Problematic Plot Lines

It’s no secret that J.K. Rowling has seen massive amounts of controversy over the last several years. That controversy found its way into Hogwarts Legacy, despite Rowling having no active part in its creation. Several players have pointed out that even though Rowling had nothing to do with the storylines, many of her possible problematic content was still present. u/asdfghjkl1237890 on r/NoStupidQuestions makes the point, “Goblins are trying to get the right to use magic, and you the player are supposed to quell this rebellion. The goblins want to be seen as equals, but the wizards want to keep them in their place as the bankers. Kinda sound like defending slavery.”

“There Is No Magic in Hogwarts Legacy”

Wired magazine’s writer, Jaina Grey, wrote up this scathing review, “The story, besides being rooted in anti-Semitism (a global “cabal” is trying to end slavery but that’s bad because the slaves like being slaves), doesn’t even feel compelling. It feels muddy, a minefield of unanswered questions and unexplained motivations. And speaking of which, the characters often flat-out state their motivations, but they don’t feel believable or even particularly coherent. It says it’s Hogwarts, but it doesn’t feel like Hogwarts. Even despite the controversy around Rowling herself, the game feels like it was put together to tap the eager nostalgia of fans without any attention to making it actually worth playing. ”

Hogwarts Legacy Is J.K. Rowling’s Legacy, Summed Up in a Feverishly Awaited Dud of a Game

Many players were quick to criticize the endless repetition of certain aspects of the game. A Vulture reviewer wrote, “”Does it get any more cozy than Hogsmeade?” The first time you hear this refrain in Hogwarts Legacy, the new blockbuster open-world video game based on the Harry Potter franchise, you may find yourself agreeing with your character, who has just said it. The higgledy-piggledy Hogsmeade Village is indeed cozy, a market town filled with a plethora of shops to purchase various wizarding wares. Then, as you hear the phrase for the fifth, tenth, and 15th time, you may begin to feel as if the long-in-development video game is trying too hard to convince you of this fact.”

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the most rich and immersive fictional worlds. With multiple books, movies, games, and television shows, Tolkien’s Middle Earth has a seemingly endless world of possibilities. Lord of the Rings: Gollum is “set in the fictional world of Middle-earth created by J. R. R. Tolkien, takes place in between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. The player controls Gollum through a series of locations, such as Cirith Ungol, Barad-dûr, and Mirkwood, as he attempts to find Bilbo Baggins and retake the One Ring whilst battling himself and avoiding Sauron.” The game was so bad, the developers issued a formal apology.

A Deeply Uninspired Plot

“The Lord of the Rings: Gollum fails to live up to both the Tolkien name and its own potential. From exhausting, repetitive gameplay to a poorly constructed narrative, this is a piece of Middle-earth you should never explore.” This is what Anna Koselke had to say on PCGamesN’s review page. Koselke continues, “I was hoping for an experience rich in adventure, story, and puzzles, and despite my concerns about the myriad ways it could go wrong, I was curious to dive into a thoughtful exploration of Gollum as a character. Upon starting, however, it quickly became clear that it offers none of these things. Instead, I was stuck in a dreary platformer with weak stealth game mechanics and a deeply uninspired plot.”

“Spend your money on a second breakfast instead.”

Jam Walker posted on PowerUp! their take on this supposed travesty of a game. “The Lord of The Rings – Gollum is every bit as twisted, nasty, broken and miserable as its protagonist. It is without doubt the most objectively poor and outright broken game that I have ever pushed through to completion. A patch has been promised for launch that may well alleviate some of the technical woes that plague the game, but no amount of fixes can pave over its utterly mediocre overall design. Spend your money on a second breakfast instead.”

No Saving Grace

On Tom’s Guide, Rory Mellon gave this game a 1/5. Mellon writes, “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is an unwelcome throwback to the era of truly awful licensed games. It looks and plays like a movie tie-in game rushed out to meet a tight deadline. This is baffling as it was one of the first ‘next-gen’ games announced in 2019, and seemingly had a long production period. But even so, it’s a game that conceptually, visually, and technically screams out for additional development time. Patches and updates may squash the bugs. But with core gameplay so dull and lacking, I can’t see a saving grace for Gollum.”

Cyberpunk 2077

Based on the aesthetic created by films like Blade Runner, Akira, and Tron, Cyberpunk 2077 promised a fully immersive open world dystopia to its players. The release date kept getting pushed farther out, leaving would-be fans frustrated. Unfortunately, the delayed release date was the least of CD Projekt Red’s concerns. Players would eventually criticize the game development studio for pushing out an incomplete game, full of glitching, poor graphics, and lost saves. CD Projekt Red has patched and fixed many of the irritating aspects of the game, and players with access to gaming PCs and next-gen consoles have had better success at playing the game. However, Cyberpunk 2077 will go down in gaming history as one of the least successful game launches in gaming history.

Been There, Done That

There is a wealth of science fiction within the subgenre of cyberpunk. The genre has been around since the 80s. Reddit user, u/Tagaziel didn’t have anything kind to say about what CD Projeckt Red was trying to creature with Cyberpunk 2077. On the TrueGaming subreddit, Tagaziel says, “Back then, alongside the likes of Blade Runner, Neuromancer, or the very first Cyberpunk 2013, it would have been a revolutionary story and setting. However, it is now 2022, forty years on, and what was fresh back then has grown exceedingly stale for a simple reason: Everything cyberpunk fiction tried to warn us about has come to pass.”

It Just Wasn’t the Game We Were Promised

“The real problem is how the marketing was pushing all elements at once, therefore creating unrealistic expectations,” says u/sicariusv. “For my part, I was initially disappointed because of this discrepancy between what was promised and delivered, but once I accepted what the game was, I had a much better time with it. I still have gripes with it, I don’t think the story is executed well and the endings are not great.” CD Projekt Red promised something that never was fulfilled. When people were told the game would be open world, the expectations were high, but never met. It seems like many players simply settled for what was given rather than hope for something different.

Fans Are Already Disappointed about the DLC

DLCs are par for the course when it comes to video games. They’re an excellent way to expand a story or universe of a well-loved game. Cyberpunk 2077 had a lot of potential for multiple DLCs. Fans were quick to theorize about possible DLC releases by CD Projekt Red shortly after its release in 2020. Nearly three years later, the game developers have announced the first, and very likely only, DLC to accompany Cyberpunk 2077. The Gamer wrote a scathing article criticizing the game developers. The article titled “Cyberpunk 2077’s DLC Is Yet Another Anti-Consumer Move CDPR Is Getting Away With” continued with the author stating “While this feels like small potatoes for a company so wildly anti-consumer it sold broken copies on two separate occasions, it’s inconceivable that the game continues to get a pass for this.”

Fast and Furious Crossroads

According to Steam, Fast and Furious Crossroads is “an epic new chapter in the Fast & Furious saga with high-speed heists, cinematic nonstop action, and adrenaline-fueled stunts in exotic locations. Join longtime family and a tough new crew to hunt down an international crime syndicate and bring them to street justice.” This game was so poorly received, it was delisted. People were upset at the price for a game that provided so little. Fast and Furious has many successful movies and video games under its belt, but Crossroads isn’t one of them. Bad in-game physics and lack of content were just insult to injury.

Vin Diesel May Be the Only Redeeming Quality

Providing a 3/10 score on Push Square, Liam Croft made sure to review the game as brutally and honestly as possible. Croft writes, “How Fast & Furious Crossroads wound up as a full-price release will forever remain a mystery. It is lacking in every department possible, from shallow and repetitive gameplay through to abysmal visuals that belong on the previous generation of consoles. Not even the most committed Fast & Furious fans should subject themselves to this monstrosity. That is unless you want to have a good laugh alongside Vin Diesel.”

A Masterpiece of Incompetence

Leonardo Faria graciously gave this game an extra half point, giving this a total of 3.5/10 on Way Too Many Games. They didn’t mince their words, saying “It’s a masterpiece of incompetence, a game so devoid of redeeming qualities to the point that its ineptitude ends up being its greatest selling point. You can have a blast with this game, not by actually having fun with its mechanics or set pieces, but by laughing at how bad it is.” Surely Bandai Namco Entertainment didn’t have that in mind when creating a game from a hit franchise.

The Actors Did Their Best…

Reddit is a fantastic place to check out reviews for games people really like or hate. r/games is a popular subreddit with dedicated gamers always ready to throw in their opinions. u/ContributorX_PJ64 was very sympathetic to those involved in the game development. “I feel sorry for the actors involved in this, because they likely did their best with bad voice direction and lacklustre scripts. It must be especially sad for Vin Diesel, because Diesel always had a really sincere love for videogames, and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is just amazing. I’d love to see him in videogames again, in a role where people take him seriously.”

Valorant

Valorant is a free-to-play first-person tactical hero shooter developed and published by Riot Games that was release in June of 2020. It was similar to the Counter Strike series many gamers became enamoured by. Riot Games also developed League of Legends, a wildly successful game. There were a lot of expectations for Valorant upon its release, but players quickly lost interest in this tactical shooting game. Aside from mechanics issues within the game, the gaming community that played Valorant became known as a “highly toxic community with surveys in 2019 and 2021 showing it is the most toxic video game in the world, with 79-80% of all players reporting to have experienced in-game harassment at some point.”

Buggy Game and Unresponsive Staff

“Valorant is legitimately one of the worst games I have ever played in my entire life. The staff team completely ignores all feedback on the game and works on it when they feel like it. Call of duty has plenty of good maps and Valorant only has 5, and they’re all extremely poorly designed. Staff team refuses to acknowledge this. The damage is inaccurate, you can shoot somebody 6 times and not kill them, however on the damage chart on the buy menu, the damage is displayed and it’s completely inaccurate,” says Woody Boy on Metacritic.

Some of the Worst Gunplay in a Shooting Game

Shooting games naturally need to have excellent mechanics in order to allow the player to have the best experience possible. One of the biggest complaints Valorant faces, however, is its gunplay. Providing a 1/10 score, Newan-90242 reviews Valorant on IMDb saying, “Gunplay is Clunky and boring, every gun feels super unreliable, like the winner of a gunfight is usually whoever isn’t looking the other way or has better RNG. Absolutely awful movement with a mechanic that slows your movement speed by 70% for getting shot, basically removing all chance of dodging even on the movement characters using abilities its just impossible.”

Toxicity is the Top Reason Gamers Hate Valorant

u/Mayhemfest08 says, “Honestly the toxic Community really made me not wanna play the game anymore. The part that sucks is very few people are actually constructive, instead of telling someone how much they suck, tell them how they can do better. And since the games are so long you can get stuck with a toxic team for 30 mins, I know the mute button exists for a reason but this game is incredibly team oriented and if you’re muting each other, you’re almost better off just Go Next.”

Where Do We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/13ek0tf/the_legend_of_zelda_tears_of_the_kingdom_review/

https://www.reddit.com/r/WanderingInn/comments/13s8s7y/legend_of_zelda_tears_of_the_kingdom_is_a/

https://www.zelda.com/tears-of-the-kingdom/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/13lkckt/the_legend_of_zelda_tears_of_the_kingdom_has_been/

https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-4-review/

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/122eujy/diablo_4_is_bad_really_bad_not_fun_boring/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/1238m80/lets_be_real_diablo_4_is_bad/

https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/zv84hi/whats_going_on_with_the_hogwarts_legacy_hate_i/

https://www.wired.com/review/hogwarts-legacy-review/#:~:text=It%20feels%20muddy%2C%20a%20minefield,doesn’t%20feel%20like%20Hogwarts.

https://www.vulture.com/article/hogwarts-legacy-review.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_Gollum

https://opencritic.com/outlet/577/powerup-

https://opencritic.com/outlet/851/toms-guide

https://www.cdprojektred.com/en

https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/zo2jm5/as_much_as_i_want_to_like_cyberpunk_2077_it_will/

https://www.pushsquare.com/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/678030

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/i75ds5/fast_furious_crossroads_review_thread/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valorant

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12104902/reviews

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/r5rkpv/i_love_valorant_but_kinda_hate_its_community/