Games that were almost good

Cafe Society
21

KotOR II was almost good: it had some significant advantages over the original.

  • The combat was much better: you could select various styles - agressive, defensive - depending on the type of fight.

  • Ranged weapons were actually a serious combat option; you could alter party members’ combat tactics to suit: wield a honking big gun, then switch automatically to a melee weapon for close range.

  • Gaining or losing influence over people according to your actions was a nice idea, and the game switched primary characters often enough to make it interesting: you weren’t always you.

  • The upgrade/create/breakdown items idea could be a little fiddly, but was very handy once you got the hang of it: for the first time a character’s “Repair” skill was actually useful, and it saved you having to buy everything you wanted.

  • Lightsabres didn’t grow on trees.

  • You had a cloak that swished.

  • The story was…interesting. It didn’t quite have the swashbuckling goodness of the original, but kudos for trying something a little more complex and ambiguous: the “revisionist” take on the plot of the original as “The Jedi Civil War” was very well done, and I liked the idea of everyone being sick to death of Jedi going bad and ravaging the whole galaxy.

Now the bad news {and no blame attached to Obsidian here, who were forced to rush it out}: IT WAS NOT FINISHED.

  • The graphics were undercooked: vast expanses of barren unfurnished rooms and empty corridors: so much time seemed to be spent just wandering down grey passages into grey rooms. Choppy frame-rate in big fight scenes, and inexplicable “jumps” in movement, as if a couple of frames had been cut out. It looked like a Beta test version.

  • The biggest gripe, though, was that the story was unfinished. It stopped. And started. And stopped again. And started again. And finally fizzled out. Now KotOR, that had a real climax. So many plotlines were left un- or half-resolved, so many sub-quests just evaporated: Pergagus is destroyed. Telos Station loses its fuel supply. We’re told that the restoration of Telos is crucial to the future of the Republic. Go to Nar Shadaa. Run round endless empty corridors busting your hump trying to piss off the Exchange. Piss them off. Strike a deal with the Hutt to restore fuel shipments. And…that’s it. That whole storyline simply vanishes. No-one even says thanks. It just disappears off your “Active Quests.”

And so on. That game could really have been something if Obsidian had just been given 6 months to tidy it up: as it is, it’s half a game that ultimately goes nowhere.
Finishing KotOR gave you a real sense of achievement, but I only finished the sequel in order to have done it: I played through the original about 6 times exploring all the various permutations of characters, but I have no inclination to play KotOR II ever again.

Oh, and it’s hard to take a Jedi Master seriously when he looks like the bass player from Spinal Tap.

22

Rascal.

I was a diehard PSX fan at the time, and I subscribed to PSM (or whatever it was before then, don’t quite remember) and a couple other game mags, and followed this one closely. It sounded like it was going to be the GREATEST GAME EVER. The plot, characters, storyline, etc were just perfect. It seemed like it would be a gift from God to our PlayStations.

Then I got a demo disc in the mail. I popped it in and gave it a shot. Holy Lord! It was IMPOSSIBLE to control that little dude. IMPOSSIBLE. The camera angles flipped around on you just as you were about to jump over a chasm, crevice, or hole, and you ended up literally taking leaps of faith the whole way throughout. The combination of seemingly LSD-influenced cameras and a control scheme that had you wanting to gnaw your fingers off at the knuckle ruined everything that was SO RIGHT about that game. That game was the first, and only, videogame to be sentenced to capital punishment under my regime. I found jars full of pennies, handlebars, towel racks and anything else hard and easily detachable, and used them to give that CD the brutal punishment it deserved for bringing its evil self into my home. I smashed and tore the thing up into shreds and then banished it from my kingdom forever.

I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. Scary, huh?

Die By the Sword was an AWESOME concept done beautifully except for really bad camera angles. I loved that you could control your sword swing with the number pad, though. If it weren’t for the cameras I would’ve bought it in an instant.

23

Damnit, I was going to say that.

Well, I’ll settle for agreeing with you. I really, really wanted to like it, and I just can’t. The game is just poorly designed and the control scheme sucks.

And In the endor level, it’s almost impossible to avoid the ewok booby traps even though you can see them, because apparently walkers can’t walk over a little hill. No, they have to walk between those big logs supended in midair.

There’s something wrong when your stormtroopers are beaten by ewoks…again!

24

Aliens vs. Predator 2: Primal Hunt

Uses the same engine as AVP2, expands on the storyline, allows you to play as a pred-alien, wield duel pistols and deploy sentry guns.

But it doesn’t work nearly as well as the game it’s an add-on for. The levels are shorter and thus, just become a constant barrage of bad guys trying to kill you, without a chance to build up atmosphere. The storyline isn’t nearly as tight either.

I’ll also second Black and White. I loved the first island(And I can still remember the boat song to this day) but I gave up when I reached the third island. Plus, I got really annoyed when my little idiotic worshippers kept starving themselves to death because they wouldn’t stop worshipping every so often to go home and eat something. My creature wasn’t much better, once getting the idea that eating anything was bad, so he’s keep starving to death. I was trying to keep him from eating the peasents, damnit, not everything.

That and the “Good/Evil” system was broken. I tried to raise my creature to be good, but the rating said “slighltly evil”. My friend came over and played the game for a few hours. Same Machine, same copy, buy from scratch. He trained his animal to use the peasents as soccer balls and act like he was godzilla. He got a “slightly good” rating. WTF?

25

It was even better with mouse control for the sword. There’s something very satisfying about a perfectly placed and vicious slash lopping the head off an advancing orc.

26

I’m going to offer up Final Fantasy VIII - possibly the most ambitious entry in the saga, it really offered up so many great ideas only to flush the game down the toilet as a whole with a few crippling problems.

Pro: Creatively posited an “Old Jedi Order” type system where you were not the lone hero, but just another member of an entire army of “Jedi-esque” characters, down to living in dorms, getting paid a stipent, and in gigantic moving fortresses (the “gardens”) and working with trained monster assistants. The game’s entire vibe is very unique, in a good way - almost completely traditional sci-fi, which is rare in RPG’s. The cities and locations were more than inspired - they’re some of the best that the series has seen. The game also works an interesting angle with the two different time periods (playing as Laguna in one and Squall in the other) and the interactions between the two.

Cons: Plot goes completely to hell about halfway through, with one of the most ridiculously stupid twists I’ve ever seen in any work of fiction (everyone suddenly remembers that they all lived together as children and that the enemy antagonist was your mommy). Ridiculously stupid and confusing “Triple Triad” card battle sub-game that’s necessary to obtaining important items. 98% of every battle involves using summoned monsters, though their often 1-2 minute animations cannot be skipped over. Enemies always get stronger as you get stronger, leading to actual strategy guides based around how to not build up your character - ludicrous.

27

I wish it was. The worst part was that every time a lawyer used this ability, it was acompanied with a roughly five second animation and annoying sound. So if you had twenty cities, fifteen of which are being lawyered, then that adds more than another minute to every turn.

28

I third Force Commander… I hated the demo so I never bought it. After having several debates over the merits of Rebellion over Force Commander I decided to break down and buy it for 5 bucks… Wasted money. The camera sucks, the control sucks, everything sucks with that game.
Now Rebellion is I think a good game. The only improvement I would have wanted was the ability to build ships faster and some sort of effects that made retreat harder. The game was usually over by the time I got my Mon Cal Cruisers AND my Indicators with gravity wells to keep the Empire from retreating. I was lucky if there were even two large scale space battles. I’d also make the non-name special units (like Guerrillas) more effective. It seemed like they never accomplished anything other than being escorts for prisoners constantly being shuffled off between Yavin and the homebase so they couldn’t escape.

29

I agree on the lawyerly annoyance in Ctp: it was never useful as the human player, since all it does it slow the opponent down rather than conquer, but the worst part about the game was the AI. Opponents would attack you with one or two half-sized armies when you had two or three and a full navy. And that’s when they did attack you: normally they are anything but aggressive.

But the best potential for a game with a fatal flaw – and I’ve said this before in here, too – is Masters of Magic. Great concept, decent power development, but the AI, again, was bad. Did I say bad? I mean horrible.

The game was basically laid out like Civ, with cities on small areas of a world-wide map(s). The opponents placed their field armies one square outside their cities. Yes, that’s as stupid as it sounds. You could just walk in and take their cities, then you could fight a defensive battle when they try to retake it! A blind crack baby on Soma could program AI better than that!

30

Nocturne. Some of the best horror atmosphere I’ve seen in a game, but the controls were all but useless.

31

Silent Hill 3. Great graphics, compelling storyline, pants-wetting monsters. But the controls were impossible. Maybe it was just the PC version, but I wrestled with that control pad like a drunk man with a monkey.

I also nth Black and White. It seems all I did was chase brain-dead villagers around and slap my monkey.

32

Space Station: Silicon Valley
Really cool concept and clever puzzles, there was just one tiny problem: getting all the golden statue things was impossible. Literally impossible, as one of them was transparent; there was no event made to signal that you collected the item, so you would just pass right through it. Quite a blatant thing to miss in bug testing.

33

Painkiller. I’m a big fan of that whole pseudo-medieval-gone-wrong sort of atmosphere, like Quake Classic had, and the demo levels were wonderful examples of that. Zombies and knights and demonic priests, oh, yes. The Palace was beautiful; the Village appropriately apocalyptic-feeling, and it just felt good. Then release day came, and I picked it up. It was great… well… about half of it was.

For some reason they decided that Zombie Bondage Biker Clowns from Hell were more atmospheric.

34

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines

It could have been hot. It could have been great. It turned out to be pretty mediocre, more or less an indictment of Troika’s failings over the years. As with all Troika games, IMHO, they had a good idea and never followed through*.

For one, the game has pretty cool graphics and the dialogue system is nice. Faces animate wonderfully, great atmosphere, etc. Problem? they underused everything. They made large, elaborate areas brimming with character which you had a reason to see twice. Maybe once. And there was no reason not to pack them full of more quests and things. Plus, most of it was just that: eye candy. There wasn’t anything you could really in with those nice areas. They were there to look at, not touch.

Meanwhile, about halfway through the game, stealth and diplomacy vanished. You didn’t need them anymore. In fact, you couldn’t really use them if you try. It all comes down to a brawl or three in the end. For a game based on Vampire: The Masquerade, this is unforgivable. I didn’t buy this game to spend three hours hacking away at random monsters.

Additionally, the dialogue systems simply didn’t measure up. The options you had were good, but they usually amounted to:

  1. Polite option
  2. Neutral option
  3. Rude bastard for no reason option

After a while, the game had all its good dialogue leeched out of it. There are, in retrospect, surprisingly few quests. You can run through it extremely quickly.

*Yes, even Arcanum. I still play it now and then, but it’s not a hot, awesome game and never was and never will be. They messed up a lot in that game, though in different ways. Good games are all good together. Each awful game is awful its own peculiar way.

35

Oof, yeah, add “Arcanum” to that “almost good” pile.

Wonderful concept- dwarves with guns! Victorian Ogres! A brilliant attitude and background to tie it all together. Character portraits that were real people of the 19th century modified to look like demi-humans.

But the combat system was horribly unbalanced. If you were melee based, you won without sweating. If you were magic based, you usually won. If you were gun based, you got your ass kicked. Not good for a “ with guns!” concept.

And the storyline… interesting until about half-way through, whereupon it suddenly became incomprehensible, like there was a specific sci-fi or fantasy novel you had to have read in order to understand what the hell was going on. Random jumpiness of plots (go here; now, for no reason, go there), and a final quest that involved having power-levelled massively to even be close to strong enough…

But, man- dwarves with guns!

36

Other Arcanum problems included horrible and horribly outdated graphics. Yes, that counts. And it wasn’t so much that the graphics were old that they were dull. The entire game had this bland, washed-out look. Moreover, even the great cities all had this cramped, tiny feel. The supposedly great houes of the mighty city of Tarant were… one room affairs. With nothing in them except one dresser and a bed.

The sheer array of powers wasn’t bad, but it just plain was silly after a while. It’s fun collecting all those different powers and options, but rarely do you really want any of them. Most schematics get used a few times and then never bothered with again. Moreover, most characters I made ended up too similar. You needed to have high Dexterity and/or Intelligence to use most skills, spells, and schematics. And after taking care of that, there wasn’t much left but to pump Charisma and pick up some party members.

In addition, the alignment system needed a lot more work. It did almost nothing, and when it did, it as usually merely limiting rather than opening up new possibilities. For contrast, see the KotOR 1/2 alignment system. Same scale, same principle. But in KotOR, alignment defines the character, gives them strength. IN Arcanum, this just doesn’t happen. Indeed, the only times characters even really note your alignment is to say they dislike you.

37

The same criticism can be made of Final Fantasy X. After you get Flare, Ultima, and Holy there is no particular reason to use any of the other offensive spells. This is especially true after you get a celestial weapon/armor that lets you cast these spells for only 2 MP. About halfway through the game, magic in general begins to decline in importance and it seems like such a waste of time having gone to the effort to get Death, Bio, and the other spells that are less effective than melee and that all the boss monsters are immune to.

38

I had the same issue with the last one. 4 I think? I can’t remember because I gave up on it when I was trapped in a corridor with a zombie bearing down on me. I knew it was there, but couldn’t see it because the camera was pointing straight down on the character’s head. Truly horrible controls.

Most of mine have already been mentioned but I have two more:

Fable. Too short, too linear, small world, few side quests. Had some interesting concepts if some more effort had gone into them - the aging system was interesting, but your character aged way too fast and none of the NPCs aged with him. Not very realistic.

Halo 2 - the single player campaign. Beautiful game, superb controls, smart AI, terrific voice acting. What a let down. The game was so balanced, it was boring. Where was the fun-factor of the original? All the weapons were interchangeable - except for the massively overpowered plasma sword. The shotgun lost its satisfying kick. What else… huge vistas and environments that looked massive until you realized that they were really very linear and full of clutter.
Three words: Giant Talking Plant.
But the very biggest “fuck you” from Bungie - THE CLIFFHANGER ENDING. I had high-praise when this game first came out, but I get more pissed off every time I think about it now.

39

Not only that, but do you remember how they deal with the fact that they forgot all this? They start to speculate that perhaps “junctioning” magic to themselves causes memory loss. This could have led to a great climax, where characters have to decide if they are willing to sacrifice their memories to become powerful enough to defeat the villain, but instead, they never mention it again.

Ridiculous

40

OK, I’m gonna throw down the Jurassic Park FPS:

Trespasser
Major points for originality and intent. Craptacular implementation. I had what was pretty much a bleeding edge graphics card at the time 3dfx Voodoo3 and the same still had major graphical problems. Something tells me that installing it now with my x850XT would still make it shit the bed.

Can you say no crosshair? Yes, you used the mouse to move your little extended arm around (instead of the view). Then you held down the right mouse button (?) and then move the mouse around to rotate your WRIST!

I put this game in the category of “Games that were almost good” but you might put it into the “Games that just plain sucked”.

It was one of the first games I can remeber, though, with hollywood celebrity voice acting (Sir Richard Attenborough and Minnie Driver).