I don’t know about which CoGs are “unpopular” but I do have three that I regret buying.
1)To the City in the Clouds
2)The Fleet
3)Choice of the Ninja
To the City in the Clouds I regret because:-
First: It’s way too short.
Second: As someone else said the “romances”, it’s unsatisfying one night stands with bodies. It’s a waste of writing space honestly.
Third. The mask unerringly always meaning your death because of some pseudo-mystical bullcrap reasons in a setting that doesn’t feature magic or mysticism is jarring. Also the death itself is really abrupt.
Fourth. Again as someone else said it was billed as an Indiana Jones story and we got one, after it had been thoroughly Austin Powered. Kind of odd.
The Fleet was a regret for me because:-
First: Again a really short one. Too short. You flee the homeworld expecting fully to be going through missions and whatnot fighting to cobble together a force to take back your own and you find its already done, and you sit about doing nothing at all.
Second: Related to the first reason, for me The Fleet had a LOT of potential that it just doesn’t deliver on. I was expecting a BSG style adventure, and that’s not what I got.
Third: Again related to the first point. I felt really incidental to what was going on. If it was an actual game I would say it played itself and all I did was occasionally press a button to say “okay”. Nothing really felt meaningful to me.
Choice of the Ninja:-
First: What can I say here? Again it’s really really short.
Second: It ends really abruptly, you get to the end and you are expecting a race to save your patron and it just sorta ends with a “yay! he’s saved! you won!” and that’s it. You don’t actually get to do the saving. It’s very jarring.
Third: Related to the second reason is the fact that this game suffers from a similar problem to Mass Effect 3 does in places where it tells you what to feel (“this is a sad moment!”) instead of giving you reason to feel something. Example: In ME3, Kai Leng beats Shepard on Thessia not a well staged combat encounter to demonstrate Kai Leng’s superior skill, or preparedness but through rage inducing video gamey bullcrap. And then the game has the cheek to have everyone including Shepard act like he lost because Kai Leng was just better. In essence the game was telling you “you should feel upset because Kai Leng kicked your ass” instead of making you upset cause Kai Leng kicked your ass.
Choice of the Ninja does the same thing with the “relationship” with the “old friend” - it expects you to feel conflicted about your “old friend” and about the choice relating to said “old friend” when you have had practically no interaction with said “old friend” at any point. Essentially saying “feel conflicted here!” instead of giving you positive interaction with your friend so you could actually feel conflicted at the point that it expects you to.
As for ones I liked. Again unsure about “unpopular” but given some other responses in the thread…
I guess:-
- Apex Patrol (the only non-“official” CoG game i’ve played).
- Choice of Kung Fu (Kung Fu Panda is my fav movie ever so it’s no shock I love this lol).
- Choice of the Star Captain (kinda surprised this is considered “unpopular”).
Apex Patrol is really really good. Especially the “romance” path which adds a really compelling layer of flavour to proceedings in the game.
Choice of Kung Fu I like because china has always fascinated me, and this game really captures the essence of “china”. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of my favourite sets of books. And I adore Jade Empire (and Kung Fu Panda lol). So this one gets loadsa points from me.
Choice of the Star Captain is a bit confusing at first, but once you figure out how to play it it becomes really enjoyable. And it’s very well written. Although the “conflicting choice” at the end isn’t really much of a conflict when you are faced with 2 unpalatable choices (genocide the blobs, or enslave the humans), and one palatable one (achieve peace!).
I also wanna say that I was really pleasantly surprised with Slammed!
I am not a wrestling fan, and I only bought it cos I was bored over Xmas and New Year and was too ill to leave the house (actually ill not hung over lol). And the demo section of the game isn’t very good, or at least it doesn’t really showcase just how good Slammed! is. Which is very good.
My only complaints with it is that I felt it was it was a bit too linear. What “branching” there is really only extends to if your character is a “face” or a “heel” which is somewhat disappointing.