Does The Bad Apple Ruin The Bunch?

So I've been streaming the Mega Man games over on my Twitch channel (twitch.tv/BradicalRadical) and I reached a particular frustrating segment. Fair warning - this post may contain spoilers for various things.

To explain the segment as simply as I can - There is huge bottomless pit that I must traverse using a special ability. This special ability has a finite amount of, for lack of a better term, ammo. In order to successfully cross the bottomless pit, I have to pick up a few ammo replenishment items along the way. Sounds simple and not terribly frustrating right? And this particular segment isn't that hard on it's own. I had no trouble clearing the gap. But I did have to still complete about 25% of the level - which consists of hard enemies and a boss. Standard Mega Man affair.

Being horrible at Mega Man games, I died not terribly long after the pit. No big deal - I have extra lives and will just respawn and try again. I then realized why this is a particularly bad part of the game. The ammo replenishments do not respawn. This means you must either complete the level after crossing the pit or force a game over and do the whole level over again. Or you can do what I did, since I played on the Legacy Collection on Steam, and make use of save states.

However, as was pointed out by my viewers several times, if I were playing on original hardware I would not have access to save states. I'd have to beat it or game over and do the whole level again. In my anger and frustration, I made the comment about how this is bad game design. That such a bad segment makes it a bad game - which of course isn't entirely true - but got me thinking... Does the bad apple ruin the bunch? Does one blemish, on an otherwise decent or great game, make the whole experience a negative one?

There's two ways I've been looking at this. As far as video games go I can confidently say "No, one bad moment does not ruin the whole experience." I still think Mega Man 3 is a pretty good game and I would recommend that anyone reading this play it. This bad segment doesn't undo the great music, the tight controls, the fun level design and so on.

Another game I can think of is Dark Souls, another notoriously difficult game. There's a level every player dreads, and that is Blighttown. Blighttown is a poorly lit, lag filled mess. The game slows down quite a bit, enemies do a lot of damage over time, it's very easy to fall off the narrow paths that obscured in darkness. Does Blighttown make Dark Souls unenjoyable? Of course not. Dark Souls is still one of my favorite RPGs. Blighttown isn't enjoyable, but the rest of the game is.

So clearly one segment isn't enough to ruin a game. It raises the question, how many bad segments causes a game to become a terrible experience? Well, there really isn't a correct answer to that. Since entertainment is so subjective, there's no quantifiable amount of bad moments that switch a game from enjoyable to irritating.

Another thought worth chewing over is if a terrible installment in a series of games ruins the whole library.

In my personal experience, I'll take another look at the Mega Man series. At the time of this writing, I am currently on Mega Man 5 on the legacy collection. Having recently completed Mega Man 4, I certainly have some harsh and critical thoughts. As my audience has pointed out to me, Mega Man 4 is typically considered the worst in the series and, so far, I'm agreeing with this sentiment. Without diving too deep into the why, I'll save that for my eventual review, I disliked the fourth game a ton and would not revisit it, unless I'm doing a series marathon. But that doesn't mean I want to stop playing the series or wouldn't replay 1-3. This bad apple doesn't ruin the whole bunch.

Looking at another series, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, I find similar thoughts. Sonic 06 is undeniably a bad game. Granted, some can find it as a "so bad it's good" kind of game, but overall they'd even agree that it's still a horrible installment. Sonic's gaming history is a bit lukewarm. The series is typically hit or miss or hidden gem or so bad it is funny. However, the bad installments don't take away from the good ones. Sonic 06 being bad doesn't make Adventure 2 any less of a masterpiece.

Those two series, although, are kind of in an interesting category. They, in general, don't have narratives at the forefront of their series. No one is playing a platformer for the incredible story ( which isn't to say they can't have an awesome story). This isn't breaking news, but so long as a video game has good game play, story can typically take a back seat.

But let's look at some games that did present a strong narrative focus.

The first series that came to mind, after looking at my list of games, was Assassin's Creed. The AC series, from games 1-3, had an engaging overarching story that they were trying to tell. From the first game to Revelations, I generally enjoyed the story. My favorite thing was that the mystery, the main reasoning for certain characters motivations or the hidden lore concerning a few elements, remained a mystery for the most part. Let's look a bit closer.

In the first game, by time you roll the credits, you don't know almost anything. You know that the evil tech corporation, Abstergo, wants this powerful magical thing called "a piece of eden" for world domination purposes. That this is a continuation of a war between Assassins and Templars. And that's it. That's the most information that we receive- in general terms.

Throughout the next three games we are given more pieces of the pie, there are more than one piece of eden, there's some double crossing, we learn about subject 16 more... etc.

But by time we reach Assassin's Creed 3 and we've fully assembled the pie, we discover that it's not a pie we want. Spoilers for the Assassin's Creed 3:

It all amounts to a world ending event that eclipses the Assassin vs Templar plot and is entirely uninteresting. The series was built up as a "rebels vs controlling government" story just to dump a celestial apocalypse on us without warning. They massively fumbled the ending of their story. Honestly, it does make it difficult to go back and play AC 1 - Revelations. The game play, in my opinion, doesn't save those games and the soiled story makes it hard to get excited about knowing it's conclusion isn't satisfying. I have yet to play beyond a small portion of AC 4, so I can't say if this fumble ruins the games after it. My initial thoughts are that it won't, considering they change the story's focus.

But something I found is that watchable entertainment falls into a different category.

Let's take Game of Thrones as our starting example. If you've been on the internet at all during GoT's life you've definitely heard that the fans, myself included, despise the ending of this series. To see my full thoughts on it, feel free to check out my review / rant I wrote here: https://bradicalradical.blogspot.com/2019/05/and-now-our-watch-has-ended-game-of.html

To summarize, characters got frustrating. Either their motivations didn't make sense, their character arcs and development were thrown out the window, or they somehow gained plot armor.

The ending of Game of Thrones is not a satisfying one - for pretty much any character ( perhaps excluding Sansa Stark ). This is an eight season long show, each with about ten episodes taking an hour long. That's about an 80 hour series and no matter how good seasons 1 through 6 are, it doesn't ultimately feel worth it to invest that amount of time for a rewatch, especially since much better series are being released daily.

Let's look at another series, one that has a strong beginning and end but a less than stellar middle.

One that I can quickly point out would be the Supernatural series. A long running fantasy series about two brothers hunting and killing monsters certainly fits the criteria for good beginning and horrible middle. Specifically, Seasons 1 through 5 are fantastic. Sure, there are some campy and corny moments, but that's also what the show was going for. Seasons 6 - 12 ( my memory of specifics is getting muddy, its a 15 season long show ) are not good, overall.

Part of this reason, without doing the deep dive I'm saving for a season by season review, is that the show was meant to end after season five. Seasons one through five are a self contained story, so it's little to no surprise that undoing the satisfying ending with a "but wait there's more" resulted in some bad story telling.

Seasons one through five had engaging character arcs, a well defined villain and a clear main objective. Seasons six through twelve had rehashed character arcs, a new villain every season and no clear big bad. Seasons thirteen through fifteen fixed some of these issues. The villain is single entity, arcs are no longer being revisited and the mystery and magic seems to have returned. I'm only about five episodes in, but 15 so far seems to be shaping up to be a decent ending.

I would be lying if I didn't say that the middle of this series is one that I don't want to revisit any time soon. I also think the middle section does hurt the series as a whole and makes it overall a bit less enjoyable.

So I think the clear verdict for "Does the bad apple ruin the bunch?" is.... maybe. It depends on certain circumstances. For video games that don't put the story as the main focus point - the answer is a clear no. These games tend to focus mostly on game play and one bad section of game play doesn't make the overall experience a bad one. I hate the rush segment in Mega Man 3 but like the rest of the game quite a bit.

However, media that puts a huge focus on narrative story telling tends to fall under a different lens. Games or shows with bad endings tend to spoil the whole experience. Disappointing middles can also have similar effects. What I think is happening here is how much, and specifically what, you're invested in.

With Game of Thrones we spend 80 hours being invested in these characters and expect a satisfying ending. If you fumble the ending it makes the rest of the experience seem like a bad investment - a waste of time. In a world where countless amounts of media are being produced, time is a commodity that can't be wasted. So when that final bite of apple gives you intense food poisoning it makes the whole experience a negative one.

Is there a way to avoid wasting your time with stories that have bad endings or disappointing middle segments? Well, there's only one sure fire way I can think of - misery loves company, especially when you can make jokes about the misery.

But what do the rest of you think? Is my assessment accurate or am I just a rambling mess? Let me know in the comments and feel free to subscribe to the blog so that you can receive email notifications. Thanks for reading, and as always, good night and joy be with you all.