247 - Top 9 Disappointing Games

In this episode, we create a round-robin list of our top 9 most disappointing games. Each of us shares three games that failed to meet our expectations for various reasons, from clunky gameplay and poor expansions to soulless sequels and childhood heartbreaks. Join us as Gem, Matt, and Alex recount their frustrating experiences with games like 'The Sims Medieval', 'Dragon Age: Veil Guard', and 'Final Fantasy 15'. Whether it’s the collapse of beloved franchises or the unrewarding grind of educational games, we dive deep into what makes a game truly disappointing. Share your own gaming letdowns in the comments and stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll focus on more positive gaming experiences.

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Transcript

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So today we are going to be going through a bit of a simpler topic. We are going to do a top nine list of a specific topic, although it's going to be more like a bottom nine list because the, so the way it works is we're gonna do three, three games each, or three answers each. And we'll just go around in a round robin and our topic is going to be the most disappointing games. In that we've experienced. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the, in our entire lives. It just needs to be a, a sliver of the, the, the detritus that has become of some games in the industry To start off with, I will go to Gem. It doesn't have to be in any particular order, I don't think, but Okay. Okay. So I'm going to jump in with. The Sims Medieval. This is one. I really was really excited about this'cause I sort of like my medieval genre games and obviously this is, it's a little bit of a cheat because I know it's not a game, it's an expansion, but you still have to pay quite a lot money for them. And I got this. A long time ago, I was in a really like miserable time in my life and I just really needed a boost. And I was quite excited because Sims was one of the few games that I could actually play on the laptop that I had at the time. And I was, I was basically like, that was all I had. So I was like, if I can get the, this, it'll be really great and I can play it. I can be like a, a medieval print. Obsessed in this whole, like, I had this whole thing planned out that I was gonna do all of this, and it was so rubbish and it just ran really slow. It was really clunky. It just didn't have, you know, like some of the sims add-ons are just excellent. You know, some of the, um, expansion sets are so much fun and really kind of reinvigorate the game. But this, this didn't, and it, it was, it was. It was a little bit, it was even weirder because unlike most of the expansions that you get these days where it kind of just sits on top of the existing world and just gives you, adds bits onto it, this was almost like a whole separate like game. It was very, it was very different in a lot of ways and it, it just didn't work. And I think I struggled with it for one evening. This was a, as I said, this was quite a bad time in my life. I was quite miserable and this particular evening was a particularly bad evening anyway, and I just have so much negative association with the game with the, with just the, luckily because it was so distinct from Sims, it hasn't caused me lasting Sims related trauma, just sims medieval trauma. But yes, it was, uh. A massively disappointing experience'cause it just could have been so much fun, but it just took away all the creativity, all of the sort of intervention that you get. All of that just, yeah. And it was just clunky and buggy and weird. Like, like, um, at where, so with, with the Sims, was this. How long between the previous sim release was this DLC released? Oh, I think it was quite, quite a while. I'll look that up. Come back to me on that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because my, my, a theme of my most disappointing ones is they're the, the death of a a Beloved franchise and. I'll start off with Dragon Age, veil Guard. Mm.'cause I, dragon Age Inquisition was the first fantasy RPG that I played like with a proper, choose your own character, choose everything. Be a chosen one. And that was in 20 15, 10 years ago, that that came out and then played that, played it to death. Played the first one, played the second one, played the third one again, recently last year, played the second one, played Inquisition again, and it's just awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. And then take one, look at veil guard's trade, and you go, oh no. Oh no. What have they done? And then. I, I ended up not buying it when it came out'cause I thought it looked awful. And then watching Angry Joe stream it and then do his review of it just proved that it was just dreadful. Just an absolute ripping out and butchering of a massively successful single player franchise. Story driven, single player franchise, and it just to have all of the, the soul and DNA that comes with Dragon age has just been ripped out and replaced with corporate design by committee bollocks, and the development process was just cut into pieces by the. The executives,'cause they said, oh, right, you start off, make a single player game. And they go, oh, okay. Right now we want it to be a live service game so we can get some of that micro transaction money. And they went, but that's not what we do. Said do it or you're fired. And then a few years later on they go, no, we want it to be single player again and say, but that doesn't work anymore because we've done the live action thing. The live service things, I don't do it. Or you're fired. Then 10 years it takes, this is the thing that is so devastating and I'll come, I'll, I'll expand on it more in a, in, when I come to my, one of my other ones devastating. When you have 10 years of nothing, of wasted time, when they could have been pumping out a game every three years or they could have done, they could have done so many more. Like installments of it in different ones. And they go, oh no, it will take the, this massive long development cycle. And then it comes out and it's nothing. And it's, it's worse than nothing.'cause it's the, it's the absolute destruction of the franchise. And also they've got, they're supposed to be doing mass effect next and they've gutted the entire studio. So all the people that were there for Inquisition have left. All the people that are there for Vegar have left as well now, and they're lost a massive amount of money, completely just. The BioWare studio name has no value to it anymore. And yeah, and just, just like with the sims and your experience with the Sims, there are, there are points in time where you need a sort of a, a crutch, a a really supporting external thing to, to grab onto and steady yourself with. And games are very often that thing. And when you've got something like you imagine this, like this Sims expansion was gonna be the just the right thing at just the right time. And then you're going, oh, I can, I can relax into this thing and it'll support me when it, when it turns out to be a paper thin facsimile of the thing that you thought it was gonna be, then you end up. Flat on the floor as well. Feeling worse than you did before you, before you started trying to play the game. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So, so it was, it was, it was a, it was a standalone game. That's why it felt so different. Yeah, I did know that, obviously at the time, and yeah, it came out in 2011. Of course, it seems medieval, which is three years. Four years, two years after the, the Sims three came out. So they, they had time. But no, I agree with you, Matt. I'm wondering, do you think that the ga that gamers a little bit to blame for what's happened with Dragon Age in that we, we always want new. Like, could they, they, and, and because, because everyone always wants new, it means that they then have to kind of redo the whole combat systems. There's a lot of technical stuff that gets changed and that gives opportunity to change a whole heap of other stuff that just makes these games, you know, it's sort of tempting to like, rather than just do more of the same, they, they end up messing it all up because they're trying to do something new and, and. Amazing, and I'm just wondering if that's at least partially the fault of us. The consumers always demanding new. Not being content with just add-ons and expansions and all that. I think, I think you might have been propagandized by the capitalist machine, it being there. It's like with recycling going, it's the consumer's fault, not the corporations that are, that are in charge of it all. And, uh, no, because you look at say God of war, God of war, new God of war, God of war, Ragnarok, two games in 10 years from. Zero to two games, absolutely. Pushing the absolute boundary of what's possible in gaming and the Horizon franchise, two games in 10 years, pushing it in terms of that as well. And with Dragon Age, you go 10 years and it was, it was all the executives deciding what they wanted the game to be because they go, oh, we want, all they look at is the other things that are making. Disgusting money and then they,'cause they owned BioWare, they're able to take that. Mm-hmm. So we'll come up onto to more corporate bastard Ry as we go along as well. But Alex, you've, it's been 12 minutes and you have, I don't think you've said a word, so That's all right. I can say that. Go ahead. Um, so my, one of my first options for this is a similar. Story to yours? Both. It's a, it is a sequel in a franchise and it's a Prince of Persia. Two, the Warrior within. That's correct. Yes. And because it was such a huge shift in direction and it was not one, I appreciated that I only played about like an hour of it at most.'cause I was just like, what have they done? Why have they changed it? What's going on? Everything about it was of putting to me like. We all know, hopefully we've all played Prince of Persia, the original. Um, we all know how good that is and the, the general vibe of Prince of Persia, one, prince of Persia two was like fully emo and like really dark, new metal, edgy and uh, the music was all metal as well. I was like, what happened to the Arabian Phil, the Persian Phil rather, I should say, you know, that had all disappeared. That being kicked out the window and it was all full of rain. It was lots of rain. I remember. Although we were on a boat, I think so maybe it was a sea. But yeah, it was just generally a really grungy sort of feel. And I was like, how? Why have we done such a shocking. Turn, like what, why, what has motivated this? What has happened to our character to, to make him change so much? But yeah, it was just not something I could get on board with. And I was very disappointed and I didn't play it for very long at all. And I thought, right, well if, if the third one's the same as the second one are not gonna bother. And by all accounts, it was relatively similar, I think. But yeah, it was just very disappointing at the time. Yeah, I see. It's my, my experience with Prince pers is a bit odd because the, the fir, the third one is more similar to the first one than the second one. The second one is proper new metal lib bis system of a down. 2001 to 2004 era. Yeah. And I'm not saying I hate that, that kind of like music and that kind of vibe. It's just that the shift from the first one was so stark it didn't really feel like it. It worked. But if it was a standalone game, that's fine.'cause you know what you're going into. But a continuation from the first one just doesn't really make sense to me. Did have you seen the. The like sort, very, very short teaser trailer for the Remasters. No, I haven't there. It's just like with the Sonic movie where people saw Sonic's teeth and they, they immediately, their people were so shocked by it that they actually had to go and change his teeth. The entire And too. Yeah, and the, the, it was, it looked so awful. I haven't heard anything from it since, and it's been years. Really. Wow. When it's the biggest like, open goal ever to have. To literally take three awesome little games and use the Unreal engine and just, just re remake them all, make them all as beautiful as they, as they can be now. And so, and I, I never finished the second one'cause it was too difficult, but I played the third one so many times. Wow. Third one's a masterpiece. Yeah. And then since then they haven't, they've failed to reboot it in any meaningful way. Haven't they made a more modern version of it, but like changed up their gameplay style? Yeah. So it's like a side, is it like more of a side thing? Yeah. I can't remember exactly, but I think that got pretty good reviews. I don't know. Yeah. Just not the, I haven't tried it. It's, it's, it's one of those things where like, that should have been going up and up and up and up over the last 20 years. Said it just went up and up, up and then died and, yeah, it's a shame. It's, we'll go on to, uh, GEMS number two. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I'm going in with Final Fantasy 15, which was really disappointing. I've talked about it before on the pod, I think for all sorts of reasons. I did play a lot of it, but it's, it's a very beautiful. Game and the, the sort of personalities of the characters is really fun. And, and just the kind of way they hung out, hung around. But it was just, it was just a road trip. It was like a bros. A bros. Road trip. Trip. And. And I dunno, that just feels so different from all of the other final fantasy like worlds. It just felt like a real big departure from that. And the combat wasn't very satisfying. The storyline was a bit, and yeah, I never actually finished it. I, I basically got really, really close to finishing it and then just lost, lost the will to continue with it. It's, I mean, I think, I think Final Fantasy is really interesting because it's, you know, it is a big franchise and it has put out a huge amount of games and, and some, and, and they do vary dramatically in their quality and their style and their themes and all of that. So to even really. It's not even set in the same world most of the time. You know, it is like completely, there's, there's very little that hold holds it all together as, as a franchise. It's more just like, we're gonna call this game Final Fantasy and then millions of people are gonna buy it. So yeah, I was disappointed with that and I, and I think it's even more disappointing when you. Play a lot of a game and you put a lot of time and effort into it and it, it never hits that spot and you, you are waiting for it to get good. You are waiting for it to prove itself, and it just doesn't, and there were so many little things. I talked a lot about the mechanic in it, whose name I can't remember, but she is, she's on one of our, uh, in the front of one of our videos on YouTube and she's just, you know. Uh, she was all TNA and you know, it's all like low cut tops and high cut shorts and it's like, oh, but it's okay because, you know, we're so like forward thinking'cause we've got a female mechanic. It's like, as long as she, when she leans over the car, you can see right down her top. That's fine. You know, and it was, it was just little things like that. It just felt really unnecessary. Yeah. And, and then all the, the, the, the few girls that did, and they were girls, a few girls that did kind of get in involved with them were so tiny and slight and just, you know, it was, it was, yeah. It was all just a sort of bro. Yeah, it was way too broad for me. I like with the Dragon Age thing, the Claire obscure is feeling a lot like Simon Peg in Hot Fuzz. You both seen hot fuzz. Yeah. Yeah. So he gets, he gets carted off to, well shipped off to the middle of nowhere because he's, he's making the rest of them look bad by being so awesome. Mm-hmm. What Claire Obscure has done is disproving the, the game industry's assumption that people only want fast LA action. That final Fantasy has moved away from its origins, which is a turn based combat game to far less fulfilling LA combat. And then Claire obs skewer comes up and goes, oh yeah, people still love term base combat. If it's done well, there's still a massive market for this. So you could have, you could have made this you, because Final Fantasy 15 was around 10 years ago. Now, long time ago going, you could have spent, it's the wasted time you go. You could have spent these 10 years building this kind of thing. Instead, you've wasted our time. I think I'm, I think I'm next. Okay. This one is a, a whimper, a dis more, it's not an ex, an extreme disappointment. Like I almost told you the, the other one. So then Dragon Age in its Assassin's Creed, shadows, the latest Assassin's Creed'cause. Assassin's Creed has released a game every one to two years for since 2007, and I have played every one of them and all the expansions and all of the, the, the sort of the, the standalone ones as well. And there's just a, a, a, a core foundation of my gaming past and until. Assassin's Creed, shadows, I've, I've felt the soul of Assassin's Creed through all of them. And then Assassin's Creed, shadows is just a complete limp dead fish with just, you start and you just go, there's no soul here. The Saturn's creed is dead and it's, this is the, this is the nail in its coffin of,'cause we've got. Ghost of Shima and that came out five years ago now and that was, that was Assassin's Creed in Japan. There isn't a, apart from the upcoming ghost of yte, the, it couldn't be improved upon Assassin's Creed didn't need to go to. And so when you've got, there are, there are plenty of awesome ninja games, and this one just fails to, it's just a map that you go around and you climb a little bit and then it's just, it just feels so soulless and empty. So rather than it being a a 10 year, it didn't take, at least it didn't. Take, they didn't do Assassin's Creed Black flag and then wait 10 years to, that's true to do this, but it's just like, oh, my faithful old pet that's been beside me for 20 years has been hit by a car or something. Um, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a tricky one.'cause like. I've played everything up to basically Mirage. I played a little bit of Mirage, but I didn't get on with it particularly well. Like you might, I'm a big fan of the franchise, so it's just sad to hear. But I am, as listeners may know, currently playing Ghost to Sushi and I think there's absolutely no way that Toof could compete with it. So in a way I feel kind of sorry for them'cause they probably had it. I mean, it's what Assassin's Creed fans have been asking for for years. And here, please set it in Japan. We want it In Japan. There's no way they can compete with Ghost Oshima. It's too good. They're always gonna have a difficult time. So I just think it's, it's a bit of a bummer all round really for us as Creed, and I feel like, I'm not really sure how much longer they can continue to push the franchise. To be honest. It's sad, but yeah. Alex, I'm glad we're, uh, the second half of our episodes are gonna be positive things, so, oh yeah. So it'll be okay. This, this is not as bad, but Alex what's your next one? I'm gonna tell you something very different. Gonna take us back to my childhood. Imagine primary school, me, um, playing a game. Now. I can't remember the title of it, unfortunately, but basically it was one of those CD ROMs that you got from. Marks and Spencers that was educational. And it was like math, English, like shapes and colors, you know, kind of one where you had all these little mini games and you'd like basically learn through playing on the game. And there was this whole thing around this magical carousel horse, right? And the goal was to turn it from crappy stuffed like. One that looks like it's made out of hay and stuffed with like bags of hay or something and it just looks really sad and full on into like this magical, golden carousel horse that will like come alive and be amazing right at the end. And when you complete it, each section of the, of the, wherever it was, like this forest that you are in, you'd reveal like parts of the horse. So you'd do like the section on shaped. You'd get to reveal its bomb and its tail, and then you'd go through and eventually you'd unlock the whole horse. And these challenges were, were not, they were not easy, you know, they were designed for like primary school age children, but by the time you got to the, like, upper limits, like the top of each level, it was pretty tricky stuff to, to, to get through. Like a lot of it was, uh. Was also coordination based.'cause like obviously you had to like maybe click things at a certain time. You know, there was all sorts of those types of mini games. So I tried really hard to get to reveal this horse and by the end of it it revealed it. It looked like a normal carousel horse. You know, nothing special. And then literally nothing else happens. You can't do anything else. And I was just so upset by the end that I'd put all those hours into, into these really difficult mass and mass puzzles and like really tried my hardest and it just, it just didn't do anything at the end. I was just really,'cause I, I figure most kids would've not, not got to the end.'cause it takes so long. It literally took me like weeks. It was really bad. It was just so upsetting right at the end, and I'm afraid I can't remember the name of it, but, uh, yeah, that was a sad time in the nineties. Yeah. Uh, my sister when, when we were playing, well, when she and my mum were playing split fiction, yeah. It was a bit where she kept on. Dying. And at one point she just went, oh, enjoy the journey. Yes. And'cause then it's not about the destination, it's not about, it's not about the unicorn at the end of the thing, as opposed to enjoy the journey there. Even if the, I think that was the intention and even if the destination, the disappointment, at least you had the journey. But if the journey's, shit, the journey's really difficult now, then what's the point? Why would you bother? Yeah, exactly. Oh dear. But yeah, I was, I was just very disappointed. It was very upsetting. Right. We're on a, we're on the home stretch. Jen, what's your last one? I feel very sorry for you, Alex. Yeah. I feel sorry for young Alex going through all of that. Yeah. Okay. Well, I am gonna go with the Witcher and I'm just gonna go with. The Witcher games as opposed to a specific one, because I've tried playing it. I, I've tried playing a couple of them and I'm not sure which ones I know I, I've played like the Witcher three or the of. Is it three is the latest? Yeah, one. Yeah. So I tried playing witch are three quite recently, and I couldn't even get out of the flipping intro area. Like the tutorial couldn't work out. I couldn't get him to do the right move in the tutorial fight. And it just really annoyed me because, yeah, it was just, just difficult for this. For no good reason. Um, and, but, but many years ago I tried an earlier one, maybe the first one, I can't remember. And I just, I just couldn't get over it. It was too sexy. It was too, like, he just goes from like, he's just walking around shagging all these people and, and it just felt, I mean, I love the TV series. I've, and I know it's extremely popular. I know the games are popular. I know the books are very popular. I have also had audio books. The one of the books, the Assume it was the first one, but I know there's like prequels and it was all a bit confusing as to what the first one was, and I didn't like, I didn't find that interesting either. I just found it. Just found that whole thing really. I think maybe. It's like Shakespeare and you know, like people go like, oh that's so cliche. Things that Shakespeare says. It's so cliche and it's because it has become cliche. We use it in so much of it under underpins so much of our storytelling and our speech that things that you learn when you are 16 or whatever, and you're doing GCSE English and you're doing Shakespeare and you're like, oh yeah, well everyone says that. And it's like, well yeah, because he said it.'cause you said it first, you know? So I just. Yeah, I do wonder if maybe, you know, the witches stories have just formed such a base line for our sort of fantasy world that maybe they're just in there, but it just felt really cliche and really uninspired and yeah, it just didn't work for me and it really annoys me because I've heard such good things about it and I really want to enjoy it, but it just. I just can't get, I can't get behind it, but that's okay.'cause I don't have enough time to play all of the games. So, you know, it, I, I, I think which of there a lot, I think especially is like in, it's a huge game. Like I don't think I got very far in it at all.'cause it's, it apparently just takes hundreds and hundreds of hours to explore the whole map and, yeah. Okay. I'm, I'm with you on the complexities. Particularly of combat and the menus and things as well. They're pretty tricky. But yeah, it is a shame'cause I think it is widely regarded as a very good game and a good series. But yeah, I didn't get very far. Yeah, it's, it's a, that makes me feel a bit better. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a flawed masterpiece. Uh, for me as I, I have, I have com, I've a hundred percented, like every single location in it over time and played it multiple times and it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's wonderful. It is wonderful, but it is not without flaws. I'm next, last one, another 10 year development cycle disaster from Rock Steady and the Suicide Squad killed the Justice League. This was utterly soul destroying this happening because I was counting the hours that I've spent playing Arc of Night.'cause I played it twice this year, played it once and then played it again. And including the times I played in the past, I've spent at least 500 hours playing it. That's what, that's what this studio was capable of creating. And they spent 10 years to produce something that a year after it's been released is now on sale for three pounds. In the, in the steam store. Arkham Knight still costs 15 pounds and their, their all time peak of concurrent players was 13,000. And today the average player count is 154, and they spent 10 years doing it. They could have made something that was a little bit better every three or four years. And then, and then, and then just, I, I don't understand. Why, or just what's the point? It's just a waste. It's all wasted. And I wasted 60 pounds on it'cause I trusted them. And now I, I don't trust game developers anymore. And it, and so rather than just going, oh, I trust this brand, I'll buy it and then I'll play it.'cause I know I'm gonna get the money out of it. Now it's just, it's just gone and, and they've lost$200 million doing it. So it is just everyone loses and it takes them 10 years for it to happens. Well, right. Alex, your, your last one. Yes. My last one is probably a bit of bad luck to be honest, but have you both heard of the game head bangers? It's developed by Team 17 of worms fame, but it's basically a bunch of musical pigeons. It's a bit like four guys, but with musical pigeons instead of beans. I remember you saying about this, that you and Tom were playing it. That's right. And we bought it because it looked fun and uh, he doesn't have a pigeon that goes'cause they, you just move their heads around. Basically, and they make noise. They're like, and they're really cute looking. So we were like, let's give it a go. That looks fun. And it was. It was fun. Definitely. You had a lot of mini games, obviously like four guys. The Structor was very similar. Basically you can earn points to unlock different outfits and all that sort of thing. And skins and um. Different pigeon noises and things. Um, but they were, it was basically a rhythm game, but in lots of different mini games. So we were having a fun weekend with it and we went to load it up following this first weekend with it, and it said, you can't play this game. You are not on PlayStation Plus. And I was like, yes, I know this. But that was the same when we bought it. And played it for the whole weekend. And then it was like, we went to the page where it was on the store and it said PlayStation plus only online only. And we were like, has it just locked us out the entire game and we've paid for it and played it for the weekend and now we can't play it again? And it would appear that was the case and we cannot play it unless we become PlayStation Plus members again. So for that reason, it is firmly in the list of most disappointing games'cause it locked us out. But it haven't really worked out how or why we had access to it in the first place. If it's always gonna be online. Online playing. Very good. We'll need to have a chat, uh, soon because we'll, we'll end up talking about it more regularly about the. The Stop Killing Games Initiative and how we don't, they go, oh, technically you don't. When you buy something from the store, you don't own it. You're not buying it. We still own it. You just get, you are buying the chance to play it for a while and we can take it down whenever we please and don't actually know it. So. Another example of getting fucked over by that. Indeed. Right. Thank you both for those, uh, rather depressing lists. If you are watching or listening, let us know what your most disappointing franchises are, your most disappointing games are, and we can commiserate together. So, and we'll be back soon with a more positive list. So, until next time. Bye-bye. Bye bye.