The Grudge List

[Frogacuda]

SwordQuest: This is the only game I hated so much I bought the whole series, not because I enjoyed them, but in a desperate attempt to comprehend them. I knew they were bad game, but I needed to understand the twisted logic that led someone to believe that this was a game they were making 3 times. I kept buying them hoping it would illuminate the mystery, but it never did.

[Low]

Sonic Adventure- for giving us "voice talent" and the oh so engaging gameplay to be expected from a 3D Sonic game.

Mario 64- I love Mario 64, but every other 3D platformer turning into a fetch quest (wave for the folks Rare) was a serious side effect.

Tekken- not even in the same league as Virtua Fighter yet it's by far the more popular choice (around here anyway)

Shemnue 2- I know broken record. It would have sold shitty on DC, and ended up selling shitty on Xbox, MS hit a nerve on that one.

Cave- great games but the template is wearing thin. 5 levels, two loops, alternate laser/beam when button is held, chains ahoy. Border Down, Gradius V, and Zanac X Zanac are the last shooters I've enjoyed that didn't seem to be vying for this company's mantle. *-neo

[Tain]

Cave fanboys: For convincing every shooter developer out there that there's nothing worth making besides bullet hell shooters. And for voting utter garbage like Guwange into the annual Shmups top 25 poll.

I can get behind this. I might consider Cave to be the best shooter developer, and Guwange is amazing presentation wise, but I can't believe how highly some people think of it.

And then some get all disappointed when Cave releases Deathsmiles because it's light and horizontal. Fuck that.

[Dyne]

SwordQuest: This is the only game I hated so much I bought the whole series, not because I enjoyed them, but in a desperate attempt to comprehend them. I knew they were bad game, but I needed to understand the twisted logic that led someone to believe that this was a game they were making 3 times. I kept buying them hoping it would illuminate the mystery, but it never did.

holy shit YES! i had all of these bastard 2600 games. fuck it they were even beatable games. i have yet to find conclusive evidence on the web if they were.

[YellerDog]

Ghostbusters NES: Made me hate videogames for several months, once upon a time. Built an awesome fort outside that summer, so it wasn't a total loss. I wish the lesson would have stuck sometimes.

Neo Geo Pocket Color: If I had known it was on it's last leg, I'd have never started with it. All too brief.

Super Mario Sunshine: THIS is why I picked up a GameCube?! Horrible. Had a better time with P.N.03.

[NeoZeedeater]

As for my grudge crap:
Nintendo: For brainwashing the world into thinking that the Japanese invented and perfected videogames.

On that note, I left off grudges that weren't individual games but fabrications of history caused by gamers and the media are at the top of my list. There's not much more annoying in gaming discussion than having someone tell you that gaming was dead and buried in 1985 until the NES came out, and calling you an idiot for saying otherwise. These people are almost always not old enough to remember entering a mall or arcade in the mid '80s, not surprisingly. But I'm sure I have ranted enough about this before. At least TNL generally knows better. It's more a problem at less informed places.

[kingoffighters]

Speaking of MMORPG and waste of time, I spent over 6.5 months in Asheron's Call over a period of 3.5 years. MONTHS. WTF.

[dog$]

Resident Evil
Contra. Metal Slug. Doom. Halo. Gears of War.
Imagine playing any of these games without being able to move and shoot simultaneously. For the first time in videogame history there would be full universal consensus, and it would be as to what unplayable garbage such a game would be. But that's not the point of RE, you're saying; it's a survival horror game. That would be an acceptable argument except RE enables you to become a walking militia. In an actual survival horror game such as Alone in the Dark or Silent Hill, enemy encounters and interaction are actually tense because you dont have 200 pounds of rocket launchers and machine guns in your coat. Not to mention that it's pretty fucking hard to be "horrifed" at something like in the old games when there was one window which had a different colored texture than the rest in the background - I wonder where the dog/bat/zombie is going to jump in from????. Now you're saying RE has elements of survival horror but it's more action-oriented. Well if it wants to be action oriented, why does it insist on being contrary to 30 years of common videogame logic where if your protagonist's main means of action are to (a) move and (b) shoot, you can't do both at the same time like any normal human would. Any game that played like RE without the game's namesake would be widely panned as an unplayable, unfocussed mess - particularly with the usually laughable script and storyline presentation. That some people insist on naming RE4 one of the best games ever made shows how sorry videogaming as a whole is.

Guilty Gear
I wanted to call this the Chatting Parodius of fighting games, but that's doing it too much of a positive service. Parodius was just some frilly shooter that nobody really took seriously. The only thing more vocal than the characters in Guilty Gear is its fanbase who insist on parading around how goddamned deep the game is and run through a list of all these moves and gameplay options which all add up to a game that's pure offense. That bores me. A good battle is a give and take, a tense struggle to hang onto your life while beating theirs down, a teeth-grinding anticipation to wait for the right moment to strike. GG offers one-hit kills. I don't care how easy they are to detect or evade - they're still there.

Super Mario 64
Yeah, when I was younger and a lot more retarded than I am now, I managed to convince myself pretty well that this was the pinnacle of electronic entertainment. And I played the hell out of the game. And I got 120 stars. And then I realized that after doing that, I had no reason to play the game ever again. And I didn't.
The reason: if you acquired 120 stars in this game as I have, how does the game show whether you or I did a better job of it? The answer is it doesn't. The answer is that the game gives absolutely no provision to develop any sort of skill to play it or reward you for doing so. I think this is why Galaxy isn't quite impressing people as they were anticipating, and why it's not having nearly any sort of tremendous impact on the entire videogame scene as SM64 did - without any means to reward or develop skill, all the game offers is places to have Mario explore. If you don't care about having Mario explore places, there's no reason to play the game.
But does that stop either Mario game mentioned from being named near the top of Top 100 of All Time lists and other self-serving crap? Does it stop Galaxy or SM64 from running up the list at Gamerankings? Not in the least. And that is pure bullshit. I've said it before - I want to see a journalist's review of SMG with a score of 7 saying "it's a great game if you're a fan of the series". It won't happen. Because most people have no fucking standards.

Smash Brothers
Everyone knows that bringing this shit up when other fighting games are being discussed causes a deserved shitstorm, yet it happens every single fucking time. Fuck wavedashing. Fuck tournament rules. Fuck your combo videos. I don't fucking care. Keep your shit out.

Super Monkey Ball
It's Marble Madness with extra minigames. Big fucking deal. Why am I supposed to care about this? What's so fucking fantastic about these games? Nothing that I can tell. Go from Point A to B. OK, great. How about giving me something I might care to do.

Umihara Kawase
Sold to me on the premise that "If you love Bionic Commando, you'll love this game!". And I do, so after a while I finally make the effort to hunt it down. It comes in. I put it in. I have the bitch swing out and latch onto something. I'm just sitting there hooked onto the side, and she'll bounce a lil bit... then a lot... then quicker but not as far in a different direction... and I can't make heads or fucking tails of where exactly she's going to go at any given time. Swell. Then I play through a few levels of boredom and then I encounter the stage with the gigantic tadpole shithead that drops down and consumes the entire stage while you try to navigate your way out of an inversed C with nowhere to go. This game gives no difficulty curve, people, it gives a difficulty brick fucking wall. You'll cruise along a few levels and go from A to B thinking "yeah this is sorta OK" and then out of nowhere the game grabs you by your lovehandles and rams its needle-lined penis into your asshole until you die from blood loss. Oh, and you can't complain about this, either - appearently it's your fault if you can't deal with it. Oh and then after I go through all the trouble of finding this fucking game I come to find out there's an even rarer and more expensive revision of this bullshit. Fuck you. So much effort for nothing.

Pop'n Music
OK. Let's take Beatmania IIDX, add two buttons, make the buttons giant disc things which are completely abstract, get rid of the turntables, get rid of any sort of visual stimulation beyond two super-generic anime characters idly standing at the sides, crank up the pastel colors and homosexuality to 200%, and this is what you get. That this has become Konami's most profitable Bemani series is a pretty damning indictment on Japanese video game players in general. Play IIDX or go home, you fags.

[James]

On that note, I left off grudges that weren't individual games but fabrications of history caused by gamers and the media are at the top of my list. There's not much more annoying in gaming discussion than having someone tell you that gaming was dead and buried in 1985 until the NES came out, and calling you an idiot for saying otherwise. These people are almost always not old enough to remember entering a mall or arcade in the mid '80s, not surprisingly. But I'm sure I have ranted enough about this before. At least TNL generally knows better. It's more a problem at less informed places.

God save me from morons who confuse "Not as popular as in the 2600 heyday" with "Dead and buried". Gaming was fine, the arcades were full of great games, and there was more amazing stuff to play than time to play it. I realize it's accepted as general knowledge that the NES was gaming's salvation from an early grave, but it's just plain bullshit. Thank god we've got the general media to always get any facts they publish about gaming wrong.

James

[Yoshi]

This game gives no difficulty curve, people, it gives a difficulty brick fucking wall. You'll cruise along a few levels and go from A to B thinking "yeah this is sorta OK" and then out of nowhere the game grabs you by your lovehandles and rams its needle-lined penis into your asshole until you die from blood loss.

Poetry is alive and well on TNL.