Bad games to avoid...

[wildweasel]

Wait, do you think Blake Stone is a bad game to avoid?

[cambertian]

First one hides a lot of mandatory spots behind secret walls. I've also heard that the enemies lack stun frames. Not sure about the second game, but I've heard more favorable things about it...

[Sgt Nate V]

Wait, do you think Blake Stone is a bad game to avoid?

It's good itself, but the controls are bad.

[wildweasel]

Wait, do you think Blake Stone is a bad game to avoid?

It's good itself, but the controls are bad.

Remember what thread you're in. =/

[Reactor]

Blake Stone wasn't bad. Yuh, the controls were a bit unusual, and it took time to adjust, but all in all, it's a decent game. It was a huge improvement above the Wolfenstein-series: there were more enemies and obstacles, the powerups were well thought-up, and the candybar vending machine idea was really innovative. B.J. Blazkowicz gets health from eating chicken leg with taters and salad, Blake Stone prefers sweets. And the music was also pretty catchy, especially in Planet Strike. Loved it. I don't say "ZOMG it wuz da best game in muh life", but still, a very enjoyable, challenging semi-3D shooter with lots of good aspects. The infamous "hiding mandatory items at secret areas" was also present in Wolfenstein 3-D, and I hated it very much, but I wouldn't say it's a shitty game just because the level mappers made a few dumb decisions here and there. They seem to have learnt from their mistakes as in Doom, necessary items never got hidden anywhere. This is good.
I remember we discussed this in another topic, and some forum members already expressed their opinion about hiding mandatory stuff in secret areas is a nasty thing, however, it'd only become a major problem if the whole game is based on finding secrets. Like "Milon's secret castle" - more like Milon's shitty asshole!
Eruanna also had good thoughts about this. Heh, I bet she could mention several horrible games in this topic as well!

[Clownman]

Nuclear Dawn is pretty bleh... Doesn't help the main multiplayer barely has any players.


Pretty much a waste of money for me, Had to end up refunding.

[leileilol]

There's nothing weird about Blake's controls. They're standard Wolf3d controls and the only additional mechanic is having to press space on more things (informants, vending machines and switches)

but i guess if it doesn't comply to wasd-snobbery like every other old game that hasn't has their history revised, then it's "a bad game"

[Oberron]

There's nothing weird about Blake's controls

Yeah, nothing weird as they're your typical Wolf3D controls.

[cambertian]

Keep in mind, there's also a good modern source-port if you want to try it out: bstone
Modern control options + hi-res renderer with other nice amenities. So yeah, with that in mind, I don't think either Blake Stone game is particularly bad in the modern day.

[Reactor]

Welp...after a month of rigorous testing, I'm rather inclined to put this turkey into the "Bad games to avoid" topic.



Heavy Weapon Deluxe is an arcade-style tank shoot'em up game developed about 10 years ago by PopCap. It's a small, humble game, to be honest, I never expected anything Valve or ID Software quality, but...damn it, that's not an excuse to develop a shitty game!

At first glance, it seems to be "awsum". Animated intro, funny story, lots of in-game jokes, you won't see these stuff in most minor games. I was impressed by this game at first, and gotta admit, I feel a lil'bit guilty about marking this game as bad.
The game itself is a parody of a fictional Soviet invasion on Murrica. Ye, kinda like Red Alert 2. The USA's last hope is a miracle weapon called "Atomic Tank", which can be fitted with various weaponry, and is sent against the evil Soviet country to obliterate the whole army all by itself, much like Chin was sent to wipe out the 1.2 billion of the fuckin' ugly reds. There are 19 missions alltogether, but only 10 counties, so halfway thru the game, the stages repeat. The name of these counties are pretty funny - Tankylvania, Frigidistan, Antagonistan, Killingrad etc. - and the environment fits the given names pretty well.
On each and every level, a whole army of aircrafts and ground vehicles are lavished on you, and you must kill as many as possible & defeat an end boss to progress to the next county. Many of these endlevel bosses are also parodies of entities from other games. The "war blimp" is obviously a Kirov airship spoof, the Mechworm is a homage on the Sandworm from Dune, and Kommie Kong is of course a King Kong (or Donkey Kong) parody.
After each level, you're allowed to purchase a new equipment for your tank. You can also sell a piece of equipment and trade it in for something else. During the level, a white Chinook shows up occassionally, and drops powerups. You must NOT shoot down the Chinook, as you'll lose points. You have 3 attempts to make it thru the level alive - if you fail, you have to restart from the beginning of the current county.
Very well, so far this seems to be a pretty good, innovative little game, so what's wrong with that? In case you haven't played it yet and noticed, I can tell you - this game is highly unfair, cheats every time it can, and extremely frustrating. At the end, it becomes nearly unplayable as well. Even though it started out as a good game, PopCap had to ruin it, they just HAD to...

- First of all, the game doesn't use the keyboard! You heard me - a tank game where you need to do everything with the mouse. The mouse is used for BOTH targeting AND moving, and I can tell you all about it - this concept is a huge piece of stinkin' turd, and this is possibly the biggest flaw of the entire game. You can NOT move independently from targeting - if you tug the mouse to aim at the other side of the screen, you will move there at the same time, even if you don't want to.
I seriously don't know what were they thinking - using the keyboard for moving is the work of Satan, or what??? Who actually thought it'd be a great idea to just move & aim at the same time with the mouse? This stupid, utterly crud control scheme will lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths because you simply can't aim on an incoming air armada if you don't roll there. And what happens is that you roll into the fusillade and die. The problem also works vice-versa - you can't jink or strafe enemy shots while shooting back at the enemy the same time. The tank will always aim where you're moving, and this is just utter garbage.

- The second capital flaw of this game is the horrible hit detection. The game just loves to torment the player that way. Enemy shots which impact ANYWHERE on your tank's perimeter will count as a hit, even though you can clearly see it was nowhere near to actually hit your tank. The game loves to break its own rules as long as it works to your disadvantage. Several times you gonna die by shots which didn't even hit your tank, but the game says it did.
This flaw also effects the Megalaser - perhaps the ONLY useful weapon in the entire game. If you get the Megalaser, be prepared that sometimes it'll just pass thru enemies and projectiles without destroying them.

- Scoring doesn't serve any practical purpose. You can earn lots of points by killing as many enemies as you can, you'll get a "Survival bonus" if you pass the level without getting killed once, and you can even get a "Friendly fire bonus" if you shoot on the Chinook (you get POINTS for hitting your own allies? What the actual f...???), but the score has no meaning at all. No matter how many points you get, you can't trade them for anything. It would have been amazing if you could purchase more equipment and guns for all these earned points and bonuses, but that'd actually make Heavy Weapons Deluxe a good game, and obviously, that wasn't what they were going for.

- The developers must have been big Tyrian-fans, since the difficulty escalates much like in Tyrian: even though you upgrade your weapons between levels, on the next county, enemies will become tougher and harder to destroy, so getting new weapons won't do any good for you. They even copied the destruction percentage counter from Tyrian (which, again, doesn't give you any benefits).

- EDIT: You begin EACH and EVERY level with the worst possible shield! It's like sending a soldier to fight wearing only a T-shirt and underpants. Damn unfair. And yes, I know, Tyrian starts every level the same way, but there, you actually get a few seconds of invulnerability until your shields charge up to 50%. Here, you don't get anything. If you get hit, no afterhit invulnerability - two successive shots, and you're dogmeat. Nice.

- Useless powerups. The "rapid fire" and "gun powered up" powerups don't do a damn thing. You already have rapid fire, and powering up your gun won't make your basic shots stronger at all.
EDIT: For some reason, the game always starts the levels by giving you these useless powerups, instead of something useful - like atom bombs or shields, which you REALLY need!!!

- The "Power orb" equipment simply doesn't work. Not sure what it was meant to do - stopping enemy shots, or damaging ground enemies - but I tested it, and it fails in both aspects.

- On the later levels, the game starts bordering on being non-playable. There'll be so many enemies, so many shots and projectiles that it'll literally shroud the entire playfield into a disgusting mess. You won't see where you are, you won't see the enemy shots, you won't see anything else, and you end up dying. You can use a Nuke to clear the entire screen of scat, or the Megalaser, but after a few seconds of good visibility, the hodgepodge will be back again. Whose bright idea was this?

So there you have it. A very good, innovative, fancy little game which was ruined by a series of huge flaws. And I really pity it - there was potential in this game, but eventually, they successfully fucked it up, and basically flushed the whole thing down the toilet. I wish I could write a more favorable review, but alas, I'm afraid it'd require a more favorable game. If you like "bullet hell" type of games, then Heavy Weapon Deluxe is for you - otherwise, do the right thing, and avoid it.

[skyrish10]

EXTREME WINTERSPORTS


Review by Clint Basinger (aka Lazy Game Reviews)

Extreme Wintersports is one of the most awful games I've seen. Here are the three reasons why to avoid this game

-The performance is very, very slow, even on the system that easily exceeds the recommended specs, it's not doing performing much. Toning it down may improve more, but not much.
-There's is no narrative, nothing to unlock any new stuff, no wintersporting events to take on, no AI opponents and the voice acting is so bad (most noted one is "Too bad, dude. YOU LOSER")
-The laws of physics does not exist here, you can stop and go on a instant, smack into walls will push you in random direction and you find yourself constantly fighting the level geometry, getting stuck and falling victim to weird boundary boxes.

Even worse, Extreme Wintersports is a copy and heavily modified version of Snow Wave Avalanche, which is a mediocre, but ok game.

Speaking of which, the games made by Head Games are very awful and they must be avoid those games at all cost.

[Oberron]

Extreme Boards and Blades was given a MEDIOCRE score by GameSpot. Show some respect, GameSpot.
Next on my list: Last Bronx (Sega Saturn/Windows): Tough, but it's worth it. The character designs range from your ordinary street thugs, to a construction worker who is likely on the wrong place (this isn't the 1992 movie Landslide!), and lastly an ex-soldier (who is likely a ripoff of a character from 90210).
All in all, an average arcade game, with a worse Saturn port, and a bit worser Windows port with no 3D accelerator support whatsoever.

[Agentbromsnor]

I'm probably going to sound like a cunt for saying this, but... Avoid Dark Souls like the plague. The PC version on Steam, that is.

Seriously. Dark Souls is one of the only games I've ever refunded because it was just so horribly broken to the point of being almost unplayable. There are mods that supposedly fix a lot of the issues it has, but they didn't change a whole lot for me and honestly they're very hack-y. What you're left with is a game that is simply unplayable without a controller, and only slightly more so with a controller.

Why does it seem like all Japanese PC-ports of big titles are absolute shit? Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 3, and now Dark Souls...

[Oberron]

Why does it seem like all Japanese PC-ports of big titles are absolute shit? Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 3, and now Dark Souls...

Too bad the first two Devil May Cry titles weren't ported to Windows, or even the Xbox because...

Virgin Interactive (Capcom's distributor in Europe) wasted time publishing their titles by various developers. (not to mention their budget)

[Agentbromsnor]

I love the Devil May Cry games, but I don't think that besides that horrible port of DMC 3 they released any other PC port. Or did they?

It's frustrating to me because most of these Japanese games have a huge fan-base and you would think that with a big franchise it would be easy to outsource a company to create a proper PC release.