The Top 8 Games With Poor Execution

Welcome all to another edition of The 8 Ball! This week I’m here to talk about games that have a great initial idea but the execution maybe didn’t quite work out so well. Aside from one game, most of the games on this list either promised one thing and delivered another, or have a great kernel of an idea but the way they brought it out is incredibly strange. Let’s begin:

#8: Alan Wake

Don’t get me wrong, Alan Wake being on this list is a bit weird. I actually love the first Alan Wake and think it holds up fairly well over the years. However, what we got as Alan Wake and the original concept behind Alan Wake are two different things. Alan Wake, as originally envisioned, was supposed to be an open-world survival game, akin to something like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. You were supposed to gather supplies during the day in Bright Falls and presumably do side quests and such, while during the night you have to face the onslaught of evil enemies. We, uh, didn’t get that in Alan Wake. What we actually got was a good, if linear, game that kind of just had you in different areas based on the chapter you were in. I’m not sure how open or not Alan Wake 2 is, but I would have really liked to have played the “original” version of Alan Wake.

#7: Fallout 76

To be fair, Fallout 76 is infinitely better now than when it launched. It has an actual story, NPC’s, and stuff for a player to do. But when it launched, it was a mess. The game was almost completely devoid of actual content. It had a few audio logs telling players “Hey, there’s something at the elementary school” or at the grocery store, and when you get there, you’ll just find another audio log. Even the multiplayer still isn’t great though with a player limit, give or take, of 24 people. I think the idea of “Fallout MMO” is still sound but they way they tried to implement it here is just bizarre.

#6: We Happy Few

This is always one of the bigger disappointments to me. That initial trailer is still so good at setting a mood, with an inventive aesthetic and a mystery of what is happening in the city. And then the game comes out and it’s a fairly bad survival game, instead. Parts of it still kind of work, like the start of Arthur’s story. But the actual nuts and bolts gameplay, particularly the stealth sections are just mediocre to bad. Maybe it’s a meta commentary because everyone in the game is hopped up on “Joy”, while the game contains no actual joy for the player.

#5: Superman

You know, there have been enough bad Superman games as to make him a MVP on a list like this. While Superman Returns, the last actual Superman game, wasn’t awful, it certainly wasn’t super either. The core problem of a Superman game is that the character is functionally invulnerable. So, how do you create a challenge for the player, or to have stakes? Easy, you don’t. Outside of really dumb contrivances of “Kryptonite Gas” (Superman 64), you can’t do it, so don’t even try. Instead, what they should do is make the ultimate power fantasy game and have that be it.

#4: Payday

It’s kind of amazing that there have been three attempts at Payday and none of them have been particularly great. While the games aren’t “awful”, they certainly aren’t good, and really, why is this the case? It shouldn’t be that hard to make an online bank robbery game but something just feels off about them. Like the controls are a bit too unresponsive, and that the shooting also feels weird. And instead of fixing this stuff, they just pump out more masks and other dumb cosmetics. That might be while GTA Online is one of the biggest money makers ever, and Payday 3 “failed to meet sales expectations”, which is putting it mildly.

#3: Brutal Legend

The idea of “Heavy Metal Legend of Zelda” game is one that is still appealing to this day. Sadly, that’s NOT what Brutal Legend is. Brutal Legend is actually a strategy game with a small dose of action baked in. It’s actually the console equivalent of an old Shiny game called “Sacrifice” where it was a third person RTS game but you had a general main character who could do battle against the other units/factions in the game. For the first half hour or hour it actually does play like your regular action-adventure game, you getting your guitar and rebuilding your car. Then it just dropkicks you into the strategy game and you’re left with a feeling of “I just got conned here, didn’t I?” Yes, you did.

#2: Watch Dogs Legion

You know what’s really easy in a game? Writing a story where “The Government” is the bad guys. What’s really hard about that story, though? Not actually having any main character to hang the story on. From a pure gameplay perspective, Legion is fine enough; stealth, combat, exploration all generally work. The problem is, is that you have zero investment in the story because you don’t have a main character. Watch Dogs 1’s Aiden Pearce may have sucked as a character but he was AT LEAST a character. All you have in Legion are cookie-cutter, indistinguishable NPC’s that you recruit to be your player character. They have no personality, or actual agency in the story, in fact, that is literally the whole point of the game. And once they die or get captured, you just become a new character. It’s completely bizarre and what ruins the game for me.

#1: Comix Zone

I love almost everything about Comix Zone except actually playing the damned thing. It has a decent enough story, the look of the game is still amazing even now, the soundtrack is good, and it has kind of a punk rock attitude that almost no games had. Why is it number one? Because playing the game sucks. It’s fundamentally a beat’em up game, but you only have one attack button with a very limited repertoire of moves. Your other buttons (on the usual Genesis 3 button gamepad) are jump and select items. Blocking is kind of automatically done, but badly. Beating up regular enemies is fine but it quickly becomes boring. You also lose health when you (need to) attack certain things in the environment to progress through levels. There are also some jumps that are pixel-perfect and you fall to your death if you miss them. The core idea of “Real world character in a comic book” is so great, but other than Comix Zone and Comic Jumper (another game with poor execution) is one that is largely ignored.

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For comments, list which games you think have great premises but poor executions.

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Top 8 Worst Versions of Great Games