Saturday, December 27, 2008

The Top 5 Overrated Games On Kongregate

If you have ever seen a movie with robots, nanobots, or aliens, you might have heard them say things like "Humans are extremely flawed things." I'm afraid I have to say they're right. The people at Kongregate apparently have short attention-spans. If the beginning of the game impresses them, then they'll rate it highly. This leads to games being overrated, such as the examples shown below.

5. Music Catch


In this game, you're a small circle that has to collect all sorts of shapes flying out from a line. There are 4 different colors of shapes you can collect
Blue and Green - Normal pieces that give points when you collect them.
Purple - Gives you Purple Power, which sucks in all Blue/Green and Yellow shapes (and possibly Purple, don't have time to check) and not the Red pieces. Also it seems like it makes more shapes fly out or makes the rate at which they fly out faster. Really awesome since it could score you some major points
Yellow - Increases your combo meter by 1. For example, x1 is turned into x2, x2 is turned into x3, x3 is turned into x4 and so on.
Red - Red is the color of evil, and it's extra evil in this game. The challenge is if you get even ONE red, you're probably not going to get as much points as you really can unless it's very early in the game. Reds are pretty devastating. They cut your multiplier in half.

Now on to the combos. You start out with a x1 combo, with your circle twice as big as a capital O (which seems like a lot, but it's still really small) and when you get yellow shapes, your combo meter increases by 1, and you grow a bit bigger. So you can go from that tiny x1 to gigantic lengths. Music goes on in the background, and it's beautiful.

So, it seems like fun. Why is it overrated? Because it's short. Also, getting a red at around x50 is the most annoying thing know to Earth. Whoops, you hit a red, now you're going to have to get 25 more yellows to make up for it. The beginning is boring, with all those little tiny shapes, and the entire game is boring if you don't have sound on your computer. It doesn't really deserve such a high rating. Next!

4. Sonny

Sonny is way too short. DTD should have been the highest rated game because it had tons of variety. Think about it. So many modes in DTD, and so many ways to explore them. Sonny, however, does not. You play for an hour, spend another hour or two trying to beat the Stage 4 bosses, then you're done. What next? Nothing. No replay value in Sonny, and to make up for it you get team mates. Wait, no. You get a team mate, and then when you finish the game you get 4 more team mates, but you can only use 3 on Stage. Veradux is the first one you get early in the game. He is the healer of this game. He sometimes attacks too, but his attacks suck, just like him. I can easily describe him using two words: Veradux sucks. It even rhymes, so you know it must be true. Oh, don't forget the infamous glitch where you can take an item and transfer it's bonuses to Sonny. It's like wearing (insert number of items you glitch here) items. Oh, and it's permanant too. The only way using this glitch can screw you over is if you don't have subduction and you need it (because you NEED subduction for one of the final bosses, the Doctor). You can easily re-spec and put everything into subduction, but if you re-spec while using this glitch, everything goes down. You can also get 8 levels, which is a helluva lot easier, but more annoying. Oh, and the glitch is incredibly easy to execture. Shown above is me using the glitch to Coup de Grace the end game boss (not the final bosses on stage 4, the final boss on stage 3). The plot is completely insane. You're trying to find out WHAT'S ON A STUPID TAPE RECORDER. The dialouge seems fitting, if this game was set in the 21st century. Every time I read "My name is Sonny." I think of some cheesy rap song. I'm done with this. Next!

3. Monsters' Den: Book of Dread



Booriiiing. I don't know how this game got over 4 stars, or even 3.5 for that matter. It's a monotonous dungeon crawler. Oh, and guess what? There's only like 4 different levels of the dungeon (Undead, Hunting Packs, Humans, and Greenskins) before the levels start over. Random dungeon placement (hey look! The exit is right next to me!), too many items (that makes over 200 items we've seen so far, and they all suck!), and lack of healing pots (looks like we're screwed unless we find an altar!) make this game suck really bad. Next!

2. The Several Journeys of Reemus: Chapter 2



It's a point and click adventure game with 3 endings, a great art style, and fun puzzles. It's still just a point and click adventure game. PaC games are never fun. Oh, and guess what? There's no replay value! Yet it's rated 4.20 on Kongregate. Why? It's only 30 minutes long and then you're not going to play it anymore. No extra challenge at the end. Sonny was waaay longer then this, waaaay more fun, and this game is waaay overrated. At least it's not rated higher then it's superior, like the last game on the list is Next!

1. Bloons Tower Defence 3

How.. who.. what.. why..

Okay, how did this get to the front page? This is the 3rd highest rated game on Kongregate, yet it sucks. A while ago, DTD 1.5 was the highest rated game on Kongregate, and everybody knew it was going to stay that was for a long time, and it did before Sonny ursurped it's throne. That wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible either. However, DTD has fallen off the front page. It's now the 4th highest rated game, just after this one. The problem is, Bloons Tower Defence 3 is a mediocre version of DTD. Let's see why.

Modes

DTD had easy, medium, hard, trickle, random, 10k, spawns, boxes, cross, the 100, speed, 15 towers, survivor, and 3k fixed.
BTD3 has easy, medium, and hard
Winner: DTD
Stages
DTD has one and only one stage.
BTD3 has 8 stages, not like you need more then one though.

Winner: BTD3

Challenge

DTD has tons of challenging modes. Anyone who has the impossible badge knows what I mean.
BTD3 is easy even on the hard more.

Winner: DTD

Playability Enhancers

DTD has a pause button, a wave skipper (send more then one wave at a time), a volume setter (set how loud the music is), and an end game button
BTD3 has a mute button, an end game button, and you can set which monsters to target.

Winner: DTD

Freedom

DTD lets you place your towers anywhere you want to unless it's blocking the creeps' path or on another tower, lets you experiment with it by using the modes, and lets you juggle by building a maze (again, placing your towers anywhere).
BTD3 has a set path the creeps HAVE to follow, and no experimental modes.
Winner: DTD

Graphics

DTD has a picture of a desktop with stuff on it as a backround, and has pretty nicely drawn towers.
BTD3 has harassing drawn backrounds, and drawn monkeys.
Winner: DTD

Order

DTD has small towers so you can place a lot of them on the desktop, and everything is explained so you know what everything is.
BTD3 has BIG MONKEY TOWERS so you can place a maximum of about 30-40 on screen, and there's a strange "secret" tower that nobody knows what it is.

Winner: DTD
Powerups

DTD's towers can be upgraded 5 times at most, increasing range, strength, or even both.
BTD3's towers can be upgraded twice for range and twice for strength/piercing/something else

Winner: DTD
Security/Hackability

DTD is hard to hack, and a couple people have done it.
BTD3 is incredibly easy to hack. I had to download Cheat Engine to test this, and guess what? It worked the first time I did it.

Winner: DTD

So, DTD is better then BTD3 in almost all ways, yet BTD3 is rated higher. What the hell? This is EXACTLY what overrated means. I'm done with this stupid game. List finished!

BONUS: GemCraft

Ah.. GemCraft. Another Tower Defence game. Putting this on the list was hard, since GemCraft had so many things that DTD didn't. Originally, this list was going to be the Top 6 overrated games, with Music Catch being 6th, Sonny being 5th, and this being 4th. At the end, I decided not to put it on the list, since it is more fun then DTD and very unique, and deserves to be rated highly. Think about it. Wizard levels, boostbable skills, bosses, hidden levels, saving.. ect.

Don't forget how different the battles were. On DTD, you only had preset towers and that was it. On here, you have empty towers, and you have gems that you can make for mana. You can increase your mana pool, buy higher ranked gems, or EVEN COMBINE GEMS TO MAKE HIGHER RATED GEMS. You got a bonus for making a "pure" gem by combination (both gems have to be the same color to make a pure gem). Not to mention building water trenches, throwing gems at monsters to attack them, not having lives but instead taking away mana if the monsters get past (and if you ran out of mana, you were dead), medals for achievements during each level, an AUTOSAVE, tons of save slots, great graphics..did DTD have all that? No! The only thing DTD had going for it was the different modes, but that's not enough to be better then GemCraft. That's why I say GemCraft > DTD

4 comments:

  1. I don't think Music Catch is more overrated than some of the games that should be on the list. Mechanical Commando, Rage 3, and Feudalism are much worse than Music Catch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very nice to find someone else who thinks there's a lot of overrated games on Kongregate. I just wrote a little monologue about overrated games and Kongregate ratings in general:

    http://www.borisvanschooten.nl/blog/2010/07/17/kongregates-crap-hidden-gems-and-overrated-games/

    ReplyDelete