This is a tough question because it’s like asking “What’s the most forgettable game you’ve ever played?” I can remember some of the best and worst games I’ve ever played, but mediocre games are explicitly not interesting.
That said, the first one that came to mind for me was Starshot: Space Circus Fever for N64. It’s just a very generic late-'90s collectathon platformer. It’s hard to be mad at it, because it’s not terrible or anything, there’s just no reason to play it. If you’ve got an N64, there’s Mario, Banjo, Rayman, even B- and C-tier stuff like Gex and Chameleon Twist. There’s hidden gems like Space Station Silicon Valley or Rocket: Robot on Wheels.
That last one is the only reason I played Starshot, I saw it clearanced at a used game store and was like “Oh yeah, I remember hearing this game was good,” but it turned out I was thinking of Rocket. That game actually is good, while Starshot is just fine.
It also makes people say things are mid to them. Honestly, rdr2 was that way for me because I hated the pseudo-rpg elements. But long after I put it away, I started playing actual RPGs. So I may give it another shot, but I have so many on my to-do list.
Hell no, Mad Max was way more fun than it had any right to be. I’ll agree that on paper it didn’t look like anything special, with mechanics we’d seen lots of times in other games, but in practice everything came together as much more than the sum of it’s parts.
I bought it quite cheap because it looked like a fun time, and have over the years since played through it 3 times. The gameplay mechanics are a blast.
Hmm… sure, but ima die on the hill Mad Max should be a linear game with sole focus on vehicular/melee combat. I don’t really think it needs to be an open world game.
Fair, although it’s less open than it appears at first glance. The world is divided in parts that you unlock as the central story progresses, much like most RPGs.
Well, when it comes to video games, despite being foundational, Mario Bros. At the time, it was mids, but there were a lot less truly great games, and less abysmal ones so it looked better than it was. The series got better, but that first one was kinda meh. It’s all timing jumps, which is fine as far it as it goes, but there were both better and worse options on that console.
Away from video game, Life is about as meh as it gets. No real strategy, no depth. But it’s a good time killer and you can play it with a table full of people drinking and not get bogged down or into arguments because of the game (unlike monopoly lol).
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming out of pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.
Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)
Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.
Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.
In my opinion ( haven’t played or really seen the DLCs, so I’m just talking about base game ), Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Definitely had ups and downs when I did my only playthrough. Absolutely middle of the road compared to the official games ( completed gen 3, part way through gens 4-7 ) I have played and still even middle of the road compared to some of the fan games I’ve played over the years.
If you’re an adult Pokemon fan, these days fan-mades or rom hacks are the way to go. Nintendo/The Pokemon Company/Game Freak are pretty damn risk averse with this property, so the really cool stuff comes from fans (at least until they get the cease and desist).
I didn’t think it was terrible in and of itself, but it also wasn’t very good. It was just missing that certain something Bethesda RPGs had before it. Just a meh experience the whole way through.
It always felt to me they wanted to create what star citizen is supposed to be someday (press x to doubt) and the. Looked at no mans sky and were like, we should add that too! And then realized the scope of that was ridiculous and half assed both of those parts.
I think it was the way that exploration felt like a grind that made it so “meh”. A whole universe to explore, and you’re either going to come to a barren rock planet, or find the same enemy base/outpost 5 times in a row.
For a game where space exploration was one of the main selling points, it felt remarkably unlike exploring at times.
Star field was just mediocre enough that it pissed me off, the loading screens and menues are egregious enough to make me go ballistic. It’s hilarious because instead of criticizing the game for actuall gameplay, at launch it was lambasted for “pronouns”. Then normal people got to playing it and actually explained the issues.
Starfield faked me out for a bit when I took the character creation perk that gave my character living parents that I could go visit and would show up from time to time. They were funny and adorably charming, and I thought it was an inspired touch. Little did I know that was the absolute best part of that game…
I personally judge that game as plain bad with decent shooting and ok loot. The main story, and the game universe in general, are memorable for how stupidly thought out they are, even for the low standards of Bethesda post Oblivion. The citizens and assorted non-hostile npcs feel less alive than the people you run over in GTA games. They also managed to take the fun basebuilding of Fallout 4 and make it bad AND pointless - very little customization and freedom of certain objects’ placements, plus you’re better off just buying resources from vendors.
I modded it with the ‘no purchasable resources’ and it became a totally different game; It was all spreadsheet/logistics and organizing galaxy wide shipping to central hubs where I had to fabricate all my own materials to be able to upgrade equipment. I found that far more enjoyable, but the game is still meh. Not worth the replays like skyrim was.
While I enjoy some logistics management, I’d never punish myself with that in Starfield. Most gear upgrades aren’t worth it and you can’t even craft your own weapons or suits. This isn’t Fallout where advanced machinery can be considered “lost tech” ffs
I think Halo Infinite qualifies, I played the multiplayer waaay back when it released so things may have drastically changed (haven’t heard of it being the case);
it didn’t / doesn’t do anything that no other game does, nor did / does it do anything particularly well nor better than its competitors (including every Halo from Bungie).
I did watch a walkthrough of the campaign, and it doesn’t look particularly engaging either.
The thing that gets me the most is they dont push the story forward. It felt like they said “lets slap some shit together so we can focus on competitive multiplayer”
I wouldn’t know what the thing that gets me the most is, there is so much that Cyberpunk 2077 corpo ass studio has done to ram the franchise into the ground after digging it up from its sacred resting place.
Other than brand loyalty (which at this point shouldn’t even exist anymore), I wonder how H:I ended up lasting years more than Concord.
Unreal 2, at launch, was the most absolutely 7/10 game I’ve ever played. Just a very generic singleplayer FPS, and not the sequel to Unreal that everyone was hoping for.
I say “at launch,” though, because almost a year after the game’s release, they added multiplayer, and that is still my favorite multiplayer game.
Oh my GAWD 7/10 is NOT mid. I just ranted on another comment about this. 7/10 is a GREAT score. Everyone: please make 5/10 your mid-game point I am so tired of this aaaaaaa
Hahaha that’s totally fair. I’m just peeved that people don’t rate games as a 5/5 = okay game rating. When I see a 7/10 as mediocre, I get a solid flare up of my autism
It’s a very different game, although it does have vehicles, so it has something in common with UT2004 in that way.
Unreal 2’s multiplayer only has one game mode. It’s kind of like capture the flag with some resource management. There are power generators that you need to take for your team in order to use vehicles. You can also capture respawn points which give your team more choices of where to respawn from.
You choose one of three classes when you spawn, with each class having specific weapons. You don’t pick up weapons as you go.
There is a release of the multiplayer that’s available for free here: https://xmpcommunity.com. After Epic tool all Unreal titles off of digital stores a while ago, they specifically mentioned xmpcommunity.com in a blog post as a way of still playing the game. So it has their blessing.
The multiplayer is supposedly incredible. But I remember being extremely whelmed by the main game.
But it’s hard to remember the mid games. Because it is very likely that they didn’t leave any lasting impression.
And especially if previous titles in a series or from a studio were great a mid game would feel disappointingly bad. Although compared to other games they might actually still be considered great.
Neverwinter Nights is the best PC game I’ve played, all thanks to the custom content the players made.
Bioware made the toolset and modding support a big part of the prerelease interviews and live demos. The message to the tabletop RPG crowd was “hey, you can finally build and run your D&D modules as a real DM-led multiplayer group experience online”. Probably the only problem with that marketing was that making modules from scratch was still an involved process and making usually needed scripting skill, so maybe the TTRPG crowd didn’t end up as enthusiastic as they could. But people still ended up making boatloads of great singleplayer and multiplayer-capable adventure modules! And the multiplayer persistent worlds were essentially like MMOs but in small scale.
I think the built-in campaign was more of a hindrance in retrospect, because if you hadn’t heard this, you probably expected another game like Baldur’s Gate 1/2. A lot of people went in thinking that the official NWN campaign was the main offering. The campaign was incredibly mediocre by Bioware standards because Wizards of the Coast was incredibly needy. They wanted high level of control, and essentially only approved a committee-built pile-of-meh plot, leaving Bioware to build something around that.
This, by the way, led to Bioware swearing they’d not work with needy licensors anymore and ended up designing Dragon Age instead.
(And if anyone is saying “wait, didn’t this just happen again with Baldur’s Gate 3?” Yes. Yes it did. WotC is basically impossible to work with.)
The original single player is so bad I’m certain it was just cobbled together as a demo of the engine and for inspiration for user content. Then the team had time to develope proper story with the expansions
Wizards of the Coast spent lots of time in meetings with Bioware to make sure every damn detail of D&D 3e was implemented according to the book. And even longer time micromanaging the campaign design. A lot of the scenarios are essentially repeats of the others - “do these four smaller thingies and then go kick the main baddie” - because getting that approved by WotC was easier.
Why are there so few D&D games these days? Why do video game dev houses want to make their own RPG systems instead? Well, they don’t want the headache of dealing with WotC.
I really enjoyed 3 more than 2, despite never quite getting the hang of doing hook-gliding combos. Flying a heli with missiles in 2 was the game’s “I win” button, dodging AA missiles was pretty trivial, 3 doesn’t have anything as OP
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This is a tough question because it’s like asking “What’s the most forgettable game you’ve ever played?” I can remember some of the best and worst games I’ve ever played, but mediocre games are explicitly not interesting.
That said, the first one that came to mind for me was Starshot: Space Circus Fever for N64. It’s just a very generic late-'90s collectathon platformer. It’s hard to be mad at it, because it’s not terrible or anything, there’s just no reason to play it. If you’ve got an N64, there’s Mario, Banjo, Rayman, even B- and C-tier stuff like Gex and Chameleon Twist. There’s hidden gems like Space Station Silicon Valley or Rocket: Robot on Wheels.
That last one is the only reason I played Starshot, I saw it clearanced at a used game store and was like “Oh yeah, I remember hearing this game was good,” but it turned out I was thinking of Rocket. That game actually is good, while Starshot is just fine.
It also makes people say things are mid to them. Honestly, rdr2 was that way for me because I hated the pseudo-rpg elements. But long after I put it away, I started playing actual RPGs. So I may give it another shot, but I have so many on my to-do list.
An N64 game I’ve never heard of before? Mark it on the calendar because that hasn’t happened in many a sparrow’s moon.
Raksasi Devil Slayer
Assault Spy comes to mind.
And Mad Max maybe?
Hell no, Mad Max was way more fun than it had any right to be. I’ll agree that on paper it didn’t look like anything special, with mechanics we’d seen lots of times in other games, but in practice everything came together as much more than the sum of it’s parts.
I bought it quite cheap because it looked like a fun time, and have over the years since played through it 3 times. The gameplay mechanics are a blast.
Hmm… sure, but ima die on the hill Mad Max should be a linear game with sole focus on vehicular/melee combat. I don’t really think it needs to be an open world game.
Fair, although it’s less open than it appears at first glance. The world is divided in parts that you unlock as the central story progresses, much like most RPGs.
This is probably more subjective than best/worst. So…
Vanilla Skyrim.
It was a fun game, but the main quest was so railroading.
Minesweeper
Well, when it comes to video games, despite being foundational, Mario Bros. At the time, it was mids, but there were a lot less truly great games, and less abysmal ones so it looked better than it was. The series got better, but that first one was kinda meh. It’s all timing jumps, which is fine as far it as it goes, but there were both better and worse options on that console.
Away from video game, Life is about as meh as it gets. No real strategy, no depth. But it’s a good time killer and you can play it with a table full of people drinking and not get bogged down or into arguments because of the game (unlike monopoly lol).
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that’s only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming out of pipes, yeah, I’d say that one was hardly a new thing.
Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that’s a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, …)
Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.
Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.
Do you mean Mario Bros:
Or Super Mario Bros? They are very different games.
In my opinion ( haven’t played or really seen the DLCs, so I’m just talking about base game ), Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Definitely had ups and downs when I did my only playthrough. Absolutely middle of the road compared to the official games ( completed gen 3, part way through gens 4-7 ) I have played and still even middle of the road compared to some of the fan games I’ve played over the years.
Pokemon ScarVio were horrrrible. Unplayable for me.
If you’re an adult Pokemon fan, these days fan-mades or rom hacks are the way to go. Nintendo/The Pokemon Company/Game Freak are pretty damn risk averse with this property, so the really cool stuff comes from fans (at least until they get the cease and desist).
From recent memory: Starfield.
I didn’t think it was terrible in and of itself, but it also wasn’t very good. It was just missing that certain something Bethesda RPGs had before it. Just a meh experience the whole way through.
As a big fan of space sims and action RPGs, I wrote that game off when looking at reviews and how the spaceship building system and space travel were.
It’s like they choose the worst of Elite Dangerous and mixed it with the worst parts of previous Bethesda RPGs.
It always felt to me they wanted to create what star citizen is supposed to be someday (press x to doubt) and the. Looked at no mans sky and were like, we should add that too! And then realized the scope of that was ridiculous and half assed both of those parts.
I think it was the way that exploration felt like a grind that made it so “meh”. A whole universe to explore, and you’re either going to come to a barren rock planet, or find the same enemy base/outpost 5 times in a row.
For a game where space exploration was one of the main selling points, it felt remarkably unlike exploring at times.
The first space exploration game without space or exploration
seriously - how fuckin lazy it was to just copy/paste the same enemy outpost 500 times.
Star field was just mediocre enough that it pissed me off, the loading screens and menues are egregious enough to make me go ballistic. It’s hilarious because instead of criticizing the game for actuall gameplay, at launch it was lambasted for “pronouns”. Then normal people got to playing it and actually explained the issues.
Starfield faked me out for a bit when I took the character creation perk that gave my character living parents that I could go visit and would show up from time to time. They were funny and adorably charming, and I thought it was an inspired touch. Little did I know that was the absolute best part of that game…
I personally judge that game as plain bad with decent shooting and ok loot. The main story, and the game universe in general, are memorable for how stupidly thought out they are, even for the low standards of Bethesda post Oblivion. The citizens and assorted non-hostile npcs feel less alive than the people you run over in GTA games. They also managed to take the fun basebuilding of Fallout 4 and make it bad AND pointless - very little customization and freedom of certain objects’ placements, plus you’re better off just buying resources from vendors.
I modded it with the ‘no purchasable resources’ and it became a totally different game; It was all spreadsheet/logistics and organizing galaxy wide shipping to central hubs where I had to fabricate all my own materials to be able to upgrade equipment. I found that far more enjoyable, but the game is still meh. Not worth the replays like skyrim was.
While I enjoy some logistics management, I’d never punish myself with that in Starfield. Most gear upgrades aren’t worth it and you can’t even craft your own weapons or suits. This isn’t Fallout where advanced machinery can be considered “lost tech” ffs
Any assassin’s creed from the last 10 years, probs gonna get hate for that but they are just so average to me.
Also most Ubisoft games in the last 10 years overall
I got the viking one for free. Didn’t make it much farther than the initial area, which is hours long.
I’d say they are worse than mediocre.
I think Halo Infinite qualifies, I played the multiplayer waaay back when it released so things may have drastically changed (haven’t heard of it being the case);
it didn’t / doesn’t do anything that no other game does, nor did / does it do anything particularly well nor better than its competitors (including every Halo from Bungie).
I did watch a walkthrough of the campaign, and it doesn’t look particularly engaging either.
The thing that gets me the most is they dont push the story forward. It felt like they said “lets slap some shit together so we can focus on competitive multiplayer”
I wouldn’t know what the thing that gets me the most is, there is so much that Cyberpunk 2077 corpo ass studio has done to ram the franchise into the ground after digging it up from its sacred resting place.
Other than brand loyalty (which at this point shouldn’t even exist anymore), I wonder how H:I ended up lasting years more than Concord.
Unreal 2, at launch, was the most absolutely 7/10 game I’ve ever played. Just a very generic singleplayer FPS, and not the sequel to Unreal that everyone was hoping for.
I say “at launch,” though, because almost a year after the game’s release, they added multiplayer, and that is still my favorite multiplayer game.
Oh my GAWD 7/10 is NOT mid. I just ranted on another comment about this. 7/10 is a GREAT score. Everyone: please make 5/10 your mid-game point I am so tired of this aaaaaaa
I was using the GAMESPOT weighted numbering scale:
Generous Averages Make Easy Satisfied Publishers, Our TrafficReliesOnThem
Hahaha that’s totally fair. I’m just peeved that people don’t rate games as a 5/5 = okay game rating. When I see a 7/10 as mediocre, I get a solid flare up of my autism
How does U2 compare to UT2003/4 in multiplayer?
It’s a very different game, although it does have vehicles, so it has something in common with UT2004 in that way.
Unreal 2’s multiplayer only has one game mode. It’s kind of like capture the flag with some resource management. There are power generators that you need to take for your team in order to use vehicles. You can also capture respawn points which give your team more choices of where to respawn from.
You choose one of three classes when you spawn, with each class having specific weapons. You don’t pick up weapons as you go.
There is a release of the multiplayer that’s available for free here: https://xmpcommunity.com. After Epic tool all Unreal titles off of digital stores a while ago, they specifically mentioned xmpcommunity.com in a blog post as a way of still playing the game. So it has their blessing.
Sounds like the Onslaught mode of UT2004 and 3, though more strategic, especially with the classes
It definitely had a lot in common with Onslaught mode. There was some overlap with the types of vehicles, too.
Neverwinter Nights
The multiplayer is supposedly incredible. But I remember being extremely whelmed by the main game.
But it’s hard to remember the mid games. Because it is very likely that they didn’t leave any lasting impression.
And especially if previous titles in a series or from a studio were great a mid game would feel disappointingly bad. Although compared to other games they might actually still be considered great.
Neverwinter Nights is the best PC game I’ve played, all thanks to the custom content the players made.
Bioware made the toolset and modding support a big part of the prerelease interviews and live demos. The message to the tabletop RPG crowd was “hey, you can finally build and run your D&D modules as a real DM-led multiplayer group experience online”. Probably the only problem with that marketing was that making modules from scratch was still an involved process and making usually needed scripting skill, so maybe the TTRPG crowd didn’t end up as enthusiastic as they could. But people still ended up making boatloads of great singleplayer and multiplayer-capable adventure modules! And the multiplayer persistent worlds were essentially like MMOs but in small scale.
I think the built-in campaign was more of a hindrance in retrospect, because if you hadn’t heard this, you probably expected another game like Baldur’s Gate 1/2. A lot of people went in thinking that the official NWN campaign was the main offering. The campaign was incredibly mediocre by Bioware standards because Wizards of the Coast was incredibly needy. They wanted high level of control, and essentially only approved a committee-built pile-of-meh plot, leaving Bioware to build something around that.
This, by the way, led to Bioware swearing they’d not work with needy licensors anymore and ended up designing Dragon Age instead.
(And if anyone is saying “wait, didn’t this just happen again with Baldur’s Gate 3?” Yes. Yes it did. WotC is basically impossible to work with.)
The original single player is so bad I’m certain it was just cobbled together as a demo of the engine and for inspiration for user content. Then the team had time to develope proper story with the expansions
Wizards of the Coast spent lots of time in meetings with Bioware to make sure every damn detail of D&D 3e was implemented according to the book. And even longer time micromanaging the campaign design. A lot of the scenarios are essentially repeats of the others - “do these four smaller thingies and then go kick the main baddie” - because getting that approved by WotC was easier.
Why are there so few D&D games these days? Why do video game dev houses want to make their own RPG systems instead? Well, they don’t want the headache of dealing with WotC.
Sackboy a Big Adventure. Absolutely no ill will towards it, and the issue may lie more with me than the game, but it just felt very “okay” for me.
A hell of a lot of Ubisoft open-world slop released around and in the 2010s.
Just Cause 3
Movement was more annoying than Just Cause 2
I really enjoyed 3 more than 2, despite never quite getting the hang of doing hook-gliding combos. Flying a heli with missiles in 2 was the game’s “I win” button, dodging AA missiles was pretty trivial, 3 doesn’t have anything as OP