Superman 64 was a hell of a mess
Seconding this one. I was like 11 years old and it’s the first time I can remember being disappointed when getting a game. Went from like Mario 64 to OOT to Banjo to Superman 64 and hoo boy what a drop off.
You didn’t like flying through 150 rings?
There are way more rings than that, and they’re actually the best parts of the game. It gets so much worse in the levels without rings. Awful combat, terrible puzzles, inconsistent framerate, and thoroughly unclear objectives.
Oh, and everyone’s favorite: escort missions!
escort missions
Clark Kent must really have not made much money as a reporter if he had to walk the streets at night too
That shitty mobile version of SimCity.
Took a beloved childhood classic (the original SimCity) and took a giant free-to-pay shit all over it.
If you haven’t given pocket city 2 a try yet I highly recommend it
Ooh, neat. TY!
The app store is a massive pool of free-to-play shit.
Mario is missing. Imagine being a young kid thinking this is Mario 3/4 (can’t remember where it fit in) and it’s a platformer not realizing it’s an educational game when you got it. What a pos, greatest let down of my life.
Difficulty-wise, The Lion King on SNES. This game shattered my childhood.
same tbh
Who Framed Roger Rabbit on NES. Ghostbusters was more disappointing, but I’ve at least kinda figured out how to play it over my lifetime. WFRR I’m clueless on. I think it’s some kind of point and click, but I’m not really sure. There’s a part where you have to call a real life telephone number to progress.
Pretty accurate depictions of what it feels like to play these games.
A bunch of early access survival crafting games on steam in the early days of early access. One was trying to be like starship troopers and it got like one update
Starforge?
Yup that sounds correct. That game taught me a good lesson about early access.
Oh god, survival crafting games were a dime a dozen back then. Though I am eagerly awaiting the 1.0 release of Satisfactory next month so clearly I never got my fill :p
The factory must grow, whether in 2d or 3d
The 4th game i made public
Its a mobile game where you have to find 4 “hidden” painted eggs. It was supposed to respawn the eggs in different spots, but i dont think i ever tested the game so i didnt know it didnt work.
There is also a score that doesnt work and a high score that cant go past 40
This is the game i spent the least time or effort making, copying everything from the last game i made, but changing the textures and modifying the part of the spawner of the collectables where they spawn randomly on the screen to appear at one out of a set of positions
Superman 64.
Weeks and months of hype (the era of print gaming journalism), Blockbuster stocking 100 copies on launch day for “guaranteed availability” etc.
Then I finally popped the cart in, and this thing was so bad it just defied all logic. Horrific controls, shitty graphics, unclear user interface and objectives, terrible draw distance. Timed level segments and insane difficulty.
There might be “worse” games but I have never been more disappointed in a release than Superman 64.
And don’t forget the oddly weird multiplayer.
Sonic 06. This is coming from someone who eagerly wanted to be optimistic about the game, especially given how, on paper, it seemed very reminiscent of the Adventure games. I purchased an Xbox 360 and the game to try it out, to see if it really was as bad as people say it is.
It was…very sloppy. There are glitches everywhere, to the point where a significant amount of deaths will occur due to them, such as wall running physics just randomly breaking, causing you to fall into pits of lava, having to hit the jump button 10 times just so Knuckles jumps off of a wall every time, and even when not considering the glitches, the controls just feel awkward and clunky, Sonic himself is slow and the physics leave a lot to be desired. I enjoyed the story much more than what the gameplay had to offer.
I wouldn’t say worst, but maybe greatest difference in expectation vs reality - “My Time at Portia”.
Cutscenes and voice acting were janky. The UI felt like it was originally an MMO and feels odd for a single player game. The gameplay loop felt tedious and seemed to disrespect the player’s time.
Maybe I needed to give it more time, but for a game that I thought had generally good/great reviews, it wasn’t clicking for me.
Desert Bus.
This game is pain on purpose.
Yeah, can a game even be bad if it’s excellent at what it intends to be?
This reminds me of a method of trying to evaluate art in an objective way. Basically you ask yourself 3 questions:
- What is this trying to do?
- Does it succeed in what it’s trying to do?
- Is what it’s trying to do worth doing?
If the answers to 2 and 3 are “yes”, then it’s probably a good work of art. This helps remove the subjectivity of “do I enjoy it?” when evaluating a work.
I would say the answers for Desert Bus indicate that it is indeed a good work of art. It succeeds in being a monotonous parody of a video game which makes a political statement about what games would be if they lacked any fictional elements or conflict. And I think the statement P&T were trying to make with this game was definitely worth making. Plus, we know from the amount of people who play it as a streamed challenge game that there is some desire for a game like that to exist.
The fact that it is talked about and marathoned decades after release mean it’s good art
I wrote that essay back in 2021, and three years later time proved all of it correct. This game straight up killed the series.
As somebody who likes Tetris but essentially had no idea about PuyoPuyo until I came across that comment, that was a brilliant yet depressing read. I’m currently busy with life but wishlisted some PuyoPuyo games for this winter, just because that article outlined such an interesting game. It’s kind of hard to find something for current platforms in Europe though…
If you want functional online, the Switch version of Puyo Puyo Champions is the only title worth bothering with. Specifically Switch, other platforms are ghost towns.
If you want singleplayer content, 15th Anniversary, 20th Anniversary, and Chronicle are all peak. None of these games were released outside of Japan and they’re older titles you’ll have to emulate, hence all my salt about the state of things today, but at least they do have fantranslation patches.
So there’s a sale now and I got champions on steam for like 2,50 euros. Let’s see what kind of ride I’m in for, thank you again for the input :)
Unfortunately you’re not going to find opponents very easily on Steam, as I mentioned. Japan is pretty much entirely on Switch, and the game failed to really take off in the west so you gotta play where the Japanese players are.
Yeah, I anticipated that. Just digging my way through the lectures now and will then play single player against ai or preferably multiplayer against my kids.
Myst.
I came for the graphics and because I liked adventuers. Was disappointed by the static graphics and I didn’t understand what to do at all.
Tales of Arise. The most bland plain characters ever, uninteresting exploration, plot was SO predictable, and the combat felt stiff. Kinda wrote off the entire series mostly, except I do like Berseria even though it’s combat also sucks.
Mostly any modern mobile game. Piles of shit with p2w and gambling addictive mechanics that aren’t fun but stressful…
ROTFL
