What makes a game Bad?

[FlameSpice]

For me, the things that make a game generally bad are the movement, and controls, A promising example is DMC2 ever since I've tried finishing all of the Devil May Cry games I've genuinely had a frustrating time playing.

Video game quality doesn't matter in my opinion if it's fun. As long as I'm having fun I don't care about the graphics and story.

What about you?

 

[Taukyrie]

If the gameplay isn't fun imo. Like I started a game a few months ago and despite enjoying the story, I ended up dropping it because I felt the gameplay was too clunky.

 

[Stolas_SMT]

Why to myself ... I'd say the most ill-content component of a game would be faulty controls! Not even the lakes of sulfur in hell- can compare to the SHEER agony of a jump being in an arch, instead of something you can regularly control. MAY I also add, I am playing these games without any opposable thumbs- makes any playthrough quite dreadful.

 

[GardeniaSky]

Any time a non-platforming game tries to add platforming puzzles with their dogshit collision and controls.

Just why.

 

[Action_Hank]

It's all about the gameplay. Why would you waste 60+ hours on a story that you could get in an hour long youtube compilation video? Most fundamental are the controls and if they're calibrated correctly for the game type(Action/fighting need responsive button presses, platformers need tight jumping, etc). Then come the finer details(is advancement rewarding? Are encounters exciting? Is collection worthwhile?) If the story is simply
>Bad guys took some chick and you just gotta do what's right
that's fine.
I watch movies and read books for stories. I play games to be PART of the story.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

For me, the things that make a game generally bad are the movement, and controls, A promising example is DMC2 ever since I've tried finishing all of the Devil May Cry games I've genuinely had a frustrating time playing.

Video game quality doesn't matter in my opinion if it's fun. As long as I'm having fun I don't care about the graphics and story.

What about you?

If the gameplay sucks (Maten no Soumetsu)
If the main part of the game sucks because it's tedious (Xenoblade 2)
If the music sucks (32X Doom)
If the game legitimately looks like shit (I mean Ronde levels of bad, not the modern game that looks slightly below par and is subjected to "PS2 game" allegations)
If the characters suck (Dustbin, YIIK)
If it's a port and there's a better option, even if it lacks content (Metal Slug PSX)

And especially if all of the above

 

[fake-kun]

To me, a game is bad when it fails to achieve its design goals.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Bad maps
Awful camera
Repetitive design
Idea of difficulty being "Lets make everything a damage sponge that kills you in a hit"
Horrendous menu navigation
Mechanics designed by some that never played more than one level of any other game of the genre he is making
Way too many enemies/Random Encounters

I would say bad music or effects, but since i started playing with music or other videos playing the background only using the game's audio for key moments i stopped minding them

 

[Raziya The Seeker]

Simple. It stops being fun.

And yes, plenty of games will have a moment where they lull. Just like a relationship, a game worth playing will be worth any and all suffering involved. When a game just isn't worth it any longer, it becomes bad. And some games, just like some people, will do this immediately. Others, further down the line.

Personal pet peeves include:

• No variety in enemies or strategy, just blast away at the same samey baddies with the same samey damaging moves, rinse-and-repeat ad nauseum. It feels like too many JRPGs do that and it irks me.
• No variety in the game's genre or subgenre, even the smallest thing to make it stand out.
• No challenge whatsoever, or when the game loses its challenge for too long and gets boring.
• Challenge for the wrong reasons -- unfair, grind-heavy, too damn hard, too RNG-dependent, buggy / janky, online play is easily cheesed by basement-dwelling troglodytes, et cetera.
• Needing to break the game over my knee with exploits, broken builds, etc to stand a chance.
• A section of the game that's too long in the tooth and becomes boring.
• Bad music and/or sound design, doubly so for straight-up ear rape.
• In games where story's involved, a lame-ass story that I don't want to see resolved.
• Lame-ass characters I can't get behind, or would want to play as, even if story isn't important.
• Excessive redundant items and equipment; hack-n'-slashes are often guilty of this.
• When a remake alters the original too hard in terms of content and/or challenge, or leaves out stuff from earlier versions (thanks for the reminder, @Evaccaneer Doom) -- Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster is on my anti-bucket-list, and FF1&2 Dawn of Souls on my 'never again' list for this reason, I'd rather play the version of FF1 in Final Fantasy Origins.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Why to myself ... I'd say the most ill-content component of a game would be faulty controls! Not even the lakes of sulfur in hell- can compare to the SHEER agony of a jump being in an arch, instead of something you can regularly control. MAY I also add, I am playing these games without any opposable thumbs- makes any playthrough quite dreadful.

This is a good point I forgot about. Ultrakill's a great game but it is quite the pain to play on Steam Deck. It all seems fine and dandy until you try dashing or using the whiplash at all. Especially the latter, it is incredibly pace-breaking to have to stop in my tracks to press two shoulder buttons at the same time.

 

[Jediuser]

For me, the things that make a game generally bad are the movement, and controls, A promising example is DMC2 ever since I've tried finishing all of the Devil May Cry games I've genuinely had a frustrating time playing.

Video game quality doesn't matter in my opinion if it's fun. As long as I'm having fun I don't care about the graphics and story.

What about you?

I honestly have a different angle on DmC2.

I didn't have much problem with the controls or movement in the game. I actually think movement was handled pretty well. I just found DmC2 really, really boring, just a major downgrade from the original. Dante inexplicably had his personality removed, enemies are pushovers, the upgrade system is a joke, the bosses are weak (most can be beaten simply by going into devil trigger and madly firing), and the urban setting feels really bland compared to the gothic setting of the other games.

Also, it's the only game in the series that doesn't keep you confined to a single room/arena when enemies appear, meaning it's really easy to simply run past most combat encounters.

 

[moonbits]

That's a hard question. If I go into specifics it they tend to contradict depending on the genre. The best I can say now it's when the sum of it's parts don't really provide any satisfaction o feel adequate. There could be games like.. Ys 9 that do everything I expect but yet it just doesn't spark anything.

 

[Xdqwerty]

It not being very fun if at all

 

[Zachery2112]

The hard truth is that there is no such thing as a bad game. Video games are art. They are not only subjective, but they sometimes cause reactions that are negative. Just because a game can be frustrating or annoying does not mean it is objectively bad as many other people could enjoy the elements that you hate.

Since video games are also such complex and interactable works of art, it is hard to objectively determine if something is good or bad. The closest we can get is when video games just don't work as they are intended. In other words, glitches and buggy games. After all, if art is about expression and glitches break away from the expression, then the artist, developers, failed at the art.

Of course, that ignores the side of the audience, the players. They have a very straight-forward perception of the art. If the player does not like it: it sucks. It is as simple as that. There are plenty of ways to get a general perception of the audience like with review aggregates, but they ultimately are polling a selection of the audience and not the entirety.

I've kind of gotten philosophical in my answer. But what I'm trying to say is that video games are art and sometimes the only way to judge art is through your personal experience. If you think a game sucks, then that is your truth.

TL;DR: Bethesda games are glitchy and suck. Also, all we have is love.

 

[Jediuser]

It varies.

Some games are bad simply because of bad game design, like DmC2 or Gotham Knights.

Some games are bad because of buggy programming and/or poor control, like Sonic '06.

Some are a combination of the above, like Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

The single most important things that a game has to be, to me, it's fun. It can de fun to read, look at and especially play, but if I'm not having an overall good time for any reason then it's not a good game to me

 

[moonbits]

Some games are bad because of buggy programming and/or poor control, like Sonic '06.

Kids who grew up playing this game are now defending it and it frankly, scares me.

 

[fake-kun]

Kids who grew up playing this game are now defending it and it frankly, scares me.

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.

 

[Graw]

Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster is on my anti-bucket-list

FF1 pixel remaster is just so horrendously easy. Even going back to the vancian magic system the pixel remaster version is barely a game. I did a playthrough of it a little while ago and I pretty much didn't have to do anything after Marsh Cave. I just walked from place to place auto battling everything and using hi-potions occasionally until the end of the game. It was really disappointing. About the only good things I can say about it is that I enjoyed the updated graphics and soundtrack.

I would say I actually prefer the GBA version over it even though it felt pretty dumbed down and easy as well. It was still more challenging even with the MP system.

It's been a long time since I played the Origins version did they add in auto retargetting in that version? That's a big change to FF1 in the remakes that gets overlooked a lot that really neuters the combat. FF1's combat isn't very complex. Being forced to carefully choose your targets in battle added a layer of strategy to the battles that the game desperately needs that's lacking in all the remakes if I remember right.

As for the thread in general it's hard not to echo what everyone else has said already but sloppy, tedious, repetitive level design is a big one for me along with janky controls.

 

[Antilocal123]

Idk, I hate every video game so they all suck to me.

 

[moonbits]

Idk, I hate every video game so they all suck to me.

you are hurting the kids with all this edge

 

[Antilocal123]

you are hurting the kids with all this edge

 

[DeadVoivod]

Microtransactions.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

I tend to agree with those who say its all pretty subjective. I used to play those slow ass tank control Resident Evil games and think they were peak but apparently they are an example of "bad controls" to the modern audience. Some people claim that Super Metroid has bad controls. And there are some newer games that I can't get into at all. The only bad game is the one you don't derive any enjoyment out of.

 

[Ikagura]

Kids who grew up playing this game are now defending it and it frankly, scares me.

Now if you would take Project 06, a fan-game that kinda trims out the worse of the game, I could understand some of its qualities that people would find (well, despite the inherent flaws) but in all times there are people defending things regardless of quality. Even Sonic Boom had even less to salvage and Forces is so plain and bland that it makes it functional but fundamentally worse as it tries nothing compared to previous entries.

But I'd argue that Sonic 2006 being the herald of bad game like how Atari E.T. is taken as the symbol of the video game krash of the early 80's is more of an Internet trend (and popular example) when I could argue that any asset flip or even more recent games that are even more filled with issues managed to be unfortunately worse because you can always go further in that aspect.

That's a hard question. If I go into specifics it they tend to contradict depending on the genre. The best I can say now it's when the sum of it's parts don't really provide any satisfaction o feel adequate. There could be games like.. Ys 9 that do everything I expect but yet it just doesn't spark anything.

As for the Ys series I'd argue that the genuinely bad games were Wanderer from Ys and Kefin (and maybe a bit of Mask of the Sun but it's more mediocre than bad in my opinion) and even then Kefin is just feeling too easy and short as a SNES action adventure/RPG game when we got ALTTP and Secret of Mana on the same hardware.

Memories of Celceta was sadly a flawed remake (despite using Seven's gameplay style) so this is mediocre more as a remake than as a modern Ys game. Ys VI the Ark of Napishtim suffers from clunkiness but once again it's the first true 3D Ys game and the first original entry after a hiatus

Ys IX could've had more to it with the Monstrum powers but pales in comparison of VIII but I'd say that X is actually the first ever modern Ys game to actually disappoint me since I started playing the series.

It varies.

Some games are bad simply because of bad game design, like DmC2 or Gotham Knights.

Some games are bad because of buggy programming and/or poor control, like Sonic '06.

Some are a combination of the above, like Duke Nukem Forever.

Duke Forever legitimately pains me when you've seen the 2001 trailer.