Just looking at this game makes me want to thrust forks into my eyes.
The video features foul language and is not appropriate for children.
(video: Angry Video Game Nerd, Lester the Unlikely review)
Many of these games are cheap cash-ins using famous cartoon characters or comic book heroes to promote and sell the games to children. Since the majority of the market lies with casual gamers, developers and publishers design poor quality titles just to make a quick buck. This is commonly the case with movie tie-ins. I had a bad experience with a movie-based game and it will forever haunt me till the day I die. That game was Atlantis: The Lost Empire for the GameBoy Advance.
When I was a kid, I felt that just about every video game I played was at least decent. I never experienced bad game design until this piece of crap hit retail shelves. I wanted a new game and since I liked the movie it was based on (key word: "based") so I convinced my mom to buy me the game. We were at Walmart when I got it so the moment my mom purchased it, I went to the front of the store, tore off the packaging, and shoved the game in my GBA. I only ever made it up to the fourth level but every single level was horrible. The second level was the worst thing I ever played. You're given about three minutes to go through the entire level to rescue the crew. The problem is that there's no way to know where any of these idiots are. Then to top that, the screen's flashing, steam's killing you, and before you know it you're almost out of time. I hated the game so much that two weeks later I took it to EB Games (now GameStop) to trade it in. The guy at the counter told me that my game was worth six cents; we paid $29.99 for the game and I was being offered next to nothing in return. I took some time to think about it but I quickly realized that no one in their right mind would pay me anything more six cents for that piece of crap. I accepted the offer, and I probably lost the money they gave me.
Screw this stage and screw this game!
Most movie tie-ins suck but there was an even larger turd that came out last year titled Duke Nukem Forever. I was not willing to buy the game but I did download the demo. What I downloaded was a bland, broken mess of a game. The jokes were stupid and the character models looked like crap. The controls felt loose and unstable so overall, it sucked. Gearbox should be ashamed for promoting, let alone releasing, such a broken game. But what can you expect from a game that was in development for ten years?
This game should have been delayed indefinitely.
There are so many awful games that it almost makes me ashamed to call myself a gamer. It was the large amount of low quality titles that caused the Great Video Game Crash of 1983, along with the over-saturation of consoles, and that same event could occur again. People play video games to be immersed in another world, to have an innovative experience, and to have fun, not to be ripped off.
There will always be bad games but the amount of them needs to lower. Developers need to spend more time making their games functional and for that to happen publishers need to give them that time. Sonic the Hedgehog '06 was a mess because of time constraints but if Sega would have been given the time they needed, I have no doubt that the title would have done much better. These games can make or break a company's reputation and can hurt the console it was developed for. This leads to studio closings which lead to layoffs in the industry. Take note: consumers would much rather play a quality title over a rushed, unoriginal, broken piece of crap.
This is an interesting blog post, but you have to remember that these things keep on being created BECAUSE they have a following, otherwise they would have died out.
ReplyDelete"These games can make or break a company's reputation and can hurt the console it was developed for."
I honestly don't think they would have allowed a game to be developed, tested, and sold if they know that it will only hurt their reputation. These are decisions that are agreed upon. And it seems as though there are far more good-quality games than there are mediocre or bad. But again, there is a following for this "genre" of video games.