(bright tones) - [Falcon] There's a lot
to love about video games, but new releases always have something you don't necessarily want. Hi, folks, it's Falcon
and today on Gameranx, 10 things players hated
in the first half of 2023. Starting off with number 10, "The Legend of Zelda: Tears
of the Kingdom" koroks. It's hard not to get a little resentful of these guys after a while. You have to find 'em in order to upgrade your storage limits, but
rather than helping you out, they kind of actively impede
your progress by hide from you and force you to do annoying challenges. There was little that
could be done about them in "Breath of the Wild," and while we were forced
to just silently suffer their nonsense, but no more
in "Tears of the Kingdom." Now these little freaks need your help, but all they'll get in
return is suffering. Now that there's actually
one of these guys physically in the game world, it's time for a little payback. With the Ultrahand, your
instruments of torture are nearly limitless, and people have gone
nuts, come up with novel and elaborate ways to dole out a little payback on these guys. Most of the quote, unquote hate for Koroks is all in good fun. It's just people screwing around or just doing something silly, you know? But for the amount of
violence players perpetrated on the Koroks, you'd think they were
someone's worst enemy. At number nine, in "Star
Wars Jedi: Survivor," the performance issues. Now switching over to a real thing people are actually
legitimately really fed up with, it's PC performance issues. It feels like pretty
much every major PC port in the last year has some
kind of glaring issues, like it's not necessarily the case. There have been some good ones, but the vast majority of PC ports in 2023 haven't just been bad,
they've been terrible. Like, we made a video about it that kind of makes it make
a little bit more sense, but that doesn't mean
it's any less frustrating or that people hate it any less. "Jedi: Survivor," great game, but the PC performance
leaves a lot to be desired. There's constant stuttering,
slowdown, graphical bugs, odd glitches, the list
really just goes on and on. It's not unplayable,
depending on who you ask, but it's not nearly good enough. In this game's case, console performance wasn't amazing either, but it was so much better
than the PC, at least. What makes it especially frustrating is that the game isn't
incredibly ambitious or anything. Its open world is pretty small
in comparison to other games and it's relatively segmented. There's just consistent
stuttering and slowdown when entering new areas or just moving too quickly
when you load a game. (dramatic music) - [Stormtrooper] I got a shot. (shots firing) - [Falcon] The game used to
crash if you move too fast in certain areas, and this is with an SSD, which is just something that
shouldn't be happening anymore. "Jedi: Survivor" is hardly the only game with PC performance issues in 2023, but it's sort of emblematic
of the entire problem. Like publishers just keep
cheating on their ports and PC players are getting
really tired of it. And number eight is "Street
Fighter 6" battle pass. At first blush, the "Street
Fighter 6" battle pass might not seem that bad. It's only five bucks and that makes it one of the cheaper
battle passes out there, and it only has custom care cosmetics and other relatively minor awards rather than major pieces of new content, like new stages, fighters, or costumes. You can even earn your fight
money back if you complete it, so as far as these things go, it's actually one of the
more generous battle passes technically speaking out there. Fight game fans are
still not happy about it for a couple of reasons. The big one is "Street Fighter 6" is still a full-priced game and the people buying it
either aren't accustomed to or just flat out don't want battle passes in the game period. The other is the most common
complaint with battle passes. The content's time limited, so if there is something you want and you miss the time limit,
you're just outta luck. You don't get that costume piece. If it were a free to play game, I think people would probably be a little more understanding,
but at full retail price, the extra nickel and diming
feels pretty unnecessary. Now let me be clear here. "Street Fighter 6" is not
a game lacking in content, especially for a fighting game. Nobody's complaining this game is bad, but people are complaining
the battle pass is, at best, unnecessary, and
at worst, blatantly greedy. (characters fighting) Battle passes are just
a fact of life though in online games. That doesn't mean people
aren't going to hate them and it's unlikely they'll
change their minds at this point either. At number seven is how little of an RPG "Final Fantasy XVI" actually is. Now, "Final Fantasy" has
always been about spectacle. Even in the NES games, they were trying to throw
pretty big swing twists and set piece movements
that were, in retrospect, pretty ahead of their time, and the series has really
gotten crazier and more wild with how flashy it's
gotten as time's gone on. For many people, "Final Fantasy" is a name synonymous with RPG, though. It's the first RP G
they've ever played it. It has formative memories
associated with it for a lot of people, so when a new "Final Fantasy" comes out, it has one playable character, no turn-based battles,
and in every respect, basically just a really long action game, some people aren't gonna be super happy. Some people might even hate it, and that's no bearing on the
actual quality of the game. I was kind of skeptical of
it for this exact reason and I ended up really liking it. As an action game, "Final
Fantasy 16" is excellent in most respects, but it's
just not much of an RPG. There's an article out there
about how "God of War Ragnarok" is more of an RPG than
"Final Fantasy XVI" is, and I can't really disagree
with their assessment. "Ragnarok" does have more
traditional RPG elements in it than "Final Fantasy XVI" does. That doesn't mean "Final
Fantasy XVI" is bad, it's just that it's not what
some people want or expect, especially when you're talking about a long-running franchise. Like, that can make emotions
run pretty hot with people. (characters fighting and yelling) There's built-in expectations there, and if they're not met,
fans can get kind of angry. I'm not saying the
people who hate the game are wrong here either. It's fair to want and expect a more traditional "Final Fantasy" game. It's just not something
that personally bothers me. I'm actually really enjoying the game, and I'm about as traditional
an RPG fan as one can be, but I'm also about as big
of a Platinum Games fan as one can be, and they had
a hand in it and it shows. Number six is "Forspoken,"
the embarrassing dialogue. Yeah, there's a lot not
to like about "Forspoken." It's got a barren and bland open world. It's incredibly slow in terms
of rollout of abilities. The tutorials go on forever, but the one thing the
internet's really latched on as a point of hate back when
it came out, it's the writing. It's just not good. People like to complain
about Marvel movie dialogue, and if you're one of those people, you know what we're talking about here, this kind of back and forth jokey writing that appears in a lot of these movies. There is an art to that kind of writing and it can be done well, and that's not to say that
Marvel movies all do it well, but this isn't about Marvel movies. It's about "Forspoken," and oof, wow, did they not do it well. Some of the writing in "Forspoken" almost feels like a parody
of that kind of thing. It almost feels intentionally bad. It's just so overwritten and desperate, like it's almost hard to describe, but you know exactly what I'm
talking about when you see it. The voice actors, oh, oh, are they trying, but the writing is what fails them, not the other way around. The worst of it is really front-loaded with all the lame fish-outta-water humor that you'd expect from
a mid-90s kids movie. When she says, "I just
moved shit with my mind," not just once, but three times in a row, that's when you know
the quality's locked in for the duration. - Did I just do that? - [Cuff] Well, definitely
with my assistance. - I did not just do that. - [Cuff] We did. - I just moved shit with my mind. - [Cuff] Perhaps our connection has somehow awoken some abilities. - I just moved shit with my mind. - [Cuff] I just keep hearing, "I, I, I." - I just moved shit with my freaking mind. Yeah, okay. That is something I do now. I do magic, talk to sentient
cuffs, kill jacked-up beats. You know what, I'll probably fly next. - [Cuff] Now you're just being ridiculous. - [Falcon] Your only hope is
a high tolerance for cringe if you're gonna get through this one, and I don't know if
you played "Forspoken," it's a lot of great
ideas that are executed in a manner where cringe dialogue is definitely not something
that seems worth it, but that's also up to taste. And number five is "Hogwarts
Legacy" boring, open world. "Hogwarts Legacy" got a lot of praise for its immersive version
of the wizarding world, but if there's one universal
complaint about the game, it's the open world. I'm not talking about
the actual school here, but rather everything else. The world of Harry Potter's pretty unique and if it was created accurately, it wouldn't easily slot in to the expected open world formula. If the developers were
a little more creative, they might have taken that opportunity to really play into the IP and make something unique in
terms of the open world space, but instead they just kind of jammed a bunch of inspired
open-world game conventions in and called it a day. (Harry casting a spell) I think a lot of people wanted a game that would recreate the
Hogwarts experience, but instead it's kind of
an action adventure game with a Harry Potter theme slapped on top. The actual school looks really great, but there's not a lot actually done in terms of really being
about Harry Potter, other than having a lot of collectibles. And the outside's equally
as impressive looking, but it's filled with your
standard cut and paste puzzles and bandit camps and can be cleared out like any other open world game. Not necessarily bad. Actually, it's probably a
pretty good example of it, but it's also not very
inspiring for people who are really into the
Harry Potter series. People thought it was
actually pretty disappointing and a lot of fans, they wanted something closer
to "Bully" from Rockstar, but that was not what we got at all. Maybe at some point I'll
be forgiven for saying it just looks like any
other open world game with a Harry Potter theme on
top back when it came out, because that seems to be a
pretty consensus opinion now. But you know, it's funny too, 'cause I don't actually hate the game. And number four is "Wo Long:
Fallen Dynasty" endless loot. A Team Ninja really has a loot problem. All their games really
have too much of it. From "Nioh" to "Stranger
in Paradise" to "Wo Long," for some reason they just
keep showering players to the deluge of mostly useless loot they kind of have to
tediously sort through in order to sell. Clearly at this point, they consider the loot a
key part of their games, like this is what they
want their games to be because they keep doing it regardless of what people say about it. (dramatic music) And I'm sure that there's
people that like it. It just, it's not everybody
or close to everybody. Like players don't have to like it in order to like the games especially. It'd be less of a problem if it were a satisfying trickle of loot, but that's just not what this is. The drops are nonstop
and most of it's junk, all destined for the trash pile. (characters fighting) If you could easily sort it in bulk sell, maybe that wouldn't be
as much of a problem, but at least at release it sure wasn't. Even features as basic as the ability to compare two pieces of
equipment was not there at launch. Sorting through inventory just felt like the most
tedious possible busy work, especially because builds
don't really matter until post-game, so it was
all kind of just wasted time. And it's an action game. You wanna be fighting
enemies, beating bosses, not slowly scrolling
through endless inventory, trying to clear out space
just so you can do it again in maybe an hour or two. And number three is "Diablo IV," the always online requirement. By most accounts, "Diablo IV" is a pretty good
return to form for Blizzard, but there's one aspect of the game that's really disliked by players, and it's that you have to
be online at all times. For most people, "Diablo" is
a single-player experience and the small amount of online
features added to the game don't really expect the
experience a whole lot, and a lot of people just
don't care about them at all. For most people, the amount
of interactions you'll have with other players might as
well be non-existent too. Sometimes you'll see
someone running around in the background while you're playing. Sometimes you'll get
help with a world event, and that's about it. In most cases, the online stuff isn't bad and the game had a pretty
relatively stable launch, so there's a lot of good stuff going on, but why the always online requirement? It seems completely unnecessary. I'm not playing with someone else, so why do I have to wait for
a queue to play the game? The always online is especially bad for people playing on hardcore,
which is a permadeath mode. The very first player who
managed to get level 100 ended up losing their
character due to a disconnect, which, wow, that had to be so frustrating, and just recently the game suffered a denial of service attack that left most players
aren't able to play the game for hours, even though
people owned the game, it was installed on their hard drive, the vast majority of
players could not play despite the fact that they aren't using any online features at all. When always online games are working, it doesn't really matter a
whole lot, but when they don't, it's a big problem, especially
for a single-player game. Like I get that you hate
piracy, guys, I understand it. You gotta make your money, but this is the most
annoying way you can do it. And number two is "Blood Bowl 3" terrible microtransactions. This game just barely squeaked out of being on the most
disappointing games of 2023, but that doesn't mean it's
gonna get spared here. At release, "Blood Bowl 3" was lambasted as a bare bones and buggy disappointment that's worse than the previous games in pretty much every way. There's fewer teams, the
rules changes feel minor, the UI is a mess, and somehow the game got
uglier than the previous entry, even though it's reusing a
ton of assets from that game. I mean, there's a lot
to hate about this one, but its utterly shameless
microtransactions are really a standout. They are especially bad. One of the major selling
points about the game was that the teams were
much more customizable this time around, and yeah,
that's technically true, but they forgot to tell people
that you had to pay for it. In one of the most ridiculous
microtransaction schemes I've ever seen, buying a
cosmetic doesn't unlock it for every guy on your team. You only get one costume
piece with each transaction. So if you want to give another team member the same cosmetic, you gotta buy it again. So every team member has
to be customized separately from one another, and you
gotta pay up every single time. Most of the cosmetics are
barely worth the price anyway. In any other game, this
stuff would all be free, but here, you're not just paying for it, you're paying a premium. Like keep in mind with a full team, that's 16 separate transactions
and that's one team. Currency can be earned in game, but it's not generous at all. You only get it by ranking
up in a battle pass, and of course the free one is
stingier than the premium one, so it's either an endless grind to unlock a few customization options or you're back to square
one and just paying up. And finally at number one, "The
Lord of the Rings: Gollum." Everyone hates "Gollum." If there's one thing everyone
agrees on first half of 2023, it's that nobody likes "Gollum." This guy's already the punching bag of "The Lord of the Rings" franchise, but somehow they found a way
to make him sink even lower with the frankly pathetic "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" game. Character is great, Andy Serkis, legend, but he's got nothing to do with this game and it sucks so bad. Immediately hailed as the
worst game of the year and one of the worst games of all time, "Gollum" really can't catch a break. And yeah, this game is
not the worst game ever. It's very harsh to say that.
At very least, it's playable. So yeah, but that doesn't
mean it's not bad. It's extremely bad. In this day and age, deeply mediocre is almost
worse than spectacularly bad. If "Gollum" was some hilarious
masterpiece of incompetence, it would probably be funnier and therefore better on some level, but the actual game is just sad. The gameplay's basic, to say the least. It's pretty brain dead. The
story's pretty flatlined. The performance is a mess. Graphics are ugly, especially for Gollum, who looks so much worse than even the one from "Shadow of Mordor,"
which is a nine-year old game. This Gollum is just so
hateable, from his stupid face to the embarrassing choices
that never amount to anything. This game is all around just
boring and pretty miserable. When the best thing you
can say about a game is that it functions and and
not always, well, might I add, but it functions. You've
got a big problem. (characters fighting and grunting) Gollum is one of the most
iconic characters of all time, but I don't really know who was
asking for a game about him. For all the hate Jar Jar Binks gets, he would probably lend himself
to a better game than this. That doesn't mean that
somebody who actually took on a Jar Jar Binks game could make the game that worked for that character. I have a feeling that would require a very strange set of priorities, and that in mind, it's also a bad idea, but nobody wants a Gollum game, like why? And that's all for today. Leave us a comment, let
us know what to think. If you like this video, click like. If you're not subscribed,
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much for watching this video. I'm Falcon. You can follow me
on Twitter, @FalconTheHero. We'll see you next time
right here on Gameranx. (upbeat music)
