Topic: Team [404 - Team Name Not Found] Deliberation Station

@Th3solution
Spider-Man 3 Treyarch
POINTLESS. This is actually a terrible, terrible game!
Spider-Man: Edge of Time Beenox
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Beenox
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows Treyarch / Shaba Games
Existing x3
Edge of Time, Shattered Dimensions and Web of Shadows were all pretty good games. Nothing particularly special about them though.

My two cents on Sonic Generations, VERY IMPORTANT.
Key pints being:
A return to form for Sonic
Not a Nintendo console exclusive
It was actually fun
Tons of content

@KALofKRYPTON Thanks! Appreciate the input.

Nice; with that useful Spidey input above, and taking into account other impressions put forward thusfar, my rankings currently look a little something like this:

SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs - Not Important
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation - Existing
Soldier of Fortune: Payback - Not Important
🎮 Sonic Generations - Very Important
🎮 Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing - Existing
🎮 Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - Very Important
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - Important
🎮 Sonic Unleashed - Important
Sorcery - Existing
🎮 Soulcalibur IV - Important
Soulcalibur V - Existing
South Park: The Stick of Truth - Important
Spec Ops: The Line - Very Important
Spider-Man 3 - Pointless
Spider-Man: Edge of Time - Existing
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Existing
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Existing
Splatterhouse - Not Important
🎮 Split/Second: Velocity - Important
SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge - Pointless

***

Servers for SOCOM 4: US Navy SEALs were shut down three years after launch, which is an indication of the game's popularity. Reviews were decidedly average for a game which, overall, seems to have lacked innovation, and developers Zipper Interactive failed to survive long enough to deliver the full DLC schedule. For the many who defended it and found the fun, there were many others who decried it as a poor clone of other, more popular multiplayer shooters. Unless anybody has any objections, this is sounding like the last hurrah of a once-great franchise. I've therefore classified it as such.

Same story for SOCOM US Navy SEALs Confrontation, which was an online-only shooter released three years prior to the above. It was met with average reviews and an ammo case full of complaints regarding bugs, glitches and connectivity issues; the servers were shut down in 2014 rendering the entire game unplayable. What's perhaps worse is that the game was missing several key features listed on the game's box and in the game's manual. Some of these would later be patched in, leading to a brief uptick in player counts, but many still felt that this wasn't enough. For these reasons, I'm gonna classify it one grade higher, as it's one of the earliest examples of the current plague of "release it broken and patch it later" games and should be dishonourably noted as such.

Sorcery was a PlayStation Move project which was met with praise for the implementation of controls and its great visuals, but criticised for its short length and lack of replayability. It all looks a little Sorcerer's Apprentice in parts, a charm which endeared it to gamers more than critics (some of which were quite harsh, even if they're in the minority). PushSquare gave it a 7/10 and from what I'm seeing, that sounds about right. I'm torn between Existing and Important; I'm gonna be harsh on it because, personally, the magical setting fails to cast a spell on me.

Same reason I'm pushing Splatterhouse down a ranking as well; Eurogamer eloquently defines this game by saying that it's "reasonably good at being the classless procession of shock and bad taste that it wants to be" and there's no way in heck I'm watching any gameplay footage to back that up. Looking at the heavy metal soundtrack listing alone tells me all I need to know. An insanely-adult brawler reboot of the 1988 original, it was met with two kinds of review; ones that looked past the gore, profanity and nudity to critique a supremely-average product, and others which fell over themselves to praise it because they're closet psychopaths. If there seemed to be support for a half-decent core game beneath the buckets of blood, then I'd be a little more impartial but with a 59 on Metacritic, I've got room to add my own opinion to the mix.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge has the dubious honour of only receiving three reviews from professional critics, and none of them are kind. There's praise for getting the entire voice cast from the show on board, but that's about it; words like "dull", "wooden", "lifeless" and "nightmarish level progression" are otherwise thrown about with reckless abandon. Seems like it was released right before Christmas 2013 and with a product like this, that kinda tells you everything you need to know.

***

Unless anybody has any major objections to the above, and manages to convince me otherwise, this'll likely be my final ranking for the week. Go ahead and lock it down!

@RogerRoger Well done. I like reading your little game summaries, especially when the game is bad. Your critiques often give me a chuckle. 😄

@Th3solution Thanks; one thing I've learned over the years is that writing reviews for bad things is immeasurably more fun than writing praise (and yet, whenever I watch a bad movie or play a bad game, I kinda end up loving it and defending it, so these are a rare delight in getting to exercise some critical savagery).

With many thanks for those that contributed opinions and research on the games, here are my votes for the week:

SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs - Not Important
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation - Existing
Soldier of Fortune: Payback - Not Important
Sonic Generations - Very Important
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing - Existing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - Very Important
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - Important
Sonic Unleashed - Important
Sorcery - Existing
🎮 SoulCalibur IV - Important
SoulCalibur V - Existing
South Park: The Stick of Truth - Important
Spec Ops: The Line - Important
Spider-Man 3 - Pointless
Spider-Man: Edge of Time - Existing
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Existing
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Existing
Splatterhouse - Not Important
Split/Second: Velocity - Important
SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge - Pointless

Team [404 - Team Name Not Found]
@Jaz007 (Captain) @Th3solution (Vice-Captain)
@Frigate @RogerRoger @themcnoisy @TowaHerschel7

Good work on the thread this week. We had our summary done within a few days so I will keep my vote as I initially wrote. Jaz you can wrap this up tomorrow mate.

SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs - Not Important
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation - Existing
Soldier of Fortune: Payback - Not Important
Sonic Generations - Important
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing - Existing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - Important
Sonic & All Stars - important
🎮 Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - very Important
Sonic Unleashed - existing
Sorcery - Existing
SoulCalibur IV - Important
SoulCalibur V - Important
South Park: The Stick of Truth - Important
Spec Ops: The Line - Important
Spider-Man 3 - Pointless
Spider-Man: Edge of Time - Not important
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - Existing
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows - Existing
Splatterhouse - Not Important
🎮 Split/Second: Velocity - Important
SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge - Pointless

@themcnoisy Votes are about to be posted as totaled, but you don't have any votes for a lot of games. Are you sure you don't want to put any votes on those games? I''ll change the total tally if add some votes for those games.

@Jaz007 it's cool mate. I haven't played many of them and everyone else has summarised pretty well!

Here we are team.
SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs - NOT IMPORTANT
SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation –EXISTING
Soldier of Fortune: Payback - NOT IMPORTANT
Sonic Generations - IMPORTANT
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing - IMPORTANT
All-Stars Racing Transformed - VERY IMPORTANT
Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection –VERY IMPORTANT
Sonic Unleashed –IMPORTANT
Sorcery –EXISTING
SoulCalibur IV –IMPORTNAT
SoulCalibur V –EXISTING
South Park: The Stick of Truth –IMPORTANT
Spec Ops: The Line –IMPORTANT
Spider-Man 3 –POINTLESS
Spider-Man: Edge of Time –EXISTING
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions –EXISTING
Spider-Man: Web of Shadows –EXISTING
Splatterhouse - Not Important NOT IMPORTANT
Split/Second: Velocity – Important IMPORTANT
SpongeBob SquarePants: Plankton's Robotic Revenge - POINTLESS

@Jaz007 Apologies for the query, Captain, but you've listed Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing as "very important" despite it only receiving two "important" and two "existing" rankings. Far be it from me to wanna knock Sonic down a peg or two, but this doesn't add up...?

@RogerRoger I’ll check that again. I did the votes at almost 4AM last night. I got a little confused about that one during the process, but wanted to get the votes and decided to check my work in the morning.

@Jaz007 That's cool; much obliged, Captain sir.

@RogerRoger Fixed. The tie was broken because I added a vote for the game. I got mixed with there being two of them when I voted. It’s important now.
Thanks for pointing that out!

@Jaz007 @themcnoisy @Th3solution @RogerRoger @Frigate @TowaHerschel7
Alright team, here are the games for the week. A pretty small batch of missed games for us
Doom 3 BFG Edition Id Software
The Godfather: The Don's Edition EA Redwood Shores
James Bond 007: Blood Stone Bizarre Creations
Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters Trickstar Games
LittleBigPlanet Karting United Front Games

@Jaz007 Haha I was about to paste that same comment.

@Jaz007 how about we all take a game each?

I choose Doom 3 BFG edition - Not Important.

It had long load times and the gameplay wasn't great. I was expecting fantastic reviews having played vanilla D3 - but its a poor attempt at updating the game.

Ok, I’ll take —
The Godfather: The Don’s Edition
This is a PS3 version of the original PS2 game that has some upgrades, mostly added content, some new modes of play, more fleshed out world such as more interaction between NPCs, and the obligatory gimmicky movement control with the sixaxis that all the early PS3 games seem to have. Clearly the developers were not content to just port the game, they really tried to improve it.
A game that at first glance looks like a GTA clone, but research shows that’s not entirely true. Yes, the setting, third person open world action aspects seems similar, but the game has some different curves it throws in gameplay such as an rpg-ish element of choosing your path as an Enforcer or an Operator and gaining specific perks and abilities. Nevertheless, many of the reviews mention a repetitive nature to the gameplay. Most also mention the lazy graphical upgrade and the game still doesn’t look much better than the PS2 game. Nevertheless, The Godfather storyline seems decent, if you’re into that, and the Metacritic score of 70 is actually pretty decent. I watched some gameplay and the environments looked drab, the shooting was pretty basic, and the AI looked awful.
But, apparently the game filled a void for fans of the genre in the early PS3 days to satiate their inner criminal until GTA IV came along later to take control of that space.
In the end, to me this game smacks of Existing

I’ll take 007 Blood Stone. I’ve played it 3-5 times.