Write-Offs

In the interest of time and sanity this post will be the new home for games that I don't want to play anymore and am not interested in reviewing. If your favorite game ends up here feel free to say something that will get ignored.

Dark Messiah Might & Magic: Elements - I forget exactly why I quit but I think it had to do something with getting caught stealing = game over. If I'm the savior of the Earth I should be able to do whatever I want. If the guards don't like it they can fight me. Otherwise I guess I just got bored of kicking people off of cliffs, into spikes, and so on.

Fighter Maker 2 - Why did I buy this again? In the time it takes for me to make one move in this game I could probably have played through a dozen arcade games.

Urban Chaos: Riot Response - This game has awful graphics and a pitiful framerate but I do like how there are so many unlockables. Then again if somebody broke into my computer and made me unlock all of my programs I'd probably like it.

Transformers (PS2) - This is one of those licensed games that is actually not terrible, but I really don't have anymore interest in playing now that I just ordered War for Cybertron for $20 off of Amazon.

Venetica (360 version) - Here's something that I really don't want to see. This game is in fact...broken. I was willing to tolerate the hilariously awkward cutscenes and dialogue as well as the shallow combat and terrible framerate. I just love RPGs that much sometimes and all sense is thrown out the window. This game however does the unforgivable and slips in a few major bugs that have caused me to lose progress as well as ruin saves. For example I help a guy find some paddles so he'll give me a ride on his boat. I take a boat ride to some nearby shore and save the game. Upon loading the save the guy who gave me the ride has disappeared and I'm stuck on the shore with no way to leave. Somehow I doubt I'll be able to get a full refund for this broken game...what a waste of money.

Dynasty Warriors GUNDAM - I love the Dynasty Warriors series. I love Omega Force games in general, and I'm totally planning on getting Trinity Zell or Zillo or whatever it wants to call itself. This game however feels like a dated throwback to Dynasty Warriors 3 or even 2 only without the charm. The move-sets feel really limited, there are a lot of clones, and the grind is just unbearable. If the equipment I won in battle could be shared with every mecha things would be a lot different. Instead each piece of equipment is exclusive to the mecha that found it so I have to start from square one every time I pick a new character. The painful level-design, the slow-moving mechas, and the bosses that have entirely too much HP just drag this game down. I might give the sequel a shot since Warrior games tend to improve with each subsequent iteration(Dynasty Warriors 6 being an exception).

DJ MAX Fever - Now I'm well aware that a handful of hardcore DJ MAX fans will grumble to themselves: "He should have imported the good editions or bought the latest sequel." That's great and all but you know what? It's not going to effect my opinion of the game. The presentation is great, the songs are good, it's very playable, but...I'm not a robot. Until I get those cybernetic implants I keep asking for my eyes & fingers are just no match for the absolutely insane level of ability required to play this game. All it turns into usually is that I just mash buttons while I jam along. Sometimes I get a huge combo, sometimes I screw it up, the entire time I just don't care. It's not my thing so I'll just leave it at that.

The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion - Classic RPG Game-play! Over 50 hours of Adventure! Unique Pet System! Wow! Falcom is a good developer and I love their Ys series but this game is just pathetic. I'm the kind of guy who could probably sit down with any dumb RPG and kill hours and brain cells in equal amounts but this game just doesn't get there at all. It reminds of that old Genesis game Traysia, an RPG so boring even frame-skip can't save it. The only real highlight is a comically inept translation by Bandai. It's probably one of the worst I've ever read since the SNES era. It's good for a laugh but certainly not fifty hours good.

Lumines/Gunpey (PSP) - Alright I know I know it's pretty much impossible for me to say that either of these games suck. Fine...they don't suck...doesn't mean I can't hate them. Lumines isn't bad except its feature-set has been trounced several times over by the many updates the series has received. Gun-pey rolls with the same concept as Lumines but the execution is absolutely borked. Either the songs are too long or the stages take forever to change but when it takes thirty or so minutes to get through a few songs that means the pacing is absolutely shameful. Sure they're both addictive and all but they're "falling block" puzzlers, that's their job. Just grab a newer version of Lumines and pray that somebody gets the bright idea to release a fixed Gunpey with a better implemented system for unlocking new skins and music.

LittleBIGPlanet (PSP) - I can't really knock this game too much because I didn't pay for it. It was part of the game bundle I received when I bought the PSP. Thing about LBP on the PSP is that it served its purpose well, it gave me just enough of a reason to grab the PS3 version. Well congrats to Sony for that one because I love the PS3 version of LBP. Unfortunately while this edition of LBP has exclusive content it is lacking multiplayer, which to me is one of the best parts of the PS3 version. All things considered it is a solid-port but ehhh...no thanks.

The Dark Spire - How old-school is too old-school? This love letter to the days of classic Wizardry has its heart in the right place but when Dark Spire can't even reach the level of games that were made 20 or so years ago there's little reason to consider playing it. This game also had the misfortune of being bought at the same time as Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land which is a fresh and excellent take on the genre. Oh well at least Spire has some decent music.

Devil May Cry - I've tried more than enough times to play this game again but wow thanks to the likes of more recent action games like Bayonetta and so on this title may as well be unplayable to me. I understand a number of people still consider this a classic but ehh..nope..I can't stand it.

Seven Samurai 20XX - I've put about an hour into this game and it's just awful and dull. A re-telling of the Seven Samurai story with cyborgs and demon werewolves should have been cool but the combat is so repetitive, bland, and constant that it simply buries any quality that this game has. This is little more than a complete waste of $7.

Resistance: Fall of Man - Really this just isn't an exciting game. Maybe if this game had some sort of hook or heck even a gimmick beyond shooting human-like aliens with futuristic weapons I would have stuck with it. Unfortunately this one just comes off as terribly mediocre and unoriginal.

Genji: Days of the Blade - This game failed the fifteen minute test. For those of you out there who aren't me the fifteen minute test is used to look out for anything that could be considered horrendous game design in the earliest stages of the game. The assumption is that if the game can't keep from showing its seams at that point then it will most certainly fall apart towards the end. Surprisingly only a handful of games have failed this test and this game is one of them.

To explain early on the player must climb onto a roof-top to dispatch some archers. After jumping from a pedestal to a spot where the roof can be hung on to the camera switches angles and if I'm still holding the analog stick in the direction I used to grab the edge I end up letting go and falling to the ground instead of climbing up. To add to this even the games that fail this test tend to offer something that compels me to keep going. This game doesn't.

New Zealand Story Revolution - A remake/sequel of the New Zealand Story seemed like a good enough idea. The original game was one of those Taito Arcade Classics that had its fair share of fans. This game is much the same except with additional features and abilities like Dual-screen support, a double jump, a health meter, and so on. It all seems good enough but none of the additions work out in any way and the entire game still ends up being as frustrating as the original. As a bonus the DS version features stages where I have to locate missing objects using both of the screens. This shoehorned garbage is just sad.

Winback - I gotta say the mechanics for this game are something else. The player character as well as almost all of the enemies are invulnerable to damage for a few seconds after taking a hit. This is rather surprising considering this is a third-person shooter. Unfortunately it doesn't make the game fun in the slightest as most of the time I end up trapped and helpless as enemies run away and hide until I lose my invulnerability before finishing me off. Tacking on a convoluted control scheme with very stiff movement adds quite a bit to the frustration as well. I'm sorry I paid $3 for this. I'm really truly sorry I spent more than an hour on this.

Tekken 6 - Nearly all of the time I spent on this game was in the story mode. Yes that horrific mode which fancies itself a beatemup but knows nothing of strong mechanics, good controls, and exceptional level design that makes beatemups worth playing. Still I have to consider that it has highlighted a weakness when it comes to what appeals to me in videogames: Random loot. I'm especially vulnerable to phat loot and I fear that it may make me think good things about bad games or games I should otherwise hate for all of the lousy decisions that are made. I will definitely have to consider this for future game reviews. I also have another weakness and that is playing dress-up and customization. One day game developers will make nothing but games with phat loot that allows me to customize everything and I'll be forced to retire from videogame criticism.

Folklore - Another vice of mine is grinding. Yes of course I'm talking about the kind where you do repetitive actions to gain experience and/or loot. Folklore falls in line with this as aside from the story and the puzzle-laden bosses there's really not a whole lot in the game. The whimsical art direction and interesting characters can only hide so much of the boring level design and finicky combat. Also while I understand and even appreciate the two-character approach to the storyline there really could have been a better way to tell the entire story than to have both characters play through pretty much the same areas. Oh sure both characters have their own monsters to collect but that eventually just turns into more grinding to bring them up to parity. Oh and for the love of everything who do I have to stab to get a patch that'll do away with the Sixaxis controls?

If I were to give "objective" ratings to these games well I dunno they could be rated 0 to 100 stars for all I care but as far as my rating goes they're all ZEROS.

I'm sure there will be more games posted here. So look forward to that if you like.