8 Genius Ideas Wasted On Bad Video Games

8. The Deaf Experience - The Quiet Man

On paper, the Square Enix-published beat 'em up The Quiet Man had a ton of head-turning potential, with the game featuring a minimal soundscape in order to reflect the experiences of its deaf protagonist, Dane.

Only vague muffled sounds are audible throughout both the action-centric gameplay and live-action cutscenes, and the dialogue is left un-subtitled, leaving audiences to try and piece together the plot themselves through visual cues.

It's certainly an intriguing setup, and one which in better hands might've actually made for both an interesting mystery-action game and a creative step forward for representation in video games.

But even if you can forgive the deeply clunky combat, The Quiet Man's execution feels fundamentally flawed; Dane is shown regularly reading lips and communicating with other characters, so there's a bizarre disconnect between Dane's comprehension of what's going on and our considerably lesser grasp.

As such, you were more likely to be confused than compelled by the story, but even once a patch was released allowing players to replay the game with full audio and subtitles, it just confirmed how overpoweringly dull it all was.

The kernel of a great idea is definitely there, but not like this.