Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has to be the most visually stunning game I have yet played. Everything about its presentation is flawless, from the animation of characters to the cinematic story telling. But that is also the reason why it makes it to this list. Take a moment and strip all the glitter off of Uncharted, and not just the first game, but the entire series; there isn't much left. The first Uncharted is a wildly overrated game that has, in a sense, become the new Final Fantasy VII. The graphics are so impressive that reviewers and gamers sometimes forget that the core gameplay is bland and even downright bad at times. Seriously, try platforming and watch Nathan jump from one platform to the next: the animations are all horribly canned and he basically auto-jumps, going as far as magically turning in mid-air to make absolutely sure you don't fail. It's painfully automatic. The battle system is improved in the second game, but it's still not quite on the level of some of the best over-the-shoulder shooting this generation has seen (Mass Effect 2 and Gears of War come to mind). But the improvements only help to show the problems of the original, because the shooting system in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is just wonky in general and more loose than a Lohan vagina.
And I could forgive all of this, I truly could, if the game was at the very least innovative. But there is nothing Uncharted doesn't rip from another game. At all. The Uncharted series has a knack for taking tried-and-true gameplay mechanics and dumbing them down for today's modern gamers and it tends to suck a lot of the fun out. It's a little baffling to me that people call this game and the sequel some of the best ever. When the years have passed and its graphics start to show their age, Uncharted will be all but forgotten for doing absolutely nothing to make gaming more interesting.
Remember Mr. Drake: there's a reason Miss Croft is struggling to get market share in this day and age and why her games have gone through countless reboots, even while being infinitely better and more original than the titles you star in. Once the novelty wears off a few years from now, you'll probably find yourself in a similar situation.
Kingdom Hearts is a bad game. A really bad game. I know that the series has a lot of fans and I know plenty of them are probably setting up their sniper rifles right now, but it has to be said that Kingdom Hearts for the Playstation 2 is one of the most overrated games of all time. There is absolutely nothing this game does right in the gameplay department: the battle system is botched, the platforming is ruined by an uncooperative camera, the RPG elements are "lul"zy at best, etc. The level design was also atrocious most of the time, with most levels being so poorly made that I often felt that if Sora walked too far to one edge he would fall into a void of gaming code.
Hate me all you want, but the only thing Kingdom Hearts had going for it was the mix of Disney and Final Fantasy. Strip those things away for a second and pretend it's just an RPG you picked up recently; you'd quickly see just how bad Kingdom Hearts really is. Case in point: how many people loved the original game but couldn't quite get into the second (which was an actual improvement, but not by much)? The reason is because the novelty of playing with Square and Disney characters had worn off at that point, making KH II fall prey to the poor design choices of the developers and turning it into an absolute chore. The story is also a clusterfuck of shit narrative and cardboard cutout characters, so it didn't even manage to have that going for it. Don't get me wrong, I loved Kingdom Hearts when it came out and I still love it despite its flaws because it appeals to a very, very geeky part of me that loves the idea of seeing Final Fantasy and Disney mixing. But realistically speaking, I know Kingdom Hearts is one of the worst things Square-Enix has ever made.
Also: the less said about the God awful Gummi Ship transitions between levels, the better.
I want to say that this one is also a bad game, but I think calling Animal Crossing a "game" is a bit of a stretch. Look, I played this one for hours when I was younger, and I do in fact like it, but I know it's terribly overrated. Animal Crossing is the epitome of non-games, because really, nothing is ever happening in it. You can't interact with other players because the game lacks online connectivity, and that would be fine if the game offered you smart A.I. that helps keep you entertained, but really, it doesn't. The A.I. serves only to talk nonsense to you or to give your pointless fetch quests. That's yet another thing: Animal Crossing is so unimaginative that it all eventually just goes downhill into endless fetch quests that require further fetch quests to complete. Even the mechanics within the mechanics are pointless: why have a mail system that delivers letters to an NPC that replies in gibberish?
Sure, you could argue that the point of the overall "game" was to make your home larger and decorate it however you wanted to, but that kind of experience was already offered in the gaming industry and it was done infinitely better too. Even the presentation of this game was dreadful, with the graphics being a massive eyesore. I don't usually care about graphics, but it does bother me that Animal Crossing is basically a Nintendo 64 game trying to pass off as being a Gamecube game.
Sorry Animal Crossing fans, this one goes down into the history books as being one of the most overrated of all times.
Ah, the MMO for lonely people! I actually have a few friends that adore this game and to me it's a mystery why. There are a few things it does right, such as the removal of random encounters and a vast, beautifully polished world to explore. But those things aside, it just falters. The battle system is annoyingly tedious in every way imaginable, forcing you to micro-manage nearly everything on your party members because they can't chew gum and breathe at the same time. Heaven for-fuckin'-bid you make one or two mistakes with those Gambits, 'cause there goes your whole party. I feel like the battle system was just ripped from Final Fantasy XI, and see, in FF XI it works because you are playing with other people. In XII you don't really have that option, and even with the expansive abilities you can give your characters, they still can't compare to a real, thinking human being. This sort of leads to two options: you either pause the game and micromanage every move, slowing the battling to an absolute crawl, or you try desperately to keep your party from wiping as you watch them get taken out one by one. It just bothers me because even though it seems like it makes the game "deeper," it comes off to me as the opposite. It's like Square just got too lazy to program proper party A.I. and just decided to let the player go at it.
The story was another issue: it lacked focus of any kind and half of the characters were boring, complete blanks. I honestly could not care less if any of them died in some massive cataclysmic event because I just couldn't connect with any of them. Even the best characters were still only shadows of better characters the series has had before (FACT: Lulu > Fran). The game lacked focus in every way imaginable and it suffered for it.
Final Fantasy XII scored one of the highest ratings in Japan's Famitsu publication, and I still don't understand why...massive critical acclaim, huge financial success, and none of it actually deserved.
What?
Don't look at me like that!
I adored playing the first God War, despite its many glaring flaws. The battle system was adequate, with the dodging and lack of depth being the only real gripes against it. But even with those problems, the game was worth playing because the story was well written, the game was well paced, and at the time, the action genre was only just starting to get its wings in the 3D realm (thanks to Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden). I skipped the second game, seeing the story only through videos online and as friends played. It wasn't that I didn't want to play it myself, mind you, it was the fact that I was broke and the game was still costly even by the time the PS3 hit. Fast forward a few years and I find myself in Blockbuster, eagerly holding in my hands a copy of God of War III for $15 (as opposed to the $45 you would get in regular retail). I couldn't wait to open it and play it, so I did the moment I got home. Despite only paying $15 for the game I still felt robbed. There is so much wrong with God of War III that when people call it one of the best games of all time I feel like I've fallen into a parallel universe of some sort.
Where do I begin? For one thing, the gameplay mechanics were not even slightly changed for the third game. The series has shown almost no evolution since it first started and it's a bit difficult to swallow when you consider how resoundingly other games in the same genre have kicked God of War's ass. It's a little difficult to play something as deep and creative as Bayonetta and then play something like God of War III that is still just as shallow as the day the first game in the series released. Even minor things like changing the dodging system would have helped the game along the way. But no, God of War III keeps the cumbersome, badly implemented dodging with the awfully placed right analog stick of the DualShock controllers.
But that's sort of the problem I have with this game in general: it heavily recycles the rest of the series, ignoring all the advances that the action genre has made throughout the years. There is nothing that it doesn't recycle, from set pieces (Really? The underworld? Again?), to story elements, and even to graphics. Those last two are what ultimately killed the game for me. The story in God of War III is very poorly written and paced, showing no originality whatsoever. What's worse is that Kratos, an already piss poor character clearly made to pander to the straight male demographic (Think: Male Bella Swan) got progressively worse as the story went on. I don't mean progressively more evil, I mean less plausible, relatable, and just generally lacking the little bit of personality he once had. It doesn't fare much better graphically either. The game is constantly named as one of the best looking of all time, but the reality of it is that the game is very hit-or-miss, with all kinds of graphical problems. The biggest one is that the game has texture work that is beautiful in some places but that in others look almost PS2 level. This may not seem like a big issue, but it's kind of grating when you can see the pores in Kratos' meticulously textured face and then see the shit-detail on his armor.
And yes, it did have cool moments, like the fight against the Titan Cronos. But even those cool moments were muddled by the lack of any depth in the actual battling and by the fact that the game relegates most boss battles to a series of pointless QTE's for the sake of being cinematic. Add to all of that the fact that God of War III is barely five hours long and you pretty much have a game whose scores far out shadow its actual merits.
- Kharlo -
FF XII has a genuine shout of being the most skillfully made game of all time.
ReplyDeleteSo no.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!!!
ps
Kingdom Hearts rules too.
Animal Crossing was great because it made me think I had friends ^_^
ReplyDeleteI don't know why I struggled through KH to the end though because I didnt enjoy it at all. Also, FFXII lost me after 15hours of repetitive battle and zero story, absolutely hated it.
That's because you're a poo-poo head.
ReplyDeleteThe Battle-System can get repetitive but only if you don't use it to it's fullest capabilities. I say this because I thought exactly the same thing first time I played it. Friend told me to give it another go with a few caveats and I got it.
Story is immense too, with some of the best voice acting ever seen at that point.