What games were trying too hard?

[Penguin_Factory]

Oh man, how could I forget Borderlands? I didn't have a problem with the cel shaded art style, but the whole punk aesthetic that went with it was really juvenile and not nearly as funny as it thought it was (Holy shit guys midgets with guns! Isn't that just the most fucking hilarious thing you've ever seen? No? Well here's 500 more of them anyway!)

 

[BiggyShackleton]

Call Of Duty Black Ops takes my vote. I had the chance of going through the campaign again recently and I came to this conclusion: this thing just does not know when to slow the hell down. I know I'm not alone in thinking this, because Yahtzee shares my opnion in his review.

Every freaking level has things blowing up left right and center, the sound of gunshots never stop and you're constantly being ambushed by 600 bad guys. Christ... it just tries way too hard to be a hollywood action shooter that I'm left dazed and disorientated by the end of a level.

But then agian, I don't think this trend is limited to BlOps... MW3 had a fight sequence in a FALLING PLANE for christ sake. If that doesn't sound like it's trying too hard then I don't know what does.

Hey the falling plane was awesome. By now I think MW knows it's just games of set pieces and explosions so on that front I wouldn't say they're trying too hard. What they ARE trying too hard to do is topping the Nuke level from COD4. No Russian was pretty bad but the family getting blown up in London was fucking ridiculously forced. It just felt so out of place.

 

[Baralak]

Bulletstorm they over did it with the 12 year old humor.I think they were trying too hard to be the next Duke Nukem.

See, I think they pulled it off wonderfully, and find the game immensely quotable. " I named him Waggleton P Tallylicker...I never got the chance to tell him.... He will be missed."

"I'll kill your dick!" "You'll kill my dick? What does that even mean?! Well I'll kill your dick! How do you like that?!"


Doesn't hurt that the gameplay is the best I've found in a shooter, ever.


On topic: Devil May Cry. The entire character of Dante. he just screams "Look at me! I'm cool! I'm so cool! Please don't laugh at me..."

Bayonetta was everything Dante wished he could be. Doesn't hurt that Bayonetta also got that style of gameplay right, while DMC fell flat on its face. The new one looks pretty good, though.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

AMMMEEEEERIIIIICAAAAAAAAA is behind this

It's a conspiracy - it's actually the Netherlands!

Spoiler: Netherlands

But why would they do it? Why would they try to hide behind...

I got it. It's a double conspiracy

Spoiler: it is actually

France, trying to hide it's colours by having them backwards

They are doing it. I knew it from the start they were up to no good.

OT: It had to be Dante's Inferno. Definitely. It was just...ugh, you know what the advertisement was like. And the game itself...

I mainly just wanted to scream Ameriiiicaaaaaa since I've been watching a buttload of Two Best Friends Play recently.

Besides if the French were behind the ending then

Spoiler: Spoilered just in case people who havent beat the game are reading

The Catalyst would totally surrender.. without a fight...., almost as if it were Fren-

MY GOD THE FRENCH WERE BEHIND IT

 

[krazykidd]

Castlevania :lord of shadows . On sentence . Le gateau est faux . Really guys? Jumping on the cake is a lie meme so late? Hell jumping on it at all .

 

[astrav1]

Resistance 2, as much as I respect Insomniac that game was a generic steaming pile of shit. Not a single good thing about it. I rage quit on the third mission, not because it was too hard but because it was such bullshit.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I get the feeling that with Saints Row 3, trying too hard was kind of the point. I mean, a major running theme of the game was how success had made the Saints into sellouts.

Duke Nukem Forever is the game that looks like a try hard next to other try hards.

 

[WhyWasThat]

Heavy Rain was trying way too hard to be a profound and thought-provoking experience.

What the developers obviously forgot was that for a story to be convincing you need dialogue and voice-acting that isn't utterly atrocious, and a plot that doesn't have more craters than the moon.

 

[Thoric485]

Dragon Age 2. When it was supposed to be sad, I laughed. When it tried to be funny, I cringed.

Also the moments in ME3 with the kid.

 

[Dogstile]

I get the feeling that with Saints Row 3, trying too hard was kind of the point. I mean, a major running theme of the game was how success had made the Saints into sellouts.

That was exactly what I was thinking. Saints are now so over the top that nothing feels as good anymore, they get that right with Gat's little speech in jail.

I think red faction Armageddon was trying to hard. Wanted to have Geomod, wanted to have rail shooter. Absolute disaster.

 

[TheDuckbunny]

Assassin's Creed. The first thing they did when making the second game was to remove the one thing I truly liked about the series. Honestly, I can't even say I like the series at all. Just the first game. You know, the one where you ASSASSINATE PEOPLE.

But no, now they have to have sections where it specifically only allows you to use mellee weapons because they broke their own fucking games by giving you throwing knives, arrows, guns, poison darts, throwing axes, bombs, bombs and more mother fucking bombs, almost all of which is instant kill. I mean, come on, who played the first game and thought that throwing knives was their favorite part? I mean, sure the combat was interesting, but they seem to be missing the entire point of their own god damned games.
I remember every single assassination target of the first game because each of them was in interesting, dynamic person who does thing for reasons, to the point that when one of them turned out to really be doing what they did just for the hell of it, the character (and I) was (were) shocked. Because it was unusual.
But by now the "villains" are just caracatures of disney characters who run around hurting and killing people FOR THE EVULZ and the main character, a mother fucking assassin, doesn't kill main characters ON FUCKING SCREEN. No, because having Ezio, the -assassin-, just fucking kill Cesare would make us uncomfortable so they have to go the fucking disney G-rated route and have him dropped off a ledge so you don't have to see him die. In a game where you can indiscriminately massacre hundreds of people for no fucking reason.


Ugh.[/vent]
Anyway, the series is trying too hard to be an actiony conspiracy intrigue story, when the best part of the original was the meticulous assinations of real, rounded, sympathetic human beings along with the implication that the main character is not tramping about on a moral high-ground. The characters were always quick to point out, when Altair would get preachy about rights and justice, that he himself is an unrepentant murderer who kills people because his master told him too, and it gave a well-welcomed releif from the constant bombardment of games filled to the brim with self-righteousness-- the view point that killing people is justified by the slightest of convenience-- the kind of game where it ends with a super-powered marine throttling an old man to death because he wasn't on the 'Merican side, and then cutting to a bunch of jets doing a fly-by of a naval fleet while rock music blasts and you're apparently supposed to be all "FUCK YEAH, AMERICA!" but in reality you feel dirty because of how blindingly fucked up the mindset behind such things is.
And ALL OF THAT was the first to go when they made the sequel. I don't even know why I keep playing them. I just don't enjoy them anymore.

Thank you! I really liked the first game and felt they completely dropped the ball on the sequels for exactly the reasons you posted, just that you were able to word it well.

OT: Braid, or what I played of it. The game tried so hard to be artsy when it just felt like it didn't belong. It actually annoyed me to the point where I stopped playing despite liking the game otherwise. It just felt really pretentious to me.