Underwhelming Games

[Fierce_LiNk]

Oh yeah of course Twilight Princess' visuals had to match the atmosphere of the game; I'm just saying it's not one I really enjoyed.

 

I thought there was absolutely loads to do in Skyward Sword tbh! I was never short of something to do, always running sidequests in Skyloft, and some that took you out a little further into the world.

 

I can understand why some people didn't like the structure of the world, but to be it worked, and surprisingly (even to me) places still felt very linked to one another despite the fact you couldn't run between them (though you could still see the mountains etc...)

 

I'm not necessarily looking for a sense of cinema from my cutscenes (for the same reason those in MGS Twin Snakes were so boring), so things like...

 

The Thunder Dragon, Everything involving Levias, Pretty much Everyscene in the first part of the game, The scenes with Zelda and Impa etc... I don't know I just enjoyed everything more.

 

 

Overall I think it was just the dark atmosphere I didn't enjoy in Twilight Princess. Everything was just a tad depressing.

 

I think you nailed it in that last sentence. I like a bit of grit or moodiness in my games. Hence why Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is up there for me as one of my favourites this generation. We will agree to disagree on this one.

[Fused King]

Skyward Sword

 

The controls were perfection, everything was great... but the hype man... the reviews... all of the pre-release buzz was just insane and when it turned out to be what it was, I couldn't help but be underwhelmed.

 

Same here.

 

Sure it had some great moments, but it was EXTREMELY formulaic which I did not expect. I truly believed they would somewhat re-invent the series what with all the talk about an area being a giant dungeon or something.

 

Still, I've been thinking about the game as of late, and I reckon the game might age quite well. And once you play it again without that über-hype backing it up, one might get to appreciate it more.

 

Also, because of Skyward Sword, I'm very much wondering by how the 3DS Zelda will turn out and, of course, the new Zelda on the WiiU.

If they serisouly take the route of the formula again, I'll be mightely dissapointed and will turn my avatar into:

 

I'm just longing for that surprise again. My girlfriend has started playing through Majora's Mask and, seeing that, just shows that NINTENDO can do it. Give us a Zelda about the origins of Majora's Mask or a Zelda in which Link is a girl and Zelda a male Prince.

SOMETHING UNIQUE!

 

At the very least I'd like to see something else than a Hyrule/Hyrule-esque world.

I'm dying to revisit Termina, but something completely new would be even better!

Edited August 24, 2012 by Fused King

[Ville]

Little Kings Story

 

Odd game. I loved it when I was playing it and even restarted playing a few imes but kept coming to points where the difficulty was too high or I did not really know where to go next and stopped playing it.

 

I kinda agree. A really charming game, but the gameplay is also kind of old-school frustrating. I do wanna finish it though, just to see what other crazy places / bosses there are : D

 

Btw, this thread's pretty darn interesting, so many differing opinions. Mario Kart Wii? I thought it was ok. TP? Cool with that. SS? Not perfect, but still a good game.

[Dog-amoto]

Zack and Wiki.

 

A real shame, as I actually do enjoy the game. I've just not felt compelled to finish it. It's a game that should have waited for MotionPlus in my opinion.

 

Wii Sports Resort

 

Don't know why, maybe it just lacked the novelty value of the first one. But I've certainly not played this as much as the first.

 

WarioWare Smooth Moves

 

After the fantastic Twisted on the GBA, how could they possibly screw this up...which brings me on to my next one

 

Nintendo Wii

 

Been completely underwhelmed by the whole concept of motion control and I'm sure I'm not alone. MotionPlus has helped, but that initial excitement of seeing the Red Steel trailer back in 2006 compared with what we actually got felt like a real slap in the face.

[Fused King]

I kinda agree. A really charming game, but the gameplay is also kind of old-school frustrating. I do wanna finish it though, just to see what other crazy places / bosses there are : D

 

Btw, this thread's pretty darn interesting, so many differing opinions. Mario Kart Wii? I thought it was ok. TP? Cool with that. SS? Not perfect, but still a good game.

 

I shall ignore the part about Little King's Story because I'm a good sport:laughing:

 

Regarding Skyward Sword; it is indeed a good game, but, to me, was underwhelming because of all the things I had read about it and thus came to expect.

The most underwhelming part was probably discovering how boring the cloud-world was.

[Rowan]

SSX Blur - felt a bit cheap just rehashing the same courses from SSX3 / On Tour and by making them more cartoony and colourful the tracks were kinda garish. The controls were too difficult to perform tricks and to navigate down the mountain - perhaps Wii M+ would have helped. Didn't like the cartoony characters which had 0 voice over. Menu loading times were loooong. Quite disappointed as was a big fan of the series and I'm sure I played over £30 for this game at a time when I had to save up money to make purchases.

[Ellmeister]

I think the final boss for Twilight Princess was great, I played that through a few times. Just like WW.

 

Mario Kart Wii I played a lot, a whole lot of multiplayer action with friends for ages. I do agree with the weapon centred style of this game compared to other Mario Kart games though.

[nekunando]

I think the final boss for Twilight Princess was great, I played that through a few times. Just like WW.

 

I can't even remember the final boss of Twilight Princess.. and that's the truth

[killer kirby]

I can't even remember the final boss of Twilight Princess.. and that's the truth

 

....it's a freaking Zelda game WHO DO YOU THINK is the final boss is? Next thing your going to tell me you don't know who the final boss in New Super Mario Bros 2 is.

[Cube]

....it's a freaking Zelda game WHO DO YOU THINK is the final boss is?

 

I think he means what the boss fight is like, not who it is.

 

Plus we have had shadowy blobs, a wizard, a demonic mask and whoever the bosses of the DS games were.

[Fierce_LiNk]

How is it possible to forget any of the TP bosses? Aside from the first one (first boss always tends to be the worst or less good than the others), all of the others were brilliant. Including the final boss.

 

Better than fighting Ghirahim 3 times anyway and calling that a boss fight.

[Ellmeister]

I love Little Kings Story, but the difficulty curve is sometimes ridiculous, it put me off playing it and now that I've been busy and not played it for a while I feel I won't remember what to do and that'll make it even harder.

 

Pretty sure I got stuck on the egg boss.

[Cube]

The big spider thing, the dual hookshot boss, the skateboardy-thing boss.

[Hero-of-Time]

How is it possible to forget any of the TP bosses? Aside from the first one (first boss always tends to be the worst or less good than the others), all of the others were brilliant. Including the final boss.

 

Better than fighting Ghirahim 3 times anyway and calling that a boss fight.

 

Apart from the last boss I can't remember any of the TP bosses. Saying that I haven't played it since the Wii launch. Oh wait! I just remembered one while typing. There was some skeleton/dragon thing in the sand where you used that spinning top. That was a good fight.

[killer kirby]

I want snowboarding back in Zelda...seriously, it was awesome, I want to snowboard with a sword to swing.

[nekunando]

I want snowboarding back in Zelda...seriously, it was awesome, I want to snowboard with a sword to swing.

 

It sounds like you want Balance Board and Wii Motion Plus support in the Wii U Zelda

[Grazza]

I haven't felt disappointment for a very long time - not since Twilight Princess on the GameCube, in fact, which is a tremendous experience in so many ways yet didn't match what I had built up in my head. Not since then I have I felt hype or expectation.

 

It's hard to describe how excited some of us were for that game. Nintendo had the best console on the market (or near enough) and not too long ago had released Wind Waker, which many people considered the best game ever - or at the very least, a true 10/10 Zelda up there with Ocarina of Time.

 

I'm not going to bash Twilight Princess (which isn't my nomination for this thread) because it's all been said. It didn't even need time or the "Zelda Cycle" for me to see its appeal. I loved my 2nd and 3rd playthroughs (although I'm not sure if I'd feel as positive if I only had the Wii version). TP is a beautiful game with atmospheric vistas, haunting music and a focused visual style. It also benefits from sticking more closely to the Zelda formula than more recent additions to the series. Who'd have thought it'd be the last game in the series (for now) to have a Day & Night Cycle or a traditional, linked, explorable overworld?

 

To cut myself some slack, a lot of the disappointment was anger-based. The finished Twilight Princess was not what the 2004 video suggested, and Nintendo's decision to release it on two formats will always mean the GameCube version's controls were less than optimum - unlike Wind Waker or the playable demo of TP in 2005 which had shield control with the R-trigger...

 

Anyway, if I'm not nominating Twilight Princess (and I realise the thread title has been changed from "Disappointing" to "Underwhelming"), then what am I? Well, nothing. No Wii game disappointed me. As I say, the type of hype I had in 2005 has never returned.

 

So what of Skyward Sword? I could not call that disappointing because, to me, at no point in its development did it look particularly good. Nothing ever suggested it would trump earlier games. Yes, reviews overhyped it, but that's what they do - sometimes because they overvalue "innovation" (which Skyward Sword had bucketloads of), sometimes out of loyalty and perhaps sometimes for other reasons.

 

All we can hope is that, one day, the Master Sword returns in a way that has us all united in its brilliance. I predict, apart from some series-best brilliance like Skyloft Bazaar, the "Zelda Cycle" is not going to repaint Skyward Sword in a different light. Until that day, all we can do is try to shake the nagging feeling that the genius has flown the nest.

[Dcubed]

It sounds like you want Balance Board and Wii Motion Plus support in the Wii U Zelda

 

Balance Board for walking/sliding. Wiimote Plus for sword. Wii U Gamepad for your shield.

 

MAKE IT HAPPEN NINTENDO!

[Retro_Link]

Balance Board for walking/sliding. Wiimote Plus for sword. Wii U Gamepad for your shield.

 

MAKE IT HAPPEN NINTENDO!

You're gonna need a holster for your Wiimote too for when that Wii Zapper comes off your back for some Crossbow action!

[Captain Falcon]

Whilst the Conduit and Madworld are both barely average, I had far lower expectations for them so it's difficult to say I felt truly let down by either. So on to the big ones...

 

Skyward Sword

 

I didn't feel the control benefited from the the use of motion. The story was poor. The sky was empty. The ground sections were recycled too much. Most of the new weapons were just redesigned old weapons. Music was lacking too. And given TP really raised the bar for bosses (in terms of design/creativity, not so much difficulty), SS only had a couple worth mentioning. And saying Skyloft was better than Castle Town is hardly showering it with praise. Skyloft still pales next to town locations featured in most other games and especially Majora's Mask which did so much more on far more limited hardware a decade prior.

 

 

Sonic Unleashed

 

Now I know what some of you are thinking, "why did you even expect that game to be even average?" Personally, I've gotten a lot more mileage out of the previous "terrible" 3D Sonic games than one might expect. It's always been a series I've managed to focus on the positive aspects of. I know the bad ones exist and can be objective about it but I also know how to get the most fun out of them. Secret Rings, which Flink mentioned, in hindsight was, at best, an average game but at the time of it's release, I enjoyed it for what it was - going back gets much harder though. This game arrived with a bit more fanfare, especially the SD version which scored consistently higher than the HD game. I was originally only planning to get the Wii version but after two days of ownership, I went out and got the HD version. And in all honesty, I think even the best bits of the SD version only just manage to outperform the worst bits of the HD game. The level designs range from dull to ok but Sonic just feels wrong running through them. That Colors and Generations are based on the HD mechanics rather than the SD ones speaks volumes as to which SEGA thought was better.... not that the gaming press remembered any of that when they started to heap praise on something they'd previously slammed.

 

 

No More Heroes 2

 

Now don't get me wrong, I like this game and given it was fairly cheap at launch, it must be even cheaper now, and thus hard for me to not recommend. But, a bit like Unleashed, my expectation was swayed by positive reviews. Most reviews stated how it was an improvement over the first game but I just don't see it. It was like a bad facsimile that watered down the key aspects of the first game - its unqiue saturated graphics, the rock and roll soundtrack, the crazy story, instantly identifiable bosses with their own styles and tactics, and the humour. The graphics became more detailed but felt more generic as a result. The music wasn't a detraction but no where near as memorable outside the main NMH theme or the map theme. The bosses required less finesse from the player as for the most part you could just run up and hack. They were also less interesting with less story about them and those that did, Travis didn't care about - in the first game, you can see all those crazy individuals affecting his thoughts and behaviour. Here, nothing. Where's the development? It's dropped entirely in one cutscene at the end, when we find out a little more about Travis and Silvia's relationship. But reviews didn't care about any of that because they were seemingly so overjoyed about not having to wander the 3D world or pay to enter fights. I really hope there is a No More Heroes 3, though I'll be sad if Travis doesn't feature, but Suda 51 needs to be a lot more hands on with it like the first rather than letting other people try to ape his style like the sequel... and making a cock up of it.

[mcj metroid]

I haven't played much on the Wii just some games in the earlier days. I blame the Wii for killing what little interest I had left in console gaming.

 

WarioWare Smooth Moves

 

Wow... This one surprised me when it came out. It wasn't that the game was bad, but it really needed to be three times as fun-packed as it was. I returned it after 1 day required for completion for single player. I mean it's not like there is a multiplayer option to save it. It's in lot of ways the shortest game I've ever played. Warioware on gamecube was one of the most fun multiplayer experiences I've ever had... WHY do they keep focusing this franchise on single player gaming.

 

Super Monkey ball: Banana blitz

 

This one annoyed me a lot at the time because it managed to get 80%-85% reviews upon it's release suggesting the game was great, but lacked that small polish that made it a classic. Jesus this was bad.

 

Animal Crossing Wii

 

Actually the entire series I don't get. The motivation to play the gamecube version was the unlockable NES titles in my opinion and that was a good feature. It was also a fun ride but I was SHOCKED at how little had changed in this Wii release. Even graphically.

I played this game twice before.....

 

Sonic and the Secret Rings

 

OH good god who kept saying this was good? I'll say no more..

[Cube]

OH good god who kept saying this was good? I'll say no more..

 

It was really good. Probably the third best game at time on Wii at the time of release, after Excite Truck and Twilight Princess.

[Magnus]

In the land of the blind... :p