Everything is cyclical in our world, so good or great games will surely be followed by mediocre or even terrible projects. Here’s our anti-rating of the most mediocre games of 2023, which are not worth wasting your time on.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Linking movies and the gaming world has been fashionable for years, no wonder there are tons of games based on movies and movie themed slot machines. So, the Lord of the Rings: Gollum literally brought gamers back to the beginning of the noughties, when every second game based on the famous movie franchise was a terrible mess. At that time, publishers naively believed that the connection with a successful movie franchise automatically guaranteed good sales, but everything usually turned out to be the opposite. Many industry veterans supposedly worked on Gollum, but the budget and development timeline were modest. Daedalic employees gave such excuses, but behind-the-scenes dramas are hardly interesting to the consumer. He buys a game based on a legendary universe, and gets a crappy stealth action game with PS2 game mechanics and PS3 level graphics. After such a fiasco, Daedalic’s game division was disbanded, and from now on, the studio will be engaged only in publishing.
Redfall
Redfall was a strong reputational blow for Arkane, which had previously delighted the audience with great projects in the immersive sim genre. And this shooter, ironically nicknamed Redfail, was made by other people. Terrible artificial intelligence, uninteresting story presentation, uninteresting combat, and bugs in large numbers just killed all desire to play it. Also, Redfall, to put it bluntly, did not shine with new generation graphics, although it was released only on PC and Xbox Series. Moreover, the console versions didn’t even have a performance mode at launch. And that’s in 2023 from an established studio. Later, Arkane justified its failure by the lack of clear control from the management. Desk, the team did not understand until the end what and how it should be done. All in all, according to the authoritative author Vitaliy Klymenko, Editor In Chief at Slotamia, it is better to familiarize yourself with the world of slots and entertainment than to play such dubious games.
Forspoken
Forspoken was criticized in absentia because of a very unlikable heroine. And okay, just another working out the “narrative” through a traditionally strong, independent, and dark-skinned girl was the main problem. The protagonist did not fit into the fantasy world at all. Such a deliberately daring character rather belongs in ironic GTA, and that’s not a fact. With gameplay, however, the situation is not much better. Forspoken, as a sponge, absorbed the worst features of most projects in the open world. Namely – a lot of empty, unimpressive space, duty “sidequest,” and numerous bugs. Its “contribution” to the already sad spectacle was also made by terrible optimization. The failure was so deafening that Square Enix disbanded the studio developing the game Luminous Productions.
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Crime Boss: Rockay City is an attempt to make a more colorful analog of Payday, and it failed. The presence of a whole host of Hollywood stars in the game didn’t add any charm to the clumsy shooter. As well as the spirit of action movies of the video salon era. Poor stealth realization almost nullified the whole variability of gameplay. No matter how you try to behave quietly, the game will still push you to a head-on collision with enemies. The project was criticized for a large number of bugs. In general, it’s another illustration that covering up mediocrity with big names of celebrities in the hope of interesting the audience is a bad idea.
Fort Solis
Another example of the fact that the participation of a famous actor in the project of a little-known studio does not necessarily bode well. “Well, it’s Joel from The Last of Us; he couldn’t fit into some questionable story,” – decided many gamers. Alas, Troy Baker’s good acting fails to lift Fort Solis off the bottom. It has even less interactivity and gameplay than the projects of Quantic Dream and Supermassive Games. Most of the time, you just walk around the Martian station where something terrible happened and try to figure it all out. QTE segments are rare, and their outcome has almost no effect on anything. As a result, we get about four hours of tedious walking, but in very beautiful scenery. As a benchmark of Unreal Engine 5 capabilities, the game turned out to be excellent. It’s just a pity that optimization was not brought into it.
Stray Blade
Stray Blade is a good attempt to create a “not like the others” clone of Dark Souls. That’s why the gloomy Gothic was replaced by a bright cartoon style here, which sends rays of goodness to World of Warcraft. You can also praise the game for a lively, dynamically developing world. But otherwise, it’s just another “soul slice.”The mechanics clearly lack the depth to entice every second for a few dozen hours. And there are too many bugs. The project is not bad, but it is not so good to recommend. In a word, a mediocre one.
Flashback 2
Nowadays it’s a common thing to bring back moss-covered classics. And quite often, such comebacks turned out to be good – just remember at least Streets of Rage 4. Alas, the continuation of the cult cinematic platformer had a completely different fate. No wonder that Flashback 2 was not even given to the press before the release – if the scathing reviews had come out early, hardly anyone would have bought such a wretched game.
Terrible optimization, axe gameplay, and too obvious borrowing of plot moves of the first part. All this is complemented by critical bugs that break scripts. Flashback 2 feels as if it’s ashamed of its existence, and it prevents the player from seeing it through to the end with all its might. And it would be okay if some newcomers who bought the license were responsible for the sequel, but no – the development was personally led by the creator of the original.
Skull Island: Rise of Kong
A berry of about the same field as Flashback 2 and Gollum. If other games in the top have some merits, then Skull Island: Rise of Kong is not worth five minutes of your precious time. Not to mention money. Everything is bad here – miserable graphics, maximum bland gameplay, and a lot of bugs. The developers later justified themselves by the fact that tight deadlines constrained them. Yes, somewhere, we’ve already heard that. All King Kong fans will be reminded of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which was released in 2005 and was based on the same name. The project hasn’t aged very well, but if you missed it and really want a game about the great ape, it’s better to shake the old one than to torture yourself with Skull Island: Rise of Kong.
