WEBVTT - The Worst Video Games of All Time . . . Since 2011 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.880 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.160 I'm your host, Johnathan Strickling. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:19.239 How Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:23.560 before I jump into today's episode topic, I want to 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.000 give a couple of corrections that I got to recent episodes, 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:29.960 which is totally valid. You guys are an awesome audience, 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:32.760 and I really appreciate when you reach out too gently. 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:37.279 Remind me that sometimes I get stuff wrong because you 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.400 typically do it in a responsible way, which I greatly appreciate, 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:44.640 and I should stress in almost every case, it's where 0:00:44.760 --> 0:00:48.320 I have researched something and somewhere between the process of 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.880 reading it and taking my notes, my brain has inserted 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:55.800 information that has made it wrong. So the fault lies 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.400 on me and I accept that. So first correction in 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.120 the Pebble episode, I mentioned that the Pebble Watch, the 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.000 original Pebble Watch, had an e paper display, and then 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:09.720 I explained how e ink works. And indeed the two 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:13.360 terms are frequently used interchangeably. You will often find e 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.800 paper and ink both talking about the same technology that 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:21.319 one that uses those electro statically charged capsules. However, that 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:25.040 being said, the display that the Pebble the original Pebble 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:28.400 watch had was not a true e ink style e 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.200 paper one, even though they referred to it as e paper. 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.440 It was actually a low powered l c D screen 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.360 called a transflective l c D so it works in 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.200 a different way than the ink stuff does. The purpose 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.720 of it is very similar, the idea being that you 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.600 want to be able to read the screen based upon 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.840 available light in the environment as opposed to having a 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:55.600 backlit screen like your typical smartphone. But it works in 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.320 a different principles, so thank you for that correction. Secondly, 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.800 listener Ben pointed that in the Cambridge Analytica podcasts, I 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:07.400 mentioned a sting operation conducted by the BBC. Small problem 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.720 that wasn't the BBC. It was actually Channel four News 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.280 in the UK, not a BBC channel. So this one 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:18.200 is just comes down to my stupid American brain, because 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:22.079 my stupid American brain says, oh, it was British television 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:26.080 that means BBC, which is ridiculous. I know there's more 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:30.680 television in the UK than the BBC channels. I'm just 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:33.440 I'm just an ignorant American, So I apologize for that. 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.120 And third, there's a software engineer who would absolutely love 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:40.600 it if I stopped saying degrees kelvin because the unit 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:45.280 of kelvin is the kelvin, not the degree. So that's 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.480 the correct thing. You want to say, kelvin, not degrees kelvin. Now, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.560 you will frequently see and hear people use the phrase 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:56.080 degrees kelvin, but it's technically wrong until enough people use it, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.280 because that's how language works if it if enough people 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.680 use it the wrong way, the wrong way becomes the 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:05.239 right way. So I charge everyone out there to start 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.760 saying degrees kelvin because if enough of you do it, 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:11.560 I don't have to worry about saying it the right way. 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.120 I'm just kidding. I'll try my best to remember to 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:18.000 be accurate. I appreciate all of those corrections. Now, onto 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.280 the topic for today. Way back in two thousand eleven, 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:23.880 my then co host Chris Pellette and I did an 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.880 episode about the worst video games of All Time. But 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:31.200 these were titles that were submitted by listeners. We solicited 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.320 uh various nominations, and we did it over Facebook and 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.480 Twitter and email, and we just asked people nominate what 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:40.360 you think are the worst video games of all time, 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.120 and then we taied them all up. And so in 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.720 that episode we talked about games that had been considered 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:50.080 bad for various things. Maybe they had missed release dates repeatedly. 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.360 Duke Nukem Forever was a famous one and had just 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.440 come out that year after more than a decade of 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.440 being in development. We also talked about games that were 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.720 buried in the desert after too many cartridges had been 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.560 made and not enough people wanted to buy a copy, 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:09.280 like E. T. The Extraterrestrial for the A. But what 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.400 about the games that have come out since two thousand eleven. 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.800 What are some of the most notoriously bad games of 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.560 that era. Well, before I jump in and start talking 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:21.720 about specific titles, I do want to say that we 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.520 need to keep in mind that real people worked on 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.479 these games. They dedicated their time, their effort, their energy 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.960 into making a game a reality, and things just didn't 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.920 go right. So in some cases, maybe they tackled more 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:39.479 than they could handle and ultimately the game they created 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:42.760 was a disappointment. In other cases, you might have had 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.480 executives who are constantly shifting expectations and the development team 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:49.600 was kind of left in the lurch as a result, 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:55.479 and maybe they even had things like a hardline deadline 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.159 that had to be the date that the game would ship, 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.000 whether the game was ready or not. A lot of 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.200 games have suffered from that sort of thing, But I 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.039 think in most cases, no one really sets out to 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.479 make a crappy game on purpose, And so while the 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.120 games I'm going to go through here have a reputation 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:15.640 for being bad, we need to remember they probably did 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.480 not start off that way, most of them. Anyway. There 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:21.279 might be a few cynical cash grabs in here that 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.839 do not qualify for such consideration. But you game developers 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.880 out there who are trying to deliver upon crazy expectations, 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:32.000 both from within a company and from the gaming community 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.560 at large, my hat is off to you. You do 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:39.800 incredible work. Now, for this episode, I consulted Metacritic to 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.919 look at the games that scored the lowest in aggregated 0:05:42.960 --> 0:05:48.200 reviews since the original episode came out in late From 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.760 the Metacritic website, here is how they described their methodology quote. 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:56.960 Creating our proprietary meta scores is a complicated process. We 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:00.400 carefully curate a large group of the world's most respected 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.520 critics assigned scores to their reviews and apply a weighted 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:08.440 average to summarize the range of their opinions. The result 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.120 is a single number that captures the essence of critical 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:16.599 opinion in one meta score. Each movie, game, television show, 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.080 an album featured on Metacritic gets a meta score when 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:24.159 we've collected at least four critics reviews end quote. So 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:27.120 in other words, they're aggregating all these different reviews and 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:31.320 then kind of determining where on a score between zero 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:36.520 and one hundred, that review rates the product. So a 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.280 zero would be the absolute worst, one would be the 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:44.600 absolute best. For games, anything beneath the score of fifty 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.839 is considered generally unfavorable. If it's less than twenty, it 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:55.160 is overwhelming dislike is the nature of those reviews. And 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:58.720 spoiler alert, we have some on this list that dropped 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:01.880 down below twenty. But the first one we're gonna talk about, 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:07.480 number ten, the ten worst video games since the Fall 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:11.200 of two thousand eleven would be flat out three Chaos 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.640 and Destruction that came out December two thousand eleven, so 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:17.000 just a few months after we had done our episode, 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.400 and it came out for the PC. The Metacritics score 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:25.880 was twenty three yikes, and this was a car racing game, 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:29.440 and as the name indicates, it was the third such 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:32.440 in a series of games. The original game developer for 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:36.200 the series was a company called Bugbear, but Bugbear developers 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.320 were actually busy working on a totally different title, that 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.800 of Ridge Racer unbounded. The jab of developing the next 0:07:42.920 --> 0:07:45.240 entry in the Flat Out series then fell to a 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:49.360 Dutch video game development studio called Team Six. As a 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:52.600 review on I g N pointed out, this was actually 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.640 an early sign of concern because the games that had 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:01.120 come out of Team six lacked something. They had great titles. 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:05.760 I'm definitely intrigued by a game that's titled Calvin Tucker's 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:12.000 Redneck Farm Animals Racing Tournament. What. But the studio developed 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:16.160 a different physics engine for this rather than the previous 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.760 one that was used for Flat Out two, and this 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:25.240 one reviewers said was sloppy. It was in direct contradiction 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.840 with earlier games in the series. So in the past 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.920 you could drive really aggressively. You could you could kind 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:33.079 of smash your way through opponents. You can nudge them 0:08:33.120 --> 0:08:36.160 and knock them off course and and continue on your way. 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.000 But in Flat Out three. It seemed like the slightest 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.079 contact with anything would result in your car flipping all 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.640 over the place. It suddenly looked like you could not 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:47.079 behave in this way, and it wasn't consistent you would. 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.359 You would have what would appear to be a colossal, 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:54.640 disastrous crash on screen, and your car would only suffer 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.320 a little bit of damage, or you might just gently 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.400 grace up against another car and then suddenly your engine 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.680 is smoking. The AI was substandard as well, with computer 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.720 controlled racers spending more time crashing into each other than 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:12.040 trying to race the course. So it sounds pretty much 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:14.720 like all the design decisions going into Flat Out three 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.560 created a game that was not fun to play. It 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.439 didn't make sense, and was a total departure from earlier 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:24.160 Flat Out games. The lack of consistency or logic really 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.640 hurt the game's reception. Team six is still around and 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:31.280 the company primarily focuses on developing racing games. To this day, 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.800 I'm not terribly familiar with their work. I don't think 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.520 I've played any of their racing games, but as I 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.240 understand it, many of those games have received a poor 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.360 critical reception, not as bad as Flat Out three, but 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.600 not great either. We're talking like Metacritics scores in the thirties, 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.640 so I'm not much of a racing game player. I 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:52.400 cannot speak to it personally, but it doesn't sound great. 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:56.120 Number nine is Rambo the video game, which came out 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:58.959 February twenty one, two thousand fourteen, and it came out 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:02.480 for the PlayStation three, the Xbox three, sixty PC, and 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.840 Metacritic gave it a score also of twenty three. Now. 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:11.120 In general, video game adaptations of licensed characters frequently show 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.360 up on lists about bad games. Now, I talked about 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.520 ET the Extraterrestrial that is frequently listed as the worst 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:22.040 game of all time, although it really isn't. But it 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:26.480 is frequently the truth that a game of a licensed 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.720 character doesn't turn out well. Now, that's not universally true. 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:35.240 The recent PS four game of Spider Man is pretty 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.880 darn fun to play. In my opinion, I think it's 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.360 a great game, or at least I've really been enjoying it. 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:45.120 But one cannot say the same for Rambo the video game. Now, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:50.920 Rambo refers to John Rambo, who's in several movies, the 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.560 first being First Blood. He's a Vietnam war veteran in 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:57.880 verse Blood, he returns to America and causes quite the 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.440 ruckus going on essentially what it amounts to being a 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.880 rampage at one point, and in subsequent films in the series, 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.560 Rambo would become the archetypical action hero. He would carry 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.040 enormous guns and just mow down antagonists left and right. 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.520 That was always like the one man army kind of trope, 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.000 and he became the model for all sorts of violent 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:21.400 excess in the in the eighties and nineties. So what 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.200 better character would you use to adapt to a video game? 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:28.199 I mean, he's certainly inspired lots of different video game characters. 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.800 So a developer named Tayon and a publisher called Reef 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.120 Entertainment were responsible for adapting the material from the first 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:39.440 three Rambo films and publishing them in video game form. Now, 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:44.559 the actual game style took the form of a rail shooter. 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:46.960 This is a type of game that you might see 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:50.640 in arcades with light guns things like Time Crisis and 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:55.160 the Past. You take through a level is set, and 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:57.760 often even the speed at which you move through the 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:02.000 level is set, and the way that villains or bad 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:04.760 guys antagonists jump out at you that is set. Everything 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.240 is kind of on a script, and it's your job 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.040 to just try and do the best you can and 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:13.040 shoot your enemies. Uh. This, however, didn't play on a 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.320 system with a light gun. You would either use a 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.800 controller or you would use a mouse and keyboard, and 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.680 with the mouse in particular, it was reportedly incredibly easy 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.439 to make every shot, so there was no challenge, there 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:29.920 was no variety, The gameplay was outdated. Uh, the the 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.280 the whole process appeared to be pretty substandard. The one 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.280 good thing I saw in the critical reviews was that 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.560 they did a pretty good job at replicating the environments 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.800 that you would see in the actual Rambo movies, so 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.240 that the video game versions of these seem to be 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:49.520 fairly accurate to those. But apart from that, the actual 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.240 game was substandard. Well, we've got more bad games to 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:55.200 talk about, but first let's take a quick break to 0:12:55.240 --> 0:13:05.679 thank our sponsor. We're up to number eight and number 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.720 eight would be Fast and Furious Showdown another licensed property. 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.480 This one came out in May two thirteen and came 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.160 out for the Xbox three sixty, the PC, the PlayStation 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:18.120 three apparently, the Nintendo three D S and the we 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:22.880 you as well, and it scored on Metacritic a twenty two, 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:25.600 so he's taken a step down. Now. This was published 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:29.840 by Activision, and it was another kind of combination racing 0:13:29.920 --> 0:13:33.040 game and shooting game, and also a licensed game, so 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.400 it had a lot going against it. The Fast and 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:39.559 Furious film series is known for a crazy automobile action. 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:43.079 Characters frequently pull off car stunts in those films that 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.560 would be impossible in the real world, and everybody in 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:50.280 those movies are They're all incredibly skilled race car driving 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.440 superheroes essentially. So you'd think a video game based off 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:55.200 the series would allow the player to take control of 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.040 a car and likewise do impossible feats in a series 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:01.760 of breathtaking missions, but unfortunately, the game's engine wasn't up 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.000 to that challenge. The collision detection in the game was 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:10.360 pretty bad. Virtual objects in the game had little mass. 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.480 You would have, you know, like enormous obstacles crashed down 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:15.960 in front of you, and your car would just kind 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:19.240 of gently pushed them all the way there. Nothing seemed 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.960 to have any weight to it. The level design was uninspired. 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.120 The art style was not terribly pleasing from an esthetic 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.400 point of view. The cinematic cut scenes weren't much better. 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.160 They were they appeared to be of a lower quality 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:38.560 than other current generation or that current generation cut scenes. 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.400 People often said, this looks like it belongs on the 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:46.080 previous generation hardware instead of PS three, less like it 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:48.760 would have been at home on a PS two. The 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.840 loading time between missions was incredibly long, and if you 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:55.320 wanted to upgrade your car you could. You could earn 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.040 experience in the game and use that experience to create 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:02.240 upgrades for your vehicles or or other features. So let's 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.600 say you want to boost your your vehicle's performance so 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:08.120 that you can tackle the next level better, you would 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.640 have to actually back out of the game entirely to 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.120 the main menu, go into a different option, then make 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.360 the changes, then back all the way back out again, 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.200 and then go back in and restart up to where 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:21.920 you were in the game in the within the storyline. 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:26.360 Uh and keep in mind those loading screens were really long, 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:30.280 and the menus also had spelling or grammatical errors in 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:34.280 them which made it look a little amateurish. And most missions, 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.120 you could control the driver of a vehicle and a 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:41.000 passenger in the vehicle who was hanging outside of the 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.320 window acting as a shooter. They have a gun and 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.320 so you can fight off your opponents that are trying 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.000 to run you off the road. The AI made very 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.400 little sense. The cars did not move like real cars. 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.880 The missions were mostly all variations on a common theme 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.920 of running gun and so the lack of variability, the 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.120 bad physics, the graphics. All of this contributed to the 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:09.280 low scores and put it on our list of worst 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:13.480 video games is two thousand eleven. Number seven is Afro 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:17.120 Samurai to Revenge of Kuma, which came out in September 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.880 two thou fifteen. Came out for the PlayStation four and 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:21.800 the PC. It was supposed to come out for the 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.680 Xbox One, but hang on here. Metacritic gave it a 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:30.160 score of twenty one. This is another licensed property. Afro 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:34.160 Samurai is a manga series in Japan, and the series 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.920 follows a character named Afro Samurai, and he's out for revenge. 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.600 His father was killed in the series, so he's out 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:47.120 to revenge his his father's death. To avenge his father's death, 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.800 I guess I should say, and an earlier video game 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.760 adaptation of this story in two thousand nine had received 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:58.040 average to decent reviews. It wasn't considered a blockbuster, but 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:00.840 it was people said, now, so, hey, you know, it's 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.480 not not a terrible game. It featured cell shaded animation 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:07.400 as uh kind of a beat him up in a way, 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:10.600 and the player controlled the titular character in his quest 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:13.679 for revenge. So this this is the sequel to that game, 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.560 and the sequel was supposed to be the first episode 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.760 in a series. So the idea was to release the 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.240 sequel in episodic format, and it put the player in 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:27.359 control of a different character named Kuma, and Kuma wears 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.879 a big mascot style bear head. The word Kuma is 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.680 Japanese for bear, and Kuma is seeking out Afro Samurai 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:40.800 to seek revenge for Kuma's sisters death, and like some 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.760 Facebook relationship status is, it's complicated. So this game did 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:46.680 come out for the PC and for the PS four. 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:49.800 It was going to come out later for the Xbox One, 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.600 but the PCMPS four versions got such bad reviews that 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.480 not only was the Xbox One version canceled, ultimately the 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:02.840 publisher actually withdrew through Afro Samurai too, from the Steam 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:08.000 Store and from the PS store. So after getting really 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.000 raked over the coals, by critics. The developer said, you 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:14.600 know what we're going to just we're gonna take this down. 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:18.440 So now no more copies are ever going to be sold. Uh. 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:21.919 It was pretty negative reaction to warrant that kind of 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:25.719 a response. Also, I think it makes the fact that 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:31.200 the developer's name was redacted studios somewhat tragically comedic. The 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.840 planned episodic sequels also got scrapped. So what made this 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.399 such a bad game? Well, the answer to that question 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:41.119 is a kind of everything. So critics were saying the 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:45.000 voice acting for the game was over the top and cringeworthy, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:47.480 as the kids used to say, and at times the 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.520 sound levels in the game made it really difficult to 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.560 hear what was being said because sound effects or music 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:58.040 was drowning out everything else, and so you're missing out 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:02.400 on valuable and formation, although apparently it was valuable information 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:04.640 that was delivered in this over the top kind of way, 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:06.840 so maybe you were better off in the long run. 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:09.679 The game style was that of a classic beat him up, 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:11.760 kind of like the old side scrolling games of the 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.080 early nineties, but this one was with sort of three 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.239 dimensional levels, and it also had that cell shaded art 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.720 style of its predecessor. The game had frame rate problems 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:22.800 in which frames would drop and that would result in 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.480 a type of skipping effect that made playing the game 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.800 really hard and not much fun at all. It's difficult 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.840 to time a counter attack if the action is skipping 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.600 forward in spurts. You can't really time when you need 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.920 to hit a button in order to avoid an oncoming 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:41.240 attack and counter it. So, according to reviews, the animations 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.679 of the character didn't always reflect the commands that they 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:47.520 were sending through the controls. And then there was the camera. 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.159 This would be the point of view for the player, 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.720 and the camera would shift around and the player could 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.320 not control it, so you would be stuck with whatever 0:19:57.359 --> 0:19:59.760 the camera angle happened to be, and that would sometimes 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.520 call as the perspective to put the player at a disadvantage. So, 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:05.960 for example, you might be moving through a level, but 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:08.480 the camera angle makes it impossible for you to see 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.080 what is directly ahead of you as a character. So 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:13.679 as you're continuing through the level, you suddenly encounter a 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:16.600 pet and fall right into it because you couldn't see 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:19.199 it as a player. But if you were actually the character, 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.000 if you were Kuma, you would have seen that pet 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:24.520 coming from a mile away. So you think about that, 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:29.159 an objective observer would just see someone running toward a 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:31.680 pit for a really long time and then fall in 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.280 the pit, and they would think that person couldn't see 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.200 or they wanted to go in the pit. I can't 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.879 imagine any other outcome. But in fact, the problem was 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:43.600 that as a player, you couldn't see the pit at all, 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.159 just because the perspective. So there are a lot of 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:49.879 problems in this game that ultimately convinced the publisher to 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:56.320 bring it back to cancel it. Number six was Infestation 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.879 Survivor Stories, which released in October two thousand twelve for 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.199 the PC. Metacritic gave it a score of twenties, so 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:08.520 now we're hitting that threshold of overwhelming dislike. Uh. The 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.240 studio that developed it was Hammer Point Interactive. The man 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.440 most frequently associated with this game as a guy named 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:20.200 Saragei Titov, who was one of the developers behind this game, 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.000 And it was actually released under a different title originally, 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:26.760 which was The war Z And if you think that 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.760 sounds like a zombie game, you win a prize. The 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:33.200 war Z was following on the success of a mod 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.760 called day Zy and This mod was for a tactical 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:41.400 shooter called Arma Too, and both Daisy and The war 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:46.399 Z had very similar features. They would put players in 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.760 a world dealing with a zombie outbreak, and in both 0:21:49.800 --> 0:21:52.640 games players would be in multiplayer maps, meaning you could 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:56.080 encounter other humans as you played, and in both games 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:58.439 you would scavenge for items and weapons and see how 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:02.399 long you could survive. Steam removed the game from the 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:05.679 store not too long after it was released, and Valves 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:07.840 said that adding the game to the store was quote 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:12.840 a mistake end quote. Some gamers probably agreed. Valvo releast 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:15.240 the statement that said it was working with Titov to 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.320 get the build of the game right so that it 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.680 would meet expectations. So The war Z was a collaborative 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:25.640 multiplayers survival game, and the game's listing on Steam mentioned 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.399 features like the ability to create a friends list to 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:30.720 rent a private server so that you and your friends 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.679 could play without fearing the interference of griefers. Um there 0:22:34.680 --> 0:22:36.640 were supposed to be a skill system that would allow 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:40.320 the players to progress in their capabilities. They were supposed 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:42.560 to be up to a hundred people allowed to play 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:44.679 on the same server at the same time, and there 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:46.400 were supposed to be maps that were as big as 0:22:46.400 --> 0:22:50.160 four hundred square kilometers, but in actuality, the game didn't 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:53.640 support those features, and that was the the root of 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:56.560 some of the most harsh criticisms. They were saying, the 0:22:56.600 --> 0:22:59.800 game is promising us one thing but delivering something else. 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:04.080 Te Top would say that players had quote unquote misread 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:09.600 those features, implying that there whether uh, these were planned features. 0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:11.119 They were going to be in the game, they just 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:13.840 weren't the game yet. They would be released later on 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.320 the game's life. In addition, the game featured what some 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:20.280