Even in a year where
so many good games came out, there will always be a fair share of
games that didn’t “click”. Maybe they had a new idea that
needed to be refined. Maybe there was a lack of polish or it didn’t
stand out from its peers. For whatever reason, the games on this list
left me wanting.
As a friendly
reminder, this does not mean that the games here are bad. You might
even like them. What this does mean is that I personally had some
issues with it that hampered my enjoyment enough to notice. Without
further ado, my disappointments of 2017 are:
Middle-Earth: Shadow
of War
I was a big fan of
Shadow of Mordor way back in 2014. Since I wasn’t a fan of
Tolkien’s works, I could look past how it failed to capture the
themes from The Lord of the Rings, looking instead to its mechanics.
The Nemesis System felt fresh and exciting, and I (along with many
others) couldn’t wait to see more games iterate of it.
While I beat Shadow
of War, it never really captured my attention in quite the same way.
Rather than iterate over and refine the mechanics of the system with
the feedback from the first game, Shadow of War adds bloat. The two
reasonably large regions in the first game have grown to 4 (possibly
5 depending on how it’s counted) regions, each with their own orc
hierarchy. With all the different enemies I had been beaten by,
shamed, enslaved, and executed, I don’t have a clear memory of any
1 of them. This is sharp contrast to the first game, where I
recognized all 5 of the orcs that came back to fight me in the
finale.
And even in the
middle of combat, the world is crowded by so many nameless, faceless
orcs that a single brawl gets tedious quickly. It was not fun to have
floods of mooks continuously interrupt my attempt to add a new
commander to my army. In the middle of the new sieges, where players
take their makeshift army to attack and protect large fortress, this
problem compounds. Whether the player is on offense or defense,
sieges quickly devolve into a scattered mess. Even when focusing on
defeating/protecting orc commanders, it’s easy to miss an enemy
coming at the player.
With the loot box controversy factored in, this game is sad. It has such potential, but
never comes together in the way I wanted it to.
Sonic Mania
Sonic Mania is a
well made, expertly crafted call back to the 2D era of Sonic. It is
everything that Sonic fans wanted it to be, and then some. So why
does it sit on this list?
Bluntly, this is the
game that forced me to finally admit that I don’t, and honestly
never, liked Sonic games. I’ve always a fan of the Sonic
“aesthetic” and attitude. I even genuinely like the character,
but every time I go to play a Sonic game I’m left bored and
disappointed. Despite being touted as the best Sonic game in over a
decade, I could not bring myself to play much passed World 2. Even
worse, if you were to ask why that is the case, I would not be able
to give you an answer.
I’m willing to
give Generations and a couple of the other “good” Sonic games
just to be on the safe side, but Sonic Mania has made me question
whether there’s even a chance I like this series. That’s not
really a position I want to be in.
LawBreakers
Technically
speaking, I did not play LawBreakers. However, I did play the beta
that was run shortly before its launch on the PS4. I would even go so
far as to say that I had fun during that beta.
The problem that
LawBreakers had was that the market it was trying to cater to was
already eaten up by many other markets, such that it didn’t have a
place in many people’s libraries. If I wanted to play a quirky hero
shooter, I would rather play Overwatch. If I wanted to play a fast
paced multiplayer shooter like the old Unreal Tournament, I would
rather play Quake Champions or… Unreal Tournament.
Bluntly, there was
nothing LawBreakers did that another game wasn’t already doing
better. As I frequently told friends, “This is a game that I
wouldn’t turn down, but don’t really need to play right now”.
As it turns out, I am hardly alone in that opinion, which spelled the
death knell for this good, but completely unremarkable shooter.
Friday the 13th: The
Game
Full disclosure: I
was one of the Kickstarter backers for this game.
In the ideal
circumstances, Friday the 13th: The Game is a fantastic experience.
Though my friend group and I didn’t play often, we had just as much
fun running from Jason as we did hunting down camp counselors. I love
the idea of asynchronous multiplayer, and this game is a good example
of how effective that can be.
But this is a
disappointments list, so why is it here if I like it? Well, those get
times were had when I joined 6-7 other people that I personally knew
in a Private Match. When 2-3 of us couldn’t convince the rest of my
group to play, and we had to go into a Public Match to get enough
people in for a viable game, we had a completely different
experience. This was where the rough edges showed. From players that
would quit the game if they weren’t Jason (and since there was no
dedicated server, would end the match if they were hosting), to doors
and buildings that simply didn’t load in, even though they still
had collision. While it’s certainly possible that some of these
issues were fixed, it made me reluctant to play public matches ever
again. And to get the best experience for the game, you need 6-8
people who can coordinate a time to play together, which is no small
feat.
I like Friday the
13th: The Game, but there’s no denying that it’s issues bring
down the whole experience.
Hidden Agenda
I know what you’re
thinking: “Dear writer, why is this here when you just wrote an
entire article about what this game did right?”
Good question.
Hidden Agenda disappoints me because, while I do think there is
potential and some lessons to be learned from it, the game did its
damndest to make sure anyone who could appreciate it had to go
through so many hoops to do so. It’s like somebody wanted to make a
murder-mystery with the same level of social play that the Jackbox
Party Packs tend towards, while fundamentally misunderstanding what
makes Jackbox work.
To play Hidden
Agenda, you need 1-6 players who are all in the same room (so unlike
Jackbox, don’t expect to stream this to your friends). Further,
each player specifically needs a smartphone with the 121 MB mobile
app installed (so unless you’ve got some good download speeds,
don’t expect a group of people to spontaneously get a game going).
This is material I touched on in the article. What I didn’t mention
was that the app drains the battery on a phone like no tomorrow, so
good luck if you don’t have a charger handy.
The game can
be played single player, as I needed to because there’s no way I’d
be able to get enough people together, but that removes the core "Hidden Agenda" gimmick the game is named after. A shame, because it does a
good job at compressing the “interactive movie” experience into a
well-paced 2 hour chunk. It may be a standard police-procedural, but
it’s a good one of those.
I really wanted to
like this game, but there’s too many hoops to go through for anyone
to get the best experience out of it.
Gravity Rush 2
When I’m in the
open world, falling up, down, and sideways, Gravity Rush 2 is
amazing. There is something intrinsically entertaining about the
movement mechanics.
The problem is that
the game built around them fails to support them. Gravity Rush also
failed in this way, but I had hoped the sequel would resolve those
issues. While I can’t say I have idea for how to best tap into the
inherent joy of flying around, the missions in Gravity Rush 2 aren’t
designed around this mechanic. In all honestly, it often felt more
that the mechanics were bent around the mission design.
When the protagonist
has the ability to fall in any direction, it feels bizarre to have
mandatory instant-fail stealth missions (disregarding the fact that
instant-fail stealth in 2017 is atrocious in general). Just like the
first game, combat required more precision than the mechanics can
offer, which is frustrating when so much time is spent mid-combat.
It’s so rare that
Gravity Rush 2 lets its core gameplay shine that the basic fetch
quest becomes one of the highlights of my time playing it. At the
very least, a fetch quest allows the player to move from A to B and
back, letting them focus on just moving around.
I like the world of
Gravity Rush, and the mechanics therein, but there’s so few chances
for either of them to shine that the game suffers for it.
Kingdom Hearts 2.8:
Final Chapter Prologue HD
While Dream Drop
Distance and A Fragmentary Passage were both worth the price tag for
Final Chapter Prologue HD, there’s a third item in the package.
That third item is why I feel compelled to bring this collection up
one more time, on the disappointments list.
Along with the above
two, Kingdom Hearts X(chi) Back Cover was included. At first, I
thought this was like the movie versions of 358 Days/2 and Re:Coded
that were in the 1.5 and 2.5 ReMix, recapping the events of the game
in the form of a movie. As it turns out, that is not the case. Though
Back Cover takes place during the events of Kingdom Hearts X, it is
actually a different story altogether. It is related to, but distinct
from, the mobile game.
This is important
because the story adds to the bloat that Kingdom Hearts already
suffers from, as my friend Sam and I have covered in the now-finished
Primer series. Even without that context, the movie itself, despite
being a visual showcase for the new engine, is dreadfully dull. Only
one character in the entire film has any discernible charisma, and he
vanishes early on. The rest of the cast just can’t carry a scene,
and I think it’s less the actor and more the material.
For all the
questions, plot points, and characters added to the franchise in this
2 hour movie, I was bored through most of it. At this point, I need
more from Kingdom Hearts.
For Honor
For Honor falls
under the same category that Friday the 13th: The Game did earlier on
this list. It is an excellent core mired by some question design
decisions and the awful netcode endemic to uPlay.
I adore the
stance-based combat system in For Honor. When it was just me and
another opponent, the mind-games and tension generated kept me
hooked. 1v1 and 2v2 are the definitive ways to play this game.
What drag this game
down are the atrocious, poorly balanced 4v4 mode. No matter the skill
and composition of each team, 4v4 basically comes down to huge gank
squads cleaning up the map. Even today, the tactic will easily win
games for even the most novice players. On top of that, gear and how
it affects character stats breaks the balance of the game. Certain
builds, particularly ones the improve the Revenge mechanic, tips the
scales to an unreasonable degree, removing a layer of skill from the
game.
On top of the lack
of dedicated servers, and the sheer number of disconnects I witnessed
in my time with For Honor, these issues combine to sully what could
have been a phenomenal game. I hope Ubisoft can turn it around.
And with that, my
disappointments of 2017 come to a close. Despite the harsh words I
had for a lot of these games, most of them at least made a good
effort to do something different, and they should be applauded for
that. Not every risk pans out, but they need to be taken anyway.
Hopefully in 2018 we’ll see this kind of risk-taking continue.
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