PC games with good idea, but bad execution

Cafe Society
41

Well, I’ve spent less than 10 hours in it, that’s true. However, I’ve played through the original SC a few times, and I’ve played through the the single player demo. So yes, I couldn’t be expected to be very good at it yet. However:

But it is heavily slanted against new players, too much for me to invest the time and frustration to get out of the novice stage. I am familiar with the interface, but yet still don’t seem to have a chance. And once you die, you have a long wait before you can try to learn again.

Oh, and it’s not necessary to quote my entire post when you’re the very next post in line.

42

You know what I liked about this game? (Like being used facetiously, as you’ll soon see) You start going, kill monsters, climb down this rope, go around this ledge, cross this chasm, and just before you leave the exit or whatever, you look around and notice that you started the level a mere six feet below where the exit is! If only Aes Sedai could fly, or at least climb. Or carry a rope or something.

I swear, the levels were laid out like that every freekin’ time. :confused:

43

i’ll vote for black and white too.

isn’t this that game with a bunch of alien spectators cheering you on as you try to complete yet another jumping puzzle? :slight_smile:

44

Yes, if only the Aes Sedai had something akin to magical powers. In this game, their powers were basically just the weapons from Unreal. The character starts out with the fist spell, then gets the pistol spell, then the shotgun spell, then the rocket launcher spell.

The really frustrating thing was that the game actually had an innovative, fun element to it. One of the multiplayer modes let you set traps, fake walls and other defenses that the other players would have to breach. It was actually rather fun to play, and a good change from other straightforward deathmatch/capture the flag first person shooters.

The problem was that I think I was only one of about three people to ever play it online, and the other two players were on the other side of the planet.

45

Hey, I tried to play the WoT multiplayer, but the three of you were never on when I wanted to play! :smiley:

46

Hey, some of us like turn-based combat! And it’s only the guns that were horrendously underpowered–the tech melee weapons were quite good.

I had two main problems with the game. First, it was possible to max out your level advancement and get amazingly overpowered just by doing the side quests–I thought the end game was too easy. Second, the aforementioned plots–it felt like several plots were abandoned halfway through the design phase.

47

Wow, I actually forgot Arcanum had a turn-based mode - I just ran around fricasseeing my enemies. Give me Final Fantasy Tactics (the original, not the GBA game) for turn-based goodness. :smiley:

How about Ultima9 (or even 8) as another nominee? Though with the way the plots went, I can’t say either started as a good idea… and 9 was buggy as hell with the switch to 3D. I’d have to say the bastard’s guides are the only ways I can enjoy either game.

48

Alien Legacy

It was a good game, cool concept. You start ona one planet colony adn gradually spread to other planets in the solar system (very much like oour solar system). You research technologies based on artifacts you find (hence alien legacy). Each planet or moon etc can be explored by sending a ship down to a zone.

There is a time limit on the game however. After 1000 turns or so, a race of aliens show up and a bunch of stuff happens that you have to b e prepared for, plot-wise.

The rub is that sending ships to explore planet zones is supposed to not take up any game time. Problem is, it DOES! In fact, it takes up a whole day for EVERY ZONE.

When a planet has 60 zones or whatever and you need to visit each one to find resources etc, the time limit gets very tight.

The biggest problem with this bug is that as your days played count goes up b visiting zones, nothing else happens. No techs researched, no resources used, no ships built etc. you just lose days. And you only get 1000 before things start getting messy.

It’s too bad because this bug made an otherwise fun game unplayable.

49

Anyone remember Midwinter?

Great idea - after a new Ice Age your home island has been invaded & as its your job to put together a resistance movement, give the members assignments etc. and blow-up the enemy base within a certain number of days.

The sale’s pitch was all about creating teams & coming up with stratgies to defeat the badguys.

Pity that the only practical way to win was to ignore all the other characters, load up with explosives, just ski into the middle of the (undefended) enemy base, plant the bomb & wander off.
:smack:

50

Megatraveller 1 and 2.

This game had such an awesome character creation process.
But that’s about it.

51

I’ve got to agree with Republic: The Revolution and disagree with Tropico. Man, I loved playing SimCuba! Now, I was one badass el presidente…

Fallout: Tactics and X-Com 2: Terror from the Deep both suffered from the same flaw – the missions were too-freakin-huge. X-Com 2 brought spending hours hunting for the last alien hiding in a closet in a 8-level dungeon of 256x256 floors to a whole new level. I never finished either of those games, despite a professed love of the genre.

Once Upon A Knight had promise of a tongue-in-cheek humorous RTS involving “swords, sorcery, and cows”. Sadly, the humor extended no further than the occasional cutscenes in the Official Campaign, and the gameplay was subpar.

Kingpin was a FPS ostensibly about you seizing power in a gang to avenge somethingorother, with tantalizing promises about recruiting hirelings, and having them perform objectives for you on each level, with a punishment/reward system for you to groom your followers! Instead, you got the occasional sidekick who stood in your way, shot aimlessly into the air, and could only be punished by shooting him in the head. …which I did with alarming frequency.

The list goes on.

52

Because both games used the complete character generation process from the pen 'n paper MegaTraveller role playing game, even though the vast majority of the skills you could gain had no function in the computer game at all.

Talk about wasted potential but probably not something that could have been helped given the limitations of hardware/software at the time.

53

X-Com: Terror from the Deep was also unfairly difficult; even at the lowest levels of trickiness it was possible to have an entire team wiped out by sheer bad luck. The game was about 15% too hard to be as enjoyable as its predecessor.

54

Horizons Very little that was advertised to be in the game was in the game, and the developers lied through their teeth to the beta testers about the various features that they turned out to be too incompetant to code.

Have to agree on Black & White. That game had truly craptacular gameplay. Just moving around was a total pain in the ass if you wanted to end up someplace looking a certain direction. Whatever happened to pressing a key and moving? And the villagers were so stupid it was inbeleivable…I don’t think they could have taken a dump without me showing them how each time. Having to waste time, for instance, asking the stupid villager to harvest trees each and every friggen time that they chopped one down, without any way to get them on some sort of automatic was beyond rediculous. Villager AI was simply non-implemented.

I disagree on Arcanum however. Maybe because I always play mages…having a guy who could disintigrate his enemes and teleport around was fun.

55

Oddly enough, I just finished playing through Arcanum a second time. The first I was a gnome technologist, and I had a hell of a time finding armor that fit, let alone surviving combat. This time, I was a half-elf mage who maxed out both Beauty and Willpower, learned all the Black Necromancy and Conveyance spells, and was decent at melee combat. Having played both sides, I now know that mages have it a hell of a lot easier in this game.

Mostly because ‘magickers’ get to use the best armor, rings, and weapons - stuff that will boost your abilities dramatically while doing fair amounts of damage, while being fairly inexpensive to obtain. The armor I ended up using for the entire game was obtained fairly quickly from a shop, and it was better than anything I found for the rest of the game (possibly; I found a suit of magic plate in one of the very last rooms, but couldn’t identify it, so didn’t bother to pick it up). Summing three mummies and hiding behind them while they pummeled enemies made the manditory fighting sections a lot easier. Even worse was that magic players could still benefit from tech - if you have the gold you can buy manuals to give you the skill to make items from found schematics without spending character points. Technologists don’t have the ability to benefit from magic like that, and don’t get a comparable amount from their own tech.

56

Four flippin’ words: Defender of the Crown.

You’re one of six lords trying to take over England, three of which are your enemies, and two of them your friends…intially. You raise an army to defend your castle and conquer surrounding lands, and also get to raid other castles and fight for honor in jousts.

Pretty neat, huh? Well, here’s what the actual game is like…

Your castle was raided while your guards were asleep! Lose half your gold!
Enemy lord ambushes your sheriff! Lose half your income!
Castle raided again! Guards were asleep again! Lose half your gold!
Danes rip path of destruction through your lands! Lose a territory!
Vikings assault home castle! Lose half your defenders!
Lose half your gold to another raid! Guards freaking useless!
Zulu explorers with really horrible sense of direction accidentally set off gunpowder stores! Lose a castle!
Evil wizard attack! All your soldiers turned into sheep!
Your raid doesn’t go so well, mainly becuase the guards you have to deal with are 1. awake and 2. deadly, so you get captured and have to spend several months negotiating your freedom while your adversaries take over all your lands, and oh yeah, you’re out a huge ransom as well!
Opponent in joust takes dive! Lose all your lands and army! Argue with self about why you bothered to get out of bed today!

DotC has all the strategy, intrigue, and excitement of getting repeatedly stabbed in the chest. I don’t know what moron thought that anyone would stand for a game where you’re CONSTANTLY bled dry and can’t ever do anything about it.

Oh, did I mention the battle system? Pick one of four options and watch. Yeah, that’s it.

It’s not strictly a computer game, but I nominate NFL Blitz as well. It’s supposed to be a smash-mouth, no rules, wide-open, high-scoring slugfest. What it is is the single most neurotic vision of football I’ve ever seen. Yeah, it’s 30 yards for a first down…except that the field’s half the size of a real field, so it’s really 15 yards…and since defense is absolutely pathetic in this game, that’s not a big deal anyway. Oh, and isn’t it cool that pass interference is ALLOWED! Yeee-haa! Except that you can’t just hold, push, or take down the receiver, you have to do an human-cannonball infinite-risk flying leap that leaves your receiver wide open if it misses. Don’t even get me started on the defenders-always-faster garbage.

57

[QUOTE=Jonathan WoodallThe UI is well nigh impossible, and after you open the box, the game won’t play right unless you let it sit for two hours running a special program designed to train the AI.[/QUOTE]

Whoa, really? Jeez…I think that’s the worst “feature” I’ve ever heard of!

Why couldn’t they just “train” the AI at the factory? Was it supposed to run off of unique algorithms generated from your CPU’s serial number, or something?