Overrated games

[Blehm 98]

so, post your overrated games

 

Here are a few:

Starcraft--> all expansions

simply because its AI is stupid. It is extremely fun in online play, but against computer it does not match up to the reviews

 

Dungeon siege (probably sequal too):

It is fun, fun fun, boring, stupid, boring, repetative, monotonous about describes dungeon siege to me. It is fun... and then it just gets boringly monotonous.

 

so these two games are currently up here, post your own now

[Matri]

Dunno about overrated, but I can name two overhyped games: Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever.

 

And DNF isn't even out yet! If ever!!

[Gungadin]

1. COUNTERSTRIKE! A game that bills itself as being some kind of realistic shooter should NOT have the best players win by bunnyjumping in circles and firing assault weapons from the hip at enemies! Mere words cannot convey my distaste for Counterstrike.

 

2. Warcraft 3. Warcraft 1 was revolutionary, Warcraft 2 was a classic, Warcraft 3 is dreary, 3-D animated hell that, like Starcraft, revolves around the player being able to remember as many hotkeys as possible while zooming around the map sending more moronic minions to their deaths while clicking the "Train Footman" hotkey constantly or whatever. I can sum up what is good about WC3 in one sentence: "My Life for Aiur....Uh, I mean Nerzhul"

 

3. Baldur's Gate: Ok, so the quest system and the entire run-around-saving-the-world-Conan-style is kinda cool, but WHY, oh why, did it come with such a despicably RPG system and control interface? Let's face it, the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset sucks like a vacuum, why not use the excellent Fallout system that BI had used before?

 

4. Diablo 2 - What exactly it is that compells gamers to spend 900 hours looking for the Super-Godly-Mega-Sword-of-the-Retarded-Cannibal-Hippo I cannot understand. I have the game, I always started a new character after finishing the game. What's the point in replaying the exact same game again on a harder difficulty? What's the point of getting any level above 30 when there are no more special skills available after that?

 

5. Rise of Nations - Age of Empires ripoff. A SUCKY Age of Empires ripoff.

 

6. Sid Meier's Pirates! - 100% remake of a classic, brings nothing new to the table, lacks the old-school charm.

 

7. Any goddamn Final Fantasy game - Being very much an emulation-addict, I've played a fair number of console RPG's and with single exceptions, like Live a Live, Xenogears or the excellent Chrono Trigger, they ALL suck. FF is the suckiest of the bunch. Uninspired combat system, stupid and/or complicated plots and general linear gameplay makes for a series of games that seem specifically designed to give me major frontal lobe pain. Also, what the hell was up with Mr. T being a major character in FF7, the most overrated console game of all?

 

8. Mortal Kombat series - I don't know why, but these games just aren't as much pure FUN as the Street Fighter and Tekken series. Clunky controls, each fighter having the same basic punches and kicks and annoying combo system. I think the humourous fatalities are the reason they became so popular.

 

9. Xcom-Apocalypse. Mentioning this here may well constitute blasphemy on this site, but I still feel that this was a MAJOR step backwards for an otherwise brilliant game series because of the eye-watering colour scheme, the silly Judge Dredd megacity setting and the downright silly aliens. (Oh no Mr. Alien, please don't spit at me! Purple Llama wannabe....)

[Crazy Gringo]

Here is some more.....

 

Second Sight

 

New World Order

 

Boilling Point

 

Panzers Phase I

 

Chicago 1930

 

Combat Mission I

 

Pirate of the Caribbian

 

I have those titles personally and consider them for being overrated due to buggy and/or crappy gameplay, lousy interface/mapping, direct ripoffs and them trying be copy something they can't.

 

The best overrated game in history so far.....Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for PC....Don't get me wrong I do enjoy roaming around a virtual city and being antisocial (Mafia, The GTA game series and in some degree Total Overdose) and GTA: San Andreas is a great game it just has issues like any game that tries to top games in it's genre that came before it. But there are just to many features cramped into that game along with some pretty lousy keymapping....

 

*Goes on ranting to the captured reticulan*

[Azrael Strife]

3. Baldur's Gate: Ok, so the quest system and the entire run-around-saving-the-world-Conan-style is kinda cool, but WHY, oh why, did it come with such a despicably RPG system and control interface? Let's face it, the Dungeons and Dragons ruleset sucks like a vacuum, why not use the excellent Fallout system that BI had used before?

 

7. Any goddamn Final Fantasy game - Being very much an emulation-addict, I've played a fair number of console RPG's and with single exceptions, like Live a Live, Xenogears or the excellent Chrono Trigger, they ALL suck. FF is the suckiest of the bunch. Uninspired combat system, stupid and/or complicated plots and general linear gameplay makes for a series of games that seem specifically designed to give me major frontal lobe pain. Also, what the hell was up with Mr. T being a major character in FF7, the most overrated console game of all?

 

9. Xcom-Apocalypse. Mentioning this here may well constitute blasphemy on this site, but I still feel that this was a MAJOR step backwards for an otherwise brilliant game series because of the eye-watering colour scheme, the silly Judge Dredd megacity setting and the downright silly aliens. (Oh no Mr. Alien, please don't spit at me! Purple Llama wannabe....)

You've just numbered four games that I love, you know what this means, now I have to kill you

 

I agree on the rest, except Pirates!, having never played the original, I was pleased with it

 

My addition:

Command & Conquer Generals

The original Command & Conquer, released by Westwood Studios, is in my opinion one of the best RTS ever made, the music was plain awesome and fit the action, the graphics were not that bad considering it was a DOS game, and they woulnd't keep me from playing it nowadays (if I could make it run on XP...). Command & Conquer Red Alert was excellent as well, though not as good as the original. Red Alert 2 was amazingly fun, I liked everything on it, except the fact that the bad guys always turn out to speak with a german or russian accent on US games like this one But Generals! where do I even begin! let's start with the graphics. RTS's don't need uber graphics to be fun! too detailed graphics make it harder to play a freaking strategy game! plus with all the rendered objects on the screen, even running at min resolution, the game does not manage to run as smooth as say, Total Annihilation (which has crappy, but perfect graphics for the genre), plus it gets distracting, all the large buildings can get in your way (your own), the quasi-isometric view is dreadful, all you need is a top-down view! Now what I mentioned earlier, the bad guys, why are they all arabian? why are the terrorists all arabian? not to get political here, but that offends me a lot, especially since I consider we have other larger, more notorious, terrorists And it portraits the US as the saviours of the world (After being annoyed by the graphics and general gameplay, I quit and uninstalled the game after seeing that all the US tanks and units were named "heroically", like Paladin Tanks, Crusaders, etc), which I found extremely disgusting. Again sorry if I got political, my intention to say is that the game is nothing more than a bunch of propaganda rolled with nice graphics and crappy gameplay. Not that EA has been making good games in like years, but this one is simply one of the worst RTS games I've ever played, not to mention they only used the name Command & Conquer to trick the fans of the series (such as myself) into believing this was truly a C&C game and getting it, all lies of course.

[Gungadin]

Here is some more.....

 

 

 

Combat Mission I

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What's wrong with Combat Mission? I liked those games. Turn based squad combat with highly customizable giant robots? What's not to love?

 

Oops, my bad, I mistook Combat Mission, a game I never played, with the Front Mission series, which is awesome.

[Crazy Gringo]

Just not my kinda game G...

[Azrael Strife]

Hey Crazy Gringo, love the avatar! my favourite comic character

[Crazy Gringo]

Thankyouverymuch, Azrael.

*Goes off to kick some celestial dweebs*

[Blehm 98]

You've just numbered four games that I love, you know what this means, now I have to kill you hmm.gif

 

i guess that means i have to do the same for you azrael

 

Although, generals was having a few problems, because stupid EA decided to drop westwood forever, i hate them

[Accounting Troll]

My nomination is Rome: Total War. I like its predecessor, Medieval: Total War, which is why I brought Rome: Total War. It turned out to be a total waste of money.

 

What I got was an AI that was utterly stupid in combat - I would have a massive army camped on a hill and it would send its small army to attack, which meant that my archers get some target practice. AI generals would personally lead the attack, despite the fact that the game gives an army a big morale hit if its general gets killed or does a runner.

 

The strategy map is even worse - the AI has a bug in it that means that when you load a saved game the AI cancels any orders given to its units that take multiple turns to complete. As for the diplomacy, lots of people have had AI factions give them money to get a peace treaty and then attack the player during the very same turn!

 

The developers responded to the bug reports by trying to pretend that it was impossible for the game to have any bugs in it. Maybe the expansion pack quietly fixes these bugs but I refuse to spend more money on the off-chance.

[Blehm 98]

Yes, it is also unbelievably difficult unless you cheat, that game was a total letdown

[Kernel]

The X games... (X: Beyond the Fronteer, X2: The Threat, and maybe the new one)

 

The overall idea of the games are fun... explore, trade, build!.

But what I don't like is spending 2 hours flying to a destination, only to be blown up and have to do it all again because you can only save while docked at a station.

 

I bought X:BTF because it got good reviews.

I bought X2:TT because it was supposed to be different from X1... WRONG!

I don't think I'll bother with X3, even though all the things wrong with X1 and X2 are supposed to be fixed.... unless I find a week where I'm stupidly bored.

 

Maybe when Elite 4 comes out it'll be better... I liked the other elites.

[Azrael Strife]

Maybe when Elite 4 comes out it'll be better... I liked the other elites.

Did they say it will?

[Kernel]

Did they say it will?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, but I think it's a LONG way off yet.

There's a small FAQ about it on the Frontier Development website. (under the games section)

https://www.frontier.co.uk/

[NKF]

A lot of the overrated games that I own are also some of my favourites. I believe that if you cannot hate your favourite games as much as you love them, then you don't truly love them as much as you claim to. Did that make any sense? It didn't have to, but if it did, well, all the better.

 

---

 

Star Wars KOTOR: Nice game - but why is it Bioware keeps producing civilians in all their RPGs that always look the same and sound the same? Surely they could've spent SOME time on making a random NPC generator that could at least provide a few randomised facial features to make them all look different. And why are there so many @%!@#$ Twileks that can produce heaps of dialogue with the same small set of phrases? "Ajuta, wiki... abadibapopo..." or somesuch. Half the time I was going to go Librarian on them. "Ook", I say back at them. The one other thing I rather disliked was how at times it parallelled the Neverwinter campaign in Neverwinter Nights. Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised they're both by Bioware.

 

Fable: A fun game, but it falls short of the promise that the manual suggests. Sure you can make your own destiny - by choosing the good or evil end. The quests are rather bland and incredibly limited. Enemies respawn in particular locations. Like SW:KOTOR, it's also a victim of civilian/enemy clones, but at least there's a lot more variety.But I could deal with all that. But why the acceleratod aging based on your total experience? My hero was 65 years old after only a week of game time - and this was from adolescence. Everyone else stayed the same... Really bugged me.

 

Dungeon Seige: Legends of Aranna (add-on pack): A fun add-on, and a must-have if your character is an orange mage or green/orange mage combo (orange/green is just my way of calling combat/nature mages). However, if you've played all the way through the Ehb campaign and have transferred your character to a one-player game of the multiplayer map - this add-on comes off as being quite a disappointment once you reach the end, and only a few of the treasure sets are worth keeping (with the exception of the one that allows 40% fire magic reduction... woo!).

 

Dungeon Seige II and Homeworld II: I'm lumping these together because I have the same gripe with both of them. Both games are great, and introduce a lot of things that build on their respective games. But if you've played the originals, you'll also find that they are a step backwards in many respects. The formation and agression modes are totally gone. Originally you could set how your units were to form up, and then set how agressive they were to be. This worked very well in the originals and provided many different combinations. Now, in the sequals, they've reduced and combined the modes into about three. Both games, while great on their own, just seem to lack something that the originals had - not counting the better graphics. They suffer due to high expectations from fans that enjoyed the originals - which is perhaps not a problem for newcomers.

 

A few specific gripes about Homeworld II: The inability to capture enemy ships to any reasonable degree. In the original, you could spend several real days gathering up 150 Ion Cannon Frigates - a bit overkill, but a definite well deserved reward for putting in so much time and effort just to do that. In this one, the flying deathtrap marine frigate (replacement for the totally awesome salvage corvette ) gets targeted by every single enemy ship in the vicinity the moment it shows itself - rendering it useless except as a means to disable other enemy marine frigates. Also, the AI cheats. The one other thing is the annoying cutscenes where Mission Control gets to flap his jaws for a few minutes while leaving your ships completely defenseless - when you were just about to issue orders. Why oh why? Also: Why do you only have one pilot doing all the voices (for both sides)?

 

Diablo - another fun game, but as mentioned in an earlier post - repetitive. You just play to pump your stats just to get the next uber sword so you can get the next uber sword to fight even more powerful enemies. I for one remember when I spent months playing on Nightmare difficulty just to find a stupid Kings butterknife of Haste - not that it matters anymore. I think I enjoyed the mage more - as it was more a case of finding the next bottle of Magic Elixer (to permanently boost intelligence) and holding on to all the Fireball tomes I could buy until my level was up high enough. A bit more variety than the bog standard fighter (hack, hack, hack, hack) with low level magicks, but still, in essence, repetitive. The lack of settings made it worse.

 

Freelancer: A game with some potential - alas, it's nothing like the blurb on the cover makes you think it to be. If you were expecting a pretty looking Elite - forget it. It's certainly pretty looking, but leaves far too much to be desired. You get to make your own destiny by letting the game's script make the decisions for you. Once you get to the end of the single player campaign, it's completely freestyle from there on, and the only thing you really look forward to doing is to keep playing overly repetitive and identical missions to earn money until you can afford to fly the best ship in the game (Which flies at the same speed as pretty much everything else) and use the biggest and baddest weapons that you can find. And why is it everyone sounds the same?

 

 

I can complain a lot, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy these games.

 

- NKF

[Kernel]

Freelancer: A game with some potential - alas, it's nothing like the blurb on the cover makes you think it to be. If you were expecting a pretty looking Elite - forget it. It's certainly pretty looking, but leaves far too much to be desired. You get to make your own destiny by letting the game's script make the decisions for you. Once you get to the end of the single player campaign, it's completely freestyle from there on, and the only thing you really look forward to doing is to keep playing overly repetitive and identical missions to earn money until you can afford to fly the best ship in the game (Which flies at the same speed as pretty much everything else) and use the biggest and baddest weapons that you can find. And why is it everyone sounds the same?

I can complain a lot, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy these games.

 

- NKF

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree with you there about Freelancer on the single player campaign. But the best thing about the game was the multiplayer. Once you setup a server and players it was a bit like a mini MMORPG with a persistent universe. Each player could go anywhere, at any time.

Anyone trying to host a FPS server on anything below a 256kbs connection known that the game becomes unplayable once you get more than 4 players in the game. In freelancer however the server program could berun on anything faster than a 200Mhz CPU and a modem and it could still support over 8 players!

I still remember flying around with friends for hours trying to find all the secrets that were dotted about the universe.

[Hobbes]

9. Xcom-Apocalypse. Mentioning this here may well constitute blasphemy on this site, but I still feel that this was a MAJOR step backwards for an otherwise brilliant game series because of the eye-watering colour scheme, the silly Judge Dredd megacity setting and the downright silly aliens. (Oh no Mr. Alien, please don't spit at me! Purple Llama wannabe....)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Burn the heretic! Bring out the stake!

[DoomMunky]

This is a great thread. Skewer the lame and the halt, especially when they've been lauded as the saviors of all... Now if only we in the US could do this with our leaders...

 

I approve. Carry on, all.

[FullAuto]

I don't know about Apocalypse. The game itself was quite fine, despite being obviously unfinished. The aliens and their lack of back-story (thank you, Ellis, stand up and leave) however, are pretty bad.

[Azrael Strife]

Man, I know what you mean about Freelancer, the game is just very nice but poorly finished, details like the ever present phrase "Hey, are you new here?", every-freaking-person asked me that during the whole game whenever I looked for a job and talked to the guys around, that was incredibly stupid and I just cannot see how the programmers missed that, it was ridiculous! And the whole universe had TONS of chances to incentivate exploration, I personally LOVED the idea of having a huge galaxy to explore, of course soon after I finished the campaign and realised that all systems were pretty much the same, didn't. I'm hoping that Elite 4, whenever it comes out, allows me to do it, I've heard great things about the Elite games and I'm very much looking forward to it

[Kernel]

After writing about X2 the other day I found myself thinking "Was it really that bad?", and now after re-installing them, I really really wish that I'd destroyed the CDs that last time I uninstalled it.

 

The creators of the game should be held up on terrorism charges for the acts of pure torture that they put the players through while watching the intro and mission briefing movies. Seriously, having your eyes gouged out with a rusty spoon would be less painful than listening to the totaly wooden voice acting, or watching the string puppet like animations of the people. It so bad that it's hard to find another animation or film to compair it against.

 

After the feelings of mass murder and suicide subsided I found myself on a mission flying a shuttle to pick up some scientists. 30 minutes (real time) in to the mission and I'm still 2 jumps away from my destination... I finaly reach it about 15 minutes later. Then comes some more mission briefing animations... just as poor as the rest, only let off slightly because it's the first time you meet the stereotype "game female" called Saya Kho.

5 Minutes of more animation and we're back in space again on our way home with the scientists. I still haven't been able to save for the past hour and 40 minutes as the game keeps saying "Salvage Insurance required in order to save". 30 minutes later and everything is strangly calm, you can all guess what's coming and sure enough Saya Kho says, over the intercom," I think we're being followed"... yeah as if we didn't know that was going to happen. I get jumped by about 5 heavily armed ships and all I got is a pea shooter of a tailgun turret. After a minute or so of fireing into space trying to hit the enemy ships I'm interupted by a cut scene showing a strange ship arriving, blowing up all the enemys, and leaving, followed by Says Kho saying "It looks like he saved us, but who was he?".

I'm then back in the tailgun turret and strangly I'm still being fired upon by some pirates, I realise that only 3 of the ships that jumped me were part of the scripted mission, the other two were part of the "Artificial Life" simulation in the game. They just happened to see the fighting and come and join in. Alas they were more heaviliy armed than the scripted enemys and including the damage I had already suffered they made short work of me.

Boom goes the ship I'm flying and I'm sent back to the main menu. Not surprisingly the last save made by the game was at the very start of the mission, some 1:15 ago. 1 hour and 15 minutes of time just wasted away flying from one point to another with 2 minutes of pure mayhem.

 

Sadly times like this arn't rare in the X games, almost every mission is like this. I'd advise anyone to avoid these games if at all possible, and if it's not, make sure you remove all sharp objects from the room you're in before playing it. You'll be looking for something to end the suffering before long.

[Matri]

My only experience with the X series of games is limited to 1 hour of the first game.

 

You know what got me? Their "accelerator"... Supposed to "speed up" travel in space. Guess what? Spend time earning the money for the stupid device only to find out it's actually a "time accelerator". That's right. It speeds up the game time instead of actually making you move faster through space. You still move through each sector at the speed of a tranquilized snail, only this time you can accelerate the time.

 

And let's not forget the freighter AI. It's damned near impossible to get them to unload your factory right where you want it. It's even more impossible to get them to follow you there in the first place.

 

Yup, this game ranks high on my list of overrated games. Right now it's vying for first place with BattleCruiser. Yup, I am ashamed to say that I have indeed played X and Battlecruiser.

 

Here. *hands Kernel a rusty spoon* I'm next in line. :bad:

[Kernel]

You know what got me? Their "accelerator"... Supposed to "speed up" travel in space. Guess what? Spend time earning the money for the stupid device only to find out it's actually a "time accelerator". That's right. It speeds up the game time instead of actually making you move faster through space. You still move through each sector at the speed of a tranquilized snail, only this time you can accelerate the time.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yup, it's exactly the same in X2. That's why it takes you hours to actualy get anywhere and it makes the "no save in space" problem so much worse.

[Krabjuice]

Nomination: Splinter Cell. I do not own an X-Box, and I do not own any of the games. However, my only experiences with the game have led me to vomit several times over the excessive popularity of the game. First of all, the game is devoid of any originality. It mainly borrows it's innovation from games several years old.

 

Gripe the first: The light gem. In order to compensate for "realistic stealth action" and playability, they borrow from the Thief Series. As such, they use this little dynamic to discredit the Metal Gear series which focuses on playability rather then realism. In reality, there is little different. Enemies far away cannot see Fisher, enemies far away cannot see Snake. Enemies in the dark cannot see Fisher, enemies in the dark cannot see Gariet.

 

Gripe the second: The fiber optic cube. Although interesting a first, it hold very much in common with other games. Gariot's mechanical eye, for one, is used in a similar fashion. Deus Ex's spydrone, another. To a lesser degree, Rainbow 6's heartbeat sensor and System Shock's sensearound.

 

Gripe the third: Pandora Tomorrow's Multiplayer. Cat and mouse or violent hide and seek. We all know that multiplayer games are fun when we win. They suck when we loose. As such, Ubisoft has given each side overwhelming weapons in which to defeat each other. The winner is the one who exploits the best. For a better example, lets look at Counter Strike. We have AWPers and hackers. In Pandora Tomorrow, we have spies with "one-hit" stun weapons, and mercenaries with infrared goggles. One always knows where the other is, the other can kill with a poke.

 

Gripe the fourth: Co-op multiplayer. When a game is as easy as hiding in the shadows and scoring one-hit-kills on NPC's, a partner doesn't make things funner. Instead, the partner merely makes the game easier. Now, there are two super-spies sniping oblivious guards; two super-spies tossing each other into fortress sniping positions.

 

Gripe the fifth: Elitism. Lets combine the above: "realism," super gadgets, munchkin multiplayer. As a result, we get people strutting balls bigger then planets. Smack-talking, a perfect example, is the first product of this elitism. Winners believe they are winners, in game and in life. The proclaimed realism gives you the illusion that you, in reality, are undefeatable. Your enlightened score makes you believe that you are twelve feet tall, omnipotent. Your ability to see around corners gives you a omniscient quality. You will breeze through the game by exploiting devices and imbalance. You are promised challenge, but are given moderated victory.