15 Most Overrated Video Games Since 2000
Battle of the Best-Sellers.
Have you ever tried saying to a group of gamer-loving pals (or just posted on a forum) about a particular game "Not being your thing", or starting a post with "Is it just me, or..."?
There's always this sensation that we're addressing a nebulous critical response, some 'voice' that represents an un-tappable consensus. You feel it whenever you openly state something like GTA V is overrated, like you're bracing for the hit from an unknown assailant.
However, diving headlong into that response, that idea of which games we simply 'cannot' deem less than perfect, is the entire point of this article. There are far too many titles that manage to weaponise their hype-cycles into multi year-long reputations of nothing but praise, and it's only years later, when you reflect back on them, that maybe... just, maybe, we were a little blinded by buzzwords and not-so-original mechanics all along.
So, torch n' pitchforks at the ready?
Let's do this.
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15. Batman: Arkham City
When you think back on Arkham Asylum, it's the immaculate world-design, the pacing, the constant rollout of marquee characters that keeps it hurtling along at breakneck speed, right? For City, Rocksteady elected to go open-world, but not... quite.
Instead of branching things out and introducing mechanics that actually befitted free-form exploration (which they at least attempted to nail with Arkham Knight's Batmobile), City felt like Asylum's still-incredible levels, spread out across an expanse of land, just for the sake of it.
Plot-wise we were supposed to be dealing with the ramifications of Hugo Strange finding out Bruce's real identity, yet in the end he was skewered by Ra's al Ghul before he could utter a sentence. Couple that with some shoehorned-in Joker appearances and a Batman that comes across as a narrow-minded A-hole with Gotham's best interests at the bottom of his priorities list, and its (admittedly stunning) finale just doesn't save Arkham City.