Giant Bombcast Game of the Year 2017: Most Disappointing Game

Woo!

Good job to all the companies involved in the "winners"

I mean company.

I feel like the polar opposite of VInny in terms of Assassins Creed. I had completely written off that series and felt they had burned me one to many times. So zero expectations, , but ended up getting it based on word of mouth, so this feels more like biggest surprise for me.

Huh, surprised so many people disliked RUINER. I had a fucking blast playing that game. Controls were tight, gameplay was punchy and fast. Good difficulty.

Weirdly, I'd include "Friday the 13th" in both Most Disappointing and Best Surprise.

That SUBSRIBERS without a C that pops up every so often is killing me.

@murbillray: Even without that, its annoying to see every dam 5 minutes on the clock...

Destiny 2 should be on this list.

Vinny.....................GO TO THE BANDIT CAVE.

Edit; the only good thing about that banner was my cat whacking the shit out of the deer. Twice would have been good enough for the sentiment and the point.

Brad asking about

I have never disagreed with Vinny more than I have with his hot AC take.

They should append Electronic Arts presents to the start of this video title.

Am I just missing a list somewhere? Like somewhere I can just read the top 10's without having to sit through hours of videos or podcasts?

edit: Found it! Cheers =)

@elite49: I played the game a few months ago and I actually agree with Brad. The visuals are amazing, but I didn't find the story or characters very interesting and I thought it was a chore to play.

@larshj: They should have put up Premium versions without those banners like they do with the Bombcast.

Did people actually have expectations for ME:A? Especially after 2 and 3.

Same goes for MvC:I.

Ok how can you think Saints Row The Third was the best one? It was the worst by far.

Vinny's unleashed wrath on Assassin's Creed: Origins was glorious to behold.

I love these long podcasts, but Brad is too frequently just a bulwark for bad opinions, and his viewpoint counts for too much in these discussions. They had way better arguments for Mordor than the other runners-up, but those arguments got dismissed once Brad said so much as an "uh, no." (Him bringing up Horizon was transparently petty; I'm glad that got absolutely nowhere.)

Friday the 13th is... actually in okay shape right now on PC. I like it. As I understand it, the major difference is the PC version has dedicated servers, while the console versions currently do not.

Vinny and AC: Origins. What the actual heck? I'm here with others, my first AC game and I'm loving it!

I guess I'm kinda happy hearing others shared my feelings about Ruiner, while it had some visually spectacular moments, I hated the feeling of that game and it felt incredibly shallow in its take on the genre.

Then, I heard the comparison that "Ruiner's take on cyberpunk is like the synthwave take on 80s music", and I guess I can get behind that, because I kinda feel the same about that entire music genre.

I also share Vinny's feelings towards loot games and where ACO is taking the franchise, not that I've particularly like any of the Assassin's Creed games after the first one, but picking up 15 different scimitars with marginally different stats and picking the ones with the highest number isn't at all engaging to me.

Check out Vinny's Top 10 to see what happened with that opinion of AC:O.

I wouldn't say I'm surprised since I can see where the criticism comes from, but I really liked it too. It's an unusual take on the genre gameplay-wise and that's what I liked about it. And that style - so good.

The thing that drives me nuts about Shadow of War, that I've never seen brought up, is the way it sort of collapses under the weight of it's own ambitions.

The two key elements of that games design have to be the Nemesis System and the army building/fortress capturing mechanic. And they completely clash with one another.

I was having such a genuine blast with the game, really taking my time and forming better relationships and rivalries with the Orcs then anything from Mordor. A game I loved. Then I got the Dominate power back in the second area.

Dominate essentially turns off the Nemesis System. All these crazy interesting and dynamically generating scenarios that had kept happening due to the Nemesis System were why I was having such a great time. But when you Dominate and recruit an Orc it essentially removes them from the Nemesis System pool. No more ambushes, no more surprisingly deep end endless pulls from the dialogue pool, etc. They just become a list of buffs and weaknesses to be used.

And the more you do it the worse it gets. With ome of them being recruited they can at least interact with Nemesis Orcs. Which is still less interesting then player interactions since you can account for fun interactions between a random Orc and the single Player Character because you know it will happen. It's one thing to account for; everyone has something to say to Talion. You have to be broader and more generic when it's Orc vs Orcs because of the countless combinations. But as you get more of them and the areas pool shifts more under your control even this goes away until you're left with this sterile pool of souless slaves.

It's also a snowball effect as while it's always easy to dominate an Orc, far easier then killing then had been up to that point, it just gets easier as the pool thins. I went from thriving Nemesis playground to empty playground within a hour of getting the dominate ability.

And you NEED those Orcs! You can't just say "So don't dominate the Orcs" because the other half of the games core design revolves around this. Ignoring game breaking systems does not justify their game breaking nature. You cannot recruit Orcs and have a meaningful time with the Nemesis System which is totally bananas.

Here's another way the interacting systems break the game. There's a chance to, I forget the term but, mentally break an Orc if you use the Shame mechanic to lower their level. Keep in mind if you cannot recruit an Orc above your level.

Sounds good on paper right? Another variable that can organically create new and unexpected events in your world. That's what this game is all about, emergent systems based storytelling. So here's what happened.

I met the infamous Orc Bard and got excited for the first time since getting dominate because at least I could make him my new chosen general. So I attacked him and used Shame to lower his level to a recruitable number. And as promised I rolled poorly on the dice and it mentally broke him. From now on that entire scripted character only has about two lines of dialogue (He'll just sadly exclaim "Sing? Sing...") and is useless as a commander.

By trying to add more systems in to make the game more dynamic they created a system that's outcome actively underminds the hard work they put into creating Nemesis Orcs, the best part of the game, but also renders them useless in the other central pillar of Fortess Capture/Defense. They knew they could do this but never stopped to think that it actively makes the fun parts of their game... Not fun.

It's lots of stuff like that. There's so many great things in Shadow of War that do not function with one another. If you make a systemically driven game like this then you need to make sure the systems don't actively contradict each other. At least for the big stuff!

This is Nemesis System: The Game and one of your most important tasks as the player is to remove any Orcs from the Nemesis System.

I had so many fun moments with the improved Nemesis System in those first ten to twenty hours. After getting Dominate I can't even remember a single new Orcs name. They're just a list of stats on a submenu now.

Vinny has been more positive on the game since the recording, as heard on recent beastcasts.

I really like Bayek, because he actually has a full range of emotions that most AC (or even most video game) protagonists don't show. He can be angry, sad, sarcastic, joyful, shocked, etc. At some point I removed the veil on Bayek's costume just so I can see his reactions. That said, side quests are very grindy, and overly long in most cases (I didn't have problems with the side quest setups, as they usually involve some aspects of Egyptian culture, but couldn't stand how all quests end in "go to this new location and kills everybody/carry someone out"). I really hope Ubisoft tightens things up, but also worry that without a setting as interesting and diverse as Eygpt the next game won't be as good anyways.

The caveat for this game is it's not really an AC game anymore, in all aspects (structure, systems, story, combat) it's more the Witcher with rough edges.

Cohesive

Assassin's Creed Origins fits. It's disappointing if you've played any of the good AC games and is not better than the previous game in any way.

So are we gonna change Brad's rating for Andromeda?

Mass Effect Andromeda is my favorite Mass Effect game.

+Great looking environments like acid lakes, endless deserts or the lightning struck Habitat 7.

+A restriction-free skill system that does allow the best combat in the series (the support drone with the Cryo-ammo being my favorite).

+A jet pack which totally changes the movement in or out of battle.

+Characters like Cora, PB and Drack which bothered me less than every other character in the Mass Effect universe.

+The Insanity difficulty that created many memorable fights, like the one over the Kett HQ on the first planet, that need took every ounce of my gaming ability.

Naturally there were bugs but they didn't bothered me too much and they weren't game-breaking. If I learnt anything from Euro-Trash games like Boiling Point or White Gold, is that brilliance sometimes hides behind mediocre-looking experiences.

I was absolutely shocked that it wasn't.

I'd be totally fine with Ubisoft naming Assassin's Creed: Origins something else. It seems like it's only attached to that franchise because it's a name people recognize. As a matter of fact, they have moved away so far from what Assassin's Creed once was, that Origins would probably been even better if they didn't have to have anything related to AC in it at all. And then they could go back and make a game that actually is an Assassin's Creed game.

did that guy just say cake factory?

"Congratulations" to EA! I'd forgotten that Mass Effect was this year. GameStop was practically giving the game away three weeks after release. It wasn't $30; it was $15.

You are a monster.

Horizon, Bradley? Seriously? Sit down.

The only positive about Mass Effect Andromeda is that I don't even remember it exists until someone brings it up... and nobody ever brings it up.

@bamme: Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying.

Unfortunately, the game often crashed for me (including a save wipe!) as well as a bunch of quests just not finishing due to random bugs. So it wasn't just the animations or visual issues.

@mt0s said:

Nice triple crown, EA.

I remember when someone said that people who hated Andromeda were just riding a bandwagon. What a trip.

Need For Speed: Payback totally belongs though. They took a last gasp for that franchise and somehow made a worse game. Man, remember when Need For Speed was relevant?

Also I totally understand where Vinny is coming from with Origins. It's changed so much from the past few games both for better and for worse.

@warningcrazy: I had forgotten about that moment, thank you sir! :L

@mythdark: For the majority of the game, yes. But the ending assassination was still very much in line with the series. The target's oration was straight up templar (and natural enough in the historical context)

It boggles the mind that people are still disappointed by NFS. A series that has been bad for years and on top of that killed an infinitely better series and its studio to boot!

Only getting by on name recognition.

ME:A was an easy win for this category. Anyone who thinks ME:A even comes close to any of the trilogy is entitled to their opinion, but is probably not a a critical opinion that should be trusted. ME:A is objectively bad on it's own merits, but when compared to even the lowest points of the trilogy, it's a burning trash fire.

The E3 demo looked great and hard to fuck up that concept though. The crew seemed jazzed about it after that and I know I was too. They didn't even mention the shitty progression system on top of all the other disappointing shit.

I feel like the mordor discussion came down to everyone having the opinion it was disappointing and Brad being "nah I liked it". I can see where he's coming from in that he liked it but he kind of just seemed dismissive of the others' opinions. It seemed like his argument was "that game is pretty ok" but everyone else seemed to like it a lot less than he did on top of having higher expectations.