Your Favorite Games Suck - Part One

There isn't much I enjoy more in life than pissing off the ridiculously zealous fans of various videogames. Don't get me wrong, I love certain games, but even I'm cynical enough to see that the best of them are flawed in one way or another. Inspired by forum-goer DannyManic's tirade on music, I recently challenged the entire membership of the Something Awful Forums to give me the titles of games so that I could rip into each like they had brutalized and murdered my family. My hatred poured out in a pure and cleansingly exaggerated form that I have to admit was pretty therapeutic.

Today I offer up slightly less than one half of the games I belittled in the hopes that a few among you will go red in the face and fire off angry e-mails.

JohnnyBravo kicked things off for me by requesting Fallout.Sucks.You mean "being shot in the back" simulator? That's a wonderful game! Nothing quite like picking up a couple NPCs to empty entire clips into your back. Hey professor trajectory, when I'm punching a supermutant in the face how about not shooting your goddamn minigun into my spine. Also I absolutely loved the voice acting in this game. The cast reads like a who's-who of out of work Z grade TV actors. The plot was a photocopy of the script to some Roger Korman movie that combined zombies with the apocalypse and for some reason Internet fanboys think it's the hottest shit since they learned how to dress themselves (yesterday).

Olhado suggested I try to dissect The Neverhood.

The Neverhood experience can be simulated by staring at a pile of Playdoh and randomly smashing a xylophone. Not to mention I've played more interactive episodes of Gumby.

Quick Stop thought I was incapable of trashing the Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Brothers 3.

The Legend of Zelda set the standard for poorly translated, cutesy, and unimaginative Japanese shit spew. Take any Tolkien-like fantasy, filter it through a fine mesh made out of syrup and gibberish, and you've got the Legend of Zelda. The combat was intense! Nothing quite like running at a red circle with googly eyes and hitting it with a sword that's smaller than your head.

Super Mario Brothers 3, what an innovation. Now the fat plumber can run sideways in a RACCOON SUIT! Holy shit, give them some awards people.

Dr_eclip5e and most of the rest of the forum goons absolutely love acting afraid of System Shock 2.

Oh my god it's so scary! I had to stop playing because it was terrifying me!

Shut the fuck up.

The only thing scary about System Shock 2 is how a game with an interface as slow and hard-to use passed QA. The rest of the game is an awkward walk through a charity haunted house where all of the bored high school kids running it are wearing masks made out of poorly painted cardboard boxes. I like how making things dark makes things scary. No, making things dark makes things FUCKING EYESTRAIN. And no, I won't turn the gamma up because frankly I don't want to see the amateur hour you faggots have running rampant on the monster models and textures.

Midgettosser went with a more recent classic and offered up Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Terrible.Hey, can I watch the embarrassing stripper sequence a little bit longer Rock Star?! PLEASE?!?

Wait, I've got an even better idea, how about you make me play through half the game and then add a save location that if I use it will ruin my savegame! SOUNDS LIKE A WINNER TO ME.

For some reason CaptainScraps thought I could say nothing bad about Half Life. He was incorrect.

A lot of people were fooled into thinking Half Life was a pretty good game when it came out, but not me. From the moment I endured a ten minute scripted sequence I knew it would be an exercise in tedium and being led around by the narrative-crippled idiots at Valve. Half Life was the first FPS game to properly integrate the gripping storytelling elements of Full Motion Video CD-ROM games. I remember back in the good old days when I got to run around and shoot shit at my leisure, now I'm told by Valve I have to sit here and watch some 5 polygon scientist hobble slowly around a FutureLab(tm) before I can even pull a trigger. The use of scripted events in Half Life is also directly responsible for the "3rd Grade School Play on a Rail" gameplay of Unreal 2. THANKS VALVE!

The ever punch drunk FatTulip suggested I take a stab at Doom II and I was more than happy to oblige him.

Apparently id used up all their "creepy" bloody wall textures in the original Doom game because there certainly isn't anything new to see in Doom II. Oh wait, I forgot, a double barrel shotgun. I'm glad I paid 50 dollars to see that id. But thanks to Doom II I can finally play the gigantic and ridiculous fan made Death Star WAD file I've always dreamed of.

Oculus has Max Payne 2 on his mind and even though I haven't played it I was happy to make fun of its predecessor.

Haven't played it yet, but if it's anything like the original I can look forward to agonizing dream sequences where I have to walk through mazes and fall repeatedly off two inch wide nearly invisible paths. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted when I bought a game about a hard boiled cop. In fact, I'm not even going to bother to play Max Payne 2, I'm just going to load Mario and play it with my monitor turned off.

P. Don't was under the false impression that nothing derogatory could possibly be said about Final Fantasy 7.

Fucking gay.You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Final Fantasy 7 took the time-tested formula of hideous anime-inspired kindergarten graphics from Final Fantasy 6 and updated it to include freakish, big-headed, polygonal characters. Luckily they managed to leave unchanged the ridiculously long winded and poorly translated dialogue of all of the previous installments and possibly even top the amount of retarded Z-grade melodrama. Oh hey, what's this, another plot about technology versus magic and nature? WONDERFUL! Japan what WILL you think of next!?

Hitler enthusiast Kobewest's favorite game is Minesweeper, possibly because he's an idiot.

What is there good to say about minesweeper? It's either totally easy or nearly unbeatably hard depending on what you set it to. The graphics are sub-clipart in quality. There are no sound effects. The gameplay consists of clicking boxes slowly and using "math skills". It's only ever played by pathetic nerds and office workers who got tired of making a penis out of paperclips.

Canadian_GeeZus went retro with a request for a review of Asteroids.

Triangle is lost in rock land. Help triangle escape from rock land even though triangle cannot escape because flying out of rock land's top brings triangle back to rock land's bottom. Repeat forever. Welcome to the hell of triangle.

I kept things short and to the point when addressing Ozzie's favorite game EVO: The Search for Eden.

NO: The Search for a Different Game

Zoben is fond of Mario Kart. I'm not.

This game was better when it was called Wacky Wheels and Nintendo hadn't once again gayed it up by cashing in on the drooling fan base for Mario. I love how Mario is such a jack of all trades these days. He drives go-karts competitively, he plays golf and tennis, and he's even got his own graphics program. I guess kudos to Nintendo for figuring out how to market their otherwise shitty games to the stupid.

Eternal cutup NilreMK dared me to say a mean thing about the original X-Com game.

The first X-COM game was a torture simulator designed by the cruelest sadists alive. It encouraged you to build up a force of elite soldiers by painstakingly researching items, equipping them, and fighting through mission after mission. Then it laughed and spit in your face as a Terror mission hit and ten of those faggot flying discs wiped out your entire force.

Xenophorm loves Super Metroid and couldn't begin to imagine the hateful things I would say about it.

Boring.A rolling ball of a nerdgasm, Super Metroid combined the wonderful element of endless backtracking to squeeze every ounce out of a level Nintendo could with the "exciting" gameplay of the original. Unfortunately, everyone knew Samus was a girl by that point and many a prepubescent boy gripped his controller with sweaty hands as a tingly feeling spread through his groin. For those boys watching Samus roll down a tunnel at the press of a button it was the first and possibly last time a female would ever do what they wanted her to.

Oscar the Grouch took a break from sifting through dirty diapers to ask me what I thought of The Dig.

Lucas Arts first and last attempt at a serious adventure game managed to somehow be even worse than their "funny" adventure games. It featured the point and click gameplay of an Indiana Jones title only in space. SPACE! Unfortunately "space" consisted of about five dull screens of rocks and was populated with a cast of characters whose names might as well have been "Sleep Aid".

Bolt Vanderhuge offered up the SA games forum's favorite RPG Planescape: Torment

As one of the more vocal critics of this game in the past I have no problem offering a scathing criticism. Let's put aside some problems that even fanboys would agree with me on; that the engine did not work well for the title and that the interface was clunky. Let's forget that the combat varied between point and click boredom and confusing spell-fests with no middle ground.

I want to talk about the story, because this is what people on the forums literally shit their pants over. The story for Planescape Torment is one of the most hackneyed, convoluted, and unoriginal pieces of garbage I've ever been forced to read through. You are THE ONE, great concept! What 500,000 books and movies did you come up with that one from? You don't remember your past! GREAT, AMNESIA, AGAIN! In fact the only positive thing I can say about the story is that it didn't involve trying to save the environment from technology.

The half-crazy X JAKK suggested that Kirby's Adventure "is untouchable".

Kill me now.You are absolutely right and not just Kirby's Adventure, all of the Kirby games should never be touched. They are hideous abominations featuring a kawaii and otaku main character trying to pose as a low rent Mario. The only people who like Kirby games are the people who are too much of an elitist fag to like Mario and too stupid to hate Mario.

People like -skreemo on the SA Forums convinced me to buy Suikoden 3. I was not particularly happy with it.

I want to fucking strangle the people in the games forum that convinced me this pile of shit was good. "Oh it's such a breath of fresh air!" and "What a great story!"

Suikoden 3 is without a doubt in the top five worst RPGs I have ever played, and believe me that's saying a lot. The characters are angsty, poorly realized, and utterly unlikable. The graphics are mediocre. The interface is a hideous mess of collapsing menus and bizarre unexplained statistics. The combat is derivative of a thousand other Japanese RPGs and, like them, is about as far removed from actual fighting as napping in a hammock. The three character intertwined story arc is an awful contrivance to try to confuse you and make you forget that you're playing a game where you're supposed to take ducks wearing helmets seriously.

On Monday I will offer up more games including titles like Mortal Kombat, Tie Fighter, and Halo. In the mean time I welcome readers to send me their favorite game to join the ranks of hatred. Please steer clear of the ridiculously obscure and don't insult me with the incredibly stupid. I'm not going to waste my time screaming about Custer's Revenge when a fucking banana slug with a pen could write hateful words about that game.

Who are you again?

Hey junior space cadets, Livestock here with the usual chitchat! In honor of Columbus Day, which was well over a week ago, we have a new Photoshop Phriday mocking Nintendo's "Who Are You?" ad campaign. Christopher Columbus himself might not be around to enjoy these pictures, but that doesn't mean you can't! Enjoy delicious images from our diligent forum goons such as this one:

For more, as well as a free consultation on debt consolidation from a leading authority on the subject, please click here. I lied about the last part. I meant the debt consolidation thing, not the clicking here part. Click there.

– Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons (@sexyfacts4u)