Shit games that could have been good

[AnsemSoD1]

Oh look, an actual lolcow, how are you doing Precious? What schizo shit will your presence be gracing us with today?

Post GBA Pokemon games could be saved if you could play as Leaf and if the completely shit girls like Lillie and Nemona were deleted from existence.

 

[Bill Kilgore]

I'm surprised nobody had mentioned this one yet.

If only Gearbox focused at the development of this game instead of hiring a bunch of random studios with little to no experience, i feel like it'll at least come out as somewhat decent.

My choice is low hanging fruit, but Destiny. Jeff Gerstmann's rant about it is legendary.

But in short, everything was in place for Destiny to be the next big thing. At least as big as Halo if not bigger. Then management fucked it all up when they decided 5 years into a 6 year project that they didn't like the story. They ripped that out and cobbled together a game with the parts that were left. Some of the DLCs were found on the disc, and the game was still using Destiny 1 alpha leftovers as late as Destiny 2.

The shooting is great, and the remnants of what lore and ideas that remain hint at something truly special. All it was lacking was content and story, both of which appear to have been cut in the name of corporate greed.

And the cherry on top, Activision is mostly blameless since they were very generous with contracts and let Bungie do their own thing. It was entirely a Bungie management fuck up.


Further compounding that is you have two loadouts. You either have a pea shooter and a disguise, or you walk in dressed for the North Hollywood shootout. And some story missions force you into combat.

I'm still very pissed about Destiny tbh, they literally got everything they need to become the next big thing, the lore and story is interesting as fuck, the world building and designing is beautiful, the shooting is satisfying and well designed, they also got memorable/likeable characters (Zavala, Cayde-6, etc.) not to mention Activision pretty much paved the way for them as a bonus point, and YET for only god fucking knows why reason they still fuck it up.

 

[Judge Dredd]

If only Gearbox focused at the development of this game instead of hiring a bunch of random studios with little to no experience, i feel like it'll at least come out as somewhat decent.

I don't like that narrative for a couple of reasons.

First, Gearbox has been shit since Borderlands 2 DLC at least. I'd argue the only good thing they ever made was the Half-Life expansions as I didn't care for any of the Borderlands games, and the plagiarism scandal was largely ignored because people liked Borderlands 2.

Second, Timegate gets shit on for botching the game, and were even shut down because of it, but TimeGate were alright. The FEAR expansions were decent enough, and Section 8 Prejudice was a fun if generic FPS.

YET for only god fucking knows why reason they still fuck it up.

Well, the talent had left after the fuck up. I'm sure some stayed around, but the devs blamed chronic problems with the tools for a long time. I'm guessing if the talent left, they didn't have the know how to fix it, or the project was mis-managed from the start.

 

[cybertoaster]

Homefront could've easily been a masterpiece if the devs put as much effort into the rest of the game as they did the opening cutscene.

The whole premise was stupid, just like in the red dawn remake. To think a starving dirt-poor nation like NK could ever invade anyone let alone us. They pull a literal miracle out their asses to explain it, its all BS.

Would be much better/realistic to make a game based on warplan red, that is the brit empire invading us back in the 30's.

YET for only god fucking knows why reason they still fuck it up.

Bungie is the Halo company, all their other projects were always meh, nobody except desperate mac users high on copium cared about Marathon (and now PSX users), nobody played ONI, and Destiny was practically a Halo clone and still fucked up.

 

[Canned Ham]

Kentucky Route Zero.

It's most famous for a delayed release schedule. Kickstarted in 2011, KRZ was released in five parts, with developers stating that the entire series would be released in 2013.

• January 7, 2013
• May 31, 2013 - few months, so far so good
• May 6, 2014 - a year, that's weird, but maybe life happened
• July 19, 2016 - two years, this is a bad trend
• January 28, 2020 - what the fuck

This is not someone's magnum opus. It's a ten hour walking simulator. The game was hyped by the gaming press when the first few episodes came out. Like any shit game, when true and honest gamers asked why the last part of a piece of interactive fiction with mouse clicks as gameplay took four years to develop, toxic defenders said it was the Citizen Kane Of Video Games and indie developers naturally take longer. In reality, the developers made all their money during the hype years of 2013-2014, and Steam wasn't granting refunds, so there was no rush.

No, it isn't even a good game. It's just pretentious.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I think one game that should've been something better was Retro City Rampage. It had a lot of cool features, including a sprawling map with all sorts of 1980s references and jokes. However, the actual game has some terrible driving (driving in a 2D plane always sucks), some extremely stupid pop-culture like stages, and a bunch of "Nintendo Hard" bullshit at the end which the game acknowledges is awful (like commenting on a water level) and then going through with it anyway.

 

[yam]

Castlevania 2. The story and premise are all pretty fine, but I think this game would REALLY benefit if it was like Faxanadu.

 

[Fag Albert]

Could have been good? Probably not. But I'd be lying if i didn't want to play a good monster-mash weapon fighter.

 

[Stasi]

Shit is probably a bit harsh, it's better described as extremely average, but Hellpoint comes to mind.

It's a sci-fi themed Dark Souls clone.
It has a really good atmosphere and almost nails that Event Horizon creepy space station vibe but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. They copied Dark Souls directly, including all of the worst elements, and added some obnoxious gameplay designs of their own. If it had more time in development and they put some actual thought into improving the DS formula it could have been a really good game. I played it well after release and it was super jank and buggy then after patches and from what I understand it was way worse on release. A shame, could have been a good game.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I played it well after release and it was super jank and buggy then after patches and from what I understand it was way worse on release. A shame, could have been a good game.

I remember playing it on release and it was both pretty fun and horribly jank. Which is a shame, because as you said, the setting and theme were great and some mechanics (like the station rotating around the big blackhole thing, causing different "moon phases" like SMT) were interesting additions to the formula. I remember one city-ish level that was just maddeningly labyrinthine. It felt like it really needed an industry veteran in the captain's chair smoothing things out.

 

[ZMOT]

The whole premise was stupid, just like in the red dawn remake. To think a starving dirt-poor nation like NK could ever invade anyone let alone us. They pull a literal miracle out their asses to explain it, its all BS.

by the time they were not dirt poor anymore, actually the "dirt poor" ones are you after oil shortage affecting the global economy and the dollar crashing. in the meantime NK grabbed more of asia while the US world police was distracted/unable to do anything, then it went from there.

no empire lasts forever.

Section 8 Prejudice was a fun if generic FPS.

the drop in mechanic was pretty neat, years before battle royale games picked it up, and not many games did the "crysis scifi", and especially not as multiplayer.

 

[Shroom King]

View attachment 5276706
Castlevania 2. The story and premise are all pretty fine, but I think this game would REALLY benefit if it was like Faxanadu.

How about Castlevania 3? When you get a partner the two of you share the same health bar. Gayest fucking idea ever.

 

[Power Appreciator]

Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4

 

[yam]

How about Castlevania 3? When you get a partner the two of you share the same health bar. Gayest fucking idea ever.

Castlevania 3 wasn't bad due to making the platforming being even better than CV1. The partners sharing the same health bar isn't too bad considering just how broken some of them are (A major example being Sypha who lets you skip major parts of levels with the freeze spell and her lightning spell being the most OP weapon in the game). I also think having them share the same health bar would make the game far too easy (Castlevania isn't that hard). It is also for more advance players who mastered CV1. Narrative wise, it's the turning point of the franchise and the first one to get an in-depth story. This is all based on the Japanese version of CV3 however as I haven't played an ENG Castlevania since I was growing up outside of the 2nd GB game due to having different subweapons between the NA and EU/JP version.

 

[NerdShamer]

Rebel Strike could have been a good game. Take one of the best arcade flight games of that console generation, enhance an already unmatched graphics engine to pull that much farther ahead of any challengers...and then spend half the game in janky, poorly animated third-person shooting where you can't aim your gun.

The game is just bad. Most of the flight missions aren't even particularly good, since the game relies even more aggressively on running out of time (I'm remembering from 20 years ago), and the on-foot sequences are horrible. Even the AT-ST missions aren't really fun.

Honestly, the ground missions could have easily been their own game; in fact, they're more of an attempt to emulate an older Star Wars game than anything else. Of course, all of the bonus missions are filler that's been tailored for speedrunners, the AI is essentially braindead, and that guy who betrayed you is essentially the final nail in the coffin.

What's interesting is that the devs were allegedly forced to cut an lot of corners, according to the in-game commentary. The level with the energy tunnels was supposed to have you hijacking an walker (big surprise) and calling in an few bombing runs.

 

[Kheapathic]

I'll get shit for it but DmC could have been good. I won't say it would have been good but it could have been. Capcom constantly giving the devs absolutely retarded directives certainly didn't help. Almost every single design/pitch for it was better than what we got but Capcom kept pushing for it to be wildly different for some reason. It's one of those shitty games I hate to defend but feel the need to since most of the shit heaped upon it in terms of its development isn't even factually accurate or ascribes malice by ignoring context. Some examples

-"it's 30fps but feels like 60" this is actually a quote by Itsuno and wasn't even about DmC, it was about Dragons Dogma
-"Shakesperean" wasn't even said by a dev but by Capcoms marketing department
-Gay Cowboys was just a joke about how shit Capcom was at communication since they said to "Make it like a Western movie" with no clarification

People give it shit for the wrong things and also defend it for the wrong things.

Some of the design decisions were pretty smart as can be evidenced by them being used in V like the Style Announcer, dynamic music, and Vergil doppleganger. Doesn't make up for the goddawful color coded enemies, camera, bosses, and story though.

DmC was a functional, arguably good game... just not a good DMC game. While it had problems, Capcom set a high bar with its combat in DMC4, and then the rework dumbed it down. The story isn't bad, but very generic, and its combat feels like a slightly better Heavenly Sword, complete with the light/medium/heavy weapon modes. It didn't help the director went online and talked a lot of shit, which is where most of the damage came from. My main complaint (that was mostly fixed in their definitive version) was no lock-on and bad camera controls. I know what I want to look at and what I want to focus on, don't make the controls my main enemy.

I like the night club level, don't care for the pregnant demon + baby boss at the end; but the level itself is pretty fun.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think one game that should've been something better was Retro City Rampage.

The development of that game is far more interesting than the end result.

A large problem is the writing. It's all just 80s references. There's nothing original or creative about it, which is a shame.


While we're on the subject. Panzer Paladin is kind of the same. Meant to be a 2D mech platform game. In practice it's just NES era trail and error bullshit. Good if you're into that, I supposed.

the drop in mechanic was pretty neat, years before battle royale games picked it up,

I also liked the super sprint. You were never far from the action because if you got stranded somewhere, you could run in a straight line for a few seconds and then you'd take off at vehicle speeds.

 

[ZMOT]

I also liked the super sprint. You were never far from the action because if you got stranded somewhere, you could run in a straight line for a few seconds and then you'd take off at vehicle speeds.

yeah, it had neat little things like that most people don't even notice unless it shoved in their face like LEVOLUTION!!111 (which also royally sucked the way dice implemented it, showing they have no clue what to do with it and why people like it).

for comparison spawning in cod and bf has been complete as for basically ever...

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Here's a good one:

TF2 clone with weapon customization. You could make a bazooka that shoots 1 rockets or 6 rockets, shotty with bouncing pellets, healing ray, etc. Way ahead of its time and super, super fun. Peaked at 30,000k players and maintained a steady 500-1000 players (which was pretty good in 2005 for a indie game)

What killed it? The devs, unfortunately. First, they pushed a shitty ranked mode cause MOBA was popular. It was boring and nobody played it. Then they tried to revive it with a PvE bot mode... Bots just walked in straight line and shot at players. They lost the community at that point.

What a pity.

 

[Spunt]

X-Com Apocalypse just needed 6 more months in the oven, and it could have been not just one of the best X-Com games, but one of the best strategy games ever made, maybe even better than the first game. Even with the curtailed endgame and missing features, it's still a really under-rated game, probably the most in-depth and charismatic games in the series, it's a really fun time. But it's frustrating to know it could have been so much more. There was a project knocking about to do an open-source port of it in the vein of OpenXcom that could have fixed these problems and more, but the userbase was too small and the technical challenges too great (it used DOS4GW, a mode that some of the very last DOS games used to squeeze as much performance as possible out of DOS at the end of the Win3.1 era, but it doesn't play nice with modern operating systems and is a notorious bitch to work with). Such a shame.