Eff your "Best of" list, here's my "Worst Games of 2011."
By DocHaus 51 Comments
I've been seeing these "Best of 2011" lists littering the forums and blogs around Giant Bomb, so I figured I would follow suit, but with a twist: I'm going to post the games I just hated in the year. The utter disappointments, the money-grubbing releases, and the just plain bad games that should serve to all game designers as a lesson in "What To Not Do" when making a game. Also, I guess because not enough people are pissed off at me yet, so let's go with that.
As always, my opinions are serious business and 100% fact. Blah blah blah enough talk, let's get down to business.
#1: Mindjack
It takes some skill for a game released near the beginning of the year to stay at the top of the pile of bad games (that I have played) to take the number one spot on my list, but Mindjack is just that amazing.
#2: Brink
Then it actually came out, and all that hype disappeared. I myself waiting until a free weekend came out to play this game, and I was unimpressed. The much-hyped "SMART" parkour system worked as advertised, but there was almost no reason to use it, as the levels were mostly set in tight corridors or wide-open spaces with little in-between. The entire game was focused around chokepoints, and practically all the weapons were interchangeable and had largely no impact thanks to the magical power of TEAMWORK. It was less like modern warfare and more like civil warfare, with both teams forming firing lines and shooting bullet after bullet until enough of the other team fell down that the victor could push forward a few feet to their own objective before the process restarted itself.
As for the story, it was rendered to extra material and nothing you do has any affect on it whatsoever. There are flashes of a very good story just waiting to come out, but it never comes. Outside of Captain Mokoena or Brother Chen growling at you over a comlink, there's no sense that what you're fighting for is actually worth suffering through the lame gunfighting action, especially since your Resistance character can be instantly switched to the Security side and vice-versa without warning when you enter a server. But you can at least build a specialized character, right? Sure, as long as your team doesn't need a Medic when you're all specced out for an Assault, then you're just screwed. Also, the Operative class was by and large a useless class. Imagine the Spy from TF2, now imagine he can't backstab or cloak at all. That's how useful he was.
So take out the story, and take out the parkouring, and all you're left with is a massively watered-down TF2 clone that takes itself too seriously. If BethSoft wants people to play this game, they should take a page from Valve and make it free-to-play with microtransactions for funny hats and clothes. Also, when someone shoots a guy in the head with a sniper rifle or a magnum pistol, they should be dead. That's the only way more than 5 people will still play this game once the free weekend is over.
#3: Dragon Age II
Blame the rush job and executive meddling all you want, but this game was a very, very big step down from its predecessor. The world of high fantasy that was painstakingly constructed in the first game was all blown to shit so the writers could get their own self-insert Dragon Age fanfiction characters turned into game heroes. The combat of the first game was frustrating, true, but it provided a good challenge. So for the second game they decided to replace that with trash mobs of multiple weak enemies instead of a handful of enemies that could actually put up a fight no matter who you were. It got boring real fast and I couldn't even bring myself to finish the game.I could also get into how the graphics got even worse than before, how there was no real story outside of every character telling us how AWESOME Hawke was just because, how none of the choices really mattered because you still got railroaded into one of two paths, how the writers apparently don't even know the basics of "show, don't tell" that is drilled into every beginning writer's head from grammar school, how none of them seem to have an idea of what a "relationship" is outside of the ones portrayed in most anime, or the several different pieces of DLC were shoved at the player in one form or another...instead I'm just going to post this video.
I'm hoping it turns out that this game was all just a wild exaggeration of the story that Mr. Chesthair told Inquisitor Whatsherface, because if this is the norm instead of the exception over at Bioware then I fear the worst for Mass Effect 3.
#4 Duke Nukem Forever
I don't like to say "I told you so," but...I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.*ahem*
The reason this one isn't higher on my list is because unlike the previous three games listed, I fully expected this game to be an awful mess preying upon the misplaced nostalgia of a crowd of gamers with too much money and/or time on their hands. After all, it took over a decade, changed hands and game engines and plotlines multiple times, how it could it be anything but that? Guess what? It was! Filled with so much disjointed "plot" and forced humor you'd swear that the writers were the illegitimate children of Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia. When they weren't giving you the equivalent of a two-year-old giggling "cacapoopoopeepee!" in your face, they poked fun at stupid video game staples like invisible walls, steam-valve puzzles and regenerating power armor...and then forced those gameplay elements on you anyway! Does no one understand what "satire" means anymore?
Sure, Bulletstorm's writing was about as immature, but at least it was fun to play, and at least you could carry more than two guns on you at any one time, and at least there was a tiny bit more consistency in the transition between levels! Duke Nukem Forever should've stayed as vaporware. Forever. For those of you who still think that maybe Blizzard could bring life to Starcraft: Ghost outside of a crappy tie-in novel by Keith R.A. DeCandido to a game that may never exist, games like this, WET, and Dark Sector are my arguments for why it should stay dead.
#5 Red Faction Armageddon
Hey, remember all that cool stuff you did in Red Faction Guerilla? How you could take down entire buildings and army outposts with naught but a sledgehammer and some good ol Ameri...er, Martian know-how? Well how about we take away most of that, and instead have you shoot at cave aliens instead in a crappy third-person shooter? Any takers? Anyone? What if we throw in a tie-in SyFy original movie? It has Ianto from Torchwood and that one guy from Stargate Universe in it! Hello? #6 Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
This is going to sound really petty when compared to the rest of the games on this list, but fuck it, might as well piss off the one contingent of game fans I haven't pissed off yet. Honestly, I thought the VS. series was the one where Capcom wouldn't use their nickel-and-diming scheme, and while the game was fun to play with friends, it was severely lacking in content and decent netcode that came standard with the original Street Fighter 4, let alone the "Super" edition. So I bought into the hype and preordered a limited edition. I was told it would come with a comic book that put the beginning of the story together. The steelbook case was nice, but the "bonus" I got for preordering was a tiny little booklet containing 8 mini-pages of comics that told about as much story as the game itself (by which I mean "use your imagination!") and another 8 pages of concept art that I already saw online. Sure, I got a code for the two DLC characters, but I don't use them that much.
So I guess while Capcom did kind of screw people over by putting out what was essentially a $60-70 public beta, I have only myself to blame for buying into the hype (and the game), and then watching as they went ahead and released a brand new retail version of the same game with more characters, stages, some content and a spectator mode that they accidentally forgot to include in the vanilla MvC3 while my copy is now an obsolete coaster. I learned my lesson, and now if I do decide to buy the Ultimate edition I'm going to wait to buy it used for less than MSRP. Or if they announce the upcoming release of Marvelous Super Ultimate MvC3. Whichever comes first.
On an un-related note, anyone want to buy a nice, shiny coaster with a picture of Iron Man and the MvC3 logo on one side? C'mon, I'll even throw in a free booklet.
That's a wrap!
Yes, there were plenty of games I liked playing this year, some were even released in 2011! But I just felt that there weren't enough "Worst of" lists, so I thought, why not add one. Feel free to give me your anger, give me your RAAAAAGE! in the comments below. Oh Raging Raven...you're such a tease.