Gears of War
This game was pretty much game of the year in most people's eyes when it was released, touted as the best Xbox360 game, heck even the best shooter ever made. Well, whilst being playable it certainly wasn't all it was cracked up to be. There was a lot of potential for this game but it fell short on many levels. The controls are terrible; having to dash with the A button whilst using the left stick to move and the right stick to look around is a total headache. The campaign is incredibly short and of varied quality, blatantly unfinished with a plot that has more holes than a cheese grater. Online play has its moments but is generally hampered with little kids screaming abuse at you and weapon whoring, not to mention how annoying it is to get an unlucky death at the start of the round and wait for ages while everyone camps, until you can play again.
Advance Wars
This series of strategy games have been hailed as some of the best portable games ever made. Yes, they have a lot of content and depth but I have no interest in exploring any of it. The battles are extremely slow paced and rudimentary, the gameplay revolves around the old "rock-paper-scissors" of unit A beating unit B and I think it just drastically pales in comparison to a true RTS that plays similarly but requires more quick-thinking and has more freedom. I have had several friends raving about the addictiveness of this game but I couldn't play for more than 10 minutes without yawning.
Dead Rising
This game for a while was claimed to be the best 360 game out, so I bought it to see what all the fuss was about, with friends of mine hyping it up to be an immense experience. Well at the core of the game lies some good gameplay and ideas, but its downright harshness destroys most of the potential fun that is to be had. Whereas this game would be perfect if you could go at your own pace and mess around, a la GTA, it imposes strict time limits - you must be at Point A by 4:50pm or you fail the game, sure you can carry on if you like but you're going to have missed most of the missions. You need to rush around like a lunatic and make sure you kill the right people whilst keeping the right ones alive, if you want to be completing it and seeing most of what the game has to offer. It's a goddamn tough game that can be enjoyable but I just gave in after having to escort a weak female from Point A to Point B by a certain time, where you're forced to go through an area inhabited by crazy prison inmates in a jeep gunning you down - after finally killing these evil fiends earlier in the game, they had respawned within the game's several day time limit. I threw in the towel at this point.
Time limits in free roaming games have always boiled my blood, it's what ruined the Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for me. I'm not too averse to challenge, but I still like to take things at my own pace and fully explore the game world, having a bit of a mess about here and there. The timelimit was the deal breaker for me with Dead Rising. I play games to enjoy them, not to rush around like a madman.
Guitar Hero
This game has created a wave of plastic-guitar toting fans, rabidly playing this game for hours on end trying to 5-star the hardest songs on expert. I really don't see the attraction. The Guitar Hero series is not terrible, but I really struggle to see enough fun in the gameplay once you get past the gimmicks, to warrant its expensive price tag. Actually playing the game requires bone headed perseverance to memorise all of the track layouts and work the clunky controller, first getting your pinky finger to actually DO something, and then even worse, mastering usage of the 5th button. To get any good at this game requires hours and hours of practising, for what? At the end of the day you don't come away with any more musical talent, all you've done is learnt to use the controller and memorised the songs.
Rez
A game that was quite unique and 'revolutionary' in its day, now that has been re-released on Xbox Live in glorious HD. Well I wasn't too impressed when it was out on PS2 and I'm certainly no more impressed now. Whereas the game creates an interesting visual experience, the gameplay is an incredibly linear and basic on rails shooter that involves shooting down up to eight enemies at a time while listening to upbeat trance music. It's just really a matter of memorising the levels, and quickly locking on to all the enemies before they shoot you or escape, something that really doesn't hold my attention for too long. To add to this, it's criminally short at only five levels, the fifth level using the lazy old trick of making you replay the bosses of the previous ones. I'm surprised it justified being called a full game back in the day, and I don't understand the acclaim it received.
