A reader lists what he considers the worst video game developers working today, from Sonic Team to Quantic Dream.
There are now many video game franchises that can boast of being 30 or older, and in some cases it has been the same developer who has been working on them all along. Thanks to the current rush to buy up anyone who is still independent, most of these studios are now owned by other, larger companies, yet many of them have a long and proud history.
At the same time, there are a lot of developers that I can’t believe have lasted past their first few games, let alone the decades they have now.
You might say I’m mean, but here’s a list of the developers I can’t believe are still getting work. They’re all big companies, so I’m not going for a two-person indie team, but how they got so big, I have no idea…
Want
I’ll give you three guesses what inspired me to write this Reader’s Feature. I didn’t buy the new Saints Row, never had a chance to, but for some reason my boyfriend is a huge fan and is always excited about the series. I’ve always found the games, including Red Faction, to be janky, unfunny junk and Saints Row somehow seems worse than ever.
Trying to show off the new game, he quickly gave up when he hit trucks out of the way on a motorcycle and watched enemies panic in a polygon tangle as he hung 10 feet in the air. How Volition has lasted so long making such mediocre games is beyond me. Not to mention Agents Of Mayhem, which is arguably the worst full-price game I’ve ever seen!
343 Industries
This was the other big inspiration, given the way Halo Infinite is slowly transforming itself from a widely popular game into a complete mess. 343 have been terrible since they first started and if anything, have gotten worse as they go along. How they didn’t shut down and reboot after the The Mater Chief Collection disaster I don’t know, but it seems like if that didn’t kill them, nothing will.
It’s not just that they never seem to learn, but they operate like an indie studio with no budget and five people working there. Where is all the money that Microsoft should definitely pump in? Are they all mocking caviar sandwiches for lunch every day or something?
Quantic Dream
While I believe the majority of these developers are undoubtedly below par, I admit that a lot depends on the bias of the person whether you like their games or not. But come on, surely Quantic Dream is some kind of industry joke that someone forgets to admit? They are almost as bad as they are good, with terrible scripts and worse plots. They’re also laughably pretentious, with David Cage embodying every negative French stereotype you can think of.
What’s worse than narrative games where the story is terrible is that they seem to have no understanding of video games as a medium. Controlling a character who not only has secrets that you are never told, but does things off screen that you never see, like in Heavy Rain, is a terrible way to design a game. I haven’t played Detroit: Become Human, but I can’t believe the plot could be any worse than Beyond: Two Souls. I can’t even believe that a game in the past or the future will ever be worse.
Sonic team
Find your feelings, you know it’s true. Sonic Team made four or five excellent games thirty years ago and they haven’t done anything since, literally nothing. It says a lot if the only decent Sonic game in all that time is Sonic Mania – the one made by fans, not them.
Like 343, it’s a mystery to me how they’ve been able to keep going all this time, especially since none of the games seem to have ever sold that well. Two Sonic the Hedgehog movies have come out in the last few years and they still haven’t managed to release a new game in that time! And if they do, well… does anyone really think Sonic Frontiers is going to break the Sonic cycle?
Omega Power
I know GC will agree with me on this one, as they hate the Dynasty Warriors games and their never-ending lineup of spin-offs. Omega Force seems like the Japanese equivalent of Volition to me as they keep making the same game year after year and their technology is ridiculously outdated. Omega Force is even worse though, in fact they are arguably the least technically skilled developer of them all, with graphics that sometimes barely go beyond PlayStation 2 level (not coincidentally the last time Dynasty Warriors was relevant in any way).
Everything they do is so sloppy and janky and there is absolutely no attempt to improve themselves especially when it comes to basic stuff like combat and checks which should be their bread and butter. All their games look like the work of a single, unpromising computer student and yet they are an accomplished team that has somehow been around for 26 years.
Bloober team
I hadn’t played any games from this team until I saw the rumors that they were working on a Silent Hill game and I tried The Medium on Game Pass. I wish I hadn’t. Again, it’s the mix of amateurish design and graphics, along with the laughable pretense that they’re doing something clever or new, that makes the whole thing downright embarrassing.
Out of curiosity I tried Layers Of Fear and it was no better. They’re such a bad choice for rebooting/remaking/whatever they do to Silent Hill that it not only gives me no confidence in the game, but also no confidence that Konami knows what they’re doing. Just because Bloober Team promotes itself as experts in horror games doesn’t make it true. A developer’s reputation lives or dies only through its games and this fate is the living death of the game industry.
By reader Cameron
The reader’s position does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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