Games I won’t touch – Part 2

Well, it looks like I have more games on mind and on hand to consider never playing.  Simply put, these are games or series that I’m not interested in playing or even playing again.  Now that I look back at it, there are a lot of series not worth looking at again.  I made a list of games in an earlier post.  Check it out when you can.  That said, here’s my next list.

Pokemon

Yes, I love Nintendo.  I will always be a fan.  But, that doesn’t mean I have to like every game they make or want to play every game they own.  I had a small taste of Pokemon through Pokemon Stadium.  For what it was worth, it was a portion of what goes into Pokemon, focusing only on battles.  After my time with it, I just didn’t see the interest in playing any more games, let alone the real games.  One such turnoff was the anime.  Oh boy.  After seeing a bunch of testosterone-driven, heavy action anime like Gundam Wing and Dragon Ball Z, my macho side didn’t even want to give this a chance.  I’d rather see people fight than cute animals or monster fight, really.  And, no, the excessive fandom of said show didn’t help either.  It was pretty corny and inaccurate in some places.  Then came the movies, and I figured it would be over after that.  I was wrong.  It was stronger than ever.  Lastly, what really burned me was that if I were to catch them all in the first games, it would be a moot point since the later games literally changed up the entire roster.  Good pokemon disappeared.  Other pokemon had their earlier evolutions in the games, forcing you to evolve them, if you could.  A slew of new pokemon took the places of the older ones, but it wasn’t the same.  No thanks.  Oh, and to catch them all means to have both games in whatever iteration or sequel you get.  That always proved to be impossible as one game was always better than the other, based on the list of pokemon in the game.  Did I mention the anime was made by 4Kids Productions, and was literally the first anime to fall under their umbrella?  I’d say this is the reason why bunches of 4Kids anime are horrible, because this show was censored….heavily.  Yea…

Donkey Kong Country 2 and Donkey Kong Country 3

Donkey Kong Country was one of the toughest platform games I’ve ever played.  It was also one of the most fun-filled games I owned with a slew of secrets, weapons, tokens, and bananas.  Lots and lots of bananas.  The story was solid enough for me as Donkey Kong and his nephew and friend, Diddy Kong must travel through seven locations in order to reclaim all of Donkey Kong’s bananas.  However, when it comes to these sequels, I have to take a pass.  People have complained about Rare games being gigantic fetch quests for endless tokens, items, and whatnot, littered with mini-games in the middle.  DKC2 and DKC3 were practically the progenitors of this, as they added more of the same per stage.   Another sticking point is the fact that DKC2 has you saving Donkey Kong, while controlling Diddy and Dixie.  First off, why should DK have to be saved?  Is he really that stupid to be captured?  He’s the hero, here!  And he’s my favorite Kong, as I found myself having many a tough time dealing with Diddy’s strengths and weaknesses.  He’s cooler than DK, sure, and it took a whole game to strengthen him, but he’s not the Kong I want.  As for DKC3, both Diddy and DK are captured.  Oh come on!  Enough with forcing me to play as characters I don’t want to use. 

Call of Duty series

Two games are the reason I won’t waste my time with this series:  Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.  These games opened the door to true innovation in the first-person shooter genre.  It’s sad that most gamers these days don’t even know about these two classics.  It’s important to know your roots.  I feel that if they did, they’d understand why I don’t care of CoD.  It started off pretty average, and then came the Modern Warfare portion of the series which strengthened the game.   Unfortunately, the game didn’t fully evolve after CoD 4.  If it has, then I give kudos to the series.  However, after hearing and seeing the game-breaking glitches in the game that people employ (even more so than Goldeneye and Perfect Dark) and not seeing them fixed, I throw my hands up in disapproval as the game is practically unplayable against others.  The single player modes aren’t as fleshed out either, as multiplayer is the only focal point of the game.  I’ll stick to my roots.

Halo series

Even though I tested out Halo 2, see the previous series entry.

Street Fighter: The Movie

The only reason this doesn’t fall under clones or inspired games is because it comes directly from the Capcom crew itself.  First mistake:  making a Street Fighter movie that doesn’t even come close to respecting the source material.  Second mistake: making a game based on the movie, prolonging the sad excuse of its reputation (although nowadays, people see it as so bad it’s good).  Third mistake:  making said game digitized like a certain game series that was in deep competition with Street Fighter games at the time: Mortal Kombat.  3 strikes and you’re out!  I’m never touching that abomination.  Saddest part:  a bevy of things has been traversed from that game into other Capcom fighting games.  Yay….

The Last Guardian

I bought Ico thinking it was the best thing since sliced bread, as mentioned on numerous occasions by many.  I found that it wasn’t to my tastes as my review has shown.  Fool me once, shame on you.  I bought Shadow of the Colossus thinking they did a better job this time around.  I found that it was ok, but not as good as one would have hoped.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Now, Team Ico has a final game to most likely complete the trilogy of minimalist art in gaming.  Yea, I’m not holding out hope, especially if it has been delayed heavily. 

The PS1 RPG series triple threat

The game series that I’m talking about are Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve, and Xenogears.  Vagrant Story had one game, Parasite Eve had a sequel, and Xenogears had 2 sequels.  One of those Xeno-sequels actually debuted for the Wii as part of massive requests from fans.  Why am I not playing any of these?  For starters, I’m not interested in unearthing a PS1 and all its loading problems and such in an attempt to play a slew of games I don’t really care for.  Perhaps I couldn’t get into them, or perhaps I just wasn’t into RPGs at the time and don’t have the time to follow up.  Or perhaps, upon inspection, I see games that don’t really jump out at me.  It didn’t help that no one brought these around to play where I could see them.  I could just look up a few vids, but I’m pretty backlogged right now with a slew of games.  RPG-wise, I’m choosing between these three or Persona, Digital Devil Saga, and Suikoden III.  It's too much to deal with for me.

Super Mario Land

I don’t know really.  I guess handheld 8-bit Mario isn’t my thing.  That, and well, the original Game Boy had its good and bad moments with me.  I don’t know what it is really.  I just never got into the Mario games on the Game Boy, save for Wario Land.  Perhaps, it is because I’m so used to them on consoles.  Now, this might seem a bit hypocritical, since I own New Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario 3D Land, but everyone will be quick to tell you that the DS and the Game Boy are two different entities.  Well, not everyone, but some of the purists will.  That said, I may never get around to this.  I did get around to the sequel, and if that’s any indication of the first game’s difficulty, I’ll pass.

Generic 3-D fighting games

Just like there are games that are clones of Street Fighter, there are 3-D fighting games that are just too generic for even my tastes.  Yes, just like the 2-D fighting craze, there was a 3-D fighting craze, and boy, was it horrible.  Dark Rift, War Gods, Vs., Last Bronx, and yes, I’ll say it, Fighting Vipers and even Battle Arena Toshinden (console version) are to name a few.  These games were not only just flashes in the pan but some were downright atrocious.  Sure, some of them merited sequels, but who really wants to remember playing those games when you had much better games in your vicinity?  Sorry, but I’m not interested.  The saddest part is that some of these were for the N64.  So, you see, the N64 can have fighting games.  Sadly, not many of them were good.   And speaking of fighting games…

C2: Judgment Clay and Clay Fighter 63 1/3 (either version)

Clay Fighter was ambitious enough to get my attention, being a parody of various fighting games and all.  The original was rife with humor, cheapness in combat and weird characters.  When the Tournament Edition of this game was released exclusively for rental, the game was tweaked heavily to remove most of the cheapness, but not by much.  Then, sequels were mentioned.  And, lo and behold, I was in for some disappointment.  Firstly, the characters didn’t all return.  Secondly, the graphics looked actually worse than the first, with dark spots, grainy models, and such.  I didn’t even bother with this game.  When the N64 version was abound, I was going to make the effort to purchase it, but again, tragedy struck.  For starters, the game was delayed and fixed, fixed and delayed, and all kinds of chaos ensued.  Characters were removed.  Characters were returned.  I pretty much stopped caring when it was released, and rather quietly.  Oh, and the graphics didn’t really win any contests as digitizing clay to this medium was seen to be a losing effort.  Another game was planned, but nothing was mentioned or secured.  And while we are still on the subject of fighting games…

Generic or disappointing Capcom and SNK fighting games

To cap off this edition of games I won’t touch, I want to talk about all the fighting games that came out amidst the great games that Capcom and SNK put forth.  These game fall into one of two categories for me: underwhelming and generic.  SNK is a bigger culprit of this than Capcom, but not everyone can make a hit.  Capcom had games like Red Earth  and Capcom Fighting Evolution while SNK had such winners as Kizuna Encounter, Savage Reign, Aggressors of Dark Combat, Power Instinct, Power Instinct Matrimelee, and even, it pains me to say, Rage of the Dragons (a reboot to the Double Dragon storyline in fighting game form).  And let’s not forget SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos.  Not only can I not find these anywhere, but they passed so far under the radar, that it was probably best these games didn’t get showcased.  Logistically, I could throw games like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Art of Fighting 3, Fatal Fury 3, and any of the 3-D SNK games (including KOF Maximum impact and Samurai Shodown Sen), but I think they are at least a cut or two above these other games.  If you’re JoJo, you’re worlds ahead, really. You can try to hit it big all you like, but unless you hit big, no one will care.  Also, did you really think you could actually match some of the magic you captured with games like Last Blade, Samurai Shodown, or the like?  The games you released barely acted as a placeholder or preparation for future games.  I’ll save my money.

And that ends part 2.  If you disagree with what I say, let me know.  Also, are there any games you can think of that you wouldn’t touch? Maybe our lists match…or not.