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Gaming Bummers aka "ugh...why did I actually play this?"


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Remember when you got a game so bad you hated it, but you had no choice but to play it because 1. You were bored or 2. It was the only other game you had until you could spend your allowance on a new one? Yeah, those were the days. We were kids, we didn't know how to use the internet or weren't allowed to, we wouldn't know if a game would be good or bad, we just begged our parents to buy it, we played it, aaaaand it sucked.

 

My question here is what game(s) is that for you? What made you hate your past choice as a gamer and left a smudge on your gaming resume?

 

I'll start with mine. So this story goes back to Christmas of the year 2000, by this time, Donkey Kong Country for Gameboy Color came out. Keep that in mind. Now Christmas morning I was looking forward to popping in Wario Land 3, a game that I begged my Dad to get me since I saw it in the Toys R Us catalog. I used to borrow my friend's copy of Wario Land 2 and friggin' loved it. So, I was psyched. Buuuut, who had a problem with it? My Mom. (She's super religious, I mean "gay rights is bad" religious but I digress.) She didn't like the boxart and called Toys R Us to get and exchange. I was pissed. Not only did she spoil my Christmas, but she pretty much ruined the game that I had my heart set on, and wouldn't find for another 14 years.

 

So we went to Toys R Us, now here's where Donkey Kong Country comes in. I saw it sitting there but what was right next to it? Rugrats in Paris: The Movie for Gameboy Color. Now I'm sure you know what this is leading right into. I said, "I want Don-Rugrats!".....

 

The game sucked. The game severely sucked. But I played it, because it was only thing I could play. No Pokemon, no mario, just Sonic and that fucking game. I am still angry to this day. Yeah I can download WL3 whenever I want, but I wanted the physical copy for collecter's reasons.

 

So yeah...bummer.

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Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 - both of which were mega hyped to me by other people (and in the case of Fallout 3 I was personally mega excited as well) only to be total letdowns that I ended up returning both and getting other games. It is quite rare that I let myself get really disappointed by a game after I've bought it but those two did it in. I really did try giving Fallout 3 a chance though, I played a lot of it before I finally just said "fuck this". As for a game I rented once I was playing Final Fantasy X, the first FF game I'd ever actually tried due to all my friends saying how amazing it was and couldn't get into it. I played around 30 hours before I finally stopped and ended up returning it to Blockbuster. Just typing that out feels weird....blockbuster...rentals...what the fuck man.

 

Other than that I can't really name too many games I found myself being disappointed with on a large scale that I was totally turned off from them. I tend to do my research first to ensure I like a game and have done so since I was a kid. Even games that otherwise are critically panned I end up finding myself enjoying if the concept is something I enjoy - Neverdead for example I really like despite being an extremely rough game. 

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With me, it's not so much "why did I play this" as much as "why am I still playing this". Gonna have to say... Mega Man Battle Network 4.

 

I mostly got it for completion's sake considering I'm a hopeless Mega Man fansomething and I already enjoyed the previous games in the Battle Network series. Good gravy, that game is abominable. The writing is horrible, the translation is just sad, and all the meaningless sidequests you have to go through... three times. At least! It doesn't even have enjoyable music. Its only saving grace is the fact that the system is fairly solid. But, of course, you can always build a bad house on a good foundation.

And yet I keep getting roped back into playing it thanks to the guides I write. I think I've played through that game four times over and gotten nearly everything each time. *sighs* The things I do for research...

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With me, it's not so much "why did I play this" as much as "why am I still playing this". Gonna have to say... Mega Man Battle Network 4.

 

I mostly got it for completion's sake considering I'm a hopeless Mega Man fansomething and I already enjoyed the previous games in the Battle Network series. Good gravy, that game is abominable. The writing is horrible, the translation is just sad, and all the meaningless sidequests you have to go through... three times. At least! It doesn't even have enjoyable music. Its only saving grace is the fact that the system is fairly solid. But, of course, you can always build a bad house on a good foundation.

And yet I keep getting roped back into playing it thanks to the guides I write. I think I've played through that game four times over and gotten nearly everything each time. *sighs* The things I do for research...

 

I have a sort of a love/hate thing for them too. Like I am attracted to them because of the RPG element in there, but at the same time, I refuse to sit through the entire game.

 

Now the only Megaman game that I find awesome yet unbearable is Megaman and Bass. It's unbelievably difficult and having played it on GBA with the screen condensing, kinda like Sonic Genesis, it was just a bad time. All I did was play each stage and find a way to salvage my way to the boss until I got better weapons for the later stages, but the later stages are even harder. Oy vey, yeah that was not an enjoyment...

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Sonic Lost World (Wii U)

I picked it up a few days ago on a whim, and I'm already regretting the decision. The game's piss poor attempts to be Super Mario Galaxy are glaringly obvious, and the engine is broken in so many ways. The Deadly Six is Sega's lamest character attempt yet, and the level designs are a huge step back from anything in Colors or Generation. I'd also like to add that played for laughs or not, Steena's portrayal is one of the most offensive characterizations of a female character in a video game yet. Only thing I've seen worse in is Ground Zeroes.

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Sonic Lost World (Wii U)

I picked it up a few days ago on a whim, and I'm already regretting the decision. The game's piss poor attempts to be Super Mario Galaxy are glaringly obvious, and the engine is broken in so many ways. The Deadly Six is Sega's lamest character attempt yet, and the level designs are a huge step back from anything in Colors or Generation.

 

I had a feeling this would come up. I agree they really could've stepped it up here, especially the deadly six. They were disappointing characters because they have no conclusion. Like what happens? Did they die? Did they just make a hasty retreat? Draw a conclusion. And the level design is what peeves me too, emphasis on sky road. Oh My God, whoever said sky road is a good idea needs to be disqualified. I lost so many lives and had to take advantage of the option to skip to the next checkpoint, it was ridiculous. I also don't like the charging homing attack. I'm used to just mashing the homing attack button not waiting until the homing attack is "lvl. 10-30". Yeah, I don't hate it but, it's not something I'm willing to pop back into my Wii U. I guess I'll wait for Sonic Boom now...

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Sonic Lost World (Wii U)

I picked it up a few days ago on a whim, and I'm already regretting the decision. The game's piss poor attempts to be Super Mario Galaxy are glaringly obvious, and the engine is broken in so many ways. The Deadly Six is Sega's lamest character attempt yet, and the level designs are a huge step back from anything in Colors or Generation. I'd also like to add that played for laughs or not, Steena's portrayal is one of the most offensive characterizations of a female character in a video game yet. Only thing I've seen worse in is Ground Zeroes.

 

I was so so so hopeful for Lost World coming off the momentum from Colors and Generations, which are two of my favorite games in the series. I just dunno what happened to all the love and effort that seemed to go into those two titles.

 

 

I had one of those "Why am I still playing this" experiences with Final Fantasy XIII. I saw it at a GameStop for $20 and decided to go for it, I had heard complaints of linearity and story but figured I'd see for myself. I was floored by the visuals / some of the music tracks and didn't care for much else. But I got some sick satisfaction out of seeing all the numbers so I eventually wound up pouring approximately 110 hours into the game to 100% it. The post-game grinding for the best weapons essentially devolves into beating the same enemy over and over in the hopes of like a 5% chance drop for an item you need a lot of. But I eventually got enough, did it, power-leveled everyone to their highest level and beat the final boss under the achievement's conditions.

 

If it wasn't such a dull summer I (hopefully) wouldn't have done that...

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Sonic Colors:

Everyone went on about this game like it was second coming of sonic jesus but i got less than halfway through before I felt like i experienced everything the game offered...and I had. The game teases you with 3D gameplay, only to have 7 stages in any given world be short little gimmick acts with copy-paste level design. Almost none of the wisps were fun to use except Frenzy and the occasional Laser. 

 

Lost World: 

Cant say what already has been said by me and tons of others, but this game is just a mess. Granted, I dont own it, but i've played enough. The game, like colors, just mostly feels like 4 or 5 good ideas watered down by endless filler. This is a culmination of ST's last few years of Mario emulation (starting with colors) and it ends just as anyone'd expect, seeing as they can't even emulate their own sonic games.

 

 

 

Final Fantasy XIII (and sort of XIII-2):

An odd example because I enjoyed this game while playing most of it but in hindsight my opinion changed entirely. I realized, the only reason I enjoyed this game is because i was carried almost entirely by expectations. It wasn't until the 3/4th mark (when everyone claims the game "opens up") that I realized, "Wow, i've been playing this game for almost 32 hours, when is something exciting going to happen." Then I reach the climax of the game and realize i'd played the most XIII had to offer 4 hours in.

 

XIII-2 was no different, it was most certainly better than XIII, but my expectations were that square was going to continue the story with DLC. I would have been perfectly content with new timezone reskins (the whole game was reskins anyway) featuring some new enemies and bosses. I really would have enjoyed that. But the story DLC didn't even involve your characters...they were standalone minigames. 

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Ocarina of TIme:

God I better find one hell of a bunker for having this one here. I grew up with a playstation and a gameboy, so while everyone else was playing FF7 and OoT, I was playing Spyro and Pokemon. So keep that in mind with this.

All my life I have not heard a stop to the hype around this game, it may as well have been god incarnate for all I knew so when I got my first TV nintendo console--a wii-- I went and bought it on the virtual console. I was pretty psyched at the time and couldn't wait to play through it. 

When I finally did play through it, I was rather disappointed. I just did not have fun with that game. At all. The amount of hype surrounding this is what killed it for me. It didn't even come close to what the hype prophesied and I didn't even understand many of the overused jokes surrounding it, like the water temple for example. I flew through the water temple. That was easy. The only temple to give me massive trouble was the Spirit temple and its vague as hell level design.

Everything was just 'eh' about it, and its obvious that the graphics haven't aged well at all. Everything looks like a gross polygonal mess and anyone who still thinks they're good probably still has their nostalgia goggles on. I grew up with graphics from that era so I can tolerate that level of quality, but it just looks bad to me. I dunno. I just didn't have any fun at all with it and I doubt I'll have any fun with the second most hyped Zelda game of all time--Majora's Mask--which I have yet to play.

 

Tiny Tank:

Tiny Tank for the PS1 is a horrible game with absurd difficulty spikes and it sometimes focuses too much on centering levels around its weakest points. But its still one of my favorite games of all time and thats why its on here. As a kid I adored this game. It was fun, hilarious, and had a superb soundtrack and voice acting. It wasn't until I got older that I noticed how bad it actually was and I find it hard to believe I considered it to be an amazing game. For someone who is trying to get into the game industry, its a little embarrassing to peg this one up so high when its not even close to being great. Its kinda my guilty pleasure and the only mediocre game I get real pleasure from.

 

Lost World:

I got this on the 3DS and was quickly disappointed for all of the reasons listed already. I do find the first 2 levels rather fun though, but only the first two. Everything else was horrible.

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  • 3 weeks later...

SUPER MARIO FREAKING WORLD.
 

UGH.

 

I played super Mario World for the 1st time last week on my Wii U. I got it free via club Nintendo. I saw it on the list, and i got SUPER hyped, I have always heard such good things about the game!

 

Oh boy. The controls are crap. The graphics are crap. The sound, ESPECIALLY THE SOUND, is just BAD. I DO NOT see why people make such a hype around this game. I wasted like 200 coins on this!

 

Sonic 1 and Super Mario World came out around the same exact time. Sorry to break it to ya buster, but the SNES is WAY more capable than the genesis. Sonic 1 blows SMW OUT OF THE WATER. The graphics are better, the gameplay is more solid, everything about it is better, IMO, and Sonic 1 is one of my least favorite sonic games.

 

I'm just disappointed that it doesn't live up to what the SNES can do, and that so much hype surrounds a relatively lackluster game. This is the 1st Mario game I've ever DISliked.

 

Edit: Got Super Metroid via Club Nintendo 2 weeks ago, I LOVE it. I never got to experience all these SNES games as a kid, since I grew up with a Genesis. I've beaten the game twice already, and I'm still playing.

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When I got my PS1, a bunch of games came with it. One was called ShellShock, and I played it that same night for like 5 minutes before giving up and calling it garbage. A couple days ago, I pulled it back out, wondering why I didn't like it. I soon found out why.

~Boring and generic graphics with heavy use of the Doom styled 8 directional sprites for enemies and basic textured cubes for the buildings. Considering this came out in 1998 (after Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider 2, and Twisted Metal 2 were released), it has no excuse to look this boring. Along with this, it relies way too much on pre rendered pictures, to the point where everything that isn't one of the campaign missions is either a pre-rendered background of a 3D space, or a pre-rendered FMV. I really hate to admit this, but Bubsy 3D had better graphics than this. Sure they weren't textured, but they were a hell of a lot more colorful.

 

~Terrible and grating hip hop soundtrack, with repetitive voice clips and annoying sound effects. I'm actually okay with hip hop some of the time, but the music here was simply dull and uninspired.

 

~Atrocious balance issues. The first level is gigantic and the objective is to take out all the enemy tanks. Fire a shell? Because the game clustered a bunch of tanks together, they're all going to gang up on you; and while the one you just shot at and killed was a weaker model that fires a pissy machine gun, the rest are most likely going to be the stronger variant that fire shells. The second level? Short mission where you take out a few buildings and drive to the exit. Oh, and health doesn't get refilled between missions. You have to purchase it yourself, or be good enough not to get hit.

 

~Sloppy controls that feel more like a generic FPS game than driving a tank, paired with questionable collision. The tank accelerates to an insane speed like a race car, and doesn't turn around quick enough to match without changing the control style. The only thing that makes it feel like a tank is that you can rotate the turret on top, but that makes it even more difficult to control. It gets caught on trees if I'm moving at any speed besides the crazy race car speed. If you happen to run over a tree, you can actually get stuck on the rubble they leave, because you slow down after running over one.

 

~To top it off, the passwords for the game are long and tedious to put in. Thank goodness it has Memory card support, because if you die in a level, it's back to the title screen and you have to load your game again.

 

Oh, and all the characters are black people that listen to hip hop, cover things in graffiti, use ghetto speech for everything, all of the artwork depicts them standing around all gangsta-like, and when you get a game over, they spray paint "MIA" on a building rather actually trying to search for you. I don't know about everyone else, but something seems a little off about this game.

(I would like to add in that this is not how I view black people. This is literally how the game depicts these characters.)

 

The worst part? This game was done by CORE and EIDOS; the same group that did Tomb Raider, which I really enjoyed.

 

Google search won't bring up much, because  another game came out on the PS2, under a different genre, with the same title. You'll get maybe an IGN or a GameFAQs article at most. Youtube isn't much better, with (I think) one actual playthrough of it. Then again, it's kind of easy to see why this game was forgotten.

Edited by Betaman
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I've met a couple of these in my life...

The first one I got was the game "USA-Racer" for PS2. It was more like "why did I enjoy this?" but whatever. It's a generic arcade-style racing game with generic American steriotypes. It glitchs like hell and is way too easy to be enjoyable. Then I met Burnout3 and all was forgotten...

 

Next up was "James Bond: The Duel" for Genesis. I got it because it was a James Bond game and It was the James Bond hype time. Generic side-scroller with weird level layouts and stiff controlls. I still kept it for collection purposes.

 

Then we got "Battleship" for Gameboy. It's a Gameboy-port of Battleship. All said...

 

That were all I can think of my mind, maybe there were a couple more in my life but I can't remember them (propably for the best)

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This is a bit more of a recent example, but definitely Sonic and the Black Knight. I had read the awful reviews, but the screenshots... they just made it look so fun. Then I played it. You can loosely fling sonic aroud with the analog stick, but if that's too hard for you, don't worry; UP is the only position you'll be holding it in. Oh, and you can swing the remote in a direction and Sonic will do the same, right? WRONG! ANY swing in ANY direction will make Sonic do horizontal slash, so that "motion control" might as well be a huge ass button labeled "SCHU-WING!" I hold Sonic '06 above this. Seriously. Y'know the game that made everyone hate sonic? Well anyway, I guess Sonic and the BK had a few good things like nice graphics, high-budget cut-scenes, and the best knight-metal you'll hear in your life. Just wish they would've made, y'know, A REAL GAME.

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Well, I sorta liked Sonic and the Black Knight too. 10 seconds later I beat it, aaaaaand it's gone. S&TBK had it fun points, but damn, that was the shortest, easy to predict story ever. Plus, when you get the controls down, which they try to make it difficult to prolong game play, it's a cakewalk.

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I guess I was a bit rough on Sonic & the BK. It's not terrible, but you can't go strait from, say, Sonic CD, to this or you will suffer from a stroke. I actually liked the boss battles in S & BK, but those lasted, what, 10 seconds? I really liked the graphics too.

Edited by Riseodvi
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