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Black & White - Most Overrated Game Ever?
Following on from our earlier story about GameSpy's 25 Most Overrated Games countdown, the Top 5 have been announced, and Lionhead's PC-based 'god game', Black & White, made it to the top spot, with GameSpy suggesting: "Sometimes... people want to love a game so badly that its reputation runs away with itself." Congratulations to an an anonymous reader for guessing right, before another commenter noticed screenshots for the Top 5 had already been uploaded, doh. Meanwhile, Penny Arcade chime in on the chart, commenting: "When you deny the profound effect of Donkey Kong Country's fully rendered sprites in 1994, making the system a bulwark against the 32-bit revolution, there is no educating you", and illustrating: "If a company that overhypes games does a feature on overhyped games, are they overhyping the game?"
Black & White may have had some issues, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The only flaw I saw with it was that it should have come with 20+ levels instead of only (was it?) 5 levels.
The User Interface for the game had the best "feel" I've ever experienced in a 3D game. It was very easy to get around the world and manipulate the objects within it. It was also amazing how you could seamlessly scroll all the way out.
The "gestures" concept was also quite novel at the time.
It's a shame it did so poorly. I would have loved to see what they could have done with some further refinement to the GUI/3D Engine.
All they would have needed to do was design a few dozen levels and the game would have done so much better...
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There whole deal the FF7 was over rated because FFT, and FFX were better is just bizarre. I think they've forgotten to consider the time at which it was released.
It's easy to look back 5 years or whatever and say that FF7's graphics are mediocre, etc. But at the time it was released it broke new ground all over the place.
The argument that FF6 had a better story is valid, that's fine, but damn if you can't just rip on it for not comparing up to FFT, or FFX.
Also one of the contributer comments remarked that the story just wasn't as epic. How the hell wasn't it? A genetically engineered super-villain hell bent on destroying the world, and damn near succeeding isn't epic anymore? Ok, ok, sure in FF6 the world was actually nearly destroyed, but as for the other games, the epic level wasn't quite the same.
Was FF7 overrated when it released? Hell no. Is it overrated now? In my opinion no. Is it one of the most overrated games of all time? Not even close.
They said several times that some of the games on the list were fun, but still overhyped. I do disagree with their ordering though -- B&W was nowhere near as overhyped as Daikatana. And, as you say, B&W at least managed to deliver on some of its promises while Daikatana delivered pretty much nothing but a waste of HD and CD space.
There are so many quotes in that piece that make me upset.
Lets start with Halo.
"Look, I'm glad so many people loved Halo. My beef's not with you."
So you are well aware of the overwhelming popularity of the game, yet you think it is "over rated." Apparently you and I differ greatly on our definition of overrated, as well as your role as a game reviewer. I don't give a crap what your personal opinion is of the game. Your job, as a "professional" reviewer, is to evaluate the game and make a judgment about what most gamers will think about the game. They go on to attach the other reviewers for giving Halo high marks. Well guess what, its STILL fucking popular! If its so overrated, then why can used game stores still charge 50 bucks for it? With the numbers it sold in, the used shelves should be filled with the worthless things if the game was so overrated. Get off your high horse and re-read your job description. Its a good game, its extremely popular, and so within the realm of game reviews, is by definition, deserving of high ratings, and certainly not overrated.
Mortal Kombat:
"The game was an instant hit... Fans persevered, but its popularity was driven more by infamy than quality. "
WTF are you talking about!? Now you are saying it was popular, but for the wrong reasons? People liked it, people played it, people continued to like and play it; where is the problem? Who frickin cares why it was popular... are you honestly going to sit there and type that people dropped countless quarters into Mortal Kombat machines because of "infamy"? Get a clue.
Again, dismount and join society.
Scott
Example the first: Donkey Kong Country. I'm not going to say it was a stronger game than, say, Yoshi's Island (which they mention in that profile), but it wasn't worthless. It helped to popularize the use of "bonus areas" in every level, and because of that it gained instant replay value. It had two different characters with different abilities that (unlike, say, SMB2) you could swap between. The graphics were godlike for the time. And it came out 11 months before Yoshi's Island, by the way. It was, for its time, an outstanding platformer. The next two, however, were just ripoffs of DKC's formula. THERE'S your hype.
Example the second: FF7. I don't think it wasn't overhyped, but I don't think it was top 10 on this list. It had a huge hype machine backing it up, and after all it was a very good game, so to call it severely overhyped is a bit unfair.
And I wanted to add one game. Banjo-Kazooie... the whole game was like fetch quest city, and it only got worse in the sequel and in DK64.
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I thought this whole countdown was pretty funny. Who better to complain about how games are overhyped than... those who do the hyping!
Let's think about this. GameSpy makes their money from advertising (among other things). Who advertises on their site? The game publishers! So is GameSpy going to publish that a brand new, multi-million dollar games sucks big ones? Nope! The advertisers would leave immediately.
GameSpy, including all the game magazines, can't be relied upon to deliver impartial news and reviews. It just can't happen. All those games are hyped for a reason. The trade press gets their money for doing the hyping.
Never ever trust one of those sites or magazines for impartial initial reviews. I have seen, however, after the game has been out for a while, some impartial reviews. This only happens after the wave of hype has passed. Then, and only then, will you see a game magazine or site say truthful things.
So, to GameSpy and other game press: Stop complaining about the hype, and stop being part of the problem!
what set all the games apart, was that they let you roam free and do virtually anything that you wanted to do. for those that didn't have much of an interest in playing with what essentially a digital pet or playing as a god, the immediate gratification of beating someone to a bloody pool on the sidewalk with a bat or picking up a hooker in a sportscar rapidly overshadowed playing with a more in-depth tamagotchi.
I know that black and white was around before GTA3, but I would still rank it right there with the last two grand theft auto games, simply because the draw is the same. if black and white recieved absurdly high marks, it was because they were well-deserved at the time. they still are, really. there are very few games older than a year or so old and black and white is one of them.
personally, I think that gamespy is just trying to throw off their image of being a bunch of corporate sell-outs and yes-men by taking a few potshots at easy targets.
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But overhyped is ever so slightly different from overrated. After Daikatana shipped (hell, even slightly before it shipped), it started getting negative reviews by the dozens. Everyone was talking about how much it sucked. It took much longer for Black and White to take its lumps. Even after it shipped, it was getting rave reviews about the ingenuity, the interface, etc. In fact, it took quite awhile for the negative reviews to start coming in, particularly ones that didn't involve actual bugs in the software.
Here.
Score: 91
"The final word: Black and White is one of the most unique -- and enjoyable -- strategy games we've seen this year."
Yeah, ok schmeg.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I don't like FF7 much myself (I prefer 6, 8, and 10), but that doesn't mean it deserved every drop of hype it received. Yes, it lacked a certain amount of polish; but that was largely because at the time it was probably the most ambitious game ever made. In fact, I would go so far as to say that later FF games were slightly less ambitious, if perhaps more polished.
Rough edges aside, though, it certainly wasn't overrated.
They complain that there is no multiplayer in the original product and that it was added later. They also sight it was just Quake with better graphics. For the multiplayer section, I think that's a bit unfair, what did most people have then 28.8k so even if multiplayer did ship it would have been quite laggy. Doom III isn't going to have much in terms of multiplayer either is that going to make it over-hyped? I doubt it. Sure multiplayer offers replay value and you can see in games like STEF2 that the screwed up multiplayer aspect with lack of dev support(took too long to get radiant out and it didn't offer much) ruined the games mod potential. However I always like to think of Id games as a demonstration of graphical talent. Its like a vanilla kernel, and games that use it are like patch sets, still using the underlying tech, with changes to it and additions.
Maybe it's just me, but Diablo 2 is the most overhyped game ever made. Game mechanics? Hack'n'slash. Simply hold the mouse over enemies and watch them die. Pick up a cool weapon or two. Rinse lather repeat. The graphics weren't even good. It was kinda like black and white: fun for about a day and then tedium sets in. Black and White at least tried and succeeding in being unique, especially with interface. If anyone can mention one original thing about Diablo 2, I'm all ears.
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Sephiroth, Cloud and Aeris are three of the most memorable video game characters ever, simply because they weren't total cliches
Thats funny.
Angsty can't remember my past super warrior with huge hair
Angsty efeminate huge sword using guy that hates the world because its so cruel
Agnsty chick with a simplistic view of good and evil and a pure heart.
The only non-cliche thing is they killed Aeris, that caught me a little off.
Defination of overrated copied and pasted from www.dictionary.com :
overrate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vr-rt) tr.v. overrated, overrating, overrates To overestimate the merits of; rate too highly.
That said, Gamespy is speaking contradictory to itself based on their previous reviews. There are two reasons for this :
1. The person fails to look at the game in -retrospect- . When Halo came out, everyone was (and some still do) nicknaming the XBox, "The Halo Machine." I have yet to find or hear someone refer to the PS2 as "The System with FFX"
2. A person tends to correct himself when given the opportunity. If given the opportunity, how many of us would take the opportunity to change anything that occured within, say, the last 3 weeks?
You know when a game is _really_ crap?
I was so stumped as to how could some reviewers give high scores to that pile of festering Black & White crap, I decided I'd see what my co-workers say about it. We had quite a few gaming maniacs, including one which had been in drone mode for a year straight, drooling over the upcoming B&W.
So I give them the CD. I even try not to influence them to my negative view of the game. Like I go, "hey, cool, there's this game where you play god, and can train a cow and stuff. wanna try it?"
So they'd take the CD. And bring it back after a day or two. Without exception, none of them liked it. At all. Even the former drooling fanboy all of a sudden tried to avoid talking about the game at all.
E.g.: Only _one_ of them was confortable with those mouse gestures. That one was one of our graphics artists, and very skilled with a mouse indeed. The rest (myself included) just wished that, since the retarded interface already painted the symbols at the bottom of the screen, we'd be allowed to just bloody click on them.
_That_'s how wide the gap was between the hype and Joe Average's impressions about that game. If that's not what overrated means, I don't know what is.
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The criticism of Halo was in quite a few places ridiculous. They bashed it for using a controller to aim, rather than mouse and keyboard. Surely if you're reviewing a console game, you review it in the context of consoles, rather than PCs? The controller aiming is fairly decent in Halo and I don't seem GoldenEye being lambasted in the list for being a console FPS.
It was criticised quite a few times for forcing people to play multi-player on split screen, complaining that 4 people on screen makes for a poor gaming experience. Given that a single console can only be hooked up to one TV, how else do they suggest multiplayer be implemented? To use more than one TV, you'll need more than one console; on the PC, if you want to play multiplayer, you can't unless you have multiple computers, so how is Halo at a disadvantage here? It allows you to play on a LAN, contrary to what one reviewer suggested and gives you the option of playing on a single console. What's the problem here?
Criticism of some of the level design is fair enough, particularly where Library is concerned, but to say 'Worst of all were the levels, which offered fleeting glimpses of brilliance, but all too often degenerated into recycling the same areas over and over until you were bored to tears.' is over-exaggeration. The first 6 levels are all offer very different environments which look amazing and play brilliantly. Level 7 is repetitive. Level 8 is basically 5 backwards, but plays a bit differently, you face different foes and you go to a couple of new places, so it's not boring. Level 9 is superficially similar to 3 but has quite a few different sections and much harder opposition. Level 10 retreads a lot of level 1, but adds a few new sections and lets you drive a warthog about the place. The external environments are all stunning, quite a bit of the indoor stuff looks quite groovy and it's only really the Library that is a let down.
The last guy calls the multiplayer levels unbalanced, messy and boring, but doesn't say which ones or why. The most popular ones are probably Hang em High, Prisoner and Blood Gulch and I fail to see what is boring or messy about any of them. I fail to see what is unbalanced about any of them, especially given that a good chunk of the levels are 90% symmetrical. In fact, he says he doesn't like PC FPSes or 4 player split-screen on a console. I'm not aware of any shooters prior to Halo that could work over a console LAN, so basically his problem is... he doesn't like FPSes, especially multiplayer. That's hardly reason to call a game over-rated.
My final qualm is with their 'been done better before' award. Which console FPS done what Halo does better? They acknowledge lovely graphics. They say the AI is the best they've seen. The 2 weapons thing is innovative. So who did these better?