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"Games are over-rated."

Most games can never hope to live up to their hype. All the ‘previews’ and ‘sneak-peaks’ lead us into a false sense of security. The gamble of buying a game and wasting 40 quid is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Take 007 Racing back on the PS1 for example. I remember reading a preview in Official Playstation Magazine, which made the game sound like a must-have. I was excited and eager to buy; when the game finally arrived it was extremely poor. This disappointment was not personal, as many reviews expressed the same feelings. I fear that this may be the same case for some today’s anticipated titles. I don’t want to start taking sides here, but look at Killzone for instance, we’re all very excited about Killzone, but if we take the time to look at the facts rather than just enjoy the ‘Halo-beating’ screenshots then we can see that it’s not exactly the next-generation fps that it has been made to resemble. Its physics engine is very ‘last year’, with no interactivity between the player and ingame objects and no rag-doll physics on the bodies. Halo however, has both. So how can the game be a ‘Halo-beater’ when it’s already lacking?

What other games could fall into this trap? DRIV3R? Star Wars: Battlefront? Gran Turismo 4? These games are all so popular because of their names. No one outside the industry has actually played them; we’re just convinced they’ll be good because ‘its Star Wars’ or ‘the first 2 Driver games were good’. What garauntee do we, the public, have that our next-generation games will live up to their hype?

- don rocco

Driver 2 is a bad example as it was a good game it was just that they bit off a bit too much and the game was well ahead of it's time for the console it was released on. At points the frame rate for a fair period of time dropped to around 5 FPS making certain sections almost unplayable. On it's own mertis I was extremely pleased to see the developers pushing the boat out a little, it was a game far too advanced for the PSONE hardware as it turned out and they really had bitten a big chunk off which was too much to swallow. Enviroments were huge, took leaps to put in on foot sections, yes they were crap but the promise was there, a promise I hope Driver 3 can manage to deliver.

I tend not to trust magazines at all. They're good for getting information on games, but more often than not they're wrong. I remember Mario Sunshine getting over 95% in almost every magazine I read, despite it being not-so-good, and Halo got 10/10 in most mags too.

The only official one I've read that's alright is Nintendo's, and that's still pretty crap.

The problem i have always had with games magazines which carry the tag "official" is that as mags endorsed by the relevant companies they are merely advertising the companies products. The reveiws in such mags are always biased as they are trying to peddle their wares and so cannot be trusted. Oh and true crime was a diabolical game fit only for use as a forty pound coaster.

Thats why i like getting the demos in the ps2 magazines because it entitles you to see what the games like without wasting £39.99 on crap games.

Some (many) games are over rated. Driver 2 was poor compared with the excellent handling in the original. Good job I had a demo of D2, so I knew how bad it was without spending £40 on it. GT3 is still quite good, especially for most of the graphics. Apart from a few obvious details, its hard to see how GT4 will be a big step on from GT3. I think GTA3 VC is better than GTA3, but is only "just" worth the extra money if you already own GTA3. I understand a new version of that is due late this year - it had better be a true step up from GTA3/VC, especially with the time that has passed.

Not all games are overrated. If you choose to believe everything you read in magazines, then it's your fault for hyping a game that is obviously going to fail. Anyone remember True Crime? By some act of god, people thought it was going to be a great game. I have no idea how or why, just looking at screenshots it looks awful, yet people were raving about how good it looked.

Then it was released and it was terrible.

On the other hand, there was al little-known title called Kirby Air Ride, which I'd been wanting for ages, and when it finally was released got awful. Still, I bought it anyway and it turned out to be brilliant.

That certainly isn't an overrated game.

You can never trust the media to give you an accurate picture of how good a game is going to be, just get it if you think it looks good.

I think the screenshots on the back of the game have been altered with seen as most games don't have the best graphics and most games are to expensive for what the game lives up for like all the PS2 games always start at £39.99 i don't see the point because most of the games are not worth that kind of money.

Some games do over emphasise graphics and speed, when they should concentrate on the storyline and longtivity of the game.

Halo doesn't have Ragdoll physics... Does it?

And Star Wars games have been generally quite crap really although KOTOR was exceptionally good... Didn't enjoy the first two drivers too much either. Gran Turismo seems to be going down hill, but still enjoyable.

Mav wrote:
> Though, I don't think the fact that not having ragdoll physics is a
> bad point about killzone. Techniques like this (bullet time being
> another example) have been done to death in the industry. It will be
> interesting to see something new.

Agreed. But when having death animations instead of rag-doll physics isn't new either.