Why? These games are either objectively the worst or the ones with so much squandered potential. Put in the trashfire where it belongs
The unfortunate nominees for the Daniel’s Trashfire Award are:
- Fast and Furious: Crossroads
- Cooking Mama: Cookstar
- Warcraft 3: Reforged
- Marvel’s Avengers
- Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles
Deliberation Summary
Not all games are good. And some are either so bad, so disappointing, both or have the wildest of circumstances attach to it we just have to make a point of remembering these trashfires before the year ends.
Warcraft 3: Reforged is a subpar remake of the RTS classic, failing to deliver the promise of remade in-game cinematics that was previously shown. But it didn’t end there. Some of the changes in Reforged affects the original Warcraft 3 which made more fans angry. Blizzard is at their right now in terms of goodwill among gamers, and unfortunately the Activision Midas touch of well-produced faithful remakes didn’t extend to its Activision-Blizzard partner.
Cooking Mama Cookstar is a wild story of what would have been a non-entry, mediocre game. The original release allegedly turns your console into a data miner, and it was delisted after a story broke that the publisher didn’t really have the publishing rights. It’s just a bizzare story of twists and turns.
Meanwhile, we have two lame games that fit into this year’s trashfire just because of the final release’s quality. A sim racing expert making a Fast & Furious game revealed as the final announcement of 2019’s Game Awards? Some might have been excited, but for us, we can see Fast & Furious: Crossroads being a train wreck from the beginning. Shoddy gameplay, phoned-in voice performances by the film cast and a multiplayer mode that barely anyone played yet having the gall to sell a season pass. What an expected dissapointment.
Another expected disappointment has to go Marvel’s Avengers. Deus Ex died because it didn’t sell as well as expected and the developers can work on this instead. And it still didn’t make a profit. The aggressive marketing is one thing. But it’s mish-mash of straightforward single-player campaign and a looter aspect designed as a live service just made both halves of the game underdelivered.
On the note of marketing, Cyberpunk 2077’s performance on consoles is downright shameful. Despite the delays, despite the aggressive marketing, the game came out as a technical nightmare, especially for PS4 and Xbox One players. To the point that Sony has delisted the game from PlayStation Store until further notice, and shareholders of the developers are starting a lawsuit.
This is the most anticipated game release of the year. Not meeting gamer’s lofty expectations is one thing, but sneaking out a shoddy console version with no pre-release reviews to warn players about the issues has hugely tarnished this game developer darling’s goodwill, revealing their true corpo identity. Corporations are not your friend, and they are now a publicly-listed company, not like they were back then.
It’s hard to decide, as every one of us have a different vote. And we didn’t want to drag the trashfire conversation for that long. So we pulled the gun and say everyone shortlisted here is the winner of the Daniel’s Trashfire Award for 2020. But in truth, on all of these disastrous games, nobody wins.
If that was a downer, check back in an hour time where we reveal Gamer Malaya and Gamer Matters’ Top 10 Games Of 2020, and Game Of The Year!