In your opinion, what video games have terrible names?
2017’s Prey
Even worse is that it is a trademark. There was a kickstarter for a game “prey for the gods” which could have gotten a trademark dispute over the usage of the name “prey” from bethesda.
So they changed the name to “praey for the gods” to not have to deal with yearlong legal battle and burn the Kickstarter funds.
Bethesda sucks. Damn.
And even worse, prey 2017 is actually a good game that should have totally been named Neuroshock or something
The names aren’t terrible by themselves but it really sucks that the critically acclaimed narrative space puzzler “outerwilds” released the same month as the open world space rpg “outerworlds”.
Supposedly their offices were near eachother and they’d joke about that.
Braid. Sounds like a dress up game but it’s a puzzle platformers about time travel. I always have to explain it every time I talk about it
A lot of JRPG’s with weird punctuation and seemingly neverending titles or made-up words.
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Re:Chain of Memories and Dream Drop Distance and χ Back Cover and 0.2 Birth by Sleep and Re Mind and -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX- and HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue
- Legend of Fantasy: Monstrum Refantazio
- Death end re;Quest
- Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth3 V Generation
- UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH Exe:Late and II Sys:Celes
- Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army
- .hack//G.U. Last Recode
- void* tRrLM2(); //Void Terrarium 2
- Atelier Resleriana: Forgotten Alchemy and the Polar Night Liberator and lots of other Atelier games
- Divine Divinity
- Infinite Undiscovery
- Various Daylife
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
- Mon-Yu: Defeat Monsters And Gain Strong Weapons And Armor. You May Be Defeated, But Don’t Give Up. Become Stronger. I Believe There Will Be A Day When The Heroes Defeat The Devil King.
Agree with most of these but
Revengeance is perfect
BlazBlue: Chronophantasma Extend
I don’t believe any of these titles are real.
The MegaTen games have some weird ones, yeah. Like Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, then the sequel to that came out and it was just Soul Hackers 2. Same with how Persona 1 was Megami Ibunroku Persona and then became Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. Oh and how theres two Persona 2s, Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. Great games but man, really should have been like Persona 2 Part 1 and Part 2.
Not to defend the game itself but Neptunia is at least on some level a parody of other JRPGs, so the title is meant invoke that cringe. The first one was still called Hyperdimension Neptunia and the “resemicolonbirth” line was a remake which has its own remake now as well with a star in the title…
So, like I said, not defending it.
Drag is personally offended that you don’t like Revengeance. Drag is a big fan of musical theatre and also of turning fascists into confetti.
Divine Divinity (sorry Larian, but it’s true)
All the names in that series are horrible.
All games and movies that reuse the same name as the very first title in the franchise to make a “fresh start” while spitting on the original.
Any examples off the top of your head?
NFS: Hot Pursuit. HP2 was a perfect game in the arcade racer genre. HP remake doesn’t even have bots in multiplayer, meaning you and your buddies won’t be chased by cops because no one plays that game and the cops have to be played by humans.
Thanks
Tomb Raider, Doom, Mortal Kombat for example
Not bad games at all but I just don’t like that it’s claiming the name of something, basically saying it wasn’t good enough.
Thanks
FiST: Forged in Shadow Torch
Such a stupid and contrived name.
I think all the games that do this are annoying. We’re not stupid, we can come up with an acronym for your name. It’s silly, I know, but it made me not want to play FTL: faster than light for a long time.
The gameplay is as clumsy as the title. So it FiTS.
Ha ha… Take my updoot 👏
The protagonist fight with a big mecha fist though, I don’t think it is that bad of a name?
Yeah but “forged in shadow torch”? Come on.
They wanted to name it fist and went back from there. For that its bad IMO.
Forged in shadows touch
Fight in shallow trenches
Freaks in silly tales
Fist inside Someone’s Tush
Fart inverse serene toot
Yes, but the breakdown of the FiST acronym was very clumsily thrown together based around that concept.
Hahaha a few come to mind from the NES and SNES era.
“Hey punk! Are you TUFF-E-NUFF?” comes to mind.
Edit: was missing the first part of the title. Thanks for pointing it out! 👍
My favorite that I unironically love is Totally Rad. Short, sweet, to the point, and PERFECTLY encapsulation 80s radditude.
This post is about bad names, not brilliance!
Hey Punk!
Oops! Forgot that park
Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars. Not much changed between this and Rocket League, the name was probably the main thing holding them back.
that’s just begging to be referred to solely as “SARPBC” pronounced as a word
deleted by creator
Triangle Strategy
I genuinely thought that name was a joke about Fire Emblem for so long.
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
It sounds like either a throwaway mobile gacha game or an epic CBT adventure porno, but it’s actually a pretty good 3D platformer.
Sounds like a porn box set
Shadowrun (the arena shooter) probably would’ve been better received if it were named basically anything else.
I loved that game and i love the TTRPG. I’d always have to tell people it’s not really a good Shadowrun game, it’s just Counter-Strike with a couple mods. On console. With bots.
Which was, like, the best thing ever to me at the time. I ate that shit UP
I also found Death Stranding to be weird.
It’s like… Death coming ashore?
I mean I get that it’s about this whole concept of people having their own beach when they die or being able to travel to other people’s beaches or something weird like that. But they’re really pushing it with that title.
And also the fact that Death end with ‘th’ followed by a word starting with ‘s’ makes it really difficult to pronounce.
