What makes a game Bad?

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.
If I recall correctly, auto-retargeting in Origins is something you can turn on or off as you like. Same with being able to use Life / Raise in battle, and others. Otherwise yeah. No optional dungeons that make you OP, no MP system, no additional equipment or "modern" items... just the essential FF1 experience with nicer graphics and sound. Heck, I think they even kept the Peninsula of Power.
 

What makes a game Bad?​


It's quite a complicated question because it's like trying to find the winning combination of what makes a game good and the difference between good and bad may vary between people.

Fun is a really subjective principle so I cannot really tell (the same way a movie so bad it becomes comedic and ironically enjoyable).

I'd rate gameplay above anything but some games can still be bad even if the gameplay is functional.
 
If a game is not fun then it's bad no matter what. I've played games where parts of it (gameplay, story, music etc.) are straight up bad but it was fun to play so it's a good game automatically. For me the fun-factor is the most important thing to distinguish a game from being good or bad.
 
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct - Xbox 360 (Renewed)

This should satisfy your need of an answer.
 
this is a question that keeps me up at night. i toss and i turn, visions of fortnite flashing before me, i try to dismiss it by exclaiming "corporate!" "bland!" "manipulative!" as personal justification for calling it bad but i know deep down it's the modern day goof off arena shooter i'm craving but my own stubbornness towards its style (and installing the epic games launcher) keeps me from playing it to this day

nothing makes a game bad and i'm throwing this down right now. yiik (the base game) sucked ass, but its ambition and the odd actual moment of good despite its own attempts to throw itself under a bus made it endearing to people who viewed it second hand, an odd emotional crystal crashing against the tail end of hipster reddit culture

final fantasy stranger of paradise was ragged on in its early days for the odd lines they showed off and the weird numetal loading screen they had, turned out that game was one of the fucking coolest things ever.

god hand is one of the best fucking games ever made and people balk by its first level because it's not 'traditionally' good (read: it uses tank controls?! what a shitload of fuck! who uses tank controls unless they don't know how to make a game?! what other action game about careful positioning and crowd management would ever use tank controls?!)

sonic 06, ass and broken as it is, i'd still call genuinely fun. usually glitches only happen when you push a game's edges and sonic 06 isn't any different but it's got just the right balance (so long as you exclude the loading screen times) of whack design to just actual bugginess to actually getting some fun outta the game that it's still a hoot. maybe it's not the way the designers intended for me to have fun but fuck it i'm having fun anyway

asset flips and whack unity toys on steam can even be fun. unfortunately a lot of them are fire and forget, a lot of them seeming like teenagers trying to ape popular (AND VERY EXPENSIVE) things they like, but there's the odd few that really surprised me with how charming i found them.

i do think that the homogenisation of big boy games is the biggest detractor. a lot of them look and play the same, even down to animations and cosmetic options. i could not tell you the difference between counter strike with power ups and overwatch but it's marvel and call of duty nicki minaj game, and it feels like every action game has just decided you should roll through every attack and get one big swing in before rolling through every other attack. helldivers 2 is the only big game i've had fun with lately since at least it has fun uses of physics, at least it's not fucking around and will just kill you if you get cocky

above all else i hate the 'if it isn't fun' argument but i think i've just been made masochistic. i have very much played some games out of a 'i got this far and i'm not letting you beat me' mindset, but fun as a concept fucking sucks anyway. infra fucking rocks and it's a part of the cursed genre, the forsaken artist's attempt at infiltrating the gamer's space: it's a Walking Simulator. but it's also an adventure game, getting you to really pay attention to the sickass city the creators put a shitton of time into making, turning what most games would have as ambient background stuff into an actual thing you gotta pay attention to.
the new monster hunter's a pretty good example of the opposite for me, since while it's very competently made and put together and it's still fun as hell to beat the shit outta monsters, it does not push back on you in the slightest. it gives you pretty much the whole roster to fight as soon as you hit high rank which doesn't take long, focus mode gives you infinite tracking so as long as you're in vague proximity so your positioning no longer matters, making a mount on command so you can instantly bail from a fight to heal and sharpen for free - it feels all too overtuned to not hurt the player. does it suck? i wanna say it does but it's probably the best selling game ever made


anyways in short i think a game is bad if it isn't good
Post automatically merged:

The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct - Xbox 360 (Renewed)

This should satisfy your need of an answer.
this game rocks and i will not accept slander
 
this is a question that keeps me up at night. i toss and i turn, visions of fortnite flashing before me, i try to dismiss it by exclaiming "corporate!" "bland!" "manipulative!" as personal justification for calling it bad but i know deep down it's the modern day goof off arena shooter i'm craving but my own stubbornness towards its style (and installing the epic games launcher) keeps me from playing it to this day

nothing makes a game bad and i'm throwing this down right now. yiik (the base game) sucked ass, but its ambition and the odd actual moment of good despite its own attempts to throw itself under a bus made it endearing to people who viewed it second hand, an odd emotional crystal crashing against the tail end of hipster reddit culture

final fantasy stranger of paradise was ragged on in its early days for the odd lines they showed off and the weird numetal loading screen they had, turned out that game was one of the fucking coolest things ever.

god hand is one of the best fucking games ever made and people balk by its first level because it's not 'traditionally' good (read: it uses tank controls?! what a shitload of fuck! who uses tank controls unless they don't know how to make a game?! what other action game about careful positioning and crowd management would ever use tank controls?!)

sonic 06, ass and broken as it is, i'd still call genuinely fun. usually glitches only happen when you push a game's edges and sonic 06 isn't any different but it's got just the right balance (so long as you exclude the loading screen times) of whack design to just actual bugginess to actually getting some fun outta the game that it's still a hoot. maybe it's not the way the designers intended for me to have fun but fuck it i'm having fun anyway

asset flips and whack unity toys on steam can even be fun. unfortunately a lot of them are fire and forget, a lot of them seeming like teenagers trying to ape popular (AND VERY EXPENSIVE) things they like, but there's the odd few that really surprised me with how charming i found them.

i do think that the homogenisation of big boy games is the biggest detractor. a lot of them look and play the same, even down to animations and cosmetic options. i could not tell you the difference between counter strike with power ups and overwatch but it's marvel and call of duty nicki minaj game, and it feels like every action game has just decided you should roll through every attack and get one big swing in before rolling through every other attack. helldivers 2 is the only big game i've had fun with lately since at least it has fun uses of physics, at least it's not fucking around and will just kill you if you get cocky

above all else i hate the 'if it isn't fun' argument but i think i've just been made masochistic. i have very much played some games out of a 'i got this far and i'm not letting you beat me' mindset, but fun as a concept fucking sucks anyway. infra fucking rocks and it's a part of the cursed genre, the forsaken artist's attempt at infiltrating the gamer's space: it's a Walking Simulator. but it's also an adventure game, getting you to really pay attention to the sickass city the creators put a shitton of time into making, turning what most games would have as ambient background stuff into an actual thing you gotta pay attention to.
the new monster hunter's a pretty good example of the opposite for me, since while it's very competently made and put together and it's still fun as hell to beat the shit outta monsters, it does not push back on you in the slightest. it gives you pretty much the whole roster to fight as soon as you hit high rank which doesn't take long, focus mode gives you infinite tracking so as long as you're in vague proximity so your positioning no longer matters, making a mount on command so you can instantly bail from a fight to heal and sharpen for free - it feels all too overtuned to not hurt the player. does it suck? i wanna say it does but it's probably the best selling game ever made


anyways in short i think a game is bad if it isn't good
Post automatically merged:


this game rocks and i will not accept slander
Rambo: The Video Game (2014)

How about this then ?
 
Rambo: The Video Game (2014)

How about this then ?
sorta bland, but it's a port of a light gun shooter to a not light gun and that'll make most games more boring anyway. terminator and robocop games at least show that this company knows what they're doing
Post automatically merged:

WOKE BULLSHIT!!!
we're throwing you off a dam for this one
 
sorta bland, but it's a port of a light gun shooter to a not light gun and that'll make most games more boring anyway. terminator and robocop games at least show that this company knows what they're doing
Post automatically merged:


we're throwing you off a dam for this one
Let me help you with that,
a group of men are fighting on a street with a netflix logo in the background

Post automatically merged:

The gameplay is what makes me leave a game altogether, a game could have the crappiest plot possible and I'll still enjoy it unless the gameplay makes the game and absolute snoozefest or it's unnecesarily complicated to be enjoyable.
a woman with long hair is holding a bow and arrow in her hand .

Reminds me of this, don't get me wrong the game is good, but it's way longer for me.
 
I would say gameplay, then again there are aspects that can keep one hooked to the game.

For example, I really love MHFU, but omg the hit boxes and jank to it. But I can't stop playing it because the music, the areas - how beautiful and charming they are...

So I think what makes a game bad it's mostly when YOU stop having fun, or rather don't see any motivation to keep playing the game.
 
When a game is difficult enough to make you suffer and have to learn very well the mechanics.
I don't want to waste any time with a learning curve, I want to be "good enough" with just one day of playing. And that's why I don't like any Souls derivates or any roguelike meant for that.
 
WOKE BULLSHIT!!!
Assassin's Creed Shadows isn't bad because it features a black samurai that may or may not be historically accurate (the franchise never aimed to be as such) but because it's an absolutely mediocre Ubislop game before anything else.

Rambo: The Video Game (2014)

How about this then ?
First Blood should've been a MGS clone imo since Snake is clearly half inspired by John (and Plissken from the Escape From movie franchise).

sonic 06, ass and broken as it is, i'd still call genuinely fun. usually glitches only happen when you push a game's edges and sonic 06 isn't any different but it's got just the right balance (so long as you exclude the loading screen times) of whack design to just actual bugginess to actually getting some fun outta the game that it's still a hoot. maybe it's not the way the designers intended for me to have fun but fuck it i'm having fun anyway
Interestingly what caused me more rage in 2006 was not the glitches themselves (I didn't encounter too many of them to the point I couldn't play the game) but the extremely long loading screens and massive slowdowns each time robots and boxes exploded.

This is legitimately worse than Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark and then again those game were salvaged by their intrinsic qualities (and the XBLA port of each made them smooth 60 FPS).

Project 06 making the experience smoother helps a ton. Too bad the normal gameplay feels so clunky and slow compared to Heroes, SA2 and SA1. I miss how dynamic and precise the jumping and running felt in the Adventure games. In the boost games Sonic feels clunky when he's not boosting but the level design compensated it thankfully.

When a game is difficult enough to make you suffer and have to learn very well the mechanics.
I don't want to waste any time with a learning curve, I want to be "good enough" with just one day of playing. And that's why I don't like any Souls derivates or any roguelike meant for that.
Then you will have to let down most 8-16 bits era games that were built like that.
 
When a game is difficult enough to make you suffer and have to learn very well the mechanics.
I don't want to waste any time with a learning curve, I want to be "good enough" with just one day of playing. And that's why I don't like any Souls derivates or any roguelike meant for that.

And yet Souls-likes are some of the best selling games in the past decade or so. Kind of proving my point that it is all subjective and there's no way to distill what makes a game bad to a formula. Heck, there are people who enjoy playing shitty games for fun, so being "bad" doesn't seem to be a complete barrier to enjoyment to some.
 
And yet Souls-likes are some of the best selling games in the past decade or so. Kind of proving my point that it is all subjective and there's no way to distill what makes a game bad to a formula. Heck, there are people who enjoy playing shitty games for fun, so being "bad" doesn't seem to be a complete barrier to enjoyment to some.
I think most Roguelites and Souls-like took the wrong notes from their eponymous games.

This is why FromSoftware are still often called the master to their own genre.

As for roguelikes and roguelite RNG is a major part but these games are meant to be played in short sessions.
 
yiik (the base game) sucked ass, but its ambition
I see your post's point, and I largely agree with it, but I don't think it's really fair to conflate "a game's development history/background is fascinating" with any actual judgement on the final product's quality. I could just read that shit on Wikipedia, I don't need to interact with the game at all.
 
nothing makes a game bad and i'm throwing this down right now. yiik (the base game) sucked ass, but its ambition and the odd actual moment of good despite its own attempts to throw itself under a bus made it endearing to people who viewed it second hand, an odd emotional crystal crashing against the tail end of hipster reddit culture
YiiK forgot that video games are also about gameplay.

I actually like the low poly art style and the themes around those internet mysteries (like the woman in the elevator) but this game actually is a stain on Indies and made people believe that they are arrogant kind of video games sadly...

I still love that chapter in that game

And sorry but ambition means nothing to me. You can be as ambitious as you want if the final product is bad it does not matter whatsoever.

I see your post's point, and I largely agree with it, but I don't think it's really fair to conflate "a game's development history/background is fascinating" with any actual judgement on the final product's quality. I could just read that shit on Wikipedia, I don't need to interact with the game at all.
Yes, the "What happened?" series is interesting to understand but it doesn't excuse the product.
 
And yet Souls-likes are some of the best selling games in the past decade or so. Kind of proving my point that it is all subjective and there's no way to distill what makes a game bad to a formula. Heck, there are people who enjoy playing shitty games for fun, so being "bad" doesn't seem to be a complete barrier to enjoyment to some.
That is exactly the description of a hobby. I don't recall anything in the world that we don't do for living that is objective. And btw, I am one of those who play specific shitty games for fun, and when a game is multi platform I tend to choose the most graphically limited one because I want to feel we are 15 years ago :)
 
video games being called video games has been the biggest mistake categorisation has ever made
Sorry if I sound old school, pedantic if not even elitist but in video games there's game.

If there's more video and story than actual game then it doesn't qualify as such in my eyes.
 

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