My friend Radar hated Morrowind so much, that he snapped my Morrowind CD-ROM into two. That’s right. It pissed him off so much he destroyed the game disc I had lent him.
Uncharted has plastic-y characters, repetitive combat and a plot development so stupid it nearly scuttled the game for me. But it’s got GREAT environments and genuinely likable characters.
Mirror’s Edge - nice first-person free-running engine, otherwise pretty terrible in every other way.
And at + 1 to the Assassin’s Creed stinks camp. Great animation, beautiful environments and absolutely no fun to play at all.
Spore. The creature creator is obviously awesome, the game’s quality is “debatable”, and for me personally it was a dud. But man, the creature creator…
Guitar Hero, post GH2. Flawed and broken imitations of greatness, but they still make some fine hardware.
Master of Orion 3.
The fleet upkeep/mobilization center concept was very cool, and the race artwork/design was excellent. Rest of the game could have used a little polish though.
Agreed… the game wasn’t that horrible… but it totally wasn’t Game of the Year.
The Terrain mod stuff was so much fun in multiplayer. The ability to blow out the terrain under your foes is so much fun.
I apologized like 3 times in the past 48 hours.
This being a Charles thread, I was certainly tempted to mention both Assassin’s Creed and Mirror’s Edge. I agree with what someone else said though, I can’t honestly say Assassin’s Creed only got one thing right. It was a flawed game, but it still got many things right, and really right at that. Ditto Mirror’s Edge, though maybe not as much. I could see the argument that Assassin’s Creed got “more” right, but either way, Mirror’s Edge managed to do more than just one thing right.
Assassin’s Creed had awesome cities (and technology showing them off). It also had superb animation, which is largely responsible for the great free running and the at least sometimes great combat.
Mirror’s Edge has an awesome city as well. Artistically, Mirror’s Edge is one of my favorite games in a few years. The free running on display in Mirror’s Edge, while totally different from what’s going on in AC, is also its own kind of awesome, when allowed to shine. The music in Mirror’s Edge was great, and Mirror’s Edge also just gets a lot of credit with me for being more interesting in its failure than a lot of games in their success because of the risks it took with its approach to combat and the very nature of it as a first-person platformer/free runner/whatever. Both its nature as a first-person-flee-er and some of its combat were compromised in many cases, but when they worked, they were great.
So yeah, I wouldn’t put either of those in the “Flawed but one thing amazing” category. More like the “Compromised Ambition worth enduring for their triumphs” category.
Hey, I loved Delta Force as well but the AI was some of the stupidest I’ve ever seen. You could stand beside them and they wouldn’t react.
Spore - Creature creation
Superman Returns - Awesome human flight model and scale
And while we are talking music …
Ascendancy
I forgave Delta Force all it’s other flaws for the chance to lie on hilltop and snipe people half a mile away. The fact that the sequels repeated all the flaws, not so much.
Respectfully
krise madsen
Nobody likes a braggart. But seriously, your story checks out. So I guess you are okay as well.
I’ll tell Neno you said that. It’ll make his day. :-)
Seriously I think I have the ripped soundtrack somewhere around here and still queue it up occasionally. It was quite decent. And if I remember right, I think after we had a thread reminiscing about it, jpinard shared the MP3 format with us.
F.E.A.R. - The AI.
Everything else was pretty lacking. Particularity the environments.
Ya know, in games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, one of the first things I do is turn off the music. I prefer a more “realistic” setting in which all I hear are the footsteps, the wind, something creepy I can’t identify, etc.
As a result I guess I have missed out on a lot of cool soundtracks…
Yeah ditto. Apparently a lot of the music in WoW:TBC was amazing, but I never turned it on, ever.
I used to do that but now I just turn it down to maybe 50% volume. I enjoy the music but I enjoy it in the background. I don’t want it overpowering any sounds in the world.
I don’t actually see any posts from you against Morrowind in that thread, FWIW.
Ha, I don’t have a problem with you subjectively disliking Morrowind - but don’t be surprised if you get called by Morrowind-defenders when you say:
" I meant games that weren’t really well received, or that were received in very mixed fashion."
…since the opposite was true for Morrowind. It was exceptionally well received. Anyway, gotcha, you just meant games that didn’t appeal to you but which you thought had a notable feature.
I didn’t just call you out on this point, so don’t get too defensive - I contributed a bunch of other game examples to your thread!
Here’s another highly subjective one - I’m not a fan of Call of Duty 4 because the respawning enemies ruin that game for me, but the character animations in that game are really special, and almost photorealistic. If only RPGs could do as well - that’s certainly a flaw of all of Bethesda’s games (especially Morrowind!)
Oh come on guys, give Charles a break! AC did a lot of things really well, you’re just all kvetchy about the pacing.
Back on topic: I thought Spore did architecture well in that it had an excellent overarching flow to gameplay. It just utterly failed at making any of the details engaging or fun in any significant way.
Here’s another:
- the seamless world of Dungeon Siege - moving from subterranean depths to great heights without ever loading.