Comments: 21 Comments (Go to Comments)
Categories: Commentary
Tags: gamer banter, hellboy
August’s Gamer Banter topic comes from Cat @ carocat.co.uk and is: What is the worst game you’ve ever played?
The problem is that I’ve played a lot of really bad games. There was Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, a game where I had to navigate around fart clouds while wearing a cactus costume. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, a game so horrible it lowered my Intelligence by 1. Alone in the Dark, a game so bad it not only became unplayable, it actually went back in time and made all the previous entries worse.
But the worst game I ever played was Hellboy. Not the 2008 game, though that was crap too, 2003’s Hellboy: Asylum Seeker (original review here). Asylum Seeker was a PS1 port of a 2000 PC game called Hellboy: Dogs of the Night. Now, a 2003 release of a PS1 game wasn’t just coming towards the end of that console’s lifecycle, it was posthumous release. This should have been a huge warning sign, but I’m a big Hellboy fan.
Asylum Seeker followed Hellboy’s adventures in 1962’s Czechoslovakia. A brief bit about Hellboy: he’s a demon brought to earth by the Nazis, but adopted and raised by the Allies. He works for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, finding supernatural evils around the world and punching them with his Right Hand of Doom, an oversized stone fist.
Which was the first thing the game got wrong.
Combat was all kinds of terrible: lousy controls, clipping and poor collision detection, but the Right Hand of Doom was underpowered something fierce. One of the first battles was against a nurse (honestly) and she shrugged off punch after punch. Hellboy also had an oversized gun, but that fared even worse.
At this point, I remember few of the enemies, but there was one called the Zombie Champion. I don’t understand how zombies choose a champion and I wonder if term limits are involved or if it’s one of those lifetime appointments like the Pope or Supreme Court Justice. It’s never a good sign if mind goes to places like this in the middle of combat.
The game had pseudo-adventure elements, meaning that you’d spend a half an hour risking life and limb for an ordinary wrench, pick up strange objects and hope they’d pay off down the road and flip through occult books with the lame pun titles.
But the worst aspect of Hellboy: Dogs of the Night were the stairs.
If Hellboy came near a staircase he automatically walked up or down it – like some strange compulsion that came with his demon blood. Being a PS1 game, the act of traversing stairs was time consuming so it became really annoying when he’d repeatedly get sucked up a flight of stairs and you’d have to turn him around and march him back down – and then flee the area before he got sucked back up. Staircases off of narrow hallways became de facto minibosses, challenging the player’s patience and ability.
All of this combines to make Hellboy: Asylum Seeker (nee Dogs of the Night) the worst game I’ve ever played.
This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part of this, please email him for details.
Other takes:
Silvercublogger: It’s all about integrity
Yuki-Pedia: Love, thy name is rage quit
Master Kitty’s World: What were they thinking???
Zath: What’s the worst game you’ve ever played?
SnipingMizzy: What is there to love?
The Game Fanatics: What is the worst game you’ve ever played?
Pioneer Project: Making the best of a bad situation
gunthera1_gamer: The game I could have loved!
The Average Gamer: Gamer Banter: Worst Game EVAR!
Extra Guy: Battle Blaze — 700 pounds of ‘don’t do it’
magisterrex:
I hope you were referring to the PS1 Alone in the Dark game, because the original PC game was a classic of ambiance and storytelling.
Amanda:
Hm, I’d have to say the worst game I ever played (not that there’ve been that many games I’ve played) is Sly Cooper for two reasons. One, he’s a freaking raccoon and yet he drowns in water. WTF Two, that stupid mini game within the game of the race with the stupid van. It was evil.
Weefz:
Oh, oh, I forgot about Leisure Suit Larry! I loved the first 4 games, though seeing at 4 came out when I was 11, I must have been pretty young at the time. (Yes, that’s what happened. My dad let us play LSL games as children)
The 5th however, was one of the most disappointing games ever. At the tender age of 12 I finished it in less than 5 hours. Even worse, the traditional series humour was replaced by puerile sleazy crap. Until then, Larry was never a sleazy guy – just a loser looking for love.
LOL at Hellboy’s staircase problem. I had the same problem the one time I tried to play Hitman and something similar with sweeping across countertops in John Woo’s Stranglehold. I can see what the devs are trying to do but IMO that sort of motion control fails more often than it works.
Silvercube:
Haha, even the pictures look terrible :)
Mizzy:
Ha! I’ve learned never to try any comicbook, cartoon or movie adaption video game. They usually end up being a huge pile of fail sauce.
Michelle:
Oh my, this made me chuckle a great deal – particularly the intro. I can think of many other games that make that sort of huge mistake with interaction on the stairs though in fairness.
That’s the trickiest element of a poor game though – when it comes as a surprise in an otherwise brilliant or enjoyable series.
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Tom Larson:
Wow I remember this game…
It was horrible!
I was so put off of the whole idea of Hellboy by this game that I retired my comics to the loft, and refused to watch the movie for over a year!!
(Which was better than this game, it turns out)
Great review, sitting here chuckling to myself at the memory of the pain of stairs!!
Tom
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