Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4

Author Topic: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame  (Read 4908 times)

Sirus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Resident trucker/goddess/ex-president.
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #15 on: August 15, 2014, 07:13:50 pm »

Pea Tee Dubya.
Logged
Quote from: Max White
And lo! Sirus did drive his mighty party truck unto Vegas, and it was good.

Star Wars: Age of Rebellion OOC Thread

Shadow of the Demon Lord - OOC Thread - IC Thread

Scripten

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #16 on: August 15, 2014, 07:37:00 pm »

3079, 3089. Ohgodwhy. These should never have been put for sale; they're tech demos at best, attempts to make a kind of procedural FPS-ARPG but they're extremely limited in scope.
This is going to make me sound like a defensive fanboy, though I've hardly played these games, but here goes: The one difference these games have from most if not all the others on your list is that they were made by one programmer (with at least some of the artwork outsourced). I'm not trying to convince anyone to like the games, and it's fine if you think they're overpriced, but considering their development situation is similar to DF, you should judge the quality accordingly.

I'm seriously disappointed in Phroot, despite all that. The programming is pretty impressive, but he is a fairly terrible game designer and the guy whose artwork he bought stole several assets from, of all things, Doom 2. This was promptly fixed, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. That and the fact that he keeps selling every iteration on the 30X9 series as if they aren't just new iterations on the same game. It's just... disingenuous and while it may not be intentional, it burns potential sales away as people keep getting unfinished messes of games when Phroot decides to can his current project and start over. Guy really needs a project leader to reign him in and focus his considerable talents.

Also, totally unrelated, but I'd recommend giving Uplink another try. It's a little slow at first, but it's good fun once you've cracked (heh) the gameplay. I must be the only person ever who didn't really like DEFCON, tho.
Logged

Blaze

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Chaos that Crawls up on you with a Smile.
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2014, 07:54:21 pm »

184 games total. Many, many disappointments.

Alan Wake/American Nightmare - Why did they make a game that takes more resources to run than Crysis 2?
Armored Hunter: Gunhound EX - Essentially unplayable without a controller, no ability to keymap, default controls require 7 fingers on one hand.
Avadon: The Black Fortress - I was always disappointed with the Geneforge series after experiencing just how massive the Exile series is.
Borderlands/Borderlands2: Freezes randomly during gameplay. No fix available.
Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy - Sid Meier's Pirates! is superior IMO.
Chantelise: I really wanted to like this game since Recettear, but it's massively grindy and lacks Recettear's charm.
Divinity: Dragon Commander - I never really understood this game. It tries to do too much and ends up being disappointing in many of them.
Dogfighter: Controls horribly, maybe I'm just spoiled by Ace Combat.
Doom II/Master Levels- Uses external frontend that's not linked to Steam.
Freespace 2: ONLY because it doesn't run. I needed to get the FSOpen to run it and that's not linked to Steam.
Geneforge Series 1-5 - See Avadon.
Hacker Evolution: Was no Uplink. Finished in 2 hours, further content is all in DLCs.
Hinterland - See Dragon Commander
Kenshi - I'll check again in 2-3 years.
Mafia: Not fond of driving games.
Mount & Blade: F&S - Warband has a much larger modder base.
Orion: Dino Horde: eeeeeh...
Parkan 2: Absolutely Massive Disappointment. Randomly Crashes.
Penguins Arena: Sedna's World - I don't even know where I got this.
RIP 1/2/3 - Essentially Flash Games.
Robin Hood - Was marketed as being able to be run on modern systems. Lies. After reporting they edited the game's store info and now ignore everyone complaining about it.
Saints Row 2 - Runs at 10x normal speed. Not going to jump hoops to play it.
SpaceTrader Merchant Marine - Essentially no balance, absolutely random trade prices, trade goods randomly spawn in stations and is free to pickup (what?), Combat AI is run by a hamster wheel.
SpaceForce Rogue Universe - Watered down X3.
Tank Universal - Beat it once. Pretty much done.
Two Worlds - This was supposed to rival Elder Scrolls? I don't see how.
Valley Without Wind 1/2 - I don't really know how to describe this game, but it's not for me.
XCOM Interceptor - Unplayably choppy
XCOM Enforcer - Freezes immediately upon starting the first level.
Logged

Niveras

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #18 on: August 15, 2014, 07:57:32 pm »

3079, 3089. Ohgodwhy. These should never have been put for sale; they're tech demos at best, attempts to make a kind of procedural FPS-ARPG but they're extremely limited in scope.
This is going to make me sound like a defensive fanboy, though I've hardly played these games, but here goes: The one difference these games have from most if not all the others on your list is that they were made by one programmer (with at least some of the artwork outsourced). I'm not trying to convince anyone to like the games, and it's fine if you think they're overpriced, but considering their development situation is similar to DF, you should judge the quality accordingly.

It is still (or feels like) a tech demo/proof of concept and not something that should have been actively sold to consumers. I understand he wanted to recoup some of the cost on working on it, and in this way it kind of works like crowdfunding where people ostensibly get a finished product (vice early access) and still contribute to future improvements. And that model works, in the sense that people like me end up buying it (hopefully not at the full $10 price...). But it is still, I would argue an illegitimate, way to go about selling your products.
Logged

Leyic

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #19 on: August 15, 2014, 08:24:43 pm »

Like I said, if you don't like the 30X9 games or don't agree with their pricing, fine. But saying they're bad in the same way that Fallen Enchantress or Salvation Prophecy are bad ("ohgodwhy") isn't really a fair comparison and diminishes just how bad the professional projects are. Like Scripten said, phr00t isn't perfect and has problems typical of other really small indie dev teams, but they are trivial compared to what the Elemental franchise has suffered, the ongoing disaster that is Starbound, or some of the trash that supposedly AAA studios put out.

My point is that solo devs and similarly small teams should be given a little leeway when being chewed up by the meat grinder that is the internet, at least where matters of quality are concerned. (Where money's involved, feel free to chew away.)

Nighthawk

  • Bay Watcher
  • INT Score: Yes
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #20 on: August 15, 2014, 08:50:10 pm »

A friend of mine has this in his library.
Logged

Scripten

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #21 on: August 15, 2014, 08:53:43 pm »

Avadon: The Black Fortress - I was always disappointed with the Geneforge series after experiencing just how massive the Exile series is.

I played through Avadon during a month with no internet and massively enjoyed it. Is Exile significantly better, then? If so, I'm totally going after it.
Logged

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #22 on: August 15, 2014, 09:47:09 pm »

A friend of mine has this in his library.

One of the tags on that is "survival horror." That officially made my day.
Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Jack_Bread

  • Bay Watcher
  • 100% FRESH ♥HIPPO♥
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #23 on: August 15, 2014, 10:05:27 pm »

A friend of mine has this in his library.
I hear the game is actually pretty decent. I think it's like a mythical horse breeding game or something.

Shadowlord

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #24 on: August 15, 2014, 10:31:07 pm »

I have Bad Rats in my library. According to steam, I played it for 10 minutes before uninstalling it. It tasked me with microwaving a cat. I did not comply.

Saints Row 2 - Runs at 10x normal speed. Not going to jump hoops to play it.

Oddly it runs just fine on Windows 8 / 8.1. Seems the timing issue was magically fixed by Microsoft. The only real issue I had was that the framerate slows down as you drive fast because it - lol - is horribly optimized and is reading all of the city data off your hard drive as you drive.

The only thing I did to it was install the Gentlemen of the Row mod, and maybe fix the resolution (Don't recall if it supported 1920x1080 or not).

Dangerous Waters is one that I think I'll toss in there, though, because it doesn't run at all. It just crashes, and there's no way to fix it (besides, of course, not using windows 8). The developers don't support it, don't answer emails, but they still sell it... It was a gift too. It would be nice if Steam had a "return gift because it won't run" feature.

Monday Night Combat... Turns out there wasn't much point to buying this, because they released Super Monday Night Combat, for free, not long after... And I didn't find MNC enjoyable anyways, alas.
Logged
<Dakkan> There are human laws, and then there are laws of physics. I don't bike in the city because of the second.
Dwarf Fortress Map Archive

ryak2002

  • Bay Watcher
  • Master Computerdwarf
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #25 on: August 15, 2014, 10:37:15 pm »

What's with all the Alan wake hate in this thread?  It may not have had the best gameplay in the history of the universe, but it had one of the better written game stories of any game i have played.  American nightmare was indeed garbage, though.
Logged
Dwarf: Excuse me, sir.  This !!x cave spider silk tunic x!! is on fire.<BR>Store Clerk: Oh, how about half price?<BR>Dwarf: deal!

Shadowlord

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #26 on: August 15, 2014, 10:43:11 pm »

I only played it a little bit on the 360, and it ran perfectly smoothly there, so it's amusing to hear that it would run like crap on a PC (since a 360 is an obsolete underpowered PC with a minimal OS that barely uses any resources, more or less).
Logged
<Dakkan> There are human laws, and then there are laws of physics. I don't bike in the city because of the second.
Dwarf Fortress Map Archive

Bouchart

  • Bay Watcher
  • [NO_WORK]
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #27 on: August 15, 2014, 10:54:23 pm »

I'll also add East India Company to this list, which is something like a boring trading game combined with a boring naval combat game.
Logged

SpiredWarrior

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #28 on: August 15, 2014, 11:05:25 pm »

Confrontation: I expected a decent strategy RPG with at least some diversity in classes, but I got a Dawn of War clone that didn't understand what made DoW so good.
Gothic 4: I never played any of the other Gothic games, but this contrasts with everything else I've heard about the series. It's extremely linear, the protagonist is flatter than an ironing board, and what few side quests there were seemed to just consist of getting X item and bringing it to the quest giver.
FEZ: A platformer with a really cool selling point that proceeded to barely use it and instead make most of its content puzzles based around a terrible cipher language that is only used to give instructions to the player and nothing more. I can only wonder what Fez 2 could have been had Phil Fish not cancelled it.

There are a few others, but those 3 are the games in my steam library that I regret the most.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2014, 11:09:47 pm by SpiredWarrior »
Logged

Sirus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Resident trucker/goddess/ex-president.
    • View Profile
Re: Your Hidden Steam Games, The Category of Shame
« Reply #29 on: August 16, 2014, 12:20:31 am »

Lessee, I got:

A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda: A twin-stick shooter/platformer. Runs best with a controller (which I don't have), but I simply can't play it. Why? The boss flashes are absolutely horrendous. Gave me a headache and would probably drive epileptics into a seizure.

Altitude: Some little multiplayer airplane game that looks like a flash title. I don't even think people play it anymore, and I probably got it as part of some bundle.

A Valley Without Wind: I want to like this, but it's just too much like a tech demo. I haven't tried the sequel yet, which I hear is more like an actual game.
Logged
Quote from: Max White
And lo! Sirus did drive his mighty party truck unto Vegas, and it was good.

Star Wars: Age of Rebellion OOC Thread

Shadow of the Demon Lord - OOC Thread - IC Thread
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4