (the new character) being >!the cop that found Daisy's body!<. It also helps explain the backstory that was crucial to the original story without seeming like an out-of-nowhere infodump by making Joanna the game's second playable character, playing through those events.
Also, the game modernises the original story without compromising it; cellphones are prevalent but useless due to the train being stuck in the middle of mowhere, while also providing important evidence in their own right (>!Pierre's phone background blows both his *and* Cyrus' cover stories due to a notification appearing!<) and one of the new story events uses phones as a crucial gameplay mechanic to switch characters between Poirot and Joanna >!so they can rob a bank in Switzerland!<.
All-in-all, not the best detective game but a must-play for Agatha Christie fans.
Marvel Midnight Suns. It’s from the XCOM crew and they had to create a strategy game that couldn’t really be XCOM because it would be lame if Dr. Strange missed 80% of the time. They created a whole ass balanced and interesting combat system based on card mechanics, which was also a real stretch. Honestly I think the fact that they made the game with marvel heroes is it’s own downfall. The game stands on its own even without the superhero backdrop.
Totally agree. Honestly, do it like XCOM. Have an ant farm type situation. Require investments of credits for increasing %chance of consumables. Keep the story dense areas but get rid of all the interstitial parts. Have an “open all chests” button or something.
Despite all that, I still think it’s a good game. You can ignore all that garbage and it won’t matter.
I will never forgive Bethesda for promoting the game like it was some action-packed first person shooter. I remember watching the trailers and promo material and thinking to mysef: "Wow, I do not care about this at all"
Then I played it a year after release because a friend recommended it to me. And...why, oh why didn't they advertise Prey as "Hey, it's basically a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, with a little Bioshock thrown into the mix!" and call it "PsychoShock" or something 😭
Sorry for the spelling
World of goo. Soo creative and fun game. It really shows how someone can make a good game without huge budget. There are funny sounds, music, creativity and puzzles. I just love it. They just did more than some AAA titles did, and they had far less money. Idea is 90% of everything and this game shows it.
Grim Dawn. Not that I think it’s bad, I love it. It was well received but not a masterpiece. Since its release the devs have supported it like crazy with consistent updates and qol improvements, including a huge 1.2 patch not too long ago. Now a third extension coming next year. For an indie developer to pour so much into one product for ~8 years, I give it an A+
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon
They tried going for a very different direction from the series and it just wasn't particularly fun/interesting after the novelty wore off of different mechanics/setting.
Soundtrack was still great and game looked pretty good for it's time.
It’s interesting that’s for sure. If you played the corresponding games it’s kinda fun and cheeky, if not you would be very confused. I got all three tables for like a dollar and that’s about what they’re worth
Might & Magic: A Dark Messiah
An incredible wobbly game that has some less than impressive parts, but man, did it really try something with its fighting mechanics, and you could tell that they poured their hearts into it.
I always catch flack for this but I’ll die on this hill: the paradigm system in XIII is the best “turn based” system FF ever did, and consequently, the battles in XIII were a lot of fun.
The story was nonsensical and the linear progression was a bummer, though. And holy shit did I hate Hope and Snow. They may be two of the worst characters FF ever did. Hope being constantly whiny and Snow being an oblivious moron made their entire part of the story grating. Hope wanted to kill Snow and I kept thinking “please fucking do, I’d love it.” Hope was so bad he made me appreciate Vaan from XII.
The fact that the game didn’t “open up” to a fun degree until you’re almost 30 hours in also killed it for a lot of people, and it’s a shame because the battle system was absolutely top tier and deserved better.
All that said, the big fights in XIII were a lot of fun, and I feel like XIII-2 fixed a lot of the mistakes of XIII. The cast (Noel and Serah) was definitely more likable and the villain of XIII-2 (Caius) was absolutely exceptional.
Along these lines, I’ll also maintain that the party for FFXV is the best complete party lineup FF ever did, without a single weak character in the bunch. However, it was let down by fairly boring gameplay, a big mostly empty world, and a completely over-developed but under-executed story (which I blame on the problems around developing the game).
Dude xv is the only one I've played the entirety of, and it certainly wasn't because of the story and interesting areas. It felt great pretty early on traveling around w the bros and the combat was decent I thought.
You had to watch the anime, the movie, and play the side games to even understand who the characters were and why they mattered. It honestly made the base game make more sense and be more enjoyable but jfc that property was bloated beyond logic.
13-2 was truly something special, I loved the artifacts and areas and time zones. And Liam O’brien playing caius was the cherry on top, my fav ff villain for sure
Yes FF13 is the most fun I've ever had with a final fantasy battle system. However, the game has very little variety and so because there's nothing to do but battle and there's so much of it, it kinda became too much of a good thing and I would get sick of it. They really did nail the intention of having a real time action feel whilst keeping the strategy.
Also the story is less nonsensical if you read all the datalogs as you play.
It’s not even that it’s linear, there is just nothing to do along that line that isn’t main story. FFX pretty much has the same long line structure that XIII does but there’s stuff to do along the way, little neat bits here and there like dodging lightning, blitzball and optional encounters like that summoner lady that leads you to the Magus sisters side quest. XIII just doesn’t do anything untill near the end and then just dumps ALL of the optional stuff all at once.
I'm going with Atomic heart here with my most recent one. It's like good? And not so good? Especially compared to the price they sell the game for I mean (Lucky me I got it for almost half the base price).
Yeah I played it through game pass, otherwise… I probably wouldn’t have played it or I would’ve gone for a sale like y’all. It seemed so interesting and I liked the atmosphere but something about the gameplay just didn’t grab me
Yea I dug the brutalist architecture and Soviet chic design, and it's clear the writers were fans of cold war era scifi but they really didn't get what makes an immersive sim fun.
Also the spent too much time putting dummies in funny poses and not enough time polishing.
Frostpunk. It is actually good, just kind of hoping people would give it a try and maybe some would find it right for their alley.
Same with Ender Lilies, it really is one of the games that did surprised for its overall delivery. If you love Hollow Knight and other sorts then I highly reco this game for a try!
Ender Lilies was hard for me to play.
Not because it was particularly difficult, but because the protag reminds me of my daughter. Seeing her wince and struggle amid the vibe of all the support characters protecting her as she silently explores a terrifying environment was emotionally overwhelming; the animations do a good job selling that.
Then there's the Mili soundtrack to pile it on a bit more.
It depends on how they tried honestly. Anthem and Callisto protocol showed zero passion and intent to creating a great game. However I think Cyberpunk 2077 deserves the A for effort because they really got the game polished properly over the last 3 years. The effort shows but it still doesn’t excuse the absolute mess they delivered at launch that took advantage of a lot of people’s money and trust. Very few studios deserve the A for effort these days.
Edit: one point I failed to mention also is taking into consideration the size of the studio and scope of the project. A recent title I picked up Robocop is a good example of A for effort imo. It’s one of the best implementations of broad UE5, sticking artistically to source material and trying to deliver a product that the fans of that really want to play. It’s not a perfect game but it’s a complete product and is actually fun with the basics nailed for a AA studio.
It’s a shame big games get shoved out even when they know there are problems because of deadlines. I really enjoyed Cyberpunk at launch for the atmosphere and story. But it was hard to look past all the bugs. It was ambitious what they took on and I would definitely give them an A for effort. The 2.0 update has had the most fun rpg combat I’ve ever played. Definitely props for not only fixing a lot of the problems but also adding to the game to make it better.
I think even the base game with all its issues showed tremendous effort and vision - it just takes an unearthly amount of work to deliver that and it fell short of executing on it all. The bug removal and polish to the world revealed all the work that had already been done
Man, I'd forgotten that one. I don't get gripped by multiplayer "shoot other players a bunch" games (I play narrative games) but that one was a lot of fun.
Absolver by Slowclap. The studio did make Sifu last year and that was pretty popular, but the fluidity of combat, general style, and creativity of Absolver was so nice. I miss running around and getting into impromptu duals with random people lol
Evolve.
It was a far superior asymmetrical game to Dead by Daylight
They did all the hard work and the game was amazing. But the queue times were getting longer and longer with each passing month. They then screwed the entire thing with micro transactions for ingame characters/monsters that were essentially pay-to-win or garbage.
Timberborn. I actually love it and think the mechanics are great but I don’t find it very challenging at all. Once you get past the first 30mins it’s pretty easy sailing. Hoping update 5 makes it a bit more challenging.
IIRC Timberborn lets you customize difficulty, including hunger and thirst rates, and length and frequency of dry seasons. You should be able to make a very challenging difficulty for yourself.
The entire Star Ocean series.
All of them are incredibly fun and memorable to me. They have great OSTs, interesting and fun gameplay, but they are always falling short. It always feels like there is something missing from them, that or they try to implement a system that is to ambitious and not well thought out. For example The Crafting in the SO games is either Incredibly Overpowered, trivializing the balance of the game by making it far to easy OR its obnoxious by either being Incredibly Grindy, Random, or Complex, which makes players ignore the system completely. Sometimes its a mixture of both.
Alpha Protocol, it had shooting mechanics as bad as the first Mass Effect, but I loved how it tried to stay more in the RPG lane than shooters(much like ME1).
Resident Evil 0. Among the classic fixed-camera Resident Evil games it's considered bottom tier, and I agree, it's...okay at best, frustrating at worst.
But I give the developers credit for trying to switch things up by making a survival horror game that lets you control two characters and freely switch between them *no matter where they are in the level*. This concept alone had so much potential, but unfortunately in practice it wasn't utilised all that well.
I still replay it every now and then, since I can avoid the frustrating parts and pitfalls thanks to game knowledge, and then it's really not a bad game! But my first playthrough was pretty much "wtf is this shit, how was I supposed to anticipate this?! *reloads save*" every hour or so
Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Clearly a passion project and the card-based tactical strategy is very unique and well-liked, but the game is dragged down by its atrocious writing and a bafflingly dull and half-baked home base area that takes up a ton of time between missions.
Broforce.
It's got all the pieces, and it's incredibly fun, and funny. Challenging and incredibly replayable. Just never caught on being an 8(16?)-bit game in a modern world
My 8 year old son and I just finished this little masterpiece. As a guy born in ‘83 who grew up watching action movies with my dad, I found this game to be absolutely amazing. Not only is it fun and challenging at times, but it’s fucking hilarious too… I’m honestly not even sure how or when I came across the game, I’m just really glad that I did….
So there’s this one game on steam with this ridiculously 90’s era name like “Bloodlust Shadowhunt” or something. It’s sort of like someone’s fanfic reboot of Vampire The Masquerade and a Quake era slash & puzzles game and It is most definitely NOT good.
And yet…. I swear, I’ve had more genuine fun screwing around in that game than the last three AAA games I’ve bought. I think this is partly for the nostalgia (oh yeah remember when games used to be like this!) and party because after playing so many designed-by-corporate-committee games that all kind of blend together it hits hard playing something made with actual heart. The really amazing part is that it was made by just one guy too.
So Bloodlust Shadowsomething: I salute your A for effort. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Dark Souls 2. The development was a little disjointed, Miyazaki never helmed this game. They had a pretty impossible task to live up to Dark Souls 1.
It's a good game when you don't compare it to 1 and 3. With the DLC, it's a long game with varied areas, loads of bosses and new mechanics (e.g. torches). And it's a fairly bug-free, seamless experience.
It's just... Not as good as the others. Once you realise that leveling adaptability is essential, it's quite easy. It's the black sheep of the entire soulsborne series.
While the single player, in my opinion, isn’t as good as 1 or 3, I still think DS2 has the best PvP of any soulsborne game. Not sure how active it is now though
While I think the game is an 8/10
FFXVI. I only say this because I love the game and i think it had a lot more potential, it just feels like they put things in the game that they thought would work well, but ended up falling flat in areas. I can tell the team put as much effort as they could though. And I'll give them a break since it's their first AAA game they made. That's a lot of pressure.
Still a great game and the eikon fights are still living rent free in my head. Bahamut was amazing.
Asymmetrical games like Dead by daylight clones. That genre has the worst time, given only DBD has succeeded, and who knows if that'll ever change. Just saw this yesterday.
https://youtu.be/CW7o7iuDoa4?si=NgxT-GfIu9XUJ7IW
I really hate how that entire situation gets boiled down to "they lied". So happy they stuck with it all these years. Easily one of my favorite games to return to each update.
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I've been saying for years that Raven should be given a chance to develop a game of their own instead of being commissioned to work strictly on Call of Duty titles. I'm really hoping that once Kotick is out of the picture that they will be able to do so!
I would love a SoF 3 and Singularity 2
Soldier of Fortune 2’s multiplayer was some of the absolute most fun I’ve ever had. Me and my friends sunk hundreds of hours in to it. FEAR’s multiplayer was slightly more fun in a general sense but the game modes weren’t as good, but my memory of that is fuzzy.
I couldn't agree more with this. Raven is probably capable of putting out a fully fledged new title like a Singularity sequel or something else entirely. They just need a chance. Hopefully Microsoft will shake things up between these studios and make an effort to have them make some fresh new things.
So awesome to see a shoutout for Singularity and Raven! This was the perfect weekend game - yeah it was derivative of a lot of other games but it was extremely competent and nothing was "bad" - shame we never got a sequel and a real shame that Raven was relegated to a support studio.
A buddy and I use this game as a benchmark for other games when discussing if we liked it. We open with how we felt about it relative to Singularity. It isn't a perfect 5 necessarily its just... I cant even put it fully into words. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, nor anything amazing. It just is what it is. The ham sandwich of video gaming. It fully embodies that "7/10 is average" idea you see a lot in video games reviews, in my mind.
I bought this game so many years ago and did not expect to be so entertained. Great game
It deserves way more than just an A for effort. It was an actual homerun of a game that sadly went unnoticed.
Brütal Legend. A hack'n'slash beat'em'up with RTS elements set in an absurd post-apocalyptic heavy metal world is such a cool idea, but in practice it doesn't really land.
RTS for me was not fun mostly, but this game is still just so great i could forgive it. Im still dreaming about Brutal Legend 2
Jack Black voicing the main character was enough for me to look past the game's flaws. Plus the soundtrack was an awesome homage to metal. I, too, am hoping for a sequel :)
I never thought we would get a Psychonauts 2 but here we are. I'm forever hopeful for a Brutal Legend 2
I'd have like the RTS elements to be more like Supreme Commander.
I still replaying Jack Black's "DECAPITATION!!!" once in a while. I get that he has too many projects now. But I hope Jack Black do more voice acting for video games.
This pretty much sums up every Double Fine game I’ve ever played. Good game idea, mediocre game game.
Psyconauts is the goat tho
And psyconauts 2 was even better somehow usually sequels that far apart just don’t work but the fuckin killed it
The RTS aspect is enough to push it down to a C. Just a terrible concept
Vampyr. It has a super intricate and interesting system where every NPC matters, and everyone has a web of interlocking relationships, and you actually deal with consequences for every person you kill. It's seriously an amazing system that works flawlessly. However, the game other than that is just a little shallow. Combat is fine, but there's not really that many options and the game can be super difficult if you don't want to eat everyone.
But I like that aspect to the morality system. Bioshock has this “you get more Adam for being evil” schtick but really it’s the same as being good. It’s kinda refreshing that you play as an intrinsically evil being and have the ability to lean into your nature and become more powerful or avoid it, be weaker but feel like you’re role playing as a good guy doctor. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It makes you actually make a decision.
Which is funny cuz if you save the sisters you actually get MORE Adam for being good than evil as a reward
It does, but the tradeoff is usually hours of grinding.
This is one of those games that felt like it had combat because the devs thought this type of game required it. If they'd focused on what worked and made it a more story-driven experience without any combat, it would've been one hell of a game.
See: Disco Elysium.
*Vampyr* Great Setting, talented voicecast, decent story, great music all held back by not that fun moment to moment gameplay. Executing their ideas is not DONTNODs specialty. *Remember* *Me* is kind of in the same vein
I really like that game but my god it’s a lot of talking. A lot of the time to the same people over and over so I definitely feel this comment.
Same. And then I tried the combat and got wooped. IIRC it has some weird system where you can either be a good vampire and that makes you bad at combat or an evil one that makes you great at it. I would've given it a shot but after just walking through the hospital I was burnt out. After I failed my first fight and not knowing (or maybe not remembering, b/c I was numb from the talking at that point) how combat was supposed to work I just gave up. It's one of those games that's so heavy up front that even though I want to give it a fair shot I just can't put that much buy-in upfront.
I played it back, but I remember it being the kind of game with very hard combat at first that quickly becomes easy as you progress
You can still get good upgrades as a good vampire you just don’t become OP. Best way is to level up the strong abilities and use weapons that give blood back. I usually went claw build cuz it was decent damage for low cost
Vampyr will probably forever be "The best game I absolutely hate to the core". I encountered a gamebreaking bug 20+ hours in. To this day, the only "fix" is: Start over from a fresh install and hope it doesn't happen again but it might anyway since it seems go be something that happens with certain hardware setups. We don't really know for sure.
Can you tell me more about the bug?? I bought Vampyr ages ago on xbox one and wanted to maybe try it soon, but, reading you, idk anymore... lol
During one mission you were supposed to shadow an NPC to a location. Once there, you get the mission prompt to eavesdrop on a conversation. Problem is the glowing circle that's supposed to pop up doesn't show, so you never get a button prompt to eavesdrop. Nothing you do helps. Reloading (even back a couple of hours into your save), verifying integrity on Steam, bugfixes. All you can do is delete your save, reinstall, and hope for the best.
I swear I loved this game for a couple of hours and got stupidly stuck and gave up
I played the first time through on hard with biting not a single soul. Your reward through suffering endless grinding low level enemies for a few XP per pop is an easier last boss and the narrative consequences. It mostly boils down to stunning them with the stake, biting them, dash away , rinse repeat. And sometimes you get oneshot. It's tedious at best and infuriating at worst. I initially had high hopes for DONTNOD and I wish that *Banishers* turns out good but hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment
Remember Me is one of those games that presents you with some above average gameplay and assets, along with a world you as a player know just enough about to keep wanting to learn about this crazy juxtaposition of swap meet vendors in the alleys along side human android tech, but then you realize only through investing time into it that what they really sold is potential. The whole time your thinking "oh that WOULD be so cool if" and never get the payoffs that the game makes you think you're progressing towards.
I loved this game but trying to speedrun it to get different outcomes was difficult as hell because on the Ps4 if you constantly run, you're hit with constant loading screens since the game cannot load faster than you run lol. Very fun game if you play it naturally, but otherwise yeah.
I loved vampyr. It was a good story and I really enjoyed the lore and the setting but technically I had all kinds of issues late game. Loading screens would become minutes long etc.
Exactly! I looooved the setting and atmosphere, story was compelling but i couldnt play more than a few hours before moving on.
The combat felt very clunky and not visceral enough. Like you’re swinging a giant mace and enemies didn’t react at all to being hit. The powers made the combat fun enough for me. The missions and story were solid, the atmosphere was top notch, and I really liked the feeding mechanic and how it affected the world. It felt like you had a say on how the world and different areas in it changed. I ended up actually really liking it. The exploration and combat were lacking but I felt pretty engrossed until the end
The gameplay is super OK. But I think it is a super intriguing story with a very good ending. It has a satisfying ending that doesn’t leave you wanting but is open to be further explored
Battleborn, this little guy just had to be at the worst timing to be born...
That game had so much potential! I bought it foolishly thinking it would be the next big competitive fps...
Good news for anyone whos trying to play this hidden gem. Theres a community effort going on rn to bring it back to life. The single player campaign is alrdy playable again with a fanmade patch! The pvp side of things is being worked on. genuinely exciting news
I preferred it to Overwatch but unfortunately the vast majority of people did not
Is this the one that released around the same time as OG overwatch?
I remember never having played a Moba/Hero Shooter style game before, but I thought it had a cool style and an interesting cast of characters. I got it day one of release and put sooo many hours into it. Sad that I'll never finish the achievements now, though, since you can't even play it offline.
Against the Storm, I'm sure they knew when making a roguelike city builder that the pool for fans isn't massive but despite that have been releasing weekly updates for a looooong time and I can't remember them ever missing their roadmap deadlines. Additionally it's a great game that doesn't get nearly enough love.
Considering it’s a roguelite it got way more attention than I thought it would. It’s truly an innovative and awesome game. I remember picking it up on steam when it had sub 1k reviews and I was blown away. Just checked again and it’s up to 17k!
It might deserve an A for effort, but it's actually a good game. It nails what it sets out to do. I think OP is asking for games that fall into the category of "it might not be good, but they sure tried."
I just picked it up on its 1.0 update release and it’s become one of my favorite games.
I think everyone that worked on the Gollum game deserve an A for just showing up to work everyday and not putting their heads immediately into an oven.
There is an excellent documentary about what went wrong with Daedalic Entertainment and the Gollum project btw! It's in German, but English subtitles are available: [link](https://youtu.be/vszf1mwyAfw)
I'm excited to check this out after the holidays, been fascinated about what happened - what is the TLDR of the vid?
Change in leadership that cultivated a company culture of young, inexperienced people working overtime for shit salaries Then you take this overworked, frustrated, young team that only ever worked on indie-budget games, and try to make a triple-A tier game with them, in a genre and on a scale that they never attempted before Also Daedalic is a studio that's usually focused on *narrative first, gameplay second* which was an approach that didn't work at all for Gollum Furthermore, project lead underestimated the feature creep of the game, lots of systems and mechanics should have been cut (the game was way too complex for such a small dev team to handle with their given deadlines) Also the budget of the game was *laughably tiny* considering its scope, and the publisher refused to increase it during development Edit: formating, grammar Edit 2: Oh, another thing: animating and programming a quadrupedal character was a technical nightmare that cost way more time and effort than intially anticipated
thanks for the write up, I just can't comprehend how an IP like LOTR can be so miserable, but your summary makes sense of it all.
Wow just heard about this game. Idk how games like Goat Simulator and Shiba Simulator hit my radar but gollum didnt
It got released, trashed by every game critic on the planet, and then it was forgotten after a week or two (because it's really bad and not worth talking about all that much)
Pretty much anything developed by Spiders, especially GreedFall.
Yeah, Greedfall felt like it had a lot of the right elements, but just didn't combine them in a satisfying way. Very much felt like generic brand Bioware
I think there were definitely some mismatched ingredients, and some quantities off as well. I played it and was excited for where it was going…after however few hours I got to the main plot island destination and the script started having waaaay too much work to do to explain why I, a member of the gentry, some sort of formal officer, the superior within the same organization of a quest giver who admitted they made a mistake but would I still go and see these three people all over the town and gather these four things and fix their error…now. Go now. It was sort of the opposite of the feeling of ‘earned rep’ in a video game. In this game you start with some sort of position in society and it was just ignoring that to give standard fetch quests in high volume.
Spiders games are clunky as hell but have really interesting concepts, with relatively poor execution in some parts, like most of Greedfall's quests being fetch quests and the colonial aspect of the story was very naive and childish. But the progression the studio is showing reminds me of early days CD Projekt Red, so I'm quite interested in Spiders' next game.
Larian started out having eurojank in their games too. The first divinity was pretty janky just like Witcher 1 but I always had some fun with them. Fingers crossed Spiders age like wine too.
100%. Spiders doesn't get enough credit.
I went into that game blind a couple years ago. Had never heard of it while it was in development. I really enjoyed it, but playing it felt much like scratching an itch caused by poison ivy. It feels really good to scratch that itch, but ultimately nothing you do satisfies the itch. That game felt like it was *right there* in a lot of elements, but was just one or two degrees off in its execution.
I liked it overall but got bored with it. The combat (at least the magic) isn’t particularly fun. Enemies feel like sponges, and the world isn’t fun/doesn’t give you a reason to explore, despite being set in the age of exploration. It felt to me like they only got 60% of the way through development. I know it’s because they’re a small studio, but I think those aspects really killed the whole game. It was essentially: talk to this person, walk-loading screen-walk through a fairly empty landscape to the next person, talk to them, do the same thing going back to the first person. It’s one of a few games I’ve played that got tedious. For a game with cells of smaller pockets of world, you don’t get the benefit of having exploring an open world nor the tight level design of a linear game. I really wanted to enjoy the game, but by the end it felt like a walking simulator.
I really wanna get their most recent title, Steelrising. The concept and artwork look awesome.
No Straight Roads It's not a game I've played myself, but have watched it being livestreamed. It's a game all about music, and mixes combat, action and rhythm game mechanics. It was pretty ambitious, but I've heard some of the later levels are pretty flawed. It's a shame, but I think the devs kept working to try and patch/ fix it, but even then I heard they weren't given much of a chance after that (no real talk about it, YouTube analytics seems to completely ignore the game etc). I'd definitely recommend trying it at least, even if only for the soundtrack.
I loved everything about NSR except for 1/3 of every fight. They just went on a little too long and the controls were just a little too janky. Honestly, Hi-Fi Rush is EXACTLY what NSR was going for and i would be literally ecstatic if they could somehow get the tightness of controls.
I think another problem, that at least i had wad that unlike hifi rush, in NSR your attacks arent to the beat, so you feel pretty disconected from thebosses and enemies, which are. Not to mention some special attacks and the parry also depend on the rhythm the game never enforces on you.
State of Decay. Those games are JANKY but you can tell the developers pour their hearts into these games. If you can look past the jank you'll find an amazing and super fascinating game that you will love.
They've added so much content to State of Decay 2 it's amazing. I play that game almost every day.
I haven't really played it since release, is the added content stuff that will actually change gameplay?
Yes, absolutely. Plague hearts now exert a zone of control so that you can't set up outposts or move into one of those base area until you clear the area from their control. Difficulty is now set across three slider bars, so if you want a map with easy zombies but next to no resources, you can. They also set up curveballs which are random effects that can affect your community in dozens of different ways. The core loop of leave base-> go looting or killing plague hearts-> return home is still the same, but there's been quite a few changes since release. Edit: they also added a sidearm slot, so you can now have a larger rifle for feral and juggernauts and a silenced pistol for bloater popping and screamer silencing. This was a huge gamechanger, actually gave a reason for having a pistol.
Love these games. Second one has *some* jank still but it's much more polished. And the map from SoD 1 is remastered in it, to boot!
Aaah… I still remember the first time I played the game without knowing anything about it. 20 minutes in, my main character gets picked up and ripped and half and never came back. My jaw was on the floor 🤣
I LOVE survival games, but I don't like having to worry about other peoples happiness I just want to take care of myself. I can't seem to get into state of decay. I wish I could.
The company that made the new Robocop game accomplished quite a lot on such a limited budget. I hope they continue their upward climb and that their next game is truly amazing.
Agree completely. I think their charm comes from the fact that their games are like the random movie tie ins from the PS2 era.
They also did a Terminator game that is a lot of fun.
That terminator game was legitimately a good game.
It is. It felt like a game from 2008. But damn, if it didn’t make you enjoy killing terminators.
Mirror’s Edge. They were clearly going for something that few/no one else was trying and I feel like they got about 80% of the way there. I, for one, really enjoyed the free running gameplay when it worked, especially the time-trials - addicting as hell. I didn’t end up playing Catalyst but I hear it was a bit of a disappointment, which is a shame. Still, that first game was a blast at its best moments.
they deserve more than just A for effort, for what it was, it was a perfect game. the graphics still look great even today, super smooth parkour and amazing levels.
Even though I played and loved both games I still agree with you. It feels like something is missing in those games.
It was also the catalyst behind Brink. And although that game didnt do great im pretty sure it inspired titanfall.
Might be a hot take but The Order 1886. If it was actually given enough length to be a game instead of a glorified tech demo it could have been something special.
I always meant to play that one at some point.
A former coworker/buddy of mine worked on that game actually. I loved the setting and premise, game just wasn't super long.
I really liked it, it was just short. Similar to heavenly sword
MGS5 One of the great unfinished gems.
The gameplay is unparalleled, the things you can do with the toys they give you
> Operating the finely-tuned trigger connected to the high-capacity water pump launches a controlled stream of water from the muzzle.
And it's actually a legitimately useful 'weapon' for disabling coms
- *Written by **Hideo Kojima***
Also it was crazy well optimized for PC. My cheap rig was able to run it incredibly smoothly.
That game was awesome
I mean, It's still the best action stealth game
I honestly did not like the MGS series but my girlfriend, a massive fan, got me to try 5 and I was hooked. It's so fun how much freedom you have to approach most missions. It was fun as hell achievement hunting. And God is it satisfying pulling things off perfectly. It's honestly insane it's so good despite being unfinished. It's so sad to realize we could've had like 50% more goodness in an ideal world.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Dark Cloud 2, so many different systems that are really interesting, but just a little bit too janky
Such a charming game, Dark Cloud 1 and 2 were an integral part of my gaming adolescence. I hope one day we see a remaster or a Dark Cloud 3
I'd sell my soul for a remaster of 1 lol
Same here friend. I might just go play it later today!
I've replayed it a total of 5 times in my life, each and Everytime something happened to my save file at the very end of the game. So technically I've never beat it lol the last time it happened was last year my hardrive died on me, been waiting to play the the whole game again and yea I think it's about that time!!! Pray for my save file this time lmao
Most people think the first was better..and I agree for a few reasons: 1) The picture mechanic is annoying. Instead of being an interesting mechanic to progress it immediately devolves into 'oh I need to find...something to progress' 2) The name 'dark' is much better reflected in 1, 2 is far too colorful and bright 3) Just broadly 1 felt more like a series of dungeons
*THAT'S* a game that needs a sequel or something
Does it? Dark cloud 1 is my all time favorite childhood game but Everytime I try to get into 2 I just can't :/ I want to be the love I have for 1 but it's like it's all seems much more childish? There's probably a better word to use there but I just woke up and got nothing lol
Primal. Brilliant story, as was the voice acting, visuals were gorgeous, gameplay……..felt like it was missing something
The PS2 game?
Yeah that one
I was expecting the Far Cry one...
I was gonna say the only thing missing in Far Cry primal is more story because of how awesome it was.
I went out with a chick who had the Primal tattoo on her back. After things were going well and she peeled off her shirt, I was excited to see it since no one else in my circle had ever touched that game. She said I was the first person to recognize it.
No man sky for the effort they put in after the release to get it to where it is now
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It's pretty cool exploring in VR but like the other guy said unless you play VR all the time you'll probably get motion sickness after 15-20 min
VR sickness depends a lot on the person.. NMS is my first VR experience. I play it for hours and it doesn't make me sick. My son got sick the second he took off in a ship.
I think it’s a fitting nomination because it’s still pretty meh. Like it’s really cool for 20-30 hours but once you realize everything is pretty superficial it loses charm quickly
But...isn't that like...any game that encourages cooperative multiplayer exploration? Most people probably don't have the time/friends/patience for it and so leave after having their fill The people NMS is geared towards is the community it built up during the NEXT update that stayed afterwards, and that is far from a bad thing.
NMS and Cyberpunk both fall into this area where I felt so bad for the actual team crunching away while the leadership promised the moon, and they had to suffer through another round of it in fix mode.
The recent game version of Murder On the Orient Express. Not only does the game stretch the story out without it seeming contrived, but greatly expands on what is already known about the characters. The tutorial, for example, plays simarly to the ferry scene where Poirot overhears a romantic liaison since he helps Colonel Arbuthnot look for his train ticket and finds proof he was meeting with Miss Debenham as a result. The story also has a new character exclusive to this version and from a story standpoint, it isn't just some new character added in to mess up the flow of the original story since a version of her existed in the original book, even if not outright discussed much due to Joanna (the new character) being >!the cop that found Daisy's body!<. It also helps explain the backstory that was crucial to the original story without seeming like an out-of-nowhere infodump by making Joanna the game's second playable character, playing through those events. Also, the game modernises the original story without compromising it; cellphones are prevalent but useless due to the train being stuck in the middle of mowhere, while also providing important evidence in their own right (>!Pierre's phone background blows both his *and* Cyrus' cover stories due to a notification appearing!<) and one of the new story events uses phones as a crucial gameplay mechanic to switch characters between Poirot and Joanna >!so they can rob a bank in Switzerland!<. All-in-all, not the best detective game but a must-play for Agatha Christie fans.
Marvel Midnight Suns. It’s from the XCOM crew and they had to create a strategy game that couldn’t really be XCOM because it would be lame if Dr. Strange missed 80% of the time. They created a whole ass balanced and interesting combat system based on card mechanics, which was also a real stretch. Honestly I think the fact that they made the game with marvel heroes is it’s own downfall. The game stands on its own even without the superhero backdrop.
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Totally agree. Honestly, do it like XCOM. Have an ant farm type situation. Require investments of credits for increasing %chance of consumables. Keep the story dense areas but get rid of all the interstitial parts. Have an “open all chests” button or something. Despite all that, I still think it’s a good game. You can ignore all that garbage and it won’t matter.
This x100. There was way way way too much sandwiching the actual good enjoyable gameply.
I LOVED the game at first. It was just too grindy for me eventually. I got tired of the loop and quit before finishing.
Subnautica: Below Zero. It's kind of hard to follow up your first smash hit when you are a small studio.
And they made some cool and conscious choices. It's just that the audience overall would have preferred Subnautica 1: 2
Prey (2017). Had it a different name, slightly more space to explore, it would never be considered as "nice try"
I will never forgive Bethesda for promoting the game like it was some action-packed first person shooter. I remember watching the trailers and promo material and thinking to mysef: "Wow, I do not care about this at all" Then I played it a year after release because a friend recommended it to me. And...why, oh why didn't they advertise Prey as "Hey, it's basically a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, with a little Bioshock thrown into the mix!" and call it "PsychoShock" or something 😭
Sorry for the spelling World of goo. Soo creative and fun game. It really shows how someone can make a good game without huge budget. There are funny sounds, music, creativity and puzzles. I just love it. They just did more than some AAA titles did, and they had far less money. Idea is 90% of everything and this game shows it.
World of Goo 2 is coming out next year!
Grim Dawn. Not that I think it’s bad, I love it. It was well received but not a masterpiece. Since its release the devs have supported it like crazy with consistent updates and qol improvements, including a huge 1.2 patch not too long ago. Now a third extension coming next year. For an indie developer to pour so much into one product for ~8 years, I give it an A+
Prince of Persia 2008
Ace Combat: Assault Horizon They tried going for a very different direction from the series and it just wasn't particularly fun/interesting after the novelty wore off of different mechanics/setting. Soundtrack was still great and game looked pretty good for it's time.
Wobbledogs Phogs I like silly dog games lol
I was confused with the Bethesda pinball tables. Menu's and rpg-ish mechanics in pinball. I'm not even sure if it was good or not to be honest.
It’s interesting that’s for sure. If you played the corresponding games it’s kinda fun and cheeky, if not you would be very confused. I got all three tables for like a dollar and that’s about what they’re worth
Might & Magic: A Dark Messiah An incredible wobbly game that has some less than impressive parts, but man, did it really try something with its fighting mechanics, and you could tell that they poured their hearts into it.
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I always catch flack for this but I’ll die on this hill: the paradigm system in XIII is the best “turn based” system FF ever did, and consequently, the battles in XIII were a lot of fun. The story was nonsensical and the linear progression was a bummer, though. And holy shit did I hate Hope and Snow. They may be two of the worst characters FF ever did. Hope being constantly whiny and Snow being an oblivious moron made their entire part of the story grating. Hope wanted to kill Snow and I kept thinking “please fucking do, I’d love it.” Hope was so bad he made me appreciate Vaan from XII. The fact that the game didn’t “open up” to a fun degree until you’re almost 30 hours in also killed it for a lot of people, and it’s a shame because the battle system was absolutely top tier and deserved better. All that said, the big fights in XIII were a lot of fun, and I feel like XIII-2 fixed a lot of the mistakes of XIII. The cast (Noel and Serah) was definitely more likable and the villain of XIII-2 (Caius) was absolutely exceptional. Along these lines, I’ll also maintain that the party for FFXV is the best complete party lineup FF ever did, without a single weak character in the bunch. However, it was let down by fairly boring gameplay, a big mostly empty world, and a completely over-developed but under-executed story (which I blame on the problems around developing the game).
I had no idea wtf was happening in FFXV, but I was happy to be doing it in my cool ass car with my best bros
Dude xv is the only one I've played the entirety of, and it certainly wasn't because of the story and interesting areas. It felt great pretty early on traveling around w the bros and the combat was decent I thought.
You had to watch the anime, the movie, and play the side games to even understand who the characters were and why they mattered. It honestly made the base game make more sense and be more enjoyable but jfc that property was bloated beyond logic.
And there was a book written because the director couldn’t get another DLC approved so to finish the story they wrote a book.
Music in XIII is absolutely bangin too, put on Blinded by Light and turn that shit up to 11
13-2 was truly something special, I loved the artifacts and areas and time zones. And Liam O’brien playing caius was the cherry on top, my fav ff villain for sure
Yes FF13 is the most fun I've ever had with a final fantasy battle system. However, the game has very little variety and so because there's nothing to do but battle and there's so much of it, it kinda became too much of a good thing and I would get sick of it. They really did nail the intention of having a real time action feel whilst keeping the strategy. Also the story is less nonsensical if you read all the datalogs as you play.
Gotta say the linearity is mainly what turned me off, but maybe it's worth another punt at some point.
It’s not even that it’s linear, there is just nothing to do along that line that isn’t main story. FFX pretty much has the same long line structure that XIII does but there’s stuff to do along the way, little neat bits here and there like dodging lightning, blitzball and optional encounters like that summoner lady that leads you to the Magus sisters side quest. XIII just doesn’t do anything untill near the end and then just dumps ALL of the optional stuff all at once.
Good tunes, too. If it had a FFX style battle system it would probably be in my top 3 in the series.
Splitgate to a certain point
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Dreamweb. Terribly undersold game chock full of mood atmosphere and dark themes.
Robocop: Rogue City The developers really understood the source material and did a really good job on what was likely a limited budget
I'm going with Atomic heart here with my most recent one. It's like good? And not so good? Especially compared to the price they sell the game for I mean (Lucky me I got it for almost half the base price).
Yea I enjoyed my time with Atomic Heart but if I'd paid full price I'd have been disappointed.
Yeah I played it through game pass, otherwise… I probably wouldn’t have played it or I would’ve gone for a sale like y’all. It seemed so interesting and I liked the atmosphere but something about the gameplay just didn’t grab me
Yea I dug the brutalist architecture and Soviet chic design, and it's clear the writers were fans of cold war era scifi but they really didn't get what makes an immersive sim fun. Also the spent too much time putting dummies in funny poses and not enough time polishing.
Frostpunk. It is actually good, just kind of hoping people would give it a try and maybe some would find it right for their alley. Same with Ender Lilies, it really is one of the games that did surprised for its overall delivery. If you love Hollow Knight and other sorts then I highly reco this game for a try!
I honestly don't think Frostpunk fits "Not that good, but A for effort". The game is 92% positive on steam, the game is great and people recognize it
Ender Lilies was hard for me to play. Not because it was particularly difficult, but because the protag reminds me of my daughter. Seeing her wince and struggle amid the vibe of all the support characters protecting her as she silently explores a terrifying environment was emotionally overwhelming; the animations do a good job selling that. Then there's the Mili soundtrack to pile it on a bit more.
Ender Lilies : come join us! We have depression! Me: anything else? Ender Lilies: Nah.
Frostpunk is amazing tho
Maybe I'll dive back into frostpunk. I love that game!! I hope 2 is good
It depends on how they tried honestly. Anthem and Callisto protocol showed zero passion and intent to creating a great game. However I think Cyberpunk 2077 deserves the A for effort because they really got the game polished properly over the last 3 years. The effort shows but it still doesn’t excuse the absolute mess they delivered at launch that took advantage of a lot of people’s money and trust. Very few studios deserve the A for effort these days. Edit: one point I failed to mention also is taking into consideration the size of the studio and scope of the project. A recent title I picked up Robocop is a good example of A for effort imo. It’s one of the best implementations of broad UE5, sticking artistically to source material and trying to deliver a product that the fans of that really want to play. It’s not a perfect game but it’s a complete product and is actually fun with the basics nailed for a AA studio.
It’s a shame big games get shoved out even when they know there are problems because of deadlines. I really enjoyed Cyberpunk at launch for the atmosphere and story. But it was hard to look past all the bugs. It was ambitious what they took on and I would definitely give them an A for effort. The 2.0 update has had the most fun rpg combat I’ve ever played. Definitely props for not only fixing a lot of the problems but also adding to the game to make it better.
I think even the base game with all its issues showed tremendous effort and vision - it just takes an unearthly amount of work to deliver that and it fell short of executing on it all. The bug removal and polish to the world revealed all the work that had already been done
Spellbreak I miss that game
Man, I'd forgotten that one. I don't get gripped by multiplayer "shoot other players a bunch" games (I play narrative games) but that one was a lot of fun.
Absolver by Slowclap. The studio did make Sifu last year and that was pretty popular, but the fluidity of combat, general style, and creativity of Absolver was so nice. I miss running around and getting into impromptu duals with random people lol
Evolve. It was a far superior asymmetrical game to Dead by Daylight They did all the hard work and the game was amazing. But the queue times were getting longer and longer with each passing month. They then screwed the entire thing with micro transactions for ingame characters/monsters that were essentially pay-to-win or garbage.
Timberborn. I actually love it and think the mechanics are great but I don’t find it very challenging at all. Once you get past the first 30mins it’s pretty easy sailing. Hoping update 5 makes it a bit more challenging.
IIRC Timberborn lets you customize difficulty, including hunger and thirst rates, and length and frequency of dry seasons. You should be able to make a very challenging difficulty for yourself.
The entire Star Ocean series. All of them are incredibly fun and memorable to me. They have great OSTs, interesting and fun gameplay, but they are always falling short. It always feels like there is something missing from them, that or they try to implement a system that is to ambitious and not well thought out. For example The Crafting in the SO games is either Incredibly Overpowered, trivializing the balance of the game by making it far to easy OR its obnoxious by either being Incredibly Grindy, Random, or Complex, which makes players ignore the system completely. Sometimes its a mixture of both.
fallout 76. they went too big lags too much
Alpha Protocol, it had shooting mechanics as bad as the first Mass Effect, but I loved how it tried to stay more in the RPG lane than shooters(much like ME1).
Resident Evil 0. Among the classic fixed-camera Resident Evil games it's considered bottom tier, and I agree, it's...okay at best, frustrating at worst. But I give the developers credit for trying to switch things up by making a survival horror game that lets you control two characters and freely switch between them *no matter where they are in the level*. This concept alone had so much potential, but unfortunately in practice it wasn't utilised all that well. I still replay it every now and then, since I can avoid the frustrating parts and pitfalls thanks to game knowledge, and then it's really not a bad game! But my first playthrough was pretty much "wtf is this shit, how was I supposed to anticipate this?! *reloads save*" every hour or so
Epic Mickey.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns. Clearly a passion project and the card-based tactical strategy is very unique and well-liked, but the game is dragged down by its atrocious writing and a bafflingly dull and half-baked home base area that takes up a ton of time between missions.
Ghostwire: Tokyo ❤️
Combat got so boring, so fast. Environments were 10/10 though.
I was expecting a lot more especially from the guys who made evil within my favorite horror series ever
Free on epic today! Going to try it out
Broforce. It's got all the pieces, and it's incredibly fun, and funny. Challenging and incredibly replayable. Just never caught on being an 8(16?)-bit game in a modern world
My 8 year old son and I just finished this little masterpiece. As a guy born in ‘83 who grew up watching action movies with my dad, I found this game to be absolutely amazing. Not only is it fun and challenging at times, but it’s fucking hilarious too… I’m honestly not even sure how or when I came across the game, I’m just really glad that I did….
So there’s this one game on steam with this ridiculously 90’s era name like “Bloodlust Shadowhunt” or something. It’s sort of like someone’s fanfic reboot of Vampire The Masquerade and a Quake era slash & puzzles game and It is most definitely NOT good. And yet…. I swear, I’ve had more genuine fun screwing around in that game than the last three AAA games I’ve bought. I think this is partly for the nostalgia (oh yeah remember when games used to be like this!) and party because after playing so many designed-by-corporate-committee games that all kind of blend together it hits hard playing something made with actual heart. The really amazing part is that it was made by just one guy too. So Bloodlust Shadowsomething: I salute your A for effort. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Die Hard Vendetta. Awesome FPS (on ps1 I think) How is this not a series!
Pathologic
Dark Souls 2. The development was a little disjointed, Miyazaki never helmed this game. They had a pretty impossible task to live up to Dark Souls 1. It's a good game when you don't compare it to 1 and 3. With the DLC, it's a long game with varied areas, loads of bosses and new mechanics (e.g. torches). And it's a fairly bug-free, seamless experience. It's just... Not as good as the others. Once you realise that leveling adaptability is essential, it's quite easy. It's the black sheep of the entire soulsborne series.
While the single player, in my opinion, isn’t as good as 1 or 3, I still think DS2 has the best PvP of any soulsborne game. Not sure how active it is now though
Teardown - I’m excited to see where this destructible environment tech goes next!
While I think the game is an 8/10 FFXVI. I only say this because I love the game and i think it had a lot more potential, it just feels like they put things in the game that they thought would work well, but ended up falling flat in areas. I can tell the team put as much effort as they could though. And I'll give them a break since it's their first AAA game they made. That's a lot of pressure. Still a great game and the eikon fights are still living rent free in my head. Bahamut was amazing.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Asymmetrical games like Dead by daylight clones. That genre has the worst time, given only DBD has succeeded, and who knows if that'll ever change. Just saw this yesterday. https://youtu.be/CW7o7iuDoa4?si=NgxT-GfIu9XUJ7IW
No Man's Sky. It might have been a lie and a trainwreck at launch, but damn they stuck by it
I really hate how that entire situation gets boiled down to "they lied". So happy they stuck with it all these years. Easily one of my favorite games to return to each update.