MadCap's Game Reviews - "The Worst Games of 2014"

Wow, 2014 was a heck of year, wasn't it? I went into it mocking a troll, screamed about games, movies, and comics alike that I despised and loved, and now I'm here to recount all the games I've played...the ten worst and best, anyway. This one, as you can tell, is the Worst list (if you can't tell, hello to my blind demographic that I didn't know I had). Now, this isn't necessarily games I've played that have come out in 2014, this is just games that I've played and reviewed this year, before somebody comments in that vein. So, without further adieu, let's look back at my year in screaming at things I don't like.

10. Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium Duels

The review in question
Well, this one isn't so much one I hated so much as just didn't care for. It's not bad by any means, it's likely the most accurate representation of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game (at the time that it was made, anyway) to be put into a simulator.  But that's just it, it's a simulator with nothing else to it.  You have your tiers based on the four different series of Yu-Gi-Oh!, even some of the familiar characters, but there's no point to any of it.  Even Eternal Duelist Soul on the Gameboy Advanced had tournaments and even a few random events that popped up every now and again.  This, though? Just...nothing to it. I would have liked a storyline of some kind, or at least a point to it all.  But it's not remotely as guilty as some of the other games on this list, so let's move on to...

9. LEGO Marvel Superheroes

The review in question
Now, I'm a Marvel fan over DC, any day. That being said, this game isn't really one that scratches that Marvel itch for me like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 did. The LEGO stamp on it feels bizarre and out of place, but then it feels that way on virtually anything that's not LEGO's own product. It's also a game that has a heavy focus on collectibles that serve no purpose other than allowing people to pull up their gamecard and stroke their e-peens to the fact that they've collected 100% of the Cosmic Bricks or all the pieces of the Serpent Crown or the underwear that Jean Grey was wearing when she was mentally destroyed by the Phoenix Force.

It's not bad, hence why it gets so low on the list. It's just not as great as it could have been.

8. Terraria

The review in question
Okay, so I technically cheated with this one.  There are some differences between Terraria and Minecraft, I admit, but those differences are so minute as to be absolutely invisible in the face of the fact that the former game is literally just the latter in a 2-D style. The mining works slightly differently and the crafting is, in my opinion, a bit better than in Minecraft, but the only real difference I've found is that Terraria is done in a very faithfully re-created 16-bit style. That's really it.  Needless to say, I'm not overly impressed. But, again, like numbers nine and ten on this list, it's not really guilty of sins far darker.

7. Spider-Man: Edge of Time

The review in question
Spider-Man is my favorite superhero, that should be abundantly clear to anyone who reads my blog. And time travel? Well, I'm a Doctor Who fan, so that kind of goes without saying. So, putting them together should be a no-brainer, right?

Apparently it is a no-brainer. A severe no-brainer.

Like the earlier ones, this is one I said was passable at release...which it is. But it doesn't give the feeling of being Spider-Man in either time period.  Ironically, the one game that has done that is Spider-Man 2, based off the Raimi films were Spidey was at his least Spidey-ish in adaptations. This game, however, doesn't give that same feeling. You're trapped in corridors and even the very broad and spacious areas where you're allowed to swing around in feel claustrophic. No giant skyscrapers and plenty of them scattered about to swing to and fro from...just closed in labs, hallways, and rooms. Yawn-a-rama.  I gave Shattered Dimensions grief, but at least it had some variety...in the settings, anyway.

That pretended to have four different styles of play, and I should be more upset about that than this, since you only have two Spider-Men instead of the four.  Except the fact is they only had two Spider-Men here, and neither gives the feeling of any uniqueness or of being Spider-Man, be he from the present or 2099. Perhaps it should be a bit higher on this list, but we have far, far worse sins to get through...

6. Fable: Anniversary

The review in question
Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Peter Molyneux. The guy is an absolute legend of silver-tongued devils like myself and he's an inspiration of somehow being beloved by virtually everyone while lying through this teeth about game features. Randy Pitchford could take a few notes in this regard, I tell you what. When Fable: Anniversary came out, I was definitely quite interested, because I had never played the original Fable on the Xbox when it had first come out, settling for jumping in during Fable II, which I admit may have colored my opinions on it a bit. I enjoyed Fable II a great deal (which led to Fable III being very disappointing for me, as some of my readers might remember), so I thought that Fable: Anniversary would be the same, while also perhaps having some interesting new things for me to check out.

By then, I knew enough from the games set further along the timeline to know the plot, so there were little to no surprises for me. But the game itself was just alright, not really anything special and I've been told by veterans of the original that nothing's changed before an HD upgrade. That's not a new game, Peter, you cheeky man. Why make us pay sixty dollars for a game we've already paid sixty dollars for ten years back? What rubbish.

5. Batman Arkham Origins

The review in question
We seem to have an ongoing theme of nothing changing on this list, which is going to be really ironic when we get to number one. But looking as we are, we have the earliest endeavors of the titular Dark Knight in the Arkham saga of games.  It's not bad, but the problem is that - beyond a few minor changes as is the case with Terraria, it's basically the same game as Arkham City, which had come out before.  And I absolutely loved City (except for the Riddler challenges). But really, the entire game is just the Arkham City facility looking a little less ratty (it is still Gotham City, after all) with all the models and such from that game with a heaping helping of snow dumped on it in the hopes that you don't notice all the familiar blemishes.  Not a fan.

4. Devil May Cry 2

The review in question
Aaaaand now we're getting into games I outright hate. I could get irritated at the fact that it's the sequel that started the bizarre out of order sequencing of the timeline.  I could get irritated at the development team (a completely different one from the first) changing virtually everything about Dante, turning him from a snarky, wise-cracking half-demon who loved a good challenge into a complete emotionless, humorless nihilist. I could get irritated at Capcom for choosing a new development team when they had such a good one for the first game.

But as for the gameplay itself - targeting specific enemies is stupid, the padding of enemies is stupid, and I didn't even get into what has become my biggest complaint about this game in my review - where are all the Devil Arms? Dante has Rebellion, which is nice, but then gets nothing else the whole game.  Guns? Oh, yes, lots of guns as in Devil May Cry, but the first game (and every game after this one) had some different, unique kinds of Devil Arms that were won by either breaking their wills or defeating the demon attached to whatever item. It had a unique feeling and a sense of accomplishment when Dante had a brand new shiny weapon to wield.

Here? Not so much...with Rebellion.  Don't get me wrong, Rebellion is a Sword of Awesome +1, but variety is the spice of life.

And, of course, the lack of the spooky environments from Devil May Cry is a pain, since they force Dante to scope out urban environments that are lifeless and completely lacking in any feeling whatsoever. They're kind of indicative of the game in general - dull, gray, and boring until its over...or you die of a lack of any sort of satisfaction.

3. Dead Space 3

The review in question
I chewed this game out when I first got a hold of it, and with good reason. It's terrible. It's taken what started out as a very intriguing horror concept and turned it completely into a generic shooter, taking on legions of power armored soldiers with your engineering-based weapons instead of Lovecraft's Damned Legions. Even Dead Space 2 (which, for the record, I loved in spite of the multiplayer BS attached to it) got that right! And that's not even getting into the pointlessness of the weapon crafting mechanic (ironic, since it's the most Isaac that Isaac has ever been) and the inclusion of a second character in generic space marine #4196, as well as locking off certain areas of the game just for two player mode. I didn't spend sixty dollars to have half the game taken away from me because you wanted to force a mechanic on me, Visceral. Eat me!

2.  DmC: Vergil's Downfall

The review in question.
I can hear you now: "MadCap, this is a DLC! Not an actual game!". Well, the fact is, little Madmen, that this DLC alone caused enough irritation in me to want to put it on this list.  DmC: Devil May Cry was and is an absolute joke as far as attempting to salvage anything likable about any of the characters, settings, or plots of the original Devil May Cry stories and this is absolutely no exception, doing further damage to the character of Vergil.

The worst part about this is that it does nothing but further show Not-Vergil's descent into madness following the events of the main game. He's angry, he's angsty, it's depressing...until he gets better, destroys the last vestiges of his humanity (which, considering in this version he has none is a bit odd) and rules the demon army that once called Mundus master. The only thing I can say to its credit is that it's mercifully short.  Sadly, that doesn't save it, and it's as high up on this list as it is because it's attached to...

1. DmC: Devil May Cry

The review in question.
Oh, don't even look at your screen that way, you knew this was coming.  This was my Aliens: Colonial Marines for this year. My Vampire Rain. I could go on with the alternatives, but I'll spare you and just say that this is my the worst game I've played in 2014 and with good reason. Actually, with many good reasons. Plural. That's right. Plural.

There's no better place to begin with this train wreck than with the protaganist, who some would call Dante, but I refuse to give that name to this character.  So allow me to use the fan-made name of "Donte".  "Donte" is completely changed from his namesake, the only things that the two really have in common anymore are that they both have two legs, two arms, and a head...and use a sword and two guns to fight demons. That's really it. Dante was clean-cut, well-spoken, and charming in all things, even in hunting demons. He had some moments that were abundantly silly (the ham to ham combat in Devil May Cry 4 with Angus comes to mind), but it was fitting of the character. He was, at his core, a demon hunter who loved what he did. It's what he lived for. One could say he's absolutely crazy about it! His boundless enthusiasm saw that people WANTED to keep playing to find out what happened next in the story...and to hear more of his hilarious quips.

"Donte", on the other hand? He cares about nothing. There's the hero that refuses the call, and then there's this asshole. He has absolutely no regard for anyone around him (up to and including himself), lives with the knowledge that demons exist and does absolutely nothing to fight them, and is pretty much an asshole to anyone and everyone...and this guy is supposed to be a hero. Now, don't get me wrong, anti-heroes are a big thing and if they're done well, they can be the focal point of some of the best stories that can be told.

This is not one of those stories.

Good God above, this is not one of those stories.

"Donte" is unlikable to the point that you want to reach through the screen and throttle him, and yet we're supposed to empathize with this guy. He's angsty and sad because there's no one else like him and he's all alone and blah blah blah, cry me a river. Dante never had the whole "I'm the only one of my kind" angsty. Y'know why? Because there was demon ass to kick! But even when "Donte" does accept the call to adventure, it doesn't feel genuine. What? A girl flashes you a bit of leg and suddenly you want to help humanity? Bull.

Even his design is something that's offputting and makes anyone who sees him want to play this game less (unless they're into the bedraggled meth-addict look). I'm sure Ninja Theory was trying to make him seem "badass" or whatever by appealing to the emo crowd. The original Dante didn't have to have the Jesse Pinkman Halloween outfit or swear incessantly to be a badass, he just had to be badass to be badass. Dante didn't care what anyone else thought of him, but had the approach-ability that came with that sort of thing. It wasn't that he didn't care about anything, he just had no care for what others thought of his more outlandish quirks as he did what he did best.

And Vergil, as I started on a tirade about, gets the worst treatment. Devil May Cry 3 painted him more as the Well-Intentioned Extremist. He works with Arkham to enter the Temen-ni-gru so that he can gain the power to fight off demons, so that what happened to his and Dante's mother will never happen again. The developers were actually able to establish more with less in that game, and it worked well overall. In the new game, Vergil at least starts out seeming this way. He runs this world's version of Anonymous in an attempt to wake up the public to the fact that the demons have taken over every aspect of human life.

Which works up until you kill Mundus...and then he suddenly, out of nowhere, thinks it's time for him and Dante to rule over humanity. It comes right of nowhere and doesn't really have any sort of build up at all. A far cry from the character who cared about honor in the classic games - never using guns, never attacking an opponent when their back is to him, and so on. Vergil in the new games, however, doesn't act like this at all. He kills Lilith by first shooting her through the stomach so that her baby is killed, allowing her to stew in it before putting a bullet through her head, while conduction a hostage negotiation.

Classic Vergil thought of himself as better than the demons because his actions showed that.  New Vergil...is a horrendous douchebag that gets Machiavellian aspirations right the hell out of nowhere.

And, of course, Kat makes up the third part of the power trio...and she's the least offensive character in the bunch. She's not bad, but she sure isn't Trish or even Lady, that's for sure. She has some generic backstory about abuse that, like "Donte", we're supposed to care about. And, to give credit, we do to an extent, but they do nothing with Kat and she's basically a pair of breasts to run around with "Donte". Yawn.

Now the one thing I will say to this game's credit without any sarcasm: how the demons have subjugated humanity is actually pretty brilliant. Instead of the overt appearances and the like, the demons have corrupted subtly through marketing, the media, and subliminal advertising. The problem is in the execution, as could be said with a lot of this game. When the Demon World, "Limbo", get revealed, it becomes this overt twisting of reality...which while it makes sense completely ruins the feel they're going for with the subtly. Sometimes, that works, but it works far less often than it does.

Swinging back to "Donte" and Vergil themselves, there's the bizarre choice to get rid of their human half and make them half-angel from their mother Eva's side.

Okay...why?

By removing any of "Donte"'s humanity, you take away a vital connection that makes Dante such a great character. He defended the humans in spite of his demonic half, because the love of humanity coursed through his veins as well. "Donte" is basically what would happen if what people complained about with Superman was actually true - namely that he's completely unrelatable because of his alien origins. And "Donte" certainly is that, but I can look beyond a character's origins. To give a good example of this, Vegeta from Dragonball Z is a character that begins as a ruthless villain, but transitions overtime to become an antihero and then one of the good guys entirely. But the transition is done so that you want to see it happen, and so that you have any sort of interest.

"Donte" is the character that you want to see taken out with a Big Bang Attack, and it is something that I want to see every time I see this character.

And this game, as a matter of fact - the worst game I have reviewed in 2014.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to everyone! When I return in the year 2015, I shall have my "The Best Games of 2014" up for you all. I hope to see you there!

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