Kurt Hvorup: Now that we've gotten a look at Balan Wonderworld thanks to its demo, we're laying out all the good and bad qualities that stood out to us.
From VGC: "Yuji Naka has claimed that he was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld six months before the heavily criticised game’s release, resulting in him suing publisher Square Enix.
In an explosive series of tweets published on Thursday (and translated in full below by VGC contributor Robert Sephazon), the Sonic the Hedgehog creator was heavily critical of Square Enix and co-developer Arzest for releasing the game in what he believed was an unfinished state.
He said he is now able to address his departure from Square Enix and the game’s reception because the trial has concluded."
"I believe that if they don’t care about games nor their fans, Square Enix is a bad company"
Oh wow he is going at them
I mean, the game was universally panned, I think both the developers and publisher at some point saw the game was going to be very bad and decided to cut their losses at the expense of making this terrible game maybe just bad.
Is that right for the consumer? Not at all and I am not defending neither but let's not pretend that Yuki Naka if allowed to "finish" the game would have made that much of a difference, on a fundamental basic level this game was bad.
I think in this case, like most, that the truth is in the gray area here. Naka has an advantage being an individual as a single person fighting a corporation will likely gain him a lot of support from the public. However Naka has a history of being "difficult to work with" and despite my respect for him and his games, the truth is he has not made a really good game in a long time. Rodea sky soldier was a turd as well...so I'm not inclined to believe this was all S-E's fault. In truth I think Naka is throwing this out into the public in order to pressure S-E to settle out of court. Was S-E likely unreasonable about missed deadlines and milestones? Probably. Were they expecting too much of a small team with a tight budget? Again most likely. However was Naka poorly managing his project? Given that he was voted off as lead by two other subordinates, yes. Ultimately I think this is about money, he was probably cut out of bonuses/royalties for missing said deadlines and for the game being received so poorly, and as a result is trying to sue to get those restored while citing "unfair work practices" and using public pressure
He hasn't been the same since he left Sega in 2006. Funnily enough, Sega hasn't been as good since then either. They worked well together, but apart, both Sega and Yuji Naka have suffered in quality.
Well squares been terrible with many games as of late. Thank you for suing them lol.
I think it's been going on for a year or two now? I can't even remember when Balan came out (was it last year?).
VGChartz's Christian Evans: "‘If you expect disappointment, then you can never really be disappointed’ may be the mantra to live by for MJ, but within the machinations of gaming's hype-machine we're promised the best, thus we expect the best. Of course, as if the universe expects balance, what the gaming gods give with one hand, they taketh away with another, and some endeavours inevitably fall short of our lofty expectations."
for me it was phoenix point on PS5, got it on release day and the amount of bugs and constant crashes made the game impossible to play.....even the PS5 update released lately crashed out on me after the 1st mission i went on so quickly deleted it and will never return
This wasn't a 2021 release, but I did only play it in 2021 and it did come to PS5 and Switch in August.
The Falconeer as it released on Xbox. The voice actors all sounded the same, there was so much open space that every mission I played up to had a "Skip" button appear almost right after you'd start up. You would fly for minutes to get to the mission and the missions were all the same. Checkpoints were infrequent, the feedback didn't feel right when shooting or getting hit, and the flying just wasn't fun to me.
To date, it's the worst game I've played on Game Pass.
I have Battlefield sitting on my table from Gamefly, not even opened. Been hearing nothing but disappointment from the game.
Will probably return it and get Guardians of the Galaxy which in turn people have told me it's excellent.
Viva La Gamefly
I heard 2042 (on console) has been... not too bad. But considering how slow important updates have been taking (even according to a DICE dev), bouncing to Guardians is way more reasonable.
I should just give it a whirl since I have it...but yeah, I definitely would rather just skip to GoG
Battlefield and COD Vanguard for me. Both were very disappointing.
GTA was pretty broken at launch, but I still had great fun with it, mainly for nostalgia reasons.
I expected much of COD Cold War since I had big hopes for an SP with 60s/70s weapons. I expected much from Vanguard and I was disappointed in the SP and MP map designs
Alex DS. from Link Cable Gaming writes: "From botched gameplay experiments to laughably bad presentation to simply being unplayable messed, this list of the top (or should it be bottom?) 10 worst games of 2021 has it all!"
