Kicking Off 2011 At TYP!

Good Morning everyone! I hope you all enjoyed New Year's Eve. I'm glad I get to have the very first post in 2011, I suppose it's a shame that I don't really have anything prepared...

I could talk some more about how Gainax likes to troll the hell out of its own fanbase...
...But that would be a huge waste of time. It's better to move past terrible things, it's a whole new year!...Shut up.

Or, I could talk about games that could've been good but weren't.
Not that one, I never played that.

Sure, let's do 'Arlon's Top Ten Great Games That Weren't: 2010'

10. Ragnarok DS (Nintendo DS)
Sure, I won't lie. It doesn't sound that great to begin with. But stop and think about it for a second, if we took the concepts of Ragnarok Online, do something different with the graphics, and turned it into a single-player RPG with story with optional wifi for playing with your friends (hell, ad-hoc would even work), it would be a pretty cool game, would it not? This is one of those cases where the MMO would probably be better as a single-player RPG. Well too bad, we didn't get that. Instead, we get the same EXACT graphics as the MMO; which means goodbye to character emotion, unless you like emoticons, and a very limited range of actions. I mean, that's all fine and dandy for the MMORPG, but in a single player game with a story, it might be important at all for your character to show emotions, or at least be able to make dramatic movements instead of always using the same actions. This kills the game, the gameplay is the same as the MMO as well, but that's not that bothersome. If you bought the game you were expecting some similarities, but this is overkill. The story is awful too. Just avoid this thing.

9. Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, Xbox 360)
Final Fantasy hasn't really been good since X. The game looked promising, but ended up just being a very pretty movie with battles in between cutscenes, most of which being stuck on auto-pilot.

8. Sonic Free Riders (Xbox 360 Kinect)
Another 3D Sonic game in a long line of bad games, this one was a new Sonic Racing game made for the Kinect. There's little to say here, as always the game looked good in previews, but lacked decent controls or story to make it really stand out.

7. Dark Void (Xbox 360, PS3)
Dark Void... Man. It was a third person shooter with jetpacks. How could they screw that up? They managed to find a way. The game itself is just forgetful and boring. It looked great on paper, but failed miserably in practice.


6. Naughty Bear (Xbox 360, PS3)
MAN. This game looked like it was going to be some awesome senseless killing in the guise of teddy bears. The sneak peek trailers made it look like a great game. Basically you're this big mean Teddy Bear named Naughty Bear. Or maybe he's just misunderstood? Doesn't matter, instead of getting a look into Naughty Bear's real character concept, the game tells you that you should just solve all your problems by killing the other Teddy Bears in town, ALL OF THEM. Like I said, if the story sucks, whatever, the concept still seems fun. The gameplay is awful too. Instead of going wild and crazy, you have to be stealthy for the most part unless you want to die. Think Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon-esque gameplay, but where the only real goal is to just kill everyone all while you lack a real story. Not that great.

5. Star Trek Online (PC)I really can't say much about this. We were finally going to get a Star Trek MMO. It sounded super promising. However the interface is clunky, the gameplay switches back and forth between your character and your character piloting his or her ship, which are both clunky and take some getting used to. The graphics are mediocre for an MMO that game out in 2010. It's not a huge letdown, but unless you're a big Star Trek fan I recommend steering clear of it.

4. APB: All Points Bulletin (PC)
Yet another failed MMORPG. How depressing. APB was a game that spent 5 years in the making, with help by a designers from the GTA series. It was meant to be a 'Modern-Day World of Warcraft', which gave hope to a lot of gamers. In short, the game lacked content, was severely unbalanced, and the 'quests' fell extremely short. APB, World of Warcraft you are not. Just another failed MMO experiment that could've been amazing.

3. Final Fantasy XIV (PC)Speaking of failed MMO experiments, let's move on to FF14. Final Fantasy 14 was supposed to be a 'sequel' or 'reboot' of FF11. Obviously the game had recycled content, that's to be expected, but the big problem was the sheer amount of recycled content it contained. Final Fantasy 14 turned the 'fun' of playing an MMO into a lot of work with very little payoff. The interface is terrible, needing multiple keypresses and clicks to do simple things such as open your inventory, lack of hotkeys to do simple actions, forcing you to create macros. As for quests, in between main 'storyline' quests, you can only do 8 short optional quests per day. Madness. Honestly, just stick to World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 11, hell I'd even play Runescape over this thing.

2. Sonic The Hedgehog 4 (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)
After years of terrible 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games, there was finally a glimmer of hope - a Sonic game that returned to its roots with classic gameplay (See: Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles) but kept the crisp new 3-Dimensional design. Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 was released Fall 2010 for the Xbox Live Arcade, Wiiware, and Playstation Network. The game seemed like it would be a refreshing return of the blue hedgehog, but turned out to be a false prophet, of sorts. Sonic The Hedgehog 4 turned out to have maps laden with traps, music that could make your ears bleed (not literally), and some of the worst physics in a Sonic game to date. Put simply, get Sonic Colors, THAT is the Sonic game that ended the terrible game streak, not this.

1. Disney's Epic Mickey (Wii)
Yeah, that's my number one pick. Epic Mickey for the Wii. This game had SO MUCH POTENTIAL. It was advertised as a darker game featuring the classic design of Disney's mascot character - Mickey Mouse. As a game itself, it fell short. The plotline is simple and not exciting. The gameplay is so ridiculously slow that I swear I've seen starfish move faster. I can't really say much about this game other than the fact that I was so disappointed by the outcome that it made number one pick.

Well, that's all of them folks. I'll see you next week! (Maybe I'll have something better prepared!)

-Arlon The Enigma