Kombo writes: "After a dismal showing on the Xbox 360 last year, developer Artoon and Publisher AQ re-release the abysmal Vampire Rain on the PS3 with the expectation that the extra year of time it has had to work on the game has gone into improving, hopefully, everything. But has it?"
Brandon T writes: "The Playstation 3 is packed with some of the best games that have ever been released and it looks like the library and variety is only getting better. However not every title that hit the PS3 exclusively (North American consoles) smelled like roses. A few games come out here and there that blemished the reputation of the powerful Sony machine."
I agree on Haze, but Lair? I thought it was ok. I just think the reviewers were nit picking.
i never played lair and i know haze was not so good but socom? only because the online wasnt working doesnt mean it was a bad game...i love playing socom
I never knew about the last 2 games.
[edit] Ok so Vampire Rain was also on the 360 but without the subtitle.
Also WKC as an honorable mention? WTF?!
Haze was disappointing for a game coming from Free Radical but it was not at all a bad FPS. In fact it was good just not to the level we expected from Free Radical.
FPSs are you bread 'n butter genre, go play it. You'll scratch your head wondering what the hell people were calling it "teh worst FPS EVA!!!" cause there's another very popular shooter that has the exact same type of pacing and map route layout but is hailed to high heaven while Haze is considered bad... uhm, interesting to me on that one.
Lair, is also brilliant but came out before it's time when motion sensing was new and the media were full guns blazing on the PS3 exclusive 1st gen titles.
Go play it now and you'll wonder what the fuss about controls were.
I won't even touch on SOCOM. How that game can be considered bad is stupid. There are many games that had a rough month during their launch for online play like CoD4 & gears2 but none were slammed like SOCOM. There's a reason it's the most played game on PSN.
Don't let these media types dupe you. Go play games, see for yourself and enjoy.
SOCOM, Lair, and WKC should not be anywhere near that list. SOCOM and Lair had rough beginnings, but unless this list is secretly titled "Worst PS3 games if time stopped in 2007" they are not the worst of anything.
Haze wasn't a bad game. Haze's only crime was being an average game which had been overly hyped.
Socom had a rough launch but after a few patches I understand turned out to be a helluva game.
Same with Lair. Even as it stands there were plenty of reviewers that were wow'd by this game despite problems with the controls. Once the controls were patched I heard it ended up pretty decent.
"Haze was disappointing for a game coming from Free Radical but it was not at all a bad FPS"
The AI was awful, it was ugly, the dialect was ear-bleedingly painful, it was short, yada, yada, yada.
It's bad.
SOCOM and Lair were decent enough some time after launch with some patches. Still not as good as they should have been.
Socom, an online game still being played today, yes had a bad start, but what game out there hasn't cough... cough... MW2... Cough....ackem, sorry something in my throat.... Still play online FYI
Lair, ok i give that alot of people hated it, but i think it was too soon of a jump from analog to motion controls. It was IMO an awesome game that will stay in my collection for sure. It was hard to get used too but was definitely an enjoyable different game.... Will play again, maybe, one day when theirs a dry spell of ps3 games.
Haze, ok you article wins on that front, but it was just hyped as a 360 killer that failed on all fronts. An sub ok FPS. Played/finished/sold...yes not staying in my fantastic collection.
Vampire rain - never heard, played, or seen in store shelves, No opinion.
Last Rebellion - same as last
Honorable mentions:
africa...dunno what it is
White knight Chronicles - Ok, excuse me but what planet did you play WKC from, cause i played it and can think of many other rpgs that were far worst...werent exclusives, but still in comparison, WKC is way better.
SOCOM:Confrontation had an insanely bad launch and took 6-8 months to finally be reasonably playable. That being said, the grenade physics are STILL garbage, the windows STILL can't be shot out of properly, there is not the sense of community that previous installments had, and I can't find any reason to play this over MAG or any other shooter that I have.
Plus, it's online-only. The online must work (and play well) if a game isn't going to have a single-player component. Otherwise, it's dead in the water.
If the game worked properly at launch or immediately thereafter, the community (which has always been the best part of SOCOM) would have grew and remained strong. However, most of my clan (that I played 1 and 2 with for 4 years) have moved onto other games and can't be bother to pop in Confrontation.
Confrontation deserves to be on this list.
"only because the online wasnt working doesnt mean it was a bad game"
Wasn't the game online-only?...
"only because the online wasnt working doesnt mean it was a bad game"
Um, that's pretty bad for an online-only game. And I do agree that Socom Confrontation was a huge disappointment. I absolutely cannot wait when the geniuses at Zipper will release Socom 4.
Haze was an average FPS that got overhyped. It wasn't a bad game on its own.
Lair's controls were originally horrible. The only reason it got better was because of the patch that allowed controls without motion-control.
Not the best reason not to buy the next game, considering Confrontation was not developed by Zipper, the original SOCOM devs who are making the new one.
There is a reason SOCOM is now the most played game on PSN. It had a great many issues when launched but has been patched and is now an exceptional, tight, and engrossing title.
The fact the moron writer can't grasp that and obviously failed to conduct due diligence puts him in the top 10 websites that should be avoided.
Lair even now is horrible, the controls weren't the only problem.
I own it, it's a pretty boring game.
Vampire Rain isn't PS3 exclusive.(is it). Heard it was really bad though.
Well, I've never played any of those games, so i guess I'm doing pretty good.
But I have to say, I've been interested in trying Lair, especially since you can get it pretty cheap and they have the patch now so you don't have to use the sixaxis.
Haze, I played the demo. Not a big FPS fan to begin with, and the demo didn't change my mind.
Lair is good, and it have a good Story (yes, it have a GOOD Story).
I recommend you to rent it.
The only bad thing, if you are not good with Sixaxis, you can change the controllers to play with the Sticks.
And another thing, if you die in the middle of the mission, you start over, there aren't many checkpoints.
but guess what, it was still horrible generic and ugly. Sure some things looked nice, but overall it was one ugly uninspired mess.
I know, right? It looks like all the other motion controlled dragon dog-fighting games. Every last one of them.
OOOHOOOO HOOOOOO
ITS FUNNY BECUZ THERE ARE NO OTHER DRAGON DOG-FIGHTING GAMES!!
oo-hoo
Wasn't Pannzor Dragoon (spelling?) a dragon dog fight game? I don't remember much of the dreamcast (couldn't afford one back then) so please don't kill me.
You can change the controllers to play with the Sticks, and turn off the Motion Controller (Sixaxis).
Honorable Mention White Knight Chronicles? Are they joking? There is nothing wrong with that game. If it's not your thing, OK, but that doesn't make it a "horrible" game. It got some mediocre reviews, and I would fight tooth and nail to disagree with those reviews, but it is a game well-loved by a lot of gamers.
I agree. WKC was a good game. I just hope it doesn't take two years for the sequel to be localized like the original.
haha... i love it when people bad mouth WKC... sure it wasn't a great game, but it is good... infact i am actually playing it right now, trying to get the trophy for 10 mil g
We knew Halo wasn't that great of a game. But damn dude, that's a little low. I think Halo is still a little better than those games, come on.
:D
·Haze
·Some People told me Lair was Crap before the Patch, no complaints after the controls were "fixed"
·X-Edge, PS2 Quality RPG...
Cross Edge is a very good game. Just because a game has graphics below average, it means it's bad. If it were the case, the whole 360 library would be classified as horrible.
I only agree with HAZE, but no one ever said that it is a Halo killer so I don't know where the author got that from. Also I don't think Vampire Rain was exclusive.
bad list
i have lair its not bad.
it can be enjoyable if taken for what it aimed to be
haze was disapointing but still ok
afrika is fine is a enjoyable relaxing experiance.
if those are the worst te best must be call of duty gta and uncharted
unchatrted yes. but differnt folks differnt strokes.
i enjoy more games then shooters
Lair got a bad rap. The sixaxis controls actually worked very well if you actually took the time to learn how to use them or spent enough time getting used to them. The graphics are great and the story was very good. also after the patch you did have the option of using the regular controls.
Socom is a great game too, sure it was broke at release but after a couple patches it turned out to be pretty darn good. there has been many games where the online was broke at release and still were not criticized as much as Socom Confrontation was, Gears of War 2 is a prime example, when it was released the multi-player was pretty bad but it got a pass from all the media.
Those are the only two I can comment on because I haven't played the rest.
The shooting mechanics in Haze were pretty good, aside from the story and crapy dialog ("remember your promise to Merido" X 1000 times) the positive from that game for me was that FR had developed his shooting engine for the next gen, like I said, weapons felt great and there's no way it can be worst FPS ever as shooting mechanics is what FPS is about...however, in general, an average game....and now we know what happened to FR so the only positive thing I thought that game had is now irrelevant.
Lair was good and fun, the problem was to force people to play 100% with the Sxaxis, it was too early and I wonder who really bothered in reading the instructions booklet? if you did in the way it was explained there it worked pretty well, actually I was half way into the game when the patch introducing analog controls came out and I couldn't switch to that one, it felt very awkard controlling the Dragon with the sticks...
I only used the D-pad stuff which IMHO actually was the only thing the original control schema needed to get patched: D-pad for dash forward and 180 degrees turns.
Don't regret playing any of those games, actually the only games I regret playing this gen are Call of Juarez (40%...most of the Billy missions) and Turok...I was getting killed all the time and you couldn't see were bullets came from nor any enemies around...terrible game design.
Really shoddy, ill informed work going on n the article I'm afraid. Someone was REALLY pushing to knock the PS3 for some reason and made damn sure they did it.
Last Rebellion , by all accounts I've heard(and that includes a few gamers I know who played it as well as the critics who panned it)was a poor, poor game but apart frm that the list is arguable all round. I've only been told, mind, but wasn't the VR:AS for PS3 just a different version of the same game(like a NG Sigma style thing?IDK for sure)found on 360 without the AS bit?
S:C deserved a mention at launch and possibly for the first few weeks of it's life as they had all sorts of trouble with getting it to run smoothly on their servers. Now, though, it's a solid enough online shooter even if it'll never be up to Zipper's series standards-but Sony should have given it to someone better suited to the task, really.
Whatever, I'm more peeved about Haze and Lair, tbh, as while they were disappointing in many ways there's a lot worse games out there and both are pretty harmless for a list title like you might catch AIDS from them. Haze suffered because of politics and, being honest, despite some awful acting, scripting and patchy graphics the core shooting in Haze is every bit as great and punchy as anything in the Timesplitters series showing that it was all the behind the scenes stuff rather than a lack of talent that hurt Haze which remains an average shooter even if we had high expectations.
Lair, imho, is just a pretty good game with some issues and some GREAT moments and , being fair, I would be happy, post patch, to tell anyone to rent it as something different. It was just too ambitious and couldn't pull things off as it wanted but that doesn't make it a true stinker like the title suggests it should be.
Also, WKC-REALLY? A LOT of gamers really, really like it esp the online parts even if the critics were cool for the most part. does a game averaging 6/10 really constitute an avoid at all costs experience? It's hardly like being asked to go for a swim in dogshit, is it? I just don't like the way the author was determined to knock one of the consoles and the way he made so many factual errors suggests he was cobbling this together too.
that would have been phenomenal had it come out a few years prior. The problem was it didn't. Well, it still would have been cheesy for it's obnoxious dialogue, but the linearity, AI pathing/routines, game length and graphics were a bit behind the times for 2008. Beyond that, it was an average game with sub-par voice acting. If it came out for $20 on the PSN or released as a launch title in 2006 (or been released last gen, rather), perhaps it would have been a more apt release.
It seems liek a copy paste of Metcritic lowest scores.
Obviously the writer didn't have an opinion of it's own.
I agree with most of the list, esp. Haze. I laothe myself for even renting the game.
Except, SOCOM (Great game now), WKC (Amazing JRPG/MMO, u gotta play it to believe it) and that other RPG (havnt played it, but it was a decent game)
It's pretty easy to summarize how this article was made.
Head to Metacritic and check out the lowest rated PS3 exclusive games (most preferably those whose numbers are set against yellow or red). Now compare them to the names on this list. Let's see:
Haze - 55
Last Rebellion - 44
Vampire Rain (which is actually multi-platform) - 30
Lair - 53
SOCOM Confrontation - 63
Afrika and WKC were simply mentioned because their scores, though in the mid-60's (which means they're average, if we go by a normal review scale), were in the yellow. So there you are - this list's main basis is Metacritic (kind of surprised Genji wasn't mentioned).
@skv007: You beat me to it, lol.
Another autor that doesn't research what he's talking about. Slant Six didn't make Socom Fire Team Bravo 2, they made Socom: Tacticle Strike.
I agree with lots of you. I enjoyed Haze as well as Socom Confrontation. If these games interest you, there's a good chance you like em.
I haven't tried the other games though so I can't comment on them. I did try Lair demo (Hong Kong PSN) and it was decent but it was difficult to adjust myself to the Sixaxis controls. I imagine the game is much more approachable with the patch that allows for traditional controls (analog sticks and etc).
Is there such a thing as a bad PS3 game? Me thinks not! Maybe multiplatform titles.
Socom Confrontation ? Lair? man they are not the greatest but they are not the worst either , anyways i have enjoyed both
Haze
I know it didn't live up to expectations and its not a graphical masterpiece. But I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. The game had its good sides and the controls where pretty tight. Also it boasted the 2 player split-screen online mode and co-op so its far from horrible. Just disappointing that it came from Free Radical who made the great time splitters serie for ps2. Good rent or bargain bin game.
Socom
Well as for start the network errors made the game close to unplayable, but nowadays it plays quite nicely. Overall after all the patches its pretty solid multiplayer. Too bad there are plenty of better alternatives (although quite differend from socom).
as for others dunno, heard lair was decent with patch tough.
White knight, Lair and socom are odd additions to that list.
White Knight is far from a bad game, its just not for everyone. Same thing with Lair. As for Socom it had a super rough start but its freaking awesome now.
lair is horrible, there is nothing good about it at all. WKC feels like a free to play korean mmo, but with less people online and less fun to play. Socom is ok, for a console shooter Id say its even good because it has dedicated servers instead of the usual lag fests.
Do you actually own any of these games?
Cause the way you talk about Lair and WKC, it seems you didn't even put the disc into the system.
But my opinion is untainted by early release on Lair. I got it for 9 dollars and played with the analog sticks.
Yall just want somethin to rag about.
Is it just me or are people liking Lair? I lurve Playstation but I'm not going to ever attempt to defend that game; it was pure shite.
Vampire Rain is back in this new updated version entitled Altered Species. While this new stealth game is not like the others out there, you will have a lot of fun playing this PS3 game. Vampire Rain franchise is not new to the gaming world it was originally introduced through the Xbox 360 platform. This game is back better than ever on Playstation 3 retitled Vampire Rain: Altered Species.
The third installment of the GameStooge Awards features Part II of the Technical Awards, which is the fun part. These Awards feature the stuff that don't easily fit under any category, such as Best Expansion or Best Editor.
The winners (or losers, as the case may be) are:
BEST ONLINE GAMEPLAY OF 2008: Left 4 Dead
BEST EXPANSION OF 2008: World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
BEST GAME EDITOR OF 2008: Far Cry 2
BEST GAME YOU DIDN'T PLAY IN 2008: Roogoo
BEST SURPRISE OF 2008: Braid
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF 2008: Spore
MOST DEAD ON ARRIVAL GAME OF 2008: Wii Music
WORST DIGITAL GAME OF 2008: Pong Toss: Frat Party Games
WORST GAME OF 2008: Homie Rollerz
The final installment will be the Platform Awards, including Best Game of the Year.
Day one purchase
nvm already came out
poor guy
you know how much it must of sucked to have your boss drop a copy of this game on your desk and tell you that your reviewing it and have all your co workers laugh at you?