Dark Souls - 10 Games With Insane Graphics That Flopped
Some article games look absolutely gorgeous with great graphics but never quite take off as mainstream successes or live up to their gameplay potential. We've got a bunch of examples of pretty games that flopped in one way or another, be it critically, commercially, or something in between. Let's dive in with number 10 and start with the obvious one, the elephant in the room, Anthem.
Anthem, especially pre-release, really looks like a graphic. The early demos of the game highlighted walking around the Hub Village area in first person with just incredible character models and realistic animations and lighting in the crowded sci-fi marketplace, leading up to you hopping into your Javelin, your cool Iron Man mech suit that had an insane amount of detail on it and reflections and light, and then the final release ended up looking much flatter than that.
The javelins still looked really cool, though. The worlds themselves that you flew around were pretty vast, but even if you could still argue one way or another that the game was pretty, the actual gameplay itself wasn't. You've probably heard enough about Anthem at this point, it being one of EA and Bioware's biggest flops as a service game that nobody really ended up wanting just because nothing about it really felt quite right.
At first, running around and blasting things was awesome, but then when it came to missions, world building, and enemy types, it didn't really quite scratch the itch that anyone was really looking for, at least for us here. With particle effects, weather effects, and environmental effects, your javelin and the customization within it did lead the game to look kind of nice.
That is the point of this list. Unfortunately, the game isn't so hot now. Moving on over to number nine, Marvel's. So there is a lot of debate about this one because there is a player base. There are some people out there that like this game, so we're not going to dunk on you. You know, everybody has their own favorite game, but for a lot of people, Marvel's Avengers looked incredible.
It was this flashy, awesome looking game with realistic looking talking Marvel characters in it. Yet another kind of endlessly replayable game as a service type game that a lot of people just weren't looking for in a Marvel Avengers game. If you're online, if you've ever been on YouTube, you've probably heard most of the complaints about Marvel's Avengers from a gameplay and content offering standpoint, but you can't deny the game looks pretty good.
The designs of the characters, you know, even though pre-release people were thinking they weren't so great. Most of the characters, especially post-launch, do look really cool. The environments are pretty cool, especially in the single-player campaign. It's unfortunate, though, that the actual game itself isn't quite what some people were really hoping for, you know.
Next, over at number eight, we have Rise Son Of Rome, a game that originally served as an Xbox One launch title and a graphical showcase developed by Crytech, who ultimately said that they were not happy with the game's Xbox One sales after launch. From what we know, it seemed like a well-after launch.
It eventually went on to sell 1.3 million units, and ultimately, despite the game not being bad, it seemed like for a lot of people it was a little bit of a forgettable experience. You know, you've seen one combat encounter, one mission in the game, you've seen it all, but this game actually does have a little bit of a cult following because it does have some cool moments, but it still didn't go on to become a franchise or anything like that, like people were hoping, but it definitely delivered on the graphics front.
To this day, believe it or not, despite being an Xbox One launch game, Rise, Son Of Rome holds up well, especially if you play it on PC, of course, but this game had detailed characters and large. And still detailed environments, lots of great lighting, and just really cool animation and combat finishers and stuff.
Crytek really went all out on this game. They definitely wanted to be like "hey yes, we are the people that made Crisis and now we're making this cool Roman warrior game and they succeeded." So say what you will about Ry's Son of Rome, the fact that it never got a sequel, maybe you want to call it a flop, maybe cry Tech themselves call it a flop, but hey, it looked really damn cool.
Then next, over at number seven, we have Knack Knack, one and two. Of course, this has become a meme thanks to Donkey, but these harmless little platformer games were really designed to showcase the graphical power of the PlayStation 4, specifically with particle effects and how the character of Knack was built out of a bunch of different voxels all moving around in real time more than we've ever seen in a character before, and with its fun light, cartoony, crisp, bright atmosphere, it was definitely bold, but the gameplay itself, the real simplicity of it, and the family-friendly nature of it still didn't help Knack really kind of attach and take off in the living room, whether in North America or in Japan.
Knack 2 reportedly really bombed in Japan after it was released and didn't even crack the top 20 software releases when it was released, which is painful, especially when we're talking about games that missed the mark or flopped or flew too close to the sun, but you know what. Knack knew what it was.
It did what it set out to do. It was a fun, light-hearted platformer, and it did look very pretty, especially Knack 2. In certain specific moments, it really did look like a Pixar kind of cartoon Disney Animation thing come to life. Next, over at number six, we have Assassin's Creed Unity, which hot damn, this game looked really good.
The unfortunate thing that held it back wasn't that it was a commercial flop; it actually apparently sold pretty well, according to reports. What really held it back and made it fall from grace was the technical state it was initially released in. The console version of the game had terrible frame rates.
The PC version wasn't really well optimized, and, of course, you've seen all the glitches by now. The Assassin's Creed Unity was glitchy as hell with people's eyes popping out of their faces, just weird horrific character contortions, you name it, you've probably seen it all at this point, but now looking back at the game now with it at least running okay, it's a decent Assassin's Creed game and it is absolutely a.
The gorgeous one from the new parkour animations with how the character can climb up and down buildings, which still blows my mind that they didn't continue that in further games, to just the level of detail of Paris and down to these city street levels filled with characters, the brimmings of revolution too.
