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25 Most Overrated Games of All Time?
AriesGeek writes "GameSpy is running the 1st of a 6-part special on the 25 most overrated games of all time. From the article: 'Over the next several days GameSpy is taking a tour through the 25 most overrated games of all time. It's not a pretty list. It's a tale of tragedy where hype gets out of hand, or good licenses and great ideas fail to live up to expectations.' You think Zero Wing will be on there?" As with previous charts, predictions for the Top 5 are welcome, we'll run another story at the end of the week to see how people did.
I could never get into that game. And I certainly don't have any desire to purchase all of the $20-$30 add ons they produced for it.
The Sims didn't have the same interest level because I have no desire to have a second fake life I need to take care of. I don't want to worry about going to work, reading, excercising, etc... in a game when I have to worry about that in real life.
Games like Sim City on the other hand would let you use your imagintation, and allow you to do things that most people will never get to do in real life are much more entertaining in my opinion.
And splinter cell should be there. Once you replay the game and the pretty graphics have been seen, you notice the poor AI and the horrible collision detection.
I once clipped through a guard while going up a ladder. The guy didn't notice me. I then jumped on his head. It's a good thing we didn't clip then, I might have hurt my balls.
It had great graphics and an innovative interface but Black and White did not deserve a 10 from Gamespot. (They game a 9.7 to Metroid Prime, their highest rated game in recent memory). The game was supposed to revolutionize the entire industry and reviewers were scarred that they would miss the badwagon.
...and all its derivatives (Doom, Quake, etc.)
Enough, already. Stop the madness. Think of the children - won't anyone think of the children?
Why do we need all these _new_ games? Everyone knows gaming was perfected with BZFlag. It's a scientific fact!
Another worthy contender would have to be... well, the entire Rainbow Six series. All have the same flimsy plot, usually poor graphics (with the exception of Raven Shield), and crappy sound. Not worth the plastic they make the cd's out of.
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
seriously.. it was just meant as mindless shooting fun. No seriousness or anything out-of-character. Pretty world with lots and lotsa of monsters and lotsa and lots of ammo. Good sound effects (I can still hear the damn suicide bombers or the horse-like-skeletons comming at me from behind).
Serious Sam is a game most would spend 10 hours on. 10 hours over its entire life not in beating the game.
Anyway the game was just meant to be silly and mindless fun, and I think it succeeded in that.
If we're talking mindless viole- I mean, fun, lets nominate Soldier of Fortune II. Again, slow graphics, poor storyline, and plenty of gratuitous violence. Not worthy.
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!
Daikatana
Tao Feng
Enter the Matrix
DDR
Unreal 2
Resident Evil (even though I love the game)
Sim Copter
"Infants flesh will be in season throughout the year." -Swift
I'm not a troll...I'm an _OGRE_! :)
Games: (The) N most foo games of bar (optional meaningless question mark)
We've had about one of these per week by now, right?
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Enough said I think... The Sims is definitely overrated as well as Enter The Matrix. Maybe the same could be said about Zelda for the GameCube.
Specifically Dragon Quest VI. I kept hearing all this hype about the Dragon Quest series from Japan, how it was suppossed to be even better than the Final Fantasy series, how there's some law against a game in the series being released on a school day.
Got a rom of DQ VI (it was never officially translated into Englsih so you have to use a fan translated version) and boy was it boring, I put about 35 hours into, got to the job system and played around to that, then gave up. The combat system was simplistic, the characters uninteresting. Not as good as FF VI or Chrono Trigger, the other big 16-bit rpgs.
Maybe I'll give it another go someday, but it just didn't live up to the hype for me.
Gamespy has a really crappy way of protecting stuff for the future articles.
Screenshot for game #1
Just change the last number in the URL for the other 2-20 games.
Okay game? Yes. Best ever? Not by a long shot.
Goo goo g'joob.
I was shocked to see Mario Sunshine on the list, who hyped that game?
I remember it getting some press, but 'overrated'? Considering that most reviews at the time said exactly what these guys are saying, (good game but no classic), I don't see what was overrated about it.
Now Mario 64, which they call 'perfectly executed', there's an overrated game.
Anybody over at GameSpy played it lately?
The graphics are washed out turdulence and the gameplay doesn't hold a candle to Insomniac's Spyro games.
Yet it was dubbed 'the greatest game of all time' and to this day maintains a reputation as a classic.
I'm just glad I waited until the N64 was selling for $29.99 before I bothered to see what all the fuss was about.
Enter the Matrix
Diakatana
Black and White
Hunter the Reckoning
Tribes: Aerial Assault
My top 5, off the top of my head:
5. Halo - Fun, sure... but nothing new.
4. Quake III - Better graphics, uninspired gameplay
3. Black and White - I love Molynieux (sp), and appreciated what he tried to do. I am REALLY looking forward to his next games. But Black and White kinda sucked.
2. Final Fantasy 7 - Same old, same old...
1. Myst - yeah.
no thanks
Gamespy doesn't know jack about anything.
They've put TR: Angel Of Darkness and Enter The Matrix as overrated games.
Those games are not overrated. I've yet to come across a score higher than 8 for any of those. Those games were just overhyped.
But gamespy wouldn't know the difference.
How about Doom 2? That game was just more Doom. Yeah, Doom was great in its day, and so was the sequel. Come on though, do you really need to go out and buy more levels of that instead of just getting a bunch of fan-made levels?
If anyone remembers Outpost and the previews/reviews it got I'd think youd understand. I got burned by it. I hope it makes the top 5 and lives forever in infamy.
It's nice to see the most overrated games, but what about the most underrated games? I would be genuinely interested in good games that weren't marketed strongly enough.
I'm all for progression in games, but they murdered their flagship franchise.
Other overhyped games I can think of...
Final Fantasy 7 (the first PSX one)
Stunt Race FX
Metal Gear Solid 2
Gran Turisom 3/2000
Any Jaguar game (minus Tempest 2000)
I not only consider B&W to be highly overrated, but Peter Molyneux himself is highly overrated. He's always talking about how his games are going to change game design history forever, but he seems to forget FUN. Simple fun is what makes a game compelling. And then you realize the devil is in the details, and comprehend that the game is a design wonder because it's fun yet simple, and attention to detail was never lost. but that will never happen with his games.
Or at least that what I think.
Then Rise of the Robots, by an absolute mile. Robot one-on-one fighting game. Banging on about their clever new AI system that responded fantastically well to player input, absolutely gorgeous pre-rendered graphics.
Except that you could get several levels in by taping the koystick in the top right corner and the fire button down. Very, very, poor.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Hmm asking for suggestions for what slashdoters think are the most overrated games ever, how is this not going to turn into a mod-for-trolling-a-thon as opinions clash? I mean, by definition an overated game would be one receiving undue acclaim right?
Anyway, Let me say a few of mine:
Halo: Now hold up before you set fire to me, I loved Halo, it was one of the only games I played on X-box for a very long time. I have never regreted spending the $50 on my copy, and i have never regreted The LAN parties I have attended in which Halo was the top attraction. But, the fact is that despite what a lof of people seem to beleive, it is not the best game ever. Half-life had a better single player, and better multiplayer. In short, great game, but not the "best game ever"
Everquest: Popular? yes. A good game? No.
Splinter Cell: yeah, a cliche trial and error exercise in futility with a bad camera but very impressive lighting effects is the game of the year? please.
Final Fantasy 7: This is the best RPG ever? ever play Fallout? ever play Deus Ex? Arcana? Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the US)Balder's Gate? there are plenty of RPGs that run circles around this game. many of them aren't as pretty as FF7 was in the day, and most of them do not feature a blonde haired blue eyed white dude with giant hair and a even larger sword, but i assure you there are better games.
That is all.
Forget the levels, people bought the game because of the _story_, right?
:P
oh, wait..
Combat was the first major turn-off for me. It just felt too much like a typical RTS scrub (a genre that I simply cannot play), but with D&D characters. D&D characters with D&D health. Which means if I ran into something that might pose a combative problem, half my party was gonna get wiped out unless I kept doing monotonous gorilla attacks. Run up, fire bow, run away... Ugh. If I did that enough, I might get a wee nugget of plot revealed. Unfortunately, it in no way grabbed my attention or even seemed VAGUELY interesting. So why suffer through all that boring combat?
Though it did have Boo. So it wasn't ALL bad.
The two Zelda incarnations on the N64 were in my own opinion totally overrated game. It offered somewhat new gameplay, but it just wasn't a Zelda game. It's like that old Coke commercial where you had two guys in front of abottle of a noname Coke-Clone and are comparing it to a real one :
Moves lile coke...
Looks like coke...
Smells like coke...
Tastes like... chicken???
It's as if Nintendo just took the visuals from Zelda and basic story elements (save the princess from Ganon, and you're Link), and used them for a totally unrelated game, like they did with Super Mario Bros 2, which is not a Mario game in Japan. Nintendo swapped the sprites for the American release and named it Mario 2 to cash in the name of the first game.
I remember the Zelda's prior 64 as an all out action game, while the two games on the N64 were about walking a minute in a direction on the world map, kill a monster, walk again, repeat until you reach the next dungeon. I haven't played the latest game, but it looked like a rehash for the 64 version but with cell shading, so I wouldn't call it innovative either.
Think about it:
- Zelda 1 was awesome.
- Zelda 2 was fun, but not a really innovative game.
- Zelda 3 introduced you more of the same, but had a city, somewhat 3d levels, talking characters, two worlds to explore who overlap and more special goodies then you could ever dream of.
- Zelda : The awakening fish or something on the Gameboy was mostly a rehash of Zelda 3.
After that, the only changes were 3D. Nothing to brag about here. Mario 64 was out as the same time as the console and already did that.
#1 http://www.gamespy.com mario sunshine : ...and the levels were hard
Oh, my? You mean I will actually have to COMMIT MYSELF TO SOME EFFORT in order to beat and enjoy the game?
Doh'
It is now Red "X" complient.
I agree, they are interesting; fortunately, someone beat you to it. :)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Anyone have a mirror?
A few words in defense of Myst, The Sims, and Halo. They are prevelant in the threads here, and they may very well end up on the top 25 on gamespy (but I doubt it).
First of all, there's a definitive PC slant here, while my guess is that Gamespy will most likely lean towards the console side in their list.
Secondly, I think it's easy to automatically dislike games that are extremely popular, such as Myst, The Sims, and Halo. They make easy targets, and in a very underground-esque kind of way, it's cool to dislike what's, well, cool. But merely because we dislike something doesn't mean it's necessarily overrated. I really dislike GTA3, but I can't deny its impact nor the fact that it may very well be a good game.
Likewise, and in regards to Myst, I'm not a fan. But Myst single-handedly opened the door for CD-ROM as a viable storage format. Yeah, it also opened the door to an onslaught of FMV and wannabees, and Myst isn't exactly a shining example of design brilliance. It's a slideshow with clicking But it isn't *that* bad, and what's more is that it brought in a tremendous amount of non traditional gamers, more commonly known as "females."
The Sims has done exactly the same thing, and in many ways is the spirital successor to Myst (without the technology push). In fact, long before GTA3, The Sims, very much in the vein of its predecessors, was pioneering open-ended, emergent, sandbox gameplay. More than that though, is that the game is largely played by moms and girlfriends and daughters and sisters; *not* by the guy who just got home from a 72 hour straight LAN party to sit down to play 3 more hours of Battelfield 1942.
Myst and The Sims are mass appeal titles, but merely because they are mainstream doesn't mean they're overrated. I would suggest that their importance in gaming cannot at all be overstated, and would go as far to say that there should be far more of these games. Even if I don't like to play them.
Halo is very much the same way, but on a smaller scale. It's a PC first person shooter...for the console. That alone is significant, and it also explains why it's making the slashdot overrated lists posted here. In college dorms everywhere, Halo replaced Goldeneye as the 2:30am procrastination technique. It revived co-op gameplay. But to many of you, it's just another PC FPS (albeit, you would argee, a fun one). What should prevent Halo from being in any overrated list is its multiplayer. To us, this is nothing new. But to console gamers, Halo is *the* original multiplayer shooter, not Team Fortress, or Quake, or Counterstrike. And there's nothing wrong with that.
My advice? Step out from the standard Doom-Lineage (Doom to Half Life 2)/PC covering and look around again. Mass appeal does not (always) equal overrated. Use Black & White as a paradigm for something not being what it ought to have been, not Myst or The Sims.
They tell you that overhype is a catagory.
all the games in the list are quite old.. Gamespy don't want to "hit where it hurts" (aka Don't bite the hand that gives you food)
But I'm pretty sure that in the next list (in a couple of years or so, we'll see Republic: The Revolution a game with a big delay with a state-of-the-art 3D engine, totally useless in the game, and the only Turn Game (masked as real time, but thats only a time counter) without the Next Turn button.
But Black & White is the Jewel of the crown here, that game, and with a big bug in! (I still remember mailing to the Support to tell me how to remove the bug and finish the game, and they only told me to reinstall it)
DDR is not overrated. Here in Hong Kong this game was a big hit. I got addicted to this game too and lost some body weight because of it. If it didn't get popular in your place, it was probably a cultural thing.
Halo. Every fanboy keeps mentioning it like it is the only shooter on earth.
Tribes 2. An example of such proof would be that fanboys flamed sites and magazines for giving an honest score to a buggy POS.
All Dead Or Alive games, all are button mashers which they only selling point is the breasts and scantly clad women.
Then again, I can understand Tecmo's exploting the sex sells and relying on the pervert demographic. There are morons who will pay $150.00 for a swimsuit for the girlfriend they will never have.
I don't think they caught on, but I couldn't get that URL to work either. Try this:
v er rated/images/25_graphics_#.jpg
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/september03/25o
replace # with the position
After looking through all the screenshots (which are now down as far as I can tell) I'm surprised the Kingdom Hearts didn't make the list.
If ever there was a game that is consistently rated amongst the best PS2 games that doesn't deserve such a rating, it's this one.
Your trying to push a tough sell chief. Many many many people consider the ocarina of time to be a pinnacle of game design. I for one would argue that Link to the Past is the most zeldaish zelda, and the most fun, but I am not going to try and argue that here. Your position can be likened to trying to argue that the Beatles were a crap band, or the "The Godfather" was a terrible uninspired movie.
In short, you need to be a little more specific in your reasons unless you want to be considered flame-bait on this one. I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just saying your not giving good enough evidence that your right.
Think about it:
- Zelda 1 was awesome. etc...
Last time I checked, "Awesome" is not a subjective term. Assuming that everyone thought Zelda 1 is awesome, and stating this as an irrefutable fact weakens your whole position.
I haven't played the latest game, but it looked like a rehash for the 64 version but with cell shading, so I wouldn't call it innovative either
Now when I read this, it reduces the rest of your post to nothing but a rant without any authority. Why? Because you dismiss a game you haven't even played, and then admit that you didn't play it. If you haven't played the game, you can't say anything about it's merits. I have never played Daikitana, so me saying it sucks is a hollow statement. The same thing goes here.
So in conclusion, you have not a leg to stand on. I welcome all opinions, but opinions without support are a waste of time.
Anal sex
1) Black and White: Cool technology. I bought it, took it home, and was bored in 3 hours. Most damn repetitive gameplay ever created. Which leads me to number 2....
2) Diablo 2: Hey look! It's a hack'n'slash. I can gain levels and I can kill lots of mindless enemies with my friends. I failed to see the appeal to the game when it came out, and, except for a brief moment, I still think it's extremely repetitive and mindless.
3) Everquest: See Diablo 2. Except here, you mulitply all the time factors by 5. Ability system is slightly better.
4) Metal Gear Solid 2: I hate to say this, cause I thought it was a great game, but after playing the first one, it didn't seem all that revolutionary. There's a pop-backlash against this game which had a good (albeit out there at times) story and solid gameplay which was in a class of its own with the exception of the first game.
5) Final Fantasy 7: Good, one of my favorites in the series. It managed to combine new technology in a good way (usually smoothly integrates FMV for the most part rather than the "Oh look, we're doing a movie" like many other RPGs, opening sequence is a good example). Ability system solved the problem of using unused characters (although at the expense of individuality) and had a deeper ability system than gaining levels and completing two quests (I'm looking in your direction FF4). Good storyline (other "old school" FF fanboys tend to dislike to sci-fi feel of the game compared to previous games, and then complain it was unoriginal). But like I said, it doesn't matter what's good or bad, only what people think. And for those of you wondering. I played the original when it came out, and have beaten every one since with the exception of 8.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Cmon, I really doubt the poop shoot is as great as they say, in fact, I hear no one likes being on the receiving end...
I just _knew_ I had to get this game when it came out. Boy was I wrong.
People... "Overrated" means a game that was, in the end, bad... but everyone said it was so good.
People here keep putting "Enter the Matrix" and "Outpost" as great examples for this list. Those games were POORLY RATED, PLAYED BAD BUT SOLD WELL and LOWLY-RATED AND PLAYED BAD, respectively. Outpost was never said to be great. It was a flop. Done. It wasn't "overrated"
These games, and many others you are suggesting, deserve a place in the "25 most dissapointing games ever," but not "25 most overrated games ever."
If we're talking overhyped at all in context with the article then I firmly vote for The Sims Online.
Jesus Christ! It was on the fucking cover of Newsweek!!
People were expecting hundreds of thousands of subscribers to the service, they saw it bridging the gap and getting "regular folks" into online gaming.
And what happened? Nothing.
Few signed up for it, lag was everywhere, mobs formed in the game and overall it was boring! Who wants to play a game online just to chat with other people? At least in Everquest you get to hit things with swords.
Of course, if it's Bungie you want, I can most certainly toss up Oni as an overrated title.
What about Shiny's pre-Enter The Matrix Messiah? There are others that are less recent, but for the life of me I can't recall which. But Messiah was supposed to be God's gift to gamingkind...
Of course, there are the vaporwares like Prey and (yes, any sentence with vaporware must have...) Duke Nukem Forever.
And it's quite possible that Half Life 2, although I doubt it, may really blow. Maybe Gamespy should hold off on their #1 until they play HL2?
I doubt most people will agree with me on this one, but Mortal Kombat was very overrated. I honestly think the appeal of that game grew more from the "Oo it's got blood, I must be more mature!" aspect of it than the "Wow, this is so much better than Street Figher 2" rationale.
:P
It's all opinion, of course. I just never felt like I was really strategically fighting with anybody in that game, more like "who can hit the buttons in the right sequence?" I have Simon for that.
"Derp de derp."
Boring boring boring. Didn't stop it getting almost perfect scores in reviews, though.
If you're going to force me to watch a million hours of cutscenes to keep up with what's going on, try to come up with a story that isn't just insipid rehashed Evangelion-wannabe HORSESHIT.
On a related tack, I would think Final Fantasy VIII would be the FF on the list. It seems like that game had to outdo FF7 in every single way, as seemingly everyone was expecting it to. It did in some areas, and didn't in many others.
The N64 had a crapload of crap:
Waverace - Admittedly, I'm not a racing fan, but it was short and there wasn't much to do.
1080 - The game wasn't fun. It didn't have the raceability that SSX brought in later (that's pretty overrated to me too) or the ability to bust out tricks like Tony Hawk or to stay true to the genre, Amped. I realize it came out before both of these games but without either of these I didn't see the appeal
Perfect Dark - I couldn't play through that awful framerate and it lacked the charm of Goldeneye.
Conker's Bad Fur Day - This was offensive in the way my little brother is. Oh dear, he's cursing, but he's not funny or cool. Just obnoxious.
But I'll quit my hating on Nintendo.
Alone in the Dark - Yeah, I thought it was creepy, but I was a lot more frustrated because I couldn't make the guy do anything. It could've been twice as scary if it were a SCUMM game.
Claw - Wasn't exactly popular but this game could have easily been shareware. The magazines loved it though.
This can go on forever so I'll quit with
Hitman (1 or 2) - maybe I just don't have the patience or the skills but it seems to me like a great idea that didn't work (probably because there's too much you can do and it's crazy hard)
Good Call on the Halo (great game, but not THAT great), Blinx, Sims and Sim City, Rise of the Robots, Tomb Raider and Myst
Look it's a joke about my sig IN MY SIG! LOL!
Let's face it, the people that write for Gamespy are over-rated wannabe twinkie fanboy's. Did they ever have any opinion that they didn't cull from another source? Has Gamespy ever had a worthwhile article that actually contributed anything to the general pool of knowledge? Why do these lame-ass obviously over-rated articles keep getting mentioned on Slashdot? Could it be because... the Gamespy "journalists" keep posting links to their own fsck'g articles?
The most reason Halo was overrated/overhyped was singleplayer. Multiplayer is pretty solid and very much fun, especially if you get 2 or more Xboxes linked up. Single player got boring fast. Why?
1. Very little interaction with the world: The vehicles were a great touch but other than that the world is pretty static(except for enemies) when it comes to what you can influence around you. To me, I was disappointed. I wanted to do more in the world than just go around and shoot everything. I know it is a shooter, thus it's primary gameplay focus is shooting, but having a use button and more stuff to interact with would have made the game seem less repeatitive
2. Level design sucked in the inside enviroments: For the most part the outside enviroments were awesome. They looked great and made you feel like you were on a big adventure. However, once you got inside a building that's where it started to stink. Whoever was in charge of level designs for the interiors went crazy with the copy and pasting. There was too many times I was asking myself, "have I been here before?" because the layout of some of the places were generic looking hallways and rooms that were used over and over. Many times I was just wandering around just waiting until I saw an enemy, at which point I knew I was in a different area. Bottom line is in a FPS the level design is critical. If you don't have an interesting world to explore through, why the hell should we want to play through it?(Hint: the answer isn't to shoot more monsters.)
I have more points but these were the 2 main complaints I had with the game after hear how great it was. That all said, I believe it was probably Microsoft rushing Bungie to complete the game that lead to these problems. If they were given more time they probably would have had those problems more ironed out than they did.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
Thoes games weren't really hyped or advertised much at all. I think Xenosaga actually had a tv commercial though, but those games really didn't claim to be revolutionizing anything. Well except the joke on the back of the box saying Xenosaga had 80 HOURS of gameplay, you shouldn't put a number like that (especially when it's nowhere near that long for the average player!), just put "Enjoy countless hourse of gameplay" like square does or something and let us decide how long it takes :/
I rather enjoyed the story of Xenogears (Can't really decide on saga, till they actually COMPLETE at least one of their countless story threads they started) It was alot more in depth than the average RPG's 'stop the all powerful evil madman' storyline and actually makes you think about your existance and purpose. I haven't really watched any anime, so I don't know how closely the story resembles Evangelion.
If you want to talk overrated, those are high my list of overrated games. Talking to the average gamer-kiddie today, you'd think that Counter-Strike and Battlefield are the holy grails of gaming. Fact is, they're buggy, have poor physics, and basically terrible gameplay.
Would someone please explain to me the point of Myst? I spent all of 30 minutes playing it ten years ago. Needless to say it didn't grab my attention.
Reviews at the time kept raving about its great graphics and calling it revolutionary. I don't understand what was so revolutionary about high-res stills that loaded from CD every time you clicked on something.
Probably like a lot of people here, I found Myst random and pointless with pretty things to look at, kind of like, oh, everything that is beloved by the unwashed masses and despised by the more practical-minded.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for alternatives to the first-person shoot-'em-up style games that dominate the market. I spent lots of time playing 7th Guest; it seemed fairly straightforward. Myst, otoh, still befuddles me.
Would someone enlighten me?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I agree with the AC who nominates B&W, but Peter Molyneux (sp?) had another equally overrated game: Dungeon Keeper II. DK1 was a wonderful game. It had good gameplay, loads of sick humor, decent graphics and it ran on my Pentium 75 with ease. DK2 was noisily announced with bimbos dressing up as Dark Mistresses (heh heh), a bombastic trailer and when I bought it, it sucked. Gameplay had deteriorated. The graphics were decent, but too overdone, and the humor found in DK1 had evolved into look-how-funny-we-are mode.
der Joachim
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
Oh. Video Games?
#1 - Atari 2600 Pac-man. A poor, rushed, half-clone of the arcade version pissed off a lot of sugar-shocked kids.
#2 - I'd have to go with Call to Power: Civ 3. It was the first game that I was sorry I bought.
#3 Duke Nukem Forever. Yes, it's not out yet. Seriously - DNF better wank me off for the amount of crap I've had to listen to. I've been teased less by high-school girlfriends.
#4 Duke Nukem Forever. Make that two times.
#5 Outpost - I was lucky enough to have this hyped to me directly from a Sierra rep. I also remember a exceedingly high rating from a 'reputable' PC mag.
#6 Michael Jackson Baby Drop - great for those with flash and without Bejeweled.
#7 Karate Champ for the Apple II - I actually bought this, copied it, returned it, played it, deleted it. Wasn't worth pirating, or hyping. I just thought I'd throw it in there.
#8 Myst - I thought I turned my screen saver to 'Starfield'? I beat on this one because they won't let it die.
#9 Diablo II - I was addicted. I played it all the way through. Hours and hours. Hey, I get to do it all over again! Nethack for people who like to know how movies end before they see them.
#10 Slashdot - What good is Karma when you're maxed out all the time from insightful posts like mine? Trolling is fun, but still waiting for the good gameplay patch.
Best games? Nethack, Rescue Raiders, Quake 1&2, Fallout, Ultima Underworld, Civ 2, Simcity 2000, Castles (by Atari- find this rom!), Comet and Cyclone (pinball), RTCW(demo:), GTA 3, Defender and some cyber-robot football arcade game that I remember from Pop's Arcade in Minneapolis. ahh, good times...
There were some very weird things in SC. In the meat locker level, there is a dense fog. You, the kick-mule good guy, need a thermal visor to see your enemies. All bad guys are not thus equipped and they see you immediately from a large distance. Yeah, right. :-)
The turrets were a nice touch, but 'hacking' them by clicking a checkbox is lame reminischent of the movie the Net, in which hacking screens look like your average Outlook version. Oh wait...
The oil rig level was bad, but the exit was there. Somehow you had to find a way back down where you started and find your way to the lifeboat. The programmer is waiting there and you just have to punch him a bit.
The Sneak-em-up versus shoot-em-up approach was well thought-out. I really liked the game. It would have been much better if the details were better thought out.
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
I know this isn't a serious article, really, but they could at least be a little more informative. I am not a fan of the Battlecruiser series, but even I know that it was initially released way earlier than the developer wanted. It literally was not finished, but the publisher released it anyway. Why not at least mention that when talking about how buggy it was?
Likewise, why not mention that it was the EA marketdroids who chose to put McGee's name in front of Alice, and that he went on record many times saying he didn't want his name there? It wouldn't take away from how overrated the game is.
Ah well. Can't believe it looks like no Diablo2, Tekken, or Soul Calibur series (a decent enough fighter, worlds better than Tekken, but the amount of hype it has been getting lately is just insane!). And how could DOA3, one of the 'most despised by the hardcore fighting fans' games around, be overrated??
And yes, yes, I feel DOA3 is underappreciated. The main complaint of most people is basically "It doesn't play like VF!" or "It doesn't play like Tekken!" or my favorite "Any overt sexuality automatically makes a bad game!" They won't approach the game on its own terms, to discover all of the cool little innovations, depth, and highly tactical gameplay it allows, while still being very accessible for new players. Of course, it could use a much better training mode and AI (a huge problem with the Namco games, too). Most gamers just don't even know about all of the cool stuff you can do, and how well balanced the game actually is. Hopefully the online competition in DOA Online will convince some fans to take it more seriously.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Knowing Gamespy, we'll see the top 25 underrated games in a couple of weeks.
Bushido Blade - Man, this game got incredible reviews. Shame that it's about as much fun as waxing a flaming Pontiac with your tongue.
Chrono Cross - Don't get me wrong, this is a fucking good game. But it really didn't live up to Chrono Trigger, or the hype overdrive before its release.
Turok - What were people thinking?
Dungeon Siege - Fully moddable Diablo Clone. Imagine how cool it would be if someone did it right?
Diablo 2 - Buggy and imbalanced since its release, some 4-5 years ago. And yeah, the lack of modability is a big problem in this day and age.
Every Final Fantasy Game Since III (Except Maybe IX) - The story would hardly hold a shitty movie together, and the gameplay reminds me of obsessive/compulsive disorder. So overrated that I can smell it from here.
Daikatana - Hahahahahahaha.
Black and White - Heh.
Mortal Kombat III - After actually pulling off a pretty decent game with MKII, Boon and Tobias fuck it up by catering to the fanboys. You can thank these fuckers for the "Dial-A-Combo" concept that has plagued fighting games ever since.
A special mention to every game ever reviewed by Nintendo Power. I trusted you assholes when I was a kid.
Also, five bucks says that the Gamespy list includes a pre-1988 "credibility-builder" game, just to show how hardcore they are. Any takers?
First, Myst was easy to install. You stick the CD-ROM in and it installs itself in your brand new Win95 install. Other games required you to screw with autoexec files (I still have nightmares about DOS4GW.EXE).
Myst was easy to play. You click, and something happens. You click on the side of the screen and you move.
Myst was pretty to look at. Oh sure, it was a slideshow, but to those outside of the computer culture, a pretty picture is a pretty picture. To us, we don't see a pretty picture; we see a pre-rendered (PRE-RENDERED!) single image flash up. But outside our "worldview," does it really matter if it was pre-rendered or not?
And finally, the plot, considering what was out at the time was pretty decent.
Now compare that to, say, Duke3d or Syndicate, which were out at the same time. They required a dos installation, required the use of all 10 fingers, and, to the uniniated, didn't look at all as good as the pre-rendered (gasp!) Myst.
I think Myst blows. But someone thought it was fun. A lot of someones.
playing that game is sheer displeasure. good graphics, but the game is very easy, the voice acting is annoying as hell, and buying things in the store requires so much navigation that it's not even worth it (you can get LOST in the store, and if you get too close to something you can't afford, you have to watch an unskippable 5 second animation that tells you you don't have enough money).
Terrible pacing, half-assed level design, good graphics. Screw that crap, Rare's embarrassing itself there.
Final Fantasy VIII:
I know Final Fantasy VII was overrated for what it was, but at least it was fun. Final Fantasy VIII's hype was legendary.
It started off being the first Final Fantasy with proportional characters, to being a life changing event when it was released. Received near perfect scores in most gaming mags, that within a year began to pan it as if it were the cool thing to do.
Grand Theft Auto III/Vice City:
You take away the fact that it's dealing with "Mature" themes and what are you left with? The graphics are piss poor, the gameplay is shoddy, and above all the game just gets boring.
Metal Gear Solid II:
Metal Gear Solid was a standout title for the PSX, on the PS2 it was just another espionage game. Amazing how being on the shelf for so long tarnishes the WOW factor. Really now, organisms in the White House you say?
It seems to me that just about every FF game has been way overhyped, at least the ones I have seen here in the US.
1 - The 8-bit FF on the NES, wasn't exactly revolutionary, it was just another swords and sorcery RPG, ala Ultima. Though, I don't recall much hype at the time, I may have just missed it.
2 - On the SNES brought us a lack of control over the party (ok, I could switch between the premade characters, bleh), and a melodramatic storyline, the goal of which seemed to revolve more about the main character trying to pick a girlfriend, than saving the world.
3 - Its now Swords, Sorcery, and Machine Guns, WTF? Didn't the game designer's mothers ever teach them not to bring a knife to a gun fight? Obviously not. The Esper system was interesting, look ma, now everyone's a mage. Oh, and we all can cast Ultima a couple times a battle, so the game is just now boring as hell. The story was, at least, better than 2. It had a rather trite bit of self discovery, but at least its not more of the "pick your girlfriend" crap from 2.
7 - Ok, we don't feel like inovating, so we are going to use some really bad 3D graphics and hype the game on pre-rendered cut-scenes. Just ignore the hand drawn, 2D, backgrounds that you are running around in. And once again, the game designers still think a sword is a good thing in a gun fight, but hey we all have a zillion HP, so that doesn't matter. Now, lets see we need a story, oh I know, "pick your girlfriend, oh and um, save that world thingy.", "Didn't we do this in 2?", "shh, just keep quite and no one will notice that this is a really bad rehash."
8 - Alright, alright, a sword in a gunfight might not be a great idea, so will give the main character a sword, no a gun, no a sword, no a gun, wait, its both! And people seemed to like that esper idea, so we'll extend that, but we can't make it simple, no it must be cumbersome and confusing.
Ok, I'll admit at this point my FF knowledge sort of runs dry. I watched my girlfriend play FF8 for a while, and realized that I didn't even want to bother. I've heard rumor that there was a 9 and even a 10, but I was so disappointed in the series that I haven't bothered. Something just feels wrong to me about a game that has to boast the amout of FMV's it has, they might as well tell me that the story is a bad retread of a bad retread, and that there will be little in the story that is refreashing and new, or that isn't so overly melodramatic as to be painful. Maybe its just me, but I don't want to worry about how this girl or that girl feels about my character, I just want to strap on a sword, grab my magic tome, and go off and save the world, the girls should just be window dressing on the side, to swoon over me as I slay the dragon, excepting those women who are helping slay the dragon, and no I don't care if they have to hots for another character. Moreover, what ever happened to allowing me to pick my party? Ok, so it doesn't work well in these interactive movies, but it works very well in a game, and I thought that's what I was buying.
Ok, I'll get off the soapbox now.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
You are a fucking moron. Final Fantasy games aren't overrated, they're simply the best RPG's ever.
FF7 had crappy 3D graphics? Is that why _everyone's_ jaw was gaping when they first saw it? Is that why it took other consoles and the PC _YEARS_ before they had anything that looked as good?
You are a fucking moron. Final Fantasy games aren't overrated, they're simply the best RPG's ever.
FF7 had crappy 3D graphics? Is that why _everyone's_ jaw was gaping when they first saw it? Is that why it took other consoles and the PC _YEARS_ before they had anything that looked as good?
Turn a little bit this way, I can almost feel the air comming off you fanboy.
The FF series is, at best, an ok RPG (a sad abuse of that term really). The stories are not at all inventive, the dialogue is terrible (though this may just be a problem with translation), and the worlds so badly conceived that I can't manage to maintain a state of suspended disbelief. As far as I have seen, they are the poster children for liner story lines. FF3 had a great example of this, you were talking to some camp of outlaws and they were asking for your help, if you said no the leader would respond "but you must" and ask again. He wasn't kidding, you were stuck if you didn't say yes eventually.
As for FF7's graphics, you must be kidding. The pre-rendered FMV's were nice, I'll grant, but the in game 3D was revolting. Not that I blame Squre too much for that, at that time the idea of 3D graphics was starting to hit its stride, and everyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But the character models were just sad, even at the time, I would have sworn I could count the number of polygons used to create each character, without taking off my shoes. They would have done better by sticking with well drawn 2D sprites for the in game graphics, and leaving the 3D stuff to the pre-rendered scenes. If "everyone's" jaw was dropping (hardly, I know I'm not alone in my belief), they were being hoodwinked by the hype. As for the PC taking years to have anything that good, that's not too suprising, dedicated vs. non-dedicated hardware. And as for the other consoles, the PS was released in the middle of an upgrade cycle for Nintendo and Sega, their hardware was a few years old at that point, so this isn't suprising either.
Sorry I don't agree with you there, but FF7 sucked on nearly every count. But that is just my opinion, so YMMV.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I mean, c'mon. I liked Soul Caliber, but this game was really little more than a graphics update.
Perhaps the problem was the SC was already incredibly gorgeous in comparison to other fighting games, but when I got SC2, I was completely underwhelmed by the supposed greatness.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I read the entire sorry article and I have to say they are morons for saying NWN and SFC were over-rated. Especially since SFC 2 and 3 improved upon the original SFC.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Comeon, it is a button masher. Even though I have had experence with other fighters, the stupid thing rarely registers the commands you give your stupid characters correctly.
You keep mentioning "Cool Stuff" yet don't give us any examples. Pretty much sounds like typical fanboy speak, make it sound like the greatest thing ever but never mention what make it great.
I personally think you can't consider Daikatana an overrated game. I've yet to meet one person who had anything nice to say about that piece of dribble. If anything, many reviewers could not wait to go to town on the reviews before the game could ever come out...
Totally agree! I never saw a positive review of John Romero presents John Romero's Daikatana so how can be called overrated? It seems many people think this is a poll of games that they think sucked, or that other people liked and they didn't. The best example (and I bet will be #1 on the list) of what this article is about is Black & White. I think it was given very high marks from most reviewers, but really wasn't that good. Too many folks (including myself) got caught up in the technology. It took a while to realize it just wasn't that fun.