10 Amazing Stories Trapped In Mediocre Video Games
Gaming's Guardians are the best version.
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00:00Video games are made up of a multitude of elements, and they don't always coalesce into something complimentary.
00:06Sometimes you get terrible stories that drag down game mechanics, and sometimes it's the other way around,
00:11which is exactly what we're talking about today.
00:14So, with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Amazing Stories Trapped in Mediocre Video Games.
00:21Number 10, Brutal Legend.
00:23The fact that more people don't know about Brutal Legend feels like an anomaly in the universe.
00:28I mean, pitch this game's story and set up to a friend, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that they'll say that it sounds completely awesome.
00:36The reason it isn't better remembered is that, gameplay-wise, it just couldn't settle on what kind of game it wanted to be.
00:43Its controls scream action-adventure hack and slash, but its actual gameplay beats, say, strategy game.
00:50And while finding a balance between those two isn't impossible,
00:54Brutal Legend never threaded that needle, and so the gameplay comes off like a confused mess.
00:59Which is why no one remembers the game where Jack Black gets transported to a heavy metal dimension,
01:06and has to fight demons with a giant battle axe that's also his guitar, because of course it is,
01:11alongside a badass goth warrior woman.
01:14But that's what happens, I guess, when you don't focus your core gameplay a little better.
01:19Number 9, Rule of Rose.
01:20One of the most fascinating games released on the PS2, Rule of Rose is a cult classic for a reason.
01:26Its story, which centers around a young woman named Jennifer as she seeks to unravel the mystery of her forgotten childhood,
01:32while also trying to survive against a cult of psychotic little girls known as the Red Crayon Aristocrats,
01:38is hailed by hardcore survival horror fans as one of the best in the genre.
01:43A shame, then, that the gameplay itself doesn't quite measure up to its contemporaries in that regard.
01:49Survival horror games had made backtracking a staple by the time Rule of Rose came out,
01:54but the extent to which this game falls back on it is just ludicrous.
01:58Add on to that shoddy controls and worse combat that makes said backtracking even more mundane,
02:03and then top it all off with a story that, while amazing, takes two or three playthroughs to fully appreciate,
02:09and it being forgotten, even by the most hardcore horror game fans, becomes a little less shocking.
02:14Number 8, Telltale's Batman.
02:16Telltale has always been known for one particular set of mechanics, basically since their inception.
02:22As a result, the gameplay in their titles is serviceable, but it's not really why people are there.
02:28What they're there for is the story, and when a Telltale game's story works, well, it really works.
02:34Hence, Telltale's Batman series.
02:37These Batman games revolve around the titular hero solving a mystery surrounding the background of his parents.
02:44A background which, as it turns out, is tangled up in some stuff that he would rather not think about his venerated parents being involved in,
02:52and if that sounds familiar to the Dark Knight's recent big-screen outing, well, that's because it is.
02:57As Bruce Wayne descends deeper and deeper into this mystery,
03:00it'll be up to the player to decide how much of his life he burns to the ground in the pursuit of truth.
03:06Telltale's Batman gives a welcome spin on the tried-and-true Batman story formula,
03:10it's just a shame that the game itself doesn't give any new spins on the Telltale formula.
03:16Number 7, Sonic and the Black Knight.
03:18How hilariously fitting that the first genuinely fantastic Sonic the Hedgehog story
03:23comes in by far one of its most mediocre titles.
03:26Despite the sword combat not being implemented nearly as well as it could have been,
03:30Sonic and the Black Knight still managed to tell a compelling story that makes you wish
03:35that Sega had gotten the gameplay right so the game could have been successful enough
03:39to continue the short-lived storybook series that this takes place in.
03:43The story here takes place in Camelot, where King Arthur has completely lost his mind.
03:49In a retaliation to her king's madness, young mage Merlina summons a hero from another world
03:55to aid her in taking down the tyrant, and no guesses for guessing who she summons.
04:01Now you wouldn't think a story where Sonic the Hedgehog fights King Arthur
04:05would have not only one of the best twist villains in gaming history,
04:08but also contain themes of nihilism and existential dread at the inevitability of death,
04:14but hey, there we go, stranger things have happened.
04:16And all of this makes it a shame that the gameplay just isn't that polished,
04:20because this thing could have been remembered way more fondly.
04:24Number 6, The Order 1886.
04:27The more time we get away from it, the more a shame it is that The Order 1886 never got a follow-up.
04:34You can admittedly see why though, the backlash to this game was immediate.
04:39With fans and critics alike lambasting the title's short length and
04:42bog-standard third-person shooting, the gameplay itself is fine, totally serviceable I guess,
04:48but compared to its stunning graphics, it was decidedly very last gen.
04:53The world of The Order 1886 though was hugely compelling.
04:57Spinning a tale about supernatural hunters in late 1800s London,
05:01the grimy environment mixed with an overarching shadowy conspiracy about werewolves and vampires
05:07was every horror fan's dream.
05:09Even better, the game ended with an excellent cliffhanger that threatened
05:12to make the universe even larger, but fans never got to see what that might have become.
05:18With the right developers, The Order 1886 could have been a franchise right up there
05:22with Sony's other exclusive big hitters, but instead this intriguing story has all but been lost to time.
05:30Number 5, Guardians of the Galaxy.
05:32Guardians of the Galaxy received rave reviews from fans upon its release,
05:36and while a decent game on its own, a lot of the praise admittedly stemmed from it not being
05:41the conga line of terrible ideas and live service nonsense that was the ever-disappointing Avengers game.
05:48But even after the hype died down, the story presented in Guardians shined through its so-so gameplay.
05:54And the gameplay is fine like so many of the titles on this list,
05:58but it doesn't do anything to stand out from other single-player adventure games from the past half-decade.
06:03It does everything they do, and it does it kinda worse.
06:06Like seriously, the gameplay in this thing is easily the worst part of the whole experience.
06:12Meanwhile, the story and how it presents the titular heroes is what really draws people in.
06:17Fans of the movies, for instance, were satisfied by how well they translated
06:21James Gunn's style of dialogue and character interaction,
06:24while fans of the comics were treated to more comic-accurate designs
06:28that were changed from page to movie screen.
06:30The relationship between the Guardians is genuinely interesting,
06:35and their struggles and issues are a delight to follow through this surprisingly twisty plot.
06:40Number 4, Assassin's Creed Revelations.
06:42The Assassin's Creed games spent a lot of time on Ezio and the world surrounding Assassin's Creed 2,
06:48but they finally wrapped the whole thing up in order to move on with the franchise
06:51with the underappreciated Revelations.
06:54Unlike the previous games, this is the first Assassin's Creed
06:57to centre on more than one Assassin at once.
07:00In this case, protagonists Altair and Ezio, both of whom are, at this point, very old men.
07:06The game focuses on the twilight years of both of them as they unravel a conspiracy
07:10that stretches not only through their own respective time periods, but well into the present day.
07:16While the gameplay is the same sort of thing that Assassin's Creed had been doing up until that point,
07:21with a few little added bits and bobs in there like a tower defence game
07:25that I'm sure someone out there was probably maybe asking for,
07:29it's the story that's really the biggest selling point of the entire thing,
07:33as it ties up loose plot threads that the previous games had left hanging.
07:37Number 3, Ultima 6.
07:39Ultima, the grandfather of all CRPGs, is known amongst old school gamers
07:44both for its engaging classic RPG gameplay,
07:47as well as its capacity for telling great stories when EA wasn't royally screwing the developers over.
07:53Ironically, however, one of the series' best entries comes in its most disappointing game,
07:58from a gameplay perspective at least, that being Ultima 6, The False Prophet.
08:03While not bad by any means, the game's UI is frustratingly clunky,
08:07making even simple acts such as opening a box and taking out a single item
08:12far more complicated than it needed to be.
08:14The story of Ultima 6 is its true selling point,
08:18being a narrative all about the unintended consequences of seemingly noble acts.
08:23The Avatar, your character, spent all of Ultima 4 and 5 trying to do the right thing and be a good person.
08:29But one act in four, that being stealing a book known as the Tome of Infinite Wisdom,
08:35ends up causing a holy war between the nation of Britannia and the book's rightful owners, the Gargoyles.
08:40A war that is, on no uncertain terms, your fault.
08:45It's a unique premise, and navigating this messy situation
08:48brought some of the most fascinating writing the series had ever seen.
08:52Number 2, Bioshock 2.
08:54When Bioshock first hit shelves, it more or less changed the entire game.
08:58Its direct sequel, Bioshock 2 on the other hand, was either panned or just straight up overlooked
09:03by the very fanbase that demanded its existence in the first place.
09:07And that's a real shame, because while it doesn't really change anything fundamental about the gameplay,
09:12the story of Bioshock 2 is pretty close in quality to that of the original.
09:16Hell, it's probably better than Infinite's story now that I think about it.
09:19Bioshock's 2 story centres around a Big Daddy named Delta rather than some poor dumb squishy human,
09:25as this Big Daddy navigates the still operational rapture to rescue his charge from the enigmatic Sophia Lamp.
09:32While the original Bioshock focused on the flaws of a society built on Randian objectivism,
09:37this one does the same thing with a rapture that is now run on the philosophy of collectivism.
09:41It's an interesting twist to the thematic current of the original game,
09:44and it gives Bioshock 2 a much needed reason to exist.
09:48And it makes Bioshock 2 more than just a sequel that rehashes the original's ideas.
09:53Also, its DLC Minerva's Den is absolutely sick and that story is like
09:57one of the best Bioshock things you can ever get your hands on, so definitely play that as well.
10:02Number 1, Spec Ops The Line.
10:04Whenever someone talks about Spec Ops The Line, which let's face it is all we do here on WhatCulture.com,
10:09the primary topic of the conversation will always be the story,
10:12because there really isn't anything to the gameplay to make it worth talking about.
10:17Whereas the gameplay is some of the most generic bare minimum cover-based third-person team shooting of its time,
10:23you know, competently built but with nothing new at all to it,
10:26the story is one of the greatest in the history of the medium.
10:29Here, the city of Dubai has been hit with a freak sandstorm,
10:33and the populace has been left struggling for survival,
10:36with a team of soldiers being sent in to retrieve an American commander who got caught up in it all.
10:41The team is led by one Captain Martin Walker, who as the mission becomes more and more perilous,
10:47and he is forced to cross more and more moral lines as a result, slowly loses his grip on reality.
10:53Spec Ops The Line, as a result, is one of the darkest, bleakest looks
10:57at what was the dominant genre of the gaming industry at the time.
11:01Which only makes how rote the gameplay is just another thematic element to the story.
11:06I mean, this game does not want you to have fun at all,
11:09and fortunately, its mechanics means you probably won't.
11:13Spec Ops The Line isn't just a great story trapped in a mediocre game,
11:17the mediocre game is kind of the point of the story.
11:20You're supposed to be numb and dulled by what you're doing,
11:23because that's what the character's doing in the story.
11:26So that's out of the way, so I want to hear what you guys think down in the comments below.
11:29What did you think about these games,
11:31and are there any other great stories trapped in so-so games that I missed off here?
11:35While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
11:37and head over to WhatCultureGaming for more lists and news like this on the regular.
11:41Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.