Bad Games

[Sodon]

Back in elementary school I rented Superman 64. That game has scarred me for life.

You know, I did too. But the odd thing is, I seem to recall being entertained by it. My taste in games at a young age was decidedly... agreeable.

Also, believe it or not, my sister rented and I played through, from start to finish, Barbie Super Model for the Super NES. It was a damnable game. I even knew that at the time. I have no excuse. See above.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Broken Sword FTW

[Korax]

I have to agree that Broken Sword is pretty good, although my criteria may be a bit different from everyone else's. I don't have the patience to play the inventory combination game, so the fewer times I have to check a FAQ, the better I consider the game to be. Add to that the presence of the DS version's in-game FAQ, and I didn't even have to touch the internet in order to complete it.

[Fuzzy Lobster]

Also, believe it or not, my sister rented and I played through, from start to finish, Barbie Super Model for the Super NES. It was a damnable game. I even knew that at the time. I have no excuse. See above.

Hah. You're in good company. Please note my earlier comment about the Spice World game. My excuse is that it was in the free bin at a local used music store and I pathologically cannot say no to free stuff.

[Tanukitsune]

I liked Spice World back in the day, which means that I was more hormonal back then and liked it because it had purdy ladies in it...

[Murdoc]

I bought and played Fahrenheit around the time it was released so I paid the full price, but I wish that I would've never done that. The damn demo sold me the game. The demo was actually really good, but almost everything after the demo scenes was really, really bad.

When I sold it away I got like 5 euros for it as the price went down the drain really quickly.

Wow, totally agree; that demo was almost a bait and switch for what I took away from the game. The gameplay and story just seemed to be pretty cool in the demo then totalyl changed as the game progressed.

[syntheticgerbil]

What the.... I can't believe the amount of negative posts about Leisure Suit Larry series on this thread! (2) It's quite possibly my favourite sierra adventure franchise. It's definitely neck-to-neck with Gabriel Knight series.

Recently I had the misfortune of playing through the first Broken Sword game on DS. I hated just about everything about it, and it's probably the worst adventure game I have ever played. What's puzzling to me is that this game was received quite well critically, and often mentioned in "favourite adventure games" conversations and such. The only explanation I can think of is that this game is so bad, it's good.

Yeah, what's up with the Leisure Suit Larry hate? There's worse Sierra games, like King's Quest or Phantasmagoria, for instance. And I really love the art style in 5 and 7, while 5-7 are all solid nonlinear adventure games with some funny parts, even though a lot was played out before and since.

But I will say I enjoy Broken Sword 1 and will stand by that it's a good game even though I don't really like any Revolution adventures (despite playing almost all of them) and that Charles Cecil is a big dork who only seems to make games worse as he furthers his career.

The background art, animations, voice work and music are probably the best the adventure world has ever seen, and the story and puzzles are also terrific. Everything is so smooth, so polished, so well-animated. It really was the peak of adventure games, right before that mother fucking third dimension (the "turd dimension") came along and ruined every game for about five years.

I will say the animation is not always that great. For whatever reason, a lot of the cut scenes seem to be animated by two different teams. Whatever team did (from what I recall) the intro, the ending, and the man getting hit by the corvette along with a few others, did a great job, while the other team did very stiff animations (going down the well, up the ladder, most of the in game stuff). You can tell because when you compare these cutscenes, they have a different line weight and the character designs look a little different between each.

I was really sad, because none of the cutscenes in Broken Sword 2 appeared to have been done by the great team from the first game, and it lacked a lot of the extra polish that intially got me interested. The most that we got for 2 was a South American god disintegrating, and even that didn't look so hot.

I have no idea how this all holds up with the Special Edition version of 1.

Edited February 9, 2010 by syntheticgerbil

[Jayel]

To be fair I never played the original Broken Sword - so it's possible the director's cut added some stupid puzzles and plot points that made no sense at all. It's my understanding that the portrait art on the top screen of the DS is done by different guys specifically for the director's cut: it's one of many nitpicky complaints I had that the art style you see in the cut scenes and the game itself don't line up at all.

I also started playing Broken Sword 2, and already it shows a lot more promise (

at least you aren't trying to avenge the death of some stranger who got killed for no reason and happened to be a bad guy at the end anyway

). But I still don't see any sort of logic to those puzzles. The very first scene you're trying to get out of the mansion you're trapped in, and you need to find a key to the front door! are all houses in France built this way?

Edit:

To steer this thread back to topic: I don't play many bad games because I try to avoid them, but I do get disappointed a lot by games I was looking forward to. The biggest disappointment has to be No One Lives Forever 2. The first one's my favourite FPS (besides half-life series). The sequel? Blech. Clearly the critics disagree: 91% on metacritic.

Edited February 9, 2010 by Jayel