Following up on this comment since I haven’t seen a thread about it: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14639216
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
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.
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.
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.
Actual conversation had with my wife, who was watching me play near the end:
“That chick is cute. I bet her romance is adorable!”
“She’s aromantic and asexual, you can’t romance her.”
“I bet her quest line is fun”
“Nope. It’s a really boring fetch quest where you set her up on a date with some bland woman old enough to be her mother. She is also very obviously sexually and romantically attracted to this woman.”
“…huh.”
I love Parvati but Drinking Sapphire Wine is a terrible quest.
I thought The Outer Wilds was violently mediocre, and yeah, its really long uninteresting fetch quest, but:
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Parvati says she’s not interested in physical affection, but I don’t recall her ever saying she was aromantic. The closest thing I remember is that she feels like she’s better at dealing with machines than people, which definitely doesn’t mean the same thing.
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I also don’t recall her ever saying anything sexual about Junlei?
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how old does this woman look to you that you think she could have a 28 year old daughter?
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Well, I can sort of be impressed with what outer wilds did. I didn’t actually find it all that much fun to play, whereas I completed the outer worlds.
Outer Wilds is absolutely superb if/when you get it try to get the DLC too its a good value. Steam summer sale coming up soon if you’re in the states
Loll, people will never stop getting these confused
Any assassin’s creed from the last 10 years, probs gonna get hate for that but they are just so average to me.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Yes, it was developed by Curt Shilling’s 38 Studios - but it was actually largely financed by the state of Rhode Island, and the studio ended up defaulting on payments!
Honestly, the story of the game’s development was more interesting than the story within the game itself!
7/10 to me is a good game. I hate how people rate games. I’ve always hated it. A 6/10 game is enjoyable. A 5/10 game is absolutely mid. A 4/10 game is okay. 3/10 has huge flaws but is worth playing if you’re into that.
Subnautica is an 8/10 game for me. I thought it was amazing. I loved it. Below Zero was a 6/10 game. I thought it was good. I enjoyed it, and I would not call it “absolute mid.”
In a world where games are scored across a full spectrum 0-or-1 to 10, then yes - anything 4-6 would be considered middle of the road.
However, due to a number of factors - that’s unfortunately not the reality we find ourselves in.
Firstly, “mid” is hard to define as it can mean anything from ‘mediocre’ to ‘fine, but forgettable’.
Secondly, ratings/scores tend to skew upward as people tend to reserve 1s for outright scams, broken games and review bombs. With 2 & 3 often used for ‘asset flips’ and similar non-games - so we end up grading on a curve from 4-10.
This also works well for mainstream outlets as it keeps advertisers happy, due to arbitrarily inflated scores.
Lastly, in a world of cumulative media (new releases don’t cause older ones to stop existing) - even ostensibly good games will fall by the wayside as players have access to 10/10 titles from previous years.
So all things considered, a 7/10 is well and truly “mid” in this topsy-turvey IGN-eque world
A hell of a lot of Ubisoft open-world slop released around and in the 2010s.
Starfield. It’s the definition of a “mixed” rating on Steam. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. You play it for an hour and your reward is that an hour has passed.
This is probably more subjective than best/worst. So…
Vanilla Skyrim.
Anything from Ubisoft
Was gonna say it. This perfectly describes the last few Assassins Creed titles. Not bad enough to put them away, but also not good enough to leave any kind of lasting impact.
Yeah, Assassins Creed was cool at first but they just bled that shit to death with too many releases. It’s hard to keep things fresh when you put out like 10 sequels.
Pretty much every modern AAA game. Theres an exception here and there but really smaller studios have been making bangers that AAA studios just cant seem to touch
Probably everytbing put out by Nintendo in a long time. Yes, even that one. That one, too.
Excuse you, but Breath of the Wild was amazing.
Breath of the Wild was basically a Ubisoft game with a Zelda coat of paint.
Don’t censor yourself, who are you afraid of??
Mario Kart World
Just say it
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.
Defo agree. But I will admit that the soundtrack is fire
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.
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.
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.
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.
From a gameplay perspective GTA has been mid for ages.
Anything ubisoft makes. Or generally most things big companies make to cater biggest possible amount of people.
I disagree. Some of them are actually bad.
yes, but medium is the absolute best they can manage
