Video Great Games I Hate that Others Love

Let's be frank: everyone knows of a movie, video game, or music release that they hate, but they keep silent. Why? Because everyone else seems to love it. In the world of video games, people (and critics) are susceptible to hype. Nowadays, score inflation in gaming reviews means that any grade below a 7/10 is meaningless, and more and more games are declared a "perfect" 10/10. But no more! Below are five of the games that I hate, despite their praise. It's not an attempt to be contrarian; rather, hopefully a look beyond the glittering praise to serious flaws or failures underneath.

#5: Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North: 2008)
"GTA IV gives us characters and a world with a level of depth previously unseen in gaming and elevates its story from a mere shoot-em-up to an Oscar-caliber drama. Every facet of Rockstar's new masterpiece is worthy of applause. Without question, Grand Theft Auto IV is the best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time."
"I could go on and on about why Grand Theft Auto IV is one of the best games we've ever seen and why even folks who are easily offended should play it, but that would be pointless. The only thing you need to know is that you have to play this game. Period."
-Hilary Goldstein and Chris Roper, IGN

Grand Theft Auto IV broke world records for sales on release, selling six million units in its first week (and making $500 million its first day by selling 3.6 million units in just that span of time (1). The title holds a 98/100 rating on Metacritic for its Xbox and PlayStation 3 versions (2). The quotes above are only some of the gushers critics reserved for the title.

The problem is, however, that GTA IV never was an "Oscar-caliber drama". In fact, the amount of praise heaped on the game is nothing short of embarrassing, if you compared it to dramas that, well, actually won Oscars. The tale of protagonist Niko Bellic is nothing but an uninspired mashup of everything from The Jungle to film noir, and the character never really grows, because the story is tied to a repetitious series of chases, missions, and showdowns. Like most games, GTA IV tells you the story rather than showing you. Relationships down't matter, money has no real meaning (despite ostensibly being the reason for Niko's exploits) and large sections of the gameplay don't function that well. GTA IV is not the first or the last big budget release to get undeserved accolades, but it's perhaps the one that didn't deserve them the most.

#4: Pokémon (Game Freak: 1995-present)
"Whatever anyone tells you, you're never too old to enjoy Pokémon. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot, a liar or possibly both. No, the immense depth, inescapable charms and boundless personalization found here is enough to put most other commercial releases to shame."
-Luke Albiges, Eurogamer

Like clockwork, every Pokemon game that has come out in the last decade has received consistently high scores, and the next version pair, Black and White, are likely to do the same. Like a few other games on the list, the reason I dislike the series now is because of a lack of innovation, iterative or not. In every game you start off with three starter Pokemon to choose from, fight a rival who picks the counter to your starter, beat gym leaders and travel through caves and grass where trainers just lie around waiting to do battle. It's a good gameplay system, and one that generally manages to avoid a huge issue that I'll talk about later in this article, grinding (doing repetitive gameplay actions). So if it's broke, why fix it?

The problem is that the number of Pokemon has steadily increased. 150 Pokemon was a hard task in the original American Red and Blue versions, but it was possible with just two players (one person would have to restart the game in order to feed the other player starter Pokemon, however.) Now, however, the number of Pokemon have swelled to 507 and counting (3). This has undermined a key point of the games: it's virtually impossible for an average player to collect all the Pokemon. Likewise, the new Pokemon are mostly iterations of old designs, and add little beyond a greater mass of foes to conquer or collect. It looks like Black and White might break out of some of the conventions that have mired the series in repetition, but it's unlikely to take a truly fresh look at the series.

#3: Guitar Hero / Rock Band (Multiple developers)
"More or less the perfect video game - as entertaining, as challenging and as absolutely infinite as you want it to be."
-Albiges (again), talking about Guitar Hero 2 for 360 Gamer

Well, if there's one genre I cannot stand under any circumstance, it's the music video game. It seems the public is finally starting to tire of the genre, or at least the glut of insipid video games that filled the past two years of gaming. This has less to do with gameplay (although I could go on about the button-mashing mania) and more the general conceit: you are learning how to play fake guitar (and to a certain extent fake drums). This is only slightly less a waste of time than air guitar. Killing aliens and saving the world are not things you can do in the real world; learning to play an instrument not much more expensive than the total cost of all those bad cover songs and plastic dongles is something you can do without a video game. Enough said.

#2: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo: 2006)
"As monumental as each entry has been, nothing, and I repeat, nothing can prepare you for the adventure that unfolds in Twilight Princess. The debate that has waged for decades over which Zelda game should stand as the series' best will at long last come to a satisfying conclusion, as this is unquestionably the greatest Zelda yet."
-Game Informer

Notice how another Nintendo game is on this list? I could fill up a dozen pages on why Nintendo needs to stop making the same games over and over again, but it would be largely pointless. With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), Nintendo finally perfected its formula of "Link, unassuming village boy, is thrust into the role of Hero of Everything and must travel across X number of dungeons to assemble Y to defeat villain Z." After that game, Nintendo made Majora's Mask, which was a good attempt at taking the series in new directions despite being limited to the same hardware and basic gameplay. But Ocarina of Time sold better, so guess what Nintendo did? Churn out the same game in a desperately cynical move with Twilight Princess a decade later.

To add to the annoying sense of deja vu, players on the Wii were treated to annoying waggle control mechanics; if you actually got into the game and swung your arm like you would if you were wielding the sword you see onscreen, you'd be likely to go out of the range of the sensor and end up sitting like an idiot while being devoured by wolves. The graphics and music were exceptionally dated even by Gamecube standards. If there was ever an example of Nintendo expecting people to buy a game because of the name on the box, it was Twilight Princess.

#1: World of Warcraft (Blizzard: 2004)
"The big appeal of World of Warcraft is that at its heart, it's a game -- no more, no less. Unlike most previous MMOs, World of Warcraft doesn't pretend to be an "online experience" or a "virtual" anything. It's a place where people can come to experience fun and interesting things for as much time as they have to spare."
-Allen Rausch, Gamespy

When it comes to games I dislike, I need look no further than World of Warcraft. Remember that jab earlier about repetitive gameplay? Well, pretty much every successful massively multiplayer online roleplaying game is guilty of that "grinding" issue, and as the most popular MMORPG today (4), World of Warcraft is singled out for my ire. It creates and cultivates that worst kind of gamer, the obsessive stat-checker and changelog reader. And it is all based on nothing more than filling a meter to get to the next level. If World of Warcraft's gameplay was self-actualizing, there would be no reason for increases to level caps or alternate characters; instead it's a house of cards predicated on chewing up addicted players and spitting them out. Looking for a critical darling of a game that's not what it's cracked up to be? Look no further.

References
* (1) Stephen Totilo. "'Grand Theft Auto IV' Posts Record First-Week Sales". MTV. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
* (2) "Grand Theft Auto 4". Metacritic. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
* (3) "List of Pokemon". Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 26, 2010.
* (4) Becky Williams. "Backstage at Blizzcon 2009". The Telegraph. Retrieved July 27, 2010.