ArbitraryWater's Official Unsanctioned and Unsolicited Blight Club Suggestion List

With the continued success of the Giant Bomb feature “Blight Club” I thought it good and proper that I, Mr Dubious Wheels himself, inject himself into the conversation uninvited and undesired. Here are a handful of games I think would greatly benefit from the Blight Club treatment, mostly because I played them at some point myself and think other people should suffer as well. I recommend all of these games based on firsthand, personal experience, likely streamed, though given the format of Blight Club most of them are going to fall under the Dubious Horror umbrella. Unfortunately, for as much as I'd like to subject the crew to some of the RPG nightmares I've encountered, that doesn't really seem plausible with the kind of feature Blight Club represents. There might be exceptions to that rule, but I'll stick with what I know works for now.

Blightning Round contenders (ostensibly 4 hours or less):

Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi

Developer: Idol FX

Release Date: Oct 20, 2003

Who should play? Any of them.

Previously covered by me on The Wheel of Dubious FPSes, and then later covered by my podcast co-host ZombiePie for his “I’m going to play every game made by the Drake of the 99 Dragons people” crusade, Nosferatu is an ostensibly run-based video game made in about seven months by a team of people with interesting ideas and absolutely no resources or time to make those ideas feel good in any conceivable way. It would be extremely funny to watch any of the blightmans deal with the game’s obscene sound mixing, janky hitboxes, and one hour time limit as they attempt to stake some vampires.

Also frankly I think this game would be an excuse for one of them to put on a really, really stupid vampire outfit and I just want to see that in my life. Don't you?

Resident Evil Dead Aim AKA: Biohazard Gun Survivor 4: HEROES NEVER DIE

Developer: Cavia

Release Date: June 17, 2003

Who should play? Grubb.

Previously covered by me on The Tower of Dubious Horror games around the time I stopped writing things on a regular basis. There are like eight other Cavia games and eight other bad Resident Evil spinoffs (including ones made by Cavia) that I could also nominate for this feature, which suggests a well of potential that has yet to be tapped. However, since these dorks all have CRTs and classic gaming setups, what if we got them to play Resident Evil Dead Aim as god intended, with the Guncon 2 controller? Modern technology means we’ve been sorely lacking in any sort of light gun blight, and there’s no better way to demonstrate it than a fourth-string Resident Evil spinoff that awkwardly tries to blend that sort of action shooting with the series’ traditional survival horrorisms. That to me immediately sounds like something Blight Club would benefit from.

Doctor Hauzer

Developer: Riverhill Soft

Release Date: April 29, 1994

Who should play? Ryckert or Grubb

You may not know the name of Doctor Hauzer, an obscure Japan-only 3DO game, but you’ll know why I’m suggesting it as soon as I bring up that it’s from the team that would go on to make Overblood. Much like its successor, Doctor Hauzer pre-dates the concept of being a “Resident Evil clone” in favor of being an “Alone in the Dark clone” with a much larger emphasis on traps than actual enemies. Oh did I mention that it’s entirely rendered in 3D and runs at sub-10 FPS at pretty much all times? Sure, when I played it I overclocked the 3DO emulator to make the frame rate a tad more stable, but that seems against the rules of Blight Club to me.

I’m nominating both Dan and Jeff for this role depending on if we want retribution for Overblood or a continuation of Riverhill Soft’s ideas. There is an english fan translation of this game out there, so no excuses.

Sonic and the Secret Rings

Developer: Sonic Team

Release Date: Feb 20, 2007

Who Should Play? Whoever can fit in another sonic costume

While Sonic 06 rightfully gets most of the attention as the nadir of the franchise, have you considered the *other* game that Sonic Team was working on at the same time? While not a broken, barely functional mess like its next gen big brother, Sonic and the Secret Rings has a card up its sleeve that I think would make for “good” blight content: motion controls. It’s an auto-runner with obligatory motion controls. Are those motion controls precise enough to let you do what you want to? Lord no, absolutely not. What kind of game do you think we’re talking about here? It’s mercifully short, but god it made me so angry. I can’t speak to Sonic and the Black Knight, nor can I speak to the Wii U “classic” based on the Sonic Boom cartoon, so this is my firsthand suggestion for more sonic-based blight should it be required.

Full Size Blights

Blood II: The Chosen

Developer: Monolith Productions (RIP)

Release Date: October 31, 1998

Who should play? Minotti, if only because he’s the one I’d be most confident in being able to finish.

Of the games I played for The Wheel of Dubious FPSes, Daikatana wouldn’t rate anywhere near the worst thing I played, to the point where I actually kinda like parts of it. I will fully admit the version of Daikatana I played was not the version Jeff Grubb played. I played a version of Daikatana with unlimited saves and functional companion AI, which makes it a significantly smoother experience. There is no fan patch that makes Blood II a better game. I’ll continue to maintain on the record that the original Blood is easily the best and least embarrassing Build Engine game, but its sequel is a blatantly unfinished, deeply janky and often miserable experience with some of the most limp-wristed weapons I’ve seen in a video game. Throw in enemies that react to you immediately with high damage hitscan weapons and we’ve got a stew going baby. At least you can try to quicksave your way through, which will surely make the experience less of a horrific sludge. Surely. Definitely no save mishaps to be expected from this group.

Dino Crisis 3

Developer: Capcom

Release Date: September 16, 2003

Who should play? Ryckert or Minotti

2003 was a weird year for Capcom, huh? Devil May Cry 2 feels a bit like an amateur hour pick, mostly sustained as a Blight Club pick by how funny it would be to see one of those guys dressed up as Dante. It’s too easy, it’s too obvious, and most importantly it’s a video game where you just mash square for five hours. It’s a miserable experience and a soul-crushing slog, but it lacks the true Geist des Schmerzes that I want when I see three adult men in their forties play a bad video game every wednesday. PN03 might be an alternate dark horse pick for this slot; you can see a lot of ideas that would eventually make their way into games like Bayonetta or Vanquish even if the experience itself doesn't cohere together well.

Dino Crisis 3 is, full stop, probably in the top 5 for “angriest I’ve gotten while streaming a game” and a lot of that can be explained thus: It’s a fast, high speed action game that is still using tank controls and semi-fixed camera angles. It’s never left the original Xbox and one can see why after about fifteen minutes of play. Your character is exceptionally mobile but never in a way that the player feels fully in control of, and trying to maintain a combo doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as it did in Dino Crisis 2, an underrated gem of Capcom’s lineup. Also the bosses are sort of fucked and I really hope you did some grinding to get enough ammo capacity. Highly highly highly recommend this one because I need some other human beings on this planet to share my pain with.

Vampire Rain

Developer: Artoon

Release Date: January 25, 2007

Who should play? Grubb or Ryckert

Hey, y’all like stealth games, right? There are a lot of bad ones out there, but few have the level of dubious infamy as Vampire Rain, an early 360 and PS3 offering from the people who also brought you Blinx the Time Cat. Weirdly punishing? Check. Jank as fuck? Check. A much longer experience than it should be? Absolutely check. I’ve seen enough Blight Club to know both Jeff and Dan have the general attention span and information retention of a goldfish, so the idea of having them drop into Vampire Rain and re-learning that game’s nonsense from week to week sounds *delicious*. At least I’m not suggesting they play games that require reading! That would just be cruel.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Developer: Spark Unlimited

Release Date: Feb 27, 2014

Who Should Play? Any of them, really, but also Dan because the dialogue would annoy him.

One of the big take aways for The Gauntlet of Dubious Character Action is that it’s a lot harder to make a God of War imitator than one would think, but it’s also hard to make a character action game bad enough to overcome the bounds of playability and become true kuso garbage. You can make a bad Square Square Triangle all you want, there are plenty, but it's hard to make a truly miserable one, or one that's miserable in an interesting way. Yaiba is an exception to that rule, with the perfect combination of mean-spirited, deeply stupid writing and annoying punitive game mechanics! Be glad I’m not nominating X-Blades, and not just because the costume for that thing wouldn’t be allowed on twitch.

Countdown Vampires

Developer: Bandai

Release Date: December 22, 1999

Who should play?

There are a lot of bad survival horror games I could nominate for this feature, such as “every single thing I played on the dreamcast.” I know both Blue Stinger and Illbleed are on the crew’s radar, but how about Seven Mansions or The Ring? You know, that good kusoge. I’ve been attempting some level of restraint though, so allow me to suggest one that may otherwise fall past their attention. Countdown Vampires is a clown game. It’s cargo cult Resident Evil at a time when other video game developers (i.e. Konami) were starting to make the genre their own and it’s just deeply incompetent on every level. To me, it still represents the zenith intersection of bad and playable, a perfect meeting point of dumb idiot game and “you can still make progress.” Bonus points for only having the true ending hidden behind a fairly obscure New Game Plus requirement, which is probably beyond the scope of blight club but also haha what if it wasn't?

That’ll be it for me, otherwise I’m going to sit here and nominate every other video game I’ve played on stream. If you noticed a decided lack of Dubious RPGs, that’s mostly because I don’t think most of the RPGs I played would make for good blight games. I might be proven wrong at some point, and if nothing else my recent experiences with Silver suggest there might be wiggle room after all. Until next time, just know that I’m definitely almost done with that mid-budget action JRPG write-up.