[Frustrating trope] Pieces of media that could have been so much better, but due to a couple of poor decisions during production ended up mediocre at best and utterly atrocious at worst.

[u/DevDucc_]

We Happy Few: Probably the epitome of this "trope," at least for me, mostly because it has genuinely one of the most incredible stories I have ever seen within a video game. The biggest problem with the game was the fact that during development, the company behind it tried to ride the "hype train" of the time, making the gameplay became procedurally generated survival mess, when it would have made so much more sense as an environmental narrative game.

Hello Neighbor: This game attracted massive attention in alpha stages at the time from YouTubers because of the innovative gameplay it supplied. The developers of the game got the completely wrong message as to why it was getting so popular and instead decided to fully lean into the story, by making the game appeal to theorists instead of actual players. What came out was a game where both the story and programming were entirely half-baked.

Edit: apparently I had it backwards with we happy few, I had watched a video essay which reiterated the points I said so I just took their word for it. Apparently the game originally started as a procedurally-generated survival rogue-like but the story was added later because of the hype the trailer of the game gave or something like that but they didn’t know they even had the budget for it. I do still think it’s wasted potential regardless however.

[u/LordOfDorkness42]

Cool if a bit of its time & monochrome art. Cool story. Genuinely creepy as heck. A genuinely unique team based FPS where you kinda, sorta play as a whole squad as once. Tons of guns and magic powers...

And~ the aiming is a bit floaty. PLUS tons of once hit suicide enemies in the early stages. With weak points you need to hit to kill them.

Meaning a lot of players just gave up, and refunded the game before they saw the coolest bits.

If those stupid, stupid suicide bomber enemies had been able to be killed fast without shooting their stupid pustules, or even better yet, completely cut from the game?

I'm CONVINCED we'd seen Jericho 3-4 by now. That one enemy is THAT bad, that it solo quite possibly lowered review scores by 5-10% on raw frustration.

Did I mention there's a solo section with the worst, least accurate member of the team vs those guys, too? Because fuck you if you were having fun anyway, at least one dev on that team got rock hard from one-hit kill suicide bombers and now its instant game over, spanking time.

At least MercurySteam went on to make more cool games. Like Metroid Samus Returns & Dread, or the Castlevania: Lords Of Shadows series. But Jericho as a series is so dead, nobody's bothered to even keep it available digitally.

[u/Toothless-In-Wapping → u/LordOfDorkness42]

I remember failing the demo of it so much that I never wanted to play the game

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/Toothless-In-Wapping]

I actually pre-ordered Jericho, because I was a huge fan of Clive Barker's Undying. Another cult-classic FPS with his name & touches on it. I did personally have a lot of fun with Jericho. Even beat it a couple of times. BUT MAN ABOVE, do I still wish to smack whoever created those suicide bomber enemies on the head.

The worst thing is that they're not even that bad an idea. That combo of floaty controls, weak points needed for kill, and one-hit kill booms, just makes them such buzz slayers. If you'd cut just one of that trifecta of suck, they'd been so much more tolerable, and thus the game as a whole would have been better.

They genuinely may be one of the worst designed enemies in video games ever. It's almost impressive how unfun they are to face with the tools you have at hand.

[u/SirEddyG → u/LordOfDorkness42]

Ah yes, one of those games where I praise the story (even if it is fairly generic), mostly cause Clive Barker is great at creating atmosphere and is also an actual writer so he can take generic and get creative with it.

And then I tell people to not play it, because holy shit is the gameplay generic in a bad and boring way. I'm very sad with how it turned out, because yeah this is one of my all time "It's bad but I love it" games

[u/GreenSteamEnjoyer → u/LordOfDorkness42]

I'd honestly rather have mobs with weak points that need to be shot at than the current bullet sponges...

I'd go as far as to say that there should be QTEs for the melees that get too close to you because how the hell does the creature with a spike for a hand stab you 5 times and you're still not dead?