I have already delved into the games that made the Xbox such a brilliant console, but now it is time to look at the crap which unfortunately has to tarnish the console's brilliant reputation. These are the games which did slip through the filter and somehow made it into a successful franchise. I have left out games based on movies as their primary purpose is to create money rather than create a good gaming experience and so they're all pretty terrible. Here are the dishonorable mentions:
WWE 13: Oh it's the same game as last year but this time with a ton of new bugs and glitches which are very annoying, but I suppose do contribute to an overall enjoyable experience.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter: A game that relies on nice looks and a smooth engine to try and win gamers hearts, unfortunately it didn't.
Assassin's Creed 3: How to ruin a franchise in one game. Make the protagonist an annoying arsehole, a weak and disappointing storyline and a load of glitches. Assassin's Creed hasn't really recovered.
Kinect Star Wars: Some genuinely good motion controls save this one from becoming an abomination. Seriously a dancing mini game, fuck off where's Battlefront 3.
#10 Sonic Unleashed (2008)
Sorry, I just don't get the appeal of Sonic the Hedgehog, I definitely enjoyed the original, but did we really need a whole series? This game sees Sonic trying to restore the world after Dr. Eggman splits the world into pieces, for whatever reason, I don't think that was ever explained. It's quite hard to take a storyline as serious as this with any dignity when the antagonist is called Eggman, it isn't any wonder that this series didn't take off, Mario has a vast array of different characters where as Sonic has a bunch of quick hedgehogs that nobody gives a single shit about. But this game has a sub story, oh yes, by night Sonic has to control his inner Werehog form, yes you read that correctly, this is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds and it adds nothing to gameplay apart from me sighing every two seconds with frustration.
The basic plot of the story revolves around Sonic trying to cure his lycanthropy, thank god, and he ends up meeting new interesting, well thought out and diverse characters such as his new guide, who suffers from amnesia, just great. The levels also were poorly thought through, and in a game franchise that encourages speed they seemed to forget all about it and create some very pretty but sluggish and combat intensive missions, which I wouldn't mind if the combat wasn't so terribly basic and dull and the levels weren't so poorly designed. The main problem with this game is that it feels like a blatant money grabber, there was evidently no logic or thought used in the development process and so what we get is a half arsed game that fails at exactly where all the previous Sonics have fallen flat. Thankfully SEGA have released some decent Sonic games since this disaster that have put the series back on track.
#9 Battlefield Bad Company 2 (2010)
This may come as a surprise, and on the face of things it does seem like this should be a good title. A great engine that definitely immerses the player into the battle with some very neat physics, programmed by Swedes which should mean technical perfection and a very good prequel to base the game on. However, the first problem comes when we look at the cover. "Defining Online Warfare". This is the first indication we get that Battlefield is just trying to do what Call of Duty has already done, effectively selling out a bit. I mean this game certainly doesn't define online multiplayer, Christ, Counterstrike and Call of Duty had done this years ago, all this game is doing is lagging behind its competitors.
My other issues with the game come from annoying little features that DICE seems to forget about such as the patches that are MANDATORY to play the game that are only a couple of gigabytes, when you stack them together that is many hours wasted downloading patches that Activision manages in a few megabytes. My other issue is that I simply don't enjoy playing this game, the weapons are so unbalanced that means you're either killed by someone from 3 miles away or someone in an overpowered tank meaning it is a much less competitive and enjoyable experience than Call of Duty, I'm sorry it just is.
#8 Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2012)
It seems so long ago now that Need For Speed were bringing out good games annually, now we have to wait for this crap. I genuinely enjoy arcade racers and certainly have a good time with more realistic racers, but what I can't understand is a hybrid that can't decide whether it wants to be a serious racing franchise or not. This game tries to take itself seriously by having the setting in a realistic, and very pretty location and then tries to put some basic physics into the car controls, which don't work particularly well and still make the game feel like an arcade game. So, it's a serious game, or maybe not as some moron decided that instead of logically paying for a car with money like a normal person you actually steal random cars in the street by teleporting into them. This means there is no sense of achievement when entering these cars which makes the game very dull and almost worthless, I soon got bored, and couple this with a disgusting soundtrack that just annoys me meant I soon threw this game out. Here's another idea, let's not have a main menu and instead everything is accessed via the D-Pad which is sure to work in a racing game, very easy to use at 100mph in oncoming traffic. That really sums up this game, hopeless.
#7 Aliens Colonial Marines (2013)
You've probably heard this one before, and with good reason. I suppose it doesn't really come as a surprise as the engine is named after the red ring of death, something that is actually probably better to happen to your Xbox than this so called game. First of all it looks absolutely terrible and appears to have been made in 2003, which to be fair was probably when this game was still being developed. Then there's the Xenomorphs that are entirely predictable and glitch out every two seconds, making them rather tame in comparison to their film counterparts and the AI are seemingly brain dead.
The game doesn't even carry over a good story that it so desperately deserved. The films gave a basis for a story on a silver platter for this game to use and it just wasted and ruined a perfectly respectable franchise. I'm not sure there's any point in continuing past the first mission as the story just becomes repetitive, very linear and very dull. So thanks for taking a massive shit on a very large franchise Gearbox. I would say Alien Resurrection looks promising, but I'm not going down that road again, I'm skeptical about preordering now thanks to this game.
#6 Crysis 2 (2011)
This is a great example of a waste of an amazing engine. We've all seen the technical capabilities of the Cry Engine and so it comes as a massive disappointment when a game comes along like this that requires solely on looks to try and get good sales, and I hate that. This shows as the storyline is absolutely dreadful, the characters have the same depth as Belgium and so by the end of the campaign I couldn't give a shit. The main focus really is on the nanosuit which looks very stupid and is incredibly overpowered meaning the campaign can be beaten very easily by charging your abilities and simply running through the whole enemy force, then wait for them to recharge and simply repeat the previous steps.
The multiplayer too is also disappointing, there really isn't that many customization options and the overpowered nano suits mean the combat becomes tiresome and limited strategy is ever used. Then comes the bright idea of picking up dog tags to build kill streaks which means sniping now becomes irrelevant. This system was done well in the kill confirmed game mode in Modern Warfare 3 when it was just in one game mode, in this game there is no option, which brings me on to the most frustrating thing about this game, which is the very linear elements of it. The game tries to be an open world game, but in the end just becomes bogged down by restrictions that punish you if you try to play it your way, it definitely severely limits the gameplay that if balanced better could of been a fun experience.
#5 Fighters Uncaged (2010)
A fighting game on Kinect, surely this must work. Of course it doesn't, not even nearly, the controls don't work no matter how loud you shout at the screen. The premise of the game is also terrible, at the end of the day it's just two people having a fight. Why would I pay money for this game just to get annoyed when I can go into the center of Liverpool on a Saturday evening and watch this for free without getting annoyed? I would usually expand here, but that's sort of it, there isn't anything else to this game. Just terrible.
#4 Top Spin 3 (2008)
I enjoy a good tennis game, for a good example try Virtua Tennis. I originally tried Top Spin for the DS, and it was very good, however when it came to the console version they just sort of tried to make it ultra realistic and forgot about the fact that people might want to have fun, and as a result we get a really bad, and really anal, sports game. I personally enjoy a nice little one button shot system, but oh no this game is realistic and so you have to time your shots precisely and then get your head around quantum physics while juggling chainsaws on a unicycle whilst hurtling down a giant toboggan run while this person gives you a lecture on the British Empire (http://www.createdebate.com/user/viewprofile/samwillown). You get the point, it's just far too complicated to be any fun.
The impossible controls mean games are painfully slow and coupled with poor maneuverability means the game is a terrible experience. I barely managed to get out of the tutorial as the difficulty spike after that is ridiculous, I was being completely destroyed by the bot on the easiest difficulty setting. It's just a frustrating game, I'd certainly rather play Wii tennis.
#3 Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (2012)
This was a genuine shame and I feel really bad about putting it this high up on my list, it really was a first of its kind, no shooter had ever gone with motion controls and so this was a great chnace to showcase what the Kinect should be, but unfortunately I have to be realistic and witness a great idea being ruined by rubbish motion controls. The setting is a good one, a sort of
Black Ops 2 near future apocalypse setting that I do like a lot with well constructed characters and the importance of a team, as when they die, that's it, and you have to maintain your squad throughout the whole game, great feature, I love a punishing and unforgiving game. This does come with a problem and that is the very large difficulty spike that never really seems easy, it's quite hard to keep your squad alive when you're fumbling around at the controls, which brings us to the elephant in the corner.
The motion controls. The kinect just isn't advanced enough to pick out the individual movements of the player and so piloting these mechs is a nightmare, there are just too many functions with similar controls to pilot the vehicle accurately, meaning actually doing well in the game is incredibly difficult, especially when there is a bloody giant robot thing that can kill me easily within one shot. It's just another example of how motion controls make the game mechanics frustrating instead of acting as a general addition to the gaming experience, maybe one day.
#2 MotionSports (2010)
Another Kinect game, but this one is by far the worst. I enjoyed
Kinect Sports, it was very fun to play, especially with multiple people, this isn't. For starters the motion controls are so unresponsive that it takes multiple attempts to actually achieve what you were hoping for, seemingly it was programmed by Stevie Wonder. It also struggles with player recognition which makes multiplayer games a nightmare as switching between players takes four years, even longer with the ridiculous loading times. My main issue with the game however is the fact that it doesn't show you where your hand is in relation to the screen, which means navigating the menus is impossible and incredibly frustrating. Seriously, just buy
Kinect Sports, it is better in every single way.
#1 Need For Speed: The Run (2011)
To like this game you would have to be a colossal bellend. I just hate this new grown up Need For Speed crap that the developers are trying to force into the game, everyone knows that Need For Speed has always been about racing ridiculous cars at ridiculous speeds through dangerous and exhilarating missions, the fact that they're now putting a story on it makes no sense. I certainly wouldn't mind a narrative in a racing game if it was good, and made any sense as the plot in this game is so poorly constructed, lacking any characterization and not explained at all that it leaves me baffled. The game tries to get you to care about characters, which is quite difficult when they are given no backstory and the actual premise of the game is never explained, they're seemingly just racing for the money.
I'm also interested in the setting as the game is meant to be set over a 48 hour period through most of America, which is interesting as their researches have found that America changes seasons every 3 hours and so it makes perfect sense that one minute you can be racing through deserts and the next on a mountain range, just a bit of thought when making this wouldn't of hurt. The game also tries to add QTEs to the storytelling, which every single gamer will tell you ruins any sense of immersion the player has to the narrative, not very fun repetitively tapping X to get me through cutscenes is it, the racing isn't exactly poor but it seems to be taken a backseat to the crappy narrative, a deadly sin in a racer, especially an arcade racer. I just genuinely have no idea what the developers where thinking when they made this game, it doesn't do anything particularly well and it all adds up into one of the worst gaming experiences of all time.
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