Idea vs. execution

[Sylocat]

Okay, I'm new here, but I've read a few pages back just now and didn't spot a thread like this, so here goes:

1. Name one or more games that had really great IDEAS for games, great concept or innovation or really good story, but turned out awful for any number of reasons.

2. Then, name one or more games with really stupid ideas that, by some innovation, luck or skill, turned out to be really good games.

 

[Katana314]

Just Cause. I would elaborate, but I already did so here:
http://inconvenienced.blogspot.com/2007/10/tragic-games_21.html
That post also has some games that vaguely fit the question.

I've reached the end of my patience for this kind of post. If you don't have anything more to add than a link to your personal blog, then you probably shouldn't be posting. /mod.

 

[Nordstrom]

I was deeply intrigued by the idea of Black & White. I was curious what could be said about playing God. However, I found it deeply annoying to have the people either continually whining for help or worshiping in terror/reverence. Surely people could have a less binary attitude towards God that wasn't so dramatic and annoying all the time. I also found it annoying to be controlling an animal. I wanted to play God. I didn't want to be an animal handler.

Surprisingly, I found the Sims provides a more satisfying God model. Looking at the Sims world from their perspective, they can't see whether there's a God or not. The Sims can't see whether God is micro-managing or not. I think of a Sim shaking its fist at the heavens, screaming about why there's no TV. The Sim doesn't know whether anyone will answer and can't tell whether you respond or not. The Sim may be surprised by the sudden appearance of a couch but it doesn't know how it got there.

There's no equivalence to a giant monkey being God in the real world. This world doesn't have a God explicitly involved in micro-management on a personal level, not in a way that can be reliably detected. People believe all sorts of different things with little or no evidence supporting their beliefs. It's built up out of tradition and not out of verifiable sightings of monsters. Lionhead took a cliché of a primitive religion and made a game out of it. That's kind of neat but it has no bearing on how religions really work, even the so-called primitive ones.

Okay, maybe I'm expecting too much out of a game but I was hoping for something more, something with fewer whiny, stupid people and no animal handling.

 

[Mallus]

In sticking with the MMOs, I'd say SWG. Really, it isn't even that hard, very simple idea, rabid fan base, ect. and they STILL cocked it up. The combat is ridiculous, the setting grows only more and more insane as time goes on, and they've progressively murdered anything that was interesting or fun. Yes, you could play as one of a number of races, the 'level' system was somewhat interesting and actually encouraged helping out new people, use 'authentic armor and weapons' and the space flight was interesting for a bit, BUT the races were worthless and horribly unbalanced, the level system was overly tedious and equally as unbalanced, the armor was pointless everywhere but the feet, hands and head if I remember correctly, weapons were varying degrees of useless for the most part, and the space flight got old very, very fast. To mention nothing of the fact that apparently everyone and their dog is a jedi when it's supposed to be set between the original movies, 2 and 3 I think, or 5 and 6, whatever, and the jedi will basically slaughter anything and everything. Then there's the weird buff system which is the only way to get anything done, and increases your 'effectiveness' to the point where you can walk into a fortified enemy base where the rats in the kitchen are higher level then you and kill everyone there and every respawn for hours on end only to run out and have to go get more buffs.

 

[halycon404 [deprecated]]

Good Idea, Bad Game:

Planetside, the mother of all bad implementations. This game single handedly kept an entire type of MMO from ever making it by how horribly it did. Only now are we starting to see MMOFPS's start to be made again, and even then none of them are trying to do what PS set out to do. If Sony only would have played fairly, setting out to make an FPS first, and then drop it into the setting with all the trimmings planetside had.. instead of putting lots of high ideals into the game without adding any gameplay what-so-ever...

Bad Idea, Good Game:

KOTOR. I couldn't stand the idea of another mucked up Star Wars game. There hadn't been a good one made in almost a decade when Bioware released it. All they did was crap on my childhood again and again. Rogue Squadron was halfway passable, but it was only a shadow of the greatness that was X-Wing. The Jedi Knight games got rave reviews by the faithful, but I couldn't play them for more than 10-15 minutes without wanting to go play Unreal or Quake. All and all Star Wars was a crap property that was only kept alive by Star Wars People. And then Kotor came along and changed all that. It single handedly rebooted a franchise long past its prime that needed to be taken out in a back alley and put down.

 

[Chilango2]

Good Idea, Bad Game:

I'd second the B&W franchise mentioned earlier, for some of the reasons mentioned earlier, but adding "I'm a god, why must I micromanage these foolish worshipers of mine?" and "Oh boy, training a pet is so boring, so frustrating, and take forever" (esp. in the first one..), and finally "why must I master precise mouse movements to cause miracles?"

I'd also like to add Stra Trek Legacy. It contineus to amaze me that a tatical squadron sim featuring eveyr ST era and starship battles was screwed up. I mean...how? Why must every Star Trek game but two (Bridge Commander & Birth of the Federation) be absolutely horrible?

Bad Idea, Good Game

When I first heard about Bully, "GTA in school" this seemed like a very bad idea, both on an absract moral level and gameplay wise, but it was a wonderful game, better than the GTA's, IMHO, actually.

 

[ccesarano]

Good Idea, Bad Game:

The Death Jr. series. I imagine a lot of people here might disagree, or not even know, but it could have been a really cool IP for Konami. It's tough to create characters of platform games that stand out, but Death Jr. had the potential to find the same niche that Invader Zim had.

Unfortunately, the gameplay was seriously flawed, most so on the DS version of the game. The characters are all incredibly weird as opposed to interesting or amusing. The writing is also just horrible. I can't even say "should've just made it a TV show" as it would have been an equally horrid show based on the writing.

Could have been a really cool IP and been a good platformer, but bad.


Bad Idea, Good Game:

Earth Defense Force 2017. They figured "hey, let's make a low budget game that captures the style of low budget B-Rated sci-fi flicks". However, it turns out blasting giant alien ants with rapid-fire rocket launchers is insanely fun.

 

[Saylex]

Good Idea, Bad Game

Red Ninja: End of Honor.
The story was neat, the ideas were awesome, what the game wanted to do was great....but then you play it and you're like "Wow, I'd really love this if I could actually control it!" Half the time you're fighting with the camera, the other half you're trying to figure out why your character decided they'd stop wall running halfway across where you're -supposed- to go.

Bad Idea, Good Game

This'll be rather laughable, might spark a flame, but here it is. Devil May Cry.
Such a cliché idea, didn't expect it to be any good, avoided it, even when I saw it in the bargain bin. Heard about DMC2, laughed because it sucked as hard as I had expected. Then I saw Devil May Cry in that 'WE'VE GOT TO GET RID OF THIS" bin at a Target and decided that, for 10 bucks, I'd get it. I felt like I had sinned against gods of gaming for not picking it up sooner. I mean, the concept: badass half demon with a sword and guns killing demons" sounds like your typical x-box fan-boy title, but the execution was wonderful. Except for number 2, that still sucked pretty hard.

 

[Lightbulb]

B&W yes - but not for the same reasons as above. The game was fine but when you FINALLY started to get places they took your pet away. The whole reason for the game is taken away? Great!

The main on for me though is Republic. Awesome idea, one of the best i have ever heard of. They just couldn't get it to work though...

Great Idea - Nearly bad game: STALKER. It was great fun but a shadow of what it could have been...

 

[ShmenonPie]

Good idea, bad game: Herdy Gerdy.

I think that the idea of playing a herder and rounding all the animals up whilst playing against the evil pink things that tried to eat them all is a good one, but sadly it was butchered by the same people that butchered the Angel of Darkness, and more recently Free Running. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what's wrong with it, but in general it was quite frustrating, and not that much fun.

Bad idea, good game: Dark Cloud.

Another dungeon crawler was just what we needed, but it turned out, due to the pretty awesome georama system to be pretty fun to play, and I really enjoyed it, but it was mainly due to the developer, in this case the awesome Level 5, which made all of the difference.

 

[Heroic One]

Good idea, Bad game: Lost Planet
A giant unexplored snow level, cool monsters, interesting "heat" aspect, nifty costumes... but everything was hard to see, painfully easy, heat was irrelevant, and you only got to play as one guy during campaign. Meh.

Bad idea, Good game: Lost Kingdoms
Oh boy, cards.
OH MY GOD THIS IS THE COOLEST GAME EVAR~
[well okay not really but I really enjoy it]

 

[Yerocha]

Good Idea, Bad Game: Sonic 360
Sonic Team likely wanted to add some actual story and character to their series to become more than just an overused name. Sadly, they forgot to work on the gameplay and oversaturated the story itself.

Bad Idea, Good Game: Kingdom Hearts series
Square x Disney. "Yeah, that's smart. Put Winnie the Pooh in a T-rated game. There's nothing wrong with THAT." Five or so years later, I'm still sending Nomura fanmail.

 

[saganaw]

Good idea, mediocre game: Tropico

I liked the game, believe me, but I thought that the idea of running your own third-world country could have been much better executed. Of course, it's an absurd and cartoonish game in the first place (which is a strange stance to take on the third world), but it seems that the USSR should collapse in 1991. It seems that foreign policy should be about more than the United States and Russia. It seems that the United States should be a greater danger/help given that Tropico is in the Caribbean. It seems that if there is a crime rate in one of my cities then there should be crime and therefore someone who can be imprisoned. Person-to-person relations are limited to marriage and sex--but life is much more complicated than that. Why do I have to hunt around to find out who the faction leaders are? Why is it so hard to find out who my Presidential opponent is? Why are my prisons only good for jailing people I find politically inconvenient? Finally, why do my soldiers have to go to high school?

I wish it had been executed better, is all.

 

[Alan Au]

This may step on some toes, but it technically isn't even a game, so I'll complain about Second Life. The concept is groundbreaking, but the implementation is technically unimpressive. As far as I'm concerned, Second Life's greatest strength is their PR and marketing, not the virtual environment itself.

For something more along the lines of a traditional game, I'd say that Evil Genius was one of those games that failed to live up to its potential. One problem was the fixed map layouts, but the bigger problem was the way that enemies would continually appear in progressively more difficult waves. This was intended to build tension, but in reality it was just annoying.

As for well-executed games based on silly ideas, I'd go with Serious Sam. The gameplay is entirely derivative, but the execution is pure genius. It's one of those games that you feel ashamed to play, and yet you enjoy the experience tremendously.

- Alan

 

[squid5580]

Good Idea, Bad Game:

The Death Jr. series. I imagine a lot of people here might disagree, or not even know, but it could have been a really cool IP for Konami. It's tough to create characters of platform games that stand out, but Death Jr. had the potential to find the same niche that Invader Zim had.

Unfortunately, the gameplay was seriously flawed, most so on the DS version of the game. The characters are all incredibly weird as opposed to interesting or amusing. The writing is also just horrible. I can't even say "should've just made it a TV show" as it would have been an equally horrid show based on the writing.

Could have been a really cool IP and been a good platformer, but bad.


Bad Idea, Good Game:

Earth Defense Force 2017. They figured "hey, let's make a low budget game that captures the style of low budget B-Rated sci-fi flicks". However, it turns out blasting giant alien ants with rapid-fire rocket launchers is insanely fun.

Wait just a minute. When has blasting giant spiders, ants and robots ever been a bad idea?

Turning Point and Legendary (from the demo experience) were good ideas but terrible games. It is a shame they just can't seem to get FPS mechanics right. Or why they didn't buy a better engine for them.

 

[haruvister]

Just for fun, how about Bad Idea, Bad Game: Mirror's Edge.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Good idea, bad game: I'm gonna hold this one for Sims 3. It just seems like it'll be too complicated to be fun. Less babysitting but WAY more people to manage...

Bad idea, good game: I'm gonna agree, Kingdom Hearts wins this one. I only got into it because a friend rented it by accident then was like WOAH THIS IS AWESOME! Before that we wouldn't touch it.