Following up on this comment since I haven’t seen a thread about it: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14639216
Dual nominations for Paper Mario: Sticker Star & Paper Mario: Color Splash. The only thing I really remember about them is that I played them and they left me without any feelings about them whatsoever.
Anything ubisoft makes. Or generally most things big companies make to cater biggest possible amount of people.
Anything from Ubisoft
The outer worlds . it was just meh in my opinion. Not to be confused with the outer wilds game that I’ve yet to play
I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.
Square Enix games (FInal Fantasy, Neir Automata, Sleeping Dogs. Tomb Raiders)
They are all… good - certainly not bad games But nothing makes them… great
Nier Automata
How dare you feel this way, you scruffy-looking Nerf-herder!
I am unhappy with your comment! But I respect it, so I hope you have a great day ahead.
I’ve been frustrated with these Japanese games lately like FF and Yakuza because of the graphics. Japan likes to use an anime style on their character models, which I personally don’t think looks good but whatever. The issue I have is that you walk around in a yakuza or FF or resident evil game and half the characters and NPCs look very realistic and like real people, and the main characters and some NPCs look like anime characters, different bone structure and art style. It’s distracting. I frankly think you stick to anime style or realistic modern style, you can’t just swap between the styles at will within the one game.
Does final fantasy still have invisible enemies that just attack you and put you into battle mode? Cause I found that outdated and stopped playing the games, im done with turn based but especially done with games where you can’t even see the enemy till they just battle you
I suppose Resident Evil 8? The scares weren’t very scary, the exploration was all very fake, and the bosses all showed up for attendance. It definitely functioned, but it didn’t impress in the way previous entries did. It wasn’t frustratingly bad like 5, nor was it interestingly bad like 6. It just felt like a lesser version of what they’ve given me before, somewhere between 4 and 7.
I remember feeling this way about Die Hard: Vendetta for GC. Strong meh/10.
Die Hard: V for Vendetta would be a hell of a crossover.
Lmao, whoops. Too early in the morning.
Greedfall
The developer, Spiders, seem to be experts at creating mediocre games with very small budgets, and again they didn’t quite have the money to take it all the way with greedfall, but they did make more than a mediocre game in my opinion. For me it was memorable enough unlike others mentioned in this thread.
Even though Greedfall is hardly a great game I think it has too much charm to really fit here. I found it too memorable to really be a “mediocre slop” contender.
A hell of a lot of Ubisoft open-world slop released around and in the 2010s.
Ghost Wire: Tokyo.
It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
i still enjoyed the crap out of it. Sometimes zoning out and just running around collecting stuff is just what I need.
I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.
Godus.
I know lots of people hate it but taken in isolation it’s okay. I found its aesthetics charming and its pace generally pretty chill. It wasn’t good but it wasn’t terrible. Low medium perhaps but I have comfortable memories of listening to an audiobook whilst playing it.
Avowed was very mid. I enjoyed it enough, but nothing about it was particularly brilliant or terrible.
I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.
Sleeping Dogs is easily my fav GTA-esque game and I weep that there‘s no successor, to each their own
Pretty much every korean MMORPG released from 2006-2014, as they were desperately trying to be “World of Warcraft, but better”. Perfect World, Aion, ArcheAge, 4story, Granado Espada, etc etc etc, even when you have the better experience of playing on a private server with significantly less P2W (as in, nearly everyone gets most of the shop for free)
To me, personally, ArcheAge would be the best fit for “dead medium quality”. It boasts naval combat, which is meh; player run trade caravans, which probably only worked as intended in the first 2 months after launch; limits on gathering and crafting, which just forces free players to buy premium; graphics are the generic korean mmo variety, pretty but almost impossible to distinguish between games; music, enemies, dungeons and most gear exist
Im sorry but perfect world got down flying before any other game and it was hella fun.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Had all the individual makings of an exceptional game (with input from Todd Macfarlane, R A Salvatore and Grant Kirkhope), and while it was definitely enjoyable enough - it lacked any wow-factor whatsoever, winding up an otherwise forgettable 7/10.
The main thing I remember about this game is that it was financed by the fortune of a former MLB baseball player, independent of any game studio.
Sort of. Their funding was also tied up in the state of Rhode Island. Reckoning was purchased by 38 Studios, who were making a Kingdoms of Amalur MMORPG, and then the game was made to be in the same universe. The MMO burned through cash and never released, and the sunken studio brought Reckoning’s developer down with it.
At the time of its release, it’s wow factor for me was simply some fucking color, compared to PS3 Skyrim which had released mere months earlier.
I love both games, but there’s something about Amalur that I think I love more that I can only think of as it being just medium, average, mediocre but not bad. It’s just something kinda fun. Comfortable.
Oh no doubt, my (vague) memories of it are definitely in vivid bright colours.
I originally got it as I was looking for a single player World of Warcraft-like experience, and I did play through a significant portion of the main story - but eventually went back to WoW as it didn’t quite scratch that itch enough.
I probably should revisit it sometime in the near future - hopefully on the Steam Deck (haven’t checked compatibility).
