In common parlance a "tryhard" is someone who, well, tries really hard to be "cool", to be one of the "cool kids", to be popular, to follow the fashions, to fit in, to get into the social circles of the "cool" people, to get validation and admiration from others, and usually does it in such an obvious and transparent "trying-too-hard" way that it's outright cringe. Or, similarly, someone who tries really hard to become popular and to succeed as a content creator, for example on online video and streaming platforms, but just doesn't really have the talent for it, and it just ends up being awkward and cringe. They are just trying very very hard to do or become something they don't really have the natural talent for, and it just seeps through and can quite clearly be seen, and it's often awkward and cringe. Or just boring. The effort may be there, but not the required talent.
Recently I played the quite criticized game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League because it was one of the complimentary games in the PS+ subscription. After having played it for about 3-4 hours the term "tryhard" came to mind to describe the game.
I almost admire how much effort has been put into the game, but I really feel that most of that effort is quite misaimed.
The main menus alone really reek of trying to be one of these big online multiplayer games of the sorts of Destiny 2, or the newer Ghost Recon games, and similar. There's like a dozen views and sub-views with all kinds of stuff: Team building, character customization, an extensive online shop for cosmetics, story "seasons", and so on and so forth.
It was perhaps those "seasons" that one of the sub-menus was dedicated to that finally gave me that strong "tryhard" vibe. This game seems to be trying really, really hard to be this big popular online multiplayer game with an illustrious "career" spanning years and years, with new content regularly added, with an evolving storyline, with entire "seasons" of such storylines. This alongside the myriads and myriads of other stuff found in the menus alone.
I also admire the effort put into the gameplay proper. Controls are relatively polished, animations are relatively polished, the four playable characters are somewhat varied in their unique skills, controls and animations, voice acting is ok, graphics are relatively ok, and it's all happening in an open world style city that's modeled relatively well, with quite some content in it.
But the thing is, when you start playing the game, and are about two or three hours in, you start noticing that all that is just window dressing, a lot of surface polish without much substance underneath.
The actual gameplay is repetitive, the missions are repetitive, there are only extremely few mission types, which means that you'll just be doing the same kind of thing over and over. The amount of variation in the game is abysmal, and doing the same type of simplistic couple of mission types (which are essentially just "go to this location in the city and destroy this enemy weapon, killing enemies along the way") over and over gets boring quite quickly.
There's a lot of polish, and there's a huge amount of stuff in the main menu, but there's not much content in the game proper, not much substance. It's just doing the same things over and over with very little variation. And I'm not the only one criticizing the game for this, as it's a very common criticism.
The game is way too simplistic for what it's clearly trying to be. It's trying to be this epic grand-scale online multiplayer game, sitting along the giants like Destiny 2 and similar other games, with a life spanning years and years, with story "seasons" and all... but ultimately there's not much to do in the game. Ultimately, below all that surface polish, it's simplistic and boring, and you get bored of it quite quickly.
Another thing that they clearly tried very hard but ultimately failed was trying to make the four playable characters likeable. To have quirky, funny, relatable personalities, characters that one would really like. However, it just falls flat. It just doesn't work. The characters are meh. Boring. Perhaps in some ways a bit unlikeable.
It really is a "tryhard" game.
Comments
Post a Comment