The games of the decade that have negatively affected the industry.

We review what, personally, have been the games of the decade that have negatively affected the industry. It may well be because of its graphics, or because of its abusive policies, I'll go on to name games that have led to discontent on the part of everyone. Criticism has dug their grave, although the players have also buried them. Do we really have such negative games in this generation? Come and see… judge for yourselves!

These are the ones that, in my totally personal opinion, are the games that have most negatively affected the industry in this decade:

Duke Nukem Forever

We all remember the excellence of Duke Nukem 3D . The third game in the  Duke Nukem series , it was released by 3D Realms in 1996 to critical and commercial success. Drunk on this success, perhaps, they began to develop its sequel,  Duke Nukem Forever , for the following year. However, it took 14 years - and many studios in between - until the game finally came out in 2011.

In a "development hell" - as those in charge of putting together the disconnected pieces of the puzzle called it - the very little information about its progress did not help either. Everyone washed their hands and no one was able to take the blame for what was happening. Actually, this long development included a series of problems, technical for the most part, but also organizational. One of the most important was the change of the game engine in the middle of development . To this we have to add the reduction in the size of 3D Realms and the subsequent conflicts with Take-Two Interactive who had gained publishing rights through their acquisitions. In addition, already at the end of development and before going gold, an abrupttransfer of development tasks to Gearbox Software – which, as we well know, are in charge of making Borderlands.

Once  Duke Nukem Forever  was released , it was criticized mainly because it was an old game . Many of the elements of the game - which tried to reinvent themselves and fitfully adapt to current standards - were already present in the game since 1996. You can not make a new game with elements that are already obsolete. It's logic. Nor were the shooter mechanics as sophisticated as other fps released at the same time. At the time, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare were technically far superior. This was too much of a negative impact , not helped by numerous technical problems. In particular I must highlightits long loading times , which were criticized as using outdated technology.

The crude humor of Duke Nukem also had a tremendous negative influence . For the dates in which we were, it was very old-fashioned. Audiences especially complained about a level that required Duke to kill kidnapped women. Duke slyly joked that he was a "totally obnoxious psychopath." The game received Metacritic scores of 49, 51, and 54 out of 100 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows versions, respectively.

This game negatively affected the industry due to its long development, the anachronism it experienced in terms of humor and the lack of adaptation of its mechanics to the times in which it found itself. It was a disappointment to all gamers and critics who wanted to experience a balanced fps like Duke DuKem 3D again.

Raven's Cry

For those who don't know, Raven's Cry is a 2015 pirate-themed action-adventure RPG developed by Reality Pump Studios. It was criticized by the specialized media and by users for a variety of reasons. Among them the technical errors, which made it unplayable , but also for having a homophobic and sexist dialogue. It was a theme that was not on the market, an open world of pirates, and they did not know how to take advantage of it, sinning for being a rough, boring game with a number of harmful clichés.

For all this, TopWare removed it from Steam and announced the release of a revision of the title the following year. This is how 'Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry' arrived, a version of this same game that we were promised would be completely enjoyable. Although that title was better than the original, it continued to suffer from many errors.

However, it began to receive a number of good reviews on Steam. This shocked a large part of the users, who had scored it 30/100 on Metacritic. As it turned out later, all of the positive STEAM reviews had apparently been paid for by TopWare.  How was it discovered? A little research was done and it was found that all the users who had rated it positively had played the title for a short time and only commented on TopWare games.

The rest of the players, who made negative reviews, complained strongly about the situation. The game was removed from Steam in January 2016 , although none of those responsible want to comment on it. The game is currently purchasable on STEAM following further review.

This game negatively affected the industry by realizing that companies are able to manipulate, through comments, the rating of games. In this case, they were positive comments to wash the image of the title and promote sales. This practice is the well-known review booming , although negative comments are normally promoted by the community and not promoted by the companies.

No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky is one of those cases where the marketing of the titles creates very high expectations for us that don't really see the light of day, at least at the start.

This title was announced in 2013 as a space exploration game that had more than 18 quintillion planets in its virtual universe. The peculiarity of this game is that each planet was unique, with its own flora and fauna that were formed randomly through  procedural generation.

Developed by a small team at  Hello Games, the game quickly garnered media hype and attention. We were not faced with a title that offered us things never seen before. Its expansive goals were further boosted when Sony announced that it would help publish the game for PlayStation 4 alongside a version for Microsoft Windows. The study was seen in a cloud. And they started promoting and advertising these features. They gave details of the development and especially focused on the multiplayer mode.

Just prior to the August 2016 release, pre-release copies revealed that some expected gameplay features were missing. That was also not fixed with the subsequent day one patch. One of the things that wasn't present, and had been bragged about, was specifically multiplayer. One of the points of which they had been proud. How could two players coincide on the same planet among the 18 quintillion planets that there were...? That's what they thought. And so, simultaneous multiplayer was non-existent out of the box.

Players also found the game to lack a procedural uniqueness quality . What I mean by this? That although it is true that the planets were generated randomly, there was little variation in relation to the scale of the game. This made the items to explore repetitive, tedious, and boring.

The negative reception from players was compounded by Hello Games' apparent lack of communication about these issues . That is to say, when the game came out and these problems began to be seen, the studio kept silent. The team only reported on bug fixes and performance improvements that they released.

While it's true that the beginning was negative, we must also appreciate that since then, Hello Games has released several major updates to the game to incorporate some of these missing features. That is why today, the game has received praise, changing this negative perception for an image that everything is achieved with effort.

This game negatively affected the industry as it is a key example of what to avoid when marketing a game . The media should not promote what is known as hype if it is not accompanied by further confirmation of the innovative elements.

star wars battlefront saga

If there has been a saga whose two titles have affected the industry in a negative way, not because of the same fact but because of different things; that's Star Wars Battlefront. While it is true that these first-person shooters make you transport yourself to one of the Star Wars movies, they brought very negative elements to the fore.

Let's start with the first title of the franchise, Star Wars Battlefront I , developed by EA Dice and published in 2015. It started arriving ten years later than its predecessor and, although it enjoys great followers, this has already irritated the players who wanted to have it soon between the hands Impeccable in graphic subject it has a small GREAT exception. Everything is online multiplayer.

We can play some options called Missions alone , but it is not a campaign. That is, the single player has been liquidated . It can be played with a partner in split screen, local co-op, but the DLC maps - which you buy separately - cannot be played in any solo mode. You need to have the online subscription mandatory. Especially in a time, we are talking about 2015, where we started to see Overwatch and Fortnite, maybe they wanted to jump on the bandwagon… but not free.

We can also criticize that the maps are not that big either . To have the entire world of Star Wars at his disposal, they didn't know how to take advantage of it. In this sense it is quite depressing compared to the saga 'Battlefield'. Many laughs -sarcastic- with the respawn since in most cases it brought you back to life next to an enemy, so you had to be quite careful not to die as soon as you just appeared on the screen.

This first title was negative for the industry because it was one of the first shooter games -without being free to play- where the solo campaign is almost nonexistent , so the player cannot experience non-cooperative missions without the use of the internet. .

We moved on to Star Wars Battlefront II , which was also an online multiplayer shooter. While EA had already been criticized a lot for the handling of microtransactions, here they took it a step further. EA opted to use the  loot crate  mechanic (called Star Crates in-game) to offer players a random collection of items. While it is true that they could be purchased with in-game items, they incorporated real-world funds to purchase them.

In Battlefront II , items were not strictly cosmetic (such as character skins) but instead included upgrades and other in-game perks . Therefore, players could progress further in the game by purchasing Star Crates immediately , making it a "pay to win" game. Although they could be earned with in-game money, the speed at which players could earn the credits without spending additional money was considered too slow. That also applied to the purchase of in-game characters.

The community became concerned about this practice as it was becoming a slot machine game and players were encouraged to be heavy drinkers rather than responsible consumers. While other 2017 games had raised similar issues, Battlefront II  was so heavily criticized for being closely tied to the Star Wars brand.

Community reaction to  Battlefront II loot boxes  also led to a series of government responses in late 2017 and early 2018 to assess whether loot box mechanics in video games were a form of gameplay, and whether If so, they would be required to regulate its sale within their countries.

agony 

Agony  is a  survival horror game  developed by Madmind Studio and published by PlayWay. The game was created through a Kickstarter campaign, which led to great anticipation for its no-holds-barred gore aesthetic. The protagonist was among the most depraved creatures in Hell. When the campaign exceeded its goal, which was in a fairly short time, the game was released more than a year later and this began to be viewed negatively by both the media and the users who had bet on the project. The game received unfavorable reviews, with a Metacritic score of 37/100 for PlayStation 4, 34/100 for Xbox One, and 45/100 for Microsoft Windows.

The criticism was mainly on the mechanics of the game , which made it rough to some extent. It was a vervain of blood. viscera and gore -censored in the versions of all platforms- which was not accompanied by the fluid rhythm that had to accompany it for the experience to be credible. The graphics had a lot of bugs, most notably the  unstable FPS rate and tearing. In addition, the textures took a long time to load and did not have much resolution . The control of the character did not respond accurately to the options that we marked. Finally the most devastating thing was the AI ​​of the enemies: Sometimes the player was detected at a great distance; at other times they passed by without noticing that we were there.

Even though the concept art, design, and sound were perfectly what was planned on Kickstarter, the glitches made the player bored and eventually got lost in repetitive mazes and ended up as a moving demon. stealthily across the terrain. Something totally contrary to the constant massacre that had been raised.

This title negatively affected the industry in the sense of being a Kickstarter funded title supporting the courage of a small studio to be irreverent and show the bloody vileness and depravity of hell, it falls short and is diluted by the censorship and mechanics and graphics that do not reach what they had promised. Another groundbreaking game that doesn't break.

Fallout 76 

This title has enjoyed a lot of criticism and it is that many negative characteristics have come together that have tarnished both the launch and the subsequent development or attempts to wash its face. While it is true that it was Bethesda Game Studios' first foray into online multiplayer , it was not only inexperience that tarnished its sales, but all the decisions surrounding this new title.

Fallout 76  is an online action game based on the  Fallout series , taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting in an alternate timeline. It was presented during E3 2018 and everyone was expectant. Upon its release, gamers and critics alike realized that the narrative-driven experience of the previous games had disappeared . Those who were looking for the strong story, full of binding decision-making of the previous titles, felt cheated because it was not what had been presented to them at E3. Despite this, those who readily embraced the online multiplayer element found thatin the game, player-versus-player interactions outweighed cooperative elements.

Several felt that  Fallout 76  was attempting to mimic  Destiny 's style  but attempting to retain its "Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System" (VATS). This was a bug as it couldn't work efficiently in an online multiplayer game. On the technical side, the game also had a series of quite important bugs to which Bethesda responded with patches of up to 50 gigabytes. Unlike the developers of  No Man's Sky , Bethesda was not as resolute in pulling together to improve the game after release, causing further consternation within the player base.

In addition to the problems with the game itself, there were also complaints and discomfort with the marketing elements that were included in the special editions of the game. And they had a negative reception as decisions were made to reduce costs that were not notified to users who had the editions of the game reserved. This influenced lower qualities of the elements as the initial nylon bags were changed to canvas bags.

Additionally, during the first few months after the release of  Fallout 76 , a  data breach occurred in Bethesda's support systems that caused the private data of 65 users who had submitted support tickets related to game bugs or other matters to be revealed. unwittingly.

As you can see, there were many elements that made the reception of the title by critics, press and players more incendiary than condescending.

Assassin's Creed Unity

This game is a mixture of everything that an outgoing video game SHOULD NOT have . That is to say, it is a game that came out earlier than expected , to take advantage of the pull of a new Assassin's Creed in the new generation of consoles. A title that made its foray into the market without finishing , with a number of bugs that diminished the experience and made you question your patience and with a story whose quality was far from the previous installment AC Black Flag. They took up the theme of the Templars that had started in ACIII, intertwined it with the assassins, but failed to give it the strength and grip to understand a story from both points of view.

Although it is true that graphically it is exceptional, a recreation of Paris is made that has even helped the reports of the Notre Dame spire after the cathedral fire in 2019, otherwise it is undeniable that the game is poorly finished. With the successive patches the framerate was improved, but in general it is not uncommon for bugs and failures to appear that, in some cases, do tarnish the experience and take you out of the rhythm of the gamesuch as textures that are loaded on your face. There are also many videos showing how the character does not do what you want him to do, that is, moments in which he sticks to the walls, climbs on chairs in the middle of the street and does not come down, does not enter through a window or does not cover where you want, etc. With this I laugh... but almost not to cry.

Although critics and users coined terms such as "broken toy" "Bugnity" or "Bugysoft" as a result of this title, we really have to stop a bit and coldly analyze the game without getting carried away by such passionate comments. Despite the fact that it is not technically polished, it has optimization problems and it has many bugs, it is not as bad or unplayable as it is sold to us. It has many flaws, yes. Palliated with later patches. No. It came out of the oven before it was cooked. Yes. It's totally unplayable and rubbish. Nope.

It negatively affected the industry because it kicked off a fairly common practice that we are unfortunately getting used to: unfinished games and day one patches . The games are no longer finished, but they are developed using the time after marking the gold version of the game to finish it and release all these final elements in an almost mandatory patch that you have to download in order to enjoy a complete experience.

I hope you liked this review of the titles that have most negatively affected the industry of the decade. Please, leave us your impressions in comments.