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Discussion In March 2005, 5 Out of 10 Of EGM’s Most Overrated Games Were Rareware Games

idk to me Rare's 3D games felt somewhat primitive even for the time, although back then you tended to give them more of pass because they were one of the few devs carrying the N64 to help with the massive software droughts but they never stacked up to their peers in any genre quality wise.
 
Eh, all of those games were overrated at their respective release dates.

I remember well the incredible Toshinden hype in the gaming media -- the killer app for the new Sony PlayStation. I finally got to play the PC version on my dad's work machine (albeit at an awful frame rate) and, uh, it was trash.
 
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BotenAnna said:
Speak for yourself, I thrive in that era of games and regularly spend much more time there than anywhere else.
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I mean, I’m not exactly speaking for myself. It’s a pretty common sentiment regarding the early 3D era, it’s ropey cameras and retro gaming. But sure, to each their own.
 
AngryAlchemist said:
Secret of Mana is also weirdly enough a game that probably should be on here, haven't played it myself but it's reception with new players is pretty bad compared to how much its praised to this day.
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Secret of Mana is a weird one for me. In the mid 90s I absolutely loved it. Played it through multiple times, it was my first Squaresoft game. Everything about it blew my mind. Then when I came back to it on the Wii VC, the ropey collision detection, simplistic slow combat with the enemy invun frames and charging weapons, and boss fights that just become ‘spam your best magic’ just had me unable to get more than a few hours in. I still love the Mana series in general though, it’s vibe and monsters and fairytale worlds.

FFIX is my favourite of the three PSOne FFs, but even now it’s slooow pace and loading in every random battle means I doubt I’ll play it again, even though I loved it at the time. That’s what the best remakes do for me, add QoL elements that help restore the games to how they felt at the time.
 
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Kind of surprised although I don't know if I would disagree with the Rare picks especially BK since I was never a fan of Rare back then even though everyone else seemed to love their stuff, I think the only game I really enjoyed by them was Jet Force Gemini.
 
SamTropic said:
Kind of surprised although I don't know if I would disagree with the Rare picks especially BK since I was never a fan of Rare back then even though everyone else seemed to love their stuff, I think the only game I really enjoyed by them was Jet Force Gemini.
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I wasn’t much of a fan of Rare at the time either (outside of a bit of multiplayer GoldenEye) and felt similarly.
 
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PixelKnight said:
I mean, I’m not exactly speaking for myself. It’s a pretty common sentiment regarding the early 3D era and retro gaming. But sure, to each their own.
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I think it's come around a bit more as more people my age get the big nostalgia glasses or as more niche things from that time period are pulled to the forefront. I won't argue that there's been some decently earned sentiment over the years towards early 3D games, and that circa 2005 it was probably brutal. That being said, I'm seeing a lot more appreciation for PSX/Saturn/PC/DC things of the era these days. N64 tends to do a lot less well still outside of Nintendo and Rare things, but that is what it is with that console.

We're probably both a bit biased though with our interests and the particular retro enthusiast circles we check out. Just I feel the "look at this weird fucking thing that rules" shouts I get lately are heavily biased to that time period, probably because I spend more time around people who are into that stuff.
 
Stilt Village said:
Well, if we're putting forth substitutions, I would absolutely say Yoshi's Island deserves to be on here instead of Donkey Kong Country. Complete with the typical "bamboozled by graphics" reasoning.

Even delving into actual problems, I think Island has every criticism I could throw at DKC much worse, aside from perhaps the uneven difficulty. Island suffers much more from obtuse secrets and enemy cheap shots than DKC does. And the level design feels really sloppy next to any Mario game, like they just didn't care because Yoshi can basically take infinite hits anyway. Of all the platformers Nintendo published for the SNES, I think Island ranks almost dead last, only above Dream Land 3.

(DKC is overrated though, but it's only really egregious in the most mainstream places for some reason. The "first/only one people played" bias seems way less pronounced the more enthusiast a space gets.)
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This is crazy. Yoshi's Island was - and remains - a near perfect game. It's a game that I will sometimes start up just for a couple of minute's nostalgia and find I've lost hours to it. Every part of the design works in harmony, imo, and the gamefeel is just immaculate. It plays like a dream.

Absolutely flabbergasted by this take, but I love a good controversial opinion so carry on...!

And just to clarify my problems with DKC, they are:
-Loose gamefeel
-Inconsistent / unclear collision spaces (especially background platform edges)
-Poor camera positioning of your character (it needed to be zoomed out a bit, with your character closer to the edge of the screen, it feels too tight)
-Ugly art design of enemies (subjective, yes)
-Inconsistent difficulty
-Over-reliance on bonus areas and animal buddies

But I will admit that there's a lot of great level design in DKC, incredible music, and it IS a good game. It was just overrated at the time. DKC2 is far, far superior, and I still have many of the same issues with it. One of the most mind-melting modern takes for me is that Rare's DKC games are better than Retro's. I don't think the games are even in the same galaxy, quality-wise. Retro's games are two of the best platformers of all time.
 
The true list:
10. SMT Nocturne
9. Melee
8. Tropical Freeze
7. Crash Team Racing
6. Wind Waker
5. FF Tactics
4. TTYD
3. FF7
2. FF6
1. Chrono Trigger

Each of these games continue to distort conversations to this day by people who cannot look past the fact that not everyone shares their tastes in games.
 
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BotenAnna said:
I think it's come around a bit more as more people my age get the big nostalgia glasses or as more niche things from that time period are pulled to the forefront. I won't argue that there's been some decently earned sentiment over the years towards early 3D games, and that circa 2005 it was probably brutal. That being said, I'm seeing a lot more appreciation for PSX/Saturn/PC/DC things of the era these days. N64 tends to do a lot less well still outside of Nintendo and Rare things, but that is what it is with that console.

We're probably both a bit biased though with our interests and the particular retro enthusiast circles we check out. Just I feel the "look at this weird fucking thing that rules" shouts I get lately are heavily biased to that time period, probably because I spend more time around people who are into that stuff.
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Yeah fair enough I see where you’re coming from. And I agree- I’m perhaps a bit older and remember the NES/SNES/Megadrive/Gameboy as my childhood, with the N64 being largely me being disillusioned with Nintendo outside of OOT, as I was no great fan of Rare, 3D platformers, shooters or tournament fighters, and all the rpgs I wanted were on PSOne :D

I’ve definitely seen more of a nostalgic call for more indie games inspired by the early 3D era as the years have rolled by, and it’s something where I can recognise I’m well served for nostalgia by the indie scene but not everyone is. It’s crazy how back then gaming was making such huge leaps so quickly that the difference between the 16-bit and 32/64-bit machines was huge. Like a 5 year chasm of a generational leap.

All the Sega IP relaunches interest me though, seeing Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio again etc. Although Skies of Arcadia is the one I love the most.
 
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The Rare buyout was close enough in memory that a lot of the backlash against the N64 Rare catalogue was motivated by console warring, if nothing else.


But I agree DK64 should not have received those accolades.
 
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Shinespark said:
The true list:
10. SMT4
9. Melee
8. Tropical Freeze
7. Crash Team Racing
6. Wind Waker
5. FF Tactics
4. TTYD
3. FF7
2. FF6
1. Chrono Trigger

Each of these games continue to distort conversations to this day by people who cannot look past the fact that not everyone shares their tastes in games.
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the true list is actually just all metroid games, it's true 😔
 
Shinespark said:
The true list:
10. SMT4
9. Melee
8. Tropical Freeze
7. Crash Team Racing
6. Wind Waker
5. FF Tactics
4. TTYD
3. FF7
2. FF6
1. Chrono Trigger

Each of these games continue to distort conversations to this day by people who cannot look past the fact that not everyone shares their tastes in games.
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Who is overrating SMTIV?

the only SMT game people care about is Nocturne
 
Imma be real. As someone who didn't grow up reading gaming magazines, pretty much every excerpt I've seen from the old guard like EGM or Gamepro reads like they were just wall to wall bad takes. Like the kind of stuff that would get dunked on as uninformed fanboy engagement bait on twitter nowadays, but "more respectable" because it's in print and not coming from bluecheck anime-pfp accounts

so it's hard to get too riled up over this stuff
 
Overrated list?

Oh sure. (My personal view on overrated is mostly games where I think they were just alright or either)

In no particular order

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Mass Effect 2
BioShock
Resident Evil Code Veronica X
Final Fantasy X
Shadow of the Colossus
Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire

Sorry not sorry
 
BlackthornOrion said:
Imma be real. As someone who didn't grow up reading gaming magazines, pretty much every excerpt I've seen from the old guard like EGM or Gamepro reads like they were just wall to wall bad takes. Like the kind of stuff that would get dunked on as uninformed fanboy engagement bait on twitter nowadays, but "more respectable" because it's in print and not coming from bluecheck anime-pfp accounts

so it's hard to get too riled up over this stuff
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But you didn't know which takes were good and which were bad because there was no "discourse." And by there was no discourse I mean I was a child.
 
Sadist said:
Overrated list?

Oh sure. (My personal view on overrated is mostly games where I think they were just alright or either)

In no particular order

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Mass Effect 2
BioShock
Resident Evil Code Veronica X
Final Fantasy X
Shadow of the Colossus
Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire

Sorry not sorry
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I think everyone has a list of popular and/or critically acclaimed games they aren’t a fan of and don’t get why they are so beloved. Sometimes entire genres too. The thread topic seems to roll around on a semi regular basis.
 
Donkey Kong Country is the game that single handed turned the tides for Nintendo side in the SNES/GEN generation. Banjo Kazooie is widely regarded as one of the best 3D plataformers of all time, hence why there's obvious love letters to it, like Yooka-Laylee. Perfect Dark is among the best FPS's of all time and foundly remembered by most, as we could see in the last Nintendo Direct announcement. I can agree with KI and DK 64, but there were already mixed opinions about both even in their peak popularity.

EGM was full of shit by that time, completely pro-Sony biased and housing many infamous Sony fanboys, like Shane Bettenhousen. He was the one who started the "Nintendo going third-party" rumour under the alias of Quatermann, which was used for years by Nintendo detractors to downplay it.

I remember this list and I laughed at the time. After the sold out by Nintendo, Rare became a massive target by all fronts in the gaming community: from salty Nintendo fanboys to Sony console warriors because of the Nintendo past/identity. The hatred review for the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country was cringe-worthy in a stupid attempt to say "it was never good to begin with", lol.
 
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VDenter said:
Mildly hot take but with a couple of exceptions (DKC1-3) Rare is pretty much the most overrated developer in existence. (Although in fairness only people who grew up with only an N64 look back on them fondly)

They made so much crap long before Microsoft ever go to them.
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Nothing mild about this take at all. It’s like going from a boiling pot of water to an erupting volcano.

GPKs3 said:
No one should care about or take these types of lists seriously. Everyone has their own lists and they're all opinions in the end.
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While I do agree with this, it surely must mean something when of all the games in the world at that time that could have potentially made that list, half of them were made by Rare. It really does feel like they were targeted and the author had an agenda.
 
Rareware said:
While I do agree with this, it surely must mean something when of all the games in the world at that time that could have potentially made that list, half of them were made by Rare. It really does feel like they were targeted and the author had an agenda.
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Can't say for sure, but if the author did have an agenda, that's all the more reason to ignore these types of lists.
 
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Lugia667 said:
the fact that no one remembers Battle Arena Toshinden now I guess proves them right
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But that would be like calling Daikatana overrated. Battle Arena Toshiden was hyped up before the PS launch but I don't remember it being super well received by people who actually played it. I'm pretty sure it was getting middling reviews by magazines even at the time unless I'm wrong. It may have had some slightly inflated scores because the graphics were impressive only to immediately get made irrelevant by Tekken and Virtua Fighter not even a year later. If anyone was overrating it then the honeymoon period didn't even last longer than like 3 months
 
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Please refrain from questioning another member's mental health over disagreements. — meatbag, MissingNo, Zellia, IsisStormDragon, Phendrift
Midway-AGNC- said:
Donkey Kong Country is the game that single handed turned the tides for Nintendo side in the SNES/GEN generation. Banjo Kazooie is widely regarded as one of the best 3D plataformers of all time, hence why there's obvious love letters to it, like Yooka-Laylee. Perfect Dark is among the best FPS's of all time and foundly remembered by most, as we could see in the last Nintendo Direct announcement. I can agree with KI and DK 64, but there were already mixed opinions about both even in their peak popularity.

EGM was full of shit by that time, completely pro-Sony biased and housing many infamous Sony fanboys, like Shane Bettenhousen. He was the one who started the "Nintendo going third-party" rumour under the alias of Quatermann, which was used for years by Nintendo detractors to downplay it.

I remember this list and I laughed at the time. After the sold out by Nintendo, Rare became a massive target by all fronts in the gaming community: from salty Nintendo fanboys to Sony console warriors because of the Nintendo past/identity. The hatred review for the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country was cringe-worthy in a stupid attempt to say "it was never good to begin with", lol.
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you ok?
 
I remember GameFan's review of Toshinden calling it the "greatest fighting game ever made," praising it as the perfect combination of Street Fighter II, Virtua Fighter and Samurai Showdown. Then when it was time for them to review Toshinden 2, the same reviewer basically said "yeah, I was a fool blinded by Toshinden 1's visuals, I apologize. That game sucks and so does this one." Lol
 
PixelKnight said:
I think everyone has a list of popular and/or critically acclaimed games they aren’t a fan of and don’t get why they are so beloved. Sometimes entire genres too. The thread topic seems to roll around on a semi regular basis.
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Oh don’t get me wrong, I do understand why those games are beloved. Mostly these type of threads devolve into “well you clearly don’t understand/haven’t really played it etc” types of discussions.

However, the games in my example are just an example and in general the Fami folks seem more chill on why someone isn’t as impressed by certain games.

Reminds me of discussion I had with someone who was a superfan of BioShock and they couldn’t wrap their head around my opinion that the big twist was phoned in and that the follow up of the reveal felt annoying and they really rubbed it in the players face. I totally respect people who were flabbergasted by it, for me it was a shrug moment.
 
james said:
this is the type of shit you can only say if your FPS experience is limited to perfect dark, goldeneye and turok good god
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But it is amongst the best FPS’ of all-time. In fact, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe it is still the highest reviewed FPS of all-time.

Not sure I understand the hate for the game here anyway. What is so wrong about Perfect Dark in your eyes? Genuinely curious.
 
Midway-AGNC- said:
Donkey Kong Country is the game that single handed turned the tides for Nintendo side in the SNES/GEN generation.
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I don’t think this is true. Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Metroid and Starfox were also all mid-late SNES games that generated a huge amount of discussion around 93-94, it wasn’t a ‘single-handed effort turning the tide’ on the part of any one game vs the MD/genesis. I’m not even sure the ‘tide needing turning’ in that particular commercial battle.

The SNES/MD was a really interesting console fight though. Often neck-and-neck as each genre became the hot new thing. Mario vs Sonic, then Final Fight vs Streets of Rage, Axelay vs Thunderforce, FF vs Phantasy Star, then Street Fighter 2 Turbo vs Champion edition once the tournament fighter craze took off. Literally a battle fought across every popular genre at the time.
 
PixelKnight said:
I don’t think this is true. Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Metroid and Starfox were also all mid-late SNES games that generated a huge amount of discussion around 93-94, it wasn’t a ‘single-handed effort turning the tide’ on the part of any one game vs the MD/genesis. I’m not even sure the ‘tide needing turning’ in that particular commercial battle.
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DKC influence was pivotal into turning the tides favorable for SNES side. Sure, there were other efforts as well, but it's widely remarked among many gaming historians as a key reason for Nintendo's victory over that generation.
 
Midway-AGNC- said:
DKC influence was pivotal into turning the tides favourable for SNES side. Sure, there were other efforts as well, but it's widely remarked among many gaming historians as a key reason for Nintendo's victory on that generation.
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It might be a key reason (one of many), but it wasn’t ‘single handed’ which was what I was responding to. In ‘94, the battle had been running for a long time and it’s not like the MD had the SNES on the ropes or anything. The MD was aging after it’s late-80s launch, Sega was about to launch the Saturn, and the mid-late SNES games like Super Metroid, Starfox, DKC, Yoshi’s Island etc all combined to show that the SNES was still going strong.
 
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Rareware said:
Tell me how wrong they were!
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They're not totally wrong.

Was DK64 even that big to be considered overrated? It was ok. Perfect Dark was ok. If it was rated highly back then, yea it's overrated.

Nights, Killer Instinct and Battle Arena are overrated yes. Although I'm unsure if Arena was ever highly rated anyway, but definitely Nights and Killer Instinct. Still overrated to this day.
 
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Never even heard of #1, so I guess they were right about that one.

Far removed from 2005, DK64 definitely became a top 10 most overhated game of all-time in my eyes. I'll always love and defend it.
 
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The Nights slander in this thread...........

sad-cry.gif
 
Honestly it was a silly list at the time and with much the entries, an even sillier list now. It is an interesting barometer of some sentiments of the time period, not unlike letters to the editor you'd find in GamePro or GameFan, but any bigger significance ends there.
 
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Heron said:
This is crazy. Yoshi's Island was - and remains - a near perfect game. It's a game that I will sometimes start up just for a couple of minute's nostalgia and find I've lost hours to it. Every part of the design works in harmony, imo, and the gamefeel is just immaculate. It plays like a dream.

Absolutely flabbergasted by this take, but I love a good controversial opinion so carry on...!

And just to clarify my problems with DKC, they are:
-Loose gamefeel
-Inconsistent / unclear collision spaces (especially background platform edges)
-Poor camera positioning of your character (it needed to be zoomed out a bit, with your character closer to the edge of the screen, it feels too tight)
-Ugly art design of enemies (subjective, yes)
-Inconsistent difficulty
-Over-reliance on bonus areas and animal buddies

But I will admit that there's a lot of great level design in DKC, incredible music, and it IS a good game. It was just overrated at the time. DKC2 is far, far superior, and I still have many of the same issues with it. One of the most mind-melting modern takes for me is that Rare's DKC games are better than Retro's. I don't think the games are even in the same galaxy, quality-wise. Retro's games are two of the best platformers of all time.
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  • Loose gamefeel... I think DKC2 feels a little tighter in comparison, but I definitely can't say I've ever seen anything particularly wrong with how the first DKC controls. I suppose it could be called a little weightless, but I greatly prefer the nimble feeling of it to Retro's super heavy physics, for the greater flexibility and more intuitive controls if nothing else. (In general I think DKC1 is just a fundamentally "better", more fun game to play than Returns; despite the latter being way longer and arguably more polished. This is mostly down to the level design, as well as the art and music being generally weaker than the game it's cribbing from, rather than the controls though. I'd rank the series 2>TF>1>Returns>3.)

  • Collision was always a complaint with Rare's DKC that I've understood but never quite agreed with. Some of the hitboxes in the first game are weird, yes, most famously Winky. But when it comes to the environments, I always found them comfortable while I generally hate this sort of ambiguous space in platformers (there were/are a great many graphics-focused western platformers that are so bad about this), because in DKC it always seems to be done in a way that's generous to the player and not jarring. There's always more room to slip past things than it looks like and you can stand on the very edges of platforms even past where the part you're standing on in "3D space" ends.

  • The tight screen space is a little iffy, and there are a few spots where you don't have time to react to things. But letting you get closer to the edge of the screen is a dodgy proposition because either the camera has to swing wildly every time you turn around to put you on the other edge, or you end up like Kirby's Dream Land 3 and keep running into enemies because you're moving in a different direction now but the camera takes a second to catch up.

  • Ugly enemies, honestly, yeah. I don't think the character designs in any DK game besides 2 and maybe Tropical Freeze have a half-decent batting average. I wouldn't say the problem here is ugliness so much as looking lame and awkward though. A large portion of the enemy roster is just like, an attempt at 3D rendering a realistic animal they stuck googly eyes on. Some of Rare's later and more proficient designs were abominations shunned by god, yeah, but I don't know what I'm supposed to think of Army beyond "yep, that's an early CGI armadillo".

  • Inconsistent difficulty, agreed. Mine Cart Carnage is one of the hardest levels and is at the start of world 2, Mine Cart Madness is way easier and it's at the end of world 5.

  • The game barely uses animal buddies, so i don't get that one. It's not as bad as Retro giving Rambi a few levels and calling it there, but I think every DKC struggles with finding a purpose for them to some degree. Each one appears only a few times here, they're unimportant optional power-ups, and often they're really hidden too. I could not tell you off the top of my head more than two levels that Expresso appears in. Rambi shows up a grand total of two times after the first level and in both cases he's actually more of a liability and you need to escort him to open a bonus room. They're also pretty jank in this one, but I'd still take them over the Yoshi transformations I suppose. The animal tokens that take you to a special bonus with them, those suck though, I think everyone avoids picking those up after their first time playing because it's just a huge waste of time to get sucked into unless you're about to run out of lives.

  • The bonus rooms, I mean, I guess they're automatically a somewhat significant part of the game because it's pretty short otherwise, but they're also completely optional and don't do anything so I don't really think of it as being reliant on them at all, which is for the best since I don't like most of them very much. I will praise the greater creativity in the secret design than any of the sequels after 2, though. The outcome wasn't always good, but they get really repetitive and checklist-y from 3 on, so there's something refreshing about going back to the nonsense of Orang-Utan Gang because it's at least interesting
I think my own biggest problems with DKC are the deterioration of the back half with a glut of mediocre cave levels, and the coral levels just being bad in general and not reflecting any of the level design quality of the rest of the game. Poison Pond is a strong contender for the worst level in the whole series.
 
WonderLuigi said:
I like your taste but Okami surprised me. I mean, it's a very flawed game, sure, but I can't judge it so objectively. I had so much fun
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for what it's worth, every game I listed is like a 5/10 - 7/10, and the list is ordered by how overrated not by just their quality (for example, MGS1 is probably the best game on that list). I can't think of many acclaimed games that I just straight up hate.

For Okami, I simply thought it was kind of dull a lot of the times. I didn't necessarily mind the relaxed pacing or the emphasis on storytelling, that was kinda cool, but I did mind how linear and simple the dungeons were, how combat felt weirdly unintuitive since a lot of the times you need a specific brush stroke to kill certain enemies as the game goes on, etc etc. Combat pacing in general is pretty bad later on because how it halts the game in a way it really doesn't in 3D Zeldas, both because of the brush strokes but also because of the way it closes you of from the field. I find that it's a game that ironically has a lot of the flaws people hate Aonuma Zelda's for, even worse versions of them, despite it's claim to fame being that it was basically the best Zelda game of the 2000's. I played it before I was even that into Zelda and even at the time I was like this is just a worse Zelda. It sucks because some ideas of the game are kind of interesting but also act like a double edged sword - like how the game basically repeats the same plot three times, where each version of the plot is better than the last, but by the end its so repetitive that you just wished the game would finish. It gets especially ridiculous once you're doing the Oorochi fight for the fifth time.

Also, despite the fact that the Switch version is often heralded as the second best if not the best way to control the game, the motion controls for the game are weirdly inconsistent. Some parts just require too much specificity to be done easily with motion, so they're easier in handheld, but most of the game is way better with motion controls than touch controls, so you're just left with a terrible middle ground. I'm actually surprised this doesn't come up more in discussions about the game since literally the first brush segment has tons of people talking about how hard it is to do with split joycons, yet it's still considered one of the best uses of motion control ....
 
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