Rose Tinted Glasses
I think it’s about time for me to do something so cruel, so unimaginably sadistic, that everyone in the whole universe will hate me.
Yes.
Today I’m going to talk about nostalgia.
Every gamer experiences it. The first game you ever played (if you remember that far back) probably evokes up some good feelings for you, even if it’s a terrible game. Nothing is safe, from the highest rated games in the universe to your average run-of-the-mill game that started a revolution. Nothing.
Now, I’m going to take a look at some games held in high regard.
And totally kill them.
Disclaimer: If you are easily butthurt by someone bashing your favourite game, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.
You will be sorry.
Turn back now.
Last warning.
Really.
Boats. How I loathe thee.
Hoo boy, sure is dusty round my part.
As you may or may not have noticed, I removed my SMRPG posts. I didn’t delete them, just threw them back into draft status, in case I (lol yeah right) decide to continue it.
But that’s not what this post is about! No, no indeed!
It’s about boats!
Extra Lives Pending is a go!
Hi! Welcome to Extra Lives Pending. A bunch of us that used to be over at Ring Relapse moved here.
But a lot of you are probably wondering: Why’d the Ring Relapse guys move over to a new blog?
Well I’m gonna tell you the whole story.
Bad Sequels
Good games get good sequels. Well, most of the time. Unfortuantely, some of them get bad sequels. It’s just a fact of gaming. Why does it happen? It could be that the developers are trying to hard to be better than the original and end up introducing some new element that sucks. It could be that the developers got lazy and try to sell the game by brand recognition. It could just be the law of averages having it’s way. Who knows really, all I know is that when it happens, it sucks.
This one should be pretty damn obvious:
Fallout 3 (360, PS3, PC)
Yeah, I know a lot of people like it, but I hate it. For my full thoughts read this. Anyway, I find it extremely boring and not at all a good addition to the Fallout series. I’m gonna keep this short and just say I hate it, read the other post for my reasons.
Not quite so bad, but still not a good game:
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (NES)
Ok, the original Castlevania is awesome, no complaints here. But this game changes it so much it’s not even funny. Instead of a regular old platform game, like the first, they try to make it a little more open ended. Ok, that’s not a problem. But then they go and make it literally impossible to find out how to get somewhere.
For example: In the later part of the game, you have to crouch in a very specific spot in order to be carried off to a new place. A very specific spot, like within 2 pixels. Serious.
Also, the controls seem a little less fluid, they can do some unexpected things sometimes.
But the worst part is the tacked on RPG elements. You can “level up”, but it doesn’t do anything. Plus you have to grind for money, which really sucks since you’re fighting the same damn things and seeing the same damn screens over and over again. That’s not to mention the annoying “What a horrible night to have a curse” and “The morning sun has vanquished the evil night” that pop up and take forever to go away. Sure a night/day element is cool, and innovative at the time. But for one thing, it makes grinding even more tedious, as the monsters get tougher. And it takes waaay to short to change from night to day and vice versa, so you’re seeing the messages a lot, and having to wait for them to go away. It’s worse than load times, honestly.
Anyway, if you look past some of the flaws, it’s not a terrible game, but it sure could’ve been a lot better.
Of course, it’s sequel, Castlevania 3 is awesome again.
A true disappointment in an otherwise great series:
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GBA)
OK, it’s not terrible, I’ll give it that. But this game is definitely the worst in the series. Worse than the original, which actually isn’t all that good. Worse than the second. And definitely worse than it’s predecessors in the 2D Zelda’s, The Oracle games. So let’s start then.
First of all, the games is short and easy. Really short, there are like 5 dungeons, which aren’t all that long. The bosses aren’t hard at all and the puzzles aren’t hard.
Then there’s that damn piece matching sidequest that really is terrible. Basically you collect these pieces of something (I don’t even know what), and you go around trying to find people with the matching piece. Doing this unlocks something out in the world. It’s the only way to get a lot of goodies, and it’s not even awesome like finding obscure pieces of heart in the other games.
The four sword element is just tacked on and doesn’t add anything awesome to it. Though I admit I do like transforming to miniature size, that was a good addition.
So it may not be a terrible game, but nothing about it screams good either.
The Kirby game which should not have been made:
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (GBA)
Ugh. This game sucks. The core of this game is fine. You run around sucking up enemies, stealing their powers and defeating bosses. Now most of the time when you defeat a boss you move on the the next stage. Not so in this game, you get a part of a mirror, it returns you to the start and you have to find a different path in order to progress in the game. The worst part is that half of the time, you end up on the same goddamn path over and over and over again. It just ends up tedious at best.
So basically you need to use a walkthrough, as the ingame map is crap and doesn’t explain anything. Once you get all the mirror parts, you get to fight the last boss. Oh and did I mention the gimmicky cellphone? Basically you can call in three other Kirby’s to help you fight a boss, or whatever. The worst thing is that the AI controlling them is pathetically stupid, so they’re more likely to get in your way than anything. It’s annoying to say the least.
Yeah, then there’s all these things to collect. Music from the game to play on a music player, which you also have to find. Spray paint which just changes the main Kirby’s colour. And other assorted shit. Now most of the time when you incllude a music player, you let the player listen to whatever they want, or at least unlock it when they hear the music in-game. And unlocking the music player by finding an obscure item in the game? That’s just stupid and annoying. Unlocking after you beat the game is fine, but having to do some specific thing just to do it is incredibly stupid. It’s like the developers intentionally did it just to make 100% even harder. Come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what they did…
Took what was good in the previous game and beat it to death:
Vectorman 2 (GEN)
If you haven’t heard of it, Vectorman is a run n’ gun platformer in the vein of Contra. The original kicks ass in a lot of ways, but it’s sequel takes what was good in the original, and just kills it. Killing enemies was fun in the original, it’s more annoying in the sequel.
The game is more labyrinthine than it’s predecessor, and it’s really annoying, since the nature of the game is to get from point A to point B losing as little life as possible.
The controls are more slippery too, the original had sharp, excellent controls, like Mega Man. The sequel has not so sharp controls, like Yoshi’s Island. The few levels that actually centre on platforming become a chore, trying to get just the right location and fending off enemies at the same time. Not fun at all.
Now the game does look nice, probably some of the best in the entire 16-bit era (and better than most of the early 32-bit as well) but are shiny graphics enough to hide a good game? *stares at Fallout 3* Apparently they are… 
What were they thinking:
Ultima 8 (PC)
OK, the early Ultima’s weren’t very good, but they were pioneering the Western RPG pretty much by themselves, granted they had some help, thanks largely in part to pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. But the early Ultimas were kinda crappy. Akalabeth, sometimes calle Ultima 0, had no story at all and was just you delving into wireframe dungeons to kill a certain monster and report to the king, where he tells you to kill another monster. This repeats ad infinitum. This was incredible at the time, with it’s psuedo first person dungeons, but it’s very archaic today.
Ultima 1 was largely the same. The second one changed the battles to take place on the overworld, and had bird’s eye maps for the dungeons, getting rid of the awkward psuedo first person viewpoint. The third one introduced a praty system. This is where they started to get good. The next four, 4 through 7. Tell the story of the avatar, and let me tell you, these games are absolutely awesome.
Then there’s Ultima 8. An awkward, entirely mouse controlled game which really doesn’t play all that well. The controls are hard to get used to, they suck even if you’re used to them as well. It plays a lot like one of those old graphical adventure games like Space Quest, King’s Quest, whatever, except it sucks. I don’t like it even enough to fight the first battle, as I don’t want to slog through dialogue with the shitty controls. Yeah. It’s crap. Moving on.
Boring and tedious describes this game best:
Prince of Persia (360, PS3, PC)
This game could’ve, no should’ve been so much better. It uses the Assassin’s Creed engine, which is a pretty good game. But the droves of people which made the game interesting are gone. The combat is similar to Assassin’s Creed, but totally different from the second PoP trilogy, which were awesome by the way. Instead of facing off hordes of sand creatures, you do duels with one creature at a time. And they’re not even tough, if you get them to the edge of the stage you instantly win. The boss fights are largely the same, but no instant win at the stage’s end. Instead of being an action-platformer like the previous trilogy, this game focuses too much on just the platforming parts. And it gets tedious fast.
It looks nice, using a particular cell-shading effect to great effect. But unfortunately the areas all start to look the same. It’s incredibly hard to tell one area from another after a while.
To make things worse, instead of just going through and defeating bosses along the way, you need to collect these damn “light orbs” in order to get new magic powers for the obligatory female love interest to use. The light orbs are all over the place and hidden in obscure places, which makes it a chore to collect enough to get the next power. And speaking of the powers, they’re all the same thing. Seriously, they all do the exact same thing, fly (literally) from glowing panel to glowing panel, and most of them you have no control, you just press a button and it’s done. And the ones you do have control over you just dodge obstacles.
Oh and did I mention y0u can’t die? Yeah. If you fall off a ledge or get killed (presumably) by an enemy, the obligatory love interest saves your fucking ass and respawns you right on the nearest platform. If you’re fighting an enemy, it heals a bit. That’s it. Seriously. You can’t fucking die. I mean, I don’t like it when I die a lot in games, but to never die at all? That’s pushing it methinks.
So there you go, several examples of how a good game can lead to a bad sequel. I hope you enjoyed reading this gigantic wall of text 
Fallout 3
So here I am, watching TV one day and during a commercial break I see an ad for Fallout 3. I had played the previous games and was a big fan of Bethesda’s previous games so I was kind of excited for this new game. Critics raved and ranted about how good it was, and I finally caved and bought it release week for $60 CAD.
Worst mistake I ever made.
Jelly Soup
insane2100
