What's an absolutely medium quality game? Not great, incredible or terrible or any single ended extreme. Dead medium quality
from weirdbeardgame@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 04:24
https://lemmy.world/post/31452879
from weirdbeardgame@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 04:24
https://lemmy.world/post/31452879
Following up on this comment since I haven’t seen a thread about it: lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14639216
threaded - newest
From recent memory: Starfield.
I didn’t think it was terrible in and of itself, but it also wasn’t very good. It was just missing that certain something Bethesda RPGs had before it. Just a meh experience the whole way through.
I think it was the way that exploration felt like a grind that made it so “meh”. A whole universe to explore, and you’re either going to come to a barren rock planet, or find the same enemy base/outpost 5 times in a row.
For a game where space exploration was one of the main selling points, it felt remarkably unlike exploring at times.
The first space exploration game without space or exploration
seriously - how fuckin lazy it was to just copy/paste the same enemy outpost 500 times.
As a big fan of space sims and action RPGs, I wrote that game off when looking at reviews and how the spaceship building system and space travel were.
It’s like they choose the worst of Elite Dangerous and mixed it with the worst parts of previous Bethesda RPGs.
It always felt to me they wanted to create what star citizen is supposed to be someday (press x to doubt) and the. Looked at no mans sky and were like, we should add that too! And then realized the scope of that was ridiculous and half assed both of those parts.
I personally judge that game as plain bad with decent shooting and ok loot. The main story, and the game universe in general, are memorable for how stupidly thought out they are, even for the low standards of Bethesda post Oblivion. The citizens and assorted non-hostile npcs feel less alive than the people you run over in GTA games. They also managed to take the fun basebuilding of Fallout 4 and make it bad AND pointless - very little customization and freedom of certain objects’ placements, plus you’re better off just buying resources from vendors.
I modded it with the ‘no purchasable resources’ and it became a totally different game; It was all spreadsheet/logistics and organizing galaxy wide shipping to central hubs where I had to fabricate all my own materials to be able to upgrade equipment. I found that far more enjoyable, but the game is still meh. Not worth the replays like skyrim was.
While I enjoy some logistics management, I’d never punish myself with that in Starfield. Most gear upgrades aren’t worth it and you can’t even craft your own weapons or suits. This isn’t Fallout where advanced machinery can be considered “lost tech” ffs
Star field was just mediocre enough that it pissed me off, the loading screens and menues are egregious enough to make me go ballistic. It’s hilarious because instead of criticizing the game for actuall gameplay, at launch it was lambasted for “pronouns”. Then normal people got to playing it and actually explained the issues.
Starfield faked me out for a bit when I took the character creation perk that gave my character living parents that I could go visit and would show up from time to time. They were funny and adorably charming, and I thought it was an inspired touch. Little did I know that was the absolute best part of that game…
Well, when it comes to video games, despite being foundational, Mario Bros. At the time, it was mids, but there were a lot less truly great games, and less abysmal ones so it looked better than it was. The series got better, but that first one was kinda meh. It’s all timing jumps, which is fine as far it as it goes, but there were both better and worse options on that console.
Away from video game, Life is about as meh as it gets. No real strategy, no depth. But it’s a good time killer and you can play it with a table full of people drinking and not get bogged down or into arguments because of the game (unlike monopoly lol).
Do you mean Mario Bros:
<img alt="" src="https://swg-empire.de/pictrs/image/c32975a5-b7b9-4547-8ec5-60b62426069b.jpeg">
Or Super Mario Bros? They are very different games.
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming out of pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.
Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)
Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.
Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.
Any assassin’s creed from the last 10 years, probs gonna get hate for that but they are just so average to me.
I got the viking one for free. Didn’t make it much farther than the initial area, which is hours long.
I’d say they are worse than mediocre.
Also most Ubisoft games in the last 10 years overall
Raksasi Devil Slayer
I think Halo Infinite qualifies, I played the multiplayer waaay back when it released so things may have drastically changed (haven’t heard of it being the case);
it didn’t / doesn’t do anything that no other game does, nor did / does it do anything particularly well nor better than its competitors (including every Halo from Bungie).
I did watch a walkthrough of the campaign, and it doesn’t look particularly engaging either.
The thing that gets me the most is they dont push the story forward. It felt like they said “lets slap some shit together so we can focus on competitive multiplayer”
I wouldn’t know what the thing that gets me the most is, there is so much that Cyberpunk 2077 corpo ass studio has done to ram the franchise into the ground after digging it up from its sacred resting place.
Other than brand loyalty (which at this point shouldn’t even exist anymore), I wonder how H:I ended up lasting years more than Concord.
This is probably more subjective than best/worst. So…
Vanilla Skyrim.
It was a fun game, but the main quest was so railroading.
Just Cause 3
Movement was more annoying than Just Cause 2
I really enjoyed 3 more than 2, despite never quite getting the hang of doing hook-gliding combos. Flying a heli with missiles in 2 was the game’s “I win” button, dodging AA missiles was pretty trivial, 3 doesn’t have anything as OP
Mighty no 9.
Minesweeper
Unreal 2, at launch, was the most absolutely 7/10 game I've ever played. Just a very generic singleplayer FPS, and not the sequel to Unreal that everyone was hoping for.
I say "at launch," though, because almost a year after the game's release, they added multiplayer, and that is still my favorite multiplayer game.
How does U2 compare to UT2003/4 in multiplayer?
It's a very different game, although it does have vehicles, so it has something in common with UT2004 in that way.
Unreal 2's multiplayer only has one game mode. It's kind of like capture the flag with some resource management. There are power generators that you need to take for your team in order to use vehicles. You can also capture respawn points which give your team more choices of where to respawn from.
You choose one of three classes when you spawn, with each class having specific weapons. You don't pick up weapons as you go.
There is a release of the multiplayer that's available for free here: https://xmpcommunity.com. After Epic tool all Unreal titles off of digital stores a while ago, they specifically mentioned xmpcommunity.com in a blog post as a way of still playing the game. So it has their blessing.
Sounds like the Onslaught mode of UT2004 and 3, though more strategic, especially with the classes
It definitely had a lot in common with Onslaught mode. There was some overlap with the types of vehicles, too.
Oh my GAWD 7/10 is NOT mid. I just ranted on another comment about this. 7/10 is a GREAT score. Everyone: please make 5/10 your mid-game point I am so tired of this aaaaaaa
I was using the GAMESPOT weighted numbering scale:
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Hahaha that’s totally fair. I’m just peeved that people don’t rate games as a 5/5 = okay game rating. When I see a 7/10 as mediocre, I get a solid flare up of my autism
we are in a golden age of medium good action games. lies of p, stellar blade, khazan the first berserker, another crab’s treasure come to mind for me.
non-fromsoft soulslikes are starting to find their voice. they’re not quite great yet, but they’re competent now.
Lies of P is amazing how dare you.
Assault Spy comes to mind.
And Mad Max maybe?
Hell no, Mad Max was way more fun than it had any right to be. I’ll agree that on paper it didn’t look like anything special, with mechanics we’d seen lots of times in other games, but in practice everything came together as much more than the sum of it’s parts.
Hmm… sure, but ima die on the hill Mad Max should be a linear game with sole focus on vehicular/melee combat. I don't really think it needs to be an open world game.
Fair, although it’s less open than it appears at first glance. The world is divided in parts that you unlock as the central story progresses, much like most RPGs.
I bought it quite cheap because it looked like a fun time, and have over the years since played through it 3 times. The gameplay mechanics are a blast.
From a gameplay perspective GTA has been mid for ages.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Had all the individual makings of an exceptional game (with input from Todd Macfarlane, R A Salvatore and Grant Kirkhope), and while it was definitely enjoyable enough - it lacked any wow-factor whatsoever, winding up an otherwise forgettable 7/10.
At the time of its release, it’s wow factor for me was simply some fucking color, compared to PS3 Skyrim which had released mere months earlier.
I love both games, but there’s something about Amalur that I think I love more that I can only think of as it being just medium, average, mediocre but not bad. It’s just something kinda fun. Comfortable.
Oh no doubt, my (vague) memories of it are definitely in vivid bright colours.
I originally got it as I was looking for a single player World of Warcraft-like experience, and I did play through a significant portion of the main story - but eventually went back to WoW as it didn’t quite scratch that itch enough.
I probably should revisit it sometime in the near future - hopefully on the Steam Deck (haven’t checked compatibility).
The main thing I remember about this game is that it was financed by the fortune of a former MLB baseball player, independent of any game studio.
Sort of. Their funding was also tied up in the state of Rhode Island. Reckoning was purchased by 38 Studios, who were making a Kingdoms of Amalur MMORPG, and then the game was made to be in the same universe. The MMO burned through cash and never released, and the sunken studio brought Reckoning’s developer down with it.
Yes, it was developed by Curt Shilling’s 38 Studios - but it was actually largely financed by the state of Rhode Island, and the studio ended up defaulting on payments!
Honestly, the story of the game’s development was more interesting than the story within the game itself!
7/10 to me is a good game. I hate how people rate games. I’ve always hated it. A 6/10 game is enjoyable. A 5/10 game is absolutely mid. A 4/10 game is okay. 3/10 has huge flaws but is worth playing if you’re into that.
Subnautica is an 8/10 game for me. I thought it was amazing. I loved it. Below Zero was a 6/10 game. I thought it was good. I enjoyed it, and I would not call it “absolute mid.”
In a world where games are scored across a full spectrum 0-or-1 to 10, then yes - anything 4-6 would be considered middle of the road.
However, due to a number of factors - that’s unfortunately not the reality we find ourselves in.
Firstly, “mid” is hard to define as it can mean anything from ‘mediocre’ to ‘fine, but forgettable’.
Secondly, ratings/scores tend to skew upward as people tend to reserve 1s for outright scams, broken games and review bombs. With 2 & 3 often used for ‘asset flips’ and similar non-games - so we end up grading on a curve from 4-10.
This also works well for mainstream outlets as it keeps advertisers happy, due to arbitrarily inflated scores.
Lastly, in a world of cumulative media (new releases don’t cause older ones to stop existing) - even ostensibly good games will fall by the wayside as players have access to 10/10 titles from previous years.
So all things considered, a 7/10 is well and truly “mid” in this topsy-turvey IGN-eque world
In my opinion ( haven’t played or really seen the DLCs, so I’m just talking about base game ), Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Definitely had ups and downs when I did my only playthrough. Absolutely middle of the road compared to the official games ( completed gen 3, part way through gens 4-7 ) I have played and still even middle of the road compared to some of the fan games I’ve played over the years.
If you’re an adult Pokemon fan, these days fan-mades or rom hacks are the way to go. Nintendo/The Pokemon Company/Game Freak are pretty damn risk averse with this property, so the really cool stuff comes from fans (at least until they get the cease and desist).
Pokemon ScarVio were horrrrible. Unplayable for me.
Neverwinter Nights
The multiplayer is supposedly incredible. But I remember being extremely whelmed by the main game.
But it’s hard to remember the mid games. Because it is very likely that they didn’t leave any lasting impression.
And especially if previous titles in a series or from a studio were great a mid game would feel disappointingly bad. Although compared to other games they might actually still be considered great.
The original single player is so bad I’m certain it was just cobbled together as a demo of the engine and for inspiration for user content. Then the team had time to develope proper story with the expansions
Wizards of the Coast spent lots of time in meetings with Bioware to make sure every damn detail of D&D 3e was implemented according to the book. And even longer time micromanaging the campaign design. A lot of the scenarios are essentially repeats of the others - “do these four smaller thingies and then go kick the main baddie” - because getting that approved by WotC was easier.
Why are there so few D&D games these days? Why do video game dev houses want to make their own RPG systems instead? Well, they don’t want the headache of dealing with WotC.
Neverwinter Nights is the best PC game I’ve played, all thanks to the custom content the players made.
Bioware made the toolset and modding support a big part of the prerelease interviews and live demos. The message to the tabletop RPG crowd was “hey, you can finally build and run your D&D modules as a real DM-led multiplayer group experience online”. Probably the only problem with that marketing was that making modules from scratch was still an involved process and making usually needed scripting skill, so maybe the TTRPG crowd didn’t end up as enthusiastic as they could. But people still ended up making boatloads of great singleplayer and multiplayer-capable adventure modules! And the multiplayer persistent worlds were essentially like MMOs but in small scale.
I think the built-in campaign was more of a hindrance in retrospect, because if you hadn’t heard this, you probably expected another game like Baldur’s Gate 1/2. A lot of people went in thinking that the official NWN campaign was the main offering. The campaign was incredibly mediocre by Bioware standards because Wizards of the Coast was incredibly needy. They wanted high level of control, and essentially only approved a committee-built pile-of-meh plot, leaving Bioware to build something around that.
This, by the way, led to Bioware swearing they’d not work with needy licensors anymore and ended up designing Dragon Age instead.
(And if anyone is saying “wait, didn’t this just happen again with Baldur’s Gate 3?” Yes. Yes it did. WotC is basically impossible to work with.)
This is a tough question because it's like asking "What's the most forgettable game you've ever played?" I can remember some of the best and worst games I've ever played, but mediocre games are explicitly not interesting.
That said, the first one that came to mind for me was Starshot: Space Circus Fever for N64. It's just a very generic late-'90s collectathon platformer. It's hard to be mad at it, because it's not terrible or anything, there's just no reason to play it. If you've got an N64, there's Mario, Banjo, Rayman, even B- and C-tier stuff like Gex and Chameleon Twist. There's hidden gems like Space Station Silicon Valley or Rocket: Robot on Wheels.
That last one is the only reason I played Starshot, I saw it clearanced at a used game store and was like "Oh yeah, I remember hearing this game was good," but it turned out I was thinking of Rocket. That game actually is good, while Starshot is just fine.
It also makes people say things are mid to them. Honestly, rdr2 was that way for me because I hated the pseudo-rpg elements. But long after I put it away, I started playing actual RPGs. So I may give it another shot, but I have so many on my to-do list.
An N64 game I've never heard of before? Mark it on the calendar because that hasn't happened in many a sparrow's moon.
Sackboy a Big Adventure. Absolutely no ill will towards it, and the issue may lie more with me than the game, but it just felt very “okay” for me.
The Halo series.
I like shooters, so I got the full bundle and I tried hard to like it.
None of the games gave me a lasting impression. The plot didn’t stick with me, the enemies were weird, the guns felt weak and flimsy, the rooms kept repeating in some sections and it got very boring. There were some fun bits with the vehicles, etc., but overall the experience was… pretty much average.
I was expecting something like the Half-Life series, but this wasn’t it.
I never had an Xbox, so really only grew up playing Halo Reach (I think) co-op when I’d go to a friend’s house. But I recently played through most of the halo games with a friend and I have to say, I agree. I can’t remember any particular moments or scenarios, no part of the story that stands out in my mind, etc. It was fun enough to run through most of them (though we did get tired of it, which is why I said “most of the games”), and I can certainly see why for when they came out, they received the attention they did but can’t say I think the reaction would be the same if it came out now or that it really holds up to the standards it seems to have set.
Thank you! I felt like I was the only person on the planet to think that those games only hit the dizzying heights of "okay, fine at a push". They're perfectly serviceable and not much more.
Halo was best when it was Halo:CE played 4v4 on two linked systems, with the teams on two screens in an undersized dorm room in 2002. Alternatively, two people playing through the entire game in co-op mode and finishing at 3 in the morning.
Everything since then has been mid at best
I kinda agree. It was fun playing with my SO but they’re pretty boring on their own. The multiplayer is fun, but the actual story mode just kinda exists.
Rogue Trooper
I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.
Sleeping Dogs is easily my fav GTA-esque game and I weep that there‘s no successor, to each their own
A hell of a lot of Ubisoft open-world slop released around and in the 2010s.
Avowed was very mid. I enjoyed it enough, but nothing about it was particularly brilliant or terrible.
Ghost Wire: Tokyo.
It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
i still enjoyed the crap out of it. Sometimes zoning out and just running around collecting stuff is just what I need.
I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.
Defo agree. But I will admit that the soundtrack is fire
Atlas Fallen. Having played it, all I can say is that it doesn’t elicit any heightened emotions from me.
Greedfall
Even though Greedfall is hardly a great game I think it has too much charm to really fit here. I found it too memorable to really be a “mediocre slop” contender.
The developer, Spiders, seem to be experts at creating mediocre games with very small budgets, and again they didn’t quite have the money to take it all the way with greedfall, but they did make more than a mediocre game in my opinion. For me it was memorable enough unlike others mentioned in this thread.
Godus.
I know lots of people hate it but taken in isolation it's okay. I found its aesthetics charming and its pace generally pretty chill. It wasn't good but it wasn't terrible. Low medium perhaps but I have comfortable memories of listening to an audiobook whilst playing it.
Pretty much every korean MMORPG released from 2006-2014, as they were desperately trying to be “World of Warcraft, but better”. Perfect World, Aion, ArcheAge, 4story, Granado Espada, etc etc etc, even when you have the better experience of playing on a private server with significantly less P2W (as in, nearly everyone gets most of the shop for free)
To me, personally, ArcheAge would be the best fit for “dead medium quality”. It boasts naval combat, which is meh; player run trade caravans, which probably only worked as intended in the first 2 months after launch; limits on gathering and crafting, which just forces free players to buy premium; graphics are the generic korean mmo variety, pretty but almost impossible to distinguish between games; music, enemies, dungeons and most gear exist
Im sorry but perfect world got down flying before any other game and it was hella fun.
Ragnarok Online was the last incredible MMO.
Eh, debatable. I’ve played it for roughly 2 years (2004-6) on private servers and even then I knew it wasn’t “the best” or “incredible” by any means, but it was light years ahead of Tibia (which was my first taste of MMORPGs, back when the starter island was a mess with too many players and not enough rats in the sewers for people to kill and level up) in every regard. Even with higher rates and an incredible teenage patience for braindead repetition, the grind got old really damn fast, not to mention that the game penalized fucking around (no stat resets, only on the 99 rebirth) and fucking up (1% xp penalty on death hit harder and harder the higher your level).
Played for a long time on EuphRO server (3x/3x/2x), my highest level character was 75 or something close to that. I think I gave up playing altogether around the time I got a super novice to level 50 on a different, higher rate server
I am biased because RO changed my life. I played on a 2x/2x server with like 3k people and it was incredible. I met so many awesome people to braindead farm with and WoE was so fun, I didn’t have a lot of close friends in real life but I had some incredible people in RO. Also as a young bi furry bitch Moonie gave me very confusing feelings. I might not be here today if not for RO, so I have some opinions on RO hahaha
Quick edit: I played from when it came out here until when it became F2P and I disagreed with that choice. I hate MTX shit.
The outer worlds . it was just meh in my opinion. Not to be confused with the outer wilds game that I’ve yet to play
I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.
Actual conversation had with my wife, who was watching me play near the end:
“That chick is cute. I bet her romance is adorable!”
“She’s aromantic and asexual, you can’t romance her.”
“I bet her quest line is fun”
“Nope. It’s a really boring fetch quest where you set her up on a date with some bland woman old enough to be her mother. She is also very obviously sexually and romantically attracted to this woman.”
“…huh.”
I love Parvati but Drinking Sapphire Wine is a terrible quest.
I thought The Outer Worlds was violently mediocre, and yeah, its really long uninteresting fetch quest, but:
Parvati says she’s not interested in physical affection, but I don’t recall her ever saying she was aromantic. The closest thing I remember is that she feels like she’s better at dealing with machines than people, which definitely doesn’t mean the same thing.
I also don’t recall her ever saying anything sexual about Junlei?
how old does this woman look to you that you think she could have a 28 year old daughter?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/c18966c8-c59d-4a83-8952-a6e0350ea12d.webp">
The quest was nothing new sure, but the reason I’m doing the quest? I want her to have the best dam date ever. I just wanted to see her happy and help her get ready for her date. Not sure what they were talking about with her being aromatic, don’t remember that. And about the age thing? not sure what they meant by that either, she looks the same age as Pavarti to me.
Outer Wilds is absolutely superb if/when you get it try to get the DLC too its a good value. Steam summer sale coming up soon if you’re in the states
Loll, people will never stop getting these confused
Well, I can sort of be impressed with what outer wilds did. I didn’t actually find it all that much fun to play, whereas I completed the outer worlds.
I suppose Resident Evil 8? The scares weren’t very scary, the exploration was all very fake, and the bosses all showed up for attendance. It definitely functioned, but it didn’t impress in the way previous entries did. It wasn’t frustratingly bad like 5, nor was it interestingly bad like 6. It just felt like a lesser version of what they’ve given me before, somewhere between 4 and 7.
My hill to die on is that RE7 and 8 should have been a new IP. I think both the Winters’ story and the overall Resident Evil plot would have stood stronger on their own and forcing them together in such a contrived way dilutes both of them.
Square Enix games
(FInal Fantasy, Neir Automata, Sleeping Dogs. Tomb Raiders)
They are all... good - certainly not bad games
But nothing makes them... great
I’ve been frustrated with these Japanese games lately like FF and Yakuza because of the graphics. Japan likes to use an anime style on their character models, which I personally don’t think looks good but whatever. The issue I have is that you walk around in a yakuza or FF or resident evil game and half the characters and NPCs look very realistic and like real people, and the main characters and some NPCs look like anime characters, different bone structure and art style. It’s distracting. I frankly think you stick to anime style or realistic modern style, you can’t just swap between the styles at will within the one game.
Does final fantasy still have invisible enemies that just attack you and put you into battle mode? Cause I found that outdated and stopped playing the games, im done with turn based but especially done with games where you can’t even see the enemy till they just battle you
How dare you feel this way, you scruffy-looking Nerf-herder!
I am unhappy with your comment! But I respect it, so I hope you have a great day ahead.
For real - one of the best games, maybe all time. But Square Enix does churn out some meh games.
I had to stop when the villians were monologuing right in the middle of a fight scene, in the most cliched way possible. And this was after some mid gameplay, with a clearly telegraphed rugpull plot point that seemed like it was going to be the centerpiece of the whole story.
I think I know what fight you’re talking about, and I understand why some persons would back out of the game at that point.
In general, if one finishes the first playthrough, they’ll get the first ending. This left me with questions so I played it again, and this time you get the game from Android 9S’ perspective. Each playthrough is shorter, and the goal is to get endings A, B, and C. Which makes for a remarkable, unforgettable game. Definitely have to get through the cliches and some of the common JRPG tropes, but the whole experience greatly outweighed those problems such that I could look past them.
I remember feeling this way about Die Hard: Vendetta for GC. Strong meh/10.
Die Hard: V for Vendetta would be a hell of a crossover.
Lmao, whoops. Too early in the morning.
Anything from Ubisoft
Was gonna say it. This perfectly describes the last few Assassins Creed titles. Not bad enough to put them away, but also not good enough to leave any kind of lasting impact.
Yeah, Assassins Creed was cool at first but they just bled that shit to death with too many releases. It’s hard to keep things fresh when you put out like 10 sequels.
It’s like chewing gum. You just keep going as it gets blander with no end in sight.
Dual nominations for Paper Mario: Sticker Star & Paper Mario: Color Splash. The only thing I really remember about them is that I played them and they left me without any feelings about them whatsoever.
Anything ubisoft makes. Or generally most things big companies make to cater biggest possible amount of people.
I disagree. Some of them are actually bad.
yes, but medium is the absolute best they can manage
Elex 1 and Elex 2
Portal 1 & 2. Far too short.
Short, but anything but mid.
Generation Zero. Primo aesthetic, sometimes well balanced, good with friends but not so much solo.
Generation Zero was amazing, when it first came out and it was all new. The machines were actually scary to be up against. I remember playing the beta and freaking out that the dogs were following me around when I was in the bunker, how they would track you down. Just always put me on edge, but then you take down a few. Learn the ropes, get better gear. And that anxiety is gone. Its not longer difficult. It got too easy, not scary to be out at night alone.
I will say though that the engine used was fantastic. I have never before, or since, had a game that loads so fast, looks so nice on mid-low level hardware. You hit load game, and you are in the game. It ran fantastic and looked really nice. The concept was amazing and for the most part it did work. Until it didn’t. Fun game but nothing outstanding.
Yeah once you explore the whole map, it becomes a typical looter shooter where you're just grinding for 6 crown weapons. I will say though, having only played for a couple years, the dev team did a remarkable job adding new content over time, and not all of it locked behind DLC. Picking this game up on sale for $5 felt like I won the lottery. It might be "just ok" but I did have dozens of hours of fun in the game with my brother and friends.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine.
Every Halloween, I play this Xbox 360 (I think it’s also on PC now) game called Bullet Witch.
Basically a third-person shooter with postapocalyptic supernatural horror theme. You play as a witch who shoots zombies and weird creatures with a magic machine gun broom thing. Also you get spells. Some are bloody awesome.
This game is peak Xbox 360 to the core. The distinct memorable thing about it is that I can actually list good and bad things about it. Level design varies between meh and decent. Some of the particular setpieces are pretty awesome though. (You get to fight at an airport, and you get to do a boss fight at the top of the plane mid-flight!) Spells are fun. The mega-spells are hella fun. (Just call up lightning and watch stuff explode.) Shooting is kinda jank but it works. Jank is explained by lore. (Why is friendly fire not a thing? Well, you see, this is a magic machine gun broom thing, so bullets dodge the civilians and allies by ~*~magic~*~.) Enemy designs are nothing to write home about at first glance, but are actually kinda memorable. (You first meet up the zombies and hey, they’re talking zombies. With military helmets and guns. Like, what? You don’t see this every day.) There are some things that seem just not very well designed, like there’s these gigantic enemies that serve as minibosses and they’re a lot less scary when you note the AI is probably bugged and they often just decide to stand at place for a while and eat a lot of bullets.
I got this thing in the bargain bin. It’s a zombie shooty game that’s perfect for Halloween so that’s what I use it for. That’s all it does. That’s all I could ask it for. And it’s fine at it.
I love Bullet Witch and I’m still looking for a physical copy of this and Ninja Blade on Xbox 360.
Team Fortress 2:
I’d say its gameplay is more “robust” than special. Like you can have any and every kind of fight in TF2 but none of it is more special than an FPS that specializes in any game mode.
Pretty much every modern AAA game. Theres an exception here and there but really smaller studios have been making bangers that AAA studios just cant seem to touch
Yeah, big studios are setting up to create the mediocrest game they can imagine. Taking risks might make the line not go up, and they can’t have this happening.
Ironically, this leeds to creation of absolute dogshit more often than not.
Probably everytbing put out by Nintendo in a long time. Yes, even that one. That one, too.
Don’t censor yourself, who are you afraid of??
Mario Kart World
Just say it
Excuse you, but Breath of the Wild was amazing.
Breath of the Wild was basically a Ubisoft game with a Zelda coat of paint.
Ubisoft wishes they could make a game that good.
They do make games that good, hence the comparison.
But instead of playing the map as a menu screen, you actually play in the world and discover things.
That was the crucial difference for me.
I envy you and wish I could see games through your eyes.
I don’t think Blackmist has a hot take here. The Ubisoft formula is: navigate to a tower. Tower gives you a checklist of things to do. You do the things, then look for a new tower.
Breath of the Wild is different. Yes, you start by navigating to a tower, but then… no checklist is given. You look around, you explore, you find things to do. Maybe you find everything, maybe you miss things, maybe you miss everything. You can always come back and explore more later… and when you’ve done everything, you can’t really be CERTAIN that you got it all. The lack of a checklist dramatically shifts the gameplay from doing a list of events, with little difference from selecting them from a menu, to actually having to explore the world and look around.
To call it the Ubisoft formula is to vastly misunderstand what the Ubisoft formula is. The formula is a list of things to do. BotW does not have that. Not even slightly. The towers are just something to aim for to get you started, and a place you can use your eyes to look around from, also to get you started.
And to add to that, it also gives you the tools for discovery. It’s not just “Ubisoft, but they hide the icons”.
The shrine detector (which can become an anything detector), the ability to look through binoculars or whatever it is and stamp a limited number of visible waypoints onto the map. Tears of the Kingdom gives you a slightly obscure ability to highlight all the cave entrances nearby, which you can then try to mark up and see if you’ve been there.
Other games have started trying to do some of this, but I think a lot of it is added late on in development and doesn’t really work well. Like Jedi Survivor gives you the ability to mark things with icons, but what for? You can’t see the markers when you’re walking around. There’s not really much to discover from a distance, and it’s pretty far from being a vast open world.
Is it perfect? No. The last few shrines are often a complete ball-ache to find, although a lot of them are just a generic fight and they’re pretty optional, it feels like you should do them.
Is it better than a world as a menu screen as offered by Ubisoft and those that copy them? Yes.
I think in general a lot of developers should take a long look at what they’re actually trying to make before going with the open world approach. It’s getting tired, and they’re mostly doing it badly.
Basically sure. But the devil is in the details.
The incredible adventures of Van Helsing. Decent rpg with loot but was fairly imbalanced among character classes. The real winner was the mini tower defense games in it and the spinoff tower defense game, imo.
The Technomancer
Starfield. It’s the definition of a “mixed” rating on Steam. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. You play it for an hour and your reward is that an hour has passed.
After running through the main story once, I modded it to where you cannot buy any natural resources - they must be harvested in person and/or setup a base and and ship all natural resources to a central storage planet. This essentially turned it into a spreadsheet-logistics game which gave me a a second, much more enjoyable playthrough. But I agree - absolutely medium-tier game.
From the 360 Era — Too Human
The control scheme is bizarre at first (right stick is melee) but it works once you’re used to it. It’s Sci-Fi Norse mythology, I recall it having a pretty solid art style. I picked it up used from either Blockbuster or EB because I wanted to see just how bad it was, ended up enjoying it far more than I expected, I’ll give it a “Yeah, it’s ok”, disc images are readily available if you want to emulate it, can find a physical copy cheap online too if that’s your thing.
This is the game that ended up taking down its studio (Silicon Knights, they developed Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, they tried to sue Epic, who countersued and won, probably added to my initial interested tbh.
It’s interesting that Too Human began development as a PSX game, back in the late 90s. Quite a bit of development hell to go through
Mechwarrior online.
Free, online “shooter”, good community, runs on linux, gameplay is dated and doesnt get tons of dev support anymore but its still how I kill an evening once or twice a week.
avowed and ACS were actually less than mid
The term you’re looking for is “Extra Medium”.
Hogwarts Legacy
Ratopia
It’s like Oxygen not Included but worse
2 that make fans go bananas.
Torchlight 2; Grim Dawn
Right in the middle of the middle part of the middle part of the middle pack.
Torchlight 2 is fun when you start out, but gets really repetitive quite fast. Good fit for a right in the middle
Sacred 2.
If you like space dogfighter sims, try Chorus. You can score it super cheap on sales and I think it’s a solid 6/10. Combat is fun and it’s nice to look at. Unfortunately the story has terrible pacing and kinda doesn’t make sense at times. Also, the missions get kinda repetitive. These two things really held it back for me, otherwise it’s a fairly good game.
Another, if you like top down shooters, is Subterrain. Doesn’t always go on sale, but when it does it’s dirt cheap because it’s like 10 years old at this point. It’s got some weird survival mechanics that I think are kinda pointless, but the gameplay and story were enough to keep me mildly entertained. I’d call this a “potato chip” type game. Not particularly good, but somehow kind of satisfying if you don’t think too much about it. Definitely a 6/10.
On another note, what’s y’all’s stance on the association that 5/10 = bad? I feel like it’s because people equate it to being 50% and associate that with bad due to school grades. I see it as an average score and when I give something a 5 or 6, that means I’m neutral to slightly positive feeling about it.
I don’t think a 5/10 game is necessarily bad, but it needs to have some kind of - I dont know, character? Niche appeal? - to shine for the players who are going to like it.
I’ll throw out Krater as an example. It’s not great, but it has a unique setting, great atmosphere, and some interesting ideas driving it. I kinda love it for its eccentricities in spite of the overall experience being a bit meh.
I remember Krater! I played it for a while and I liked the atmosphere, but I only got so far before I saw how… 1-dimensional it was?
I don’t know how exactly to put it into words, but some games that aren’t so good I have a “see behind the curtain” moment. Once that happens I tend to quickly get turned off to a game because I feel like it’s not fun anymore. In Krater that happened when I realized that all the fights were essentially the same and equipment was all stat sticks with no unique qualities.
Pretty much what your characters did at the beginning of the game was what they did at mid game with no noteworthy changes. There were other characters you could sub in and that changed things up a little but the repetitiveness of it all really ruined it for me.
I agree that’s a really good example of a “meh” game and I think 5/10 is a very fair assessment.
Shadwen.
First thing that came to my mind was Crysis 2. Absolute mid-tier FPS, which was unfortunately pretty disappointing coming off of the first game.
Definitely worth a look if you just want to run around and shoot shit.