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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2408 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 13, 2025

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With all of that preamble out of the way, I'm curious what you consider the worst video games ever from an aesthetic perspective. In particular, I'm interested in video games which are technically functional and not completely broken, but which make so many bad aesthetic choices that playing them induces a feeling of vicarious embarrassment comparable to what one might experience watching an Ed Wood or Neil Breen film.

The first game that came to my mind from reading this was DmC: Devil May Cry, the attempted reboot of the Devil May Cry franchise after 4 which shifted the aesthetics from something akin to medieval/gothic fantasy with shades of Lovecraftian horror to modern punk with grotesque fantasy.

Thing is, I'd never consider it to be one of the worst games ever made; it's actually a good game in terms of combat, such that if you just reskinned it and gave the characters different names while keeping literally everything else the same, I'd think it was a solid action game that was a viable alternative for people who were into the DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising style of games. But the absolutely terrible visual art and cringey tone severely harmed the game, and the fact that it was an attempted reboot that pretty overtly shit on the original franchise was the kill shot.

Funnily enough, if just considering gameplay, DMC2 probably fits, where the combat was so incredibly bad, not just by DMC standards but by any sort of game standard, that I'd probably consider it one of the worst games ever made, at least among games that are functional and released by a professional studio. Definitely creates second-hand embarrassment that such a game was released by Capcom, and it seems that the actual devs feel similarly, because the name of the original director (who was replaced by Hideaki Itsuno late into development - Itsuno would go on to direct DMC3 which is, to this day, considered one of the greatest games in the genre) has never been revealed publicly, for his own protection.

the name of the original director... has never been revealed publicly, for his own protection.

What, for real? That's insane.

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