Have you ever found yourself picking up a game just because everyone and their mothers was praising it like crazy, only to play it and ask yourself why was it so hyped up in the first place? I've done that plenty of times and let me tell you, it set my wallet back quite a bit and sadly, it's money and time I will never get back. Here is a list of what I believe to be some of the most overly hyped and overrated games of all time. Keep in mind that this is not all of them considering my list is very long, so I'll just keep it brief.
Mass Effect -
I'm glad I bought this used and did not subject myself to paying the full price for it because Mass Effect was not nearly as good as everyone said it was. I'll admit that it was a good game but come on people, about 90% of the game is just talking. Boring conversation after boring conversation every 5 minutes at a minimum. The graphics were not that great either and it suffered from noticeable graphic hiccups like when you could still see the models rendering right near the beginning of a scene change. I really hope that Mass Effect 2 will at least make the action more common and keep all that dull talking to a minimum.
Ikaruga -
Everywhere I look, this game is getting perfect to near perfect scores and I can't understand why. Was it fun? Yeah I'll admit that it was fun for the short time it lasted and that is exactly my point. Ikaruga only contained 5 levels which were not very long at all and once you cleared them, that was it. You could keep playing to get a higher score but is it really worth it? High scores on the leaderboards are just as pointless as the achievement system. I feel sorry for the people who bought this game new on the Dreamcast or Gamecube.
Marvel Vs Capcom 2 -
When this title came out on the Xbox Arcade, I bought it on launch day. Why? Only because everyone was talking about it and praising it, so I had to see why everyone thought this game was so fantastic. I'm still asking myself that question! Was it because of the massive amount of characters you can choose from? The graphics aren't even that good and that was where most of the praise has was aimed. The music is also just so horrible. I honestly wish I could get my 1200 microsoft points back for this.
Halo 3 -
It used to be one of the biggest events in entertainment until GTA4 and Modern Warfare 2 came along which is sad. I hear a lot of people call this game "Halo 2.5" because it wasn't much of an improvement over the original. The graphics are barely better and there are a few new weapons and enemies. That was all this game had to offer that was any different from Halo 2. Sure, multiplayer is fantastic in this game but I don't want to pay full price for a title only to have good multiplayer. Give me a good single-player campaign too!
Super Mario 64 -
When Mario 64 came out, everyone bought it and the only reason it's as popular as it was is because of it's nostalgic value. That's it! Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy are more then 100 times better and it's not only because of the better graphics. Super Mario 64 had one of the most annoying cameras in a video game that I have ever dealt with. It lead to my death more than enough times and the controls really didn't help my cause.
Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas -
All considered it to be the most controversial game until the release of the infinitely better Grand Theft Auto 4, I bought these games purely from word of mouth. All of my buddies praised them, even went as far as to call them the greatest games ever made. I got rid of GTA3 before I even got half way through it because of it's terrible graphics and stiff controls. Vice City didn't improve on much besides slightly better visuals and a good soundtrack, not to mention a far better story. Then we come to San Andreas which is just way too much I think.
Doom -
Sure, it's considered to be the grandfather of first person shooters but I can't stand it. Horrible controls, some of the messiest and unattractive visuals I've ever set my eyes upon, and the same enemy sprites keep appearing over and over again. I really don't understand what is so great about a game like this when Doom 3 was so much better. I'm not dense and I love a lot of the classic games from the 80's and 90's but Doom just isn't for me.
Final Fantasy VII -
Oh no! Grab the pitch forks and light the torches! He dissed the greatest game ever! I'm not dissing this game, as I do loved it and own both the original copy and the PSP/PS3 copy. It was a great game with groundbreaking elements of game-play that are still staples in the franchise and other RPGs to this day. I consider it to be one of the greatest RPGs ever made. Now with that said, it should have been left at that! Let us count the many sequels and spin-offs that have been created based on this game alone.
Final Fantasy: Advent Children was a great movie as far as mindless action goes but it lacked any sort of characterization.
Dirge of Cerberus had amazing cinematics but terrible, terrible game-play.
Crisis Core was an interesting prequel but had a very confusing and awkward battle system. Before Crisis I didn't even bother to play because it seemed so pointless, and I can't even name off all the stuff based on this. Stop milking the game Square! It is not the best game in the franchise by a long shot. I consider Final Fantasy 12 to be a better game and I'm sure Final Fantasy 13 will top that one as well. Final Fantasy VII was a great gaming classic but it did not need all of this 'stuff' milked from it.
11.17.09 Colton West
You have great knowledge in gaming I see, I actually agree with you on all fronts.
ReplyDeleteA multi-generation list that makes sense?!
ReplyDeleteIt's strange I'm agreeing with you for the most part. Except for Doom. The thrill of Doom wasn't about the game, it was about everything around the game: Killings blamed on kids who played Doom, being rated 18, etc.
If you played it at the right age, it was the equivalent of hanging around the porno section in a video store: forbidden :|
haha, i laughed my ass of about some of the reasons.
ReplyDeleteColton, did you even get, that mass affect is in first place an RPG and no shooter?
your wishes for part 2 are making it a shooter and get rid of the RPG-elements.
maybe stay away from RPGs in the future, if you don't like story and character elements ;-)
you say doom is the grandfather of FPS and in the same sentence you say the visuals are bad and compare it with doom 3??
how old are you?
doom IS the grandfather of FPS and when it was released in 1993 the visuals where one of the best you could get at that time and the gameplay was unique.
how can you compare one of the first shooters from 1993 with a modern shooter like doom 3 from 2004?
i think it's better you stop writing articles!
it's also funny that you always seem to do the same mistake, by buying games based on hype.
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Nice list of overrated games there, as someone above me said, it seems you've been gaming for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteA list that actually holds true. Good going GamesThirst!
Have you ever considered that maybe these are great games but just not for you?
ReplyDeleteThis was a terrible list. You obviously know nothing about the history of gaming and aren't even taking into account the context in which some of these games were released. I agree that some of them are overrated, but just because you don't understand how to play a game (Ikaruga and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 are perfect examples of your incompetence) doesn't make them bad games.
ReplyDeleteshit i agree, mario i questioned, but yeh, that camera angle, it was the first proper 3d platformer tho, wasnt it? so cant dis-it too much. (i h8 nintedo at the moment as well..!)
ReplyDeletemarvel vs. capcom 2 ,, i mean come on you should have instantly known it was for people who like the series and are hard core fighting fans its not for the casual gamer
ReplyDeletedoom i dont agree with , how old were when you tried that game to really understand why its considered one of the greatest games you had to play it at the time it was released.. compare it to games today or even on ps2 and i could see how someoene would be un-impressed with doom
all others i agree with , i feel as tho your comments are made with games you were disappointed with after following the hype.. but thats what you get for being a follower :)
another wasted list of
ReplyDeleteWhile I do agree with some of the points you make, I do have to dispute arguing against Doom simply because it's successor looks better. Of course a game made 10-odd years later will look better! But at the time, everybody raved about how good it looked. And, to be fair, Wolfenstein 3D should be considered the grandfather. The controls for that were even worse, but I still loved it.
ReplyDeleteSuper Mario 64 did have bad camera angles, but the gameplay and graphics were great (for the time). I recently bought a copy for a friend who had dug his N64 out and he couldn't see what the fuss had been about, because like yourself he had gotten used to what games are like *now* and thought that the graphics were poor. But like Doom, it's unfair to compare something 10+ years old to something new
"It was a great game with groundbreaking elements of game-play that are still staples in the franchise and other RPGs to this day."
ReplyDeleteWhat was so ground breaking from FF7? Nothing that I can recall, materia system? Was a reimplementation of the esper systems in FF6, limit breaks? hardly groundbreaking. Story? nope.
don't get me wrong, the game is wounderfull, it's just not as groundbreaking as you think.
To the guy near the top who mentioned that I don't want Mass Effect 2 to have RPG elements. That is EXACTLY what I want it to have more of. All those pointless conversations in the first game were just long and tedious. I've played plenty of RPGs today that don't have all this pointless, drawn out talking and are still incredibly good. I'm just glad they can all be skipped. And to those saying I judged Doom based squarely on it's graphics. No, the gameplay is also terrible. It was fun maybe back when it first came out, but just the fact that people still call it one of the best shooters out there is ridiculous.
ReplyDelete