Worst game possible: First round
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 7 2006 01:10
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Of course we must describe the worst possible game. For the sake of arbitrariness, let us consider only CRPGs in a broad sense. RTS and FPS games with some RP element would be in. In this round we will attempt to determine just what being the worst possible game would mean. The discussion may, however, proceed with examples, which may then become actual competitors for the title in Round 2. Note that there is no restriction to games that have actually been made. It seems implausible that the very worst possible game could yet have appeared in reality, so the ultimate winner of Round Two should certainly be hypothetical. Examples presented in this Round, however, may be real, hypothetical, or both (such as a hypothetical mixture of two actual games). To start the ball rolling, I will raise the grave problem of Camp: it is unfortunately (for our purposes) quite possible for a game to be so bad that it becomes good, or at least not so bad. The worst possible game would necessarily be one that derived no benefit from this effect: it would have to be bad with a badness unredeemable by any amount of irony. This may be a tricky constraint to pin down. Conversely, however, it might be that the very worst games would all have to contain a substantial amount of goodness, otherwise they would lack (a) the disappointment of unfulfilled potential and (b) the temptation to play them and experience their awful badness. Is it possible, for instance, that the worst possible game would be the greatest possible game except for having the lamest possible ending? Or would one in that case simply refuse to accept the ending as part of the 'real' game, and classify the remainder as a very good game somewhat marred by having no ending? -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Nuke and Pave
Member # 24
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written Friday, July 7 2006 09:14
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As you've said, there are two kinds of bad games: the games that are so bad nobody would ever play them, and the games that are painful, but good enough to keep the player struggling. To see examples of the first kind, just look at the bottom of BoE CSR chart. :) The second kind is much tougher, because it requires enough good elements to counter-balance the bad ones, while keeping the bad ones bad enough to qualify as "worst" game. I would suggest a game with a gripping mystery story, where the player is constantly looking for the next clue, and a very good rewards system in the form of artifacts, cheat codes, and feel-good text. The negatives would be slightly out-of-focus graphics, with refresh rate low enough to cause barely noticeable flicker, gameplay requiring rapidly pressing key combinations awkward enough to damage the wrist, and consistent spelling mistakes that creep into the keywords player has to enter. The game would allow saving only in pre-defined positions, requiring player to replay whole sections over, and over, and over as he tries to hit the right key combinations quickly enough. So the negatives would be not in the game itself, but in damage to eyes and wrists, headaches, and learning spelling mistakes. [ Friday, July 07, 2006 09:17: Message edited by: Zeviz ] -------------------- Be careful with a word, as you would with a sword, For it too has the power to kill. However well placed word, unlike a well placed sword, Can also have the power to heal. Posts: 2649 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Friday, July 7 2006 10:16
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Submission: "Sometimes Linear Is Better" Game: Some online text-based adventure that I forgot the name of. Summary: Game was extremely good up until random teleportation got involved, then the game become too frustrating and time-consuming to continue. The problem: The game started off well. I solved one puzzle, and the game advanced me to the next one. There was even a walkthough I could refer to in case I got stuck. However, towards the end of the game, the game got split into seven or eight places I had go to via a teleporter. The teleporter sent me to a place randomly. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that the teleporter continued to send me to places I had already completed. By the time I was down to two or three places to visit, I was often using the teleportal five or six times before getting to one of them. Furthermore, the teleportation itself was annoying. It took several turns to get where I was going. Typing "wait" four turns in a row just isn't that interesting, and it's downright tedious the fifteenth time I had to do it. After realizing that I had spent over ten minutes teleporting without getting to a single new place, I gave up. The game should have just teleported me to places in a set order. It would have been a lot less frustrating. Dikiyoba's rating: Random and extreme frustration. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 14:11
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Let's start with the elements of good game design that can be warped to our evil needs: Plot. A good or at least decent plot can keep a sucker playing, as Zeviz says. Atmosphere: I insist on making this separate from plot, but it serves basically the same function. Graphics: Hideous graphics offer some good possibilities, but I think the real disasters lie in more subtly awful tricks. For example, perfectly serviceable graphics with occasional eye-searing "errors," a 3D setup with a self-positioning camera that always chooses the worst angle so you can only see walls or close-ups of pixellated ears. Audio: Music that seems okay and then rapidly becomes unbearabel is good. Sound effects that are serviceable except for the occasional random sound glitch that can cause severe ear damage are good too. Horrendous voice acting is a must. Interface: Make clicking picky. Make it really easy to mis-click. Make it like the older versions of A4, only more so. And make potential click errors disastrous, especially if you can only save at a few places with long and irritating segments of gameplay in between. Ugly menus with slightly fuzzy text and many similar letters can keep people guessing. Bonus points if "yes" and "no" somehow can't be distinguished from each other. Sensitivity that goes from so high you can't actually exert any fine control to so sluggish you just can't do anything with the keyboard or mouse is good. Put in plenty of lag even on fast computers. Gameplay: Another goldmine. As long as it's easy to make big mistakes that don't show up until you have no saved games far enough back, you're set. And make it easy to have obvious mistakes, too. The wrong choice in dialogue makes the entire continent hostile and the game unwinnable, so you have to reload. The difficulty can be either punishingly, cruelly high or so low that you can fall asleep while playing but never in between. Arbitrariness: Make things just happen with no explanation given. Especially things like taking damage, losing money, or getting teleported across the map. Tasks: All sidequests should take more effort than they are worth. Important plot events should be made as tedious as possible without actually making the plot terrible. —Alorael, who considers the absolutely essential ingredient of a terrible game to be the bug that makes the game impossible to complete, or at least extremely and arbitrarily unlikely to be completed. A 90% chance of game crashing and savefile corruption somewhere around three-quarters of the way through works nicely. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Friday, July 7 2006 14:21
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The worst plots I've ever seen have been mysterious and interesting at first, with a lot of questions that seem exciting and worth answering, that then give completely vacuous or unsatisfying answers (to take a very mild example, VoDT). The graphics must be passable but prone to baneful problems, as Alorael said; I had in mind that certain areas would be blocked from view arbitrarily, as one can do with inopportune heights in BoA. Infrequent random errors are the key to just about everything else. Occasionally scatter the screen with graphical glitches. Occasionally make the sound cut out and then come back on twice as loud as it ought to be. Corrupting save files is a must. All of these errors need to be rare enough that the player doesn't expect them, but often enough that the player encounters them at least a couple times per game. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 7 2006 16:10
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Another good bad idea is having each step of the plot become a greater hurdle. At first you're led from quest A to quest B by the hand. Then you have to start finding clues and figuring stuff out. Then you don't get any clues and you have to wander around looking for the one person who can tell you what to do next. —Alorael, who has gone through this far too many times. It's really not that much fun no matter how well the game handles the inevitable pointless battles en route. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 6652
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written Friday, July 7 2006 16:18
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quote:I hate those plots. The worst thing an author can do, IMO, is to give us a mystery and answer it in an entirely inadequate way. My Entry: The worst game in the world is one that is highly praised by game review sources. From the screenshots you've seen, the graphics are simply amazing. It has incredible and innotiative gameplay, the sort that redefines the genre. You've read forums after forums of people describing how awesome it is. It seems utterly perfect in every way. The gameplay videos, screenshots, reviews and previews make it seem like the perfect game for you. The system requirements fit your computer. You buy it, or download a demo. And it doesn't work. It just doesn't. You double-click on the icon, the screen goes black, perhaps a few logos appear. Then it quits back to your desktop, maybe informing you with a nice polite error message that your hopes and dreams of the past solid week are dead. You spend half a minute wallowing is desperation and disbelief. Then you go mad. You search the Internet late into the night for tech support, missing files, patches, people with a similar problem to yours, etc. Maybe you get a different error message. Maybe you get as far as the opening movie. And as you gradually realize that nothing will work, you shrivel up in despair. Inspiration: KOTOR 2, Hitman: Blood Money. -------------------- But I don't want to ride the elevator. Posts: 420 | Registered: Sunday, January 8 2006 08:00 |
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Councilor
Member # 6600
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written Friday, July 7 2006 16:18
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The game should be big. Really big. And it should not come with a map of any kind. And none of the characters or in-game descriptions should give any indication of exactly where the important locations are in this really big game. Dikiyoba. Posts: 4346 | Registered: Friday, December 23 2005 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Friday, July 7 2006 19:09
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Just an aside because I probably won't post in any of the other rounds: I agree with Wonko about nominating KOTOR II. Bugs, graphical glitches, a pointless and reused plot, and totally a let-down from KOTOR I. -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Friday, July 7 2006 19:21
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Out of many good bad ideas so far, I single out Alorael's suggestion of bad automatic camera angle control. Humans have basic instincts about trying to see things, I think, and having our viewpoint slew around arbitrarily should be maddening on a sort of animal level. Probably a good refinement here would be to have manual camera angle controls that are brutally counter-intuitive, and remain so no matter how long you play the game because they actually change from level to level. Everything is bearable on automatic camera until suddenly you're staring at a wall while a Bugblatter Beast is whaling on you, and you're trying to pound in the necessary six-key sequence just to get a look at the thing. Having to struggle just to look death in the face: priceless. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 6652
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 01:02
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quote:I listed KOTOR II as inspiration because it got me all hyped up and then wouldn't work on my computer, not because of the gameplay (which I don't know about). But you can use it for whatever you want. -------------------- But I don't want to ride the elevator. Posts: 420 | Registered: Sunday, January 8 2006 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 5814
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 12:30
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quote:I thought so. But even though you are missing a lot, slugging through so much just isn't worth it. It has some of the best and worst qualities a game can have; however, the bad outweighs the good. Hey, whaddaya know. I am following the thread. :o -------------------- quote: Posts: 1115 | Registered: Sunday, May 15 2005 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5576
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 12:55
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I think that a game, while not neccessarily eligible itself, being of somewhat the wrong genre, is Majesty "The Fantasy Kingdom Sim". For those not familiar with this at best highly mediocre game, it is a sort of RTS in a fantasy setting, but in which the player cannot directly control ANY of the units. This opens wonderful possiblities, with all kinds of action occuring in the game, which the player can't actually influence. Among the games other points are: Impressively long save and load times (without any type of progress bar most of the time) The only actions the player can actually take are constructing buildings and casting spells on characters, but both of these require large quantities of gold that the player must struggle to get in any great quantity. In addition, each building can supply a limited number of heros or civilians, but duplicate buildings have exponentially increasing cost. In addition to being merely uncontrollable, the player's units are maddeningly stupid; fleeing from fights they can easily win, pursuing fights they cannot hope to win, and doing absolutely nothing for huge lengths of time for no visible reason. Majesty features some wonderfully picky clicking: for instance, if your city gaurd is fighting a troll, and you try to cast a healing spell on the gaurd, you may well end up healing the troll instead. -------------------- Überraschung des Dosenöffners! "On guard, you musty sofa!" Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 7223
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 14:59
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Why is this in RWG? Nevermind. I won't get an answer, and if I do, it will be strange. In odd ways. EDIT: On second thought, this wasn't a good example. [ Sunday, July 09, 2006 04:28: Message edited by: Elijah ] -------------------- Polaris The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. - H.P. Lovecraft Posts: 164 | Registered: Wednesday, June 14 2006 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 17:14
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I'm not really sure how that makes FF7 the worst possible game, but we can work with that. Arbitrary manipulation of who is and who can be in the player's party makes the game all the more frustrating. —Alorael, who otherwise can only see how FF7's failure can be called plot. FF7's plot is apparently a crowd-pleaser. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 23:35
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Majesty sure does sound bad. Important units or characters being beyond the player's control does sound like a winning feature. You could bill it as a strategy feature, that you have to recruit, equip, train and lead various in-game entities. And at first it goes okay. But then you spend the last half of the game laboriously pumping up your heroes, in all kinds of tedious ways, only to discover in the endgame that the AI is an algorithmic representation of mouldering toast, and your heroes all die ludicrously without your being able to lift a finger to help. Perhaps a theme is emerging here, that effectively denying the player control over essential units, at essential times, makes for really bad games. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, July 8 2006 23:51
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Majesty isn't a good game, but it also isn't bad. It is, in some ways, an exercise. Learn how to let go of control. Accept that sometimes the only way to play is to just let go. Understand that despite the interface that lets you bribe your units to do what you want, there are no results from said bribes. After the initial frustration and anger, it's actually liberating. Mind you, this only works because the computer has no more AI behind it than your units do and tends to be so flimsy that you win by numbers as enough of your units wander into the right area by chance. [Edit: Interestingly, this makes the game almost exactly the opposite of Myth. Myth is all tactics with no real strategy because all you've got is your units. Majesty is all strategy with no tactics because you have no control to speak of. Myth is a stunningly good game. Majesty isn't.] —Alorael, who can't say the same for games between two human players. Both feverishly build up their bases and start churning out units. Then comes the sickening realization that exponentially growing building costs mean you can't make any more units. You've got what you've got. So two moderately titanic armies slowly wander into each other and form a massive melee somewhere on the map. As units (slowly) fall in battle their "controllers" pay for replacements, who meander back into the fray. This goes on until someone gives up and quits. [ Saturday, July 08, 2006 23:52: Message edited by: Citizen of Exile's Arrest ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 06:05
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Hmmm. This makes me think of Titan, which was originally a cardboard-on-tabletop game but has by now been ported pretty effectively to computer (and it does have the barest minimum qualification as an RPG). It is a quirky game in many ways, but overall a very good game. Once two armies meet on the main board, they fight on a separate board and the players have full control over moving their units. But the strategic movement on the main board is more like a kids' game than a wargame: you roll a die, and each unit typically only ends up with a couple of options for where to go that turn. Which enemy units you engage, whether or where you can retreat, and what new units you can recruit, are all heavily affected by pure chance. But this is also sort of liberating in Titan, and even contributes to the game's fun spirit of monsters slugging it out: tactical cunning fits right in, but elaborate strategy is not the point of the game. So somehow a reduced amount of control in a crucial feature seems to be okay, if it is done right. For one thing, strategy is not eliminated from Titan. You do have choices, and you can estimate the chances and play the odds. You can adopt various sets of principles to guide your choices, and over several games one can observe the relative merits of different styles of strategic play. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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E Equals MC What!!!!
Member # 5491
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written Sunday, July 9 2006 13:24
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I demand a game that overwrites your save file every time you get hit by the boss. With no warning, naturally. And if we're talking arbitrary cruelty in games, play Cell Block, in SubTerra. :P -------------------- SupaNik: Aran, you're not big enough to threaten Ash. Dammit, even JV had to think twice. Posts: 1861 | Registered: Friday, February 11 2005 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 6821
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written Monday, July 10 2006 08:24
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What's Cell Block? Is it a level? Or a hidden minigame, like Castle Ethilo? And more importantly, can it be found in the full shareware version (that's the only one I have)? [ Monday, July 10, 2006 08:26: Message edited by: The Lurker ] Posts: 363 | Registered: Wednesday, February 22 2006 08:00 |
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? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
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written Monday, July 10 2006 11:30
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The worst game [b]must[/i] be sequel to several truly great games. Maximize anticipation, and deliver frustrating dreck. Plus most of what all was said after this post. -------------------- quote: Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Monday, July 10 2006 12:34
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quote:It's a third-party level. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 6821
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written Monday, July 10 2006 23:48
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Thanks, Thuryl! (I really need to (re?)play these third-party levels...) I also think I agree with Salmon - the disappointment is even more important when the game is part of a series you love and you expect it to be awesome. Posts: 363 | Registered: Wednesday, February 22 2006 08:00 |
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By Committee
Member # 4233
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written Tuesday, July 11 2006 04:22
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Genre: console RPGs Crimes: needlessly complex/frustrating advancement/experience/combat systems, in the name of "innovation." Severely imbalanced combat systems that put a premium on respawning the same techniques over and over, combined with those techniques taking tremendous amounts of realtime to complete. Slow, slow combat load times, with disproportionately small experience rewards for the time invested. Needlessly large pools of available characters with little true differentiation or development. A lot of people raved about it, but I really didn't enjoy Chrono Cross all that much. I thought the number of characters available took away from the game, and the combat and character advancement systems were dull. If the game had been pared down to, say, seven main characters, and combat was more in line with its predecessor, it would have been a superior game. The other games that I'm thinking of here are Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - the skill system in that game really took away from my pleasure in it - and FFVIII, which I know some people here loved for the story, but every battle was a festival of spawning summons, which took forever, and had little variety, until you got a walkthrough and figured out how to get Squall's final limit break, which was then what you had to have pretty much to win the game. Oh, and leveling was so imbalanced that Squall had about forty levels on everyone else by the end. Bugs can also make games wretched. I will forgive KOTOR 2 though, because it did have that Black Isle style goodness of quality in scripting and interesting areas, even though the game was clearly rushed. Actually, my hard and fast candidate for worst cRPG ever is Pool of Radiance 2: Ruins of Myth Drannor. No variety in character design, no variety in level design, poor color pallets, minimal story advancement, and bugs, bugs, bugs! EDIT: Actually, Sacrifice, from Interplay, was pretty bad too. [ Tuesday, July 11, 2006 04:24: Message edited by: Drew ] Posts: 2242 | Registered: Saturday, April 10 2004 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, July 11 2006 13:47
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Combat that overemphasizes one thing is hardly unique to consoles, and "innovation" backwards is also pretty universal. I still think Spiderweb has stats just right. They may not all be perfectly balanced, but nothing is so good it's a crime and advancement is both reasonably simple and completely up to you. —Alorael, who does not like playing games in which he needs to read a technical manual full of jargon in order to understand how to play, or more importantly how to progress without crippling his characters. He also does not like the (A)D&D memorization spell system. Unless someone makes a Dying Earth CRPG, of course. And that would be spiffy! Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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