Legacy Control

No one likes being disappointed, especially parents. It’s always worse when they say, “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.” I feel the same way about some of the stuff that has been going on with video games this year.

Sometimes, a game has been so hyped that there was just no way it could’ve ever met expectations. Some of the stuff that’s going to be mentioned here isn’t necessarily bad. Some is even good, to an extent, but nothing here is great. The one thing they all have in common is that they let me down.

Bastards.

1. Capcom

Yup, I went there right away and I’ve already talked about it at great length. This isn’t purely about the company, though. They released quite a few games this year that consistently let me down and I didn’t want this entire list to be nothing but Capcom games, so I’m lumping them all in one slot.

First came “Street Fighter X Tekken”. The game is actually really fun but it was extremely broken when it first came out, gems are stupid, we had to wait for Capcom to slowly trickle out free color packs so we could customize our characters, and people went batshit crazy about DLC characters.

The game didn’t exactly gain a stellar reputation. That’s a shame, too, because the game really could’ve been something special but the execution was just flawed. Hopefully the 2013 version makes up for it.

“Dragon’s Dogma” showed a lot of promise. It was touted as an open world RPG that actually had good combat and massive monsters to take down in a brutal fashion. What the game actually ended up being was a tedious slog full of constant backtracking, due there being no way to fast travel until the game was essentially over. It also had a  combat system that was too limited and escort quests. ESCORT QUESTS!

I’m not entirely sure why game designers feel the need to include escort quests in their games. To my knowledge, no one likes them and “Dragon’s Dogma” makes them even worse by giving the people you’re supposed to protect the artificial intelligence of a “Speak & Spell”. Lame.

“Dragon’s Dogma” SHOULD have been good. The game’s pawn system was actually incredibly unique and fun. Hiring pawns that other people had raised was a blast and having your pawn return from adventures with other players was always exciting. Combat also showed a lot of promise but instead of making it more complex and allowing for more options, it basically came down to spamming one button over and over and then using a special attack, which is preset to button. *Yawn*. Still, it’s better than combat seen in every other open world RPG, including “Skyrim”, so they’re at least on to something there.

At least catching griffons on fire has never been more fun or horrifying. So brutal! You almost feel sorry for them.

Then, we come to “Resident Evil 6”. I’m not going to say much about this. I think the Internet has yelled enough obscenities about the game and run it through the mud enough times to hide it from the Predator. All I will say is that it’s a painfully mediocre game that lost all sight of what the “Resident Evil” series is supposed to be about.

Well, it still has Mercenaries Mode. I guess that’s something.

2. Twisted Metal

Here is a series that has been dead for ages. Last sighted as “Twisted Metal Black” on PS2, it was an extremely dark and twisted game that rivaled “Twisted Metal 2” as best in the series and is probably the best car combat game of all time.

So, how do you top it? You don’t, you just make a generic car combat game and then throw a few, and I mean a few, “Twisted Metal” characters in it, then call it a day. Why did it take so long for this game to come out?

Story mode is laughably weak and there are only three characters to play as. Granted, the three stories you get are kind of interesting but you just get so little. The actual game feels like old “Twisted Metal” which may be a good thing for some but those controls weren’t entirely great when they first came out. Why make absolutely no attempt to modernize them?

Oh, then there’s that old school AI that makes this game SO pleasant. Wait, did I say pleasant? I meant horrible. If you’re playing single player, get ready for some rockin’ frustration because the enemy AI does NOTHING but target you. It doesn’t matter if they have other cars next to them and it doesn’t matter if you’re on the other side of the map. They will make a beeline straight for you and they will attack relentlessly in swarms. Oh, and that’s on normal difficulty.