The real problem is that the game works as intended. The game breaking issues are at a conceptual level, which can't be fixed without starting over from scratch.
No it not Jason either yt as The one made Jaystationyt yes he says I'm hate on hem no I give him real love he mad at me because I did come at the time I could come how I can't jump on bus like you Man I trying to here you think I'm not doing shit because my phone on All Time it does meng I'm sat on my ass ok thanks for it
yeah it's by no means the worst, in fact i'm sure i can find another triple A game that was even worse for me [pokemon sword and shield didn't come out in 2021 but yikes. that would've been a no brainer] but most disappointing? also no because i've never played NiGHTS or anything similar really, but i see where people are coming from if they had prior attachments it's BECAUSE it sucked so bad i ended up enjoying it, yeah the cliff hanger ending kinda sucks ass but that just gives me an excuse to write my own continuation fanfiction. that is the running theme with my experience lmao it was bad, but bad in a way where it's fun to think about what to improve upon!
@@Santoryu90 I was commenting more on the most disappointing game of the year part of the comment, it can’t really be the worst game because it’s just a reskin of an already good game
What frustrates me about Balan is the character/boss design is SO GOOD and it's a shame it's wasted on the rest of it. Balan, the main villain, the bosses, the costumes (the enemy/NPC versions, not when you're wearing them as a suit) are all incredible. Seriously, go look up "Balan concept art" or "Balan character art". It's like NiGHTS or Adventure era sonic mixed with a monster collecting series like Pokemon but also with trippy stained glass/rainbow tribal tats, it's wild and really cool.
What frustrates me even more is the over reliance of realistic motion capture on Naoto Ohshima’s heavily stylized character designs. Even Sega phased out the reliance on motion capture after how bad it looked in Sonic ‘06, you would have thought Balan would have learned almost 15 years later. They don’t even try to mask the uncanny “mascot effect”, if anything they maximize the awkwardness during the infamous dance sequences.
Everything but the actual gameplay is great about the game tbh, the music, cutscenes, designs, even the graphics are pretty nice. But you can't enjoy that when the gameplay is so bad
The game really suffered from its restricted controls, like it really seems like it had a lot of potential but only using one button per character was it's death sentence. Especially when you lose abilities from taking damage, damage dodging is fun for challenges but not the ENTIRE game.
The only thing I like about Balan is the cinematics. I was sold on the cinematic trailer when it was announced. After watching the official gameplay... boi... not worth the pain to get all the sweet beautiful cutscenes. 😵💫
@@Android480 Actually that was pretty ok. Also, I had to check again to see if I'm missing something, I came to realized the intro with the kids (before heading into Balan's shop) is a bit cringe. 😅
@@CyberKnightProbably YO THE DANCING SCENES, those cracked me up too! I eventually stopped watching the next dancing sequences after the halfway point. They got boring.
@@Hilly_LittleFeatheryCorner the game had too many worlds even if the dancing scenes were part of the boy’s character development while unlocking the English versions of the songs in the dance were part of the girl’s.
From what I remember hearing, the animation division of their company had to fight to get those in. So know that without their invention, Balan Wonderworld would have nothing.
I think instead of "Worst Games of the Year" a better list might be "Most Noteworthy Failures of the Year." Anyone can make a bad video game, no one really cares about that. It's when a project has a lot of money, or hype, or a big name attached to it, and then it flops hard, that's when it's interesting. Those are the ones that leave people discussion what went wrong, or about worrisome trends in the games industry.
I'd be down for a list like that but I definitely wouldn't take it over "Worst Games of the Year" lists, because with that there's a unique list for every person you ask and it's fun seeing that even if the games themselves repeat a lot. But I feel like there's a lot more objectivity to judging noteworthiness, and it'd just become "what bad games did the most people talk about".
@@roosterboots4684 Yeah, maybe with mods to adjust the time limit, but then you also have to have a rig that can handle the varying amount of hiding spaces as well as character height balance, and those didn't become affordable until 1802.
@@roosterboots4684 Hide and Seek had the POTENTIAL to be good, but it's weak anti-cheat allowed for far too many wall hacks, ruining what could have been a genuinly fun experience. Instead we got nothing but trash.
What I've seen is that instead of talking about the "worst games of x year" some creators have started to call them "most disappointing games" to avoid these types of arguments since some people can't seem to grasp what they actually mean when they say what's the worst game of the year like you've explained.
@@kneau I wouldn't say equally, disappointing isn't as "strong" of a word as 'worst' and sounds more subjective. It also gives more of an idea that you were expecting more from it hence the disappointment instead of just plainly calling it the "worst" game reducing the number of more emotional responses. As for it being vulnerable to arguments well people will always be mad at something no matter what you say or how you put it but I do believe this can help decrease them.
@@V0xKey "...instead of talking about the _worst games of x year_ some creators have started to call them _most disappointing games_ to avoid these types of arguments..." My reply was/is stating "most disappointing" & "worst" are equally subjective. 🤷🏻♀️
@@V0xKey slight addendum - it can be objective to label a game the worst. I forgot about literal math/code; designating something the worst can be an appropriate/objective act. 🤷🏻♀️
@@kneau EVERY stinking award is subjective, disappointment means there were expectations ahead of the release, people aren't going to have high expectations for some 2 dollar indie game from some no name person, but something made from a big budget studio from the creator of one of the most well known gaming icons in the world sold for full price!! Yeah, I think it makes more sense to call it most disappointing rather than worst Feel free to disagree, but that's just my take
Watching a muppet stand in front of a greenscreen and say, unironically, "There should be no limits to our hate" is already the highlight of 2022 for me. Somebody, please make use of this.
We should Photoshop that scene over all of Palpatine's appearances in The Rise of Skywalker. Goodness knows that he'd be a better villain than Darth Bathrobe the Generic ever was.
Balan is an example of the kind of game I genuinely feel sorry for. It has a nice premise. And functionally it operates for the most part. And for that reason alone I cannot call it "worst game of the year". It's still a bad game. Nothing came together. It did not approach anything the right way. It failed to do what it set out to do in every regard. I hope someday the IP is given a second chance, because I want Balan to be good. But this first go around is just heartbreaking.
They need to redo it from scratch. I felt pretty heartbroken when I played the game and it turned out to be bad because it had so much potential. I personally would love if they could make a movie or a tv series out of Balan Wonderworld. The cinematics and music were really incredible in the game and the premise was solid too. So to make it a movie or series sounds more fitting to me.
_And functionally it operates for the most part_ disagree, it's game design is broken at the core: the whole gameplay basically sums up as using a very specific set of costumes in the given level in order to progress through, the problem is that is not only a guess game sometimes but you can actually lose the equipped costume and it can potentially get you stuck in the middle of the level and if that happens you either hunt for another one or if you can't even backtrack reset the whole thing. And while the game is indeed not as bad as an asset flip just because of _dev merits_ the fact that it's being compared to those games speaks for it's quality.
@@Xfushion2 I was talking about on a code-based level. Yes the gameplay is a big fault, but aside from needing to patch out the graphical bug with the final boss, I don't recall any game-breaking glitches or physics inconsistencies.
Yeah and if you wanted to play the entire game you could the demo had the entire game on there. I think the devs figured people would naturally get bored of the game and stop playing the demo was definitely a warning
@@castonyoung7514 Nope it’s an oversight on the devs part. I guess they just expected people to stop playing at some point. I think the game crashes when you try to go to the final boss fight tho. But at that point you’d probably want to stop playing anyway.
The biggest problem with Balan was that “one action” concept. That and having to back track to get costumes from earlier levels, because the disappear with one hit. They designed the game around bad ideas, because they wanted to design a bunch of costumes that have overlapping uses. They were married to a concept without considering how to make it work.
@@YujiUedaFan or they couldv just made the game into an action-platfomer in a similar way to Ratchet & Clank by dividing the costumes power and abilities.
What Arlo is trying to say is that the bigger the swing, the bigger the miss.. and thus more people will notice and talk about it (Cyberpunk, anyone?). And that's what Balan Wonderworld was. Big swing, _monumental_ miss. No doubt about it.
1:15 “Just have your opinion, don’t be so antagonistic about it, *it does not make for healthy discourse.* ” This cannot be stated enough. This is the main (and one of my favorite) difference between Arlo and a lot of other content creators; Arlo can be super critical, but he doesn’t belittle or insult people who hold a different opinion. Congrats on a well-deserved 600K.
Agreed, though Arlo did rub me the wrong way a bit recently when he tweeted that anyone who disagreed about Nintendo prioritizing hiring minorities instead of "the right person for the job" should just unfollow him right now because there's so much evidence to prove this kind of thinking is rooted in systemic racism. I thought this was very out of character for him and it was disappointing to see. He wasn't interested in leaving the door open for rational discussion at all and closed the comments, then got upset about what people who retweeted it were saying. I'm white, yes, but I'm from a small Appalachian town in Kentucky that is severely economically limited and where opportunities are few and far between. Our economy was dependent almost entirely on the coal industry, and when that went under, lots of people lost their jobs and had to move away to look for opportunities elsewhere. Which isn't always easy when people judge you as an uneducated, backwards, incest hillbilly because of your accent. Most don't even try to leave, and they end up turning to drugs to cope with their depression and have no good healthcare options available for them to rehabilitate. I'm not saying white privilege doesn't exist in some places, but everyone's circumstance is different, and there are plenty of white folks out there struggling to get by. I've heard an analogy that saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" is like having a group of people sit down for dinner, and everybody has a full plate except for one person. When that one person speaks up and says they want food, the rest of the table responds with, "We'd all like food" in spite of the fact they're stuffing their faces. This isn't a completely fair comparison, as many of us in Appalachia are also sitting there going, "Hey guys, we'd like to eat, too." I want the black community to thrive as much as anyone, but Arlo, like so many other RUclipsrs and TV personalities and Left-wing politicians, lives in the well-off state of California, where white people don't face these problems to the same degree. I used to be ashamed of my "redneck" accent and worked hard to get rid of it over the course of several years because I didn't want to sound stupid. But I've only recently come to realize this was society conditioning me to think my accent was somehow lesser the same way a black man might think he has to get rid of his "hood" dialect to not be thought of as a "thug." Neither one is fair, and we should be advocating for the best for all groups to make sure no one gets discriminated against. We can not fight bias with more bias. I could have respectfully disagreed with Alro's opinion, but because he was so quick to point fingers and close any discussion about it, it kept me from being able to engage in any sort of rational dialogue about it with him that I think may have been a great opportunity for us all to understand each other a little better. But no, once again the plights of my community go ignored, because we've been told by other white people who have it better than us that we have white fragility and are part of the problem. And that's really, really disappointing to me. Don't get me wrong, I still love Arlo's content and think more highly of him than most RUclipsrs. But it stung, I'm not gonna lie. And I hate feeling this way when he's done so much good. I suffer from OCD, and when Alro posted on Twitter about his diagnosis, I thought that was super brave of him and reached out on Cameo to ask how he copes with it. His response was super thoughtful, and he played a big role in helping me decide to start medicating, which has been one of the best decisions of my life. The anxiety has gone down so much and I'm significantly happier, and I'll always be thankful for his considerate response. So yeah, he raises a great point in the video, and he's always been very good at applying that to the discourse around video games. I understand politics are a much more touchy subject--and for good reason: it's a big deal--but that shouldn't mean that's where we draw the line in terms of when to show respect.
@@nintentrovert Huh. I’m not on Twitter so I didn’t actually know this, but you’re right that that sounds out of character. You’re right that politics are touchy, and he probably wanted to keep that out of his feed both for his sake and his follower’s sake, though I don’t know his exact thought process so I can’t put words in his mouth. I can’t really comment on your own experience, but your comment about “fighting bias with bias” is interesting. In a lot of instances it comes from a good place, and I appreciate that kind of intent of things as a Black person, but I wouldn’t want to get something that someone deserves more than me.
Oh yeah, two other points I quickly wanted to make: 1. You're probably right--I don't think Arlo closed the comments to purposefully be malicious. I wouldn't have thought anything of it if it weren't for how confrontational the original post and his subsequent comments seemed. But if you're going to call people out, it would be nice to give them a chance to offer a rebuttal. 2. I often her people say, "Well why does the most qualified person always have to be a straight, white male?" But for the record, I know there are plenty members of the other sex and people of differing ethnicities who are way more talented at certain things than I ever will be. If I miss out on a job opportunity because a black man, or an Asian woman, or a gay person had a better resumé, then so be it. They earned it fair and square by putting in the time and effort. I follow a black character artist on Twitter who is also a woman, and she makes some of the most incredible art I've ever seen. I consider myself a decent drawer, but I don't know that I could ever live up to her work, no matter how hard I try.
@@FedoraKirb I also typed a really long comment where I linked the original Twitter post and went into more of my thoughts, but I'm not seeing it for some reason? Let me know if it published for you, I probably typed for close to an hour and would really hate to redo it, lol.
Definitely a fair assessment, as you said, the true list would consist of games on Steam I probably scrolled past at an absurd speed not even sparing a glance. It's an entirely different matter when a game manages to attract your attention and give you that sense of promise that you'll have a good and enjoyable experience with it, only to swiftly crush that sentiment. Also, grats on 600K.
I think you hit the nail on the head that the game itself isn’t what makes it terrible so much as the context behind it. Asset flip games suck but they are also not the product of major funding and countless hours of work. Balan, on the other hand, was made by a wealthy game development studio with a well regarded game developer heading it and still turned out as a generally bad game. Like Cyberpunk, it’s not just that it failed, but that it had so many reasons why it *shouldn’t* have failed. I feel similarly that FnaF Security Breach is a pretty spectacularly bad game to come out recently. Which stinks because I love that series but the level of bugs and glitches are awful. Worse is that the intentional design of several parts of the game are bad. And this was supposed to be the *big* transition for the series. It didn’t have nearly as many “reasons to succeed” as balan but it was still spectacularly disappointing.
I think Secuirty Breach is at least more salvageable of a game than Balan, which was broken from the core. Security Breach has good graphics and there are good parts to the game play, it's really just missing content, the saving system, and the bugs and unpolishedness that drag it down, but updates to add back some content, fix the bugs, and allow saving after 6PM would alleviate a lot of peoples' major complaints.
The difference between Balan and Cyberpunk is that as horrible as the bugs were, Cyberpunk at least had something enjoyable about it. While Balan, at best, was mediocre, and worst kind of insulting to the player.
What comes to my mind is Back 4 Blood. It was hyped up as the successor to Left 4 Dead 2, but it had absolutely zero of Valve's insane levels of care and attention to detail that the original series had. It wound up being a weird, buggy, boring, cringey letdown, when it had seemed like the potential for a perfect game was just staring the devs in the face. Turns out, just because these old games _looked_ simple, does not at all mean that they _were._ We often forget that in their heyday, these games rose to the top of ugly piles of similar, yet terrible, games in their genres. They weren't the _only_ games of their kind... they were the _best_ of their kind. And when people today try to re-capture the magic through their nostalgia glasses, they unfortunately just end up creating more crappy failures to add to the piles already made and forgotten in decades past.
Also what does it matter if Balan is not an asset flip game if people still dislike it either way? sure just because of _development merits_ Balan trumps the average asset flip game, does not change the fact that people would rather play dozens of games before it. And the fact that Balan is being compared with asset flip games doesn't vouch for it's quality in any way.
I'd say it's the most popular "worst" game. Anyone can make a nothing game and have it be objectively bad. But a bad game with a legacy? A major build up to release that disappoints everyone? That's the magical kinda of bad you don't see often
"Most Disappointing Games of the Year" is probably the better wording for these kinds of lists. Sonic 06, Duke Nukem Forever, certainly not the worst games of their respective years, but DEFINITELY the games with a lot of people looking forward to them only to be disappointed on playing/watching them.
Its weird cause from looking at gameplay you wouldn't think that it was worst game of the year worthy but when you play it your like "yeah this is definitely not good"
I think that it's fair to call it the worst game, I played the demo, and I hated it as well. I think that it might not be fair to call an indie project the worst game of the year, a game from a newer studio, with fewer people working on it, BUT THIS IS SQAURE ENIX! They're a massive studio, and I think that contributes to why its being called the worst game of the year.
@@ZalYagunRyai I feel like there had to be some kind of insider sabotage, because it doesn't look like it got the complete support by Square-Enix it needed. Could've had a shoestring budget because Square-Enix didn't want to make a platformer, and then also had very limited people working on it, plus Covid-19 on top, but we just don't know what happened behind the scenes. Eh.
@@ZalYagunRyai This game is not Yuki Naka's idea this was square's Yuki only agreed to make this. The problem is while Yuki Naka is a verrrry talented producer, he is not a good director.
I just wanna say that, regardless of the game, I absolutely fell in love with the novel adaptation they wrote alongside it. The story is simple, but fairly solid for someone like Yuji Naka (I believe it was written with help from a Japanese children's author). I like the characters, the illustrations, and the reveal at the ending was honestly pretty cool. It even inspired my own work a very tiny bit. Something like Balan Wonderworld would definitely fit more as a children's animated film than a video game. Or, at least, don't seperate the story from the game as much as they did. For those who wanna read the book, I believe it's $10 on Amazon Kindle. Even if you don't read the whole thing, it's at least worth a small peek.
@@logicaltips4107 Even if you have no intention of playing the game, Id recomend checking it out, its a pretty good read (also it's literally both the set up and rising action of the game's story so it's kind of essential to make sense of anything)
“Is Balance WonderWorld really a bad game?” If a company has to remove the demo off of every platform what do YOU think 🤔? In all seriousness Arlo, this was a good discussion and makes perfect sense maybe Balan would have been impressive 15-20 years ago, but now it’s pretty yikes that it came out the way it did.
Baland wonderworld is one of the most interesting games I've ever seen Most flawed games can have their issues marked down to a few things Bugs or glitches, developer oversight, rushed unfinishedness, greed, ect. There's usually some culprit standing in the way of a game's potential But here? It doesn't feel rushed or greedy or super buggy, it's just straightforward bad in the game's core If I didn't know any better I'd say this game was carefully engineered to become terrible on purpose
@@AkameGaKillfan777 yes but when a gamenis ruined by greed I moreso mean in the sense of extensive micro transactions or pay 2 win elements or cut content to be resold as DLC 60 dollars for a game is just the triple A industry standard I don't like it but it is what it is what it is
I hate when people call every single instance of a large group agreeing on something "bandwagoning." There are plenty of instances of real actual bandwagoning that occurs that could be called out, but instead they call out people who have the sheer gall to not like the thing they like. People have the right to not like a game separately, they can all dislike it together too.
There's healthy questioning of the accepted belief, and then there's smug contrarianism. When somebody advocates for something unpopular, it's a welcome challenge to the prevailing opinion and may be well reasoned or not. When somebody disdains the popular opinion as poorly-founded and asserts the challenger's superiority, then the argument is automatically poorly-reasoned and I have no interest in the other points.
Balan disappointed me for the exact same reason Sonic games always do... Balan as a character design was so frickin cool! Now he's forever associated with poorly made games.
Yes. What a disappointment. I'm all for the more 3D platformers movement, and when they send half baked messes to store shelves and get terrible sales, it encourages companies to not try anymore.
Do I need to list 500 FPS for every one of the two you listed? Of course some will still exist, but in the 90s, there were tons of them. They're practically extinct.
@@nicorobin5978 gaming changes and preferences change. The late 90s are gone. We have very few 3d platformers nowadays and that's alright. 2d platformers are still going strong and that's what matters. Lol
It's almost like people have different preferences, or like variety is good. Feel free to be a tool and say only what you want matters, but with a ton of developers in the industry I'm all for 2D platformers for you, FPS for other people, and 3D platformers for people as well. When there's a variety everyone wins. If 2D platformers fall out of style, I hope no one says "The 2020s are gone. We have very few 2D platformers nowadays and that's all right." to you. I wouldn't want you to feel Berned.
@@nicorobin5978 2D platformers may go out of style one day. FPS may as well go out of style. You can't make games for variety sake. You must have a significant market out there. Considering making an average 3d platformer is difficult. Making a good 3d platformer is very difficult. Making a great 3d platformer is extremely difficult. Even designing the course/worlds to provide an enjoyable experience in 3d is expensive and sales don't match the effort. The last good true 3d platformer was crash bandicoot & sales was lukewarm.
Important distinction though: Even if you're absolutely free to hate GAMES as much as you want, that has nothing to do with how you treat actual people, and fans of those games you hate are still people. There's no threshold of hate for a game where it becomes acceptable to treat other people badly, and it's easy to let feelings related to a game shift into abusive behavior because games don't cry like people do when you hurt them. Fans aren't punching bags there to stand in for the game and don't exist to represent everything you hate about it.
I think people should accept Yuji Naka was never a good game designer. He was an excellent 2D game programmer who shined on one game, and that largely didn't translate to 3D. He also kneecapped 3D development for his own company, and never had a comparable hit after Nights. Neither is he solely to blame for BW's failures, but the design reeks of an outdated mindset. The game's positives (character design, cg movies) likely had little to do with them.
naka is a pompous ass that has infamously been dismissive of the actual game designers that have breathed life into his programming work. can't say I'm at all surprised that he shacked up with a cheapo shovelware mill like arzest. probably thought it didn't matter who was making it as long as he was in charge and was getting a bunch of funding.
There's something about Balan Wonderworld that feels "legitimately" bad. Like most people would say that Call of Duty Vanguard was "bad". It was released in a clearly half-finished state, it was arguably a carbon copy of Modern Warfare with a WWII coat of paint on top, the microtransactions and FOMO is rampant, and the developers faced no shortage of criticism for their appalling work environment. But if you can somehow find a way to look past all of that, what you have at it's core is a pretty fun FPS experience. Balan Wonderworld though is just an irredeemably bad game with bafflingly, uncharacteristically bad game design from an industry veteran.
I find games that are just totally broken on release to be far more insulting. The Cyberpunks and GTA Trilogy's, if you will. Everyone shits on COD Vanguard for the crime of being an average reskin of Modern Warfare with a short campaign, meanwhile you have Battlefield 2042 in the corner being an unplayable mess. EA had all that time to at least make their game presentable yet they just *didn't!* With Balan, the game looks like it runs just fine - it's just that it's ideas were bad. I can respect that.
CoD is mediocre (dunno, didnt play). There's little we can learn from it, so it bores us. Balan is just bad, like very bad, but there is a LOT we can learn from it (A LOT of things NOT to do).
In my opinion, Yes. Even though there were and there were a lot worse games put out there last year, its made by a massive company, costs full price and is still somehow a buggy, glitchy mess that is broken on a conceptual level. Just like something isn't objectively the best, it's completely fair to say something is the worst as its completely down to individual opinion.
This is honestly a game I want a feature-length documentary on just so I can see what went wrong with the production Because I'm sure as heck not gonna spend actual money to play it.
Warcraft 3: Reforged should be the worst game of 2020. Because it wasn't only a bad game in it's own right, but also ruined the original game it was Reforging.
Yeah is disappointment can be a lot more worse than bad. Cause the first teaser trailer looked good and then the demo came out and broke the septic tank. Also that asking price for a game with not much to it.
There's quite a LOT that can go into quality measurement from person to person. There's things like stability, count of positive qualities, count of negative qualities. Is it well written? Does it look appealing? Is the concept good? Is the execution handled well? How does it play? Too gimmicky? Too simple? You get the point, some people prize presentation, and I think Balan Wonderworld is a prime example of beautiful presentation... For the most part. So yeah, I can see WHY people like it, but that's not what I or other people with similar game tastes likely feel. And yes, it IS functional in gameplay, but that's sort of the thing. Gameplay that is mainly used as a connecting thread for better content feels more like a hassle to me, especially when there's not much of note aside tedium. You can HAVE a well functioning game with nothing inherently wrong (aside from the seizure inducing final boss attack, but that was patched as far as I know), but which will have gameplay that stands out more? Gameplay that is stable but shallow, or gameplay that is so writhed with messy glitches and clear oversights that you FEEL the uncanny valley the realm of video games can provide? By no means am I saying there's better QUALITY to that, but the clear blemish will much easier linger on the minds of the community aware of it. In terms of games and art as a whole, which do you think is better? Being Memorably BAD, or functional but forgettable? Neither is inherently good, but depending on circumstance and preference, people tend to feel one is better than the other.
Balan Wonderworld reminds me of what a "Bad" game was like in the PS2 era. It's sort of something that stopped happening. There were bad games on the PS2 were bad as games, controls, bugs, performance, what have you, but it was clearly a project that was dedicated to by *someone*. A good place to start looking for them is to look for games that were trying to be "the next great mascot platformer." Some might burn me at the stake because I guess being "meme" is a worthy defense, but I'd say "Gex" is a perfect example.
3D Gex wasn't too bad but it was still a bit more jank than other games of it's era. At least they had some innovative gameplay mechanics with the wall climbing and such. The original Gex I tend to forget exists because it's such a dull game. I still have no idea what Balan Wonderworld is. The only thing I know about it is that it apparently sucks. I don't know why it sucks, just that no one wants to talk about it except to say that it sucks (and not explain why it sucks). However, when I see the gameplay, it kinda reminds me of Billy Hatcher for some reason, which was a platformer that most people forgot as, while it was competent and fun in plenty of ways, it wasn't as fun or interesting at other platformers, and had mechanics that held back some of the fun factor with the awkward movement mechanics that can't decide between being too strict or too loose. Or perhaps Glover, which seemed neat but didn't do much to justify the horrible level design and painful goals.
Cheap shovelware games on steam may be bad. But triple A games that flop despite having all the resources in the world is a whole new realm of bad. They're tragic.
I think the only thing I liked about it was the movie parts and some of the visuals. The bosses and Balan look pretty good, really good even. But God this game (can I call it that?) Was a pain to play. It's even worse because a lot of nights into dream fans where really hoping and hyped for this game and it let them down hard.
I shit my pants one day last year and it wasn’t technically the worst day of the year but it was the worst day of the year. Balan feels like that to me.
While I've seen some folks liking the gameplay enough, it was definitely the characters that people preferred. I wouldn't call it the worst game of the year, but I would call it the most overhyped and underwhelming.
The point about bandwagonning also brings up a greater problem in Internet culture with people acting as if an entire fan base for something are all the same with the same opinions and the same toxic behaviour
As someone that truly love Balan Wonderworld, I do honestly respect people’s opinions on this game. I am fine people hating this game cause I actually understand why. I used to hate Balan but when I actually play the game 100% and read a novel, I personally enjoy it! I respect your opinions too! As long as people won’t causing problem like rude comments like “play better games” or passive aggressive for people hating the game they like. There’s nothing wrong with like or hate the games. Yes, even I think Balan Wonderworld is not a perfect game but I don’t think it deserve as a worst games. They had good potential.
I'll say this about the Balan Wonderworld demo: I liked it. I didn't think the game was worth full price, but I was excited when it went on sale and bought it. Haven't played the full game yet but I'm looking forward to it, though I also can imagine the gameplay loop getting repetitious and boring after a full game's playtime. I won't say everyone who dislikes the game is bandwagoning, obviously not, although I will say that in pretty much every instance my personal experience doesn't really line up with theirs. In some cases I've straight-up wondered if I got a different version of the demo somehow. And judging by the overall snarky tone of the usual critique, combined with the vagueness of their personal criticisms, I can't help but wonder how many people had their opinion influenced by others saying it was a horrible trainwreck rather than a just mild disappointment, and how many others didn't even play it and just decide to parrot other's opinions. Or how many people decided to exaggerate their opinions to appeal to the majority and get more clicks from people who want to hear their own opinion regurgitated back to them. I'm not accusing everyone of that, but I do think it's a factor to consider in regards to just how violently the game is despised. A part of me can't help but wonder if the internet didn't make it a meme to hate the game so passionately, would people even still care or remember it? I guess Balan Wonderworld, and the other example of Cyberpunk 2077, and things like No Man's Sky, Fable, Mass Effect 3 and countless other worthy examples, all really prove a point that a "Worst Game" rating and snarky internet vitriol usually has more to do with the overall meta-narrative of the game behind the scenes than the game itself in a vacuum. How it's usually judged more harshly due to expectation or hype than it's actual mechanics. Is that fair? I suppose in "just for fun" lists meant for clicks and entertainment, but I can't help but feel like it's damaging to the field of game analysis. Games should probably be rated on their own merits first and foremost, even if the context inevitably plays a factor. I agree that people should be allowed to hate anything they like, or disagree with the majority opinion and like something anyway. Although I'd personally argue that in any regard, hating or liking, backing up your opinions and explaining them is important. Rather than just "bad design", how do the bad design choices hinder your experience specifically? I think just blanket "THIS SUUUUCKKKSS!!!" type of constant dunking on a game the entire internet has collectively decided is bad can lead to negative consequences for the games industry as a whole. Everyone wants new ambitious and innovative 3D platformer, but when one is released and gets dunked on without explanation for why, it sends the wrong message to other gaming companies to not try it themselves. And while some people HAVE gone into detail about what they dislike of Balan Wonderworld, I feel like the actual critique is vastly overshadowed by the memes dunking on it for fun. Which isn't to say there isn't a time and place for the honest opinions of "THIS SUUUUUUUCCCKKS!!!" and we'd be missing a lot by not having that as well. I guess I don't know what the solution is. All I can say is "yes, it's fair to rank Balan Wonderworld as the worst game of the year, but I'd really prefer to hear why you think that." Just as the Nintendo Life article should've better explained why they thought it was worthy of praise rather than dissing people who didn't like it.
Definietly the best game to hate this year, but seriously so many wtf choices: one action button, so many useless powers(dragon that can shoot fire in a reasonable distance, teleporting through really thin walls, mario odyssey's flower powerup ugly sibling, box fox), really slow walking, the story doesn't make sense in the game, really bad npc animation, suprise musicals...etc.
I’m glad Arlo feels the need to emphasize how he respects the article’s author’s opinions while he adresses said article’s many faults. People like him are the voices we desperately need here on the internet, especially with so many bad-faith critics running rampant and becoming super popular in the process.
I hope that perhaps the developers who created this stick their ground and just go ahead and start fixing this game instead of leaving it a money dump. I get it's a single player game and that it'd give them almost no benefit, but if they actually made the game look all nice and good, I think they would actually have a good game on their hands. They just need to polish it up and perhaps change some of the biggest core flaws of the game. Though, will it happen? From the publisher who just said they want to implement NFTs and the Metaverse into their games? Hell no, and I think it's a darn shame.
A few months after this released, The demo was pulled, the game got a price cut to 40 bucks and Yuji Naka was let go from Square Enix. ....I'm probably not gonna hold my breath for any major updates here.
On one hand, I love the character designs (drawing them is so much fun) and the main concept of visiting other people’s worlds that are based on their interests and traumas. There’s so much potential to become something that many people could resonate with. On the other hand, I was so bored when I played the demo. The idea of using costumes sounds cool and couple of things were interesting, but the execution and gameplay was so odd and underwhelming. Also the in-game animations were either uncanny or meh. Especially compared to the opening which had expressive and energetic animation! Personally, I’m not a fan of the game itself, but I won’t shame anyone if they are. In fact, it’s awesome to see some finding enjoyment out of it. Unfortunately, I found it to be disappointing.
You should look up Psychonauts. It has you visiting the worlds inside peoples heads and exploring their traumas and thoughta. It's also a much better 3d platformer than Balan. I think you'd genuinely really enjoy it.
@@pinkdarkman Oh yea, I I’ve heard of that game before! Especially since the sequel came out not too long ago. I don’t know much about it gameplay wise, but the art style looks very unique and gives me Invader Zim vibes! I really want to check it out when I have the chance.
Well this helps me understand the hate on Sonic games over other games that are way worse, when talking about only games from bigger developers and publishers. I still think there's a lot of Sonic that is overhated, but that helps me get into the shoes of those who consider them as bad as they do. And yes, I do still respect those who hate most Sonic games, even if I disagree (as long as their actual opinions are that they hate it and not just jumping on the bandwagon). Oh and Balan Wonderworld was bad IMO too.
The thing with criticism, is that it's meant to be a learning experience, either for the creator themselves or for other creators/players to learn from. Every game, nay every thing, has its Do's and Do Not's that you can take from it, whether to create something or to find what you enjoy. And generally, if the game is coming up with many Do Not's and few-to-none Do's, then you just might have a contender for worse game of the year.
But I do think criticism must be fair to be criticism for many cases like these. Reason being for some stuff is that not every attempt at criticizing is fair, and if it was "all valid" (which includes criticism conflicting with each other) then how is it "important" then? You know what I mean?
I agree, and that's why fairness is generally down to the eye of the beholder really. Getting a genuine bout of criticism from someone you don't know, especially on the internet, is always a gamble, considering a high number of people who do criticise, don't like to participate in good faith arguments. But, there is a general consensus you can take with cases like these I think. Of course there's going to be hate-train people, but you can generally root them out by finding people who never balance their argument by never at least attempting to find a positive. As such, from the general consensus I've seen, I think it's perfectly valid to call Balan Wonderworld the worst game of the year, EVEN IF people have praised the cinematics and I like that they attempted to try do their own attempt at a chao garden. All criticism is really down to personal preference, as is listening to it. Maybe these kind of videos stating that there is a presence of a bandwagon, helps people be aware of a bit of general bias when making their own decision?
@@dr.badguyreviews6785 Interesting, I don't really exactly agree this idea that a "consensus" is always justified regardless you were saying it matters or not. There are for example, some films and maybe some games that are underrated and the only reason why it was hated was due to bias, but I do think it's possible to somewhat objectively recognize levels of quality, partly depending on what the creator was trying to achieve. Though I am sticking to trust the general consensuses of BW, mainly because I saw some videos of the game too. Haha
@@SpaceOmega-zz6vs I never said "always", I said "cases like these". Again, general consensus is another tool in the criticism handbook, especially in blanket statements like "Worst Game of the Year". Objective is a loaded term though, for Balan Wonderland objectively functions, objectively runs on hardware and objectively obtains what Yuji Naka was going for, single button gameplay. Now, if that gameplay is good, the general CONSENSUS is no.
@@dr.badguyreviews6785 Yeah I think I was trying to be careful about that, but just wanted to give the point alone. Sorry for any mistake I've made here. I think it's useful as a likelihood of bad, not itself a criticism (sorry if I assume wrong from you) unless it ties with a certain thing. When I think objective when critiquing sometimes, I usually mean recognizing the creator's intention for some stuff and seeing if something in certain games screws that up. If the creator intended BW to be fun for a lot of people, then the negative consensus might be itself criticism and as useful feedback.
What really sucks is that the character and art for this game look fantastic and beautiful, which makes sense since the creator of Sonic worked on it. That however wasn’t able to save it
I reckon people who bring asset flips into debates like this are failing to consider the cost of production. Let's say all games start at 0 points and gain points for content, style, story, aesthetics, enjoyability... etc, after this people really ought to be deducting points for what the game cost to produce/aquire, what was the game's budget? How many people worked on it? What kind of big names worked on it? How much does the game cost retail? If something costs more to make then it's expected to better, losing points for big names and high budgets helps to show a game's value in comparison to other tiers of game production, the hope of having a big name is to use that talent to earn enough points to outweigh the cost of using them. Asset flips score next to nothing but cost next to nothing to make too, their score usually balances out at just 0. Games like balan wonderland are a different matter, as a core product they earn more points from the get go for actually being a game, having content. However the points they gain can't outweigh the costs, Square Enix, Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima, there's a fair few big names tied to this game, it had a AAA development cycle AND released at a AAA price, these costs start to put balan wonderland into the negative scores, making it score worse that asset flips. This system also helps explain how games like undertale and other indie titles score so highly, when they're made well and are enjoyable they earn a lot of points for their content, then you look over to the cost side, small teams/solo devs aren't going to lose many points, they don't have big names to tie themselves to (Toby Fox wasn't really known at all until Undertale), and they usually retail at lower prices, they don't lose many points so the work on the game can stand for itself.
I heard Nintendo is working on Mario Kart 9 and I want them to hear us out about adding Captain Falcon to the roster. He's been away from the race track for too long. If you agree, help spread the word. CAPTAIN FALCON FOR MARIO KART 9.
random thought: if taking one bite of a casserole is compared to a demo of a game, with eating the full thing compared to finishing a game/ playing through it, does that imply the existence of casserole completionists?
This is kinda off topic but I REALLY love these green screen videos. I love the goofy first few seconds of random stuff you do and I appreciate the pure off script topics you talk about. It's like I'm sitting with you and were just having a quirky discussion about video games.
MAybe we should make two lists. One can be "Worst Games of xxxx, where we put broken shit from big publishers (like GTA Remasters); and then another list of "Biggest Wastes of Budget", where we put games that work as intended but are just bad, like Balan Wonderworld and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
I feel like saying nothing is objectively bad is being incredibly generous. Balan Wonderworld is objectively bad. The controls. The pacing. The graphics. The failure. Objectively bad. The fact that Balan Wonderworld fell short of all financial expectations and the fact that this discussion even exists means it's objectively bad, but people got their own tastes so they'll enjoy what they enjoy. More power to them.
I don't think the graphics are bad, so already this is subjective. Going by pure stats and general opinion it's a objective failure, but I've heard of people who like the game, so by personal standards it's...personal.
I think the world would be slightly better if people could admit that the game they like is bad like yeah i know it sucks i still like it tho. For me that game is Sonic Unleashed I know the Werehog sucks still love it tho (The jazz music still haunts me)
@@speedslider3913 That's fair. One part of the game can't be bad but it can still be a bad game. Bad things can be enjoyed. There are people who enjoy Green Lantern, but it's a bad movie. There are bad books that are poorly written that can still be enjoyed. Saying Balan Wonderland can be a good game to some because they enjoy ignores how poorly it was made and all the expectations it fell short of, financially and by the majority of the fans who were looking forward to it.
@@speedslider3913 but also by 2021 standards and the budget the developers had, they're bad. They had a visual art style they were going for, but didn't meet it halfway. Video games have choice of art style, but if you're going for a certain art style and fall short of that even though you have the resources to exceed, it's bad.
@@pkpyro2000 I thoroughly enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 but it was a bad game. Crashes, glitches, cut content. But I can't say I didn't enjoy my time with it.
On a similar point, I remember a few people (notably Yahtzee) picked "The Last of Us Part 2" as the worst game of the year, and while I don't know many others who went that far, it got a lot of hate from fans when it came out. I find that's a much more interesting debate personally. I would say that, objectively, it's an unbelievably well crafted game. Which is all the more impressive for the developers given the hostile working conditions at naughty dog. Even most of the detractors don't really bash the gameplay as much as they bash the narrative, and the choices made to tell the story. That's something that is much more subjective and likely to divide people in understandable ways. I can legitimately see people saying it's the best game of the year or the worst one. It's certainly one that made me feel the most depressed in a while, but ultimately I found enough purpose in the misery to feel like it was worth it. Others didn't and that it's endless parade of bleakness had no point and its attempts at "seriousness" fell flat. Granted, I'm being generous with the game's backlash. There are some criticisms which I would argue are just flat out wrong (like complaining about a certain spoiler that happens quite early in the game), but that's the trickiness of things like this, isn't it?
I think the worst thing that could have happened to Balan Wonderworld isn't being just a bad game (which it is) but instead because Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, were behind the game now has a fanbase of over-defensive toxic-positivity people who shun down any and all criticism of the game and deny and of its issues *much like Sonic fans* (like the Nintendo Life article was pretty laughable how it ended saying that BW is better than Bowser's Fury _...yeah fucking right)_ btw, very ironic that they allowed that thought piece considering they themselves gave the game a low-score and on their RUclips channel made lenghty discussions about how much it sucked and the article itself bashes the Switch port when you know _it's a Nintendo-centric newsite _*_for Nintendo fans._* It probably got there for easy clickbait most likely.
I've heard so many people tell me "you decided that you're not gonna watch this movie cause of the trailer? That's not fair to the movie!" Trailers are meant to gage if you're interested in a product it's meant to sell you the product. If the trailer is bad then I'll, understandably, assume the product is bad and not engage with it
When it came out, I thought "There's no way it's _that_ bad, right?" And then I got to the part in Alpharad's video where the only way to quit out of the baseball minigame was to go to the main menu.
That 3D Kirby game looks like it will be kinda like Balan but way better. Using different powers(costumes) to solve environmental puzzles in a colorful 3D world.
Congrats on eclipsing 600k Arlo! Been a fan of the channel for a few years now and it's been fun experiencing everything Nintendo through the lenses of a fuzzy blue monster such as yourself. Hoping you are well!
Also, bringing negative coverage to small indie stuff in a “worst _____ of the year” list/video just feels like unnecessary punching down. We mainly focus on the relatively high profile stuff because we actually have reasonable expectations for those creators to meet a baseline level of quality and ripping on them for failing to do so isn’t going to tank their careers. If an indie developer comprised of three people comes out with a bad game, we can cut them some slack because at least they tried right? Although, I’ll say one thing about Balan: it at least felt like it had some passion put into it. Even if it didn’t end up being, you know, good, I can at least respect the devs for having some sort of vision.
Not just cut some slack, even if the game is not objectively worse, having it made by a team of paid professionals just makes the degree of failure that much deeper in comparison to an amateur fing around with some assets and an engine.
It's weird how they didn't look to the fundamentals of this game. Even walking simulators have a base line in regards to the game being enjoyable to control. Games usually do prototypes to test the game with just placeholding assets to check if the simple act of playing feels good. But this game seemed to have started with the presentation and then finding out ways to combine all the ideas it had. A better game this reminded me of is Space Station Silicon Valley. In that game instead of different costumes you're a robot posessing robot animals each one having 1 or 2 abilities, some can't jump, others can't attack others can't move fast, etc. The levels take account of those limitations and only place a certain number or animals you have to hunt down to take control over them. So I think it's not the ideas or the design decision of having simple controls. But only the execution and game design. Maybe it started as another thing, because it does feel like the game aspect came later, maybe the costumes were made first and then the levels. Hard to tell how this passed a lot of decision making staff.
Honestly I didn't think Balan was that bad. I mean yeah it plays like a game that was made a few decades ago and the story being a separate book was an... interesting choice (kinda reminds me of the old Ultima days). But the art direction is gorgeous, the gameplay, while basic, is at least fun in small doses, and while I had to read a separate book to get the story which is still dumb, the story was honestly pretty deep and something I would love to see more of (emphasis on see*). Is it a good game? No, not by a long shot. But worst? ...nah.
Nah, it was bad no doubt but the GTA Trilogy remaster was absolutely atrocious. Shit framerate across all platforms (should a game be running below 30 fps on PS5?), countless bugs, spelling errors. That had potential, but Rockstar rushed it out to capitalize on fans and newcomers alike.
Perfect video on the topic I say. I mean, I've never heard of this game, but saying people don't actually hate it and just jumping on the band wagon is the same as saying you don't have an argument for people's criticisms so you would like to pretend those criticisms don't exist. It's like gate keeping in fandoms, you must have played/watched/read this much material from a given media to be considered a "real fan". Now they're saying you must have played so much of the game to complain about it or say you're disappointed.
My keys to a low stress year, drink until i forget to remember not to drink again and repeat everytime I get stressed, then get anxious when I think about stress so drink more
I feel like whoever is trying to say that Balan is actually a good game only watched the cinematics and a couple of promotional still frames. I don't get why many people feel the need to defend bad games, and when I say "defend" I mean trying to pass them as actual masterpieces that should be shielded from real criticisms. The same also happened for other games like Cyberpunk, GTA trilogy and the last Pokemon games.
Sometimes I feel that people only put some games on a "Worst Game" list because if they don't they feel the game goes on a "Best Game" list and a game can simple be.. OK. A game can be "Eh.." It can be not a good game, but not THE WORST game. I don't hear Balan Wonderworld throwing women, trans people, and other marginalized people under a bus for it's marketing and in game commentary, and that at least sets it above other games.
Simple response to the video title: "Yes. It came out this year, something has to be the 'Worst game of the year', it can absolutely be in the running."
The only thing that Balan Wonderworld grabbed me was the design of Balan and nothing else. I really dig his design. I never touched the game and don’t plan on doing so any time soon. I’ll stick with watching people play it instead of me.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
The real problem is that the game works as intended. The game breaking issues are at a conceptual level, which can't be fixed without starting over from scratch.
That not true ok it get better you all think
If you're the other Jared, who's the og Jared
No it not Jason either yt as The one made Jaystationyt yes he says I'm hate on hem no I give him real love he mad at me because I did come at the time I could come how I can't jump on bus like you Man I trying to here you think I'm not doing shit because my phone on All Time it does meng I'm sat on my ass ok thanks for it
Yes, it's just a fundamentally terrible idea to have so many different character forms in a platformer. You can't design fun levels around that.
@@larryericjackson2148 are you an AI? My brain can't parse these comments you're leaving
Worst game of the year? Debatable
Most disappointing game of the year? Now that's much more justifiable
yeah it's by no means the worst, in fact i'm sure i can find another triple A game that was even worse for me [pokemon sword and shield didn't come out in 2021 but yikes. that would've been a no brainer]
but most disappointing? also no because i've never played NiGHTS or anything similar really, but i see where people are coming from if they had prior attachments
it's BECAUSE it sucked so bad i ended up enjoying it, yeah the cliff hanger ending kinda sucks ass but that just gives me an excuse to write my own continuation fanfiction. that is the running theme with my experience lmao
it was bad, but bad in a way where it's fun to think about what to improve upon!
*BDSP has joined the call*
I really wanted to like this game when I first heard about it. : [
@@Steve_SBU I’m not gonna say it was perfect at all but one worst games of the year I think that’s also a stretch same for SWSH
@@Santoryu90 I was commenting more on the most disappointing game of the year part of the comment, it can’t really be the worst game because it’s just a reskin of an already good game
"There should be no limit to our hate." I want to clip that with audio because that is the funniest thing I think I've ever heard out of Arlo.
What frustrates me about Balan is the character/boss design is SO GOOD and it's a shame it's wasted on the rest of it. Balan, the main villain, the bosses, the costumes (the enemy/NPC versions, not when you're wearing them as a suit) are all incredible. Seriously, go look up "Balan concept art" or "Balan character art". It's like NiGHTS or Adventure era sonic mixed with a monster collecting series like Pokemon but also with trippy stained glass/rainbow tribal tats, it's wild and really cool.
The antagonist's name is Lance.
What frustrates me even more is the over reliance of realistic motion capture on Naoto Ohshima’s heavily stylized character designs. Even Sega phased out the reliance on motion capture after how bad it looked in Sonic ‘06, you would have thought Balan would have learned almost 15 years later. They don’t even try to mask the uncanny “mascot effect”, if anything they maximize the awkwardness during the infamous dance sequences.
Everything but the actual gameplay is great about the game tbh, the music, cutscenes, designs, even the graphics are pretty nice. But you can't enjoy that when the gameplay is so bad
@@thaddeoust8455 sexy balan at the end is pretty cursed. Not to mention the dance numbers.
The game really suffered from its restricted controls, like it really seems like it had a lot of potential but only using one button per character was it's death sentence. Especially when you lose abilities from taking damage, damage dodging is fun for challenges but not the ENTIRE game.
The only thing I like about Balan is the cinematics. I was sold on the cinematic trailer when it was announced. After watching the official gameplay... boi... not worth the pain to get all the sweet beautiful cutscenes. 😵💫
You must have forgotten about the farmer scene
@@Android480 Actually that was pretty ok. Also, I had to check again to see if I'm missing something, I came to realized the intro with the kids (before heading into Balan's shop) is a bit cringe. 😅
@@CyberKnightProbably YO THE DANCING SCENES, those cracked me up too! I eventually stopped watching the next dancing sequences after the halfway point. They got boring.
@@Hilly_LittleFeatheryCorner the game had too many worlds even if the dancing scenes were part of the boy’s character development while unlocking the English versions of the songs in the dance were part of the girl’s.
From what I remember hearing, the animation division of their company had to fight to get those in. So know that without their invention, Balan Wonderworld would have nothing.
I think instead of "Worst Games of the Year" a better list might be "Most Noteworthy Failures of the Year." Anyone can make a bad video game, no one really cares about that. It's when a project has a lot of money, or hype, or a big name attached to it, and then it flops hard, that's when it's interesting. Those are the ones that leave people discussion what went wrong, or about worrisome trends in the games industry.
I'd be down for a list like that but I definitely wouldn't take it over "Worst Games of the Year" lists, because with that there's a unique list for every person you ask and it's fun seeing that even if the games themselves repeat a lot. But I feel like there's a lot more objectivity to judging noteworthiness, and it'd just become "what bad games did the most people talk about".
Angry Joe has a "Top 10 most disappointing games of the Year" next to his "Top 10 worst games of the Year", and I think balan definitely fits that.
Yeah but it can be a failure and still be one of the worst games of that year; those concepts are not mutually exclusive
+
I would put Mighty No 9 in that category too, I really liked Mighty No 9 but understand why it flopped hard
Thank you for saying this Arlo, I finally have the guts to say that 1674 was a garbage year for video games. Not a single good release.
Hide and seek came out that year and that was a huge part of my childhood! >:(
@@roosterboots4684 omg I did not expect to laugh out loud from the comments section but this one did it 😂
@@roosterboots4684 Yeah, maybe with mods to adjust the time limit, but then you also have to have a rig that can handle the varying amount of hiding spaces as well as character height balance, and those didn't become affordable until 1802.
@@roosterboots4684 Hide and Seek had the POTENTIAL to be good, but it's weak anti-cheat allowed for far too many wall hacks, ruining what could have been a genuinly fun experience. Instead we got nothing but trash.
@@CrocvsGator Pshhh. I had a 50 dollar rig back in 1799. Get good.
"There should be no limits... To our *_hate._* "
-- Arlo 2022
Said the depressed jaded puppet.
#MOREHATE2022
That's gonna sound splendid out of context.
"Where does all that hate go?"
"Good, good. Let the hate flow through you"
What I've seen is that instead of talking about the "worst games of x year" some creators have started to call them "most disappointing games" to avoid these types of arguments since some people can't seem to grasp what they actually mean when they say what's the worst game of the year like you've explained.
Equally subjective & vulnerable to arguments.
@@kneau I wouldn't say equally, disappointing isn't as "strong" of a word as 'worst' and sounds more subjective. It also gives more of an idea that you were expecting more from it hence the disappointment instead of just plainly calling it the "worst" game reducing the number of more emotional responses. As for it being vulnerable to arguments well people will always be mad at something no matter what you say or how you put it but I do believe this can help decrease them.
@@V0xKey "...instead of talking about the _worst games of x year_ some creators have started to call them _most disappointing games_ to avoid these types of arguments..."
My reply was/is stating "most disappointing" & "worst" are equally subjective. 🤷🏻♀️
@@V0xKey slight addendum - it can be objective to label a game the worst. I forgot about literal math/code; designating something the worst can be an appropriate/objective act. 🤷🏻♀️
@@kneau EVERY stinking award is subjective, disappointment means there were expectations ahead of the release, people aren't going to have high expectations for some 2 dollar indie game from some no name person, but something made from a big budget studio from the creator of one of the most well known gaming icons in the world sold for full price!! Yeah, I think it makes more sense to call it most disappointing rather than worst
Feel free to disagree, but that's just my take
Watching a muppet stand in front of a greenscreen and say, unironically, "There should be no limits to our hate" is already the highlight of 2022 for me. Somebody, please make use of this.
We should Photoshop that scene over all of Palpatine's appearances in The Rise of Skywalker. Goodness knows that he'd be a better villain than Darth Bathrobe the Generic ever was.
Use #morehate2022 everywhere.
Balan is an example of the kind of game I genuinely feel sorry for.
It has a nice premise. And functionally it operates for the most part. And for that reason alone I cannot call it "worst game of the year".
It's still a bad game. Nothing came together. It did not approach anything the right way. It failed to do what it set out to do in every regard.
I hope someday the IP is given a second chance, because I want Balan to be good. But this first go around is just heartbreaking.
They need to redo it from scratch. I felt pretty heartbroken when I played the game and it turned out to be bad because it had so much potential.
I personally would love if they could make a movie or a tv series out of Balan Wonderworld. The cinematics and music were really incredible in the game and the premise was solid too. So to make it a movie or series sounds more fitting to me.
@@Smiley-pe6vu if you had played Rodea you would have known yuji has long been washed up
_And functionally it operates for the most part_ disagree, it's game design is broken at the core: the whole gameplay basically sums up as using a very specific set of costumes in the given level in order to progress through, the problem is that is not only a guess game sometimes but you can actually lose the equipped costume and it can potentially get you stuck in the middle of the level and if that happens you either hunt for another one or if you can't even backtrack reset the whole thing.
And while the game is indeed not as bad as an asset flip just because of _dev merits_ the fact that it's being compared to those games speaks for it's quality.
They even made a whole company named after it because they were that sure it would succeed
@@Xfushion2 I was talking about on a code-based level. Yes the gameplay is a big fault, but aside from needing to patch out the graphical bug with the final boss, I don't recall any game-breaking glitches or physics inconsistencies.
Yeah, I’m glad the demo was able to save many people their money.
Yeah and if you wanted to play the entire game you could the demo had the entire game on there. I think the devs figured people would naturally get bored of the game and stop playing the demo was definitely a warning
@@pkpyro2000 really? I played the demo and got bored so I never knew
@@pkpyro2000
R U joking?
@@castonyoung7514 Nope it’s an oversight on the devs part. I guess they just expected people to stop playing at some point. I think the game crashes when you try to go to the final boss fight tho. But at that point you’d probably want to stop playing anyway.
"There should be no limit to our hate."
Arlo the Monster.
I think it should be called dissapointment or criticism of this game because hate IMO is a strong word and not to hate on the game, but criticise it.
The biggest problem with Balan was that “one action” concept. That and having to back track to get costumes from earlier levels, because the disappear with one hit.
They designed the game around bad ideas, because they wanted to design a bunch of costumes that have overlapping uses. They were married to a concept without considering how to make it work.
Yeah that's the issue with the game. If they had 30 monsters with 2 or 3 actions each, that would have been enough TBH.
I mean, Look at Kirby. They used to only have one action per ability.
@@cosmicspacething3474 True, but the controls on Kirby are well done.
From what I've heard of Balan Wonderworld, it's controls aren't.
@@cosmicspacething3474 Difference is that Kirby copy abilities are mostly used to attack enemies, and not used for platforming.
@@YujiUedaFan or they couldv just made the game into an action-platfomer in a similar way to Ratchet & Clank by dividing the costumes power and abilities.
What Arlo is trying to say is that the bigger the swing, the bigger the miss.. and thus more people will notice and talk about it (Cyberpunk, anyone?).
And that's what Balan Wonderworld was. Big swing, _monumental_ miss. No doubt about it.
1:15 “Just have your opinion, don’t be so antagonistic about it, *it does not make for healthy discourse.* ” This cannot be stated enough.
This is the main (and one of my favorite) difference between Arlo and a lot of other content creators; Arlo can be super critical, but he doesn’t belittle or insult people who hold a different opinion.
Congrats on a well-deserved 600K.
Agreed, though Arlo did rub me the wrong way a bit recently when he tweeted that anyone who disagreed about Nintendo prioritizing hiring minorities instead of "the right person for the job" should just unfollow him right now because there's so much evidence to prove this kind of thinking is rooted in systemic racism. I thought this was very out of character for him and it was disappointing to see. He wasn't interested in leaving the door open for rational discussion at all and closed the comments, then got upset about what people who retweeted it were saying.
I'm white, yes, but I'm from a small Appalachian town in Kentucky that is severely economically limited and where opportunities are few and far between. Our economy was dependent almost entirely on the coal industry, and when that went under, lots of people lost their jobs and had to move away to look for opportunities elsewhere. Which isn't always easy when people judge you as an uneducated, backwards, incest hillbilly because of your accent. Most don't even try to leave, and they end up turning to drugs to cope with their depression and have no good healthcare options available for them to rehabilitate. I'm not saying white privilege doesn't exist in some places, but everyone's circumstance is different, and there are plenty of white folks out there struggling to get by. I've heard an analogy that saying "All Lives Matter" in response to "Black Lives Matter" is like having a group of people sit down for dinner, and everybody has a full plate except for one person. When that one person speaks up and says they want food, the rest of the table responds with, "We'd all like food" in spite of the fact they're stuffing their faces. This isn't a completely fair comparison, as many of us in Appalachia are also sitting there going, "Hey guys, we'd like to eat, too." I want the black community to thrive as much as anyone, but Arlo, like so many other RUclipsrs and TV personalities and Left-wing politicians, lives in the well-off state of California, where white people don't face these problems to the same degree. I used to be ashamed of my "redneck" accent and worked hard to get rid of it over the course of several years because I didn't want to sound stupid. But I've only recently come to realize this was society conditioning me to think my accent was somehow lesser the same way a black man might think he has to get rid of his "hood" dialect to not be thought of as a "thug." Neither one is fair, and we should be advocating for the best for all groups to make sure no one gets discriminated against. We can not fight bias with more bias.
I could have respectfully disagreed with Alro's opinion, but because he was so quick to point fingers and close any discussion about it, it kept me from being able to engage in any sort of rational dialogue about it with him that I think may have been a great opportunity for us all to understand each other a little better. But no, once again the plights of my community go ignored, because we've been told by other white people who have it better than us that we have white fragility and are part of the problem. And that's really, really disappointing to me.
Don't get me wrong, I still love Arlo's content and think more highly of him than most RUclipsrs. But it stung, I'm not gonna lie. And I hate feeling this way when he's done so much good. I suffer from OCD, and when Alro posted on Twitter about his diagnosis, I thought that was super brave of him and reached out on Cameo to ask how he copes with it. His response was super thoughtful, and he played a big role in helping me decide to start medicating, which has been one of the best decisions of my life. The anxiety has gone down so much and I'm significantly happier, and I'll always be thankful for his considerate response.
So yeah, he raises a great point in the video, and he's always been very good at applying that to the discourse around video games. I understand politics are a much more touchy subject--and for good reason: it's a big deal--but that shouldn't mean that's where we draw the line in terms of when to show respect.
@@nintentrovert Huh. I’m not on Twitter so I didn’t actually know this, but you’re right that that sounds out of character. You’re right that politics are touchy, and he probably wanted to keep that out of his feed both for his sake and his follower’s sake, though I don’t know his exact thought process so I can’t put words in his mouth.
I can’t really comment on your own experience, but your comment about “fighting bias with bias” is interesting. In a lot of instances it comes from a good place, and I appreciate that kind of intent of things as a Black person, but I wouldn’t want to get something that someone deserves more than me.
Oh yeah, two other points I quickly wanted to make:
1. You're probably right--I don't think Arlo closed the comments to purposefully be malicious. I wouldn't have thought anything of it if it weren't for how confrontational the original post and his subsequent comments seemed. But if you're going to call people out, it would be nice to give them a chance to offer a rebuttal.
2. I often her people say, "Well why does the most qualified person always have to be a straight, white male?" But for the record, I know there are plenty members of the other sex and people of differing ethnicities who are way more talented at certain things than I ever will be. If I miss out on a job opportunity because a black man, or an Asian woman, or a gay person had a better resumé, then so be it. They earned it fair and square by putting in the time and effort. I follow a black character artist on Twitter who is also a woman, and she makes some of the most incredible art I've ever seen. I consider myself a decent drawer, but I don't know that I could ever live up to her work, no matter how hard I try.
@@FedoraKirb I also typed a really long comment where I linked the original Twitter post and went into more of my thoughts, but I'm not seeing it for some reason? Let me know if it published for you, I probably typed for close to an hour and would really hate to redo it, lol.
@@nintentrovert RUclips doesn’t like links in comments.
Definitely a fair assessment, as you said, the true list would consist of games on Steam I probably scrolled past at an absurd speed not even sparing a glance. It's an entirely different matter when a game manages to attract your attention and give you that sense of promise that you'll have a good and enjoyable experience with it, only to swiftly crush that sentiment. Also, grats on 600K.
I think you hit the nail on the head that the game itself isn’t what makes it terrible so much as the context behind it. Asset flip games suck but they are also not the product of major funding and countless hours of work. Balan, on the other hand, was made by a wealthy game development studio with a well regarded game developer heading it and still turned out as a generally bad game. Like Cyberpunk, it’s not just that it failed, but that it had so many reasons why it *shouldn’t* have failed.
I feel similarly that FnaF Security Breach is a pretty spectacularly bad game to come out recently. Which stinks because I love that series but the level of bugs and glitches are awful. Worse is that the intentional design of several parts of the game are bad. And this was supposed to be the *big* transition for the series. It didn’t have nearly as many “reasons to succeed” as balan but it was still spectacularly disappointing.
I think Secuirty Breach is at least more salvageable of a game than Balan, which was broken from the core. Security Breach has good graphics and there are good parts to the game play, it's really just missing content, the saving system, and the bugs and unpolishedness that drag it down, but updates to add back some content, fix the bugs, and allow saving after 6PM would alleviate a lot of peoples' major complaints.
The difference between Balan and Cyberpunk is that as horrible as the bugs were, Cyberpunk at least had something enjoyable about it. While Balan, at best, was mediocre, and worst kind of insulting to the player.
What comes to my mind is Back 4 Blood. It was hyped up as the successor to Left 4 Dead 2, but it had absolutely zero of Valve's insane levels of care and attention to detail that the original series had. It wound up being a weird, buggy, boring, cringey letdown, when it had seemed like the potential for a perfect game was just staring the devs in the face.
Turns out, just because these old games _looked_ simple, does not at all mean that they _were._ We often forget that in their heyday, these games rose to the top of ugly piles of similar, yet terrible, games in their genres. They weren't the _only_ games of their kind... they were the _best_ of their kind. And when people today try to re-capture the magic through their nostalgia glasses, they unfortunately just end up creating more crappy failures to add to the piles already made and forgotten in decades past.
Also what does it matter if Balan is not an asset flip game if people still dislike it either way? sure just because of _development merits_ Balan trumps the average asset flip game, does not change the fact that people would rather play dozens of games before it. And the fact that Balan is being compared with asset flip games doesn't vouch for it's quality in any way.
I thought Security Breach was the best FNAF game yet personally
I'd say it's the most popular "worst" game. Anyone can make a nothing game and have it be objectively bad. But a bad game with a legacy? A major build up to release that disappoints everyone? That's the magical kinda of bad you don't see often
*cough* Mighty No. 9 *cough*
i call this game balan wonderland in my head every single time. why didn't they call it that. IT WAS RIGHT THERE.
10:54 "there should be no limits to our hate"
well said, arlo.
"Most Disappointing Games of the Year" is probably the better wording for these kinds of lists. Sonic 06, Duke Nukem Forever, certainly not the worst games of their respective years, but DEFINITELY the games with a lot of people looking forward to them only to be disappointed on playing/watching them.
Its weird cause from looking at gameplay you wouldn't think that it was worst game of the year worthy but when you play it your like "yeah this is definitely not good"
I think that it's fair to call it the worst game, I played the demo, and I hated it as well. I think that it might not be fair to call an indie project the worst game of the year, a game from a newer studio, with fewer people working on it, BUT THIS IS SQAURE ENIX! They're a massive studio, and I think that contributes to why its being called the worst game of the year.
Lesson here is don't trust Yuki Naka and vet the team he picks.
@@ZalYagunRyai I feel like there had to be some kind of insider sabotage, because it doesn't look like it got the complete support by Square-Enix it needed. Could've had a shoestring budget because Square-Enix didn't want to make a platformer, and then also had very limited people working on it, plus Covid-19 on top, but we just don't know what happened behind the scenes. Eh.
@@ZalYagunRyai well the main issue was the development, and lack of preparation.
Hes mainly a programmer than designer
@@ZalYagunRyai This game is not Yuki Naka's idea this was square's Yuki only agreed to make this. The problem is while Yuki Naka is a verrrry talented producer, he is not a good director.
I just wanna say that, regardless of the game, I absolutely fell in love with the novel adaptation they wrote alongside it. The story is simple, but fairly solid for someone like Yuji Naka (I believe it was written with help from a Japanese children's author). I like the characters, the illustrations, and the reveal at the ending was honestly pretty cool. It even inspired my own work a very tiny bit.
Something like Balan Wonderworld would definitely fit more as a children's animated film than a video game. Or, at least, don't seperate the story from the game as much as they did.
For those who wanna read the book, I believe it's $10 on Amazon Kindle. Even if you don't read the whole thing, it's at least worth a small peek.
TIL that there was a novel about this game
@@logicaltips4107 Yup, and it's kinda interesting honestly. Like everything that happens in the game makes a lot more sense if you read the novel.
@@logicaltips4107 Even if you have no intention of playing the game, Id recomend checking it out, its a pretty good read (also it's literally both the set up and rising action of the game's story so it's kind of essential to make sense of anything)
“Is Balance WonderWorld really a bad game?” If a company has to remove the demo off of every platform what do YOU think 🤔?
In all seriousness Arlo, this was a good discussion and makes perfect sense maybe Balan would have been impressive 15-20 years ago, but now it’s pretty yikes that it came out the way it did.
Baland wonderworld is one of the most interesting games I've ever seen
Most flawed games can have their issues marked down to a few things
Bugs or glitches, developer oversight, rushed unfinishedness, greed, ect. There's usually some culprit standing in the way of a game's potential
But here?
It doesn't feel rushed or greedy or super buggy, it's just straightforward bad in the game's core
If I didn't know any better I'd say this game was carefully engineered to become terrible on purpose
It was $60 at launch, so there was some greed involved
@@AkameGaKillfan777 yes but when a gamenis ruined by greed I moreso mean in the sense of extensive micro transactions or pay 2 win elements or cut content to be resold as DLC
60 dollars for a game is just the triple A industry standard
I don't like it but it is what it is what it is
I wonder if it is just a question of yuji naka's tastes being weird
@@camoking3609 They could've fought a little harder
11:02 you got it boss
Lol
I hate when people call every single instance of a large group agreeing on something "bandwagoning." There are plenty of instances of real actual bandwagoning that occurs that could be called out, but instead they call out people who have the sheer gall to not like the thing they like. People have the right to not like a game separately, they can all dislike it together too.
This should be pinned
@@AkameGaKillfan777 Why do i see you everywhere?
@@cakelayer Maybe because we watch some of the same channels?
I'd say so, this game had a chance and failed miserably.
There's healthy questioning of the accepted belief, and then there's smug contrarianism. When somebody advocates for something unpopular, it's a welcome challenge to the prevailing opinion and may be well reasoned or not. When somebody disdains the popular opinion as poorly-founded and asserts the challenger's superiority, then the argument is automatically poorly-reasoned and I have no interest in the other points.
Finally someone let me hate games freely, now Arlo's channel is a safe space for us!
Great video as always.
Balan disappointed me for the exact same reason Sonic games always do... Balan as a character design was so frickin cool! Now he's forever associated with poorly made games.
Yes. What a disappointment. I'm all for the more 3D platformers movement, and when they send half baked messes to store shelves and get terrible sales, it encourages companies to not try anymore.
A Hat in Time, New Super Lucky's Tale and the Toree games would like to have a word with you.
Do I need to list 500 FPS for every one of the two you listed? Of course some will still exist, but in the 90s, there were tons of them. They're practically extinct.
@@nicorobin5978 gaming changes and preferences change. The late 90s are gone. We have very few 3d platformers nowadays and that's alright. 2d platformers are still going strong and that's what matters. Lol
It's almost like people have different preferences, or like variety is good. Feel free to be a tool and say only what you want matters, but with a ton of developers in the industry I'm all for 2D platformers for you, FPS for other people, and 3D platformers for people as well. When there's a variety everyone wins.
If 2D platformers fall out of style, I hope no one says "The 2020s are gone. We have very few 2D platformers nowadays and that's all right." to you. I wouldn't want you to feel Berned.
@@nicorobin5978 2D platformers may go out of style one day. FPS may as well go out of style.
You can't make games for variety sake. You must have a significant market out there. Considering making an average 3d platformer is difficult. Making a good 3d platformer is very difficult. Making a great 3d platformer is extremely difficult. Even designing the course/worlds to provide an enjoyable experience in 3d is expensive and sales don't match the effort. The last good true 3d platformer was crash bandicoot & sales was lukewarm.
Important distinction though: Even if you're absolutely free to hate GAMES as much as you want, that has nothing to do with how you treat actual people, and fans of those games you hate are still people. There's no threshold of hate for a game where it becomes acceptable to treat other people badly, and it's easy to let feelings related to a game shift into abusive behavior because games don't cry like people do when you hurt them.
Fans aren't punching bags there to stand in for the game and don't exist to represent everything you hate about it.
I think people should accept Yuji Naka was never a good game designer. He was an excellent 2D game programmer who shined on one game, and that largely didn't translate to 3D. He also kneecapped 3D development for his own company, and never had a comparable hit after Nights.
Neither is he solely to blame for BW's failures, but the design reeks of an outdated mindset. The game's positives (character design, cg movies) likely had little to do with them.
naka is a pompous ass that has infamously been dismissive of the actual game designers that have breathed life into his programming work. can't say I'm at all surprised that he shacked up with a cheapo shovelware mill like arzest. probably thought it didn't matter who was making it as long as he was in charge and was getting a bunch of funding.
This is more apparent when you look into his development history and see how much he actually did have influence on.
There's something about Balan Wonderworld that feels "legitimately" bad. Like most people would say that Call of Duty Vanguard was "bad". It was released in a clearly half-finished state, it was arguably a carbon copy of Modern Warfare with a WWII coat of paint on top, the microtransactions and FOMO is rampant, and the developers faced no shortage of criticism for their appalling work environment. But if you can somehow find a way to look past all of that, what you have at it's core is a pretty fun FPS experience. Balan Wonderworld though is just an irredeemably bad game with bafflingly, uncharacteristically bad game design from an industry veteran.
I find games that are just totally broken on release to be far more insulting. The Cyberpunks and GTA Trilogy's, if you will.
Everyone shits on COD Vanguard for the crime of being an average reskin of Modern Warfare with a short campaign, meanwhile you have Battlefield 2042 in the corner being an unplayable mess. EA had all that time to at least make their game presentable yet they just *didn't!*
With Balan, the game looks like it runs just fine - it's just that it's ideas were bad. I can respect that.
CoD is mediocre (dunno, didnt play). There's little we can learn from it, so it bores us. Balan is just bad, like very bad, but there is a LOT we can learn from it (A LOT of things NOT to do).
Balan was a game made to be broken
In my opinion, Yes. Even though there were and there were a lot worse games put out there last year, its made by a massive company, costs full price and is still somehow a buggy, glitchy mess that is broken on a conceptual level. Just like something isn't objectively the best, it's completely fair to say something is the worst as its completely down to individual opinion.
Popeye....but I can't name one worse game in 2021
Intergrade?
This is honestly a game I want a feature-length documentary on just so I can see what went wrong with the production
Because I'm sure as heck not gonna spend actual money to play it.
Here's a good one, even though not feature length: ruclips.net/video/YuRl_AOe57w/видео.html
It could have simply been a rush job, but one thing I heard was they hired people who don't make platformers
Warcraft 3: Reforged should be the worst game of 2020. Because it wasn't only a bad game in it's own right, but also ruined the original game it was Reforging.
It may not be the actual worse game of 2021, but it was by far the most disappointing to so many people. And sometimes, that’s even worse.
Yeah is disappointment can be a lot more worse than bad. Cause the first teaser trailer looked good and then the demo came out and broke the septic tank. Also that asking price for a game with not much to it.
There's quite a LOT that can go into quality measurement from person to person. There's things like stability, count of positive qualities, count of negative qualities. Is it well written? Does it look appealing? Is the concept good? Is the execution handled well? How does it play? Too gimmicky? Too simple? You get the point, some people prize presentation, and I think Balan Wonderworld is a prime example of beautiful presentation... For the most part. So yeah, I can see WHY people like it, but that's not what I or other people with similar game tastes likely feel. And yes, it IS functional in gameplay, but that's sort of the thing. Gameplay that is mainly used as a connecting thread for better content feels more like a hassle to me, especially when there's not much of note aside tedium. You can HAVE a well functioning game with nothing inherently wrong (aside from the seizure inducing final boss attack, but that was patched as far as I know), but which will have gameplay that stands out more? Gameplay that is stable but shallow, or gameplay that is so writhed with messy glitches and clear oversights that you FEEL the uncanny valley the realm of video games can provide? By no means am I saying there's better QUALITY to that, but the clear blemish will much easier linger on the minds of the community aware of it. In terms of games and art as a whole, which do you think is better? Being Memorably BAD, or functional but forgettable? Neither is inherently good, but depending on circumstance and preference, people tend to feel one is better than the other.
Balan Wonderworld reminds me of what a "Bad" game was like in the PS2 era. It's sort of something that stopped happening.
There were bad games on the PS2 were bad as games, controls, bugs, performance, what have you, but it was clearly a project that was dedicated to by *someone*.
A good place to start looking for them is to look for games that were trying to be "the next great mascot platformer."
Some might burn me at the stake because I guess being "meme" is a worthy defense, but I'd say "Gex" is a perfect example.
3D Gex wasn't too bad but it was still a bit more jank than other games of it's era. At least they had some innovative gameplay mechanics with the wall climbing and such. The original Gex I tend to forget exists because it's such a dull game.
I still have no idea what Balan Wonderworld is. The only thing I know about it is that it apparently sucks. I don't know why it sucks, just that no one wants to talk about it except to say that it sucks (and not explain why it sucks). However, when I see the gameplay, it kinda reminds me of Billy Hatcher for some reason, which was a platformer that most people forgot as, while it was competent and fun in plenty of ways, it wasn't as fun or interesting at other platformers, and had mechanics that held back some of the fun factor with the awkward movement mechanics that can't decide between being too strict or too loose.
Or perhaps Glover, which seemed neat but didn't do much to justify the horrible level design and painful goals.
Scaler
Vexx
Man, I still remember the plethora of generic 3D platformers that were released in the late 90's and early 2000's. They were _everywhere_ back then!
The biggest problem is that I often mistook "wonderworld" as "wonderland"
Calling it a _"game"_ is giving it too much credit.
Izzagame
God
Cheap shovelware games on steam may be bad. But triple A games that flop despite having all the resources in the world is a whole new realm of bad. They're tragic.
I think the only thing I liked about it was the movie parts and some of the visuals. The bosses and Balan look pretty good, really good even. But God this game (can I call it that?) Was a pain to play. It's even worse because a lot of nights into dream fans where really hoping and hyped for this game and it let them down hard.
I shit my pants one day last year and it wasn’t technically the worst day of the year but it was the worst day of the year. Balan feels like that to me.
While I've seen some folks liking the gameplay enough, it was definitely the characters that people preferred. I wouldn't call it the worst game of the year, but I would call it the most overhyped and underwhelming.
It's extremely hyperbolic to call it a bad game.
The point about bandwagonning also brings up a greater problem in Internet culture with people acting as if an entire fan base for something are all the same with the same opinions and the same toxic behaviour
the worst? no, there was plenty worse
the most disappointing? oh god yeah
As someone that truly love Balan Wonderworld, I do honestly respect people’s opinions on this game. I am fine people hating this game cause I actually understand why. I used to hate Balan but when I actually play the game 100% and read a novel, I personally enjoy it! I respect your opinions too! As long as people won’t causing problem like rude comments like “play better games” or passive aggressive for people hating the game they like. There’s nothing wrong with like or hate the games. Yes, even I think Balan Wonderworld is not a perfect game but I don’t think it deserve as a worst games. They had good potential.
I'll say this about the Balan Wonderworld demo: I liked it. I didn't think the game was worth full price, but I was excited when it went on sale and bought it. Haven't played the full game yet but I'm looking forward to it, though I also can imagine the gameplay loop getting repetitious and boring after a full game's playtime.
I won't say everyone who dislikes the game is bandwagoning, obviously not, although I will say that in pretty much every instance my personal experience doesn't really line up with theirs. In some cases I've straight-up wondered if I got a different version of the demo somehow. And judging by the overall snarky tone of the usual critique, combined with the vagueness of their personal criticisms, I can't help but wonder how many people had their opinion influenced by others saying it was a horrible trainwreck rather than a just mild disappointment, and how many others didn't even play it and just decide to parrot other's opinions. Or how many people decided to exaggerate their opinions to appeal to the majority and get more clicks from people who want to hear their own opinion regurgitated back to them. I'm not accusing everyone of that, but I do think it's a factor to consider in regards to just how violently the game is despised. A part of me can't help but wonder if the internet didn't make it a meme to hate the game so passionately, would people even still care or remember it?
I guess Balan Wonderworld, and the other example of Cyberpunk 2077, and things like No Man's Sky, Fable, Mass Effect 3 and countless other worthy examples, all really prove a point that a "Worst Game" rating and snarky internet vitriol usually has more to do with the overall meta-narrative of the game behind the scenes than the game itself in a vacuum. How it's usually judged more harshly due to expectation or hype than it's actual mechanics. Is that fair? I suppose in "just for fun" lists meant for clicks and entertainment, but I can't help but feel like it's damaging to the field of game analysis. Games should probably be rated on their own merits first and foremost, even if the context inevitably plays a factor.
I agree that people should be allowed to hate anything they like, or disagree with the majority opinion and like something anyway. Although I'd personally argue that in any regard, hating or liking, backing up your opinions and explaining them is important. Rather than just "bad design", how do the bad design choices hinder your experience specifically? I think just blanket "THIS SUUUUCKKKSS!!!" type of constant dunking on a game the entire internet has collectively decided is bad can lead to negative consequences for the games industry as a whole. Everyone wants new ambitious and innovative 3D platformer, but when one is released and gets dunked on without explanation for why, it sends the wrong message to other gaming companies to not try it themselves. And while some people HAVE gone into detail about what they dislike of Balan Wonderworld, I feel like the actual critique is vastly overshadowed by the memes dunking on it for fun.
Which isn't to say there isn't a time and place for the honest opinions of "THIS SUUUUUUUCCCKKS!!!" and we'd be missing a lot by not having that as well. I guess I don't know what the solution is. All I can say is "yes, it's fair to rank Balan Wonderworld as the worst game of the year, but I'd really prefer to hear why you think that." Just as the Nintendo Life article should've better explained why they thought it was worthy of praise rather than dissing people who didn't like it.
Definietly the best game to hate this year, but seriously so many wtf choices: one action button, so many useless powers(dragon that can shoot fire in a reasonable distance, teleporting through really thin walls, mario odyssey's flower powerup ugly sibling, box fox), really slow walking, the story doesn't make sense in the game, really bad npc animation, suprise musicals...etc.
I’m glad Arlo feels the need to emphasize how he respects the article’s author’s opinions while he adresses said article’s many faults.
People like him are the voices we desperately need here on the internet, especially with so many bad-faith critics running rampant and becoming super popular in the process.
The hype built up for this was huge. Look at the names behind it.
Then... Farmer dance sequence.
I hope that perhaps the developers who created this stick their ground and just go ahead and start fixing this game instead of leaving it a money dump. I get it's a single player game and that it'd give them almost no benefit, but if they actually made the game look all nice and good, I think they would actually have a good game on their hands. They just need to polish it up and perhaps change some of the biggest core flaws of the game. Though, will it happen? From the publisher who just said they want to implement NFTs and the Metaverse into their games? Hell no, and I think it's a darn shame.
A few months after this released, The demo was pulled, the game got a price cut to 40 bucks and Yuji Naka was let go from Square Enix.
....I'm probably not gonna hold my breath for any major updates here.
Does anyone know the song the video opened up with?
On one hand, I love the character designs (drawing them is so much fun) and the main concept of visiting other people’s worlds that are based on their interests and traumas. There’s so much potential to become something that many people could resonate with. On the other hand, I was so bored when I played the demo. The idea of using costumes sounds cool and couple of things were interesting, but the execution and gameplay was so odd and underwhelming. Also the in-game animations were either uncanny or meh. Especially compared to the opening which had expressive and energetic animation!
Personally, I’m not a fan of the game itself, but I won’t shame anyone if they are. In fact, it’s awesome to see some finding enjoyment out of it. Unfortunately, I found it to be disappointing.
You should look up Psychonauts. It has you visiting the worlds inside peoples heads and exploring their traumas and thoughta. It's also a much better 3d platformer than Balan. I think you'd genuinely really enjoy it.
@@pinkdarkman Oh yea, I I’ve heard of that game before! Especially since the sequel came out not too long ago. I don’t know much about it gameplay wise, but the art style looks very unique and gives me Invader Zim vibes! I really want to check it out when I have the chance.
Well this helps me understand the hate on Sonic games over other games that are way worse, when talking about only games from bigger developers and publishers. I still think there's a lot of Sonic that is overhated, but that helps me get into the shoes of those who consider them as bad as they do.
And yes, I do still respect those who hate most Sonic games, even if I disagree (as long as their actual opinions are that they hate it and not just jumping on the bandwagon).
Oh and Balan Wonderworld was bad IMO too.
The thing with criticism, is that it's meant to be a learning experience, either for the creator themselves or for other creators/players to learn from.
Every game, nay every thing, has its Do's and Do Not's that you can take from it, whether to create something or to find what you enjoy.
And generally, if the game is coming up with many Do Not's and few-to-none Do's, then you just might have a contender for worse game of the year.
But I do think criticism must be fair to be criticism for many cases like these. Reason being for some stuff is that not every attempt at criticizing is fair, and if it was "all valid" (which includes criticism conflicting with each other) then how is it "important" then? You know what I mean?
I agree, and that's why fairness is generally down to the eye of the beholder really. Getting a genuine bout of criticism from someone you don't know, especially on the internet, is always a gamble, considering a high number of people who do criticise, don't like to participate in good faith arguments.
But, there is a general consensus you can take with cases like these I think. Of course there's going to be hate-train people, but you can generally root them out by finding people who never balance their argument by never at least attempting to find a positive.
As such, from the general consensus I've seen, I think it's perfectly valid to call Balan Wonderworld the worst game of the year, EVEN IF people have praised the cinematics and I like that they attempted to try do their own attempt at a chao garden.
All criticism is really down to personal preference, as is listening to it. Maybe these kind of videos stating that there is a presence of a bandwagon, helps people be aware of a bit of general bias when making their own decision?
@@dr.badguyreviews6785 Interesting, I don't really exactly agree this idea that a "consensus" is always justified regardless you were saying it matters or not. There are for example, some films and maybe some games that are underrated and the only reason why it was hated was due to bias, but I do think it's possible to somewhat objectively recognize levels of quality, partly depending on what the creator was trying to achieve.
Though I am sticking to trust the general consensuses of BW, mainly because I saw some videos of the game too. Haha
@@SpaceOmega-zz6vs I never said "always", I said "cases like these". Again, general consensus is another tool in the criticism handbook, especially in blanket statements like "Worst Game of the Year".
Objective is a loaded term though, for Balan Wonderland objectively functions, objectively runs on hardware and objectively obtains what Yuji Naka was going for, single button gameplay. Now, if that gameplay is good, the general CONSENSUS is no.
@@dr.badguyreviews6785 Yeah I think I was trying to be careful about that, but just wanted to give the point alone. Sorry for any mistake I've made here.
I think it's useful as a likelihood of bad, not itself a criticism (sorry if I assume wrong from you) unless it ties with a certain thing.
When I think objective when critiquing sometimes, I usually mean recognizing the creator's intention for some stuff and seeing if something in certain games screws that up. If the creator intended BW to be fun for a lot of people, then the negative consensus might be itself criticism and as useful feedback.
What really sucks is that the character and art for this game look fantastic and beautiful, which makes sense since the creator of Sonic worked on it. That however wasn’t able to save it
I reckon people who bring asset flips into debates like this are failing to consider the cost of production.
Let's say all games start at 0 points and gain points for content, style, story, aesthetics, enjoyability... etc, after this people really ought to be deducting points for what the game cost to produce/aquire, what was the game's budget? How many people worked on it? What kind of big names worked on it? How much does the game cost retail? If something costs more to make then it's expected to better, losing points for big names and high budgets helps to show a game's value in comparison to other tiers of game production, the hope of having a big name is to use that talent to earn enough points to outweigh the cost of using them.
Asset flips score next to nothing but cost next to nothing to make too, their score usually balances out at just 0.
Games like balan wonderland are a different matter, as a core product they earn more points from the get go for actually being a game, having content. However the points they gain can't outweigh the costs, Square Enix, Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima, there's a fair few big names tied to this game, it had a AAA development cycle AND released at a AAA price, these costs start to put balan wonderland into the negative scores, making it score worse that asset flips.
This system also helps explain how games like undertale and other indie titles score so highly, when they're made well and are enjoyable they earn a lot of points for their content, then you look over to the cost side, small teams/solo devs aren't going to lose many points, they don't have big names to tie themselves to (Toby Fox wasn't really known at all until Undertale), and they usually retail at lower prices, they don't lose many points so the work on the game can stand for itself.
I heard Nintendo is working on Mario Kart 9 and I want them to hear us out about adding Captain Falcon to the roster. He's been away from the race track for too long. If you agree, help spread the word. CAPTAIN FALCON FOR MARIO KART 9.
random thought: if taking one bite of a casserole is compared to a demo of a game, with eating the full thing compared to finishing a game/ playing through it, does that imply the existence of casserole completionists?
They lick the plate for all the crumbs and then wash up for you after. Also they cooked it too. The full casserole experience.
Yes, and casserole speedrunners
@@snowblossom4961 Plate%
This is kinda off topic but I REALLY love these green screen videos. I love the goofy first few seconds of random stuff you do and I appreciate the pure off script topics you talk about. It's like I'm sitting with you and were just having a quirky discussion about video games.
The sheer fact that this game is original makes it 1% better than BDSP.
MAybe we should make two lists. One can be "Worst Games of xxxx, where we put broken shit from big publishers (like GTA Remasters); and then another list of "Biggest Wastes of Budget", where we put games that work as intended but are just bad, like Balan Wonderworld and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
I feel like saying nothing is objectively bad is being incredibly generous. Balan Wonderworld is objectively bad. The controls. The pacing. The graphics. The failure. Objectively bad.
The fact that Balan Wonderworld fell short of all financial expectations and the fact that this discussion even exists means it's objectively bad, but people got their own tastes so they'll enjoy what they enjoy. More power to them.
I don't think the graphics are bad, so already this is subjective. Going by pure stats and general opinion it's a objective failure, but I've heard of people who like the game, so by personal standards it's...personal.
I think the world would be slightly better if people could admit that the game they like is bad like yeah i know it sucks i still like it tho. For me that game is Sonic Unleashed I know the Werehog sucks still love it tho (The jazz music still haunts me)
@@speedslider3913 That's fair. One part of the game can't be bad but it can still be a bad game. Bad things can be enjoyed. There are people who enjoy Green Lantern, but it's a bad movie. There are bad books that are poorly written that can still be enjoyed.
Saying Balan Wonderland can be a good game to some because they enjoy ignores how poorly it was made and all the expectations it fell short of, financially and by the majority of the fans who were looking forward to it.
@@speedslider3913 but also by 2021 standards and the budget the developers had, they're bad. They had a visual art style they were going for, but didn't meet it halfway.
Video games have choice of art style, but if you're going for a certain art style and fall short of that even though you have the resources to exceed, it's bad.
@@pkpyro2000 I thoroughly enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 but it was a bad game. Crashes, glitches, cut content. But I can't say I didn't enjoy my time with it.
Worst Triple A game probably. I could find something worse on Steam in 10 minutes if we’re including all games.
The game looks like it has lots of imagination and really nice level design this seems like a game that could be fixed with a patch or two
I’d say it would take a lot more patches, but it’s definitely possible.
On a similar point, I remember a few people (notably Yahtzee) picked "The Last of Us Part 2" as the worst game of the year, and while I don't know many others who went that far, it got a lot of hate from fans when it came out.
I find that's a much more interesting debate personally. I would say that, objectively, it's an unbelievably well crafted game. Which is all the more impressive for the developers given the hostile working conditions at naughty dog. Even most of the detractors don't really bash the gameplay as much as they bash the narrative, and the choices made to tell the story. That's something that is much more subjective and likely to divide people in understandable ways. I can legitimately see people saying it's the best game of the year or the worst one. It's certainly one that made me feel the most depressed in a while, but ultimately I found enough purpose in the misery to feel like it was worth it. Others didn't and that it's endless parade of bleakness had no point and its attempts at "seriousness" fell flat.
Granted, I'm being generous with the game's backlash. There are some criticisms which I would argue are just flat out wrong (like complaining about a certain spoiler that happens quite early in the game), but that's the trickiness of things like this, isn't it?
Balan Wonderland might not have been the “Worst Game of 2021,” but it was still the most disappointing game of 2021.
I think the worst thing that could have happened to Balan Wonderworld isn't being just a bad game (which it is) but instead because Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog, were behind the game now has a fanbase of over-defensive toxic-positivity people who shun down any and all criticism of the game and deny and of its issues *much like Sonic fans* (like the Nintendo Life article was pretty laughable how it ended saying that BW is better than Bowser's Fury _...yeah fucking right)_
btw, very ironic that they allowed that thought piece considering they themselves gave the game a low-score and on their RUclips channel made lenghty discussions about how much it sucked and the article itself bashes the Switch port when you know _it's a Nintendo-centric newsite _*_for Nintendo fans._* It probably got there for easy clickbait most likely.
I've heard so many people tell me "you decided that you're not gonna watch this movie cause of the trailer? That's not fair to the movie!" Trailers are meant to gage if you're interested in a product it's meant to sell you the product. If the trailer is bad then I'll, understandably, assume the product is bad and not engage with it
The purpose of a trailer is to convince you. If it's not convincing, then of course you're not convinced. I mean, duh.
When it came out, I thought "There's no way it's _that_ bad, right?" And then I got to the part in Alpharad's video where the only way to quit out of the baseball minigame was to go to the main menu.
That 3D Kirby game looks like it will be kinda like Balan but way better. Using different powers(costumes) to solve environmental puzzles in a colorful 3D world.
“But way better” Kirby is just as bland and boring lol
@@DreadclawDragodon if that's what you think then, ok.
When forgotten land was revealed I grabbed the case of my copy and shouted: “MTHER F.CKER THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE YOU!”
Congrats on eclipsing 600k Arlo! Been a fan of the channel for a few years now and it's been fun experiencing everything Nintendo through the lenses of a fuzzy blue monster such as yourself. Hoping you are well!
Also, bringing negative coverage to small indie stuff in a “worst _____ of the year” list/video just feels like unnecessary punching down. We mainly focus on the relatively high profile stuff because we actually have reasonable expectations for those creators to meet a baseline level of quality and ripping on them for failing to do so isn’t going to tank their careers. If an indie developer comprised of three people comes out with a bad game, we can cut them some slack because at least they tried right?
Although, I’ll say one thing about Balan: it at least felt like it had some passion put into it. Even if it didn’t end up being, you know, good, I can at least respect the devs for having some sort of vision.
Not just cut some slack, even if the game is not objectively worse, having it made by a team of paid professionals just makes the degree of failure that much deeper in comparison to an amateur fing around with some assets and an engine.
It's weird how they didn't look to the fundamentals of this game. Even walking simulators have a base line in regards to the game being enjoyable to control.
Games usually do prototypes to test the game with just placeholding assets to check if the simple act of playing feels good. But this game seemed to have started with the presentation and then finding out ways to combine all the ideas it had.
A better game this reminded me of is Space Station Silicon Valley. In that game instead of different costumes you're a robot posessing robot animals each one having 1 or 2 abilities, some can't jump, others can't attack others can't move fast, etc. The levels take account of those limitations and only place a certain number or animals you have to hunt down to take control over them.
So I think it's not the ideas or the design decision of having simple controls. But only the execution and game design. Maybe it started as another thing, because it does feel like the game aspect came later, maybe the costumes were made first and then the levels. Hard to tell how this passed a lot of decision making staff.
Thank God for Arlo and Jim Stephanie Sterling.
Arlo, I love so many things about you - chief among them how you never fail to make cynicism fun!
Yes it is the worst game of 2021. I literally watched alpharad play it and he said it was terrible. What other evidence do you need? 🤷♂️
A bad game is one thing, a DISAPPOINTING game is another thing
“There should be no limits.. to our hate.”
This actually also applies to movies and shows.
Santa Inc. on HBO Max is a good example of that.
Netflix Live Action Cowboy Bebop is very deserving of hate.
Honestly I didn't think Balan was that bad. I mean yeah it plays like a game that was made a few decades ago and the story being a separate book was an... interesting choice (kinda reminds me of the old Ultima days). But the art direction is gorgeous, the gameplay, while basic, is at least fun in small doses, and while I had to read a separate book to get the story which is still dumb, the story was honestly pretty deep and something I would love to see more of (emphasis on see*). Is it a good game? No, not by a long shot. But worst? ...nah.
Yes. Yes it is.
Worst game isn't the actual worst game of the year. It's the worst popular game of the year.
Nah, it was bad no doubt but the GTA Trilogy remaster was absolutely atrocious. Shit framerate across all platforms (should a game be running below 30 fps on PS5?), countless bugs, spelling errors. That had potential, but Rockstar rushed it out to capitalize on fans and newcomers alike.
Arlo: "Yes. Yes it is."
Saved you guys about 12 minutes
Perfect video on the topic I say. I mean, I've never heard of this game, but saying people don't actually hate it and just jumping on the band wagon is the same as saying you don't have an argument for people's criticisms so you would like to pretend those criticisms don't exist. It's like gate keeping in fandoms, you must have played/watched/read this much material from a given media to be considered a "real fan". Now they're saying you must have played so much of the game to complain about it or say you're disappointed.
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The Completionist called Activision Blizzard the worst game of the year though
Does anyone know the music that starts at 4:15?
My keys to a low stress year, drink until i forget to remember not to drink again and repeat everytime I get stressed, then get anxious when I think about stress so drink more
I feel like whoever is trying to say that Balan is actually a good game only watched the cinematics and a couple of promotional still frames.
I don't get why many people feel the need to defend bad games, and when I say "defend" I mean trying to pass them as actual masterpieces that should be shielded from real criticisms.
The same also happened for other games like Cyberpunk, GTA trilogy and the last Pokemon games.
I'm a simple man. Mention Jim Stephanie Sterling, I drop a like. Simple as that.
Sometimes I feel that people only put some games on a "Worst Game" list because if they don't they feel the game goes on a "Best Game" list and a game can simple be.. OK. A game can be "Eh.." It can be not a good game, but not THE WORST game. I don't hear Balan Wonderworld throwing women, trans people, and other marginalized people under a bus for it's marketing and in game commentary, and that at least sets it above other games.
Simple response to the video title: "Yes. It came out this year, something has to be the 'Worst game of the year', it can absolutely be in the running."
The only thing that Balan Wonderworld grabbed me was the design of Balan and nothing else. I really dig his design. I never touched the game and don’t plan on doing so any time soon. I’ll stick with watching people play it instead of me.
Don't support Balan, wait till Sega makes Nights 3, f* Square Enix
@@segaspice4062 i never was going to buy it. I know it’s a VERY bad game.
I remember the Nintendo Life article. They said it was better than Bowsers Fury, then reposted their bad take like five times.
That's gross