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As expected, last weekend's list of Ars editors' picks for their least favorite overrated games led to some spirited debate in the comments. There were plenty of people around to lend both support and derision for each and every pick, though Florence Ion's pick for Super Meat Boy seemed to draw the most universal ire (and Lee Hutchinson's Halo pick was by far the most controversial, with dozens of commenters on each side).
Despite all the arguing, there was one thing everyone seemed to agree on: the list was way too short. We left off a lot of way overrated candidates. While we weren't really attempting to be comprehensive, our commenters did their best to remedy that problem, offering their own picks for games that just don't deserve the heaps of praise they receive from the critical establishment. Here's a round-up of some of the more popular and/or interesting picks from the epic, 350+ comment thread.
Final Fantasy
The most popular overrated pick among our commenters, by a hair, was the Final Fantasy series, and Final Fantasy VII in particular. Pitmonster led things off by saying the game 'did nothing for me at all, despite all the gaming reviewers raving about it being the best game of all time.' Robot Dinosaur expanded on the thought: 'Not that it's a bad game, but it doesn't deserve the ridiculous hype it's been given ever sense. It's inferior to FF6 in most ways that matter (more interesting characters, more interesting villain, better plot, better subplots, better graphics if you allow that masterful 2D sprites beat shitty 3D stuff.)' Commenter ifgriffi ended up with quite a bit of FFVII buyer's remorse: 'It's one of those games that I expected to love (even traded my N64 for a Playstation so I could play it) but ended up hating and just barely forcing myself to finish so I could say I did. ... I didn't give a shit about any of the characters, and the fact that all your abilities were stored in materia made them pretty much interchangeable anyway. And the unskippable minute-and-a-half long summon spells were just obnoxious.'
The rest of the Final Fantasy series didn't escape our commenters' ire either. Kitkoan called outFinal Fantasy VI (known as Final Fantasy III in the US), specifically for what he sees as a mess of a story. 'It flips through so many characters at a break neck speed that by the end of it I just didn't care what happened to any of them. It felt more like they just gathered a bunch of five page stories and tried to in a desperate move to merge them into one giant story.' Charleski called out the entire Final Fantasy series, but hated VI in particular. 'What a tedious pile of mindless button-clicking shit! I actually persevered fairly far into the game until I got to a point where I realized that killing the next boss required a whole lot of leveling-up by clicking the same buttons over and over again on a countless pile of completely unchallenging trash mobs.'
Mosxs centered his complaints on the more recent Final Fantasy titles, specifically the ones after the original PlayStation. 'Being a big fanboy of Final Fantasy in the 90s, Final Fantasy X was one of the worst games I've ever played. ... Seriously, the story in that game was flat out awful. To the point where I was laughing in disbelief at some scenes and dialog. ... Each FF game since has gotten progressively worse as well.'
A series of overrated events games
The Call of Duty series in general was a perhaps unsurprisingly popular choice for an overrated series, withmanycommenters just declaring the games as overrated without further comment. PrimalxComwboy put his problems with the series into words, specifically arguing against the games' popular multiplayer modes. 'I fail and/or loath online competitive multiplayer, having encountered too many Trolls that would rather see the world burn, than actually enjoy a game with people. I just thank God that Words with Friends doesn't suffer the same amount of insults and cheating or 'world burning' behavior as COD or any game similar to it.'
A number of commenters didn't see why so many people seemed so enamored with the world of Skyrim, or Elder Scrolls in general. 'It felt profoundly empty, with a feeling that nothing we did would affect the world that much,' dogbiscuit complained. 'I've spent enough hours playing it to know that bugs from the previous Elder Scrolls titles are still there, and the addition of dragons does not 'instant classic make,' Shmak suggested. Snyder thinks the entire Elder Scrolls series doesn't deserve its praise, thanks to 'ridiculous' leveling, bad AI, and even 'abominations' from the face generation engine.
The Assassin's Creed series also drew a lot of ire, from quite afew commenters who said they didn't see the appeal. Swilhelm called the first game in the series 'the only game I've ever started that I gave up on entirely. Everyone seemed to love it, but I found it to be slow paced and the controls were beyond awkward.' Ginsuchikara was particularly mad about Assassin's Creed 3 and its 'forgettable, shallow characters. Crap art direction. Glitches everywhere. Story that seems to have been written by M. Night Shyamalan. Pointlessly, overly difficult AI's.'
Speaking of convoluted games stories, a few commenters took issue with the Metal Gear Solid series. Boticho was particularly offended by the way the fourth game included 'a given action break at over sixty minutes [long]. Some people I know were turned off when they realize they were mostly watching an interactive movie that they could not figure out as they have not played previous games.' Salamanderjuice also pointed out the 'hour-long cut scenes' but also the long install and load times and a tailing mission that stretched out to 30 or 40 minutes. MPK211, meanwhile, pointed toMetal Gear Solid 2 as a game where 'the actual gameplay elements are killing the immersion and taking you out of the game, it should have just been a movie,' and there was altogether too much exposition.
And the rest
Past those, there were quite a few games that were considered overrated by one or two (or maybe three) commenters in our epic thread. Angry Birds is 'supposed to be physics based, but it seems to have way too large a chunk of luck for that to be true,' according to wjousts. Dark Souls doesn't deserve good reviews because it's 'stupidly hard' and/or 'inhumanely difficult.' Half-Life 2got attacked for having puzzles that were 'obnoxious and tedious, essentially the game designers trying to show off their physics engine more than being interesting gameplay.'
Among Ars commenters, you can find hatred for World of Warcraft, Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, BioShock, Uncharted, Minecraft, the original X-Com, Shadow of the Colossus, and more titles that are almost universally praised by critics and gamers alike. It just goes to show you, there's no accounting for taste.
But my favorite comments, by far, were the ones I'll refer to as 'machine gun trolls.' These are the commenters that used the thread to simply list out a good number of ultra-popular titles that don't measure up in their books. Hardrock_ram's list of 10 overrated games included the only mention of Super Mario 64 in the entire thread, as well as an incredible pick for Tetris. Ekotan listed seven big-name games that he said 'bored me to tears about an hour into the game.' Jedisamurai wrote out his own list of 10 overrated titles ranging from Super Mario Galaxy to Everquest.
The very best machine gun troll comment, though, is from commenter orborborb. Not only did he put the hammer down on the entire God of War, Twisted Metal, Elder Scrolls, Prince of Persia (modern), and Assassin's Creed series, but also the entire post-Baldur's Gate II output fromBiowareand 'Red Dead Redemption, Arkham City, Diablo 1&2, Borderlands, Okami, Ratchet and Clank games, Professor Layton games, Fable II, Burnout Paradise, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Mario Kart Wii, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario games, andKlonoa games.' After reading through a list like that, it's hard to imagine that any game is good enough for such a refined palate.
Feel like we've finally got a comprehensive list? Add even more to the debate below.
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