John Romero can sleep more easily now. Romero's infamous Daikatana is no longer the most notorious flop in video game history. That dubious honor now belongs to Left Behind: Eternal Forces. (See our first post about it here.) Universally panned by the gaming community for its laughable bugginess and spyware, and boycotted by its Christian target audience for its emphasis on violence (though the game itself is nowhere near as violent as the books it's based on), the game has resulted in a $31 million loss for its parent company, which is seeing its stock trading at a humiliating 31¢ a share.
If you click on the link to our own previous post there, you'll see an amusing comment from someone claiming to be an employee of Left Behind Games (and hey, they probably are, or were — I suspect a bit of downsizing has been done), defending the game from its critics and offering examples of "credible" reviews from "unbiased experts". It's a sign of how badly the criticism was stinging LBG, Inc. that they felt the need to come to a little blog like ours — much less trafficked at the time of that post than it is now — to defend it. Still, if lives were being changed because of this game, you'd think it would have sold a little better, you know? (And one of the "credible" reviews they link to is one on IGN.com that only gives the game a "5.9 - Mediocre" rating.)
Clearly God just wasn't backing this little venture, was he? Maybe He was off playing Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball.
A "credible review" from "unbiased experts?"
ReplyDeleteCall me crazy, but aren't all reviews, well, inherently subjective? Isn't the phrase "unbiased expert" meaningless when dealing with subjective media? Isn't it generally true that we find critics with whose views we tend to agree and ignore those with whose views we are generally at odds?
Wow. I've been a gamer for a long time, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone get that pretentious over a scorned game.
akusai - Maybe the "unbiased" comment was about the fanboy syndrome where the latest offering in a particular series or from a certain vendor is the greatest game ever made, no argument brooked.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it was just persecution rhetoric and sour grapes :)
By the way - I've been a gamer for years too, and iD make the best games. HL2 wasn't bad though :)
Ummmm...I happen to have it on good authority that God is a skiball fan. He scorns all video games...except for Sim games. He likes the Sims (I guess it gives him warm fuzzies and a re-play).
ReplyDeleteI always knew I hated The Sims for a reason...
ReplyDeleteThose old comments were hilarious. They were like two months after WE discussed it. I am surprised you even noticed it.
ReplyDeleteThat must mean that the developer hired people (or had employees) scouring the net with this info to try to bring up sales...
NAIL IN THE COFFIN!
John Romero can sleep more easily now. Romero's infamous Daikatana is no longer the most notorious flop in video game history.
ReplyDeleteYes, but Romero promised to make me his bitch. I'm still waiting.
I really have to wonder if this will replace Daikatana as the most notorious flop. I know that it won't with me. The hype surrounding Daikatana was legendary, it was more than two years late, and it would have been an embarrassment even if it had shipped on schedule. I bought the game less than 6 months later for $5.00 in a bargain bin. Even at that price I felt ripped off until I gave it to a friend as a gag gift.
I think it's different with Left Behind because even thought it probably was a bad game (I've never played it to tell you for sure), nobody I talked to really expected anything more.
GG,
ReplyDeleteWow. Really that bad, then. Almost makes me want to play it just to experience how bad it can be. You know, when you hype a game that much, only to have it get a desultory two-year-late release on the N64 (!), that must be...um...pretty bad!