What's the worst game you actually paid for?

[jkp1187]

In the early '80s, it was "Pac-Man" for the Atari 2600. I think my dad took it back to the store (along with the 2600) on my recommendation for a full refund.

In the late '80s, it was "Star Trek V" for the PC. Complete waste of time.

In the '90s, it was "Birth of the Federation". Yes, there's a decent fan base, but having been weaned on MOO and MOO2, I really loved the way ship movement was handled in those games (ships move between star systems) as opposed to the Civ-like map that BotF had. (And yes, both Gal Civ and Final Frontier disappointed me by using a similar movement system....) And the unique race traits really rail-roaded players' playing styles. After two weeks of playing, I just wasn't freakin' enjoying myself at all. This was probably the last PC game I was allowed to take back to a store for a full refund.

In the '00s, it was "Civ III: Play the World". I suppose it was marginally better than Civ III, but if you weren't playing MP (which I wasn't,) you really didn't get anything new out of it. Also: MP didn't actually work.

"Tropico" was good for a month or two of playing....but the micromanagement was insane. Still, the ambiance and music are entertaining enough to get me to play it occasionally (after we went on our honeymoon to the Caribbean last year, I actually fired it up and played around with it a little after we got home. The micromanagement still killed my enjoyment, but I can't say I haven't gotten my money's worth out of it.)

[Modo44]

Sid Meier's Pirates. Sorry, it had to be said.

Originally posted by Elok
I understand that it had the clunkiest, most unwieldy interface ever made. Also it departed from the fun space empire theme of its predecessors and had you running an interstellar bureaucracy. So I hear, at least. I never played it.

I've seen worse UI designs than MOO3. It has a good semi-automatic system for most queues, which can be nicely varied by planet type on multiple levels. It takes some figuring out, but you can do wonders with it, without any MM at all. I bet many people didn't even try, and got burned by the bad (really bad) UI that you have to use to micromanage. But the nice macromanagement UI doesn't help MOO3, since most other things are broken. I'd even say it exposes those weaknesses (useless space battles and diplomacy, to name some) by way of contrast.

[Spec]

Warcraft 3



SPec.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Modo44
Sid Meier's Pirates. Sorry, it had to be said.

It was.

[asleepathewheel]

Yeah, the new version of pirates, I played through once and never again. no replayability whatsoever for me.

[Harovan]

I didn't even buy it. Lucky me, I guess.

[Arrian]

The new Pirates! was essentially the 1987 version with a facelift. I didn't hate it, but it certainly didn't bring anything terribly impressive to the table. One of the few additions, the dancing, sucked donkey balls.

Still... Pirates! > Outpost.

-Arrian

[Dry]

Originally posted by CrONoS
Why Master Of Orion 3 is so bad?

I remember having played the MOO & MOO2 a lot and actually I liked it.

Is it because it's just plain bad or the game was very buggy?

Moo3 was great on paper and expectations were great. On paper, it had the potential of being one of the greatest game you could imagine.
Implementation ruined everything.
Moo3 is for me, the ultimate example of great ideas badly implemented.

I do not remember so many bugs, but I remember quite nasty ones. Browsing, jumping through screens could stall the game was the most annoying one.
Imagine that to get to the planet view, you need to click at least on 3 levels of menu. Then, you cannot jump to the fleet menu (the fleet orbiting your planet, f.i.) without risking a stall. But you need to go back-back-back to the main menu, then click-click-click-click to select the fleet you want. Every back or click taking of course 1-2 seconds.
In fact, to avoid the stall, every forward click in any menu had to be un-clicked, if understand what I mean.

The GUI was terrible. For me, the worst was what I call the report sheet screens. In every strategical game, you want a report sheet with all your planets/countries/cities/colonies... you are supposed to manage, with some easy-to-read symbols or numbers to get a picture of your empire. Which planets/ships/... are ok, which need a change. And maybe some links on those symbols to jump to the appropriate screen to modify things.
I like to see at least 10 (16 is better, 8 is an minimum) of my planets/countries/cities... per page. And I like to be able to sort them in a meaningfull way.
In Moo3, you got 5!!!! (five) planets per page. So much for the 'big picture' of your empire. And I do not remember being able to sort them the way I wanted. There were sorting possibilities, but not the one I wanted.
And with the links, you could click on it, but be sure to come back on this screen before clicking elsewere.

And one last thing. As a Moo player, you will understand: all races were uncreative... you know, like in Moo1.
That's not funny.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Privateer II -- which was ashame, because Privateer (or Wing Commander fame) was one of the best games ever.

But in Privateer II, in the early game, your space ship has puny weapons which are incapible of doing any damage to attacking pirates. Plus, you can't space-jump until all nearby enemies are destroyed. Each enemy has their own taunt, which they repeat over, and over, and over, and over.

As a practical matter, the game last until you attacked by the first pirate you run across. It doesn't help to do a cheat by setting your ship to "Indestructable" because that only means the attack (and taunting) by the pirate will last forever.

I liked this one playing it on a 486 - Slow enough to cope with. Got a bit boring once you had done most of the missions and distress calls and were just looping round trying to boost your score to the very top level.

Then I got a Pentium and couldn't get past the first enemy. If by some chance I actually wiped out the first one another would appear before I could jump to hyperspace. So I got rid of the game.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Donegeal
For me, it was Tropico (but thankfully it was cheap).

Wow... I really liked Tropico. It wasn't wonderful, but it was amusing for a while.

[Ben Kenobi]

I liked this one playing it on a 486 - Slow enough to cope with. Got a bit boring once you had done most of the missions and distress calls and were just looping round trying to boost your score to the very top level.

Then I got a Pentium and couldn't get past the first enemy. If by some chance I actually wiped out the first one another would appear before I could jump to hyperspace. So I got rid of the game.

You should try DOSbox.

Works wonders on all the old dos games to make them function properly.

[MOBIUS]

Has to be Civ II...














































That's why I know you lot...

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Spec
Warcraft 3



SPec.

WC3 is a thing of beauty worth paying for many times over. I cannot imagine how you have reached your conclusion.

[siron]

Here a some reasons why MOO3 sucks:

http://www.neuro-tech.net/2003/03/14/moo3-sucks/

I still enjoy some of these rants....

...and Tom Chick's preview of the game is simply spot on:

http://www.quartertothree.com/reviews/moo3/moo3-1.shtml

[Andemagne]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Has to be Civ II...
That's why I know you lot...