Poll: Top 10 most overrated games I?ve ever played *WALL OF TEXT AHOY!*

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Oirish_Martin

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tl;dr

Too much to ask to just post a link next time?

Or maybe just make a short summary for those who could manage to give a shit without wanting to go through the quasi-intellectual wankery / trying desperately to be Yahtzee?
 

KILGAZOR

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Dec 27, 2010
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Tryzon said:
That's my problem with Half-Life 2: a brilliant team using intelligent storytelling techniques to tell an unremarkable story.
Damn. You just summarized my opinion on the Half Life series in one sentence. Good job sir. Damn good job
 

Gitty101

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Jan 22, 2010
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KeyMaster45 said:
Tryzon uses Wall of Text
...it's super effective!
Wild Forum user faints, Tryzon received 500xp.
It's early - but I can tell that's gonna be the best thing I read today XD

OT: HOLY MOTHER OF... That's literally the largest post I have ever seen on this site, ever. Even the articles don't reach that word count! I did read it though and don't see much discussion value here - you stated you don't like them and have given your reasons (however nit-picky and biased). Fair enough... You want a medal or something?
 

EBHughsThe1st

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Congratulations.

You made a thread about how you thought big-name releases were overrated.

On the Escapist.

Yep...

Nothing...nothing new here...

At all.

OT: I though Bioshock was a bit overrated. I watched a review a while back that said the game challenges gamers to "dig deep" to make the right choices. That's so freaking stupid, since our choice was to either kill a defenseless little girl or let her live a happy life. No real choice there. But I still really liked Bioshock. I didn't play System Shock 2 so I have no idea if it does just recycle the elements, but I don't think that really matters.
 

TheRussian

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Tryzon said:
I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by that. You think I like the Gears/Uncharted style of cover-based shooting? Not really, though Uncharted is probably my favourite game of that type by a good distance. I'm not sure what else you might have meant.

OR did you mean that I apparently love putting walls between myself and the audience? I see your point, if so.
I was just referring to the massive walls of texts, that's all. I guess proper punctuation counts, huh?
 

EzraPound

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Captain Booyah said:
EzraPound said:
3) My point is that the audio logs are a textbook example of lazy narrative exposition--compare, for example, how Half-Life 2 weaves your interactions with NPCs into the arc of in-game events. There's a reason voice-overs are considered taboo in films, y'know.
Just out of curiosity, what better alternative would you recommend? The Half-Life 2 method isn't really feasible, because the vast majority of people who were giving the backstory on life in Rapture in the audio diaries were, by the time you find them, either dead or insane. That, and to an extent, it did employ that method in terms of the countless environmental details that fleshed out the world further.

But anyway, the only other options I can think of is one big exposition scene where absolutely everything is spelled out for you (which everybody hates) or replacing the audio diaries with written text, Dragon Age-style, which is even worse. The audio diaries were useful in that they provided the viewpoints and positions of every kind of person that lived in Rapture's society, and built up the narrative gradually, layer upon layer, again with different characters. If you didn't care about the story at all and just wanted to shoot things, then you weren't even obligated to pick them up. I'm no game designer and that probably shows, but as "simple" as the audio diaries were, I can't imagine anything more effective in terms of what they were trying to convey.
I would've preferred if Rapture felt a little more. . . involving, as opposed to being a collection of set-pieces which BioShock could hang its thin gameplay upon. And while I acknowledge what you're saying about the intrinsic emptiness of the setting, I would counter that 1) it's likely that the decision was made for the setting to be barren in order to escape the demand of populating it, and 2) even if Irrational kept the same narrative angle, I'm sure they could've found ways to integrate the storytelling better.
 

Blood Brain Barrier

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I actually agree with most of the list, except Tomb Raider which is a great series that I wish they made more of. Half-Life wasn't too bad either. However, there are many more games you could have included, such as the slew of profiteering shooters and rpgs out there now.
 

Rheinmetall

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May 13, 2011
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Very interesting read! I really enjoyed it. I couldn't have said it better myself. My only objection is the Tomb Raider games. I loved the first four PS1 games for their atmosphere and the sense of isolation and danger. No music, just hearing Lara's footsteps on the snow- I will never forget that first level in Peru in TR1. And the agony to perform correctly the jumps...and the feeling of reward when you solved a puzzle. lol However the PS2/Xbox 360 games are an abomination. Crystal Dynamics killed TR in cold blood for me.
 

nyysjan

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Mar 12, 2010
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Bioshock was, in my opinion, over rated, talking of gameplay, not story, as i did not play very far, other than that, games stated i either liked, avoided or just were not my cup of tea.

Other over rated games, in my opinion, are Fallout 3 and Oblivion.
 

Tryzon

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Jul 19, 2008
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SpaceBat said:
*snippy snip*
I think KotOR arrived at just the right time for me. The prequels were a real soul-destroying endurance trial, so I made frenzied grasps at something Star Wars related that turned out to be awesome in a number of ways. I really must try the sequel, since it seems to split opinions like Obi-Wan split Darth Maul. Boom.

Glad we can have a nice discussion here :)
 

Tryzon

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drummond13 said:
Fair enough, this is the only piece of yours I've seen. I'm more reacting to these forums as a whole. The most positive posts seem to be along the lines of: "I love Skyrim, but what flaws has everyone found so far." It's a bad trend. :)
I see what you mean about those posts. Rest assured, though, that such is not my style. Perhaps I should write a personal list of games I see as UNDERrated, to counterbalance this one? I'd probably try and make it a more reasonable length, but it'd still be an epic undertaking. I'll put it on my maybe pile.
 

Tryzon

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Jul 19, 2008
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BloatedGuppy said:
Tryzon said:
Moving on from title formats, what we've got here is 2007's game of the year for 97% of the planet's population. Folk at the time went on and on about the cool powers, the non-linearity, the "surprising" twist and the fact that various themes rarely touched on in games make prominent appearances. What all these people were apparently unaware of is that very nearly everything BioShock does well was pioneered in much the same manner by System Shock, which I've never even played but can still easily tell you from secondary data deserves all the praise its prettier, more mainstream successor got and continues to get.
Couple things...

First, I did not read all of the way through your laborious wall of text. That was astonishing. I actually RESPECT the laborious wall of text. I respect that you love games so much you have a ton of opinions on them and you spent that much time spilling them out. Unabashed enthusiasm is an admirable quality. But, as an editor, that was horrifying. Consider your audience. If you're going to put that up for public consumption, you need to find a way to whittle it down into a more digestible format. You're not writing the next great American Novel here. You're writing capsule reviews summarizing why you find certain popular titles overrated. I can tell you there is a healthy population on this forum who would find this paragraph I'm writing right now to be grotesquely overlong.

Second, in reference to the quoted above:

A) Dirty pool. If you're going to put sarcasm quotes around "surprising" you need to elucidate why you thought the much celebrated twist was worthy of scorn. Just tossing some quotes around it is lazy criticism.

B) You what now? Half of your Bioshock rundown was comparing it unfavorably to a game you never even played? If you were here, I would slap your face. Don't get me wrong, I ADORE System Shock, and I'm THRILLED to see it get recognized, even by someone who hasn't even played it. Was it better than Bioshock? Eh...I dunno. It was definitely years ahead of its time, though, which is something Bioshock cannot as readily lay claim to. Still, condemning a game as overrated because it dared to follow up on one of the most criminally under appreciated titles of all time (And did you know they WANTED to make System Shock 3, but EA wouldn't let them? Did you? I bet you didn't), a series Ken Levine himself was the lead developer for...well, that's just silly.
I think I've definitely learnt the lesson that 10,000 words is too much for the average peruser of these forums. Hell, my PS2 tenth anniversary thing was LONGER, but still. Very true what you said.

A) I agree the "surprising" thing was a bit cheap, in retrospect. I should've said how I felt that

*SPOILER* Atlas was so overly helpful that when he turned out to be a fraud, I wasn't overly shocked. I didn't predict that he was Fontaine, but I could tell there was something iffy about him.

*NO MORE SPOILERS*

B) No, I haven't played either System Shock, as I admitted, but even if we treat BioShock as the spiritual successor it so clearly is, I can't really defend having a plot twist that's basically the same. That'd be like if Darth Vader turned out to be Luke's father...twice. Still, at least I admitted I hadn't played System Shock instead of acting like I had. That would be inexcusable.

I definitely didn't put it as well as I could, but BioShock didn't wow me even before I learned of how many of its supposedly revolutionary features had previously appeared to some extent in the System Shocks. Well, I thought it was brilliant for about two hours, then realised that everything was becoming very formulaic and quickly lost interest. I still wanted to see the story through to the end, but was literally just begging for a conclusion by the time the whole Big Daddy sequence came up.

I hope that's a better explanation for you. Thanks for your time.
 

Tryzon

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silasbufu said:
Wow I'm surprised you didn't put Skyrim up there, for the drama.

I will honestly say I'm not capable of reading all of that without fainting, but I'll just agree with titles such as Bioshock, RDR and that's about it ( I have no idea what Black is, never played it, only know it's an FPS ). Sure, there are other titles up there I'm not 100% fond of, but "most overrated" of all time is not what I would call them. What came first in my mind is the Final Fantasy series. Sure there's like a billion of them and people say some are masterpieces, some are junk, but I just didn't get into the series as a whole at all.

But that's the problem with opinion threads. Opinion is a *****.
You can be the most intelligent being in the Universe and tell me a certain game is the best ever made. If I didn't like it, that opinion is void to me.
Well put. I'm happy that most people here are apparently aware of what an opinion is and the degree to which it can reasonably be countered, but I've had some pretty miserable experiences on these forums before. The music list I did comes to mind. Obviously, just saying "in my opinion" before something doesn't automatically make one immune to criticism, but it's nice that the majority of these comments are reasonable, yours included.

And I have yet to play Skyrim, much to my distress, so couldn't comment on it in the least beyond such controversial things I've heard as the lack of weapon degradation. The Argonians look AWESOME, though.
 

Tryzon

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Arqus_Zed said:
Ah, so many people with valid points! Can't respond to them all, but I will say that from my personal experience, Black and Doom 3 still get far more love than I can understand. And you call Black short, yet I remember being so glad when that abrupt, unsatisfying ending finally appeared and I could leave the thing alone. Black is almost like a precognition of these modern brownfests that look set to dominate the charts for the time being. The worst crime any media product can commit is being boring, and I definitely found Black to be that.

Also, funnily enough, I entered the Jak series with #2 and still prefer it to the first one. I can't even explain why, but I found the story strangely compelling. Bit of an anomaly, but that's my situation.

Thanks again for your comprehensive criticism.
 

Tryzon

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Jul 19, 2008
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Oirish_Martin said:
tl;dr

Too much to ask to just post a link next time?

Or maybe just make a short summary for those who could manage to give a shit without wanting to go through the quasi-intellectual wankery / trying desperately to be Yahtzee?
Well, I took people's recommendation to put a link to my blog and immediately got a warning, as I expected I would. At least I tried.

And as I've said to other people, this piece is very unusual for me: I almost always write positively about games, and it just so happens that this one negative example has received way more attention than, say, that short and praise-filled Penumbra review I put on here that nobody commented on. Still bitter about that.

Call me whatever you like, but a conscious Yahtzee imitator I am not.
 

Tryzon

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Metalhandkerchief said:
I agree with all those games, especially BioShock and HL2. Though I do feel Halo (the original) should be on there instead of KoTOR, even if KoTOR was overrated, it wasn't half as overrated as Halo.

And I'm also calling Guiness Book of World Records on you, as this is a new record in lack of discussion value per word in a forum post.
Erm...thanks? As the top of the OP states, this piece had a troubled genesis, which makes it all the more irritating that so many people are apparently new to my stuff and are using this underwhelming example to judge me and my writing. What I wouldn't give to have all these people look at one of the thirty-odd happy, loving reviews I've put on these forums over the last couple of years. Even the PS2 anniversary piece generated some good discussion, despite being EVEN LONGER THAN THIS. Just try and comprehend that for a moment.

Many thanks.

KILGAZOR said:
Tryzon said:
That's my problem with Half-Life 2: a brilliant team using intelligent storytelling techniques to tell an unremarkable story.
Damn. You just summarized my opinion on the Half Life series in one sentence. Good job sir. Damn good job
Brofist!

Blood Brain Barrier said:
I actually agree with most of the list, except Tomb Raider which is a great series that I wish they made more of. Half-Life wasn't too bad either. However, there are many more games you could have included, such as the slew of profiteering shooters and rpgs out there now.
I didn't put things like CoD on here because EVERYBODY knows they don't deserve the guaranteed success they get. People called me predictable for picking on BioShock, but at least that's not as topical as CoD.
 

SpaceBat

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Jul 9, 2011
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Tryzon said:
I think KotOR arrived at just the right time for me. The prequels were a real soul-destroying endurance trial, so I made frenzied grasps at something Star Wars related that turned out to be awesome in a number of ways. I really must try the sequel, since it seems to split opinions like Obi-Wan split Darth Maul. Boom.

Glad we can have a nice discussion here :)
I can understand that, seeing as the prequels were quite bad indeed. I am not sure whether timing of release having an effect on the quality of a game is entirely fair, but I definitely understand. I wasn't searching for anything star-wars related and was just looking for a good story, so the game's universe didn't really have an effect on me.

You could try the sequel out, but I have to tell you a few things before you do:
- Remember the repetitive and broken gameplay of KotoR? The sequel does it worse.
- Bugs. My god. SO. MANY. BUGS!
- The game is incomplete. There are quite a few things that pop up and never get mentioned again. There is a mod that brings back all of this content and patches the game very well , but it's only for the US versions.

That's basically it. That was more than enough to scare most gamers away from that game or make them dislike it. The story however? You sound like the kind of person that will love it.

Don't expect Planescape: Torment level of storytelling and characters though. That's just impossible, even if KotoR 2 is done by practically the same company.

And yeah, it is nice to have a decent conversation without any insults getting thrown around, so I'm glad as well.
 

Arkynomicon

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Mar 25, 2011
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Tryzon said:
Arkynomicon said:
Yeah gotta say that I found Red Dead Redemption to be pretty mediocre. Then again I feel the same way about the entire wild west genera. I found myself enjoying the mini-games a lot more then the actual combat in it. The story was okay but at the end of the day I did not care for the main character at all. But the biggest sin that games commits is acting like a sandbox game without the sandbox fun I have associated with Rockstar games from PS2 era.

As for Bioshock I just enjoyed it as an FPS that is actually located in a cool (not grey/brown) setting, not being a war story, had some fun game mechanics with the whole magic shtick. I actually enjoyed Bioshock 2 more with it's fine-tuned combat mechanics, the bad guy options actually being relevant to the story more and the challenge of protecting the little sisters.

I didn't really get around to play the Bioshock games until this year and greatly enjoyed them for not being a cover-based FPS with regen-health system. It's a shame the upcoming game seems to use just those game mechanics. So after that fresh breeze of olden FPS fun with modern graphics my enthusiasm went down again.
...wow. I've not played BioShock 2, but apart from that, I agree with every word you just said. That's pretty freaky. We were clearly separated at birth O_O
Yeah sure, anything is possible in this crazy world. Maybe I should start a blog on my own where I rant my opinions on games I play?