Subjectivity is a big part of what drives the game industry. Another part of it is just shoving crap down the consumer’s throat, which is best saved for a whole other rant. For right now I want to focus on subjectivity and opinions based on experiencing certain games.

The internet is prime real estate for loyalists and agitators alike to mouth off to each other in heated discussions based on the most trivial of features. A common scenario in the game forum scene is for the hive mind to take effect, giving a newcomer the opportunity to witness the sheer lack of social skills demonstrated when up to dozens of nerds will jump all over somebody for having a different take on a beloved entity. With that in mind, I will take this opportunity to look at three of the games I consider to be the most bafflingly successful and popular that I’ve personally played, and take a little time to explain why, despite being known to many as classics, these games are sickeningly terrible.

For this particular list, I’ll be looking at games released in the mid to late ’90s. Expect more of these down the road. Oh, and another thing: if you start reading and this feature pisses you off because you happen to enjoy these games, I’m glad. I’m glad I pissed you off. Maybe it will allow you to do a little self-assessment and see where you’ve been wrong about what you thought you liked for your whole life.

FINAL FANTASY VIII

The amazing thing about Final Fantasy VIII is that it manages to be both mind-numbingly boring yet graphically impressive at the same time. When it was released in 1999, the cutscenes that pulled the dead carcass of the game’s storyline along were some of the very best at the time, and in a lot of ways they set the standard for how a story can sell a game to pseudo-intellectual idiots. Too bad the in-game graphics and character animation looked more like something out of a retarded cookie cutter.

Most of the music was dull and did nothing to drive any mood, and the gameplay was appallingly complex with menus and additions, even though once you figured it out, it became easy to the point of just holding a controller and pushing the X button mindlessly.

Final Fantasy VIII is also fascinating on another level, for two reasons:

1. Upon release, this game got a pretty lukewarm reception from fans of the series due to its gimmick gameplay elements, effeminate male characters, and boring design. It was only years later that some revisionist history paints this installment as being anywhere near the quality of the previous games.
2. Unlike virtually any other proper reaction to a fan backlash, Square pulled a fast one after its apologetic release of Final Fantasy IX, immediately returning to gimmick gameplay elements, effeminate male characters, and boring design. This "fuck the fans" strategy apparently worked.

I could go on for days and write a book about how much I hate Final Fantasy VIII alone, and I might someday, but for now, all you need to know is that I played all the way through it just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. I’m not. It sucks. Fuck this game.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE OCARINA OF TIME

Oh shit, I’m not going there, am I?

Oh yes I am. Before I start mercilessly pounding on this game’s face with elbows and foot stomps, let me make something abundantly clear: I loved the Zelda series. I consider the original NES game to be an all-time classic, perhaps in my top 3 games ever. Zelda II was... what it was. It was different, and I enjoyed it, but nowhere near how much I enjoyed the first game. Down the road, the SNES entry to the series, A Link to the Past, was Nintendo’s equivalent of giving fans of the first game a sloppy blowjob while Zelda watched. So, finally, in 1998, we were going to get another one.

I’ll be the first to admit I was ecstatic when I heard the news. I was fine with delays, the borderline unacceptable dearth of N64 games up to that point, and even the very decision to change the name of the console from the awesome Ultra 64 to the dumb name they ended up choosing. I reserved the "limited edition" gold cartridge, put it in, turned it on, and...

Oh man, did it look great. Then I started playing.

I don’t know what happened. I still don’t get it. While the NES and SNES titles managed to be different, unique and challenging, you could tell the priorities changed with this one. They wanted to blow you away with the presentation, but the gameplay of Zelda 64 simply blows. The pace starts at a crawl and it never gets up, and nearly all of the "gameplay" elements involved were lazily taken from the SNES game and executed in an inferior fashion. Maybe they didn’t consider that ALttP didn’t have unstable camera angles and terrible controls.

A large part of your playing time involves collecting shit that doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to bother with, and nearly everything that made the original such a classic and the SNES game a worthy 16-bit incarnation is no longer to be found. Bosses are a total pushover, and even normal enemies are few and far between. The overworld is replaced with "Hyrule Field" where you run and ride on horseback for no real reason and that’s it. Enemies only appear at night until later on and are insultingly weak and simple, and much of your time is spent learning to play that fucking flute and riding that goddamn horse.

Remember in the NES game, where you had rooms full of Blue Wizzrobes or Darknuts, and you had to kill them all to find a secret passage or otherwise advance? In this game, you might have to fight one "Iron Knuckle" who slowly limps at you while slowly swinging an axe. If you’re awake, you’ll kill him. Even the final boss is a complete pussy. Most of the challenge consists of figuring out which item hurts a boss, then wailing on him without fear of any counters or, you know, offense.

The dungeon designs aren’t bad, but the emphasis is on solving puzzles rather than any action or survival whatsoever, making it not only tedious but pointless to repeat if you want to replay the game. Remember how to hit that switch? Good, you saved yourself two hours.

Ironically, with the focus on graphics, all that effort adds up to a presentation that looks dated by today’s standards. I despise the concept of a game looking "dated" but if you live by that sword, expect me to kill you with it. If the SNES game was "a sloppy blowjob" as I described it, this game was a shemale blowjob using his/her (Editor’s Note: shkler?) teeth the whole time while your mother watched.

It’s sad to admit, but I consider Ocarina of Gay to be among my least favorite games ever, and I’ve all but written off the entire series ever since.

MADDEN ’95 SNES

I was downright nice to those two games, but with this one, I will pull no punches. There’s some sort of conspiracy here. Let me start by saying that I love most sports games. They’re often hit and miss, but when they’re on, THEY’RE FUCKING ON. But what do you do when you don’t know who to trust to tell you if that’s the case?

Madden ’95 for the SNES is the worst game of all time. Not Deadly Towers, not any of those Barbie games, not E.T. for the Atari 2600, but MADDEN FUCKING ’95 FOR THE SNES. I’m not even going to bother looking at graphics and sound and shit like that, because we should first look at the bare bones of the gameplay.

Quick, let’s do some play testing with this.

1. Call Hail Mary.
2. Score Touchdown.
3. Repeat.

Maybe there’s something I’m not figuring out, but I can tell you that against either the computer or human opponents, in 5 minute quarters I’ve never scored below 100 points. No human opponent of mine has scored below 100 points. Hell, I’m not sure we’ve scored below 150 on each other. All I know is that this is unacceptable. How the FUCK did this get past the development stage?

This is where the conspiracy comes in: nobody I’ve ever played in that game has had a different experience. Nobody whose posts I’ve read on an internet forum has ever posted anything different from what I’ve described. Yet, somehow, this game got rave reviews when it was released. All the magazines loved it, and go read the GameFAQs reader reviews. THEY LOVE IT. Yet that doesn’t add up to what I’ve researched and discovered firsthand. Did they play some beta version before they took the defense out? Did they get a big fat payoff? Are the GameFAQs reviewers malfunctioning robots? Something’s fishy here, and it’s not Madden’s pussy.

From what I’ve read in some places, the Sega Genesis version of this game is far different and some say it’s more balanced and "less offense-oriented," meaning it’s not completely broken and unacceptable in its execution. I’ve yet to try it out, so if anybody has a copy they don’t want sitting around, contact me and I’ll take it and find out.

That’s all for now. Feel free to send me your acknowledgment of total agreement, or death threats if you like any of these three games (meaning you’re stupid. Stupid.) Oh, and expect this sort of thing again.