Today we are giving you eight games from publishing behemoth Activision that you should leave alone. Activision isn’t perfect, they’ve made more than their fair share of crap, and today we roll around in their crappy games. But remember, for every crappy game that Activision has put out they’ve released several that you really should play, so there’s more than enough fish in the sea.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars, or The Game With Too Many Colons, was released in 2001 to lackluster reviews. Many complained that it was bland and a typical space game, not what you want from a Star Trek game, you want to be immersed in that universe, not in a template for space games.
2001 saw another Star Trek game from Activision. This time around it was Star Trek: Away Team, a strategy game that wanted to take you into the Star Trek universe after the Dominion Wars. Unfortunately for the game it received pretty horrible reviews, mainly because the game didn’t allow for any sort of customization and it felt like a rip-off of the X-COM franchise.
Activision’s Gun had the potential to be an amazing Old West style shooter, unfortunately for us it was seriously lacking. One of the biggest criticisms of the game came from the Association for American Indian Development, who claimed that the game contained derogatory and harmful depictions of American Indians. Considering the setting they really could have made that aspect of the game a positive one and made the game even better.
Usually movie tie-ins aren’t the best games, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine proves that. The game received poor reviews because of it’s shoddy controls and a noticeable lack of music. At this point in game development you’d think that everyone was on board with knowing that a good score can make a mediocre game amazing, unfortunately no one told the developers of the game or the company that released it.
Speaking of crappy X-Men games, we have X-Men: Destiny. Reviewers and players alike panned this pathetic excuse for a video game. The moral of this story is that if you rush out a cash grab of a game you should really try to make it not feel unfinished. With subject matter that has a built in audience it’s hard to screw this up.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 may have received positive reviews but ultimately it was just a rehashing of the other Call of Duty games. Leave it to Activision to make a shooter franchise seem like every release is just a roster update of guns. Maybe someday they’ll realize that having a strong story is a good thing, but until then they’re going to capitalize on their fan-boys who would follow them through hell just for a good K/D ratio.
Not every Spider-Man game is horrible, unfortunately The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is one of the bad ones. This time around the game was rife with bad graphics, undeveloped story, and glitches galore. Fans understand that publishers try to have game adaptations released around the same time as the movie, but they don’t expect it to look and act like a rush job to try and capitalize on their fandom. Fans are savvy and know when they’re being taken advantage of, and this was the perfect example of that.
Today we see the release of Activision’s latest shooter franchise in Destiny. Hopefully this won’t disappoint but with all of the hype it’s hard for it to live up to the expectations that people have placed on it. With a hype train that has been going for over a year they’ve put this game on a pedestal and maybe, just maybe, that pedestal may not be earned. But with Bungie at the helm hopefully they can make the game as good as everyone is hoping. We suggest that you wait until reviews come out to see just how good this game really is.
