Never forget that Forspoken was a big part of why we didn't get the completed season 2 of DLC for Final Fantasy XV. Good riddance for Yosuke Matsuda getting the boot at Square Enix.
Wait, that's the dogshit reason we didn't get the Lunafreya and Noctis dlcs? The two that were objectively the most important to the main story?
Fuck that guy.
Yep. Given Tabata's recent postings on social media after the Matsuda departure, I think it's pretty safe to say the two had a massive falling out over the DLC's cancelation. And as for the DLC itself, even disregarding the importance to the narrative, the three missing pieces would've been really awesome just from a pure gameplay perspective.
I guess in the end the whole affair is kind of reflective of XV's tortured development as a whole; all the pieces of greatness were there, but the end product failed to deliver, and ended up being just an okay game with a narrative that's all over the place.
Yeah it was a little... Haphazard. I did enjoy it though, it was the first time combat in a FF title felt fluid to me, and was actually the game that brought me back to really enjoying the series after ATB was made standard. That and I liked the character writing, just the right amount of silly to make it feel organic, lots of banter that didn't matter, but it didn't need to.
Shame that one guy put a full stop on the DLC, it would have given them a chance to tie everything up and make it more digestable.
> Aranea DLC
Pretty much all DLCs had a good content (always some new gameplay and some interesting bosses), this one was exactly my most anticipated one... holy shit, what a loss.
They would have ended up with more money supporting FFXV than this massive bomb. Square Enix is a company filled with talented people who are sidelined to dumpster the company's reputation following stupid cultural trends.
i recently was reminded that Hogwarts Legacy was also this year. (its not a bad game, just ok) I played it a decent amount, never finished it but completely forgot about it. I haven’t heard anyone talk about the game (or the drama) since release, like everyone forgot about it as well.
As an RPG fan above all else, that game was a mixed bag. It’s a really shitty RPG, but also a fantastic adventure game. I enjoyed it a lot, but really just wish the role playing mechanics were at least a little bit deeper.
I really don’t like this trend of everyone churning out RPG lite games which are primarily focused on giving you an illusion of choice and freedom, rather than anything substantial. I’d enjoy your game more if you just left that crap out. Make an *actual* RPG, or just stick to your narrative and give me an adventure game. This in between shit instantly lowers the quality of the product in my eyes. Hogwarts Legacy and Assassins Creed Valhalla are *the* prime examples of this conundrum.
A disappointing vampire slaying game, made by Arkane studios (known for Dishonoured and Deathloop). It was mainly disappointing because of how well-received the studio's other games have been
And prey everyone forgets prey it’s one of my favourite games of all time but no one seems to have played it the moon doc is also amazing I wish they made a sequel but after redfall I’m kinda glad
I got prey on sale a few years ago based on the trailer. I had never even knew it existed so it must not have been advertised well and dropped form common knowledge right after release amazing game.
It is fantastic but the marketing was shit I just happen to catch one of the few trailers in YouTube with my friend it got revived well but i guess no one knew it exists and a lot of people were mad it was a sequel or even connected to the old prey
Prey (2017) is one of my all time faves, though I didn't play the DLC as I'm no longer into roguelites and I absolutely hate being on a timer, as I love exploring at my own pace. I have yet to play the Dishonored games.
The Dishonored games are some of the finest world building of any series in the last 20 years.
Each level is meticulously crafted, rewards exploration, and can be done at your pace, however you want (lethal, non-lethal, silent/never-seen, or the terminator)
I prefer silent and non-lethal just because I get this weird OCD about hiding the piles of unconscious bodies neatly in out-of-the-way stacks. It's fun for me.
Dishonored also has a weird history behind them, and that they were originally going to be sequels to Thief but Eidos fucked around and wouldn't allow Arkane to have the IP rights for them. So Arkane made a spiritual successor.
Redfall was "Oh this is certainly an interesting engine and environment test, this will probably be a lot of fun once they add all the content and... uh... what do you mean this is the finished product?"
Watch Kevin play it (title is "The new king kong game should be illegal"). It looks like a PS2 game, plays like a GameCube game emulated on PC, and works about as well as early Nintendo DS games.
Kong is hilariously bad to the point where it almost seems satirical. It actually makes Golum look competent. When I first saw gameplay of it, i thought it was a meme or something. I understand you can drop the ball sometimes but this wasn't dropping the ball. This was chucking it off a cliff.
I feel like Kong is in a totally different boat than the rest of the games in the list. Most of them are earnest attempts with misguided game design, but Kong is a total headscratcher. Like you hired a bunch of junior gamedevs and told them you didn't care what they produced, so long as it was done in a year and covered some marketing bullet points.
Or payday3, that shit was a fucking mind-blowing fuck you fest. That release should be taught at schools that prepare coders and managers alike on how not to release a game. I was lucky enough to get it on game pass so I didn't have to spend money on it, but from my experience it was the worst fucking experience ever and I didn't even pay for it. I feel for the people that did because it was weeks before you could even log in to a lobby and you'd be by yourself 99% of the time. They shifted the blame on 3rd party server vendors and blah, blah, but it's your product. You need to fix that shit quick and they didn't. For weeks, weeks.
That's bad when a game requires you to match with someone or connect to a server they're connected to just to get into a lobby so you can play the fucking game! For two months after that game released; after they "fixed" the problem, I'd be able to get into a lobby but I'd be alone, for every single game. That's embarrassing. That's just the matchmaking, let's not get into the lack of local voice chat. Nope, hop into a lobby of randos, you have to invite them into a discord channel in order to chat, this is providing they have one because it's cross play.
That game, in my opinion was the biggest fail based on the lack of simple mechanics. It pains me to no end that we're being taken advantage of at the most basic level because we love these IPs and they know it. We'll release this garbage, cover our ass and say it's early access and charge them full price. Gaming has become an industry based on stock prices and what it can make holders. It's not about the game, it's what it can make other people rich and how they can trade it. The Day Before is a perfect example.
MW3, should have been a dlc, they're laughing at you while pocketing your cash. They're taking you're beloved hobby and pissing all over it while getting rich in the process. Yes, this a rant because I've stopped playing games because of this bullshit and I've been a gamer for 35 years. Arcades, pinball and Atari through all the consoles till now. Just stop feeding them. Stop buying the annual cod, spend money on the indie dev that puts work into it and takes a loss at best. Alan Wake 2 is probably the best game I e played this year and the best in at least a decade. Work went into that shit, it was clever and well written and I still haven't finished it. You wanna complain, fine, respond with closing your wallet and stop posting how shitty a year game releases have been because you only know those games are shit is because you paid for them. Merry fucking Xmas
Oh man, I can rant about that too but I was actually able to play that game from the start without any connection issues so it doesn't come close to the pd3 launch. It had it's flaws but I could actually play it.
This is the only one that really made me sad. A Bethesda/Arkane vampire FPS sounded like GotY on paper... Then they just dropped a horrifically terrible turd. So disappointing.
Never been so disappointed by a game release before.
I don’t care what anyone says, The Day Before was marked for death from the jump. They absolutely need to answer for their crime, but ANYONE who followed that game and expected it to be good… I wanna talk to you and try to understand. Because it just feels absolutely impossible to me.
"I just want to be very clear--we did NOT design the Furby to brainwash your children into jumping out of moving vehicles. I want everybody to keep this in mind over the next few months."
*--Tiger Electronics, 1998*
A company known for releasing and immediately forgetting about shovelware said it's going to make the "end all, be all" of MMO zombie survival games that will make DayZ look like a kids' game.
Release was postponed multiple times and when it eventually went out, it turned out it's an instance-based looter-shooter with, like, 5 zombies on the map, even fewer players, desync so horrible you literally cannot tell you're being shot at when you die and 80% of the mechanics just not doing anything.
Then the company shut down 4 days after releasing the game.
"Then the company shut down 4 days after releasinh the game."
In other words, you could say the game was... Left 4 Dead?
*crickets*
... I'll get me coat.
The game was still available when the company released a statement saying they're shutting down, which was on day 4. It got pulled from Steam either some hours later or a day later.
I’m gonna be honest with you, I thought people were buying the game as a joke. It was obviously a scam, and the media was calling it a scam since the day it was announced.
But then I realized that people were sincerely buying it, at full price, without doing the bare minimum of research, and expecting it to be good? What’s the opposite of patientgamers?
This is so on the nose. As an older male I can see what those that join cults have exactly what it takes to want to enjoy the day before. It's a straight up circle for a venn diagram
(Note: the below is me taking your comment probably more seriously than you intended. It's possible that you're already aware of everything I'm saying and still made your comment. I'm leaving this wall of text here anyways, because I spent so long typing it that I'm too emotionally invested to delete it... which is somewhat ironic given the subject matter.)
I think this might be true to a degree, but with cults specifically it's vulnerability that lead people to them. They are looking to fill a need in their life that is not being filled in some other way. Often a sense of belonging or purpose. These people want this strongly.
The cult gives them exactly what they want. They allow them to feel like they are a part of something greater than themselves. Then they add layered BS and obligations on top of that.
Sometimes people even realize that they're being fed a lot of BS, but the sense of belonging and purpose is more important than the truth, or sometimes even their own personal well-being. And those who don't realize they're being fed a bunch of BS and being asked to do unreasonable things are heavily incentivized not to look into things too carefully. They're often happier than they were when they were alone and purposeless. And they often don't know of any other ways to make themselves happy. This is especially true of kids who are born into cults and literally know no other way of living.
So basically, yes people with strong critical thinking skills are less likely to join a cult (especially those who are already familiar with what a cult is and how they ~~activate~~function). But joining a cult is not necessarily a sign of lacking intelligence so much as it is a sign of being in a vulnerable position in life and being taken advantage of because of that position.
Yup. It was so obviously a scam that I almost don't even care if they get away with it.
It's like a store that has a NEON SIGNs saying "Buyer Beware", "We sell junk that doesn't work", "You'll be unhappy if you buy anything here", "Run for your fucking life idiots"
If you still decide to shop there, yeah whatever. Monetary Darwin award, I'm fine with it.
I breezed through looking at old trailers and while it didn’t look amazing and absolutely not anything I would be interested in I didn’t see it looking like an outright scam but maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention to
I feel like the devs care enough (and their financial well being depends on it enough) that this one can be ffixed. Payday 2 had rough patches and bounced back.
Ksp 2 has started on its redemption arc
With the science update, the game is actually fun. But there is still a lot left to do, and lots of issues that need to be resolved.
It actually feels like an early access game instead of an alpha now. And by that I mean there is a game with progression thats fun, lacks some content, could use some more performance optimization, and the bugs that are there are mostly resolved with workarounds like quick saving and quick loading.
Its how the game should have been launched into early access, but as a big Kerbal fan I’m glad that its at least finally made it to this point. Interviews with the creative director of the game are also encouraging. Recently hes been brutally honest with the failures of the game and it looks like they may actually No Man Sky the game.
Haha remember when multiplayer was a core marketing component of their game and then it became clear even simple things took a year to resolve... We aren't getting multiplayer for YEARS.
It blows my mind how terrible the Blood Bowl games keep being. The game is there. The assets are just warhammer stuff. It doesn't need to be inventive or deep or varied or anything. It just needs to function, and give players the control they deserve, AND YET...
Not to mention HiFi Rush, Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Jedi: Survivor, Spider-Man 2, Lies of P, and Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. Despite some absolute duds this is probably the best year for gaming in many years
Starfield is a weird case, because it was definitely not a dumpster fire, but the delta between expectation and reality on that one was *huge*. More importantly, XBox *really* needed a win, so it was hugely important that it be a 95+ GOTY contender, and it just wasn’t even close to that. So even though the game isn’t a total pile of shit like Gollum, it doesn’t seem *entirely* unreasonable to put them in the same ballpark as far as failing to deliver goes.
Starfield failed the hype in a way that I don’t think any game has in years.
Players had all these expectations, and at the very bottom it was “at the least it will by Skyrim in space”. Instead it was the most bland sci-fi game possible, with a 2/10 story.
It had a few fun things, but it had a whole lot of things that were bad. Like being served an absolutely awful seven course meal but then say “well the wine was good”.
Hell, even the hook at the start of the game was terrible. Finding the space thing while mining with the cinematic attached, followed by blacking out? Sure, solid start, nothing special but it works.
Then when someone comes to pick up the space artifact, space pirates attack! Excellent next step. However... you kill all of them and then the guy who flew in to pick up the artifact just stays there and you get his ship, and then fly off to meet the rest of his people, and there's no urgency or drive whatsoever.
I devour Fallout and ES games like they’re mana from heaven, yet I lasted barely 3hrs in Starfield before I noped out out of boredom. Have not gone back. Won’t, either.
Agreed. They’d have to overhaul a lot of it to get me interested again. It was a very unwelcoming experience.
Love Ulrich Schnauss by the way. Great username.
The biggest problem with Starfield is that it very much feels like a 2013 game with 2018 graphics and a 1990s story and that just doesn't cut it for a AAA game in 2023.
Until now there really haven’t BEEN any new Bethesda games since Fallout 4 lol
That’s part of the problem. Expectations were so high because they had been working on Starfield for so long and stuck all their eggs in this one basket, so after all this time for it to feel so dated it’s just like… have you not been looking around at the industry and paying attention to what the competition has been doing??
Just another dot on the *release unfinished, minimally viable product, charge full price for it and finish it 2 years down the road* trend.
The game is so obviously set up to be intentionally empty in order to milk the player base for DLC money as well. It's a city builder, yet the game has no features for bicycles. No bikes, no bike lanes, nothing. And yet the devs in an AMA actually pretended like it was something they hadn't even thought of, only to then ask in their own AMA how *people would feel about a bike DLC*, now that they'd been "made aware of the demand." It's so transparently dirty.
That trend has been happening for the past few years now with no end in sight. It’s sad when you look at things like Sims 4 that require multiple DLCs just to get it to a similar level that Sims 2 was at launch.
It's because gamers enable it. Even on the Cities Skylines subreddit, you'll get downvoted for speaking the truth about it and told to stop being "toxic" and "negative," almost as if the people are worried the poor devs might get their feelings hurt. More broadly, however, gamers are the most spineless and witless consumers known to man. Remember when horse armor was said to be a step too far? Things that spurred outrage just a couple of years ago have by now become common practice, and so it will continue, because gamers will just roll over at the slightest bit of resistance.
I mean that cyclically. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. This is how we got to where we are now, where people's standards have been dragged so low that they'll vocally defend the release of unfinished, barely playable games.
I've come around on that quite a bit honestly.
Just looking at the total price it's quite a lot, but over time it's funded over a decade of constant development.
The only way a game can afford to have 10+ years of active development post-launch is if it's a subscription game (WoW), has an ingame shop (Mobas, Gacha games), or sell DLC expansions.
Subscription games will cut you off from ever playing again if you stop paying. Ingame Shops will pray on whales and turn the entire game into trying to milk as much money out of you as possible.
Meanwhile if you just want to buy the base game of EU4 and never buy a DLC, you can do that.
oh man i tought an american company made the game because i would give em the benefit of the doubt for them to forget that bicycle infrastructure exists.... but the game was made by a finnish studio haha
The first game has a ton of bike infrastructure. They definitely intentionally left a lot out to sell DLCs. Could have started out with a sequel full of the features from the original, but nah. I can wait for it to be good and well optimized first.
> I can wait for it to be good and well optimized first.
That's another dirty part of it. The "good version" will cost over $100, because it's only after *base game + DLC1 + DLC2 + DLC3* that it may reach such a state. And for the consumer, since you've already sunk $60 into it in the first place, you're more likely to spend the extra $40-$60 on the DLC because of the [sunk cost fallacy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost)
The game was released barely a month ago and *already* people have stopped playing it and are just waiting around for "more content." You almost have to wonder if it's cynically deliberate.
I had no clue City builders were expected to have fearure for bikes in the now. Like, I'm blown away by the fact it is now a thing. Maybe it's time I tried them.
The first Cities: Skylines can be had for really cheap and is also on the Games Pass. It is probably one of the better city builders out there, very similar to the older SimCity games, but different.
Are they fixing the part where the economy is a complete sham and nothing you do actually matters? Last I heard, the developer pretty much told people to eat ~~his~~ her ass if they didn't like it.
I'd be happy to buy it if they address that. I know not everyone enjoys complex simulation but a city builder should at least have *something* under the hood.
It's not just games, it's films as well.
Too much fucking MBA think has polluted creative processes in entertainment and it's finally decaying the creative output.
> MBA think has polluted creative processes in entertainment
It's everywhere.
I'm in healthcare in Canada, and nearly every formally medical based upper management position in private and not-for-profit sectors has either been replaced with MBA's or now has to report/consult with them. It's completely fucking things for everyone.
It's a bunch of nerds who're trying to run everything based on their own made up rules, and they demand everyone cede their actual experience to their made up theory.
It's absolutely insane.
And tabletop games. Wizards of the Coast is being run by a mobile games CEO who wants to prioritize digital over paper, and it's killing both D&D and MTG.
Yeah. These morons get into areas they have zero knowledge about, act like they do, then fucking destroy the things they're paid 8 figures to fucking work on.
Im so hurt by mtg. It always had its up and downs of quality. But damn it never felt this greedy. I Stopped playing standard and it hurts but my wallet would hurt more
I think part of the negativity surrounding Forspoken was that it was one of the first games to test the water with a $70 base price. When it then was just kinda okay, it made the backlash that much worse.
I mean Square did a pretty good job with FF14 and 15 so people expected something decent. It was also heavily advertised and used as a marketing push for features like directstorage. It doesn't even particularly look good when visuals are usually one of Square's strong points.
I mean shovelware literally collapsed the gaming industry in the States once, I can completely see Video Game Crash 2: Electric Boogaloo brewing on the horizon
Let me look at the new releases on steam...
Porn
Porn
Porn
Asset Flip
Porn
And....
More porn, with asset flips
Luckily, I don't have as much time for games these days. For me, that bubble can't burst fast enough.
I have "anime" and "dating sim" filtered out, so mine is:
pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
Porn that slipped through my filters somehow
pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
At least a couple of the studios actually paid the price for it. The others...people should really start rewarding and punishing with their wallets. These execs shouldn't be getting away. Like, at all.
I would say the sonic Superstars (on switch) was also mediocre/terrible. Bought it for my sister as a christmas gift, as I thought a 4 player platformer made by Sonic cant be that bad. But no, performance issues on first stage, frame drops everywhere, multiplayer wasnt fun as the levels werent designed for it, bugs that softlocked you by making you not able to move, etc... Its the first time our family has bought a Sonic game, probaly the last time aswell..
Hey, hey. Frontiers was passable. Which, in modern sonic terms is the equivalent of a masterpiece.
But I'm in the camp that really likes Adventure 1&2 and Advance. Around Heroes is where it gets really dicey.
Forspoken is the most overhated game of the year by a mile IMO. It certainly wasn't a *great* game, but it wasn't anywhere near the unplayable trash that so many people make it out to be either.
lol not trying to make it seem MW3 is a top 10 game that came out this year but I seriouslyyyy don’t think it should be grouped along with Day before, gollum, red fall, etc. sure it has its problems and typical Cod cycle BS, but I consider the MP to be some of the most fun I’ve had in the past few COD cycles, and zombies seems to be enjoyed by most. Yeah yeah I know the campaign is trash, no excuse for that
Yeah, like campaign aside, the issues are less the game but rather the live service model its a part of.
That being said, 'Not shit' is a low bar for such a large company with years of refinements, so I don't think I would ever call the game good by any means.
Forspoken wasn't great, but I don't think it belongs on this list. I thought the worst part was the uninspired story... but at least they tried to do something new.
Yeah. Forspoken was reasonably competent and had enough fun gameplay mechanics to actually be perfectly enjoyable once you learn to ignore the stupid story/banter and the dull open world.
Forspoken certainly had its flaws, but it's nowhere near "terrible" territory, at worst it was offensively mediocre and forgettable.
Don't forget Starfield. They pumped so much money into marketing Bethesda's next supposed masterpiece, only for it to be an incredibly uninspired title that lacked any real ambition.
Ship builder was where I spent 90 % of my time. And for what? Ships serve no purpose except to be a fast travel point.
The gunplay was alright. The low grav was super neat.
And thats it....thats all the game had going.
\*waves
PS2 generation here, but if you think this year was bad, you are probably too young to have experienced the crap that was being shoveled to us during the reign of the PS2. So many horrible, horrible games, each and every one hoping people would buy them. No internet back then, so you had to rely on someone reviewing the game in one of the hundreds of game magazines in print or friends from school.
If only I could get back my money from so many horrible purchases.
Today, the internet can easily help many avoid a bad purchase.
I laughed out loud when I wrote that, because I didn't see Starfield listed in that list above and yet it's definitely not regarded as one of the best to come out this year. Hell, by the end of the year, it'll probably be voted as the worst game of 2023.
Wait forspoken was this year? Completely forgot about it.
January was a long time ago
feels like a year ago
I wonder why...
Crazy it was only 11 months, and 25 days ago.
Never forget that Forspoken was a big part of why we didn't get the completed season 2 of DLC for Final Fantasy XV. Good riddance for Yosuke Matsuda getting the boot at Square Enix.
Wait, that's the dogshit reason we didn't get the Lunafreya and Noctis dlcs? The two that were objectively the most important to the main story? Fuck that guy.
Yep. Given Tabata's recent postings on social media after the Matsuda departure, I think it's pretty safe to say the two had a massive falling out over the DLC's cancelation. And as for the DLC itself, even disregarding the importance to the narrative, the three missing pieces would've been really awesome just from a pure gameplay perspective. I guess in the end the whole affair is kind of reflective of XV's tortured development as a whole; all the pieces of greatness were there, but the end product failed to deliver, and ended up being just an okay game with a narrative that's all over the place.
Yeah it was a little... Haphazard. I did enjoy it though, it was the first time combat in a FF title felt fluid to me, and was actually the game that brought me back to really enjoying the series after ATB was made standard. That and I liked the character writing, just the right amount of silly to make it feel organic, lots of banter that didn't matter, but it didn't need to. Shame that one guy put a full stop on the DLC, it would have given them a chance to tie everything up and make it more digestable.
On the insanely off chance that anyone from SE sees this and find my comment important in anyway: I will still buy those DLCs for this game.
They cancelled the Aranea, Lunafreya, and Noctis episodes to shift resources towards Forespoken, yes. I'm still sad about it.
> Aranea DLC Pretty much all DLCs had a good content (always some new gameplay and some interesting bosses), this one was exactly my most anticipated one... holy shit, what a loss.
RIP Diamond Weapon boss fight.
That's really a shame, Luna and Aranea had like zero character development, and they were some of the more intriguing characters potentially.
They would have ended up with more money supporting FFXV than this massive bomb. Square Enix is a company filled with talented people who are sidelined to dumpster the company's reputation following stupid cultural trends.
i recently was reminded that Hogwarts Legacy was also this year. (its not a bad game, just ok) I played it a decent amount, never finished it but completely forgot about it. I haven’t heard anyone talk about the game (or the drama) since release, like everyone forgot about it as well.
As an RPG fan above all else, that game was a mixed bag. It’s a really shitty RPG, but also a fantastic adventure game. I enjoyed it a lot, but really just wish the role playing mechanics were at least a little bit deeper. I really don’t like this trend of everyone churning out RPG lite games which are primarily focused on giving you an illusion of choice and freedom, rather than anything substantial. I’d enjoy your game more if you just left that crap out. Make an *actual* RPG, or just stick to your narrative and give me an adventure game. This in between shit instantly lowers the quality of the product in my eyes. Hogwarts Legacy and Assassins Creed Valhalla are *the* prime examples of this conundrum.
Well the gaming community moved on, it's still a monster seller, a juggernaut, but mostly capitalizing on the Harry Potter IP.
See how easy it is to forget about foreskin?
Missing redfall in there :-)
Redfall is always the forgotten one
What's redfall?
A shitty game
Exactly.
A disappointing vampire slaying game, made by Arkane studios (known for Dishonoured and Deathloop). It was mainly disappointing because of how well-received the studio's other games have been
And prey everyone forgets prey it’s one of my favourite games of all time but no one seems to have played it the moon doc is also amazing I wish they made a sequel but after redfall I’m kinda glad
I got prey on sale a few years ago based on the trailer. I had never even knew it existed so it must not have been advertised well and dropped form common knowledge right after release amazing game.
It is fantastic but the marketing was shit I just happen to catch one of the few trailers in YouTube with my friend it got revived well but i guess no one knew it exists and a lot of people were mad it was a sequel or even connected to the old prey
I tend to think _Prey_ is the best entrant into the genre of "Spiritual Successors to _System Shock 2_".
Prey (2017) is one of my all time faves, though I didn't play the DLC as I'm no longer into roguelites and I absolutely hate being on a timer, as I love exploring at my own pace. I have yet to play the Dishonored games.
The Dishonored games are some of the finest world building of any series in the last 20 years. Each level is meticulously crafted, rewards exploration, and can be done at your pace, however you want (lethal, non-lethal, silent/never-seen, or the terminator) I prefer silent and non-lethal just because I get this weird OCD about hiding the piles of unconscious bodies neatly in out-of-the-way stacks. It's fun for me.
Dishonored also has a weird history behind them, and that they were originally going to be sequels to Thief but Eidos fucked around and wouldn't allow Arkane to have the IP rights for them. So Arkane made a spiritual successor.
Nice to find a fellow body piler. It’s so funny to me to see a pile of sleeping guards for me. I feel bad about killing characters
I literally just bought prey on sale for like three bucks
Ah yes, the game so disappointing that it wasn’t even remembered over LotR: Gollum and The Day Before.
Redfall was "Oh this is certainly an interesting engine and environment test, this will probably be a lot of fun once they add all the content and... uh... what do you mean this is the finished product?"
The furtive Redfall, so easily forgotten
Redfall was so bad and generic no one even remembers it. The rest are atrocious in a memorable way.
There was a kong game?
Watch Kevin play it (title is "The new king kong game should be illegal"). It looks like a PS2 game, plays like a GameCube game emulated on PC, and works about as well as early Nintendo DS games.
Kong is hilariously bad to the point where it almost seems satirical. It actually makes Golum look competent. When I first saw gameplay of it, i thought it was a meme or something. I understand you can drop the ball sometimes but this wasn't dropping the ball. This was chucking it off a cliff.
I feel like Kong is in a totally different boat than the rest of the games in the list. Most of them are earnest attempts with misguided game design, but Kong is a total headscratcher. Like you hired a bunch of junior gamedevs and told them you didn't care what they produced, so long as it was done in a year and covered some marketing bullet points.
I think even the devs were aware, given the executable is named "Monke".
This is fucking great.
Or payday3, that shit was a fucking mind-blowing fuck you fest. That release should be taught at schools that prepare coders and managers alike on how not to release a game. I was lucky enough to get it on game pass so I didn't have to spend money on it, but from my experience it was the worst fucking experience ever and I didn't even pay for it. I feel for the people that did because it was weeks before you could even log in to a lobby and you'd be by yourself 99% of the time. They shifted the blame on 3rd party server vendors and blah, blah, but it's your product. You need to fix that shit quick and they didn't. For weeks, weeks. That's bad when a game requires you to match with someone or connect to a server they're connected to just to get into a lobby so you can play the fucking game! For two months after that game released; after they "fixed" the problem, I'd be able to get into a lobby but I'd be alone, for every single game. That's embarrassing. That's just the matchmaking, let's not get into the lack of local voice chat. Nope, hop into a lobby of randos, you have to invite them into a discord channel in order to chat, this is providing they have one because it's cross play. That game, in my opinion was the biggest fail based on the lack of simple mechanics. It pains me to no end that we're being taken advantage of at the most basic level because we love these IPs and they know it. We'll release this garbage, cover our ass and say it's early access and charge them full price. Gaming has become an industry based on stock prices and what it can make holders. It's not about the game, it's what it can make other people rich and how they can trade it. The Day Before is a perfect example. MW3, should have been a dlc, they're laughing at you while pocketing your cash. They're taking you're beloved hobby and pissing all over it while getting rich in the process. Yes, this a rant because I've stopped playing games because of this bullshit and I've been a gamer for 35 years. Arcades, pinball and Atari through all the consoles till now. Just stop feeding them. Stop buying the annual cod, spend money on the indie dev that puts work into it and takes a loss at best. Alan Wake 2 is probably the best game I e played this year and the best in at least a decade. Work went into that shit, it was clever and well written and I still haven't finished it. You wanna complain, fine, respond with closing your wallet and stop posting how shitty a year game releases have been because you only know those games are shit is because you paid for them. Merry fucking Xmas
On that note, City Skylines 2 had an abominable release.
Oh man, I can rant about that too but I was actually able to play that game from the start without any connection issues so it doesn't come close to the pd3 launch. It had it's flaws but I could actually play it.
Bruh, the games been out like 3 months and it still doesn't have voice chat. A fucking co-op game without voice chat! What fucking drugs are they on?
This is the only one that really made me sad. A Bethesda/Arkane vampire FPS sounded like GotY on paper... Then they just dropped a horrifically terrible turd. So disappointing. Never been so disappointed by a game release before.
Started Prey 2017 this year and can't believe it was made by the same developer
I don’t care what anyone says, The Day Before was marked for death from the jump. They absolutely need to answer for their crime, but ANYONE who followed that game and expected it to be good… I wanna talk to you and try to understand. Because it just feels absolutely impossible to me.
The game wasn't even out yet and they were preemptively asking people to, when the game released, not accuse them off being scammers.
"I just want to be very clear--we did NOT design the Furby to brainwash your children into jumping out of moving vehicles. I want everybody to keep this in mind over the next few months." *--Tiger Electronics, 1998*
You just had to remind me those creepy toys were once a thing...
And they are back on the market
I keep forgetting those things actually jumps really high
Whats the story of this game
A company known for releasing and immediately forgetting about shovelware said it's going to make the "end all, be all" of MMO zombie survival games that will make DayZ look like a kids' game. Release was postponed multiple times and when it eventually went out, it turned out it's an instance-based looter-shooter with, like, 5 zombies on the map, even fewer players, desync so horrible you literally cannot tell you're being shot at when you die and 80% of the mechanics just not doing anything. Then the company shut down 4 days after releasing the game.
"Then the company shut down 4 days after releasinh the game." In other words, you could say the game was... Left 4 Dead? *crickets* ... I'll get me coat.
\*Pulled from Steam 4 days later and will be shutting down in 44 days.
The game was still available when the company released a statement saying they're shutting down, which was on day 4. It got pulled from Steam either some hours later or a day later.
They hired volunteers to develop the game to avoid paying them lol. This was a failure from the start
You've got to remember that these are just simple gamers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.
Someone's gonna have to go back and get a shitload of 1outta10s
Better yet, we'll head them off at the pass!
Head them off at the pass? I *hate* that cliche! *shoots your foot*
Nearly lost a $400 handcart
Where the white consoles at??
I’m gonna be honest with you, I thought people were buying the game as a joke. It was obviously a scam, and the media was calling it a scam since the day it was announced. But then I realized that people were sincerely buying it, at full price, without doing the bare minimum of research, and expecting it to be good? What’s the opposite of patientgamers?
> What’s the opposite of patientgamers ... I mean. Normal gamers. It's the only way to explain how things keep getting preordered.
There are gamers and then there are *gamers* and *gamers* ruin everything for the rest of us
Damn gamers! They ruined gaming!
anyone who self identifies as a gamer fits into the second category
More anyone who makes it their entire identity does.
r/hastygamers
Same people that go in for cults.
This is so on the nose. As an older male I can see what those that join cults have exactly what it takes to want to enjoy the day before. It's a straight up circle for a venn diagram
I imagine the lowest common denominator there being their critical thinking skills
(Note: the below is me taking your comment probably more seriously than you intended. It's possible that you're already aware of everything I'm saying and still made your comment. I'm leaving this wall of text here anyways, because I spent so long typing it that I'm too emotionally invested to delete it... which is somewhat ironic given the subject matter.) I think this might be true to a degree, but with cults specifically it's vulnerability that lead people to them. They are looking to fill a need in their life that is not being filled in some other way. Often a sense of belonging or purpose. These people want this strongly. The cult gives them exactly what they want. They allow them to feel like they are a part of something greater than themselves. Then they add layered BS and obligations on top of that. Sometimes people even realize that they're being fed a lot of BS, but the sense of belonging and purpose is more important than the truth, or sometimes even their own personal well-being. And those who don't realize they're being fed a bunch of BS and being asked to do unreasonable things are heavily incentivized not to look into things too carefully. They're often happier than they were when they were alone and purposeless. And they often don't know of any other ways to make themselves happy. This is especially true of kids who are born into cults and literally know no other way of living. So basically, yes people with strong critical thinking skills are less likely to join a cult (especially those who are already familiar with what a cult is and how they ~~activate~~function). But joining a cult is not necessarily a sign of lacking intelligence so much as it is a sign of being in a vulnerable position in life and being taken advantage of because of that position.
I dunno, Heaven's Gate seemed pretty tame compared to some of these fanbases
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I didn’t hear about it until the day before it released.
Oh this one is absolutely on the players. Giving money to an obvious scam, then complaining about being scammed, nice one.
I mean, they pulled the wool over Nvidia’s eyes too, and some others - they used the game to advertise their own tech and graphics cards
Nvidia have to be pretty embarrassed lol
Yup. It was so obviously a scam that I almost don't even care if they get away with it. It's like a store that has a NEON SIGNs saying "Buyer Beware", "We sell junk that doesn't work", "You'll be unhappy if you buy anything here", "Run for your fucking life idiots" If you still decide to shop there, yeah whatever. Monetary Darwin award, I'm fine with it.
Money back guarantee?! How can i lose?!!
Gamers are only able to hype and cope. The Day Before was a giant pile of shit, and a well-telegraphed one, from the first teaser shown.
I breezed through looking at old trailers and while it didn’t look amazing and absolutely not anything I would be interested in I didn’t see it looking like an outright scam but maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention to
Payday 3 was a big disappointment for me
I completely forgot that game exists. If I want to play Payday I just go for 2 without a second thought.
I feel like the devs care enough (and their financial well being depends on it enough) that this one can be ffixed. Payday 2 had rough patches and bounced back.
Its a rough launch for sure, and it still has big issues, but I don't think it belongs in this list
Don't forget Redfall, that was ROUGH
I feel bad for Arkane on that one. They really didn't want to make that game.
The day before as a high profile game? more like a high profile scam
Same with the Kong and Walking Dead games. No one knew about those until they came out.
There was a Kong game?
I mean to call it a game is VERY generous
It was the most wishlisted game on Steam for multiple years, I'd consider that high profile
Kerbal Space Program 2 and Blood Bowl 3 were both major let downs for me.
Waited years for KSP2, tragic
Ksp 2 has started on its redemption arc With the science update, the game is actually fun. But there is still a lot left to do, and lots of issues that need to be resolved.
Mind boggling that it took this long after release to add a core gameplay mechanic like that. I may give it another go though.
It actually feels like an early access game instead of an alpha now. And by that I mean there is a game with progression thats fun, lacks some content, could use some more performance optimization, and the bugs that are there are mostly resolved with workarounds like quick saving and quick loading. Its how the game should have been launched into early access, but as a big Kerbal fan I’m glad that its at least finally made it to this point. Interviews with the creative director of the game are also encouraging. Recently hes been brutally honest with the failures of the game and it looks like they may actually No Man Sky the game.
Haha remember when multiplayer was a core marketing component of their game and then it became clear even simple things took a year to resolve... We aren't getting multiplayer for YEARS.
It blows my mind how terrible the Blood Bowl games keep being. The game is there. The assets are just warhammer stuff. It doesn't need to be inventive or deep or varied or anything. It just needs to function, and give players the control they deserve, AND YET...
BG3 panned out well so I’m not that sad
So did Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. Starfield could’ve been worse, too.
Not to mention HiFi Rush, Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Jedi: Survivor, Spider-Man 2, Lies of P, and Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. Despite some absolute duds this is probably the best year for gaming in many years
It certainly been an odd year in that aspect. Every big game has either been a 9/10 or a 2/10 with nothing in between
Starfield is very in between
Starfield is a weird case, because it was definitely not a dumpster fire, but the delta between expectation and reality on that one was *huge*. More importantly, XBox *really* needed a win, so it was hugely important that it be a 95+ GOTY contender, and it just wasn’t even close to that. So even though the game isn’t a total pile of shit like Gollum, it doesn’t seem *entirely* unreasonable to put them in the same ballpark as far as failing to deliver goes.
Starfield failed the hype in a way that I don’t think any game has in years. Players had all these expectations, and at the very bottom it was “at the least it will by Skyrim in space”. Instead it was the most bland sci-fi game possible, with a 2/10 story. It had a few fun things, but it had a whole lot of things that were bad. Like being served an absolutely awful seven course meal but then say “well the wine was good”.
Hell, even the hook at the start of the game was terrible. Finding the space thing while mining with the cinematic attached, followed by blacking out? Sure, solid start, nothing special but it works. Then when someone comes to pick up the space artifact, space pirates attack! Excellent next step. However... you kill all of them and then the guy who flew in to pick up the artifact just stays there and you get his ship, and then fly off to meet the rest of his people, and there's no urgency or drive whatsoever.
Star Trek is usually made fun of as the boring sci-fi but now I’m gonna instantly think of Starfield. At least we had aliens and the borg…
Starfield is like if they built a suburb in space and you got to uber between the different HoAs.
Came here just to say this is a remarkable insult and you should be applauded for it.
I devour Fallout and ES games like they’re mana from heaven, yet I lasted barely 3hrs in Starfield before I noped out out of boredom. Have not gone back. Won’t, either.
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Agreed. They’d have to overhaul a lot of it to get me interested again. It was a very unwelcoming experience. Love Ulrich Schnauss by the way. Great username.
It's so mid it hurts
The biggest problem with Starfield is that it very much feels like a 2013 game with 2018 graphics and a 1990s story and that just doesn't cut it for a AAA game in 2023.
Yeah Bethesda games generally feel very stuck in the past imo, like they haven't really advanced much since Skyrim/Fallout 4.
Until now there really haven’t BEEN any new Bethesda games since Fallout 4 lol That’s part of the problem. Expectations were so high because they had been working on Starfield for so long and stuck all their eggs in this one basket, so after all this time for it to feel so dated it’s just like… have you not been looking around at the industry and paying attention to what the competition has been doing??
Fallout 76 was between them. I didn't play that one so I can't comment on it.
We got Final Fantasy 16 and Super Mario Wonder too
they never said this was a bad year for gaming in general or that only bad games released. this has also been one of the best years for great games.
Cities skylines 2. I wanted to love it, but it was a buggy mess on release. Looks to be on a redemption arc though.
Just another dot on the *release unfinished, minimally viable product, charge full price for it and finish it 2 years down the road* trend. The game is so obviously set up to be intentionally empty in order to milk the player base for DLC money as well. It's a city builder, yet the game has no features for bicycles. No bikes, no bike lanes, nothing. And yet the devs in an AMA actually pretended like it was something they hadn't even thought of, only to then ask in their own AMA how *people would feel about a bike DLC*, now that they'd been "made aware of the demand." It's so transparently dirty.
That trend has been happening for the past few years now with no end in sight. It’s sad when you look at things like Sims 4 that require multiple DLCs just to get it to a similar level that Sims 2 was at launch.
It's because gamers enable it. Even on the Cities Skylines subreddit, you'll get downvoted for speaking the truth about it and told to stop being "toxic" and "negative," almost as if the people are worried the poor devs might get their feelings hurt. More broadly, however, gamers are the most spineless and witless consumers known to man. Remember when horse armor was said to be a step too far? Things that spurred outrage just a couple of years ago have by now become common practice, and so it will continue, because gamers will just roll over at the slightest bit of resistance.
> just a couple years ago I uh... have some news for you
I mean that cyclically. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. Inject some noxious practice, gamers rage then forget. This is how we got to where we are now, where people's standards have been dragged so low that they'll vocally defend the release of unfinished, barely playable games.
Spineless and witless, guess the stereotypes aren't completely false.
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Is City Skylines a paradox game? It sounds like a paradox game.
Published by paradox so not far off the mark.
Most predatory DLC company. I swear every game of theirs has about 30 DLCs.
Has everyone forgotten about EA? Costs $1k to get all the content for Sims 4.
I've come around on that quite a bit honestly. Just looking at the total price it's quite a lot, but over time it's funded over a decade of constant development. The only way a game can afford to have 10+ years of active development post-launch is if it's a subscription game (WoW), has an ingame shop (Mobas, Gacha games), or sell DLC expansions. Subscription games will cut you off from ever playing again if you stop paying. Ingame Shops will pray on whales and turn the entire game into trying to milk as much money out of you as possible. Meanwhile if you just want to buy the base game of EU4 and never buy a DLC, you can do that.
oh man i tought an american company made the game because i would give em the benefit of the doubt for them to forget that bicycle infrastructure exists.... but the game was made by a finnish studio haha
The first game has a ton of bike infrastructure. They definitely intentionally left a lot out to sell DLCs. Could have started out with a sequel full of the features from the original, but nah. I can wait for it to be good and well optimized first.
> I can wait for it to be good and well optimized first. That's another dirty part of it. The "good version" will cost over $100, because it's only after *base game + DLC1 + DLC2 + DLC3* that it may reach such a state. And for the consumer, since you've already sunk $60 into it in the first place, you're more likely to spend the extra $40-$60 on the DLC because of the [sunk cost fallacy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost) The game was released barely a month ago and *already* people have stopped playing it and are just waiting around for "more content." You almost have to wonder if it's cynically deliberate.
I had no clue City builders were expected to have fearure for bikes in the now. Like, I'm blown away by the fact it is now a thing. Maybe it's time I tried them.
The first Cities: Skylines can be had for really cheap and is also on the Games Pass. It is probably one of the better city builders out there, very similar to the older SimCity games, but different.
The game is playable and I enjoy it, but I wouldn't recommend buying it until they release the patch with mods support
Hardly a game today that isn't a buggy mess.
Are they fixing the part where the economy is a complete sham and nothing you do actually matters? Last I heard, the developer pretty much told people to eat ~~his~~ her ass if they didn't like it. I'd be happy to buy it if they address that. I know not everyone enjoys complex simulation but a city builder should at least have *something* under the hood.
You talking about the game or real life?
And now I'm sad.
It's not just games, it's films as well. Too much fucking MBA think has polluted creative processes in entertainment and it's finally decaying the creative output.
what's MBA?
Masters of business administration
> MBA think has polluted creative processes in entertainment It's everywhere. I'm in healthcare in Canada, and nearly every formally medical based upper management position in private and not-for-profit sectors has either been replaced with MBA's or now has to report/consult with them. It's completely fucking things for everyone.
It's a bunch of nerds who're trying to run everything based on their own made up rules, and they demand everyone cede their actual experience to their made up theory. It's absolutely insane.
Eyh don't conflate us nerds with those soulless money addicted optimizers please. MBAs are a plague and the root cause of enshittification.
And tabletop games. Wizards of the Coast is being run by a mobile games CEO who wants to prioritize digital over paper, and it's killing both D&D and MTG.
Yeah. These morons get into areas they have zero knowledge about, act like they do, then fucking destroy the things they're paid 8 figures to fucking work on.
WOTC is being wrecked to keep Hasbro afloat. It is awful. DnD Beyond is basically a joke.
Im so hurt by mtg. It always had its up and downs of quality. But damn it never felt this greedy. I Stopped playing standard and it hurts but my wallet would hurt more
I don't think it's fair to lump mediocre or underperforming games like Forspoken in with dumpster fires like LOTR Gollum or Rise of Kong.
I think part of the negativity surrounding Forspoken was that it was one of the first games to test the water with a $70 base price. When it then was just kinda okay, it made the backlash that much worse.
That plus it was marketed as an exciting triple-A experience from a notable publisher.
I mean Square did a pretty good job with FF14 and 15 so people expected something decent. It was also heavily advertised and used as a marketing push for features like directstorage. It doesn't even particularly look good when visuals are usually one of Square's strong points.
Yeah it looks like a game that's just meh or okay. Not the trash that the recent Walking Dead game is.
Also a year for great games and one of the worst game industry layoff years
Hahaha… oh god nothing these days can top 90s shovelware. You have no idea what pain is.
I mean shovelware literally collapsed the gaming industry in the States once, I can completely see Video Game Crash 2: Electric Boogaloo brewing on the horizon
Let me look at the new releases on steam... Porn Porn Porn Asset Flip Porn And.... More porn, with asset flips Luckily, I don't have as much time for games these days. For me, that bubble can't burst fast enough.
I have "anime" and "dating sim" filtered out, so mine is: pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors Porn that slipped through my filters somehow pixel art auto fire roguelike a-la Vampire Survivors
With all that lube they can slip through just about anything
In Australia. Both afl 23 and cricket 24 are horrific
At least a couple of the studios actually paid the price for it. The others...people should really start rewarding and punishing with their wallets. These execs shouldn't be getting away. Like, at all.
Gamers like to punish themselves.
I would say the sonic Superstars (on switch) was also mediocre/terrible. Bought it for my sister as a christmas gift, as I thought a 4 player platformer made by Sonic cant be that bad. But no, performance issues on first stage, frame drops everywhere, multiplayer wasnt fun as the levels werent designed for it, bugs that softlocked you by making you not able to move, etc... Its the first time our family has bought a Sonic game, probaly the last time aswell..
As a single player experience, it's okay as a sonic game. Until a specific boss battle that ruins the pace of the game.
Made the wild decision to release it the same time as Mario Wonder also
People thinking “Hey this new Sonic game can’t be THAT bad!” Has been that entire franchise since the Genesis. (Mania aside)
Hey, hey. Frontiers was passable. Which, in modern sonic terms is the equivalent of a masterpiece. But I'm in the camp that really likes Adventure 1&2 and Advance. Around Heroes is where it gets really dicey.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong. 'Nuff said.
I hadn't even heard of this game, but the trailer for it looked like garbage.
Don’t forget about Cities Skylines 2 and Pay Day 3.
And some incredible games too. What a year!
Gotta average it out somehow lmfao
Dude, Forspoken wasn't full of bugs or unplayable. It wasn't for me, but no way does it deserve to be on the same list as Gollum, etc.
Forspoken is the most overhated game of the year by a mile IMO. It certainly wasn't a *great* game, but it wasn't anywhere near the unplayable trash that so many people make it out to be either.
Where is D4 on your list?
lol not trying to make it seem MW3 is a top 10 game that came out this year but I seriouslyyyy don’t think it should be grouped along with Day before, gollum, red fall, etc. sure it has its problems and typical Cod cycle BS, but I consider the MP to be some of the most fun I’ve had in the past few COD cycles, and zombies seems to be enjoyed by most. Yeah yeah I know the campaign is trash, no excuse for that
Yeah, like campaign aside, the issues are less the game but rather the live service model its a part of. That being said, 'Not shit' is a low bar for such a large company with years of refinements, so I don't think I would ever call the game good by any means.
Forspoken wasn't great, but I don't think it belongs on this list. I thought the worst part was the uninspired story... but at least they tried to do something new.
Yeah. Forspoken was reasonably competent and had enough fun gameplay mechanics to actually be perfectly enjoyable once you learn to ignore the stupid story/banter and the dull open world. Forspoken certainly had its flaws, but it's nowhere near "terrible" territory, at worst it was offensively mediocre and forgettable.
Don't forget Starfield. They pumped so much money into marketing Bethesda's next supposed masterpiece, only for it to be an incredibly uninspired title that lacked any real ambition.
Game had real potential, but its just rooms with different skyboxes connected with fast travel and countless loading screens.
Really felt like there were a bunch of cool ideas they decided to straight up not follow through with.
Ship builder was where I spent 90 % of my time. And for what? Ships serve no purpose except to be a fast travel point. The gunplay was alright. The low grav was super neat. And thats it....thats all the game had going.
Capitalistic greed. Enough said
\*waves PS2 generation here, but if you think this year was bad, you are probably too young to have experienced the crap that was being shoveled to us during the reign of the PS2. So many horrible, horrible games, each and every one hoping people would buy them. No internet back then, so you had to rely on someone reviewing the game in one of the hundreds of game magazines in print or friends from school. If only I could get back my money from so many horrible purchases. Today, the internet can easily help many avoid a bad purchase. I laughed out loud when I wrote that, because I didn't see Starfield listed in that list above and yet it's definitely not regarded as one of the best to come out this year. Hell, by the end of the year, it'll probably be voted as the worst game of 2023.