The Games of 2010 That We Wish We Never Played
Oh, man, we saw some utter crap hit our consoles this year. Here are the eleven games that made me want to give up gaming forever.
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By K. Thor Jensen December 17, 2010 |
| 11 | Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow |
This was just a Goddamned mess. The Castlevania franchise has been floundering in recent years - the DS titles have been semi-successful attempts at recapturing the magic of Symphony Of The Night, but full-blown console installments have been horrendous. Lords Of Shadow attempts to capture that epic feeling, and sort of succeeds - it's certainly a big game. It's just not a good one. It's atrociously linear, with none of the mystery and exploration we expect from a Castlevania game, and the new elements are shamelessly ripped from other, better games (like God of War and Shadow Of The Colossus). And don't get me started on the plot, which is doled out in the form of Patrick Stewart reading a book.
| 10 | Aliens Vs. Predator |
So Predators was a bunch of fun, but it was too much to hope that we'd get a good video game outing the same year we got a good movie for either of these franchises. Aliens Vs. Predator started out OK - the Marine campaign was a decent slice of FPS action, putting you in claustrophobic territory hunting xenomorphs, but the more you played the worse it got. Levels were dull, cramped and lacking any strategic options. Unfortunately, playing as the Alien or the Predator is worse - clumsy controls and recycled environments, combined with totally restrictive level design, suck all the fun out of being an extraterrestrial mass murderer. How lame is that?
| 9 | Naughty Bear |
Can we put a moratorium on cute cartoon characters doing bad things? Conker's Bad Fur Day was years ago and that's the last word on the subject. So I don't think anybody was particularly excited for Naughty Bear, no matter how much press they bought for it on Kotaku. But when the game finally dropped, it was actually worse than it looked from the previews. It's a clunky, sluggish third-person action game that's cursed with a nightmarish, constantly-spinning camera and no targeting mechanism, leaving you running around bland environments while an unfunny announcer tells you how "naughty" you are.
