So Bad It's Horrible Cleanup

There's a game I want to propose, from the Wii U, The Stonecutter, an unfinished, poorly made, and no effort visual novel where's it's just a slideshow. I think it fits, you guys?

It does seem to have abysmal reviews.

Actually I wonder: could sports TEAMS in an objective sense be considered horrible? For example teams that went 0-16 in the NFL like the 2017 Browns or 2008 Lions. Or teams like the 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats who has the lowest wins in a NBA season. I guess the 2000 Spain Paralympics Basketball team is a team though, though they are Horrible due to pretending to be disabled.

I, uh, don't think we're in the business of calling real people / groups of people "horrible".

I mean we have a page for Musicians who are also real life people/groups of people. The teams aren't being called bad due to their personal lives, they are being called bad solely for their actions within the sport itself. (I guess for cheating examples it could toe the line with personal lives, but it's no different then a product/event falsely advertising themselves or the like, it's basically the team/player being called horrible for going against the rules of the game and misleading the other players.)

Edited by BocchiTheRock on May 11th 2024 at 2:59:36 PM

The thing is that most sports teams, no matter how awful, still are still able to attract a fanbase of dedicated locals who hope they'll be better next year. That's too much of a fanbase for something to be So Bad It's Horrible. Anything short of a team that had to fold because they sucked too much and couldn't draw any fans wouldn't be worth considering.

I promise to stop the joke right now. There done.

But what exactly would make an sporting event horrible? No one had any fun in it? Loss of life? (That one is right out, too controversial)

Question: If one were to add Brendan Schaub's Gringo Papi comedy special to SBIH (which was negatively received), where would it go? It was released on YouTube.

I guess my concern is that for bands and musicians we should be troping the quality of their music. That seems to be harder with sports where there is no "creator / creation barrier". I don't want to risk sliding into bashing real people.

I've already explained my take on it multiple times, but basically the event should be held to the same standards as some of the other events we already discuss. That does include loss of life which is not too controversial considering we have infamously deadly events up already (like Altamont Free Concert).

Edited by WarJay77 on May 12th 2024 at 11:57:18 AM

Ok, you are right, you are A VERY good troper, you know your stuff. I trust your insight.

If a tabletop game has a 4 or less on Board Game Geek, would it be eligible to add to the list?

Edited by mariic on May 13th 2024 at 2:33:03 AM

Should we disqualify musical works made using Japanese vocal synthesizers (Vocaloid, Synth V, UTAU, CeVIO etc.) from appearing on the various Music subpages? Given the nature of the softwares and how musical works featuring them are made, it's pretty much a given that at least a thousand of them are bound to suck hard. In other words, it's like Fan Fiction for music.

Edited by JHD0919 on May 13th 2024 at 2:27:02 PM

Is it the place to suggest another entry? I have one game in mind, "Smuta". It's the Russian game in the Time of Troubles historical setting, that was, in theory, meant to spark the people's interest to history and patriotism. In theory.

• It was received very poorly: critics gave it abysmal ratings (most platforms gave it 3/10 or below; one that didn't, said that only saving grace is design, but still states that it's painfully boring); players hate it, and widely mock it as unplayable mess. The few defenders this game has, almost entirely rely on "if you don't support this game, you're not a patriot" rhetoric, or (in case of media persons) were hired to promote it to begin with (and even of those, some turned on it after release, picking dignity over money).
• It's extremely buggy, including bugs that literally softlock the game.
• It's extremely badly optimised (and not just because it's made with Unreal Engine). While it's generally agreed that design is the sole saving point of entire game, it just feels like badly-done empty sandbox with pretty models, and does nothing to salvage otherwise-abysmal game; everything else was botched, including basic day/night cycle.
• The game is advertised as RPG. But it's linear, combat system is barebones and buggy.
• Almost nothing of the promised and advertised features was actually implemented in any meaningful way, be it visuals or gameplay. During development, they were actively ignoring pleads to show gameplay footage until just few months before release, which may or may not be because those were done at the last moment.
• The plot is very primitive, with flat characters and unlikable protagonist.
• Empty "open world" that isn't even open (you're still railroaded), with no activities, and with few quests being very boring.
• All of this was done with massive budget they received from government sponsoring. After its disastrous release, even some officials believe that most of this budget was stolen, and the game was made at the last moment with what's left, hence the result.

It's not a draft, I was just listing my arguments in favour of adding it; if people agree, I'd prepare the actual draft. Game was released at April 4th, so by now it's certainly 1 month old.

You can suggest entries to be added on this thread (I think there's a note on the main page of So Bad, It's Horrible stating that proposing entries here before adding them is actually encouraged, given that SBIH is a rather contentious page and that it has some relatively strict requirements). I'm not familiar with the game, but it sounds like it could qualify given the points you made.

I feel like this isn't necessary when the usual "Is it being made for professional reasons/for profit or just someone messing around?" reasoning could be used.

I don't see it as grounds for disqualification any more than using Unity should disqualify games. As long as the music was sold for money, it should count.

Okay, he's the draft about Smuta game ("Troubles", as in Time of Troubles).

Edited by Aazkaal on May 13th 2024 at 4:56:33 PM

Good to go.

And heh heh, that title's sounds so hilariously wrong with no context to english-speakers.

Edited by generation81 on May 13th 2024 at 9:50:05 AM

Updated the text to state what its title means.

The only question is, where to put it, if it was only released on PC, with console versions being cancelled? Those "generations" subpages are confusing to me.

Edited by Aazkaal on May 13th 2024 at 4:55:26 PM

It's whatever year the game was released in. Since it was released this year it would go in Horrible.Video Game Generations Seventh Onwards under "Ninth" (2017-present).

Actually, that draft is not ready to be put on the page, as the grammar is very poor.

While I don't use this browser, I hear that back in November 2023, Opera GX had a near-universally reviled promotion with Eric André where, upon starting up the browser, he'd suddenly pop up while yelling "OPERA GX!!!"

This attracted a ton of complaints, as the sound is very loud and unexpected, making it a Jump Scare not only for the person using the computer, but for anyone nearby if you're not using headphones (I've found stories of this causing problems for people who triggered this while in a classroom, at work, or in the presence of a sleeping baby). This would happen every single time you closed and re-opened the browser, and there was no way to disable it, other than digging through the browser's files to manually delete the video file.

Thankfully, it only lasted for one day (November 28), but that one day was enough to convince some users to download a different web browser. It has a small number of defenders, but they seem to be overwhelmingly drowned out by people who thought that campaign was obnoxious at best.

I think this could count as Horrible.

I love Eric Andre and that's very on-brand for him but yeah that sounds like an absolutely terrible idea.

I mentioned adding the game Waifu Impact before but I got no feedback on it, so I'm curious what you think

I think that might count under advertising, but to me, it strikes me more as Dethroning Moment of Suck. Given that it's a single advertising campaign that otherwise went very bad in comparison to the other ad campaigns that didn't go bad.