Calling a game disappointing arguably has more to do with me than the game itself. Disappointment isn’t an inherent quality. It can’t exist without some sort of expectation in the first place. In many cases, these games are sequels, or the creations of developers with proven track records, or entries in established genres, or games with promising beginnings. But for various reasons, a central fact about these games is that I had personally hoped they would be better.
But you haven’t seen even 10% of the surprises in NieR: Automata if you never made it past the initial parts of the second playthrough. I hope you do someday, because there’s so much that’s so good after (and during) that.
The Automata part of the title is important! Nier was the first game. (Which is fabulous and whose second playthrough does very different things than Nier: Automata does.)
Absolutely agree with Torment. Eventually all the weird stories, overlong descriptions and unfamiliar terms and concepts overwhelmed me, and the actual parts of the game where I clicked on something besides dialogue options weren’t engaging enough for me to bother coming to grips with all the information overload.
I loved Planescape, but that had the benefit of a D&D frame of reference for certain aspects and mechanics to ease the transition into the weirdness.
Awesome - been waiting all week for this post! I only have 1 of the games on the list (Prey) so I can’t really add any constructive banter except it’s interesting all the concurs with Torment. Maybe it would have been a better tablet game?
I dunno, I disagree about Torment. I went into it expecting talking and was not disappointed. It’s true that the pacing / size of the areas is nonstandard, but it didn’t bother me. I knew nothing about the setting, but just let the parts that went over my head roll off my back (so to speak), so i enjoyed all the weird different subplots on their own merits.
The only one of these I’ve played is NieR: Automata, and it’s probably my GotY. I also hit a bit of malaise where you dropped it, early in the second path, but pushed through it. The overly familiar and repetitive bit passes quickly enough, and the payoff in terms of both different perspectives on previous events and new events once the paths diverge again is well worth the time.
As for my own disappointments, I didn’t play a ton of new releases, but the one that sticks out the most is Monster Hunters. The word of mouth here was strong, but 2/3 of every play session consists of rote, easy battles devoid of challenge and interesting decisions.
Also somewhat disappointed by Aztez, whose enjoyable core combat system is let down by misfires in the connective tissue (strategy layer, scoring system, performance).
Wow, I was expecting to see Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in here given Tom pretty much bought a console to play it and from the reports on record didn’t seem overly enamored!
The most troubling thing about your blurb on NieR: Automata is that you don’t like 9S, who is the best character in the game, a lot of which is probably from the follow-on campaigns. (I can’t remember.)
I am totally with Tom about the single player part of Tooth & Tail being disappointing: the campaign is interesting on paper - a succession of mini-games of sort with weird conditions -, but it didn’t work for me, and the skirmish’s AI jumps from being a pushover at “normal” to being inhuman on “hard”.
It’s like those clickbait links… “Which stars were secretly CIA spies?” with a picture of Goldie Hawn on the link, but Goldie Hawn isn’t one of the 43 listed stars, you discover after 129 clicks… At least Tom’s is all on one page. :)
I think it’s a running gag: can’t remember whether it was ‘best games of 2016’ or another category, but he used a Zero Dawn screenshot without further mentioning of the game at that topic as well. I think people felt it should have been on that list (while Tom felt differently) whereas now people will think ‘surely that’s not on the list?’ So yeah, clickbait in a way.
Considering Tom’s opinion on the game, I’m actually surprised it didn’t make the list. But we still have Friday to come :-).
