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Black & White - Most Overrated Game Ever? 129

Posted by simoniker from the does-matter-if-you're dept.
Following on from our earlier story about GameSpy's 25 Most Overrated Games countdown, the Top 5 have been announced, and Lionhead's PC-based 'god game', Black & White, made it to the top spot, with GameSpy suggesting: "Sometimes... people want to love a game so badly that its reputation runs away with itself." Congratulations to an an anonymous reader for guessing right, before another commenter noticed screenshots for the Top 5 had already been uploaded, doh. Meanwhile, Penny Arcade chime in on the chart, commenting: "When you deny the profound effect of Donkey Kong Country's fully rendered sprites in 1994, making the system a bulwark against the 32-bit revolution, there is no educating you", and illustrating: "If a company that overhypes games does a feature on overhyped games, are they overhyping the game?"
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Black & White - Most Overrated Game Ever? More

Black & White - Most Overrated Game Ever?

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  • It was entertaining at least. (Score:5, Funny)

    by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:26PM (#7006944)
    I'm not sure I would call it the most overrated game ever, over dogged on game ever perhaps. I mean yeah it was a mess, and yeah it didn't even come close to what it was supposed to do as described by its creator, the missions were lame yada yada yada.

    But despite all that, I did at least have fun with it. Teaching my giant cow to eat children and crap all over my worshipers homes was great fun. Rolling flaming boulders into my own villages entertained me for far longer than it should have I suppose.

    Broken, definately, but at least it was fun.

    • Re:It was entertaining at least. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:41PM (#7007119) Homepage
      They said several times that some of the games on the list were fun, but still overhyped. I do disagree with their ordering though -- B&W was nowhere near as overhyped as Daikatana. And, as you say, B&W at least managed to deliver on some of its promises while Daikatana delivered pretty much nothing but a waste of HD and CD space.

      • Re:It was entertaining at least. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sancho ( 17056 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:53PM (#7007244) Homepage
        But overhyped is ever so slightly different from overrated. After Daikatana shipped (hell, even slightly before it shipped), it started getting negative reviews by the dozens. Everyone was talking about how much it sucked. It took much longer for Black and White to take its lumps. Even after it shipped, it was getting rave reviews about the ingenuity, the interface, etc. In fact, it took quite awhile for the negative reviews to start coming in, particularly ones that didn't involve actual bugs in the software.

        • Dumb Idea (Score:4, Interesting)

          by (54)T-Dub ( 642521 ) * <tpaine@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Friday September 19, 2003 @05:49PM (#7008751) Journal
          I think the whole idea of "top 25 overrated games" was a dumb idea for a list. As Tycho pointed out their criteria for "overrated" varied between:
          1) over hyped by the publisher
          2) over rated by the critics
          3) under developed and being rushed to the shelves
          4) being a sequel that didn't live up to it's predecessor
          With such a wide array of criteria you are sure to piss off most gamers because every gamer has a sacred cow. Maybe that's what they were trying to do to make it a "conversational piece" but I think it alienates their main target audience more.

          I've thought of a couple Lists that I think would be much more interesting :
          1) Best games to be rushed to market (#1 Tribes 2)
          2) Most poorly implemented good ideas (#1 Battlefield 1942)

          Who can argue that Tribes 2 wasn't rushed to market 6 months to early *cough* UE *cough* . Or that the interface to BF1942 isn't HORRIBLE (ever tried to kick someone? forget it). I mean i loved t2 and played quite a bit of BF, but that doesn't mean they don't have their faults. Instead of saying a game is "overrated" and thereby invalidating everything about it why not point out its flaws in a way that you can't argue with.
          • Or that the interface to BF1942 isn't HORRIBLE (ever tried to kick someone? forget it).

            A couple of patches ago, the administrator interface was cleaned up considerably. For instance, now "map Bocage" will change the map (before it was "admin.changemap Bocage"). Plus, for commands like kicking and the buddy list (thats new too) player numbers are displayed in the score screen.
            • But you shouldn't have to bring down the console menu and type in some stupid command. There should be a GUI interface for it. And though kicking was made a lot easier, but people still don't even know how to open the console to type the command. They should do it like tribes 2. To initiate a vote you hit esc and use the gui to select whom/what to vote on. Then once the vote is initiated an announcment is made (verbal and visual) and then people press insert (yes) or delete (no). These commands are also dis
          • Good points on GameSly's nonsense. I've been ignoring them since that Joost asshole tried to trick me into giving him my (valueable) domain name.

            But, regarding bf1942 -- I don't get your point. The interface for bf1942, not unlike its amazing engine that can generate those wonderful huge landscapes with 64 players scrambling all about and dozens of vehicles (of all kinds), grounbreaking, awesome, yet relatively immature. In fact, it's the same console-based interface from Quake1. To kick a player, yo
            • Things about the bf1942 interface that i don't like:
              Searching for a server : PAIN IN THE ASS. The filter is cumbersome, there are no saved filters, there is no way to find your friends (except by getting the IP), and you have to re-type your criteria EVERY time. All that would be bearable if there wasn't a delay between when click join and when it actually joins (allowing someone else to get that 1 available spot). In the end i have to resort to using some third party program which is rediculous.

              Maybe i
        • Well, that's what surprised me too. Even sites which ripped the game to shreds in their review, still had a knee jerk reaction to give B&W a high score.

          E.g., take Firing Squad's review. Their review picked every single aspect of the horrible gameplay, retarded gestures, etc. Without going into how horrible _I_ thought the game was, it was obvious that the _reviewer_ hated every moment of it. He even went on to explicitly say that it might be good for people who never played a game before, and thus don'

    • Re:It was entertaining at least. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The Evil Couch ( 621105 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:52PM (#7007230) Homepage
      I agree. the game was entirely what you put into it, much like some of the more popular games of more recent history, namely GTA3 and GTA:VC. all three games had plots that were pretty canned and missions that weren't particuarly inventive or engaging. just more of the same old thing that we've seen time and time again.

      what set all the games apart, was that they let you roam free and do virtually anything that you wanted to do. for those that didn't have much of an interest in playing with what essentially a digital pet or playing as a god, the immediate gratification of beating someone to a bloody pool on the sidewalk with a bat or picking up a hooker in a sportscar rapidly overshadowed playing with a more in-depth tamagotchi.

      I know that black and white was around before GTA3, but I would still rank it right there with the last two grand theft auto games, simply because the draw is the same. if black and white recieved absurdly high marks, it was because they were well-deserved at the time. they still are, really. there are very few games older than a year or so old and black and white is one of them.

      personally, I think that gamespy is just trying to throw off their image of being a bunch of corporate sell-outs and yes-men by taking a few potshots at easy targets.

      • The article is funny. "Though we were one of the ones to give this game such critical acclaim when it was released, we realize now that we were just riding the bandwagon for fear of having a different opinion" A site like this just shouldn't do an article about overhyped games, cause they are the main ones doing the hyping to start with. What's the point?

    • Re:It was entertaining at least. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @06:10AM (#7011091) Journal
      You know when a game is _really_ crap?

      I was so stumped as to how could some reviewers give high scores to that pile of festering Black & White crap, I decided I'd see what my co-workers say about it. We had quite a few gaming maniacs, including one which had been in drone mode for a year straight, drooling over the upcoming B&W.

      So I give them the CD. I even try not to influence them to my negative view of the game. Like I go, "hey, cool, there's this game where you play god, and can train a cow and stuff. wanna try it?"

      So they'd take the CD. And bring it back after a day or two. Without exception, none of them liked it. At all. Even the former drooling fanboy all of a sudden tried to avoid talking about the game at all.

      E.g.: Only _one_ of them was confortable with those mouse gestures. That one was one of our graphics artists, and very skilled with a mouse indeed. The rest (myself included) just wished that, since the retarded interface already painted the symbols at the bottom of the screen, we'd be allowed to just bloody click on them.

      _That_'s how wide the gap was between the hype and Joe Average's impressions about that game. If that's not what overrated means, I don't know what is.

  • Revolutionary UI, but too few levels... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:27PM (#7006960)
    Black & White may have had some issues, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The only flaw I saw with it was that it should have come with 20+ levels instead of only (was it?) 5 levels.

    The User Interface for the game had the best "feel" I've ever experienced in a 3D game. It was very easy to get around the world and manipulate the objects within it. It was also amazing how you could seamlessly scroll all the way out.

    The "gestures" concept was also quite novel at the time.

    It's a shame it did so poorly. I would have loved to see what they could have done with some further refinement to the GUI/3D Engine.

    All they would have needed to do was design a few dozen levels and the game would have done so much better...

  • Gamespy's been smokin some crack. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:36PM (#7007073)
    There whole deal the FF7 was over rated because FFT, and FFX were better is just bizarre. I think they've forgotten to consider the time at which it was released.

    It's easy to look back 5 years or whatever and say that FF7's graphics are mediocre, etc. But at the time it was released it broke new ground all over the place.

    The argument that FF6 had a better story is valid, that's fine, but damn if you can't just rip on it for not comparing up to FFT, or FFX.

    Also one of the contributer comments remarked that the story just wasn't as epic. How the hell wasn't it? A genetically engineered super-villain hell bent on destroying the world, and damn near succeeding isn't epic anymore? Ok, ok, sure in FF6 the world was actually nearly destroyed, but as for the other games, the epic level wasn't quite the same.

    Was FF7 overrated when it released? Hell no. Is it overrated now? In my opinion no. Is it one of the most overrated games of all time? Not even close.

    • Words from someone who doesn't like FF7: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lendrick ( 314723 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @03:28PM (#7007622) Homepage Journal
      I don't like FF7 much myself (I prefer 6, 8, and 10), but that doesn't mean it deserved every drop of hype it received. Yes, it lacked a certain amount of polish; but that was largely because at the time it was probably the most ambitious game ever made. In fact, I would go so far as to say that later FF games were slightly less ambitious, if perhaps more polished.

      Rough edges aside, though, it certainly wasn't overrated.

    • Re:Gamespy's been smokin some crack. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's easy to look back 5 years or whatever and say that FF7's graphics are mediocre, etc. But at the time it was released it broke new ground all over the place.

      At the time, some did complain about the "Popeye" look to the character models. That's not something new that Gamespy writers just thought of while looking back at the game.

      How the hell wasn't it? A genetically engineered super-villain hell bent on destroying the world, and damn near succeeding isn't epic anymore?

      Gotta agree on this one. Anyth

  • I bought B&W the day it came out (Score:5, Interesting)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:40PM (#7007115)
    I loved Syndicate and Populous. I thought I was going to get something fantastic. I did. It was a fantastic piece of shit.

    I found showstopping bug after showstopping bug. Complaints in the official forum were being deleted rather than addressed. I literally spent 24 hours trying to get the game to run for more than five minutes at a time, and once it finally did, I found a different bug that prevented me from completing the first scenario.

    Add to that the sheer amount of repetitive handholding involved in play (feeding your people, training your beastie), and the obnoxious gesture system, and you have something I wouldn't play even if I was given a salary to do it.

    I ultimately wrote to EA and asked for my money back. Wanna know the good part? They gave it to me.
    • I downloaded it off Kazaa, and I'm glad I did. It's the only game I ever downloaded, because I usually never take a look at that particular genre. I only usually look at flight sims, and whatever looks like it'll be like Age of Empires.

      So, because of the hype, I committed myself to the big download, fired up the game, and realized that it completely sucked. If I had actually spent the money to buy it, I would have been very pissed off.
      .
    • It was a fantastic piece of shit.

      I thought it was a craptastic piece of shit myself. Glad you got your money back. Wish I had had the chutzpah to ask.

    • It ran great on the 1.4GHz P4 Dell I had at work, but I couldn't get it to run at home at all.

      I actually really enjoyed the game once I got used to the controls.

  • Daikatana overrated ?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Militant Libertarian ( 696302 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:42PM (#7007140) Homepage
    All the reviews I read were identicle to mine: Daikatana is complete crap..

    Maybe they were trying to say that there was not a rating low enough to express the complete crappiness level of Daikatana, so therefore any rating given to it would have been way higher than it deserved.

  • Who the hell do they think they are... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by s88 ( 255181 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:46PM (#7007177) Homepage
    There are so many quotes in that piece that make me upset.

    Lets start with Halo.
    "Look, I'm glad so many people loved Halo. My beef's not with you."
    So you are well aware of the overwhelming popularity of the game, yet you think it is "over rated." Apparently you and I differ greatly on our definition of overrated, as well as your role as a game reviewer. I don't give a crap what your personal opinion is of the game. Your job, as a "professional" reviewer, is to evaluate the game and make a judgment about what most gamers will think about the game. They go on to attach the other reviewers for giving Halo high marks. Well guess what, its STILL fucking popular! If its so overrated, then why can used game stores still charge 50 bucks for it? With the numbers it sold in, the used shelves should be filled with the worthless things if the game was so overrated. Get off your high horse and re-read your job description. Its a good game, its extremely popular, and so within the realm of game reviews, is by definition, deserving of high ratings, and certainly not overrated.

    Mortal Kombat:
    "The game was an instant hit... Fans persevered, but its popularity was driven more by infamy than quality. "
    WTF are you talking about!? Now you are saying it was popular, but for the wrong reasons? People liked it, people played it, people continued to like and play it; where is the problem? Who frickin cares why it was popular... are you honestly going to sit there and type that people dropped countless quarters into Mortal Kombat machines because of "infamy"? Get a clue.

    Again, dismount and join society.

    Scott

    • Re:Who the hell do they think they are... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alkaiser ( 114022 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @03:01PM (#7007344) Homepage
      Want to know which game site you can trust?

      The one that doesn't presume it knows so much that they can spew out a Top X Games of all time in Category Y.

      I seriously hate this make a list journalism. To top it off, Gamespy's retarded.

      Look at some of the games that made it. Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. This is highly overrated...by WHO?! I don't know anyone who likes this game...or Daikatana for that matter. I think they started making an Overhyped list and then realized, "Oh wait a second, they advertise WITH US...we can't make fun of them!"

      Then Starfleet Command...who here has played this besides me? And I liked the game. If you don't, it's probably because you didn't like Star Fleet Battles, the game it was based off of.

      I figured games.slashdot.org was for game news, not the latest crap article someone was spitting out. Hey, when's the next new insertcredit incisive something or other coming out? I need see if there's really something worse than Gamespy out there now.
      • Dunno the rest of those games, but Daikatana was definitely overhyped, right up to the day it shipped at which point it was crucified.
      • Amen! I think halfway through they got confused if they were making a pre-release hype list or a post-release overrated list. BC3KAD was DEFINATELY hyped like crazy, and sounded awesome. But the publisher forced a shit release, so it was panned in the reviews.

        I don't mind Gamespy doing lists like these so much... they're kind of interesting. I mean, they often have completely WRONG opinions, but at least it's interesting.

        I played the Starfleet Commands. Solid B minus in my book for the series. They
      • Then Starfleet Command...who here has played this besides me? And I liked the game. If you don't, it's probably because you didn't like Star Fleet Battles, the game it was based off of.

        That was the entry that perplexed me the most. They criticize the interface as being too complex, but if you give the game an hour you can easily master it (and once it IS mastered, it becomes as natural as any FPS layout). They complain that the pace was too slow, but Starfleet Battles was always about big, relatively un

      • Want to know which game site you can trust?

        The one that doesn't presume it knows so much that they can spew out a Top X Games of all time in Category Y.

        *cough*lookatmysig*cough* :p

    • Re:Who the hell do they think they are... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Friday September 19, 2003 @03:21PM (#7007550)
      If its so overrated, then why can used game stores still charge 50 bucks for it?

      Before you read what I'm about to say, just remember: you asked.

      There's only one reason why a game can continue to sell for $50 used over a year after release, and this is true regardless of how good the game actually is: It's relative quality compared to all the other games on the (expensive) platform is high. That means that Halo is still popular because there is a decided lack of quality titles for the platform it has been exclusive on since the game was released. Were such quality titles available, Halo's popularity would have passed no matter how good the game was.

      Besides, I game has to be highly thought of to be overrated.
    • Halo's fun. But it's not exactly anything new. Not two years ago, and not now. It's fun to play multiplayer with your buddies (I do all the time), but there's seriously nothing special about it.

      f its so overrated, then why can used game stores still charge 50 bucks for it?
      I think the fact that it IS popular, even though it's a ho-hum game is the primary indicator of its Overrated-ness. As mentioned elsewhere, its price is only a reflection of economic factors, not on its quality as a game. It's over
    • Someone forgot their happy pills this morning.
    • They're called "experts."

      A lot of people seem to be under the impression that everyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone elses. This is patently false. Some people are smart, some people are dumb. Some people are well versed in a subject, some people are dilettantes.

      When determining the quality of any work of art, the opinion of an expert is worth more than the opinions of a million Joe Sixpacks.

      Of course, when determining the amount of money a work makse, this all goes out the window and Joe Si

      • People play games for entertainment, not because they are works of art. Game "experts" are not critiquing a game as art, they are making a judgement on the merits of the game as a game.
        • It may be true now that people don't play games now to appreciate them as works of art, but I hope that's not the way it will always be. And experts are going to point the way. I think insertcredit.com [insertcredit.com] is a step in the right direction.

          (Aside: Anyone who thinks a game can't (or shouldn't) be art needs to take a look at Ico [icothegame.com].)

          In either case, though, my point still stands.

      • They're called "experts."

        Oh come on. If they were experts, they might at least be able to find games that actually fit the word they chose for the list: "overrated." Daikatana, Super Mario Sunshine, Black & White...All of these are examples of games that were, and are, "rated" relatively low despite the hype. SMS was [rightly] criticized as being Super Mario 3D without the accessibility/difficulty curve, Daikatana was shunned as being a barely [or below] average FPS and Black & White was tarred

      • That is a pretty elitist attitude, in my opinion.

        A lot of people seem to be under the impression that everyone's opinion is just as valid as anyone elses. This is patently false. Some people are smart, some people are dumb. Some people are well versed in a subject, some people are dilettantes.

        When determining the quality of any work of art, the opinion of an expert is worth more than the opinions of a million Joe Sixpacks.

        That's an embarassingly silly remark.

        There is no such thing as an objective mea
    • I dropped quarters into MK. I admit it. My uncle owned a grocery store and had collected over $100 in Candian quarters. I took them to the local arcade. The only "cool" game that they worked on was MK. Street Fighter II just wouldn't take them. So I played MK.

      The game was terrible to play. No depth. I could only do one fatality. But I played because it was free. I later got caught up in the hype and bought it for the SNES. More money wasted.

      The arcade also had quarter pizza in the evenings, but guess what
    • Mortal Kombat:
      "The game was an instant hit... Fans persevered, but its popularity was driven more by infamy than quality. "
      WTF are you talking about!? Now you are saying it was popular, but for the wrong reasons? People liked it, people played it, people continued to like and play it; where is the problem? Who frickin cares why it was popular... are you honestly going to sit there and type that people dropped countless quarters into Mortal Kombat machines because of "infamy"? Get a clue.

      Seriously! Mortal
      • Seriously! Mortal Kombat played a big part in my early college years. One of my fondest memories was the day when I beat twenty-one people in a row, securing my initials in the #1 position of the rankings. It was in a Del Taco during lunchtime and even middle-aged office workers were crowding around, watching me beat all comers.

        Dude, I remember that! It was absolutely freakin' unbelievable! Just kidding, no one but you and God remember, and probably only you care.

  • Some of their profiles on the games seem like "well, we all thought it was good, but for the sake of flamewars let's whine about popular games".

    Example the first: Donkey Kong Country. I'm not going to say it was a stronger game than, say, Yoshi's Island (which they mention in that profile), but it wasn't worthless. It helped to popularize the use of "bonus areas" in every level, and because of that it gained instant replay value. It had two different characters with different abilities that (unlike, sa

    • I never understood the appeal of Donkey Kong Country's graphics. You say they were godlike, and a lot of people seem to share that opinion, not least the 1994-era press.

      DKC's graphics were 3D, drawn by a computer, whereas the graphics of most other platformers were drawn by people. In my opinion, art created by people has always looked superior to art created by a machine. 2D just looks better than 3D, plain and simple. What 3D rendering buys you is not graphical quality, but immersion. A sense of "t

    • When I first looked over the top 25 list, I thought I read Donkey Kong 64, and agreed completely. That was an overhyped game with tedious play and no big advance in graphics. I was shocked when I noticed they were talking about Donkey Kong Country.

      Donkey Kong Country really blew everything else out of the water. It breathed new life into the aging SNES platform. The level of detail and the animation really pushed the envelope for the SNES hardware, and was way better than anything else at the time. I can't
    • It had two different characters with different abilities that (unlike, say, SMB2) you could swap between.

      Explain this, please. SMB2 had 4 characters with different abilities and using certain ones on certain levels made a world of difference. There were definitely areas where the princess was the better choice than toad or vice versa. The only one I rarely used was mario because once of the characters could always do something better than him. I'm not flaming, I just never played DKC so I don't understand

      • Let me rephrase that. In DKC and its ilk, you have, at certain points of the game (most of the time, actually) two characters, a la Sonic 2/3. Usually one just follows behind the other, but you can at any point swap between them mid-level... Diddy jumped higher, while DK had the ground pounding ability and a better jump attack. In SMB2 you could change between the characters, but only when you died or reached a new level.

  • They are part of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by marvinx ( 9011 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:50PM (#7007215) Homepage
    I thought this whole countdown was pretty funny. Who better to complain about how games are overhyped than... those who do the hyping!

    Let's think about this. GameSpy makes their money from advertising (among other things). Who advertises on their site? The game publishers! So is GameSpy going to publish that a brand new, multi-million dollar games sucks big ones? Nope! The advertisers would leave immediately.

    GameSpy, including all the game magazines, can't be relied upon to deliver impartial news and reviews. It just can't happen. All those games are hyped for a reason. The trade press gets their money for doing the hyping.

    Never ever trust one of those sites or magazines for impartial initial reviews. I have seen, however, after the game has been out for a while, some impartial reviews. This only happens after the wave of hype has passed. Then, and only then, will you see a game magazine or site say truthful things.

    So, to GameSpy and other game press: Stop complaining about the hype, and stop being part of the problem!
    • So, I'm not the only one to notice that at least one of the games on that list was actually given Gamespy's Game Of The Year Award after it was released. Over-rated because ..... they themselves over-rated it?

    • Back when I wrote for a tiny gaming reviews site I used to write impartial initial reviews. This was before the editor got a hold of them.

      Like in television, the product of a gaming magazine (on or offline) is its audience, which is sold to advertisers. The advertisers are the customers, not the readers. The exception is in subscription-based web sites that do not take ads. Print magazines can't really afford to do that what with their high overhead, but some websites can.

      Ravi

  • Gamespy review (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daVinci1980 ( 73174 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @03:00PM (#7007334) Homepage
    Here. [gamespy.com]

    Score: 91

    "The final word: Black and White is one of the most unique -- and enjoyable -- strategy games we've seen this year."

    Yeah, ok schmeg.
    • Well, they are defining the most overrated game ever. If it had gotten low marks, it wouldnt have been overrated...it would have been accurate.
    • So what you are saying is that Black and White was overhyped because Gamespy overhyped it (I remember, actually and yes they did. I can still see the annoying pop over ads and "more preview screenshots" when I close my eyes.). I guess a nice sidebar to the article would have been either "Top 5 Overhypes We Caused" or "How to criticize your own lameness and blame it on developers and fans". Gamespy is pro at that last one ;)

      (Gamespy ranting continues...)I really wish the rest of the world would stop giving

    • Normally I don't like to point this out.... but RTFA. GameSpy flat out admits that they unjustly contributed to the hype.
  • I think some of you are missing the point of the article. They aren't saying that the games on the list are necessarily bad... they are saying they were over-blown and over-hyped when they were released.

    They're looking back (with the benefit of some hindsight) and saying: "wait, some of those games didn't change the gaming world as much as we thought at the time." Games like DK Country were fun, but it was pretty much a standard platformer, not the "Second Coming of 16-bit" Nintendo wanted us to believe

    • Title of Gamespy's article : 25 Most Overrated Games of all Time

      Defination of overrated copied and pasted from www.dictionary.com :

      overrate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (vr-rt) tr.v. overrated, overrating, overrates To overestimate the merits of; rate too highly.

      That said, Gamespy is speaking contradictory to itself based on their previous reviews. There are two reasons for this :

      1. The person fails to look at the game in -retrospect- . When Halo came out, everyone was (and some still do) nicknamin

  • ... but rather overHYPED. Everybody who suffered the misfortune of actually playing that rancid shitstain of a game would RATE the following activities higher:

    1. licking clean the toilets at Grand Central Station
    2. brushing one's teeth with a random-orbit sander
    3. playing Oni

    'jfb

  • I rate this article Overrated (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. They consistently go back to their original reviews and say how bad they are. What kind of integrity in reviewing do they expect to drum up if they keep saying that their own reviewing is crap?

    2. The get really picky. In the Halo overrate, they talk about how it did all these things right, and then decide to pick on how is just sucks they couldn't use a mouse. I'm sorry, but I believe this is a REVIEW, not a statement that the game is overrated. I'll also go on record as saying that while 90% of the
  • I played through Black and White once and loved it, I never played a game so smart but...

    It wasn't fun, it seemed like a chore after a few days of playing (teach the monkey, pet the monkey, spank the monkey... hehehehe).
  • Robinsons Requiem and Everquest... the pre-hype on RR was insane, and the game just sucked when it came out... EQ was so hyped up after it came out and it sucked even more.
  • Penny Arcade's reaction is almost as dumb as the actual list. Final Fantasy VII "deposited the notion of gaming into a new generation"? Use hyperbole much? The ironic thing is this sort of hysterical bullshit alone justifies the inclusion of FF7 on the list. In fact anything that pisses off Penny Arcade is automatically beyond reproach in the greater scheme of things. So congratulations Gamespy.
    • It's arguably true that Final Fantasy 7 did exactly that. Noone will argue that the PSX brought video gaming into the mainstream, and FF7 brought an enormous number of people to the PSX.

      Whether or not FF7 a good game is another story entirely.

      I agree that Tycho is being an idiot here, but because he's arguing that FF7 was influential and therefore must be excellent -- but I can think of many awful games that were widely influential.

  • Grand Theft Auto and Vice City. Both are virtual sandboxes with dull missions tacked on to torture those massochistic enough to not use codes. Rockstar's pop music soundtracks, celebrity voice-overs and smart advertising conviced people that by playing GTA they were part of something special. The ensuing controversy drove the message home. EGM responded by giving the game three perfect 10s. Sure, these games paved a lot of ground and presented some of the most wide-open levels in history. But when it co
  • It was tremendous. I loved the gestures and such. It was a great program.

    What? It was supposed to be a game?

    Never mind.
  • Top 3 most over-rated gaming sites ever: (drumroll if you'd like)
    1. Gamespy

    2. IGN
    3. Gamespot
    BRING BACK DAILYRADAR!
    /rant
    • Then where are some good places to read more impartial reviews? I'd probably buy more games than I do if I had a (slightly)impartial review to help me out.

      So, folks, what are your favorite game review sites?

    • http://www.gametab.com/ Shows reviews from lots of sites all on one page so you can make your own mind up.
    • I know you're being either facetious or ranty, but I feel compelled to respond. IGN is, IMHO, about as good as impartial reviews get. Recently, they responded to criticism of their "Head-to-Head" features:

      "GameCube wins. We're biased. Xbox wins. Biased. PS2. Biased. We're paid. We're sell-outs. We're clueless. Look, your favorite console didn't win. Too bad. This is exactly why people like you could never write this kind of feature, because you would actually be biased about it.

      It's a very hard task to

  • The only one that chaffes me is DOA3 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Friday September 19, 2003 @04:30PM (#7008161) Journal
    The rest of the games I either basically agree with them, or never heard of. (And I'm ignoring their confusion between overhyped and overrated.)

    DOA3, however... had *excellent* gameplay. They accuse it of rewarding button mashing. My roomie's girlfriend played it a bunch, and pretty consistently beat the hell out of button mashers. I knew more of the combos and special moves, and I pretty consistently beat the hell out of her. My roomie had a better feel for the timing and range and pretty consistently beat the hell out of me. (And anyone else that ever played the game.)

    They bitch about the counter system... what? What is the complaint? Is it too weak? Too powerful? Frustrating? What's frustrating about it? They say it's "flawed" but wasn't really improved in 3. Ok. I still don't know what that means.

    The main reason I ask isn't because I'm positive that it's the best fighter ever. I ask because I'm so fucking baffled why more fighter game fans don't play it. Is there some flaw I'm missing? What's so much better in other games? Please, fill me in.
    • Sadly, Tecmo took the unfortunate route of promoting the girls in the game over the gameplay itself. This gave many people (ya know, those sort of people who love to complain) reason to bitch "graphics over gameplay blah blah blah" again, completely overlooking the fact that DOA2 & 3 were amongst the most well balanced fighters ever released. Both of them managed to keep a smooth graphical style, while at the same time a solid fighting engine (two things, I feel, every Tekken and VF game lacks.) Button
    • I agree. The counter system is what sets it above any other fighting game. And it has hot girls!

      The only problem I have with it is the down attacks: They routinely hit, even when the other character has already stood up and moved.

    • They bitch about the counter system... what? What is the complaint? Is it too weak? Too powerful? Frustrating? What's frustrating about it? They say it's "flawed" but wasn't really improved in 3. Ok. I still don't know what that means.

      It's insane.

      First off, don't get me wrong. I own the game, and it's quite fun to play...I love the diversity of martial arts moves they have (particularly in the counters), and the graphics are quite good.

      The counter system...my god, talk about a way to unbalance a game.

      • Well, you're pretty exactly right. Anyone that comes at you like it's Street Fighter is going to get countered three times in a row and die.

        That's why fights with good oponents consist primarily of hopping in and out of range, trying to psych each other out and get their oponent to make a mistake so that you have an opportunity to land a punch or two. If you start into a combo, of course, you're going to get countered.

        Sure, it changes the dynamic a lot, but... that's why I liked it.

  • imho (Score:3, Funny)

    by pizza_milkshake ( 580452 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @04:45PM (#7008263)
    b&w was ok... i got it, played it a bit and then after torturing and killing all the island tribesmen a few times got bored.

  • My personal pick: Shenmue (Score:3)

    by BadmanX ( 30579 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @04:57PM (#7008338) Homepage
    Shenmue was hyped to an amazing extent, both to players and to developers. Shenmue was going to revitalize the adventure game category, and show developers how games would be made from then on. If you go to Gamasutra, you can actually watch Yu Suzuki's original presentation [gamasutra.com] of the game at the 2000 Game Developer Conference. It's a love-in of epic proportions.

    Then the game was actually released. While it excelled in many areas - it had good characters, large environments, lots of interaction, etc, it also suffered from some severe gameplay problems that made it frustrating to play. Couple this with the fact that developers began to realize the resources the game required - five years of work by a one-hundred-person team! - and the development hype wore off as well. Eventually the shine wore off and reviewers began rating the game (or revising their ratings [gamespot.com]) based on how it actually played.

    Disclaimer: I personally love Shenmue, and love its sequel, Shenmue II, even more. But I can recognize overhype when I see it.
    • I agree. Especially for the first game. For all of the huge amount of development time and money, not much actually happens in the game. Couple that with the fact that the game itself was very slow-paced, you fall far short from the hype.

      I agree the second game was significantly better. I didn't even finish the first one, but Shenmue II kept me enthralled nearly nonstop until I finished it. Can't wait for Shenmue III.

  • Quake II ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Analog Kid ( 565327 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @05:28PM (#7008593)
    They complain that there is no multiplayer in the original product and that it was added later. They also sight it was just Quake with better graphics. For the multiplayer section, I think that's a bit unfair, what did most people have then 28.8k so even if multiplayer did ship it would have been quite laggy. Doom III isn't going to have much in terms of multiplayer either is that going to make it over-hyped? I doubt it. Sure multiplayer offers replay value and you can see in games like STEF2 that the screwed up multiplayer aspect with lack of dev support(took too long to get radiant out and it didn't offer much) ruined the games mod potential. However I always like to think of Id games as a demonstration of graphical talent. Its like a vanilla kernel, and games that use it are like patch sets, still using the underlying tech, with changes to it and additions.
  • That list is largely useless. Whoever wrote it should take the definition from page one and write it a hundred times.

    Daikatana overrated? Puhh-lease, it got slammed in the reviews, and is synonymous with ridicule among gamers.

  • "When you deny the profound effect of Donkey Kong Country's fully rendered sprites in 1994, making the system a bulwark against the 32-bit revolution, there is no educating you"

    First up, replace "fully" with "pre" and you'll get a head start on where I'm going. DKC is of no technical merit, nor does it contain any original gameplay. It's a platformer notable only for the fact that rather than being hand-drawn, the sprites, background and sprite animations were rendered on a Silicon Graphics machine. Th

    • You're right, the game isn't of technical merit. But the graphics were still pretty damn impressive for the time.

      The SuperFX chip was a flop. Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, and Yoshi's Island were the only notable games to use it. Star Fox and Stunt Race FX had been out for a while when DKC came out. Yoshi's Island came out a year later, and didn't use the chip for 3D.

      DKC sold a huge number of copies, and system sales jumped significantly when the game came out. And it was a really fun game. It was definately a

    • Re:I'd like to show my rebuttal (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DarkZero ( 516460 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:48PM (#7010174)
      First up, replace "fully" with "pre" and you'll get a head start on where I'm going. DKC is of no technical merit, nor does it contain any original gameplay. It's a platformer notable only for the fact that rather than being hand-drawn, the sprites, background and sprite animations were rendered on a Silicon Graphics machine. The fact that anyone credits it with extending the lifespan of the SNES is beyond me, especially when some seriously innovative development in the form of the SuperFX in-cart chip actually allowed the SNES to render workable 3D.

      Donkey Kong Country introduced pre-rendered 3D graphics to the Super Nintendo and thus shortened the gap between the SNES and the PlayStation. Instead of the difference between the two being "2D versus 3D", it became "beautiful 2D versus ugly, clunky 3D". The PlayStation was all set to be regarded as a huge leap in graphical power until Donkey Kong Country came along and ushered in an brief era of games with beautiful 2D graphics and the sort of refined 2D gameplay that people had come to respect from the SNES, essentially making the two systems six of one and a half dozen of another. Different, but equal.

      Without Donkey Kong Country, I really don't think that the Super Nintendo would've lasted until the release of Final Fantasy VII. Games like Donkey Kong Country, its sequels, and Super Mario RPG were what held the PlayStation at bay for all that time, and DKC was obviously their forebear. Also, its sales simply couldn't be denied. The difference in graphical power and variety of gameplay should've kept the SNES from ever having another hit after the PlayStation was released, but instead it released the blockbuster DKC, the nearly-as-successful DKC2, Super Mario RPG, and a few others that I'm sure I'm forgetting about.

      I don't think the SuperFX chip was quite as revolutionary simply because the way to preserve the SNES wasn't to do a 3D vs. 3D battle with the 32-bit consoles, but rather to refine and beautify what they already had. I think the games' sales also reflected this, because StarFox was the only truly successful SFX game, but DKC, DKC2, and SMRPG were quite popular.
      • I just don't get it. To me, DKC is hideous and clumsy, especially compared to something like, say, Super Metroid. I think that the sales spike is due more to name recognition than and talent that might be demonstrated in the game.
    • The fact that anyone credits it with extending the lifespan of the SNES is beyond me...

      Then maybe you should look at sales numbers sometime. It sold like gangbusters, and single-handedly brought the SNES decisively ahead of the Genesis in sales. It also ensured that the SNES would continue to sell tons of games even with the competition of newer consoles.

  • What about Diablo 2? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@gmail. c o m> on Friday September 19, 2003 @07:51PM (#7009465) Journal
    Maybe it's just me, but Diablo 2 is the most overhyped game ever made. Game mechanics? Hack'n'slash. Simply hold the mouse over enemies and watch them die. Pick up a cool weapon or two. Rinse lather repeat. The graphics weren't even good. It was kinda like black and white: fun for about a day and then tedium sets in. Black and White at least tried and succeeding in being unique, especially with interface. If anyone can mention one original thing about Diablo 2, I'm all ears.
    • Diablo 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. The fact that it is still on top selling game charts every now and then (this July and August i think) tells something. There was nothing that hadn't been done in this game. It just all came together so well as to be a classic. Blizzard often does this with games. Many of their titles are not 100% original but are standouts in the genre.
  • These guys are mixing the two up I think.

    Games such as Daikantant and Enter The Matrix are in no way overrated. That's impossible:) (Daikatana deserves it, Enter The Matrix does not IMO).

    Black and White was overrated, however from what I remember.

    But Final Fantasy VII overrated? Hardly. If they wanted to put a FF game in there, they could have put FF VI in there, that was amazing until the end of the Forgotten Island, then pretty much sucked after that. All the character development just kinda stopped. I
  • About every review out there rated Soul Calibur (Namco, Dreamcast) as one of the greatest fighting games ever. Truth is, other than the awesome looks, it is quite dull, shallow and uninteresting. The Dreamcast has far superior fighting games, like Project Justice (Capcom), Guilty Gear X (Arc), and The King of Fighters 99 Evolution (SNK).

  • Halo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JonathanBoyd ( 644397 ) on Sunday September 21, 2003 @10:59AM (#7017831) Homepage

    The criticism of Halo was in quite a few places ridiculous. They bashed it for using a controller to aim, rather than mouse and keyboard. Surely if you're reviewing a console game, you review it in the context of consoles, rather than PCs? The controller aiming is fairly decent in Halo and I don't seem GoldenEye being lambasted in the list for being a console FPS.

    It was criticised quite a few times for forcing people to play multi-player on split screen, complaining that 4 people on screen makes for a poor gaming experience. Given that a single console can only be hooked up to one TV, how else do they suggest multiplayer be implemented? To use more than one TV, you'll need more than one console; on the PC, if you want to play multiplayer, you can't unless you have multiple computers, so how is Halo at a disadvantage here? It allows you to play on a LAN, contrary to what one reviewer suggested and gives you the option of playing on a single console. What's the problem here?

    Criticism of some of the level design is fair enough, particularly where Library is concerned, but to say 'Worst of all were the levels, which offered fleeting glimpses of brilliance, but all too often degenerated into recycling the same areas over and over until you were bored to tears.' is over-exaggeration. The first 6 levels are all offer very different environments which look amazing and play brilliantly. Level 7 is repetitive. Level 8 is basically 5 backwards, but plays a bit differently, you face different foes and you go to a couple of new places, so it's not boring. Level 9 is superficially similar to 3 but has quite a few different sections and much harder opposition. Level 10 retreads a lot of level 1, but adds a few new sections and lets you drive a warthog about the place. The external environments are all stunning, quite a bit of the indoor stuff looks quite groovy and it's only really the Library that is a let down.

    The last guy calls the multiplayer levels unbalanced, messy and boring, but doesn't say which ones or why. The most popular ones are probably Hang em High, Prisoner and Blood Gulch and I fail to see what is boring or messy about any of them. I fail to see what is unbalanced about any of them, especially given that a good chunk of the levels are 90% symmetrical. In fact, he says he doesn't like PC FPSes or 4 player split-screen on a console. I'm not aware of any shooters prior to Halo that could work over a console LAN, so basically his problem is... he doesn't like FPSes, especially multiplayer. That's hardly reason to call a game over-rated.

    My final qualm is with their 'been done better before' award. Which console FPS done what Halo does better? They acknowledge lovely graphics. They say the AI is the best they've seen. The 2 weapons thing is innovative. So who did these better?

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