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How Not To Buy Crap Games This Season
The Guardian Gamesblog has a short guide on avoiding bad games and helping the games industry. From the article: "Say no to film and TV tie-ins - These are generally belted out in nine months by newcomers treated little better than sweatshop workers. If you're fed the line, 'the director was fully involved in the making of this game', beware. This means, roughly, 'The director sent his lawyers to the studio with a 300-page guide, warning that if it were breached, the team would be shot.'"
Even though Spiderman 2 and The Incredible Hulk were both really awesome games? This sounds like crummy advice.
Here's what I do: never buy a game until you're read some good reviews. NOT previews, which are always suspiciously glowing. After getting burned buying a few $50 games the first day they came out, I stick hard and fast to this rule.
Even then sometimes I wait a year or so until they're $20 at Wal-mart.
Game Company Database
Try to avoid games whose titles end with 2005, 2006, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, V, X, etc.
Crap is the noun (and verb) form. Crappy is the adjective.
//ducks
Wait for the review at least.
Seriously, I've found that waiting on both hardware and software purchases saves loads of money. Wait a few months until after the game has been out. Then go ahead and buy it if it turns out to be good/popular.
I see no validity in the implication that just because it's released right before Christmas, you must buy it for Christmas. There are plenty of other games that have been out for a while and proven their value. Don't be a lemming.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
I know (hoping at least) that they meant that if you see anything like a GTA knockoff its not going to be a decent game. I agree with that, but the specific inclusion of a specific race into their "bad games" definition is a bit much, IMO.
Even sweatshop workers can work miracles under the threat of being shot.
Download the game first. If you like it and play past an hour or so: buy it. Otherwise trash it.
Trolling is a art,
Say no to film and TV tie-ins:
Tie Fighter, Chronicles of Riddick
Avoid gangster adventures:
GTA (OK, maybe they meant to exclude that themselves)
The second world war is over:
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - maybe not an incredible game but it's great value.
Try an original title:
Many of these suck too...
Download an independent game:
Most people seem to think Darwinia isn't much fun to play. Certainly there are plenty of awful flash games.
terrible games based on cartoons:
Astro Boy (GBA). It's by Treasure!
I quit!
Now, I understand what they are saying here, but why the inclusion specifically of the black young man holding a shotgun? I suppose if the same game featured a young white inner-city youth roaming the mean streets, or a latino kid, the game would be ok to pick up and enjoy?
I like the way that you use selective political-correctness to try and accuse them of being racist, yet you completely disregard the fact that they also said man.
I suppose if the same game featured a woman, the game would be ok to pick up and enjoy?
The specific inclusion of a specific gender into their "bad games" definition is a bit much, IMO.
(Please note the use of sarcasm here, just to point out the article was no more racist than it was sexist)
C17H21NO4
...Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? the movie sucked ass, but the game was absolutely fantastic (on my Xbox at least) One way to avoid rubbish games is to avoid smart ass general conclusions like the ones touted in TFA
For example, Battlefield 2 or the released-next-week expansion pack "Special Forces". It's a bit of a cheek for EA to charge for an upgrade to a game that still has so many bugs:
* memory leaks
* random crashes
* an inability to allow certain users to upgrade to the 1.03 patch required to play on ranked
servers
* an apparant inability to prevent people from `bunny-hopping` which looks stupid and makes it
nigh impossible to kill people who do it, a clunky front end which prevents sensible filtering
* the game is much more laggy than other multiplayer games
* poor visual performance on all but the very latest graphics cards
Other people are pissed off with other aspects. It seems that EA is not really interested in supporting a game once it's been released.
If you have to buy it, get it from somewhere other than their `download now, play later` system, as they'll probably get less of the purchase price that way.
This article isn't about saying ALL military FPS games, licensed stuff or whatever are rubbish. It's a call to buy something a bit different for a change, and save us from the monotony of being faced with a Christmas lineup in 5 years that just reads:
Tony Hawk's Extreme Wheelchair, Brothers Of Duty: It'll Be Over By Christmas 2100, GTA: Homicide Village, Every Sport 2011, Big Film 3 or Ricer Racer: Street Edition.
Buy something a bit different, and see what happens. It might suck after all, but at least it won't be what you bought last year but with slightly shinier graphics, some new maps and a roster update.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It looks as if there is a Christmas tree perched on an Atari joystick.
Metacritic games is where I visit first.
Prettymuch if a game has an 85+ rating on here it's not going to be a total lemon.
Just last week I was talking with our facilities manager who was lamenting he hadn't played any games on the Xbox lately, but was wanting to get some more FPS and didn't know which games were any good.
We went to metacritic, used the advanced search, and printed off a list of the top 25 FPS for Xbox, stopped by Gamestop at lunch and he picked up 3 highly rated games.
The article mentions indie games, but fails to mention one of the greatest draws -- they are also generally cheap (or at least cheaper than the standard $50 per game of most large releases).
Mutant Storm is a brilliant arcade style game that combines old school frenzy with purty graphics. It is nice to see that folk are still making games like this (now, if I could find a decent platformer -- the last good game in that genre was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night). Not only is Mutant Storm a great game, but it costs less $20.
Darwinia is another wonderful game. Sure, it is a bit short (10 levels, less than 10 hours if you go through it at a reasonable pace), but some of the best games ever were rather short (Sonic the Hedgehog is still one of my favorite games, and can be beaten less than an hour -- two hours if you take your time). Add to this that Darwinia has a very different set of aesthetics from most modern games (rather than realistic graphics, Darwinia seeks to produce a very clean, artificial look, something like the movie Tron), an interesting interface, and a compelling story. Price: $30.
I know that both of these were briefly mentioned in the article, but I thought that they both deserved a bit more praise.
Rhapsody in Numbers
I've done this in the past:
Instead of buying one $50 game, buy 5-10 $5-10 games. You know, games that are a year old, on clearance, etc... Sometimes you find a good game that you otherwise would have overlooked.
If 80% of those games aren't worth playing, you still end up with one that is.
Look used.
GT4: $50
GT3 (used): $6
Will you have 700% more fun w/ GT4 over GT3?
That's not to say don't buy the $50 game. After all, many are well worth it. (ie: Shadow of the Colossus)
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
What on earth are you talking about? Just because there are some games with black men and guns you assume the industry is racist? These games just typically try and glorify the gang "culture", which is another issue altogether.
black man + gun != racist
Now, if the game was something like "Underground Railroad Tycoon", then yeah, I'd have to agree with you. But I don't even sense the most subtle hint of racism in games. At all.
Care to point some examples out to me?
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
two options:
1. don't buy games
2. go to http://www.gamerankings.com/ and don't buy anything that gets lower than 90%.
this isn't rocket science, come on.
If you've been saving Black & White 2 for the holiday season, you might want to wait a bit longer.
The game has a lot of positive reviews, but that's probably only because the reviewers didn't play past halfway into the game. For me, the later part of the game seemed to have a lot less QA and was substantially lacking in content variety.
- I feel more like a city planner than a God. I'm spending most of my time on city planning instead of impressing the people. I'm managing "tribute" (money you earn for odd jobs which you use to "buy" more building types and abilities) now instead of gaining belief.
- The game is repetitive. Every level is the exact same strategy.
- The enemy AI is very simplistic and underdeveloped. You can quickly find holes in the AI and easily exploit them, and the AI doesn't seem to get any more sophisticated later in the game.
- Even with my graphics settings at minimum on a 6800 GT, and *nothing* else running, the game occasionally and randomly went into stuttering fits for a few minutes at a time.
I get the feeling based on how suddenly this game's release was announced, that at the beginning of summer some PHBs in the higher-ups of management suddenly told the developers to patch this game up and make it ready to sell for this year's holiday season.
The game does look nice, and is kind of fun (at least until you figure out how to skip around the extremely simplistic AI). I recommend waiting to see how the patches turn out, and then maybe give this game a try when it his $20.
Not only are they tried and true, tested and reviewed, but they can be had for $15 used at EBgames. Great games never get old.
1. Don't buy anything from Sony.
2. Don't buy anything that runs on a Sony platform.
3. Don't buy anything from EA.
4. Don't buy anything from the "Square" side of "Square-Enix".
Or you can just follow these rules:
1. Don't buy any game immediately after release, wait at least three months for there to be enough reviews to give you a good opinion of the game.
2. If in doubt, play at a friend's or rent.
Knights of the Old Republic
Chronicles of Riddick
Two great movie license games.
Savvy gamers will buy games based on quality of the game, unsavvy gamers won't be reading slashdot anyway so they'll keep buying movie license games.
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I support spreading santorum
This holiday season I'm investing in a GP2X. This device has been reported on previously on Slashdot; basically, it's a handheld that's powered by open source software. If this doesn't help the "game industry," I don't know what will... :-)
Buy a game because it's good. You can find this out within days by reading through the reviews. That's not perfect - nothing in life is - but it's a very useful step.
Regarding the supposed "racism"; it wasn't racist, it was stereotyping. To be simplistic, the former is "evil" the latter may be "ignorant". However, in the real world advertising, marketing, and specifically entertainment are all targetted to stereotype groups. It's quite normal to speak of games, tv shows, or films appealing to certain ages, genders, racial groups, or some combination thereof.
I think the article writer showed poor discretion in writing what he did, but I don't think we can jump to racism either.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
This "article" reads like it was written by someone who reads the daily gripes about games on Slashdot. They really are guilty of generalizing specific game categories rather than helping anyone find good games. There are good games out there with movie tie-ins. There are great games that take place in WWII now matter how tired they are of it. Independant games are not magically good. Non-Sequels can be terrible. Now, if they said "A large number of games with movie tie-ins are very very bad. There are many exceptions though. Do some research on a title online first and see how people rate it. Check multiple sources." Actually, that's the advice I would give on any game. That article doesn't do much to actually help you. You'd get more out of going to gamefaqs.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
If only there some reviews for videogames than these kinds of stupid articles would be pointless. ...oh wait...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Just go to www.gamerankings.com
Make sure you have a Nintendo DS and a copy of Mario Kart DS and all will be fine. The game (and the DS platform) simply rocks.
What terrible generalizations.
It's a shame the author of the article isn't aware of The Guardian Gamesblog that had an entry several weeks ago titled Peter Jackson - game developer. It seems the director was unhappy with EA's treatment of the LotR games, so for the game based on King Kong he contacted the developer of Beyond Good and Evil, a great but overlooked title, and even shipped members of the design team to New Zealand, gave them information about the movie and discussed the game with them.
Yes, games based on movies used to be bad (E.T. anyone) but now that games are big business things are changing.
Pick up a DS and Mario Kart. Done.
[o]_O
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
The point is that the whole industry has gone into this mode of being afraid to try something new. Because the budget to make a game from scratch is going up and up and up, it's not a big surprise, but there are very few companies out there willing to take a chance.
Some sequels that were good include The Sims 2, and Civilization 4(the game has changed a LOT from previous titles for the better).
Bioware has been working on some new stuff, such as Dragon Age which is a while away still, but will be an original game world and rule system.
Oblivion(which has been delayed), may or may not be a great game that breaks away from previous Elder Scrolls titles, so while it may be in the series, the game itself should be more than just Morrowind with a new area to explore and adventure in.
If you look at what I and the original article was saying, a sequel in general isn't a bad thing, but if it's just the same junk as the previous game in the series with some differences, it's not worth spending money on. If a game is based on a movie that is just comming out, chances are it's being sold just to try to make more money for the movie, not because the game itself will be good. It's like "Buy Star Wars Episode 3 toilet paper", not because it's good, but because you like the movie. Crap like that needs to go away in this industry.
Sports games are one of the worst offenders out there because by their nature, each new version tends to be the same game with a different set of players. Do you need to spend $40 to buy a game that isn't different from the last year's version? If there is a new game engine and the game is really different, then sure, buy it. If it's the same crap, then skip it.
Another thing to be careful of is when the next game in a series is made by a different company. In many cases, the feel of the original game in the series may have been great, but if the license gets transfered to a new developer, the feel may get lost. So, beware...
Then theres the imfamous E.T. game, the incredibly bad Matrix games and the Batman/Superman/Spiderman comic book games which almost always seem destined to fail.
You can make generalizations that are true 95% of the time - that's why they are generalizations. There's a 95% chance that a Spielberg movie will be good, and a 95% chance that a Pauly Shore movie is going to be absolute dreck.
Are there good game with movie tie ins? Sure. But 99 out of a 100 will be shit.
On most review sites a really horrible game will still score 70%. Even Diakatana managed to score 25%, despite getting the microwave award. There are several reasons for this:
1) 85% is considered an "average" game rather than 50%
2) Reviewers are dependent on free copies of games from publishers
3) Reviewers get much better support from developers if problems arise.
Contrast that with Slashdot's review of Myst III: Exile, which earned a score of 0 because the game wouldn't install or play. Highlights include the game not running if you didn't have a 32 bit card, despite the supposed support for 16 bit, not installing if your CDROM drive had a letter higher than H (wtf?) and people not getting the game to run despite having the exact system specs as what was listed on the box.
So, what to do? I start by subtracting 20% off the typical review score. Then I try to "read between the lines" to see if the reviewer is is trying to nonchalantly slip some grips past his corporate "benefactors". Then I read user reviews, and start with the mixed to hostile reviews first and the fawning ones last.
generally a pretty good way to judge what is good and bad. not 100% but def weeds out the crap (umm midway!)
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!