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The worst game you've ever played....

Started by br305893, May 21, 2013, 06:45:23 PM

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br305893

I'll start this off with Tex Murphy: Mean Streets. Thankfully I haven't played a lot of games that were truly "bad," but Mean Streets is about as close as it gets.
"You Can Feel Good About Hood"

GrahamRocks!

Hmmm... off the top of my head?

SimCity DS. Horrible remake of a classic game (SimCity 3000 Unlimited) from my childhood! I read about it, got so pumped because it gets harder and harder to play the game when I get a new computer, and bought it with my own money at Best Buy's bargain bin.

According to my friend Albert, the bargain bin is where you either find crappy games or just really cheap games. The receptionist thought I was mistaken when I asked if they had it, and was genuinely surprised when I managed to find it.

It was so bad that I actually wrote an essay on it for my college writing class, and got an A on it! (*sigh* One more point on my score, and it would have been a perfect A+)
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Tarnished Nostalgia

You have to wonder sometimes, why people seem to think you need to remake everything into something 'cool' or 'edgy' or 'hardcore' or, in the case of Electronic Arts' "remake" of Simcity 3000 for the Nintendo DS- completely botched and ruining childhoods. As someone who grew up with the original company for Simcity 3000 Unlimited (the only one aside from the DS version I'd ever played) of Maxis, this remake was completely cut down from the original in every way possible.

First of all, the gameplay itself. The game is lot harder to get into in the remake than it is in the original. Why? Partially because of the interface, and also because there is a lot more you can do with your city in the original. The interface in the original was very simple: you have your tabs for all your city building stuff like Landscape, Roads and Buildings (and all their little submenus depending on what you click) on the right side of the screen, alongside your options and different save files. The bottom right corner of the screen has your map, and down along the bottom of the screen is your City Ticker (where news is) and where you can see how your zones are doing and adjust your speed. The remake makes this a lot more awkward. It took me forever to figure out how to access things, because I couldn't find them as easily in there. I eventually figured out that you have to click on your Finances tab in order to reach the other stuff. What a hassle, huh? I mean, couldn't you just organize them like they were in the original, like say, putting them all on the touch screen?

The other thing I didn't like was the fact that, unlike the original, you have no control over how you design your city. In the original, you could choose what your terrain could be (green grass, dull grass, snow, sand, or clay), and where the rivers and mountains were. In the original, you could choose how big or small it was, what your buildings would look like (low class, middle class, high class), and even your difficulty settings and how much money you have at the beginning.

The remake takes all that away from you! You always only have the city on dull grass terrain, you can't add anything there, and the difficulty setting is determined by where you start on the map. C'mon game, just because I want to start with the maximum amount of money so I don't go bankrupt within the first few hours of playing, doesn't mean I want a tutorial level! Just let me play my own way!

Second of all, there is the music. Oh dear Lord, the music. What I loved most about the original game, aside from the gameplay was the catchy music. They had a composer named Jerry Martin on board, with actual musicians playing toe-tapping jazz songs with actual instruments like real saxophones, trumpets and pianos. There were several lovely tunes that made feel good and mellow, like "Central Park Sunday", 'South Bridge" and "Updown Town" and a few others that sounded a bit more ominous and quiet like "Desert Sand" and "Sixth Floor". All of them fitted the mood most of the time, with the more mellow songs playing when things were good, and the more somber songs when things weren't. Of course, sometimes it was the opposite, but that's usually what I thought of it.

The remake... completely ruined the music. Even if they'd fixed things like the interface and such, I still wouldn't have given them a free pass on that if they hadn't fixed the music as well. Gone are the saxophones and pianos, now replaced with MIDI music that just sounds awful and doesn't hold a candle to Jerry Martin' work. They cut nearly all the songs, and decided to have ONE song per activity: one song for the main game (which escapes my mind, but I remember not even liking it in the original all that much) which just drones on and on. One song for the museum, one for the options, and one song for the "Save the City!" scenarios menu... which was an absolutely BUTCHERED version of "Central Park Sunday", which was my favorite song in the original game! Forget the rest of the tracks- if you screw up my favorite song in the game, you get a low score from me!

Lastly, of course, is the creators themselves. As I mentioned before, I grew up with Maxis and loved all their "Sim" games- SimPark, SimAnt, SimSafari, SimTunes, SimTown and SimCity. I wasn't allowed to play The Sims back then unfortunately, although I still hear good things about it even after EA took over Maxis, which makes me interested. All of these games were educational in some way, and always entertaining. SimPark taught me about nature, SimSafari taught me about Africa, SimAnt taught me about ant colonies, SimTunes taught me about music, SimTown taught me about managing a small town, and SimCity taught me about broadening my horizons to a city. Maxis was a great little company, and I'm so happy to see it in the front list of companies for the new SimCity game coming out in 2013, classic eclipse logo and all!
Electronic Arts however, I've not heard good things about. It's not just SimCity they've ruined either. They've also done horrible things to series' like Ultima (especially the last game which ret-cons nearly everything in the series, including the ending to the game before it, and makes the main character seem like an idiot), Command & Conquer, Dragon Age and Mass Effect according to most people. SimCity seems like small potatoes to something like the Ultima series. Of course, they've done their share of a few good games such as The Sims, but that still doesn't cut it with all the bad ones they have.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend the DS version of SimCity at all. It just isn't as good as the original, the only good thing being that it's portable. But, just because it's portable, doesn't mean you need to ring out all fun and decency out of it with bad music and gameplay made by a non-respectable company that was voted one of the worst places to work. I don't want to leave on a negative note with this paper, so I'll give you two options if you want to try SimCity out yourselves: 1. If you can find them, buy the original games (SimCity, SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000/Unlimited and SimCity 4/Rush Hour) and get them working somehow. Or 2. Wait until the 2013 game, which is being made by Maxis thankfully, and play that on your modern computers.
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stika

On a technical level? New World Order, it was a Counter-strike wanna be, came free with a magazine (though it was sold in stores as well), threw it in the trash the next day, it wasn't even worth the disc space it took


Games that disappointed me the most? mmm... Good question, Maybe Gothic 3 it was barely playable when it came out, though I hear it's a little better now

Neonivek

Dear goodness how would I even quantify "worst"?

For example I thought Simon the Sorcerer was a very funny game and I liked the characters and humor but I thought the technical gameplay of it was absolutely dreadful and nearly the worst I ever played!

Yet not only would that just be the worst point and click I ever played, but it would be so just for the actual gameplay aspects AND if I don't use a guide.

Mind you the worst point and click I played would probably AS OF THIS MOMENT! be... Monkey Island 4

Numbers

Worst game I've ever played: Command and Conquer 4. Gah. Just look it up on Amazon and you'll see that I am not alone in thinking that this game is garbage.

Worst game I've seen but not played: The Town with No Name, which is riffed over at this Blip TV link:
http://blip.tv/slowbeef/true-s***-5475579
Holy hell. The Town with No Name is like the holy grail of bad games. Glad I didn't waste my time playing it. A runner-up in this category would be F**k Quest.

Worst game I've heard of, but not bothered to look further into: Probably the E.T. game. It's kind of famous for its badness at this point.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Rosella

I'm thinking Final Fantasy XIII is gonna have to win this for me. The plot was obscure; the gameplay was both boring and tedious (being both too easy and too hard at the same time); and by the end, I didn't even know why I was playing. I genuinely have no idea what the final boss had to do with that game, and was paying attention and reading datalogs.
I'm a princess even if my kingdom is pixelated.

Official Comfort Counselor of the TSL Asylum © ;D

It's funny how you find you enjoy your life when you're happy to be alive.

Damar

I remember there was this game that was made based on Michael Crichton's Timeline.  It was terrible.  It handled badly, it had basically no puzzles in it, and it didn't follow the book at all.  I think it came bundled with the book.  Or the book came bundled with it.  I think of it as the former because I fully enjoyed the book more.  Man, that was a terrible game.

Outside of that, I'm not really a gamer, so I haven't much experience.  It might be cheating to include a fan game because there is just a ton of amateur crap out there.  But I do feel the need to once again point out, just because it's so well known and is one of the originals, that Space Quest: The Lost Chapter is an unplayable mess.  Not just because of the bugs, not just because of the tentacle maze, not just because of the tentacle obsession in general.  Also because the story, narrative, and puzzles made no logical sense whatsoever.  It's just a profoundly broken, unplayable game at every level.

Numbers

Quote from: Damar on June 15, 2013, 02:40:54 PM
It might be cheating to include a fan game...

Not really. I'm sure Lamb will pop in and talk about how much he hates TSL any minute now.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

Did he ever fully explain why that is?

Numbers

A few times, actually. Valanice acting out of character, melodrama, dialogue trees that go on for way too long, and awkwardly written scenes (Graham and Edgar's heart-to-heart is probably the most glaring). No matter how much you like TSL, it's safe to say that POStudios has come a long way from the first couple episodes.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

*nods* They can only get better and better as time goes on. Actually, I don't really mind those lengthy conversations really. In fact, Tower Sequence aside, that conversation between Graham and Cassie was one of the defining favorite moments of episode three for me.

Melodrama? Well the saying goes "The night is darkest before the dawn" I'm used to dark things by now. And besides, at least this game had quite a few humorous/awesome moments to lighten the mood.

Valanice? *shrug* Could have been much worse.

 

Numbers

Much of Lamb's experience with TSL is playing the first two episodes, and those are the ones he rips on the most. The whole melodrama thing mostly has to do with the voice acting, and two particular examples stand out to me.

Edgar: It was evil...it was pure evil.

Alexander: CASSIMA!!! *then, later* Don't you DARE call me that! You MURDERER!

As for Valanice:

[spoiler]The ending of episode 2 really left Lamb pissed off from what I can remember. Valanice attempting to kill herself because things were looking a little grim was severely out of character. It wasn't until a while later when Cesar explained that Valanice was possessed at the time that the scene started to make any sense.[/spoiler]
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

As much as I love the acting in TSL, I can say that they're not perfect performers. Although, I am wondering now, since according to the special feature video from a few years ago that Jason Michael Victor has been in theater before and proven (at least to me) that he's really good with Graham and Robert.

I wonder if he can sing? I'm assuming that's him doing Graham's whistling anyway.

Neonivek

QuoteValanice acting out of character

I thought that was specifically a plot point.

GrahamRocks!

"Valanice is not going mad! There must be an explanation for this!"- Graham, episode 3 to Captain Saladin iirc.

Blackthorne

Lamb is gonna lap it up over how much you guys are talking about him!  tee hee!


Bt
"You've got to keep one eye looking over your shoulder
you know it's going to get harder and harder as you
get older - but in the end you'll pack up, fly down south, hide your head in the sand.  Just another sad old man, all alone and dying of cancer." - Dogs, Pink Floyd.

Lambonius

Quote from: Blackthorne on June 15, 2013, 09:18:15 PM
Lamb is gonna lap it up over how much you guys are talking about him!  tee hee!


Bt

!!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!! !!!

Also, it's not the voice acting, it's the writing itself.  Though certain voice actors WERE terrible.

I might ask 929572 to pen my biography!

Damar

Quote from: Neonivek on June 15, 2013, 07:58:05 PM
QuoteValanice acting out of character

I thought that was specifically a plot point.

It may have been a plot point but it was never particularly clear.  I know I didn't get it until Cesar pointed it out (and seemed pretty annoyed that people didn't get it.)  It could have been made a lot clearer.  And that's coming from the guy who thought it was pretty clear that she must have been under a curse in the first place.  But linking it to what was going on in the Pandora's Box scene?  The to events just did not tie together for me at all.  In fact it seemed much more likely that...sigh...spoiler tag[spoiler]Valanice was distraught not because her kids were in comas, but rather that they were in comas and she opened Pandora's Box and unleashed an evil.  Still think it would have been out of character for her to try to kill herself, but that added thing makes it more understandable.  And when you add in the fact that the jumping wasn't at all related to what was going on with her confrontation with Shadrack, it seemed the more likely theory.  I mean, at least have the scene end with her trying to escape Shadrack by jumping out a window or something.  Then it ties in and shows that this was enchantment, not suicide.  Whatever, it's their fan game, they can do what they want.[/spoiler]

Numbers

Quote from: Lambonius on June 15, 2013, 11:45:53 PM
I might ask 929572 to pen my biography!

I was reading the forum long before I actually participated in any discussions, so I'm familiar with people's stances on certain things. For instance, Baggins' stance on TSL is that it is stupid and anybody who likes it is stupid.
I have no mouth, and I must scream.

GrahamRocks!

Wow, Baggins would hate me then!  :o

I mean, even Lamb who also hates TSL doesn't call people stupid for liking it!

Then again, you are talking to the girl who:

Has no hatred for Cedric the Owl.

Does not go into a rage whenever ME3's endings are mentioned (probably because aside from the GameStop commercial, that was actually the first footage she ever actually saw of the game.)

Gets most of her knowledge of certain videogames from Retrospectives, Let's Plays, and Reviews (for which I apologize to Numbers for.)

Actually likes KQ5 and KQ7.