The no nonsense Overrrated Games thread

[NewDeli]

Hi,


This is a similar thread to the one
Freakyweakywoo created a while ago.

Plz, highlight a few popular Amiga games you consider were/are overrated & explain or have arguments ready if you want/need to.

I simply ask you to be reasonable in your arguments, and especially counter-arguments. Say, as soon as you have replied to someone about their choice of games, pass over the mike .

In other words let's not let build arguments that tend to demonstrate how "tell us how much you hate these games other EAB members adore" would be more relevant
neither
"let's keep arguing till Xmas about why you included this particular pinball game in your list, I think you're not a faithful Amiga fan because of that"

Finally, and it will be the ultimate word of caution :
I think it won't hurt too much the discussion if you include no more than one "AlllTime favorite" in your list (Speedball II, Zak...)


As a side note, 20 years make a big difference, I think...

Some games have aged quite well, others despite bearing innovative mechanisms collect dust although they opened the way to technically better games based on the same premises (Settlers, Syndicate, Sentinel...). I call them "precursors". (it refers to annotations in my Gambase Amiga that I will show later on)

Let's say you have insights about which of these overrated precursors are actively played these days, it could be a plus.
The fact that they are overrated in 2009 doesn't mean we will forget they were ahead of their times, see ?


If we're cool, here's my list :

HIGHLY OR

• Cannon Fodder
• Leander
• Lotus Esprit (all versions, the car seems so static...)
• Project X
• Pushover
• Seek & Destroy (all versions)
• SotB II
• Super Stardust AGA
• WipeOut 2097

MILDLY OR

• Agony
• Apprentice
• Bart vs. the World
• Body Blows
• Flood
• Heads over Heels
• Iron Lord
• Leisure Suit Larry (since one needs the walkthrough from the first moments)
• Moonstone (nice port on MS-DOS, though)
• Shadow Fighters
• Turricane II

SLIGHTLY OR

• Chaos Engine (especially if you plan to play it without a human partner)
• Gods AND Deliverance
• Heimdall
• Joe Blade
• Lionheart
• Monkey Island
• Rick Dangerous
• Shadow Dancer
• SuperFrog

Edit : Highlighted the games with some consensus over the fact that they are/were OR.

[dlfrsilver]

HIGHLY OR

• Cannon Fodder
• Leander
• Lotus Esprit (all versions, the car seems so static...)
• Project X
• Pushover
• Seek & Destroy (all versions)
• SotB II
• Super Stardust AGA
• WipeOut 2097

Cannon Fodder overrated ? It's one of the best games of all time. I don't see what to say in bad about it. The difficulty is related to how well you can handle it. It's funny as hell, politically incorrect , a rare thing nowadays.....

I don't see why those are overrated, overrated to me means they've been rated better than they are. The problem is that they are amongst the best games we have.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

MILDLY OR

• Turricane II

SLIGHTLY OR

• Turrican II

Hmm, seems I missed 'Turricane II'. Should really have a look...
Btw : You really think we need another overrated games thread? Well, I don't really think so.

[humble worm]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

Chaos Engine (especially if you plan to play it without a human opponent)

how to play it with human opponent?

[Shoonay]

This thread is Overrrated...

[Sensi]

Superfrog - repetitive, childish, boring.

Too many "Overrated games thread" threads imo

[s2325]

If you want to see static car try http://hol.abime.net/2835 or http://hol.abime.net/3028

[Maren]

Bart vs the World was trash, but Turrican II? you're playing with fire

[NewDeli]

@TCD
This is the "final countdown" for my 300+ favorite game list publishing, so I kinda need to know if these games (which, for the majority I tried to like) still have active supporters.

Believe it or not, I tried to make this list without the bias induced by some games being praised over and over on LemonAmiga. For the most part, it is with my own eyes that I evaluated those games (except for Canon Fodder and Wipeout : The reason being I immediately look like a subject to insomnia E. Norton in Fight Club once I watch some footage of these two)


@HW
In Chaos Engine II, you play against an opponent, the coop mode is gone. CE II is not overrated since it was not considered an excellent sequel. However, it doesn't look that much inferior to CE I to me.

So I would put it that way :

• Haz a buddy ? play the slightly overrrated CE I
• Don't haz a buddy ? play the mildly underrated CE II

@Sh00n
Thread is not rated yet but from reading your reactions, I am not too sure it will get many stars so I wouldn't worry about that .

[Thorham]

Chaos Engine? What? Ace game, especially if you play two player games and let the second player die so you can go solo without the computer assist. On the other hand, it all depends on taste. I used to love Turrican 2, now I don't like it as much as I used to.

[Jgames]

Gods overrated! syntax error! Gods is THE BEST game of it's kind on the amiga.

[NewDeli]

Guru meditation, you mean

Quick additional notes :

• Turrican II : level design didn't convince me, the two others (I & III) seem to have received more attention from the dev.
• Head over Heels : Too d*mn difficult
• Moonstone : Poor controls, the "adventure" part is very thin, repetitive
• Super Stardust :What does this game have that the Arcade shooters of that type don't ?
  
• Joe Blade : Hard to find anything pleasant about this one, need to fight against bugs first, then against your enemies
  
• Agony : ordinary close to mediocre shooter, the fact that it is from Psygnosis doesn't make this game better.
  
• Heimdall : Seems unfinished.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

• Turrican II : level design didn't convince me, the two others (I & III) seem to have received more attention from the dev.
• Moonstone : Poor controls, the "adventure" part is very thin, repetitive
• Heimdall : Seems unfinished.

Since you seem to have made this thread to get an oppinion about your list (and not about overrated games in general) and you have posted some points now why you think they're overrated, how can we 'convince' you that it's not so?

Okay, about those three games :
Turrican 2 has quite different and interestingly designed levels. For me the level design beats Turrican 1 and especially 3 anyday.
Moonstone controls aren't great, but they aren't poor either. You can fairly well control your knight in the fights (compared to a lot of other fighting games). The 'adventure' part is just there to 'hold' the fights together (no 'Round 1' and so on). Surely not more than a nice gimmick in the game and never meant to be more either.
Heimdall = unfinished. Hmm, need more info why you think so. But for now a 'No' will have to do.

[Retro-Nerd]

If you are searching for really overrated games: Check some old UK or French magazines for action games.

[dlfrsilver]

@Deleauvive: I think you're confusing with games genre/type you don't like with overrated ones.

Strangely all the games you noted are arcade/shooters/platform. All the titles you stated
are to me and others who love these kind of games really good ones, classics.

It's not because you don't particularly like them means as a consequence they are
overrated. Maybe this is what guys thinks about it ?

To me Chaos engine I is great to play alone or with a pal, and chaos engine 2 should never been done. It has no interest to me, no plot, no guideline. Just you fight
against someone else, which as concept is poor (my opinion).

Opinions guys ?

[Retro-Nerd]

To be honest: A good game review needs no score/rating.

[dlfrsilver]

+1 Retro Nerd

[PowerPie5000]

I never thought Cannon Fodder was ever overrated I love those games and have them on several platforms.... one of my all time faves

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

HIGHLY OR

• Cannon Fodder
• Leander
• Lotus Esprit (all versions, the car seems so static...)
• Project X
• Pushover
• Seek & Destroy (all versions)
• SotB II
• Super Stardust AGA
• WipeOut 2097

Leander gets more fun on the third level onwards - drawback could be that it's easy to fall/get lost and so jumping up all the way again can get tedious. But I thought it was a polished neat game when it came.

Lotus Esprit series will give you some feedback It's fun both singleplayer and especially split-screen, the whole series! A very competent and adrenaline-inducing arcade "conversion".

SotB II: well I agree. Never saw the point with those, they not only lacked playability, they were anti-playable.

Agree a little with Project X, it was great fun just blowing up droves of enemies, but it got boring faster than other shoot'em-ups.

I'm assuming by mean by 'overrated', not "they didn't live up to the hype", but rather "got higher marks in the mags than they deserved"?

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

MILDLY OR

• Agony
• Apprentice
• Bart vs. the World
• Body Blows
• Flood
• Heads over Heels
• Iron Lord
• Leisure Suit Larry (since one needs the walkthrough from the first moments)
• Moonstone (nice port on MS-DOS, though)
• Shadow Fighters
• Turricane II

I thought Flood had good ideas and was fun, although I didn't have the oomph to get very far.

Head over Heels: ok, the graphics were too Spectrum-ish. Still, tons of hours spent on it, and some sick humor in there too No real difference from the C64 or Speccy version, but an ace game in my book, much more enjoyable than the "prequels".

Larry was the most fun of their series imo, but I was 16 so the juvenile sexist jokes worked on me Also I played it in school on the new hotness, the CAD PC was the only one with EGA :P Amiga version looks like shit tho.

Moonstone - looked to me as only a lot of fights where they changed the enemy sprites at the time, so I didn't try it more than once. Those who stuck with it says there's more depth to it?

Originally Posted by Deleauvive

SLIGHTLY OR

• Chaos Engine (especially if you plan to play it without a human partner)
• Gods AND Deliverance
• Heimdall
• Joe Blade
• Lionheart
• Monkey Island
• Rick Dangerous
• Shadow Dancer
• SuperFrog

Well, "slightly overrated". Hm. Sound like you could leave these alone and find droves of more highly overrated ones, like all those games with awesome graphics that were utter shit to play Or 3D games that were slower than your grandma's car, so you couldn't play them at all.

Bitmap bros games all had ace gfx and sound, better than all the rest. Apart from the Speedballs I had trouble finding enjoyment or depth in them. Especially Xenon II was un-fun.


In general, many games were just frustratingly difficult. Some of them you just can't understand what made you play them. But when you had such a game you looked in the mags for tips&tricks&maps just to get further, and too see the pixel magic So I hope you mean "I bought this from a mag review in 1990 and it sucked" rather than "I played it in an emu with a joypad and it sucked".

Those are my opinions anyway.

[NewDeli]

I didn't buy any single game all the time I used my A500. I was sent cracked copies by snail mail of what we called "news" (new games that started to get swapped during copy parties).

In 1993, because of a noticeable decrease in quality, and for personal reasons, I kinda got tired of the whole thing and stopped being a "computerer" for almost 2 years...

From the Bitmap Bros', I liked Xenon II and Speedball II very much.

I established this OR games list based on what I could notice from user's feedback in LemonAmiga or back in the days for the "buzz" they created. I don't memorize and take the magazine scores as solid indications, and in fact in the first issues of our well-known magazine Gen4, every single game was considered great, and the reviews were amateurish at best.

Game publishers were using witty marketing techniques to have us think their next release was going to be the killer game (it applied to hardware parts, too), and to me the Amiga greatness was compensated by this burden to some extend (having to wait for ages for such games or parts).

The only game I played extensively on the Amiga were Bard's Tale & Silent Service, I think. (in my other threads/post, you may notice I was more of a dedicated gamer when I possessed a CPC).

Oh, and I should mention me and my brother spent a great deal of time in the arcades, so there was absolutely no chance a bad arcade port on the miggy would get any redeem value from me.

And then, the FPS craze induced a deep and irreversible transformation in game design departments, and some expensive but relatively inefficient hardware was produced for those who went on believing they could have fun playing the first Doom-like on their Amiga, but I 'll stop being prosaic for now...

The problem I have with Lotus is simply the 2D sprite of the car.
It's barely animated and doesn't bear any nice effect a glossy paint would render, for example. It may be a fun 2 players game, but for me Test Drive rules when it comes to great looking Amiga sports car racing (and it had the humor too, with the cheesy presentation and the Police chasing you).


May I ask what are the prequels in Head over Heels you're evoking ?