1) Life Is Strange
Life is Strange took everyone by surprise in 2015, being that it was not only an indie title, but one that relied more on story interaction than actual gameplay. Yet, with likable characters, an interesting mystery and a nice pastel art style, it ended up earning rave reviews, and enough fan support to warrant two sequels.
But, Life is Strange was also the victim of numerous problems that have been seemingly overlooked. First was the evident budget cuts, which resulted in all player choices not having any impact on the rushed binary finale. Second was developer Dontnod opting to throw out the interesting mythology that had been hinted at in early episodes in favor of a resolution that didn’t answer big questions like why the storm was coming and why it was tied to the protagonist Max.
Finally, of course, there was the lingo, which rang more like an attempt to sound hip than someone actually speaking the language of millennials.
2) Kingdom Hearts
The concept of Kingdom Hearts was something of a revolutionary idea: merge the Final Fantasy series with Walt Disney’s classic characters for a fun adventure. Seems like the perfect recipe, right?
Unfortunately, the resulting game was nowhere near as exciting as this premise. To start with, the story, which should have been the strongest element given the scope of Final Fantasy and Walt Disney films, was a confusing mishmash of cliches: take every single Disney villain and have them team-up for the sake of acquiring world domination.
To add insult to injury, the gameplay was downright terrible. An awkward control scheme forced players to hold the controller at a weird angle, the auto-targeting was bipolar, the camera needing constant manual attention, and the combat was essentially just button mashing bullet sponge enemies with weak AI partners. Talk about a missed opportunity!
