While I try to be civil and maintain respectful professional relationships, I’m not afraid to call game companies on their BS when they mess up. While I don’t take joy in crapping on someone else’s hard work, I believe it’s important to point out when a developer or publisher does poorly, in hopes that they can improve in their future efforts. Here are the games that failed spectacularly in one area or another this year.
- Worst Microtransactions
- Most Overrated
- Laziest Copycat
- Worst Port / Remake
- Most Overpriced
- The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award
- Most Disappointing
- Nintendo’s Biggest Blunder
- Worst Game
- Additional Commentary!
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Worst Microtransactions
Chocobo GP – Microtransactions frequently make a videogame worse, but it’s particularly depressing when they outright ruin what would have otherwise been a great game. For Square Enix to load this game up so heavily with microtransactions when it’s a full-priced game is extremely disappointing. For them to do so when it is a game clearly made with kids in mind is despicable. This could have been a pretty respectable Kart Racer, and instead it became a cautionary story. And Square Enix thought they could make this fly on a console… that already has Mario Kart. Recently, Square Enix threw their hands up and announced they were stripping this game of its microtransactions, but there’s little talk of rebalancing so players don’t have to grind to unlock content. This means that even when microtransactions are gone from the game, the crippling scar they left will live on.
Runners-Up:
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Most Overrated
Two Point Campus (87) – I found myself rather surprised this year when only one game got a review score on Metacritic that I felt was far more than it deserved. However, in this case, the score is so absurdly high that I have to wonder what reviewers were thinking. Now, to be clear, Two Point Campus is a decent game. However, this grade makes Two Point Campus one of the top 20 highest-rated games of the year. What? Its review score puts it ahead of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Bayonetta 3, and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. All this for a game that I felt just retreads the same ground as its predecessor without fixing its biggest problems. Absurd.
Runners-Up:
N/A
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Laziest Copycat
Overwatch 2 – It takes some guts to basically re-release the same game with a “2” on the end and call it a sequel. It takes even more guts to do that while also taking the previous game off of storefronts. And then it goes a step beyond that by having those who bought the prior game automatically having their old game erased and replaced with the “new” one. That means that if you don’t like what few changes were made to this game, you can’t just go back and play the “first” game, you have to play the “second” one. You know, like this was just an update to the first game. You know, because that’s what this was.
Runners-Up:
Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium / Capcom Fighting Collection
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Worst Port / Remake
Crunchyroll – Who said this award had to go to a game? It doesn’t seem terribly difficult to release a streaming app on a game console. Countless streaming companies have done it on numerous platforms, including Crunchyroll. Yet the Crunchyroll app on Nintendo Switch has to be the buggiest, most poorly-constructed streaming app I have ever had the misfortune to use. One has to wonder why they released this app so late into the Nintendo Switch’s life, but you have to wonder even more why they would take so long only to bungle it so completely.
Runners-Up:
Pendula Swing – The Complete Journey
Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
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Most Overpriced
Vazial Saga XX ($34) – They couldn’t even be bothered to properly localize this ugly piece of trash (a fact they seem to be trying to hide), and they want to charge $34 for it? I suppose at the very least I can be grateful because this means that fewer people probably bought it.
Runners-Up:
Farm Tycoon ($20)
Faith & Shield: Tower Defense Space Wars Game 2022 ($10)
Chex Quest ($5)
Trivia for Dummies ($10)
Sonic Origins ($40)
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The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award
Sonic Origins (3.6 GB) – For the record, of the four(-ish) games included in this collection, the biggest of the bunch, Sonic CD, originally released with a file size of 21MB. This package inflates the file size of the original games over 100x. Even adding in the remixed music and completely unnecessary new animated intros, there’s no way the game should be that big. It’s disappointing Sega didn’t just release Sonic CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles via the Sega Ages line of games so we could be spared this massive hog of file space.
Runners-Up:
Doctor Hospital: Hypocondriac Simulator (713MB)
Robby’s Adventure (835MB)
Chex Quest (2.5GB)
A Little to the Left (1.4GB)
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Most Disappointing
Run Box Run – Developer Atooi has released nothing but great game after great game on Nintendo Switch… until now. It’s not like this was some big experimental title either, it was just a Platformer, right in Atooi’s wheelhouse… and they still messed it up, releasing a bland game with terrible controls dependent on dead online multiplayer. Some developers shoot for the moon and miss, but Atooi was basically shooting fish in a barrel and still missed. Pathetic.
Runners-Up:
Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
Pokemon Scarlet / Pokemon Violet
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Nintendo’s Biggest Blunder
Nintendo and Panda Global force Smash World Tour to shut down – Super Smash Bros. competitive pro players are used to Nintendo spitting in their faces by this point, but we had hoped that they were past all of that. But not only did they force a beloved game tournament to shut down, they publicly responded with what by all appearances looks to be bald-faced lies about their role in all of this. So not only did they needlessly attack one of their most dedicated fan communities, they didn’t even have the integrity to be honest about it. For shame, Nintendo.
Runners-Up:
Allegations of Nintendo contractor abuse
Pokemon Scarlet / Violet clearly rushed to release
What the heck happened to Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp?
Nintendo Switch’s age and underpowered hardware is really starting to show
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Worst Game
Vazial Saga XX – I technically did not review this game. Could not review it. Because this is a Japanese-only language game published on the US eShop with nothing but a small footnote on the game’s page indicating this. But everything I can tell points to an ugly, boring game. But hey, maybe that’s jumping to conclusions. I’ll tell you what, if the publisher ever actually properly localizes the game, we’ll see. Until then, I’m perfectly satisfied assuming this is a piece of trash, because all the benefit of the doubt I had was used up when I was tricked into buying this game in the first place.
Runners-Up:
Faith & Shield: Tower Defense Space Wars Game 2022
Pendula Swing – The Complete Journey
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Additional Commentary!
Just going to comment on the categories I feel like I have more to add.
Most Overrated
That’s right, no runners-up. There was only one game I felt truly got a significantly higher Metacritic score than it deserved this year, but that score is so outrageously ridiculous, this game stands alone.
Laziest Copycat
There weren’t too many blatant copycat games I played this year. The two Capcom games are on here because the overwhelming majority of the content in Capcom Fighting Collection is also in Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium… and those two games released one month apart. Yet of course each collection has a few games that are different and can’t be played in any other release, just to try to push you to get both and re-buy the same content multiple times. Gross.
Nintendo’s Biggest Blunder
I should note that the story about Nintendo contractor abuse didn’t win only because I’m unclear on just how much of this is Nintendo’s responsibility, and how much of this is on the contractor and/or individual employees. It’s still pretty shameful, but Nintendo’s role in the Smash World Tour shutdown is much more well-established, even if Nintendo feebly claimed innocence in regards to the fiasco.
Worst Game
A part of me wondered whether it was right, declaring as the worst game a game I cannot play because it hasn’t been properly localized, when two of the runners-up are literally unplayable due to their buggy game design. However, the way I see it, the broken games could be broken because the developer was lazy or impatient and didn’t properly play test it… which is bad, but at least it’s plausible they didn’t know it was bad. The developer of Vazial Saga XX, on the other hand, knew they were deceiving potential customers into buying a game they wouldn’t be able to play – the fact that they put a warning about the game’s language on the game page proves they knew this, and the fact that they put it at the very bottom, where most customers wouldn’t see it, proves that they didn’t care. Well, then as far as I’m concerned, they can also not care about being named my worst game of the year.
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That’s all for today! to keep up with all of the eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards, be sure to check back at the Awards’ Start Page, which I’ll be updating throughout the week!
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