I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about Digital Era Entertainment (much less DEE CORe) yet, but we revel in doing the conventional in the most unconventional ways possible. Because we honestly put all our effort into making a quality “Best of 2017” video (presented below to soften the descent into madness and make it clear where our priorities lay), we agreed to take Kenneth’s “Disappointing” and “Worst” lists and consolidate it all into one big piece covering the full spectrum.
Though things are still far from perfect, we are happy with a lot from this past year and are excited for 2018, so we opted to focus on all that as we come up on remaining pieces of 2017 which coincide with the first anniversary of the relaunched CORe.
So without further adieu…
The Best, Worst, and Most Disappointing. With the latter two receiving as much effort as the publishers/studios that put them out.
-Mario
Introduction + The Top Ten Best Games of 2017
It’s the end of the year and as expected, we’re bringing you our Best, Disappointing and Worse of 2017. We kind of did things a little backwards this time around as we presented our Best Games of 2017 first in our debut non-stream video over at our YouTube channel as opposed to last like most traditional gaming sites tend to do. Then again, we here at CORe are not your traditional gaming website and we do things our way for sure.
The Top Ten Worst Games of 2017
While 2017 was perhaps a grand year for video games as whole, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that some titles were better off remaining unreleased. For every amazing and genre forwarding entry we got, another title came out and saw fit to undo a lot of what makes the industry so grand and majestic. These are the stains of agony in an otherwise amazing field. The retched hives of villainy. The absolute and utter worse of 2017.
10) Conan: Exiles
Crom, where is the wizard who created this blasphemy on your franchise? If you’re my god, then show me the way to bludgeon them with the hilt end of the sword. No really this game was broken from the get go and had little to offer in stable playability. It has been patched though, but even that patch isn’t enough to save what little this game had to offer.
9) Perception
A video game where you play as a lone woman who utilizes echo location to traverse the environment because she is blind sounds amazing. Unfortunately, the game is neither fun or scary as it is predictable, boring and cloddy throughout the entire ordeal. What sounded amazing on paper is a chore to play through and isn’t even disappointing as it is an extreme let down and an example of what not to do when you have a unique premise for a game.
8) Double Dragon IV
Tedious gameplay, piss poor hit detection, bland level design and cringe worthy music all combine to showcase a cheap cash in on nostalgia. Also, we already got a Double Dragon IV on Super Nintendo. This game’s existence is utterly pointless
7) Deformers
I have no idea what this game was trying to do but I do know that Ready At Dawn is a better studio than this considering their previous track record. Some game where you’re combating other players as a rolling blob might have been a decent party game but this one felt phoned it on all levels from awful design, terrible controls and just sheer amounts of unfun gameplay.
6) Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Mega Battle
Monotonous fighting gameplay marred down with enemies who wander around waiting to be beat up hinder what could have been a fun experience. Then they up and made the Mega Zord fights QTE only. I’ve never deleted a game as fast off my HDD as this one, and feel ashamed I bought into the hype. Oh wait there is another few titles I regret playing and we’ve just gotten to the halfway point on this list.
*Sigh*
5) DYING Reborn
Virtual Reality Horror games shouldn’t be a terrible experience as when done right they are usually among the best reasons to play a game in VR, but DYING Reborn decides that it wants to offer bland puzzles alongside awful voice acting and isn’t that scary. The challenge is non-existent, the game is super short and the story is so cliched you’d groan just playing through the experience.
4) Troll and I
Trying to cash in on the concept made prevalent in The Last Guardian, this game tries to mix that title with Uncharted gameplay and fails in every attempt. Framerate drops, awful voice acting and terrible AI mix together with game breaking glitches that just wind up resorting this to the trash bin.
3) Drive Girls
You most likely never heard of this title and if you haven’t please skip ahead to the next entry which is only saved by the fact that this game is slightly better than it. We got transforming anime girls who transform into cars with Dynasty Warrior style beat ‘em up gameplay that gets tacked down by awful combat mechanics and a 4 hour campaign. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this game except that it was obviously made to cater to fans of waifu loving nerds who like to buy this crap.
2) Vroom in the Night Sky
I have no idea what happened in this game as it feels like an anime gone bad with awful controls, terrible level design and it happened to launch with the Nintendo Switch. Nothing in this game made any sense and I only played it because it was free. I think back to when I deleted MMPR off my PS4 quickly, and this was a game I erased not just from my Switch but am trying to erase from memory as well.
1) Life of Black Tiger
A vengeful black tiger is the star of this Android port to PS4. I think by that sentence alone you should know what you’re getting out of this thing. Bland visuals, awful gameplay and it just feels so cheap and unfinished I can’t believe it even made it to the PlayStation Store in the capacity that it did. I played it so you don’t have to, so please don’t.
The Top Ten Disappointing Games of 2017
So, as it comes to pass, we now look at the games that while decent, wound up being disappointments for us at CORe and we wished were better than they advertised or we expected.
10) Destiny 2
Make no mistake we are enjoying our time with Destiny 2 as we play it (especially now with the Curse of Osiris expansion out) but we had to acknowledge that this one was a bit of a letdown when compared to the leaps, bounds and immense strides the original made in its 3-year lifespan. While D2 offered a better story than its predecessor, it faltered heavily when it came to the end-game content and grind as it offered very little reward for most if not all the high-end activities that one would focus on once the campaign was beaten. The token reward system is a mess, and the activities dropping mostly rare, blue quality engrams and items is laughable considering the amount of work that goes into these missions and events. It’s a case of two steps forward, one step back but thankfully Bungie is a company that actively listens to their fans and has been addressing some of these issues as we speak. Let’s hope they’re quicker on the uptake and it doesn’t take a 3rd or 4th expansion to get it right this time around.
9) Drawn To Death
From the original creator of Twisted Metal and God of War, Drawn to Death had an amazing concept and idea fleshed out with an interesting art style and premise. Unfortunately, that’s all it had as the mechanics just weren’t as deep enough as the Twisted Metal games were, and the online community disappeared just a few weeks after it launched mostly due in part that some features in the main game didn’t materialize in time to hold anyone’s attention. No single player trials or levels in a game that clearly could have supported it; multiplayer balance was off a tad and an extremely small roster wound up hurting this game in the long run. Much like Destiny 2, we enjoyed this one briefly but saw a lot of areas where it could have been improved if the focus was there.
8) Call of Duty: WWII
It’s always funny when the once king of the multiplayer shooter keeps messing up the part of the game everyone mostly buys into this series for. While the single player campaign this time around was a highlight, the online portion of the game needed a ton of work with inconsistent net code and balance issues thanks to microtransaction BS that essentially makes the online component a borderline pay to win game.
7) Guardians of the Galaxy
Telltale Games is usually spot on with their releases, but as of late their engine has been showing signs of aging and their games haven’t been the same in quality and nowhere is that more disappointing with their first Marvel endeavor in Galaxy of the Guardians. Graphical hiccups and bugs killed any of the fun that could have been in this title but even the story was a let down by the final chapter’s release.
6) Ghost Recon: Wildands
A forgettable story, horrid driving controls and a lackluster variety of missions killed what could have been an amazing open world experience for the franchise. There’s dropping the ball and then there is Ubisoft being Ubisoft and crashing a giant ball down a 50-story building into a room full of puppies.
5) Friday the 13th: The Game
It’s recently been patched into a playable state, but initially this game launched a buggy mess with horrid latency issues and couldn’t be played for weeks after its initial release. By the time it did come out, people had already moved back to Dead by Daylight, which is arguably a far better game than this one.
4) Yooka-Laylee
Nostalgia doesn’t always win and this game would have been fine if It came out when the Nintendo 64 was the platform of choice. Nothing in this title pushed the platforming genre to any sort of relevancy, especially when a remastered Crash Bandicoot outshined it and we’re also in the year that Super Mario Odyssey just went light years beyond what could ever have been even conceived for the genre. This one went Banjo-Kaplooey from the get go.
3) Need for Speed Payback
Despite a fantastic trailer at E3, Need for Speed Payback suffers from an incredibly bland story. Characters in this installment were so boring and the progression system was busted on release complete with microtransactions that its nearly become as overdone as the movie franchise it is trying to rip-off from nowadays. The driving mechanics were well done despite all this, but it’s not enough to give this title any sort of worthwhile praise.
2) Star Wars Battlefront 2
EA is quickly becoming a company that misses the point of what gamers want in a video game, especially a Star Wars video game. Not content to take a steaming dump on single player games, EA saw fit to mess up on their multiplayer endeavors as well, bogging down this entry in the franchise with a loot box system that essentially forces you to buy into it to obtain anything of value. It’s a shame the game went in this direction as its extremely fun to play, but the grind needed to obtain anything of value isn’t worth the investment.
1) Mass Effect: Andromeda
I believe the only thing more disappointing than this game is the current state of affairs in this country. At launch it was a glitch-filled, unpolished mess of a game with an awful story and after a graphics patch it was still a glitch-filled, unpolished mess of a game with an awful story. Bioware is generally known for better quality than this, but it seems like they can’t catch a break after the fiasco that was Mass Effect 3’s ending controversy. EA just can’t win as of late apparently.
