This is made worse when you consider how samey each one of their games feels these days.
This isn't to suggest that every game needs to stand up to the biggest powerhouses of the AAA industry in order to keep up, but as the years have progressed, Telltale Tools has struggled to take any steps toward looking and feeling relevant. Not only is Guardians another example of how by the numbers TT's gameplay style has become, its house-made engine just feels. And this year, an advanced coffin nail was hammered firmly in place with Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series. In the years since, Telltale has acquired more and more existing properties to inject their style into, and it's felt as if this strategy has weakened exponentially with every new project the beleaguered developer has taken on.
Their contribution to the gaming world peaked in 2012 with the release of The Walking Dead, a chilling episodic horror story centered around a new cast of characters in an existing, beloved IP. In years past, Telltale Games represented a breath of fresh air: a modern twist on the classic adventure games that were a bedrock of video gaming as we know it.
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series The Life of Black Tiger is an ugly, janky mess that deserves the heaps of scorn that have been piled on top of it like wet leaves. Soak it all up, and then remember: This is a game for the PlayStation 4. Let its dull roar wash over you, like a wave of raw sewage. Take a look at the screenshots of Black Tiger.
It's slow where it ought to be fast, and it's boring where it ought to be exciting - if it even works on your PS4 at all. There's a disclaimer before the trailer preview of Black Tiger that it "might be inappropriate for some users," and I can think of no game that is more deserving of this warning. Originally developed as a free-to-play game for the Android, indie gaming fans were gobsmacked to find that Life Of Black Tiger was not only being sold on the PlayStation Store (for $10 dollars) but was also being prominently advertised on the PlayStation YouTube channel. With graphics that embody the razor-sharp fidelity of the first PlayStation, a story that feels like poorly written Lion King fanfiction, and controls reminiscent of an infant learning to crawl, one can't help but think of a mobile game that your nephew stealthily downloaded while you were distracted with a second helping of Thanksgiving dinner.Īnd this is because that's exactly what Black Tiger is. Yeah, let's start off with something so blatantly, unrepentantly bad that we can all have a good shared head nod before we start debating the merits (or more to the point: flaws) of future entries.
But feel free to suggest an order of your own in the comments below. Since "worst" is a word that can cover so many different aspects of a game, these have been collected in no particular order. Whether they're buggy, unplayable messes or deeply disappointing representatives of existing franchises, they deserve scrutiny. And sometimes these are finely tuned greed machines that represent something far more insidious and disheartening in the industry at large. Sometimes these are rushed hackjobs that represent the shovelware encouraged by the hundreds of games that are pushed onto Steam on a weekly basis.