10 Amazing Stories Trapped In Mediocre Video Games
Gaming's Guardians are the best version.
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00:00 Video games are made up of a multitude of elements, and they don't always coalesce into something complimentary.
00:06 Sometimes you get terrible stories that drag down game mechanics, and sometimes it's the other way around,
00:11 which is exactly what we're talking about today.
00:14 So with that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 Amazing Stories Trapped in Mediocre Video Games.
00:21 Number 10 - Brutal Legend
00:23 The fact that more people don't know about Brutal Legend feels like an anomaly in the universe.
00:28 I 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.
00:36 The reason it isn't better remembered is that, gameplay-wise, it just couldn't settle on what kind of game it wanted to be.
00:43 It's Controls, Scream, Action, Adventure, Hack and Slash, but its actual gameplay beats, say, Strategy Game.
00:50 And while finding a balance between those two isn't impossible, Brutal Legend never threaded that needle,
00:56 and so the gameplay comes off like a confused mess.
00:59 Which is why no one remembers the game where Jack Black gets transported to a heavy metal dimension,
01:06 and has to fight demons with a giant battle axe that's also his guitar, because of course it is,
01:11 alongside a badass goth warrior woman.
01:14 But that's what happens, I guess, when you don't focus your core gameplay a little better.
01:19 Number 9 - Rule of Rose
01:20 One of the most fascinating games released on the PS2, Rule of Rose is a cult classic for a reason.
01:26 Its story, which centers around a young woman named Jennifer as she seeks to unravel the mystery of her forgotten childhood,
01:32 while also trying to survive against a cult of psychotic little girls known as the Red Crayon Aristocrats,
01:38 is hailed by hardcore survival horror fans as one of the best in the genre.
01:43 A shame, then, that the gameplay itself doesn't quite measure up to its contemporaries in that regard.
01:49 Survival horror games had made backtracking a staple by the time Rule of Rose came out,
01:54 but the extent to which this game falls back on it is just ludicrous.
01:58 Add on to that shoddy controls and worse combat that makes said backtracking even more mundane,
02:03 and then top it all off with a story that, while amazing, takes two or three playthroughs to fully appreciate,
02:09 and it being forgotten, even by the most hardcore horror game fans, becomes a little less shocking.
02:14 Number 8 - Telltale's Batman
02:16 Telltale has always been known for one particular set of mechanics, basically since their inception.
02:22 As a result, the gameplay in their titles is serviceable, but it's not really why people are there.
02:28 What they're there for is the story, and when a Telltale game's story works, well, it really works.
02:34 Hence, Telltale's Batman series.
02:37 These Batman games revolve around the titular hero solving a mystery surrounding the background of his parents.
02:44 A background which, as it turns out, is tangled up in some stuff that he would rather not think about
02:49 his venerated parents being involved in, and if that sounds familiar to the Dark Knight's recent big screen outing,
02:56 well, that's because it is.
02:57 As Bruce Wayne descends deeper and deeper into this mystery,
03:00 it'll be up to the player to decide how much of his life he burns to the ground in the pursuit of truth.
03:06 Telltale's Batman gives a welcome spin on the tried and true Batman story formula,
03:10 it's just a shame that the game itself doesn't give any new spins on the Telltale formula.
03:16 Number 7 - Sonic and the Black Knight
03:18 How hilariously fitting that the first genuinely fantastic Sonic the Hedgehog story
03:23 comes in by far one of its most mediocre titles.
03:27 Despite the sword combat not being implemented nearly as well as it could have been,
03:30 Sonic and the Black Knight still managed to tell a compelling story that makes you wish
03:35 that Sega had gotten the gameplay right so the game could have been successful enough
03:39 to continue the short-lived storybook series that this takes place in.
03:43 The story here takes place in Camelot, where King Arthur has completely lost his mind.
03:49 In retaliation to her king's madness, young mage Merlina summons a hero from another world
03:55 to aid her in taking down the tyrant, and no guesses for guessing who she summons.
04:01 Now you wouldn't think a story where Sonic the Hedgehog fights King Arthur
04:05 would have not only one of the best twist villains in gaming history,
04:08 but also contain themes of nihilism and existential dread at the inevitability of death.
04:14 But hey, there we go, stranger things have happened.
04:16 And all of this makes it a shame that the gameplay just isn't that polished,
04:21 because this thing could have been remembered way more fondly.
04:24 Number 6 - The Order 1886
04:27 The more time we get away from it, the more a shame it is that The Order 1886 never got a follow-up.
04:34 You can admittedly see why though, the backlash to this game was immediate.
04:39 With fans and critics alike lambasting the title's short length and bog-standard third-person shooting,
04:44 the gameplay itself is fine, totally serviceable I guess,
04:48 but compared to its stunning graphics it was decidedly very last-gen.
04:53 The world of The Order 1886 though was hugely compelling.
04:57 Spinning a tale about supernatural hunters in late 1800s London,
05:01 the grimy environment mixed with an overarching shadowy conspiracy about werewolves and vampires
05:07 was every horror fan's dream.
05:09 Even better, the game ended with an excellent cliffhanger that threatened to make the universe even larger,
05:15 but fans never got to see what that might have become.
05:18 With the right developers, The Order 1886 could have been a franchise right up there
05:22 with Sony's other exclusive big hitters, but instead this intriguing story has all but been lost to time.
05:30 Number 5, Guardians of the Galaxy.
05:32 Guardians of the Galaxy received rave reviews from fans upon its release,
05:36 and while a decent game on its own, a lot of the praise admittedly stemmed from it not being
05:42 the conga line of terrible ideas and live service nonsense that was the ever-disappointing Avengers game.
05:48 But even after the hype died down, the story presented in Guardians shined through its so-so gameplay.
05:54 And the gameplay is fine like so many of the titles on this list,
05:58 but it doesn't do anything to stand out from other single-player adventure games from the past half-decade.
06:03 It does everything they do and it does it kinda worse.
06:06 Like seriously, the gameplay in this thing is easily the worst part of the whole experience.
06:12 Meanwhile, the story and how it presents the titular heroes is what really draws people in.
06:17 Fans of the movies, for instance, were satisfied by how well they translated
06:21 James Gunn's style of dialogue and character interaction,
06:24 while fans of the comics were treated to more comic-accurate designs that were changed from page to movie screen.
06:30 The relationship between the Guardians is genuinely interesting,
06:35 and their struggles and issues are a delight to follow through this surprisingly twisty plot.
06:40 Number 4 - Assassin's Creed Revelations
06:43 The Assassin's Creed games spent a lot of time on Ezio and the world surrounding Assassin's Creed 2,
06:48 but they finally wrapped the whole thing up in order to move on with the franchise
06:51 with the underappreciated Revelations.
06:54 Unlike the previous games, this is the first Assassin's Creed to centre on more than one assassin at once,
07:00 in this case, protagonists Altair and Ezio, both of whom are, at this point, very old men.
07:06 The game focuses on the twilight years of both of them as they unravel a conspiracy
07:10 that stretches not only through their own respective time periods, but well into the present day.
07:16 While the gameplay is the same sort of thing that Assassin's Creed had been doing up until that point,
07:21 with a few little added bits and bobs in there like a tower defence game
07:25 that I'm sure someone out there was probably maybe asking for,
07:29 it's the story that's really the biggest selling point of the entire thing,
07:33 as it ties up loose plot threads that the previous games had left hanging.
07:37 Number 3 - Ultima 6
07:39 Ultima, the grandfather of all CRPGs, is known amongst old-school gamers
07:44 both for its engaging classic RPG gameplay, as well as its capacity for telling great stories
07:49 when EA wasn't royally screwing the developers over.
07:54 Ironically, however, one of the series' best entries comes in its most disappointing game,
07:58 from a gameplay perspective at least, that being Ultima 6 - The False Prophet.
08:03 While not bad by any means, the game's UI is frustratingly clunky,
08:07 making even simple acts such as opening a box and taking out a single item
08:12 far more complicated than it needed to be.
08:14 The story of Ultima 6 is its true selling point,
08:18 being a narrative all about the unintended consequences of seemingly noble acts.
08:23 The Avatar, your character, spent all of Ultima 4 and 5 trying to do the right thing
08:28 and be a good person.
08:30 But one act in four, that being stealing a book known as the Tome of Infinite Wisdom,
08:35 ends up causing a holy war between the nation of Britannia and the book's rightful owners,
08:39 the Gargoyles.
08:40 A war that is, on no uncertain terms, your fault.
08:45 It's a unique premise, and navigating this messy situation
08:48 brought some of the most fascinating writing the series had ever seen.
08:52 Number 2 - Bioshock 2
08:54 When Bioshock first hit shelves, it more or less changed the entire game.
08:58 Its direct sequel, Bioshock 2 on the other hand, was either panned or just straight up overlooked
09:03 by the very fanbase that demanded its existence in the first place.
09:07 And that's a real shame, because while it doesn't really change anything fundamental about the gameplay,
09:12 the story of Bioshock 2 is pretty close in quality to that of the original.
09:16 Hell, it's probably better than Infinite's story now that I think about it.
09:19 Bioshock's 2 story centres around a big daddy named Delta,
09:22 rather than some poor dumb squishy human,
09:25 as this big daddy navigates the still operational rapture
09:29 to rescue his charge from the enigmatic Sophia Lam.
09:32 While the original Bioshock focused on the flaws of a society built on Randian objectivism,
09:37 this one does the same thing with a rapture that is now run on the philosophy of collectivism.
09:41 It's an interesting twist to the thematic current of the original game,
09:44 and it gives Bioshock 2 a much needed reason to exist.
09:48 And it makes Bioshock 2 more than just a sequel that rehashes the original's ideas.
09:53 Also, its DLC, Minerva's Den, is absolutely sick, and that story is like,
09:57 one of the best Bioshock things you can ever get your hands on, so definitely play that as well.
10:02 Number 1 - Spec Ops The Line
10:04 Whenever someone talks about Spec Ops The Line, which let's face it,
10:07 is all we do here on WhatCulture.com,
10:09 the primary topic of the conversation will always be the story,
10:12 because there really isn't anything to the gameplay to make it worth talking about.
10:17 Whereas the gameplay is some of the most generic, bare minimum cover-based third-person team shooting
10:22 of its time, you know, competently built but with nothing new at all to it,
10:26 the story is one of the greatest in the history of the medium.
10:29 Here, the city of Dubai has been hit with a freak sandstorm,
10:33 and the populace has been left struggling for survival,
10:36 with a team of soldiers being sent in to retrieve an American commander who got caught up in it all.
10:41 The team is led by one Captain Martin Walker, who, as the mission becomes more and more perilous,
10:46 and he is forced to cross more and more moral lines as a result, slowly loses his grip on reality.
10:53 Spec Ops The Line, as a result, is one of the darkest,
10:56 bleakest looks at what was the dominant genre of the gaming industry at the time.
11:01 Which only makes how rote the gameplay is just another thematic element to the story.
11:06 I mean, this game does not want you to have fun at all,
11:09 and fortunately, its mechanics means you probably won't.
11:13 Spec Ops The Line isn't just a great story trapped in a mediocre game,
11:17 the mediocre game is kind of the point of the story.
11:20 You're supposed to be numb and dulled by what you're doing,
11:23 because that's what the character's doing in the story.
11:26 So that's LA, so I want to hear what you guys think down in the comments below.
11:29 What did you think about these games?
11:31 And are there any other great stories trapped in so-so games that I missed off here?
11:35 While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
11:37 and head over to WhatCultureGaming for more lists and news like this on the regular.
11:41 Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.