It's the end of a generation, and the GC crew takes a look back at the era that was. We throw out our Most Overrated and Underappreciated games of the past gen, and somehow we were all still on speaking terms afterwards. Also, some bonus talk on the magic of Pokémon. With Sinan Kubba, Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike "I Hate You All" Bracken, and Richard Naik.
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Latest posts by Sinan Kubba (see all)
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I’ll add to my heresy by saying I don’t have the first fucking clue why people gushed over Vanquish. Played that game and found it completely underwhelming.
It’s a generic third person action game at best. Not sure what people see in that one.
I’m glad you enjoyed the show, though. 🙂
Thanks for mentioning GTA 4 in the podcast. This game is overhyped to such a ridiculous degree (98% — ninety-eight! — on Metacritic for the console versions with zero “mixed” or “negative” reviews), that I always use it as indicator for the integrity of review sites. That is, whenever I find a new game review site or journal, I always check their opinion on GTA 4 first. The integrity can then be deduced from how far they are away from a realistic score (which would perhaps be 5 or 6 out of 10 if you’re into such numbers; it’s basically… Read more »
Great show once again ! Too bad the poll wasn’t conducted with the official GameCritics twitter account (no offense Brad, but you do tweet a lot ^^), but the results were satisfying anyway. Some thoughts on Pokemon : yes it is really easy to get into, and the late game is surely very deep (not that I would know), but as Brad said, the core single player experience isn’t really great, and requires more grinding than strategy, with no story to keep you invested. My two cents on some of the games mentioned, even if I fully understand why they… Read more »
Glad you picked Nier as the most underhyped game. I always have an itch to go back into the game, but then the white flower reminds me that i have already beaten it to the fullest extent (which is a good thing — i guess?). Actually i disagree with you on the side-quest stuff. Sure, they bag on the player for doing them, however if you follow the side-quests long enough (both the fishing and the lighthouse quests) you will get “closure” which i thought was pretty fitting — as Nier explains to the book it’s not about getting any… Read more »
Nice to see a bit of good humoured conflict on the show and I can now state definitively I am 100% Team Bracken. I played Dragon Age: Origins at the height of my interest in RPGs – couldn’t get enough of them – and DA:O killed that interest stone dead. Possibly the only other game at the same mark on the sheer boredom scale for me was Ass Creed 1. I don’t think we need worry about Demon’s Souls – it’s at the pinnacle of current-gen games after all. It’s good that Dark was released to a wider audience and… Read more »
You people are heretics. I agree with Brad and Richard that Bracken was probably insane to suggest Dragon Age: Origins.
For me, an undervalued game would probably be Vanquish. I loved that game, and I hope we will see a Vanquish 2 or at least other games in the similar vein.
An overhyped game for me would be the Witcher games. They were okay, not great. I never got into them, but people kept hailing Witcher and it’s sequel as “the most awesome RPGs ever”.
Thanks for the great podcast.
I wanted to join the Bracken army too, but I found out that he liked Jason Statham whom is my pick for the most overhyped actor of this generation. To hell with his boring action movies. Jason Stathman is to action what Adam Sandler is to comedy. Vanquish sucks. I agree. Not only for the generic interminable cover shooting but also for the atrocious story, voice acting and dialogue. My overhyped games would be Final Fantasy XIII. If Tobi uses GTA4 as measure of a gaming site’s integrity, I use FF13. It’s lucky that I’ve been reading GC for years… Read more »
I like that we’ve reached a point where people are getting on Team Bracken. Soon I will take us all to a South American jungle — where we’ll build a utopia around the idea of playing only good games. So anyone who likes Skyrim and Dragon Age will be barred entrance. Dragon Age: Origins sucks — it sucks almost as much as Skyrim, which is pretty fucking impressive when you stop to think about it. I probably liked it better the first two times I played it — back when it was called Knights of the Old Republic or Jade… Read more »
Yes! Grand Theft Auto IV!!! That game bored me to tears. I got about five hours into the campaign, played a couple rounds of multiplayer, regretted my purchase and traded in that garbage.
So if I counted correctly Nier is Gamecritics official underhyped Game of the generation! That’s so great that this game gets more recognition. I think the fishing video was irresponsible for sure, but SE marketing/PR was also at fault. Nier came out 1 month after FFXIII, was not presented as an RPG, honestly I thought it was an action game, it was even compared to God of War by the PR. The “we made a burly character version for the West” was also a big turn off among the niche jrpg crowd (although the father storyline was more compelling than… Read more »
Overhyped:
Gears of War
Demons/Dark Souls
Bioshock (+Infinite)
Metal Gear Solid 4
GTA IV
Braid
Vanquish (by the PG Fanboys)
Live (the “far better” MP service)
Underappreciated:
Brutal Legend
World in Conflict
Crysis 1, Warhead & 2
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Wipeout HD Fury / 2048
ClickR
PB Winterbottom
Dead Nation
Vanquish (by the market)
PS+ (seems like there are still a ton of people who have no idea what great value it delivers)
Here’s my list of overrated games. Strap yourselves in. Any GTA Any Metal Gear Any Driving Game Oblivion and Skyrim All Modern Warfares from 2 onwards EVERY SINGLE Final Fantasy Bioshock 1 and Bioshock infinite are possibly the Most overrated ( especially Infinite ) No wait, I take that back, any Mario and Zelda game. Super especially 2D Mario games. Enough all f#cken ready. Also Mario Galaxy. Same 2D shit, but now shitness in 3D. And yeah I finished it. Dragon Age Origins I could go on for longer but too many games suck for me to list. I like… Read more »
I agree with the notion that Dragon Age: Origins is/was overhyped to the point of nausea. People treated it like the second coming, all I could see was a rather generic RPG with really bad pacing and a NPC who’d try to sell me DLC in game. The only party member I liked was the dog. The others were tolerable at best and mostly just annoying. I finished the game and pretty much all dlc and the expansion, since I bought the ultimate edition and was looking for that great RPG everyone was going on about. What a waste of… Read more »