GameCentral readers name the most over-hyped video games in history, from Half-Life 2 to Metal Gear Solid.
The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Gannet, but didn’t have to be a game you think is actively bad – just not as good as its reputation suggests. We wanted to know why it didn’t live up to your expectations and what you feel it got wrong.
Despite the infinite possibilities a number of names did come up more than once, including Halo, The Witcher 3, and Bayonetta. But it was the work of Naughty Dog which seemed to have the edge, with both Uncharted and The Last Of Us accused of being good, but not that good.
Not bad
I’ve always found the Uncharted and The Last Of Us to be somewhat overrated.
They have tremendous storytelling and characters, but in terms of moment to moment gameplay, or ability to make choices to tell your own story, they are, at best, average. As games they fall short, and their greatest strengths are arguably hamstrung by their inclusion in a game in the first place. Games usually make terribly films because their plots and characters are secondary to the gameplay. Uncharted and The Last Of Us buck this trend because gameplay is secondary to plot and character.
I’m not going to pretend that any of these games is in any way bad, and I’m definitely not saying that plot and characters aren’t important factors in games, but I think they don’t merit their universally high scores.
Matt Woolley (he_who_runs_away)
One out of two
My most overrated game would be Half-Life 2. I think to a large extent this was a result of hype that it couldn’t live up to. I went into the first game blind and while it had a few rough edges (mostly the bosses and the final level) I really enjoyed it. Half-Life 2 on the other hand was sold to me on about five years of ‘Best Game Ever’ hype, and when I finally played it I found a decent but unremarkable first person shooter.
The gunplay was fairly mediocre, with every weapon bar the gravity gun being pretty forgettable, and the varied enemies of Half-Life 1 were replaced by an army consisting about 80% of generic soldiers in gas masks. Major plot points were unexplained (why are baddies from the first game allies now? Why is Freeman so important? What are any of these missions supposed to accomplish?).
Many of the things that I had heard hyped up were pretty minor things that had been done before, even in older games – the revolutionary lack of cut scenes for example just mean that you got the same scripted, non-interactive scenes but you got to walk around while the other characters completely ignore you and act out their scene like the animatronics from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
On the plus side, Portal was included on the same disc, and that did live up to the hype.
TGN Professor
I see
I don’t know how retro people are going to go with their choices here but I nominate Shenmue. For the longest time I thought all the talk about a third game was irony. I mean, these are some of the most boring non-games I have ever played. People complain about walking sims but this was the original! Except instead of any pretence of walking anywhere interesting you were going to the docks to work a day job as a forklift driver. And it was exactly as boring as that sounds!
It doesn’t help that the controls were horrible as well, but that at least I can put down to the era. Although why the combat was so completely mindless I don’t know. The game was supposed to be an evolution of Virtua Fighter as a role-playing game but it was nothing of the sort. The game invented QTEs and yet it’s still lauded!
The worst thing is that it doesn’t even have a proper story. The first one your day gets killed in the opening and… that’s it. You go to Hong Kong to find out what happened and…. you don’t. I mean, that is all the summary you need. Except for maybe the very last cut scene with a magic mirror. You couldn’t pay me to play the remasters, or the sequel. If it even materialises.
Drago
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Flawed evolution
My pick for the most overrated game ever would have to be Halo: Combat Evolved.
I remember it coming out on the Xbox and being highly praised, so I was somewhat excited to see what the deal was when they ported it to the PC.
When it did finally come, it became evident that all the praise it received was due to people having incredibly low standards.
‘The graphics are amazing!’ Everything was extremely simplistic polygons, to the point where it was essentially a Sega Saturn or even SNES game with better textures.
‘The AI is incredible’. I wouldn’t consider not running straight towards you as clever AI, nor is running around gibbering like a maniac when something with a larger health pool dies.
The level design was intentionally poor – recovering health made it so the designers always knew how much health the user would have, but also meant that there was no need to design anything except the boring linear path that constituted every level.
Restricting the user to a maximum of two guns meant that there was less fun to have overall. If you found a gun that you found entertaining to use, you were quickly forced to switch to something less fun.
I think what most annoyed me is that, for years afterwards, shooters copied this awful formula. Thankfully Wolfenstein: The New Order eventually came along, and reminded people why the genre used to actually be entertaining.
Joseph Dowland
GC: We think you may be misremembering what first person shooters on the SNES and Saturn actually looked like.
Not bewitched
Regarding the upper echelons of critically acclaimed games, I’m going to nominate The Witcher 3 as one of my most overrated games. I’ve just finished the main story this week, and while I recognise the overall production quality I just can’t seem to like the game as much as I expected to.
The world CD Projekt RRD have built is truly phenomenal, the best I’ve ever seen. Every inch feels hand-crafted, every turn in the road brings a new vista previously unseen. Each settlement, from hamlet to metropolis is unique. Of particular note, I find the ruined battlefields and war-torn countryside of Velen to be some of the most atmospheric places I’ve been to in gaming. The voice acting is amazing, the story and script are great. Credit where it’s due, but it all kind of ends there for me.
Most of the game appears to be either cut scene or walking sim (albeit in a beautifully detailed world). The dialogue and script feel very ‘on rails’, there are about half a dozen actual dialogue choices nestled in hours and hours of cut scene. The combat is basically press square to win, occasionally tap circle to throw off the monster’s woeful attacks. As a role-playing game there is practically no loot, all crates and chests contain is pretty much junk.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of crafting. If all the ingredients/materials are in the game, why do I have to collect them and then make the loot? Just give it to me in its final combined form (that’s a very personal criticism of mine, I know others like this kind of stuff). Levelling is also very odd, as basically playing the main story makes all side quests and monster hunts irrelevant, except for the cut scenes and walking sim parts.
I understand there’s a bit of a thing about getting a band of buddies together by doing side missions, but you just don’t need them. It only seems to give you little extra cut scenes and character nods when you all come together. The skill tree feels a little tacked on; with the combat being so simplistic I just don’t see the point or need for most of the skills. I would really like to play the game on the higher difficulty setting, as I feel this is where the most immersion and challenge in games can be had, yet I’m put off by the painfully long load times following death.
I have the Game of the Year edition and I hear Blood And Wine is pretty spectacular, so maybe I’ll bump it up to Death March for a last hurrah on the game. Overall, I can see where all the acclaim comes from, it’s definitely a top tier creation, but it’s not enough of a role-playing game for my tastes. A great game, but not enough gameplay.
SimianGeorge (PSN ID)
Just build
For most overrated video game I’m going to say Minecraft. I don’t think it’s a bad game, and can see why others like it, but for me it’s just a lot of pointless busy work. I was talked into buying it a few years back on the Xbox 360, and let’s just say I soon realised it wasn’t for me.
So the point of the game is to gather resources and then just build, and that’s it? I think it’s a very creative game that allows people to use their imaginations, though for me I hoped it would have purpose rather than just build for the sake of it and say, ‘Hey, look what I just built’.
It would be fine for a separate mode for just building, e.g. a free mode, but I think the game would benefit from, and appeal to even more people, if it had scenarios where you had to build for a reason like more people moving to a village and more houses now need to be built, schools, churches, etc.
The game might have changed since I played it, admittedly it was a while ago. It might of been different if I played it when I was younger as I used to enjoy building Lego, but these days if I’m going to spend my time building I like to have a purpose behind it rather than just because I can.
R1CH5TER
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Every platinum but one
I’d have to say having tried Bayonetta originally on the the Xbox 360 a few times (and again on Xbox One via backwards compatibility) that I’ve found it to be one of the most overrated games of all time. I found it painfully average. Despite what GC said in their review the game really does rely on you rote learning button combos, which I consider below par game design.
Other games in the same genre I’ve been able to play organically and from feel. Games like Devil May Cry 1 and 3, Ninja Gaiden (on original Xbox), Metal Gear Rising, even the much maligned DmC had great combat. So how Bayonetta gets compared to the above has me at a loss.
Then there is over sexualisation of Bayonetta herself.
GC themselves stated that, ‘With her impossibly long legs and frequent semi-nudity she may to be nothing but a male fantasy, but she takes every opportunity to mock those that would fetishise her and the game always paints her as firmly in control and justifiably self-confident’.
And there lies the deliberate caveat, it doesn’t make it any better, just a poor attempt at justification.
I feel that this isn’t the only way to approach sex and attraction in games, and personally I prefer characters that express their own sexual agency rather than ones that are presented for the player’s sexual consumption.
Chaosphere616
GC: As far as we’re concerned you just described Bayonetta herself exactly. Also, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are both by the same director and have very similar systems, so it seems surprising you would get on with one and not the other.
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