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Your WGOTY of 2013


DocAzure

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Don't even have to think about this one:

Time-and-Eternity-logo.jpgTimeAndEternity.jpg

 

Haven't heard of this game? You're a lucky son of a bitch.

This is probably one of the worst JRPGs ever created. It's definitely the worst one I've ever played. Just about everything in this game is bad...well except for the music, I'll give it that. Music's decent. But everything else? Just. Plain. BAD.

 

Read on if you want to see this further in detail (slight spoilers):

 

Synopsis: The game's about a princess named Toki who's about to marry a dude named Zack.. Toki, about a half a year prior, received word from a fortune teller that someone will die at her wedding. Her and her friends laugh it off after she tells them the day before the whole shebang, but lo and behold, it happens. The victim? Her fiance, who perishes while valiantly (pfft) defending her. While Zack's slowly dying in her arms, it's revealed that Toki has a second soul/half named Towa, an action girl. After dealing with the assassins, Toki/Towa and Zack (whose soul ends up in her pet dragon, Drake), go back in time to try and stop the event from happening.

 

Now, where to begin ripping this game apart? Let's start with the presentation. Now, this makes me kinda sad, because the idea of the hand-drawn style intrigued me at first, buuuuuuuuuuuuut...it fell really flat. The character's animations are stiff, there's GLARINGLY noticeable animation errors that happen frequently in the game (terrible transitions, glitching out, etc.) The 3D backgrounds are virtually static and that on top of the extremely clashing 2D sprites(?) pretty much make the game look like something from the PS2 era. The character designs are alright, but seriously, I think there could've been a little more differentiation between Toki and Towa asides from different hair, eye, and clothes colors. There are some CG images and stuff that feature some (somewhat poorly drawn) fanservice, too, but all that's side quests and stuff no one cares about that :v

 

Next up? The gameplay. The battle system seems like it could've had some depth, but a bunch of bad decisions make this part of the game ALSO fall flat. So, the main character, Toki/Towa, uses a...rifle, I guess, for long range combat and a knife for close range combat. You can move up or back depending on which weapon you want to use, and each half has a mastery in a different weapon (Toki's better with ranged weapons, Towa's better with close quarter combat). Now, this is kinda well thought out and there's even a whole skill tree thing and everything, but there's a lot of issues with it. Remember the stiff animations I mentioned earlier? Yeah, that's where it affects the game most. The battle animations, aside from being really bad, get in the way of the gameplay. The dodge mechanic becomes really stupid due to the pretty unclear starting and ending points. You think you're clear for a dodge but NOPE, just a frame off and you get damaged. The game virtually becomes a mash-fest with little-to-no-strategy involved. Also, those two halves of the main character I talked about? You don't get to pick which one to fight with. You automatically switch halves by leveling up. So yeah, you could be grinding to face a boss, end up leveling up, and then being at a disadvantage because the half that the game automatically switches to doesn't have the skills that work best against the boss. There is a manual switch though, but it's through a collectible item you get later in the game.

 

That's not all that's wrong with the gameplay, but I just want to get to the absolute worst part:

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THE CHARACTERS.

OH. MY GOD. THE CHARACTERS. Jesus Freakin' Christ, the characters just bug me to no fucking end in this game. It's like they take a bunch of the famous anime tropes, amplify them greatly, and shove them in your face worse than Westboro Baptist Church shoves their ideas. One of Toki's friends literally has to throw in a line referencing how fucking rich she is every couple of minutes (the one in the middle of the picture, with the orange hair). Another one of them likes to divert an important conversation with talks of her libido all...the time (the one to the left of the aforementioned rich girl, with the blue hair). and Zack (if you couldn't guess, the only male human in the group)... don't get me fucking started on Zack. This guy. is. a. PIECE. OF. FUCKING. FUCKSHIT. Now, I'm pretty lenient when it comes to characters (I can accept a lot of flaws very easily), but it took me all of the first ten or so minutes of the game to start hating him. TEN. MINUTES. now, remember when I said he defended Toki valiantly (pfft)? If you're wondering what the pfft was for, well...

 

ss-124.jpg

 

Note: This is literally what he's thinking as he's dying in her arms. I'm not even joking.

I mean, the guy's a pervy douchebag who, at a lot of times, looks like he only wants to get in her pants. There are virtually little redeeming qualities to the guy and I just wanted him to go away, but NOPE, he ends up being the game's other main character!

 

So how's the rest of the story? I dunno, because...

 

The game was so goddamn painful to play that I couldn't even finish it! Got rid of that piece of crap as quick as I could. Good. Freakin'. Riddance.

I played this game for an hour, and then cried at how dreadful it was. I traded this shit in towards my PS4 purchase, I regret nothing. If this game were an anime, it would be contender for one of the worst anime in history. This game has some of the worst visuals I have ever seen, the plot is stupid, there are roundtable moments in the game that take ages to get through. Playing this game was like ripping off my fingernails. Playing this game made me question life. Word to the wise, if you see a game, and someone says its "experimental" skip it, and wait for reviews.

 

Like, if you want to know how bad I think this game truly is...

 

I would honestly rather play... this... for an entire year.. and nothing else...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWEHwvcnyM

 

AND I FUCKING HATE THIS GAME.

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Worst game of the year: Sonic Lost World (3DS) The first few levels are fun...but it stops being fun after Windy Hill is over. From Dessert Ruins onwards the game is just a total chore. Poor level design, too many puzzles, frustrating special stages. Don't even get me started on the bosses. This is coming from someone who has tolerated every handheld title so far, but Lost World is just unforgiveable. It's garbage.

 

Disappointing game of the year: I guess I would call Pokemon X/Y disappointing? It's not a bad game by any means, but it's just so different from the previous installments. Too easy, the story drags on, the Gyms and Elite 4 aren't even balanced, and the Pokemon designs are my least favourite. I really hope the 3rd game in the series picks things up and improves in some areas.

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Definitely Sonic Lost World 3DS for me. I still haven't beaten it. After three sessions of "Alright, I'll give this game another chance - there'll surely be some fun in the next level" and zero fun to be had, I just gave up on it entirely. The gameplay isn't even broken or malfunctioning, it's just not fun. Each level is one tedious frustrating obstacle after another.

 

I'm sure there've been worse games in 2013, but I've been pretty conservative with my purchases this year; only going for games I was really up for. SLW3DS is the only one I can say I honestly wish I'd never played.

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You guy wouldn't have to put Sonic games on your worst of list if you stopped playing Sonic games.

 

Ni no Kuni: The Wrath of the White Witch

Sit down this framing exposition is going to take a while.

 

OK now for mine. I also didn't play any particularly bad games this year, so I have to unfortunately go with most disappointing for me, which would have to be Antichamber. Antichamber's claim to fame was it's non euclidean geometry used in its world but it really only does that for the first few puzzles and then the rest of the game is puzzles where you move little squares around in a superficially non euclidean environment.  

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You guy wouldn't have to put Sonic games on your worst of list if you stopped playing Sonic games.

 

Of course. Then again, I wouldn't have to put any game on my "Worst of X" list if I stopped playing games altogether, so... yeah.

 

Anyway, I haven't really played a whole lot of games this year, unfortunately. The one that I would consider the "worst" is Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Now, it's not exactly bad per se, but it was ultimately quite a disappointment for me. Just... everything about seemed so lazy and predictable. The gameplay is so simplified and boring that engaging in battles was essentially pointless. The less said about the nearly nonexistent story, the better. 

 

All in all, as much as I hate to say this about a Paper Mario game, it was just... well, meh.

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Almost completely forgot about it but yeah Sticker star is probably my worst too, no other game this year has really been as disappointing (and overall just bad) as that game was, it was okay for one playthrough but the game was still pretty bad and I just couldn't bring myself to go through it again, the only really good thing that I got from it was the music, probably the best soundtrack in the series for me.

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Oh yeah, I completely forgot about Sticker Star.  Such a boring, uncreative, mediocre game.  Tropey as hell, gameplay was ridiculously dumbed-down, and the story is just insultingly lazy, even without comparing it to the first 3.  And hell, even the music was boring by comparison.

 

EDIT: Oh, that was last year.

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Didn't sticker start come out last year?

 

Yeah, but I got it earlier this year, so I guess it still counts for me.

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WGOTY that I played?

10. Mirrors Edge

9. X-Com Declassified

8. Beneath a steel sky

7. Tofu boy

6. Deadly Premonition

5. White Knight Chronicles

4. Mario's Revenge

3. Jingle all the way

2. Night Trap

1. Sonic Rush

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Isn't Mario's Revenge a flash game?

 

Yes. Hated it.

 

... I think we were talking about retail games, not flash games, and flash games are free. You didn't have to pay for them.

 

Anyway, My Worst game of the year (more like last year) is Rayman Origins 3DS.

 

Holy fuck, The game  compassion is awful, the levels are piss easy and overall a bad port.

 

If you're looking for a good handheld port of Origins, get the Vita version.

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I think I can muster up some hate for this game right now.

 

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DmC: Devil May Cry

 

Let's get the obvious out of the way, DmC is reboot.  I have nothing against reboots when they're necessary, however Devil May Cry was in no need of one.  I still enjoy the DMC series (sans 2), I enjoyed Dante as a character, and having those things taken away from me soured my impressions from the start.  Tameem and the rest of Ninja Theory/Capcom spilling out horseshit about this game and the previous installments didn't fucking help (old Dante would get laughed out of a bar, the FEEL of 60fps!, etc.), nor did the potshot at the old games in DmC's beginning level.

 

As far as gameplay goes, for a re-imagining of the series, it does absolutely fucking nothing new.  In fact, they pretty much just took things out and called it a day.  Like manually being able to lock on to your targets (which would be very helpful against those flying bastards) and the directional input moves that came with it.  Another thing I like about the DMC (sans 2) is the challenge they provide, it takes a lot of time, effort, and skill to score S's-SSS's in your fights; DmC then decided that it should be piss easy to do everything.  Trying to stay in the air in a DMC game was a skill and a reward in of itself, and DmC makes it so easy that it makes you wonder if the game is broken or not.  The game also hands out those coveted S-SSS ranks like candy, where spamming the same combos over and over again could qualify as "sensational" in this game's eyes.

 

The biggest thing I like about Devil May Cry however is that you're allowed (and rewarded) to be creative with how you fight.  You have several weapons at your disposal, each of them function very differently.  DmC rectifies this "problem" by assigning weapons to the triggers, where they barely function as individual weapons anymore and now pretty much act as augments to your standard sword.  Styles are also gone, further limiting the way your play.  The biggest problem is that they start introducing Red and Blue enemies in the game rather early, and they can only be hurt by a certain type of weapon.  These bastards appear everywhere, add absolutely nothing to the game, and are only there to limit any sort of creativity you may have; your moveset becomes horribly gimped and they last way too long for their own damn good (especially the blue ones).

 

And then there's the story, dear fucking god the story.  Devil May Cry never had a good story.  Ever.  But this is a whole new low.  Every character in the game is as flat as a piece of cardboard, none of them are likable in any way shape or form; Dante in particular is an unrelenting asshole who speaks in a very dull monotone slur.  The game takes many plot points from previous Devil May Cry games and strips away anything that made them interesting by the 2nd chapter of the game.  And the game is so goddamn cutscene heavy; Devil May Cry is a series that is much more gameplay focused than it is narrative focused, and constantly being interrupted by cutscenes mid level (there are even points in game where you slow the fuck down to a crawl to listen to love interest girl or some other character whine) is ridiculous.

 

The soundtrack (from what I remember) is mostly trashy dubstep sounding shit that damn near made my ears bleed.

 

Are there things I like?  Yeah, the art direction for some environments is nice.  Am I being overly critical of this game?  Yeah, maybe.  But DMC set a bar for action games, and NT's attempt at reinventing it by stripping the game of everything that made it great to me is laughable.

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My WGOTY list is rather short as I've gone out of my way to avoid playing stinkers but occasionally I slip up.  Anyway here is my WGOTY for 2013.

 

Raceroom Racing Experience:  Oh boy where do I begin to describe this let down of a game from one of my favorite developers?  FIrst off this a F2P game which alone should have taught me caution as a result of NFS World. Next the amount of content to purchase to equal one of their legacy titles is over $100 USD before even factoring in the liveries into the cost.  Another thing is the lack of racing options against the AI outside of Track Test.  Finally there are no Multiplayer races against other players outside of Time Attacks against them as I want to race against other people for real not against their ghosts.  Simbin had an audience that they built over the years from GTR in 2004 to Race Injection in 2012 and they just lost due to the greed of the F2P transactions.  I think that I'll be going to Slightly Mad Studios and Kunos Simulazioni for my racing game needs as they aren't actively trying to anger the racing game communities.

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Didn't sticker start come out last year?

 

 

Yeah, it did.

 

You know what though, I'm going to talk about it anyway. I didn't really play any especially awful 2013 games, so this talk about Sticker Star gives me an excuse to whine in more depth about that awful pile of shit. I've probably written a post like this before at some point, but god damn it, Sticker Star deserves multiple posts about how terrible it is. 

 

I've talked about how much I loved the Paper Mario games before. Almost everything about them was just so great! The gameplay was simple for an RPG, but in a good way. You could just sort of pick them up, and immediately understand most of how the game worked. They were well written! The art direction was great! The interchangeable Badge system added depth and personalization to how battles worked! The music was pretty damn good too. Even SPM, with it's flaws in gameplay, was worth playing and still had the charming characters and world. 

 

Then comes... this thing. 

 

 

Now, even when it was first revealed, I was cautious from those screenshots. They looked so... NSMB-ish. NSMB being a series I have expressed dislike annoyance possibly irrational levels of hatred toward. 

PM3DS12.png WigglerPM3DS.PNG

 

Of course, I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't still excited at the time. I hadn't really been let down by any of the past games, and again, I still even really liked SPM. The previews were promising, and it was supposedly just as good as it should have been. Like with most Nintendo games, I didn't hear too much about it for a while, and so I stayed in the same mind of being cautiously optimistic up until about release day.

 

I bought it soon after release, and to say the least, I was not happy. 

 

 

Problem Number One: The Awful, Awful Inventory. 

 

A massive problem with the game is also what it sold itself on. The sticker-based battle system. It is bad game design to have a battle system where items that can be used up are the only means of doing so much as a simple attack. It is extremely stupid to build an entire game around fucking inventory management, an activity proven to be one of the least fun things in any game ever. It is a really fucking bad and awful and just plain generally shitty idea to have boss fights that are nearly impossible to win, or roadblocks that just can't be cleared, without guessing the right massive sticker. These massive stickers take up a huge chunk of inventory space, and are generally just idiotic hassles to deal with. 

 

 

Problem Number Two: Dialogue and Characterization (and the lack thereof).

 

Name one character from this game. I dare you. Honestly if you can remember a single character from the entire story without looking up a character sheet I should probably, like, I dunno. Give you some money I guess. No, the stupid crown thing doesn't count. All the levels were just... there, same with everyone in them. The other PM games had plenty of great dialogue, and the characters had their own personalities and motivations and such. Sticker Star just sort of... doesn't have that. The characters just kind of do whatever, and do the things... and uh... attack Mario because uh...

 

The writing didn't really exist, therefore it sucked. 

 

Also, they made Bowser, one of the most entertaining characters, mute. 

 

A fuck you for that one, Nintendo.

 

Fffffffffuck you. 

 

 

Problem Number Three: The Death of Creativity. 

 

Let's go back to NSMB, shall we? Yes, I think this is where the problem began. This is the game that introduced the idea to Nintendo that Mario should never be anything other than running through generic grass, desert, ice, forest, etc. This lack of creativity is a problem that has plagued many recent Mario titles such as the NSMB games, Sticker Star, and even games like 3D Land and to a lesser extent, Galaxy 2. 

 

This game is of course very bad in that department, and is so bland and uninteresting that I actually could not bring myself to care long enough to finish it. Unless it somehow improves drastically in Bowser's castle, I seriously doubt that I'm missing much. It's just a boring, boring game, and thinking about it is actually making me so bored and I don't really want to write about this anymore.

 

So yeah, the locations and variety and atmosphere and stuff suck. You already knew that. Moving on.

 

In Conclusion:

 

Seriously though, this game is really fucking bad and I'm tired of talking about it. I'm pretty sure I've even forgotten the point I was going to make. Why did I even make this post? It doesn't matter. 

 

What does matter is that you do one thing for old uncle Phanto. Next time you see a shop selling Paper Mario: Sticker Star, burn the whole god damned place to the ground. Also every store near the store you burned down.

 

You know what? Burn the whole town the store is in, or nuke it or something.

 

 It's the only way to be sure. 

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Both Sonic Lost Worlds. I ended up getting the 3DS version, and both are pretty bad.

 

How so? You really can't say that both versions of Sonic Lost World are bad without explaining why. People like me have yet to play either version of the game to find out for ourselves what is so bad about the game and from your post we still don't know what's so bad about it due to you not explaining yourself.  

 

WGOTY that I played?

10. Mirrors Edge

9. X-Com Declassified

8. Beneath a steel sky

7. Tofu boy

6. Deadly Premonition

5. White Knight Chronicles

4. Mario's Revenge

3. Jingle all the way

2. Night Trap

1. Sonic Rush

 

Responses that are simply list answers are against the rules as effort and explanation is required whenever you make a post. If you feel all 10 of these games are qualified for being the worst games that you have played for the year, you need to tell us why as opposed to listing them without any explanation.

 

In this topic you must have explanations as to why you feel these games are the worst ones that you played this year like everyone else in this topic has done. You two are the only ones that have failed to do so in this topic so far. Please be sure to put substantial effort into every post that you make from here on out.

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In this topic you must have explanations as to why you feel these games are the worst ones that you played this year like everyone else in this topic has done. You two are the only ones that have failed to do so in this topic so far. Please be sure to put substantial effort into every post that you make from here on out.

This is something that comes up rather frequently, so I want to make sure we understand what "substantial effort" is when you make a post.  Writing an explanation is always encouraged, but just slapping a brief sentence to vaguely explain your point of view isn't much better than just listing them.

 

Substantial Effort-

Mario Found Planet - This game was a huge disappointment to me.  The gameplay was a confusing mess due to the strange perspective and the bright graphics aren't really my cup of tea.  It would have been better if it had used the same engine to bring about Generations-style gameplay instead.

 

Longer posts are encouraged but they're not necessary as long as it's detailed enough to know why you didn't like the game, as opposed to:

 

NON-Substantial Effort-

Crash Bandicoot Legends - Game just wasn't fun and it sucked.

 

Detail is the key here.  You don't have to write a novel.  Just make sure we know what bothered you about a game and why you consider it the absolute worst of the year.

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I'd say Sim City is my worst game of the year, but no one should base their whole experience on only 30 minutes of gameplay. 

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