There's nothing I love more than a Spruce Goose—an idea so big, and so ambitious that it'll either light the world on fire, or go down in a big stinking blaze of schadenfreude. Most of the games on this list fell short of greatness. However, one thing is true—every game on this list could have been mind-blowing, if they only had more time in the oven.
Here are my Top 10 half-baked games of this generation.
#10 – Just Cause 2
Some of you may remember that I featured this as my number one passed-over game from last year. That still stands. And, if you've done the smart thing by taking my good advice, you'll understand what I mean when I saw this game has an awesome foundation undermined by a few tiny cracks.
Just Cause 2 does so many big ideas right. There's an interesting world to play around in, the developers let you have the freedom to do just about anything from the start, and the game is just plain fun—mostly.
It has its problems. All of the big guns that you'll inevitably want to play around with have to be unlocked. Even then, you have to spend money to acquire them. And they're expensive. Really, really expensive. Prohibitively so. If you've gotten them by adhering to the rules of the game (meaning, no console commands to give satiate your appetite for destruction) you probably don't want to waste the super-rare ammo for that awesome rocket launcher you just bought by transforming cars into ashy black piles of steel. You'll also probably not want to crash that jet you just bought, as you blew your whole stack on it.
This is all predicated on you not being careless enough to have one of those super-expensive items air-dropped to you in a forest, or where there are a lot of buildings for you new plane to get stuck on, thereby keeping it permanently grounded. It's flipped upside down between two buildings, you say? Well, guess you'll just take it out back and fix the problem, Old Yeller style.
#9 – Oblivion
Bethesda does so many things right with their games. They create works with nearly unmatched ambition. Everything from the layout of the world down to the small details like finding books strewn around that fill in the backstory by explaining previous Elder Scrolls games. The kind of things Bethesda pulls off while giving players the ability to explore wherever, whenever are amazing.
But there's just one problem.
Cyrodiil is just so goddamned boring! How is that possible? You'd think with roaming bandits, demons, and reanimated skeletons things would be a bit spicier, right? But the voice acting is so bland, assets like art, character faces, dialogue, and enemies are repeated ad nauseam. And the animations are just plain bad!
In theory, the game should be filled with interesting people to meet, and exciting things to do, but it's all so repetitive that Oblivion is about as captivating as old wall paper.
With any luck, Skyrim will put to good use any lessons Bethesda learned in its development of Oblivion.
#8 – Heavy Rain
Here we have a really cool idea for a game that is essentially an interactive movie. You get to determine the way the plot plays out by whether particular actions you take succeed or fail. Every little movement of the characters is controlled by you, down to the smallest, most mundane detail like putting on eyeliner, or sitting in a chair.
If you're like me, you were so excited when you first read about it, you told your friend who promptly looked at you like you just told him that you're going to give your checking account number to some Nigerian prince that needs help transferring his vast fortune.
It then becomes apparent that Heavy Rain is really bad idea, then you think about it and realize it's still cool. After all, consequences stay with you – there's no true “failure” condition in this game. That's a really cool idea, right? Right! It is! I'm saying this with no sarcasm
Then, after spending a couple hours with the game, you realize that it's practically one big quick-time event, and you're practically driven to becoming the next Origami Killer.
#7 – Fallout: New Vegas
At first glance, what wasn't there to like about this game? Players get the chance to revisit Fallout with members of original design team. The designers get a chance to bring all their kooky reverence for Fallout's lore back to life. And it has some Old West style to it! Hell yeah!
Hah! Did you actually think this game wouldn't be super buggy? We're talking about Obsidian making a game for Bethesda on the Gamebryo engine. By their powers combined, I'm pretty sure those guys could screw up making a pop-tart. They'd have to crunch for six months to do it, but rest assured, they'd burn the shit out of that Pop-tart.
Also that Old West aesthetic was kept around for about half the game. After that, nearly all of the weapons and armor were just reused assets from Fallout 3. Around the same point, the game became much less focused, and it became obvious that things were just being phoned in so there would be enough content to warrant a $60 price tag when the game's number was called.
You know what the hell of it is? Even after writing that, I still enjoyed this game. It's still fun. I don't blame you if you hate it. Because, sometimes I hate myself.
#6 – Demon's Souls
This game oozed with awesome ideas. Every player has their own personal “world” to play in. You can invade other players' worlds as a black soul, and try to kill them. You can leave cryptic messages for other players whom have to figure out if you're helping them navigate through a punishing world or hurting them for the lulz. You can even see the last few moments of another player's life if you touch a bloodstain they've left behind. Also, the game is harder than penguin shit.
Pretty awesome, ambitious stuff.
Except seeing where other players failed is pretty meaningless, as all you'll see are them swinging aimlessly at air, then falling down (presumably killed by some monster), telling you almost nothing about the obstacles ahead. And you can't actually write out your own messages – every message is chosen from a predetermined list. Oh, also your messages are rated by other players. So, a message with a low rating most likely won't show up in another person's game. Inevitably, any tricky message is rated negatively, ruining the tension created by wondering if you can trust a message, because nearly any message you see is trust worthy.
Oh and that whole “become a Black Soul, and invade other people's games” thing – good luck finding out how to do that without reading it online somewhere. In fact, good luck trying to figure out nearly anything in Demon's Souls without a guide. The game's mechanics are a completely byzantine nightmare. And the game itself is hard. So, so hard.
The entirety of Demon's Souls is like that part in Metal Gear Solid 3 where you climb up a ladder for 3 minutes – only the ladder lasts somewhere around 30 minutes, and you randomly fall to your death a few dozen times, forcing you to grind the ladder for the next three days.
Further crushing my hopes and dreams, there's no song about Snake Eaters on this ladder
#5 – Bulletstorm
Kill with skill! That was the tagline for Bulletstorm. The challenge of the game is racking up points by killing enemies in a variety of ways. For instance, booting them in the junk so hard they fly uncontrollably into a nearby wall that just happened to be covered in spikes.
Unfortunately the phrase “kill with skill” must have translated to something weird in Babelfish, as Polish developer People Can Fly thought this meant running the same god damned levels over and over until you want to skill kill yourself with an Xbox controller down your own throat.
In Poland, the phrase “Kill with skill” apparently translates to “run through this level 100 times while trying to perfectly line up every enemy with some sort of random piece of the environment that impales them in some way. Missed something totally inconsequential? Haha, start over you poor bastard. We hate you.”
I'm told that Polish is a very complex language.
#4 – Dead Rising
Huge open world, with tons of stuff to interact with. Pretty sweet, right? Au contraire, mon frere. There are timers. Oh how there are timers. And they will always force you to rush from point A to point B, never giving you a chance to screw around.
Did someone wish for Dead Rising by using a cursed monkey paw?
You say you want to go explore this huge mall, crawling with zombies, practically bursting at the seams with cool weapons with which to gib said zombies? Hope you can do it all in 90 seconds, fucker, because you have to go save some Japanese tourists.
Oops. I guess we forgot to tell you about the convicts in the truck that you have to sneak by every 20 minutes. Oh, oops again! They have a machine gun. Walk it off, wussy boy.
Oops, the third. Your timer just ran out! Way to screw up that mission.
If ever there were a more apt example of developers creating a game because they absolutely hate people who play games, I haven't seen it. Well, maybe Demon's Souls. Oh, ha! Look at that!
#3 – Age of Conan
Frankly, I could put any MMO on this list, and it'd fit right in. It's the only genre I can think of that is practically defined by pushing a game out the door before it's completed. In theory, end-game content is added in before any player is there to consume it. In practice, I don't think I've ever seen this happen. Knowing this, I committed the ultimate gamble in the world of MMOs – I bought a new MMO the day it was released. That game happened to be Age of Conan. I never said I was smart.
Age of Conan was so tempting though! Here was a game that claimed to silence my biggest gripe about MMOs – that the story in nearly every single one is complete shit. Funcom created a game that apparently had a rich story that was told from a different perspective depending upon which class you played. Really cool, right? How could I possibly resist? Surely this MMO would be different from the rest!
Right! This was actually in the game, and it was really cool! But there was a catch. There's always a catch. The story only lasted for a few hours, then it was back to MMO business as usual for the remaining 90% of the game – meaningless quests, grinding, and being greifed to hell (although that actually spiced things up a bit).
Oh, and there was also no end-game for the first few months. Fun!
#2 – Alpha Protocol
“Innovative dialogue system governed by weird timer!” That should be the only box quote for this game. It's the long and short of Alpha Protocol, a game which cribs pretty heavily from Mass Effect. Most notably, that you have a dialogue wheel where each response is a shortened version of what is actually say. For instance choosing “Professional” has the player character, Michael Thorton, answer in a professional, no nonsense manner.
Unlike Mass Effect, you have to pick an answer before a timer runs out. And this timer isn't a lazy Sunday sort of timer. No, it has places to be, and can only spare a few seconds, so you better come up with something quick. What's that? You missed an important detail an NPC shared with you, because you panicked worse than a boy going through puberty at his older sister's birthday party? Too bad, bucko. Once you pick a dialogue option you'll get your answer once, so you best shut that yapper.
While this is cool in a Heavy Rain-esque “you have to live with whatever you pick” sort of way, it's also a huge pain in the ass. I admit that I am genuinely conflicted by Alpha Protocol's conversation system. The critic in me loves the way Obsidian stuck to their guns, and tried to make this work. The gamer in me absolutely loathes it.
Bottom line – if you like being able to explore your dialogue options in a game, Alpha Protocol will drive you to murder.
#1 – Morality Systems in nearly every game
If ever there were a big idea that just hasn't been done right, it's morality in pretty much every game ever. Morality is not “do I want to be Hitler, or should I be Jesus?” The whole idea behind morality is that its a code of personal ethics that often shifts from person to person. You may think I'm an asshole for turning in a crook that was only thieving to save his family, I think you're a jerk because you let that guy mug an innocent person.
That's morality – it's subjective. There's no clear Good/Evil outcome. Well, sometimes there is, but that's not very interesting, now is it?
I have yet to see a game that makes an interesting morality system. In Mass Effect, it's just “do I want to be nice, or do I want to be a dick?” That's not morality. That's being nice or being a dick. There's no interesting moral choice there.
Furthermore, many games employ a reward system, further screwing up the intent behind morality. Yes, sometimes people will give you things for helping them push their car onto the shoulder, or raking their leaves, but more often than not, morality is a personal choice with no clear right/wrong, and no reward at the end of the line.
I don't abstain from kicking puppies because PETA is handing out gold stars to “good” people. I don't do it because I've judged it to be immoral. I don't care if that makes me good or bad in someone else's eyes.
Furthermore, not every burglar breaks into someone's house for personal gain. As hard as it is to swallow, there are a lot of reasons why someone may be driven to do something like that. Not all of them are purely “bad”.
Categorizing actions into purely black and white terms dumbs down what could actually be an interesting choice for players. Believe it or not, a lot of people actually enjoy thinking about this kind of stuff, and I'd wager a lot of those people also play games.
So, developers, give us something more nuanced than “Shall I feast upon these babies? Or shall I give these babies all of my diapers?”
Alternative #1 – Duke Nukem Forever – Haha just kidding! It didn't matter how much development time this game had. It was destined to be awful.
