Welcome one and all to our Saturday club feature ‘Controversial Club’. As so much of our content is positive, charming and a lovely read we thought we’d start a weekly article where we can get a bit of rage out, or just generally be dicks!
I introduce our controversial club, a place where we can all write about things that get on our nerves, rub us the wrong way
This week we’ve decided to look back at times games have lied straight to our faces – Lying trailers, blabbering devs and exaggerating studios are all worthy candidates!!
Chris
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty lied to us well before we knew Kojima liked to mess with his fans. A lot of you probably know exactly what I mean; some might be confused. Well, to explain, in the lead up to the game’s release, everything told the audience that we were going to be playing as Solid Snake once again – the two trailers released prior to the game featured Snake heavily, and the demo of the game focused on the Tanker chapter at the very start. Even the box seemed to suggest this idea. And yet, after the Tanker chapter, when your character infiltrates Big Shell and removes the mask he’s worn through this new level’s opening – surprise, motherfucker! You’re now a blonde guy named Raiden, with none of the cool factor and a clingy girlfriend on the CODEC. And you’ll be playing as him the rest of the game, too – your time with Snake is over. Many were very thrown by this reveal, some to the point of avoiding the title. Understandable, but the game turned out to be pretty good in spite of the new protagonist. And thankfully Raiden improved as a character as the series progressed, too.
Joe
One game (Or rather set of games) that I’ll never forgive for outright lying to consumers has to be the Fable franchise – At one point hyped as the “most ambitious RPG of it’s time”, the charismatic and endearing personality of Peter Molyneux lead many followers to believe that your actions in the first title will affect the future versions and releases of the series – Lo and behold, a mass majority of promises that were made in excitement by Molyneux never saw the light of day, with Fable quite possibly being the one singular franchise that has told the most lies out of any other in the gaming industry. I still hold Fable somewhat close to my heart for being a charming set of games with some excellent environments and visual appeal, but you bet that fondness is contained in a rusty steel cage labelled “DO NOT TRUST”.
Clarice
Now I will be talking about the most infamous game of 2016 when it comes to lies and deceit… That’s right, the one everyone talks about – No Mans Sky. Let’s start from the top shall we? We started the journey of lies in 2013 at the VGX Awards where we first were initially blown away by the possibility of an endless space adventure with hundreds if not thousands of procedurally generated planets and creatures that we could adventure with friends or even encounter others, trade with them and possibly become the most feared pirate of the universe… However none of that happened. Well, apart from the procedurally generated planets, and the unfinished mess of really fucked up creatures, falling through the planets with clipping bugs and issues, crashes upon crashes, and get this…The end of the game..? YOU GET TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN FROM THE START! ISN’T THAT FUN?!?
Sean Murray lied throughout this whole train wreck of a game, and if you look carefully at the Limited Edition of the game (At least with our copy, anyway), you can see a sticker was placed on top of the rating AND to hide the fact that there was MULTIPLAYER INTENDED. To be fair the game has improved a hell of a lot by introducing new elements, and I’ve gotta say I enjoy it a lot more than I first did so I’ll give them that… And with their biggest update coming soon, maybe, just maybe this might be the game we wanted and hoped for (Don’t hold your breath though)…
If I learnt anything from this, it would be to NEVER pre-order games that have the amount of hype this game had.