Shit games that could have been good

[Mista House]

Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3.

Victoria 3 - Vicky 2 is genuinely one of the best paradox games made. Its complex yet simultaneously fairly simple. Its got its problems but overall is a solid game. I felt they really captured the entire period.

Now look at 3. The warfare is a joke, the system flat out doesnt work and that was evident even from the beta videos. Youll see armies taking massive attrition casualties, for example Britain taking hundreds of thousands of casualties in the opium war.

The economy is somehow dumbed down and is all about micromanaging which was the worst aspect of Victoria 2. Oh and private ownership just doesnt exist, in the industrial revolution. The era defined by private ventures.

Crusader Kings 3 is just barebones, the latest dlc is so bad even the most hardcore paradrones are turning on them. The game is closer to the sims than the old CK2. Its just hilariously bad. Shame as CK2 was great despite the rampant dlc whoring.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Ride to Hell: Retribution.
it was rushed and the game designer didn't have a true grasp of what he wanted making the leads confused as well.
one of the devs commented on a video of it, they wanted to make it like a open game but somehow the focus of the game changed for console shit while it was halfway developed, forcing the game to be enclosed due to memory limitations, animation systems and gameplay features got rushed and look like they are in alpha state due to the whole fuck up that was the development process of that game.

I think a biker gang GTA-like in the 1970s Southwest with as much an emphasis on chases/automobile customization/vehicular combat as on ground, like a more grounded Mad Max (PS4), would be really good, and that's what Ride to Hell would have been a lot like if it had been developed by a AAA studio like Rockstar.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Dominions.

Each "sequel" is the same game with the same stuff, only some small feature tacked on that could have been an expansion.

Did I mention each game costs 30$?

 

[Monuklear]

Dwarf Fortress. After 200 hours of the Premium release, there are just too many rough edges for me to continue to bother. The "rich history" concept is really just spamming random nonsense. The game remembers all this useless garbage but refuses to tell you much about things that actually matter. There's some fun to be had, but unless your autism profile matches the devs, you're gonna have a bad time.

I was always of the opinion that Dwarf Fortress is severely overrated.
My suspicion is that a lot of the retards who applied themselves and spent 1-2 hours acclimatizing to the terrible UI and gleaming the basics off the wiki got an unwarranted sense of elitism from doing so. Then a bunch of even more retarded retards saw the first group talk about, it looked it up, saw what a mess it is and went "Oh wow this game is so complex. It must be for smart people!"

The most ironic part is that Dorf isn't even hard. Yes, it's complex, but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it, it's just bloated. As far as actual gameplay goes, it's all as easy as literally following a flowchart to get a functional and impregnable fortress going in 2-4 seasons. After that your biggest enemy is the fucking FPS.

I think the Premium Edition release was really an "emperor's new clothes" moment for the stupid cargo cult that surrounds this game. The new GUI is still shit, but it's shit in the way many subpar games' GUIs are shit, not a violently misanthropic attack on your senses like the original game's was. So a lot of morons got to experience Dorf for the first time realized it's just a shittier and more autistic Rimworld.

 

[Kid Named Rocket]

Starbound. I'm still fucking mad.
>have a neat ammo system for ranged weapons that you end up scrapping before it's done because the lead dev dislikes guns
>give each race unique traits and abilities, only to remove them because... because, I don't fucking know why they did it
>scrap various other interesting things in favor of a stupid-ass storyline that is forced onto the player
>lure in random students (some of which are actual underages) to work on your game for free, then fire them
>ask the creator of a major mod if you can add his work into the official game, but the only payment you offer is 'exposure'
>kill a puppy through criminal negligence by leaving wires laying around your studio where it can chew through them and electrocute itself
FUCK Chucklefish.

 

[Foghotten]

APB Reloaded. The game is an abomination that should've died a decade ago, but didn't. It's as though it is the game equivalent of DSP: both are kept alive thanks to rich unpleasant retards and degenerates despite making bafflingly retarded decisions with their money, are occasionally mentioned as semi-obscure industry jokes, and can't change for the life of them despite being 10+ years in their industry.

Spoiler: Sperging time with Foggy

Mysteriously, after the game collapsed Realtime Worlds into bankruptcy, it got picked up by Gamersfirst, then by Little Orbit once their brand of incompetence sunk the game further into obscurity. The PvP is unpleasant and retarded: mission objectives range from preventing one opponent from picking up a single object on the ground (which is an instant action) for over four minutes, to having to force four windows and doors (actions that take 35 seconds each) with a team of two against fully-kitted nolives in four minutes or less. If you don't want to pay $10 for a fully modifiable gun (wtf?), grinding for one to catch up may take you literal years for just a single character. On the topic of weapons, they're either bullshit guns with no weaknesses, or crap that defies all human logic in terms of usage.

Despite positioning itself as a team-oriented game, tools to cooperate with your team will take you 310+ hours of grinding the unpleasant and broken PvP this game offers, meaning that, unless you have friends to play with (you will lose them if you suggested them this game), your team is gonna be full of retards doing their own things while you struggle to actually play the damn game against people who mysteriously never miss, and know where you are 24/7. The open world the game offers lacks features, looks dated and arid; NPCs only exist to be mugged (crim exclusive), block shots and mindlessly throw themselves under your ride. The only other thing you could do is farm money by ramraiding storefronts (crim), confiscate stolen cash from criminals (enforcer), and ram trucks into cars you find for shits and giggles. It's very empty.

Community-wise, you would be forgiven for believing Gamersfirst and Little Orbit bought covert chimp farms injected with testosterone 24/7, as a simple "gg" might send global chats into blind rage and have your former opponents grief you until you switch districts. Coincidentally, most of what remains of the game's population live in Turkey, Russia, and Balkan countries, so make of that what you will.
The community, from what I can tell, is also responsible for the abysmal state the game is in, as people maining the most broken toys in-game also happen to be the most vocal minority in forums. There is one story where, months after Little Orbit took over game development and chose to directly address issues with PvP, forum-goers whined about changes to the most broken gun in the game hard enough to have LO cuck out from re-balancing the game. Even today, mentioning that there might be issues with character/gun modifications and weapons will have the usual suspects screech about how you don't know shit and guns are fine (as proven by the game's healthy population of about 450-700 players in peak hours).

On the other hand however, the customization the game offers is impressive despite having been built on Unreal Engine 2 of all things. The degens of this game, however, will only use this to make furry, weeb, and other coomer shit. There's a catch though: you gotta pay premium status to actually be able to do stuff, which isn't permanent, and last time I checked, had you pay out the ass for it.

It's a shame, because back when it released in 2009, the game only suffered from underdevelopment. Now, years of incompetence also made it frustratingly broken and stagnant.

EDIT:

It took more than 10 years for the game executable to be in 64-bit. What the actual fuck lmao

 

[Cornfed]

Gothic 3.
Had all the makings of a great wrap up to the series, but...
Shit combat
Characters not being consistent with the previous games
Shit faction implementation
The Orcs are completely different
MMO style quests

Great music and world though. Oh well.

 

[Solid Hyrax]

Cube world.

Are you perhaps aware of a different game that looks similar to Cube World but is developed by different people and is also Free & Open Source called "Veloren"? I am only aware of it since it was talked about on /v/ during the time when Cube World was released and people were looking for good alternative. I'm not too sure if it ticks all the things Cube World did, but maybe if you haven't heard of it, give it a shot.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Second is Phantom Doctrine. You ever wanted an XCOM game, but instead of fighting aliens you're doing cool Cold War spy shit? This game lets you play as either the CIA or KGB, and you have to unravel a global conspiracy while countering and subverting the other guys. It included a very cathartic corkboard minigame where you connect clues you pick up during missions to one another to advance the plot, which is also pretty solid. Where the game falls apart is the actual gameplay, especially regarding guns. It's a stealth game so gunplay should be your last resort, but between the wonky target mechanics (shots ALWAYS hit unless behind total cover, cover and distance just mitigate damage), infinitely respawning enemies when compromised, and fairly unreliable stealth mechanics, combat isn't even a resort. If the shooting starts, restart. Also it has an incredible crime noir aesthetic, but it's got a lot of obvious Unity jank that will take you out of it at the worst times. And much like FS2 it was dropped about a year after release. They're working on a sequel as well, but it's a different company and it's a third-person shooter, so I have negative hope for it.

Phantom Doctrine was great. I've only got three quibbles.

• Why do all female enemy agents look the same?
• Smashing through windows and vaulting over counters is so normal, even unalerted civilians do it.
• Tail/Infiltrate map missions were almost always worse than doing it manually.

Dragon Age could've been a good spiritual successor to BG and NWN, but they got fucked over by awful design choices

Origins and the expansion were near perfect. I liked the art direction of II, especially the elves, but everything got old quick and there was too much combat.

 

[Obstagoon]

Are you perhaps aware of a different game that looks similar to Cube World but is developed by different people and is also Free & Open Source called "Veloren"? I am only aware of it since it was talked about on /v/ during the time when Cube World was released and people were looking for good alternative. I'm not too sure if it ticks all the things Cube World did, but maybe if you haven't heard of it, give it a shot.

Ty. I tried Veloren around that same time but didn't like how barebones it was and how the controls felt. But it's been so long that I should give it another try.

 

[Cpt. Stud Beefpile]

Starbound. I'm still fucking mad.
>have a neat ammo system for ranged weapons that you end up scrapping before it's done because the lead dev dislikes guns
>give each race unique traits and abilities, only to remove them because... because, I don't fucking know why they did it
>scrap various other interesting things in favor of a stupid-ass storyline that is forced onto the player
>lure in random students (some of which are actual underages) to work on your game for free, then fire them
>ask the creator of a major mod if you can add his work into the official game, but the only payment you offer is 'exposure'
>kill a puppy through criminal negligence by leaving wires laying around your studio where it can chew through them and electrocute itself
FUCK Chucklefish.

They niggered up the build-your-own station aspect. It was the last major part of the game i'd not tried yet so i gave it a go and:

1. Rooms require a fuckhuge investment in lategame refined ores
2. You can't unbuild a room to reclaim resources
3. The prefab types are extremely limited and totally barebones when you do build them
4. You can't make or share your own prefabs, a feature just BEGGING to be added, so you're stuck with the shit selection forever.
5. There are no racial prefabs at all.
6. You can fall to your death in the larger rooms because you have to build all your own floors, they spawn totally empty.

Other offenses of note:

1. There are no seed vendors so growing crops literally requires scavenging plants from HUNDREDS of worlds.
2. Despite being able to do multiple kinds of romance quests for NPC's, the player gets nothing of the kind. If Chucklefish would implement an interspecies romance option they would practically have a money-printing machine of a game.
3. You can't make your own prefab rooms and have to build every single thing pixel-by-pixel, requiring massive autism and a fuckhuge time investment for anything more complicated than a one room hut.
4. There haven't been any new room types or new random space encounters in years, something that could easily be done in a couple months.

 

[The Early 2000s]

I believe K&L: DM would've been a good game if they gave IOI Interactive about 6-8 additional months of dev time. From what I understand, the development cycle was pretty rough and the game was rushed out, which is pretty obvious when you play it:

• Character animations are janky
• The crowd AI feature they bragged about isn't impressive; the people just scramble about and bang into walls in a very unnatural manner
• No dedicated reload button...in a third-person SHOOTER; your character reloads whenever he feels like it
• Clearly rushed models/textures; for instance, the prison walls in the jail break-in level look completely untextured
• Odd level layouts; sometimes you go though a section and then have to loop through the same area again with little variance
• Shoddy gunplay; the bullet spread is weird and unwieldy, the ragdolls are lame and awkward, and the damage output on most weapons is piss-poor
• Cover system with no dedicated cover button; again, you walk into a wall until your character feels like taking cover behind it
• Most of the story is weak, and feels like a lot of plot points were cut to meet the deadline
• The last third of the game takes place in Cuba, meaning it's all just boring jungle levels (that were recycled from the scrapped Freedom Fighters sequel)

In short, it's a slog to play through, especially the last third or so. However, there are elements in Dead Men where you can see how cool the game COULD be if it was given the appropriate time and resources:

• Kane and Lynch as characters are interesting and the performance by their voice actors are top-notch, very much wasted in this game
• One of those rare games where shotguns are deadly effective at medium-long distances
• Co-op feature seems relatively streamlined; the gimmick of Lynch's Schizo-Vision making him see civilians as cops and shit is a fun idea
• At the rare times where the environment and models are finished, the game looks pretty damn good - especially for a game from 2007
• There are parts of the plot that are interesting, especially the choice Kane faces near the end of the game, choosing between helping his men being slaughtered or just leaving them to die with his daughter
• The levels are fun IN PRINCIPLE: a rave club, breaking INTO prison, a bank heist that transforms into a police chase, so on and so forth. Perhaps too ambitious for it's own good, but good ideas nonetheless
• There are times where Dead Men succeeds in feeling like a video game version of Heat; the Tokyo chapter comes to mind
• Apparently, the multiplayer Heist mode was pretty damn good until the online closed (As far as I can tell, it was like Payday before Payday was a thing)
• All the little details: the little pop-up screen that provides the POV of the sniper who's aiming at you, the fact you can overdose on adrenaline and die if you get revived too many times in a short time span, environment destructibility (small-scale), etc.
• A good OST by Jasper Kyd

Dead Men is one of those games that I kinda like but can't recommend at all. The fact it was taken down from the Steam store to fix the Games for Windows Live dependency, only to never be released again should tell you all you need to know. This game could've been something and it bothers me how badly IOI dropped the ball with it - that is, if it's even their fault at all.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is actually good though and I will die on that hill

 

[Scotched up Scott]

Sonic 06, if the original planned 2007 release

sorry to quote such an old post. wasn't what was shipped a build that was MONTHS behind where the devs were? I remember hearing that in several videos about this game but could be wrong.

 

[Becomemysoulreaver12]

sorry to quote such an old post. wasn't what was shipped a build that was MONTHS behind where the devs were? I remember hearing that in several videos about this game but could be wrong.

Hmm, not sure, but I am pretty sure that having tho release the game a year earlier was the biggest factor for how it ended up being

 

[Mr. Zed da Robot Poon Fed]

Mindjack. If they bothered to polish the game and up the story, characters, fix bugs and get the mechanics straightened out, this could have been a gem.

 

[Town Drunk]

Fallout 76: Could of been a great rust competitor with better PVE and a roleplaying community. Not to mention the modding potential as well.

I remember when they made the elder scrolls MMO, and I thought "another sword and sorcery MMO? Why isn't there a fallout MMO?" Then they made one....

I'm surprised no one has said Fallout 4

Gameplay was good, the main storyline was stupid though. NV had no problem with having a totally evil faction, yet FO4 had to make the institute look reasonable, when we know they are killing people and replacing them with Synthes.

 

[Product Placement]

MGSV- While not bad, it is incomplete. One of it's biggest issue is the open world, and would have been better suited to many smaller Ground Zero size maps than two huge ones it does have.

Evil Within - Again not a bad game but it does need an editor as too many levels feel over long.

Alice the Madness Return - Also not a bad game, but much levels go on far too long for their own good.

Deadly Promonition DC -This is more of a bad port than a bad game. The DC which is the easiest to find version is a downgrade over the original 360 game. It looks worse, runs worse, has a number of missing visual effects, crashes all the time, the new story stuff adds nothing of worth to the game and they really didn't fix any of the issues from the original game such as the poor combat.

Outriders - By all accounts the game isn't bad outside the one huge fuck up, always online even for single player. This caused issue when it came out with people unable to even play it and will cause issues later when the game is closed down due to server costs. No reason any game with a single player mode should have always online requirements.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - While it is better than the movie it's based on, I wouldn't call it good. Real lack of variety in what you fight and some combat encounters are pretty poor.

Donkey Kong Country Returns and many other wii games- remove the waggle, all you need to do which thankfully you can on dolphin. Wii was great at pointing but waggle in place of a button was always worse for most games, and really lowered the enjoyment of them.

Metroid Other M - A normal control layout using the nunchuk, the nes style one it has makes what could have been a meh game into a bad one. d-pad movement for a 3d game doesn't feel good, having to turn the remote to point at the tv for some attacks is slow and messy for what wants to be a fast paced action game and the lack of buttons due to the nes style means the devs have to simply what you can do compared to other action games.

Street Fighter X Tekken - On disc DLC really just left a bad taste with this game. Really hard to look at the game positively when 12 characters you have to pay extra to unlock despite already being on the disc. If Capcom weren't so greedy I bet this one would be looked back on so much better.

 

[Scotched up Scott]

Dawn of war 3 - a half hearted attempt at bridging the gap between the two similar but fundamentally different experiences of dawn of war one and two.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Starbound. I'm still fucking mad.
>have a neat ammo system for ranged weapons that you end up scrapping before it's done because the lead dev dislikes guns
>give each race unique traits and abilities, only to remove them because... because, I don't fucking know why they did it
>scrap various other interesting things in favor of a stupid-ass storyline that is forced onto the player

Do you have sources on the ammo/interesting things features?

There leftovers of it?

 

[Power Glove]

It's still wild to me that they tried the absolute god-awful abomination that was trying to ape... moba-like? sensibilities that died well before it came out of the womb, and yet Age of Empires 2 continues to enjoy a slew of neverending expansion-packs to this fucking day because the studio in charge of it just polished up the old game... for people who actually fucking enjoy RTS.

I've always felt that at a certain point, well into the development of Dawn of War III someone, perhaps higher-ups at the development studio, or pressure from the publisher, decided to completely do a 180 on the direction of the game with no additional development or resources time given.