6 Games That Were Unfairly Bashed

Gamers are gamers. They will always find any minuscule reason to whine and bitch about a little annoyance in a game that is so insignificant that it’s hardly noteworthy. In some cases these little annoyances or discrepancies blow up into one giant miasma of idiocy and mass hysteria. Exhibit A: Mass Effect 3 ending. But we will get to that later. These complaints often don’t do the game in question any justice and distracts people from the big picture. Often a game is glorious and thought-provoking and gets overshadowed by negative influences from so-called “die-hard gamers”.

Let’s look at some of the games that received negative reactions that were totally not deserved at all.

 

6 — FEZ

Racism is a very touchy subject. So touchy in fact that you can’t say a single thing wrong about another race group without being totally massacred by the media, racial groups and just trolls in general. Phil Fish, the lead developer of FEZ, mentioned in a GDC panel that Japanese games suck. This got misinterpreted as racist against Japanese people when in actual fact he just stated his opinion that modern Japanese games suck to him. What is the fallout of this action? Internet “elites” calling him a racist with a plethora of like-minded idiots  just jumping on the bandwagon despite the fact that most people on forums say what he has said every day almost. Now FEZ is a good game , no doubt about that, but people are flat-out refusing to buy the game based on one simple statement made by one man.

I’m sorry, but is just fucking stupid to me. It wasn’t just Phil Fish designing the game, no, it was a group of people working their fingers to the bone to produce a game worthy of significant praise. Now all their effort gets wasted because one guy made a mistake? What are we, animals?

 

5 — L.A. Noire

This is a prime example of my personally coined phrase “gamer amnesia”. I was lucky enough to receive this game on release (for which I spent a shitload of money because I’m a fan of Rockstar‘s games) and was totally hooked by it. Detective games weren’t a new thing, but this was so well done that it became unique in its own sense. The facial expressions were beautifully crafted and designed to pull you into the game. I was filled with immersion and even found myself questioning my relatives and friends while reading their facial expressions. I was seeing praise left and right. From people on Twitter, various reviews and the amount of people that were playing it on my friends list. A few months passed and whenever the topic of L.A. Noire came up in social media or whatever, gamers were suddenly bashing it mercilessly.

Why? BECAUSE LOL. Actually it was always something idiotic like “Oh, the facial animations weren’t that great” or “The story actually sucked now that I think about it” and so an and so forth. I was literally shocked at the negativity that was given off because I loved the game and still loved it even after getting a 1000 G for it (GSW Alert). What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. Gamers completely forgot about the amazing experience they had and started agreeing with a bunch of idiots that said the game was bad for some fucked up convoluted reason. This doesn’t paint the game well for people that have yet to play it and in turn they miss out on one hell of an experience.

Sad. Sad indeed.

 

4 — Dragon Age 2

We all love him and we all would marry his face. The favorite game of our infamous space pirate Caveshen. He has been defending Dragon Age 2 since it came out and with good reason. Gamers have went so far as calling it the worst game they have ever played, but with as much evidence as a homeless guy’s hygiene. In my honest opinion you can only ever truly scrutinize a game if you have completely finished it.

This became apparent to me when I played a little under the radar JRPG called Tales of Vesperia. At first I didn’t like the game at all and only ever enjoyed the combat. I played off and on for weeks with only an hour or so of play time. As I progressed, it started to draw me into its storyline and characters in a way I never expected. From thinking the game was kinda shit to being close to addicted to it is evidence enough that you can’t undermine a game before you truly played it.

This is exactly what happened to Dragon Age 2. People didn’t play as far as the prologue and then subsequently called it a load of rancid piss. That’s not fair now is it? I played the game twice and while it not being my favorite BioWare game of all time, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Character interactions and relationships had me so sucked in that I frankly didn’t give a fuck about recycled dungeons and the fact that the game is only based in one city.

It’s obvious that Dragon age 2 is hated by many, but almost 90% of the supposed haters can’t even justify their hatred towards the game because they couldn’t even be arsed to play the damn game in its entirety.

 

3 — Bulletstorm

This is from another phenomenon that I’ve subsequently called the “Too Damn High Expectation Phenomena”. The game was developed by Epic and when gamers thing Epic they instantly think of my Epic Guitar Hero skills. And Gears of War I guess. When Bulletstorm was announced people looked forward to the same type of quality they usually get from an Epic game. This was not the case with Bulletstorm, but, – and this is a huge but –  it did things right in other departments. Bulletstorm is a vulgar, humourous First Person Shooter with interesting scoring mechanics thrown into the fray.

That’s all it was. Not a spiritual predecessor to Gears of War where Grayson Hunt is secretly Marcus Fenix’s long lost brother or whatever. Bulletstorm did its own thing and did it well at that. It was a sad day when I saw internet discussions pop up that portrayed Bulletstorm as a shit game full of “gimmicks” and “clichés”. No, it wasn’t. It had its own universe, own style of humour and completely different ideas of where it was going. Gamers were just not pleased with anything other than the majesty that was Gears of War.

Bulletstorm was hell of a lot of fun and something completely different to what I was used to. I’d much prefer playing something like this to the tried-and-tested likes of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.

But I guess that just wasn’t enough for “hardcore” gamers.

 

2 — Mass Effect 3

Sigh. I really am over this whole debacle with regards to the ending. Weeks and weeks of angry forum posts and heated arguments over a 10 minute sequence of actions and cutscenes was enough to drive me completely bonkers. To be completely fair, Mass Effect 3 did not deserve all this negativity at all.

It all started with the whole Day 1 DLC deal. People were outraged at the idea and decided that they “HAD ENOUGH” and proceeded to boycott the game (Which they didn’t) and attacked the game on sites such as Metacritic, giving it absolutely abysmal scores. To be fair it was a bit of a low-blow to us as gamers, but nothing so drastic that it deserved total scrutinization and hatred. Many games have done it before and just because it was Mass Effect, suddenly it’s stepping over the line.

Then there was the ending. Entire sites dedicated to it? Petition signings? Facebook groups laughably called “Retake Mass Effect”? Really guys?  Was this really necessary now? Also, it seems that the so-called “fans” of Mass Effect suddenly just dropped the entire experience they had throughout the entire 40+ hour game and only focused on the final scene. This doesn’t do the game justice at all. There were some amazing set-pieces and brilliantly told stories left right and centre. What happened to that? On ALL the opinion pieces and 10 000 word essays I’ve read concerning the ending I never saw a mention given to how amazing the game in itself was.

Just a load of whiny bitchy gamers.

 

1 — Deadly Premonition

I’ve ranted significantly in this article and I’d like to cool things down a bit with a game that I think everyone should play. I bought this game for R100 on the  Games on Demand store on Xbox LIVE and got my mind blown to pieces. The game is bad. Horrible even. The graphics are that of the PS2 era, controls are one big mess (for example you reverse your car with the RIGHT TRIGGER. How the… I don’t even), character animations are laughable, stupid things happen to the geometry, combat is unsatisfying and retarded.

But you know what? This game has attitude and spark. Throughout the time I’ve played it, I was treated with humorous dialogue at almost every conversation. The characters were bursting with uniqueness and personality, like a transvestite deputy sheriff and a rich guy with a gas mask speaking in rhymes and eating turkey cereal sandwiches . There were pop culture reverences made that shocked me, like the lead character talking about the movie Rise of the Killer Tomatoes and Tom and Jerry. Everything is quirky as hell and that made the experience totally worth every minute I spent it on.

You know what could have prevented me from not having that experience? Just giving up at the prologue because of the faults I’ve mentioned and that’s what most gamers do. They just give up. Not interested in discovering something new and exciting because they have grown used to just being handed something on a silver plater. That’s why Call of Duty is so popular. It’s simple, quick to pick up and fun. The gamer who looks for challenging experiences or new worlds outside their comfort zone are dying out

And I don’t like that.

 

In Conclusion

I’ve started this article because I was downright pissed off at gamers just moaning and bitching the whole time. It would be justified if a game is truly crap and shallow without any hint of creativity. That kind of bitching I understand because it makes sense to do so. Not undermining a game based on foggy evidence or mass hysteria. We need to shut that out of this industry and truly appreciate the great games that are seldom given to us.

Sometimes it’s good to be up in arms about an issue you have in a game, but it needs to be justified and from personal experience. Not just jumping on a bandwagon with a bunch of trolls and idiots.

I don’t know if I just have a soft spot for games and tend to go easy on them, but I will say this:

I’m a gamer and I’m passionate about my chosen entertainment.

Give games a decent chance and you might find yourself surprised or even hooked.