From recent memory: Starfield.
I didn't think it was terrible in and of itself, but it also wasn't very good. It was just missing that certain something Bethesda RPGs had before it. Just a meh experience the whole way through.
From recent memory: Starfield.
I didn't think it was terrible in and of itself, but it also wasn't very good. It was just missing that certain something Bethesda RPGs had before it. Just a meh experience the whole way through.
I think it was the way that exploration felt like a grind that made it so “meh”. A whole universe to explore, and you’re either going to come to a barren rock planet, or find the same enemy base/outpost 5 times in a row.
For a game where space exploration was one of the main selling points, it felt remarkably unlike exploring at times.
Starfield faked me out for a bit when I took the character creation perk that gave my character living parents that I could go visit and would show up from time to time. They were funny and adorably charming, and I thought it was an inspired touch. Little did I know that was the absolute best part of that game...
As a big fan of space sims and action RPGs, I wrote that game off when looking at reviews and how the spaceship building system and space travel were.
It's like they choose the worst of Elite Dangerous and mixed it with the worst parts of previous Bethesda RPGs.
Any assassin's creed from the last 10 years, probs gonna get hate for that but they are just so average to me.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Had all the individual makings of an exceptional game (with input from Todd Macfarlane, R A Salvatore and Grant Kirkhope), and while it was definitely enjoyable enough - it lacked any wow-factor whatsoever, winding up an otherwise forgettable 7/10.
At the time of its release, it's wow factor for me was simply some fucking color, compared to PS3 Skyrim which had released mere months earlier.
I love both games, but there's something about Amalur that I think I love more that I can only think of as it being just medium, average, mediocre but not bad. It's just something kinda fun. Comfortable.
7/10 to me is a good game. I hate how people rate games. I’ve always hated it. A 6/10 game is enjoyable. A 5/10 game is absolutely mid. A 4/10 game is okay. 3/10 has huge flaws but is worth playing if you’re into that.
Subnautica is an 8/10 game for me. I thought it was amazing. I loved it. Below Zero was a 6/10 game. I thought it was good. I enjoyed it, and I would not call it “absolute mid.”
In a world where games are scored across a full spectrum 0-or-1 to 10, then yes - anything 4-6 would be considered middle of the road.
However, due to a number of factors - that’s unfortunately not the reality we find ourselves in.
Firstly, “mid” is hard to define as it can mean anything from ‘mediocre’ to ‘fine, but forgettable’.
Secondly, ratings/scores tend to skew upward as people tend to reserve 1s for outright scams, broken games and review bombs. With 2 & 3 often used for ‘asset flips’ and similar non-games - so we end up grading on a curve from 4-10.
This also works well for mainstream outlets as it keeps advertisers happy, due to arbitrarily inflated scores.
Lastly, in a world of cumulative media (new releases don’t cause older ones to stop existing) - even ostensibly good games will fall by the wayside as players have access to 10/10 titles from previous years.
So all things considered, a 7/10 is well and truly “mid” in this topsy-turvey IGN-eque world
This is probably more subjective than best/worst. So...
Vanilla Skyrim.
The outer worlds . it was just meh in my opinion. Not to be confused with the outer wilds game that I've yet to play
I was going to say outer worlds as well (outer WILDS is a fantastic game IMO) the game was entirely competent, just unimpressive in every way. Except Pavarti, she is a precocious sugar dumpling and must be protected at all costs.
Well, I can sort of be impressed with what outer wilds did. I didn't actually find it all that much fun to play, whereas I completed the outer worlds.
A hell of a lot of Ubisoft open-world slop released around and in the 2010s.
Starfield. It's the definition of a "mixed" rating on Steam. It's not bad, but it's not good either. You play it for an hour and your reward is that an hour has passed.
This is a tough question because it's like asking "What's the most forgettable game you've ever played?" I can remember some of the best and worst games I've ever played, but mediocre games are explicitly not interesting.
That said, the first one that came to mind for me was Starshot: Space Circus Fever for N64. It's just a very generic late-'90s collectathon platformer. It's hard to be mad at it, because it's not terrible or anything, there's just no reason to play it. If you've got an N64, there's Mario, Banjo, Rayman, even B- and C-tier stuff like Gex and Chameleon Twist. There's hidden gems like Space Station Silicon Valley or Rocket: Robot on Wheels.
That last one is the only reason I played Starshot, I saw it clearanced at a used game store and was like "Oh yeah, I remember hearing this game was good," but it turned out I was thinking of Rocket. That game actually is good, while Starshot is just fine.
I think Halo Infinite qualifies, I played the multiplayer waaay back when it released so things may have drastically changed (haven't heard of it being the case);
it didn't / doesn't do anything that no other game does, nor did / does it do anything particularly well nor better than its competitors (including every Halo from Bungie).
I did watch a walkthrough of the campaign, and it doesn't look particularly engaging either.
The thing that gets me the most is they dont push the story forward. It felt like they said "lets slap some shit together so we can focus on competitive multiplayer"
From a gameplay perspective GTA has been mid for ages.
Pretty much every modern AAA game. Theres an exception here and there but really smaller studios have been making bangers that AAA studios just cant seem to touch
Ghost Wire: Tokyo.
It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it's just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of "Hey I know that anime" level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
i still enjoyed the crap out of it. Sometimes zoning out and just running around collecting stuff is just what I need.
The Halo series.
I like shooters, so I got the full bundle and I tried hard to like it.
None of the games gave me a lasting impression. The plot didn't stick with me, the enemies were weird, the guns felt weak and flimsy, the rooms kept repeating in some sections and it got very boring. There were some fun bits with the vehicles, etc., but overall the experience was... pretty much average.
I was expecting something like the Half-Life series, but this wasn't it.
Square Enix games (FInal Fantasy, Neir Automata, Sleeping Dogs. Tomb Raiders)
They are all... good - certainly not bad games But nothing makes them... great
Nier Automata
How dare you feel this way, you scruffy-looking Nerf-herder!
I am unhappy with your comment! But I respect it, so I hope you have a great day ahead.
Probably everytbing put out by Nintendo in a long time. Yes, even that one. That one, too.
Don't censor yourself, who are you afraid of??
Mario Kart World
Just say it
Excuse you, but Breath of the Wild was amazing.
Breath of the Wild was basically a Ubisoft game with a Zelda coat of paint.
I said any Call of Duty from the past decade as answer to the original comment, and I still think that is a solid candidate. However, another game I played recently that qualifies I think is Sleeping Dogs. Perfectly cromulent 7/10 GTA clone but ultimately not pulling up any trees.
Dual nominations for Paper Mario: Sticker Star & Paper Mario: Color Splash. The only thing I really remember about them is that I played them and they left me without any feelings about them whatsoever.
Anything ubisoft makes. Or generally most things big companies make to cater biggest possible amount of people.
Neverwinter Nights
The multiplayer is supposedly incredible. But I remember being extremely whelmed by the main game.
But it's hard to remember the mid games. Because it is very likely that they didn't leave any lasting impression.
And especially if previous titles in a series or from a studio were great a mid game would feel disappointingly bad. Although compared to other games they might actually still be considered great.
The original single player is so bad I'm certain it was just cobbled together as a demo of the engine and for inspiration for user content. Then the team had time to develope proper story with the expansions
Unreal 2, at launch, was the most absolutely 7/10 game I've ever played. Just a very generic singleplayer FPS, and not the sequel to Unreal that everyone was hoping for.
I say "at launch," though, because almost a year after the game's release, they added multiplayer, and that is still my favorite multiplayer game.
Mighty no 9.
Well, when it comes to video games, despite being foundational, Mario Bros. At the time, it was mids, but there were a lot less truly great games, and less abysmal ones so it looked better than it was. The series got better, but that first one was kinda meh. It's all timing jumps, which is fine as far it as it goes, but there were both better and worse options on that console.
Away from video game, Life is about as meh as it gets. No real strategy, no depth. But it's a good time killer and you can play it with a table full of people drinking and not get bogged down or into arguments because of the game (unlike monopoly lol).
Do you mean Mario Bros:
Or Super Mario Bros? They are very different games.
If you are actually talking about Mario Bros., i.e. the game that's only about kicking turtles, crabs and flies coming out of pipes, yeah, I'd say that one was hardly a new thing.
Super Mario Bros. though? Hard disagree. Back then, that's a scrolling platformer with controllable jumps, inertia that let you do sliding tricks, and relatively complex physics (acceleration, positional damage, shells, ...)
Also very good readability with mechanics that were easy to learn on the spot.
Look at what most platformers played like around that time, and even what basic design errors a lot of them kept doing long after that. SMB was lightning in a bottle.
Mechwarrior online.
Free, online "shooter", good community, runs on linux, gameplay is dated and doesnt get tons of dev support anymore but its still how I kill an evening once or twice a week.
Avowed was very mid. I enjoyed it enough, but nothing about it was particularly brilliant or terrible.
Godus.
I know lots of people hate it but taken in isolation it's okay. I found its aesthetics charming and its pace generally pretty chill. It wasn't good but it wasn't terrible. Low medium perhaps but I have comfortable memories of listening to an audiobook whilst playing it.
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