What are some beautiful/brilliant/inventive games that were panned by critics?
In your opinion, what is a game/what are some games that were inventive/unique/original or just otherwise superb that you feel didn't receive the praise it deserved?
Personally, I feel that the Scribblenauts series (Mainly the first two) are amazingly imaginative games that I don't hear talked about often. I feel that this is perhaps due to its being on the DS, a platform that was sort of mired in shovelware. I hadn't ever seen a game quite as painstakingly made as this one. The developers clearly had fun thinking of all the different ways to solve their puzzles. The soundtrack is also unexpectedly wonderful, and is very reminiscent (imo) of Katamari Damacy
Edit: I suppose mediocre popular reception would have been a better way to say it instead if critical reception
It wasn't really panned per se—review scores averaged in the "meh" range—but Lego Racers is literally one of my top three games (along with well-received Morrowind and critical darling Witcher 3). Sure, it's cheesy as hell, and easy, and unsophisticated—but the character/vehicle customization is extremely flexible, the gameplay fun and satisfying, and to this day it is the only arcade racer I've ever played or heard of to have fixed power-ups (i.e. if you get a green power-up, it will speed you up; none of Mario Kart's probabilistic "might get a speedup, or something completely useless" nonsense). This leads to all sorts of interesting tactical gameplay: you might get a power-up you don't need to keep someone else from getting it (e.g. if you're in front, an attack power-up is almost useless, but preventing whoever's behind you from getting an attack power-up is extremely useful) or modify your line through a turn to get a particular power-up you want. I'm actually surprised this isn't more widely copied, as I think it's far more fun and interesting than randomized power-ups, but I guess Mario Kart's dominance sets the theme.
Thank you for reminding me of this. Such a fun game.
Honestly, I don't think there are many games that somehow escape the critical consensus and become panned despite their obvious quality, not without other mitigating factors or if the game is especially divisive (e.g. Deadly Premonition). Games just aren't a big and varied enough pool of artistic works that some experimental or heady ones get past all the critics because all many of them want are games that do something novel and unique. Even if one outlet gives it an unfavourable review, there are probably five others that recognized something about it and the critical consensus ends up balanced out.
For example, the DS Scribblenauts games are sitting at about an 80% on Metacritic, which is pretty good and not a critical panning, whereas only the Switch version of the latest Scribblenauts Unlimited is sitting under 50.
If anything, it's more the popular reception that is prone to miss some good quality games out there and that comes in all sorts of flavours, from a misunderstanding of what the game is (Prince of Persia 2008), to just plain bad sales (Okami), to a lack of appreciation until years down the line (Witcher).
Yeah I definitely should have said popular reception, but I only realized after I posted
The Killzone series (PS2, PS3) brought some innovative modes and mechanics to the FPS genre. FPSes have the usual modes like deathmatch, capture flags/zones, bomb/defuse. But Killzone had other modes like Assassinate, where one player (out of 24!) is the target, and one team tries everything they can to kill this one player, and the target's team is supposed to protect him. This mode brings the concepts of chokepoints and concentrated fire to a whole new level. Teammates yell at the target and try to get them to come to the most defensible locations. Let me tell you, being the assassination target is a heartpounding thrill like no other that I've experienced in an FPS.
There was also a class that had a special ability to go semi-invisible. Think Predator movie(s). You see an outline if you're really paying attention -- but, of course, in frenzied combat this is easier said than done. Also, if you train your crosshairs on a suspected cloaker, your reticle changes colour depending on if it's an ally or an enemy, so you can check that way, too. But: Killzone has friendly fire, so you can't just hastily shoot anything suspicious.
EDIT: I was actually confusing this feature with another feature: One of the classes had an ability to impersonate the enemy team, including the username/gamertag of an actual player on that team. So, you could sometimes get behind enemy lines and do some serious flanking and other trickery with this ability.
Another feature I really liked in Killzone: in addition to squad comms, your voice can be heard by anyone nearby, friend or foe. So many times in other FPSes, I wish I could talk to a nearby non-squad teammate, and tell them to move out of the way, or drop supplies, or watch out for an enemy, etc. Also, global voice chat was active between rounds, so you could congratulate teammates or trash talk the opposition.
Killzone was a lot of fun, and I think it deserved to be more popular than it was (though, granted, it did have 6 or so games in the series).
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Another game which had a mechanic that I haven't seen in any other game since is Okami. It's a 3D adventure game with visuals done in a "painted art" style (for lack of a better term). The distinguishing feature is that you perform magic in the world by using a [virtual] paintbrush on the "canvas" of the world around you. So you solve environmental puzzles by doing things like: magically slashing trees or rocks to remove obstacles; or cutting loose an object that is out of reach, making it fall to the ground; or painting in the sky to temporarily change night to day or vice versa. Combat also has the paintbrush mechanic. Your avatar has normal, low-powered moves that work via normal button presses, but you can also do some super moves by painting certain brush strokes or shapes during battle. A horizontal line would do a slash on the opponent; a circle would create a bomb at that spot; and other shapes or strokes that I can't remember.
Overall, I thought it was a good game. Perhaps it suffered from straddling genres: As an action game, it wasn't challenging enough, but as an adventure game, perhaps people that aren't good at action games would have had trouble with the combat.
This mode was available in the original counter strike. Invisibility was also part of several mods for counter-strike (like warcraft rpg ones).
I think a lot of people are not aware at how innovative mods can be, sprawling entire genres on their own (tower defense, moba, autochess, battle royale)
Right, point taken. And, actually, your response jogged my memory; I updated my comment to include mention of an impersonate ability (which, I suppose might be available in other games via mods, too).
Killzone 1 was a ton of fun on the PS2. I mostly played single-player but I do recall the online multiplayer being good as well. (Honestly, I loved online multiplayer on the PS2. It doesn't get a lot of recognition, but it worked pretty well. I played Battlefield (I forget which one), Burnout Revenge, and probably a bunch of others.)
Rain World had generally middling to poor reviews, 66 according to Metacritic. Despite the low reviews, it did get nominated for a few awards, so at least it didn't go completely unnoticed.
I think it's one of the best games I've ever played, or at least it's certainly one of my personal favorites.
I think part of the breakdown between my experience and the reviewers comes from the fact that reviews are generally coming at it as a "challenging platformer/survival game", expecting it to teach and reward the player in the way that games usually do. This is, to be fair, an entirely reasonable expectation, and I can't fault anyone for bouncing off the game on a first pass. That said, I really think the game merits further examination and that it offers something uncommon and precious.
There was a thread here on Tildes, a little while back, discussing how games like The Witness have progression barriers based not on anything the player does or accomplishes, but on what they understand about the game rules. It's a kind of game where not knowing what you don't know can result in bashing your head against an impassable wall for hours, until you get up from your computer, go do something else for a while and then abruptly stumble upon a realization that allows you to move forward with ease.
I think Rain World is a little bit like that, except that it's designed more as a "prey animal simulator" than as a puzzle game, and that the mental progression required is partly about the "stuff you know" and partly (possibly the larger part) about the frame of mind you need to have in order to make progress.
In The Witness, once you know the deeper secrets of the world, you can start a new game from scratch and be at the end of the game in a matter of minutes. Rain World is a little more challenging due to the randomization, but in a similar way, the player begins the game lacking more in knowledge than equipment, and on a second playthrough can move pretty smoothly to the endgame.
I've gone back and forth on including a longer comment here on how the game integrates its core gameplay loop into its larger themes, but I think most of what I have to say is more thoroughly covered in this blog series.
Rain World is a survival game with none of the niceties of the modern survival genre, it's about learning to live and even thrive in an uncompromising and harsh environment, it's a game about being on your own in a world that could not care less about you, it's about being lonely in a world full of life, and it's about accepting where you are, and it's about finding peace and finally rising above it all.
And it does this almost entirely without dialogue, through its core gameplay systems, and through the frame of mind it forces the player to be in.
For me, it's Brigador. MandaloreGaming just did a great review on this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bp3ivWv7Vs. Simply, it's an isometric cyberpunk styled mech game.
This game has a personal connection for me. I had no idea it even existed until I bumped into their booth at PAX West. I was blown away by the great art design, graphics, and gameplay. One of the cofounders was there and he even toured some of the dev console with me. It's such a fantastic game that it was mind-blowing to me why it wasn't widely known in the gaming community.
From what I gathered, the game had a rough launch. They even did a GDC talk about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUsuusNLxik.
That aside, it's a great game and it definitely felt like a passion project for the people that worked on it. I highly recommend everyone to try it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/274500/Brigador_UpArmored_Edition/. They are also coming out with a storyline release this year: https://store.steampowered.com/app/903930/Brigador_Killers/
GREAT LEADER IS DEAD. SOLO NOBRE MUST FALL.
Wishlisted; thanks for sharing. It's even playable on Steam OS / Linux, which is nice.
FUEL sits at a 67 on Metacritic which isn't exactly awful but is pretty low by gaming standards.
The game's defining feature is its gigantic open world, at a size of 5,560 square miles/14,400 square kilometers. The map is roughly the size of the state of Connecticut and takes three hours to drive from corner to corner. It's genuinely impressive, and it features a large variety of environments, often beautifully rendered. There's snow-covered mountains, burned out forests, dry canyons, beautiful gorges. I genuinely loved just driving around the game's world -- picking a spot in the distance and heading there, only to see a new point of interest on the way, and going there, chaining traversal spots for sometimes hours at a time. This is probably the game I've put the most time into where I haven't played the game as intended and moreso just done my own thing as a player.
The bad reviews aren't exactly undeserved, as the game does have major issues (on the PC, you can alleviate some of these with the REFUELED Mod, by the way). But if you just play it as an exploration sandbox, it's really quite wonderful. It's a shame that it's been delisted for sale on PC and that it still has Games for Windows Live in it, because those make enjoying it almost more trouble than they're worth. I'd love a modern remaster or even just re-release sans GFWL (please, GOG, make it happen for us!).
In my opinion, TumbleSeed. It got dismissed as too hard, but for me it just presents the true rogue-like feeling.
The novel controls where you control the wine, on which TS rolls need getting used to, but they are very good and intuitive. The audio-visual part is great, and the sense of progress through failure is present as well. It is probably one of my favourite modern twists on a rogue-like/lite.
Scribblenauts was amazing! It's been a long time since I've heard the name, but I remember wanting it pretty badly as a kid, it sounded and looked so cool. Never got around to trying it out until many years later though.
My entry for this would be the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, and especially Explorers of Sky. IGN gave it a 4.9/10, the rating they typically give to shitty shovelware titles, but I'd argue it's anything but. It has an absolutely fantastic storyline (seriously, you wouldn't think it from a Pokemon game of all things), lots of post-game content, lovely graphics and artwork, and a massive soundtrack with some truly excellent music.
The main downsides to me are that it takes a while for the story to get going, something all Mystery Dungeon games share unfortunately, and the gameplay mechanic itself can be rather repetitive at times (though this is common to all rogue-likes, it's a genre trait instead of specific to this game). But I think that even if rogue-likes aren't your thing, and even if you're not into Pokemon in general, there's no way this game deserves only a 4.9/10 - it has way too much love and care put into it, and stands way too strongly with content, to warrant the same placement as some cheapo $5 hunting minigame collection.
The PMD series has always intrigued me but I never got into it besides the first ones. My only gripe with them is that evolution was a postgame thing. Kinda killed my enthusiasm for team building
Regarding Scribblenauts, can someone explain what makes it so great? I never played it, but aam eyeing it from time to time. I heard you can basically work around every puzzle with a jetpack.
I think you've touched on a cornerstone of "The Problem with Gaming".
There are fundamentally different reasons that people want to play games. For me the core reason to play a game always comes back to having fun - that's the single most important thing to me, and most of the rubrics I use to think about games are measured through the lens of "fun", both for myself and for others that I'm playing with.
For a long time, I thought that most other people looked at games the same way, but that is not the case. There are a number of different core things people look for in video games; while an argument could be made that each of these is a facet of "having fun" I put forth that they are distinct enough from "vanilla having fun" as to be quite different. Maybe I'll categorize my vanilla fun first:
Also, some people do not prioritize everyone who is playing - they may prioritize only themselves, or only a small subset of people who are playing such as their group of friends, clan, guild, or team.
Someone who plays a game to feel superior to others is going to feel differently than someone who plays a game for fun and they're both going to feel different from someone who plays games for educational purposes. Someone who prioritizes their own fun over all is going to feel differently from someone who prioritizes fun for all who are playing.
Since we are all gaming for so many different reasons, and considering different things when we are playing, throwing people into games together and expecting them to be some kind of cohesive unit is not a great idea. I used to play a lot of Overwatch, and one of the key things about that game is teamwork, so for me, "vanilla fun" included trying to be a part of a team and doing things together as a team, as the game makers intended, to try to beat the other team. A lot of people don't play like that. They go off on their own, trying to set traps and 1v6 the other time, or they just feed the other team, or they actively troll their own team. They do this for control, or superiority. There are also people who are far more serious, who only play to try to destroy the other team at all costs and who do not value any kind of enjoyment, and do not value allowing people to play roles or characters that they enjoy. This mishmash of motivation means that finding a good group of players to play with is pretty hard.
It also means that finding a review that you can trust is pretty hard. Does the person doing the review value the same things that you value in video gaming?
The Problem with Gaming is that "gamers" are a diverse group, and many of the groups don't play well with each other, and many groups don't understand that games aren't all for them, and are intolerant of other reasons for playing games.
This was a long winded way of getting to answering your issue specifically:
It's been a while since I played, but I remember finding that there were items that were very powerful that let you cheese the whole game. Whenever I used them, it was not fun. Part of the fun is finding more and more ridiculous things to try to solve puzzles. Because the game is pretty open ended, and because the library of things you can draw is deep, you can solve puzzles in a huge variety of ways. Part of the joy is finding the weirdest way to solve a puzzle. As with most puzzle games, if you're a completionist and only care about having the solves at 100%, then it's not going to be a good game for you, because you can just look up how to solve the games - incidentally, this is why many people didn't enjoy "The Witness" which is one of the pinnacles of gaming in the last 10 years - but that's inimical to the point of the games. If you look up how to do puzzles, then you are robbing yourself of their reason for being, and have sidestepped "playing the game" entirely.
So, yes, you can cheese your way through a lot of games, but that's not really a problem if you just don't draw jetpacks. The joy isn't in just getting through, but in how you get through. Part of the journey is the journey itself, and enjoying the journey is an important part of this particular game.
I am sorry for keeping it shorter than your and other's replies would be worth of, but am on mobile.
You people just drew me a picture how Scribblenauts just may be a great game for me. For example, I just recently beat the last divine beast in BotW and already clocked over 200 h. Exploration is fun 😄
You do not have to apologize for not writing as much as my textual diarrhea, which is really just a function of the fact that I type about as quickly as I think in the morning (fast hands and slow brain). ;)
BotW is on my short list of games to play next. I have a switch and the game, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Scribblenauts is a ton of fun, and if you have kids, it's fun to play with them as well. One of the few games that we enjoy just gathering round and playing a single player all together.
As a puzzle game it is yes, just sort of easy -- but there's a lot of humor and whimsy in it. The dictionary you wish things out of is quite thoroughly compiled so you can be creative about how you approach each level. I think of it as one of those "what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" sort of series.
Sweet. That sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
I can echo what @Qis said and affirm that they're right. I played Scribblenauts a long time ago. I was playing it simply to solve the puzzles, and it wasn't that fun because I basically figured out I could solve most puzzles using the same strings (like "jetpack").
Meanwhile, my boyfriend was watching me play and asked if he could try something. I said sure, and we swapped places. His first action was to type something along the lines of "giant farting llama" and the game accepted the input and produced, on-screen, a giant farting llama. He started cackling like a child and proceeded to just have fun with the game as a sandbox. I was playing the game way too seriously and trying to optimize solutions, whereas he was playing the game for the fun of it, and he started trying to solve the problems in the most ridiculous ways possible -- seeing which absurd inputs the game would accept and which would unintentionally create the right outcomes for its puzzles.
It really isn't about getting through the game but is instead about just having fun with creative summons and solutions.
That is definitely my favorite way to play the game. I like seeing what the devs accounted for, or just trying to think as outside the box as I can.
I think it's best to view scribblenauts as a reflection of your own creativity. It's a boring game if you just equip yourself with a speedy flying invisible cape, and use a powerful invincible bazooka to tackle most of the problems, but it gets more interesting when you decide to scare away a bully using a docile Cthulhu, or get a cat out of a tree by bringing in a lumberjack.
The original Nier was basically not taken very seriously by the media. Most reviews at the time basically reviewed it like an average action game and basically ignored all aspects of the plot.
That was basically how the games media treated every game that was not focused on gameplay at that time. The fact that Snatcher got a US release at all was some sort of miracle.
I'll say Anthem. While some criticism certainly was deserved (the game lacked polish, the story is very incomplete, there were many bugs, etc), the game itself was still quite good if approached as sort of a pilot episode to a larger experience (that we are told is still coming). Game play itself is also really fun, in terms of just exploring, jumping, flying, experiencing the world that has been built. When you look at the PS5 demo that first came out from Epic (https://twitter.com/geoffkeighley/status/1260587589280559104), this is basically Anthem gameplay used to hype people about a console that isn't even out yet.
I think part of its problems game that it was a looter/shooter, a game type that has a notoriously toxic user base and that BioWare itself completely botched the design process by changing course significantly deep into the development process (basically the same thing they did with Andromeda, which is also very underrated and actually quite good). But I've played a few looter/shooters now (Warframe, Destiny 1/2) and Anthem is the only one that kept my attention, I think it deserves a better shake than it got.
I understand what you're saying but I have real problems with this. Maybe it's a function of age but I don't like the open-beta, day-one patch, publish-before-it's-ready style games are released with nowadays. I know that studios often are under ridiculous pressure to meet pre-purchase deadlines, show returns on investment, etc. but I think way too many games suffer because they are pushed out half-baked. I don't mind waiting for longer than expected if you'll polish the game properly and I can just pay for what I want and enjoy it when it's done. Part of that is due to me not playing a ton of games in the first place, I guess. Incidentally, I also am not a fan of game subscriptions.
To add to the topic I think Evolve suffered from this. It seemed like a great concept and fun to play, though maybe light on content for how it was overexposed in beta. By the time they ironed out the kinks and launched 1.0, people were over it.
Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) is one of my favorite games of all time, even though its criticisms are wholly deserved. The "simon says" QTEs are terrible, putting them on top of the cutscenes was an awful decision, and the story truly does fall apart in the last 25% of the game.
But one of my favorite aspects of it, is that it's the first game (that I'm aware of) where your character's "mood" affected the gameplay -- it was basically just a reskinned HP bar, but certain interactions were only available while your character was in certain moods, providing a dynamic aspect to gameplay I hadn't seen at the time. And the first half of the story is a genuinely interesting murder mystery with mystical elements.