The 'worst games ever' thread

I used to know somebody who loved Mech Commander, I was never good at strategies....still rant, but it was super popular with raven reviews!

Later Mech Warrior came out, which from my understanding flopped, but when I had ago on it later it was actually pretty cool :)

However, I guess it could have been so much more....especially with todays hardware. Shame the current generation is all about COD *sigh*

Jodwin said:

It's also a matter of reaching a specific skill level where you can start to appreciate the deeper mechanics, similar to how a lot of people consider fighting games nothing but button mashers.

Just to look at two examples, the Age of Empires games generally emphasis more difficult macro (=economy, building and production management) with their multiple types of resources. On the top level you need to have the optimum amount of workers harvesting each resource type to both maximize your production and to avoid "floating" too much money (=having unspent resources because you don't have efficient enough production) or avoid having idle money (=having queued up production while you could immediately use those resource on production somewhere else). There's less emphasis on army control, and battles come more down to composition, positioning and your ability to reinforce faster than your opponent.

On the other hand, in Starcraft there's less emphasis on controlling your economy as the resource types are limited to two, and the game effectively limits how many workers you can assign to one resource point before reaching maximum resource gathering. However there's much more emphasis on map control, since to improve your economy you have to expand outwards to additional bases. Fights also require a lot more micro management, as there are lots of units with special abilities that you either need to use or move your units against. Ie. casting psi storms with high templars or dodging storms with stimmed marines. Flooding your units against any pro player will only result in your armies getting massacred due to their far superior control.

I remember Age of Empires II and Empire Earth and Dungeon Keeper 2. All games I like. And yes floods don't work on higher levels, which is why I brought up the rock paper scissor mechanic. A lot of RTS have them. It just makes me think that's the only trick? But I guess everything can be boiled down to rock paper scissors. FPS has enemies hiding behind cover, so you grenade them.

geo said:

I remember Age of Empires II and Empire Earth and Dungeon Keeper 2. All games I like. And yes floods don't work on higher levels, which is why I brought up the rock paper scissor mechanic. A lot of RTS have them. It just makes me think that's the only trick? But I guess everything can be boiled down to rock paper scissors. FPS has enemies hiding behind cover, so you grenade them.

I suppose if you break the games down to their core elements you could say the RPS is half of the game (the other half being economy management). But at the same time, that would be a very naive look at it all. Yes, spearmen are the perfect counter to cavalry in Age of Empires 2. No, no sane player would throw their armies of light cavalry at your wall of spears because they know what would happen, instead they'll run around your spears and go massacre your villagers. At that point it becomes a matter of positioning your armies in a way that provides as favorable outcome as possible, and controlling your units so that they do exactly what you want them to.