The Top 10 Most Disappointing Video Games of 2013
08. Beyond Two Souls
The second video game walkthrough and guide that I wrote for SuperCheats was for a game called Heavy Rain. Developed by a studio called Quantic Dreams as a PlayStation 3 platform exclusive, Heavy Rain was not just a great game as a WTG Project, it was a great game period.
Very easy to get immersed in, very difficult to stop playing, and so complex that players really needed that WTG. When I later reviewed the game for another website, fresh off of having played and written the WTG, you probably will not be shocked to learn it scored a solid 9 out of 10.
News that Quantic Dreams was about to launch a new game called Beyond Two Souls, and the favorable comparisons to Heavy Rain that were being bandied about, well, let's just say that games that qualify as interactive fiction are not that common. In fact very few have ever been made so it is safe to say I had high expectations for it.
When it finally arrived it turned out to be an amazing experience -- its cutting-edge development tech made a convincing and immersive game, the dev team had carefully and successfully put together an astounding and phenomenal cast, and that cast did an amazing and convincing job in their voice acting.
Like Heavy Rain the use of facial expressions and the emotional hints in tone and inflection added the sort of stage presence not often found in video games but critically necessary for video games that move in the realm of interactive fiction.
It is fair to say that for a second time the folks at Quantic managed to accomplish what other games failed at - using the best parts of a motion-picture style take on games and making it sing! If you are curious about games that have attempted that and failed I simply whisper the words 'L.A. Noire' to you discretely and without casting aspersions.
If the game was that good, you are probably thinking, then why is it on a list of the top ten disappointing games of 2013? Thanks for asking that because I am dying to tell you!
The thing for BTS is that for what they did right -- and they did a lot right -- it suffers from a handful of very disappointing elements that modify it for the worse.
Like Heavy Rain the game has you making decisions, but unlike with Heavy Rain the decisions you make in BTS have very little impact in terms of consequences. I say this sadly. In Heavy Rain when you made the wrong decision or a bad one, if you did not end up dead you still had to live with the consequences of whatever choice you made. Not so in BTS.
Where Heavy Rain was built around a cohesive and deep story, it seems like much of the plot development and background story were left on the cutting room floor with BTS -- in fact that has to be so because the different 'levels' often abruptly shift in focus, so that the information being communicated often feels as if it were more of a non-sequitur than any planned continuance of the story.
The illusion of free will that was present in Heavy Rain is not present here, and the presence of the narrator here feels like a sentence being passed rather than the infinite possibilities that it might have offered.
Heavy Rain was a lot like real life in that sometimes the smallest of actions or events could turn out to be significant evidence or clues, whereas with Beyond Two Souls the feeling -- and fact -- that you are on a rail with about as much free will as you find in an old Choose Your Own Adventure book of the sort popular with teens in the 1970s overwhelms you.
Far from the anticipated deeper levels of immersion one expects to encounter in this genre and sort of game, you instead find that by the time you reach the point in the game where everything is coming together you end up wondering when it will be over?
That is the version of the story that was written up by Andy Chalk for Escapist - and by the way, paragraphs are our friends.
The situation that lead to the formation of the ESRB wasn't over a single game and it did not happen overnight - and as far as I know it was not a conspiracy.
It started with bloody gore and violence in Mortal Kombat and Doom, and the sexploitation games Night Trap and Rape. When the issue was brought to the Senate Commerce Subcommittee it was a combination of games from Capcom and Midway that were said to have excessive violence.
Remember this was just after Australia created an official government run approval system - that really hurt the games industry in Oceania.
As for the conspiracy - considering that Acclaim, Sega, Nintendo, EA and Id created and funded the initial committee that ended up creating the ESRB.
Good read,but I am confused. To the best of my memory it was in fact mortal Kombat on Sega genesis and night trap on Sega cd that caused all the big issue over video game violence not street fighter. Also it was Sega that worked with video game developers and instituted the first video game rating system not Capcom. You see after huge sale of mortal kombat over genesis over the sanitized super nes version Nintendo went to Joseph Lieberman to try and harm Sega and caused the big out cry over video game violence. I am pretty sure this is the situation that took place and Capcom and street fighter did not have much to do with it. Still enjoyed the article and I still need to check out Remember me. To bad about the original staff being let go.
Er,the Aliens from the Alien series do not live on human flesh and can't morph at will.Maybe you should watch them again.
Actually you are missing the point - if RockSteady had been hired to do the third game it WOULD have had improvements. What happened was the IP owner decided that the level of advancement in the game was sufficient to simply retread the engine with a different story on top and none of you would notice or care. Apparently they are right for some of you - but we do expect more.
He's got a point
You can't be dissapointed, if you don't have expectations in the first place. if you were expecting anthing from these tittles, then its your fault to get dissapointed.
first place whaaat?
You simply cannot expect the quality go up any higher than Arkham city lol, i mean it has to stop somewhere, jesus. insatiable gamers.
I actually enjoyed Batman Arkham Origins pretty much. It was what I expected to be after playing the previous two games from Rocksteady. Articles like this are the beiggest proof that gaming media has gone down the toilet. We get incredibly amaizing games every year, but now for some reason, to the gaming media they always turn out to be crappy disapointments. I seriously wonder what exactly are you guys expecting? Are you not entertained?