- 05/06/2025
Well at least they sound good on paper.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00You wouldn't know it from the overwhelming popularity of some genres and franchises,
00:04but gaming is always striving to innovate. It's that drive that makes us look forward
00:08to a new generation of potential. Unfortunately, that same ambition is all too often unruly and
00:15too much for one project. I'm Jess from WhatCulture and here are 8 video games that wasted
00:20one awesome idea. 8. Gears of War in Space
00:25Inversion Shooters in particular are constantly trying
00:28to break out of the mold, from various approaches to cover to health and weapon management to the
00:34freedom of increasingly fictitious sci-fi settings. Putting bullets into things has been dyed at least
00:39half the colors of the visible spectrum. When 2012 rolled around, Namco Bandai's Inversion
00:44strolled up promising that it had the next big color, gravity manipulation. Uptly titled Inversion
00:51Flies in the Face of Isaac Newton Every Chance It Gets. In an almost dead space-like manner,
00:57you bounce around zero-gravity zones like a moth in a jar, the game letting you turn ceilings into
01:02paths and buildings into stairs. This could easily have injected some much-needed zeal into its cover-based
01:08shooting. Ironically, however, Inversion just couldn't get off the ground. It treats its much-touted
01:14gravity mechanic like a throwaway gimmick. Promises of perspective-swapping battles were not met,
01:19and gravitational warfare is, in most cases, replaced by an obsession with cover so strong,
01:26you'd need a crowbar to pry hero Davis Russell off those chest-high walls. Gravity Rush meets
01:31Gears of War this was not, but that would have been awesome.
01:357. An Incredible Setting
01:37Resonance of Fate
01:38Presumably due to having exhausted much of their creativity on the fantastic Valkyra Chronicles
01:44two years prior, Sega rolled out a typical JRPG for Resonance of Fate. After just dodging
01:50Use the Power of Friendship to Save the World, the plot landed on a post-apocalyptic future with a
01:56killer steampunk aesthetic and tone. Indeed, the game's central locale, bestseller, towering achievement
02:02of human engineering and the last vestige of life on Earth is an interesting one. The reasons for it are
02:08vague, but mankind retreating into what is effectively a giant air purifier to escape a
02:13cancerous poison which has overtaken the planet is at least a far cry above your run-of-the-mill
02:19nuclear apocalypse. At least it could have been were it not for, in practice, an absurdly convoluted and
02:26messy story that has more characters and hanging plot points than it does bullets. Things only get
02:31worse when you add in a boring main cast which somehow manages to hit every extreme of forced acting
02:37while remaining flat as hell throughout. It's almost an achievement.
02:42Number 6. Jetpack cover shooting. Dark Void.
02:45Right after grappling hooks, jetpacks make everything better. It worked in Star Wars Bounty Hunter,
02:51Dead Space 2, Elix, Ratchet & Clank, hell, an airborne Kratos might be better with one. If nothing else,
02:57Dark Void had the right idea when it began development. Jetpack plus guns equals fun. Obviously.
03:03Somewhere in Dark Void is the exact sort of diverse gameplay that shooters are crying out for. The
03:09ability to switch effortlessly between ground and air combat is, at its best, truly exhilarating and
03:15rife with creative approaches to otherwise linear confrontations. Unfortunately, it's a nigh-unplayable
03:22train wreck at its worst. The game's physics engine takes an even more questionable approach to gravity
03:28than inversion, alternating randomly between the surface of the sun and the far side of Pluto.
03:34The problem isn't helped by flight controls, which can make gliding about feel like trying
03:38to staple water to a tree. At the very least, it can be fun to watch the game's wonky ragdoll
03:44physics take your airborne corpse for the ride of its not-life.
03:48Number 5. Dissecting one of the greatest artists of all time. Eternal Sonata.
03:53If Resonance of Fate was a dash of cayenne pepper in the otherwise bland collective plots of Japanese
03:59role-playing games, Eternal Sonata was a bowl full of the stuff. It casts you as a fantastical
04:04incarnation of Polish piano prodigy Frederick Chopin on a colourful romp through his own super-ego as he
04:11lies on his deathbed. It's an unorthodox and introspective depiction of the tuberculosis-stricken
04:17artist that is commendably true to its history. This is a game that makes use of authentic paintings
04:22and photographs as often as it does conventional cutscenes. A delightful score featuring some of
04:27Chopin's finest pieces played in rare form accompanies its action-heavy gameplay, which
04:33itself is punctuated by history lessons chronicling the pianist's short life.
04:38As you may suspect, though, what begins as an intriguingly metaphorical adventure predicated
04:43upon such undertones as maturity, self-sacrifice, and Chopin's own romantic struggles quickly devolves
04:50into the crock of ass-polls you would rightfully expect from a JRPG. There is no definition of
04:56avant-garde capable of justifying its absurd ending, which is completely detached from every
05:02decision leading up to it, and sends a therefore-too-brilliant story frame into a stiff nosedive.
05:094. A City at Your Fingertips
05:11Watch Dogs
05:12If you had a dollar for every story-related criticism levied against Ubisoft's next-gen poster child,
05:18you may very well be able to match the game's staggering marketing budget.
05:22Of course, last it was seen, Aiden Pearce's morally questionable but unquestionably generic
05:28tale wasn't any less unworthy of the technological creativity the game is built on. So here we find
05:34ourselves. Who doesn't want a city at their fingertips? Watch Dogs' mantra is, in many ways,
05:40the epitome of sandbox design. Putting so many ways to manipulate the environment literally in the
05:46player's pocket was a stroke of genius on Ubisoft's part. It boils the fun of open worlds down to
05:51easily digestible bites, drops you in a playground, and lets you run free.
05:56Things rapidly grow less fun, however, when you realize the jungle gym only has two tiers.
06:02One of the swings is broken, and some annoying gravelly voice is narrating your every move.
06:07For all its potential and hype, Watch Dogs is crippled by its uninspired,
06:11if faithfully recreated city, and equally tired plot. Fortunately, that potential got a second
06:17shot in Watch Dogs 2 and Watch Dogs Legion, which a lot of people would say did indeed make good on
06:23the checks the original couldn't quite cash.
06:263. Cyberpunk Memory Analysis
06:29Remember Me
06:29As was predicted by every gamer with a shred of humor or cynicism to their name,
06:35Remember Me met the grim fate of being forgotten. Curiously though,
06:39the game had plenty going for it. A Cyberpunk rendition of Paris is a new box on the list of
06:44environments, and Capcom's fighting expertise evidently trickled down into the game's developer,
06:49Dontnod Entertainment, enough for them to churn out a proper combo building system.
06:54Then there's the game's namesake, a clever game of memory analysis which allows players to
06:59effectively rewrite personalities. Much of Remember Me is in fact memorable, especially its story.
07:05However, both this and combat are at their best as fond memories. In practice,
07:11the two are too busy fighting over screen time to do their jobs correctly. Both custom attacks and
07:16custom memories could have carried Remember Me to greatness, but keeping up with them both
07:20proved to be too much for its raw promise to carry.
07:242. A Mature Walking Dead FPS
07:26The Walking Dead Survival Instinct
07:28Telltale Games proved The Walking Dead can deliver a fantastic gamey experience by sticking
07:34to its guns and taking the narrative route. The Walking Dead's survival instinct, however,
07:39proved that even a wealth of backstory and promises to explore one of its more prominent characters
07:44cannot sell a smoldering pile so hideous that even the series' iconic walkers appear more
07:49personable by comparison. Despite being canonically interwoven with AMC's hit series and its source
07:55material, Survival Instinct doesn't know what it is. It wanted to be a shooter, it wanted to be a
08:01mature story with karmic decisions, it wanted to be a stealth game, and it's none of these things.
08:07It's just a repugnant reminder of the soullessness of most licensed games. Far from the grandeur of
08:12its brand, it's better described as the little engine that didn't even freaking try.
08:171. The Big Daddy Backstory
08:20Bioshock 2
08:21How do you follow Irrational Games' Bioshock, an undersea thriller still considered one of
08:26gaming's most beloved shooters? This was the imposing question publisher 2K had to answer in
08:32the roaring wake of the original game's success. To the then-perked ears of many, they came up
08:37with the answer. Let's learn about the Big Daddies. Rapture itself has detail and care dripping out of
08:43every busted pipe, but its lumbering giants aren't quite as characterized. Naturally,
08:49the prospect of delving into their backstory and even playing as a daddy ourselves raised some
08:54eyebrows when first revealed. Then the gameplay happened. Bioshock 2's overly action-reliant
09:00gameplay openly drops the survival and horror infusion, which is what helped establish the
09:05legacy of the first title. Then the story happened. Without lead creative Ken Levine on board for this
09:11sequel, we got a story that claimed to take place several years after the events of the original,
09:15but still cast you as the first Big Daddy. Something that systematically replaced Rapture's
09:21haunting atmosphere with shallow villains, only just clinging to the moral quandaries of its
09:26predecessor. Bioshock 2 not only fails to better the Big Daddies, it doesn't hold a candle to
09:31Bioshock 1 when it comes to gameplay. That's the end of our list, but do let me know down in that
09:36comment section if you can think of any other video games that wasted one awesome idea.
09:42As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture. Thank you so much for hanging out with me.
09:46If you like, you can come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald,
09:50but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.
Recommended
8:53
|
Up next
11:48
8:28
10:57
0:51
1:31
9:58
12:20