Games ruined by bad voice acting

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Mischief Maker
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Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Mischief Maker »

Gog had an article on the scariest videogames of all time for Halloween and one of the ones they listed was Sanitarium. I was and still am of the opinion that Sanitarium could have been a great game but it was ruined by the main character's horrible voice actor, whose upbeat and cheerful delivery clashed horribly with the fact that he was supposed to be a horribly disfigured patient trapped in an insane asylum.

Other people have said the voice acting ruined Freedom Planet for them (note that you can play with the cutscenes off).

Are there any games whose shit voice acting ruined it for you?
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BIL
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

I was going to post much the below in What Not Shmup but held off, as tbh mine is hardly a fresh take. Good timing on this thread!

I would not say the original Silent Hill is ruined by its VA, quite the opposite actually. It's an inherently bent game with little lost from its offputting performances... except with regards to Harry and his daughter. Harry's is the most profound example of Just Mute The Bastard I ever hope to hear. The man is weaponised ennui. I learned years ago to keep the remote handy on replays, to zero him in most cutscenes, especially the Bad Ending paths where the game's most primally affecting scenes of horror and grief are snuffed without trace. You would think a man collapsing in despair and whispering "This can't be happening" is at least ripe for overacting if nothing else, but it's just another infuriatingly consistent blast of morphine direct to the brainstem. Echoing Roo, it's so much better in your head.

Thankfully I don't play many VA-dependent games, I'm sure there are many more (and worse!) examples. I'm pretty sure Harry's VA is the male announcer in Gradius Gaiden and he's clearly having a great time there, so good on him I suppose.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I remember reading about how the guy who voiced James in SH2 commented that they had to record their lines separately which was why the lines sometimes came off as stilted or unnatural when characters were speaking to one another. All things considered, I thought the voice acting turned out pretty good in SH2 in spite of that.

I actually can't think of any game where I was that annoyed by the voice acting that I found the game unplayable. Certainly there's some games where having the option to disable voices could be nice, but I'm scratching my head to think of a game that I truly felt dissuaded from playing just because I didn't like the voice acting.
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drauch
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by drauch »

Yeah, I agree with Sanitarium. Love the game, but good lordy, there's some insane tonal issues due to the delivery of some lines. Really absurd choice for a main.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:All things considered, I thought the voice acting turned out pretty good in SH2 in spite of that.
I actually did a double-take when I first heard James in SH2's attract reel. Particularly following Maria's effortless teasing, he sounded pathetic. Like a man attempting a full sprinting retreat from the inescapable burdens of his own sad heart. :o

...

...

Image

Quality zero-budget VA. :cool: What a fortunate production that was... the only miscreant was Ernest, who's easily sidelined by nature. (maybe he's secretly Harry? he absolutely nails that "great in your head / shitting in your bed" delivery!

I feel worse for the odd clanger lines they got saddled with. Jeremy Blaustein seems like a cool guy but I wouldn't describe SH2's script as "super tight" when it hits its listener with the aural dead leg of:

"Liar that's a lie!" (speaker is a huffy little girl - survivable)
"No. That's not true." (MY BEAUTIFUL FACE IS RUINED / YOU BITCH I'LL MAKE YOU SUFFER) "No. It's the truth," surely? Image
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ryu
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by ryu »

When people quit a game because of bad voice acting it's probably got a share of other problems. In my experience you just get used to cringy voice over anyway. People have claimed they got so used to the acting in Arv Rise Fantasia that they stopped noticing it - and that game's a good example for terrible VA.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by awbacon »

Deep Fear. Super fun game, great RE clone underwater, but the voices...so bad
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BulletMagnet »

There are few games I've played where I felt compelled to switch the voice acting off, but one that comes to mind is Mana Khemia 2 for the PS2; in truth it wasn't even the quality of the voice actors themselves that did it, but the awful localization choices that ruined the voices no matter who did them. Long story short, the two main characters were a resentful, put-upon type and a "country bumpkin" sort; the English voices transformed the former into a completely insufferable grouch and gave the latter an overdone, nails-on-chalkboard twang. Fortunately a Japanese voice track was included so I just switched to that (and in fairness, presumably the Japanese actress for the latter character had a corresponding "country" accent too, but since I don't speak the language I couldn't detect it), but that's one of the few times I've ever bothered, and it still sticks in my mind two console generations later.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Specineff »

Final Zone II and Last Alert on the Turbo Grafx CD. Experiences comparable to shoving steel wool down your ear canal.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by orange808 »

Sewer Shark had some unforgettable acting. :) Dogmeat!

The full motion sequences in Wing Commander were bad, as well. I think that one had a porn star reading lines.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by xxx1993 »

Last Alert, Castle Shikigami 2, every single House of the Dead game ever made...
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

Oh HECK no, HOTD 1 & 2 VA is legendary! You are making me SUFFER LIKE G DID, xxx1993! :o The later ones took themselves seriously and got boring, but the first two are cheese, glorious cheese. Roll on M2's Switch ports next year! Image

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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by kitten »

BIL wrote:Harry's is the most profound example of Just Mute The Bastard I ever hope to hear. The man is weaponised ennui.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-9tmFGYT0c

a classic

- the part of this with cheryl going "daddy d-daddy?" is contrasting strangely with having listened to a bunch of daddy mulk in the car with my roommate earlier today
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

Good ol days... have you heard this one? :mrgreen:

Also Jimmy The Homicidal Maniac, rated NC-17 :shock: Unbridled psychotic carnage, basically the thing TEH MEDIA wants Joker to be. Image

"You don't sound very happy to see me!" "S-sorry!" "AIEEE!" still gives me a sick laugh. :lol:
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Sumez »

It feels like the people who made Typing of the Dead wanted to capitalize on the legendary voice acting of HOTD2. Amazing overall product.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by kitten »

ah, man, the days of simple cut & paste editing. this right here might be my absolute favorite.

- - -

re: the thread topic, i'm trying to think of answers, but i can't come up with any. i remember when playing danganronpa: ultra despair girls, it defaulted to the dub and doesn't let you change mid-game, and it is atrociously bad. i seriously do not understand why on fucking earth that people whose living mostly subsists off of voice acting for japanese games cannot so much as correctly pronounce simple japanese names. it got so bad i restarted the entire game after 30 minutes and thankfully found an option to switch to JP VA's on a restart. would have considered that game totally ruined had the option to change not been there. i've grown a lot less tolerant of english dubbed JP stuff, in general, but that one felt particularly intolerable. i can't tell you how many modern anime i'd not watch at all if i had to watch dubbed - at least back in the day they were either trying hard enough for it to be charming or it was so fucking bad it was hilarious, but shit today just feels cynical and done by the numbers.

most legendary instances of bad voice acting, to me, either don't detract from the actual game (e.g. castle of shikigami II), are part of already spectacularly bad games that couldn't be "ruined" (e.g. mega man x7), or add to the game in a weird way with the campiness (e.g. resident evil). this site hasn't updated in more than a decade (i think when i first discovered it it was already inactive, sheesh) but it used to be my favorite source for hilariously bad audio bites. each game has numerous samples of the particularly bad VA, and there's some hilarious shit in there. the shikigami II lines were so bad they actually led to me buying the game 0_0;;

DAMN, I HATE ACTIVITIES

i like girls, but now, it's about justice

no description

i'm kim of two homes and seven moms

there's a bunch more on the site for these, god, they're all so great. what a fucking legendary dub.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Gespenst »

Airforce Delta Strike has incredibly awful dub on the top of an already terrible script. Doesn't help that every single characters (even nameless redshirts) are so talkactive the chatter bar keeps reopening every couple of seconds or so.

There's even an occasion where the chatters lasted for 8 minutes nonstop
https://youtu.be/CnAVA-PGfF4?t=285


From the weeb side, there's Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1 to 3 where they replaced some characters' VAs for various reasons (some of the original VAs had retired from voice acting when the game is in production). At least 3 has dual voice option but it's exclusive for PAL region.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by ED-057 »

Megaman 8
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ryu
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by ryu »

ED-057 wrote:Megaman 8
but the english voice over only makes it better???
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Specineff »

Not ruined it by it, but Colony Wars Vengeance's "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLP" is atrocious to listen to. Makes me wonder if it was originally a placeholder that someone later forgot to remove.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by M.Knight »

Chaos Wars is an example of really really bad voice acting, even for US dub standards. This is what happens when the voice actors are actually your friends and family you relied on because you were too cheap to pay for actual dub actors :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccVTCGpBcdU
I knew of the most famous Shiki 2 dub lines but I never heard of this one beforehand. It's incredible, I love it so much.
The voice acting isn't even too bad on this one, but the line itself is so absurd and funny. Ah man, those damn activities. You have to do stuff, urgh. :lol:
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by it290 »

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island :twisted:
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by ZellSF »

Mischief Maker wrote:
Other people have said the voice acting ruined Freedom Planet for them (note that you can play with the cutscenes off).
Freedom Planet is obviously intended to be a retro game, it's supposed to look and sound like a game from before games got professional voice actors. I like it.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Sumez »

Conversely, I'd say the voice acting was exactly what took me out of the "retro" aesthetic of Freedom Planet. Even if the acting had been better, it would still clash horridly. It feels like a game that was designed to not have it, and then had it tacked on later on.

It doesn't "ruin" the game, but it definitely does absolutely nothing good for it.

For a game that's seriously damaged by the voice acting, I guess Shenmue 1 is a good contender, though it's hard for me to relate to as I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it either way. Shenmue 2 at least was a huge improvement in just keeping the Japanese voices.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by neorichieb1971 »

Castlevania SOTN was pretty bad in the English translation.

I actually anticipated it. Playing Dracula X on PS1 I thought to myself I don't know what is being said, but I can guarantee it will sound like a load of bollocks when its translated.

And it was. :lol:
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

SOTN's English VA is bad, and badly-recorded to boot (where were they, the gas station toilets across the street? Image) But the absolute worst thing is, you can't skip any of it on a clean memory card. Gotta make sure that riveting story doesn't go unheard! More like gotta keep a game clear save around. Image

On the subject of the gaming world pre-standardised VA, I used to think the Metal Slugs (1996-2000) were kinda quaint stuffing their manuals with reams and reams of story and characterisation with hardly a peep in-game, even during ending sequences and so on. I didn't care, just thought it was eccentric and cute.

Image
How does it feel to take the life of another?

Did you know General Morden is a commander beloved of his men, thought of as a father as much as a leader? It's true! Don't be fooled by his Dick Dastardly X Saddam Hussein in-game aesthetic! His son was killed by some corrupt world government fuckery and he's out to bring them down. Tragically his uprising killed a lot of decent men who had nothing to do with their masters' iniquities. Some were dear friends of MARCO ROSSI, who is normally a happy-go-lucky type, but will become dangerously enraged if his arch-enemy Morden is so much as mentioned. Also, Tarma Roving enjoys painting metal and can sleep anywhere.

I'm a bit murky on the details, it's been well over a decade since I last cracked open my XBox MS3's case, my MVS cart is naked as fuck, and like hell am I going to read the digital manual that came with the Neo ACA version. Come at me MS lorenerds. Image

But good gravy do I admire that approach now. The "character" I've spent the most hours with this year is Tsukikage from Saigo no Nindou. You have to spend time with your avatars in Hard Action Gaming. Otherwise, you'll die and join the masses of "xfd unpossible i know he be cheatin" scrubs that infest the internet. I am thoroughly acquainted with the combat abilities of this one-man Evil Ninjas Extermination Unit. I don't know who he is though. What's going through his mind as the Shinobi Rifle Corps teems into the haunted waste of stage 3?

A) Chivalrous: "Please desist. Equipped as you are, all of you will die."
B) Vagabond: "Oi, oi! This ain't what a battlefield is supposed to be!"
C) EDGE MASTER: "Drop the toys, scum. Before I walk over there and bugger you with them."
D) ONE RLY BAD LAD: "Come."

And what of the doomed men? Are they ruthless killers? Or have they been duped in some fashion? Are they afraid of this chap whose sickle is whistling through their ranks like they were so much bleeding, gurgling barley? They're either very brave, or very stupid, or REALLY motivated not to GTFO from that open-air abattoir. Certainly when I'm playing! EDIT: The zombies I get. Ningyo. They don't even flinch when beaned square in the face by high explosives. Stand still in front of one, and the last thing Tsuki will taste is his own bloody puke as a sword twice his size swung with unfathomable hellborn power splits him in half from balls to brain, in that order.

Tormented as I am by these questions,
TLDR: Thank god they didn't do this.
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xxx1993

Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by xxx1993 »

I’m aware of Morden’s backstory. But considering he lost his son, why not take revenge on the terrorists that killed his son instead of becoming a terrorist himself?
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BIL »

Thing is, from Morden's perspective, the terrorists who murdered his son are the head honchos of the world government, and they have the allegiance of elite killers like the four pictured in my previous post. Who's gonna take the word of a guy that looks like Dick Dastardly X Saddam Hussein? I certainly didn't know he was anything but a petty tyrant until I glanced through MS3's manual while my Xbox booted up. And I'd already 1CCd Metal Slug and annihilated a good chunk of the man's army at that point! Image
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by BulletMagnet »

neorichieb1971 wrote:Castlevania SOTN was pretty bad in the English translation.
I've said so on here before, but for me the cheesiness of the localization is an integral part of the experience; there's plenty more to recommend the game, of course, but I don't think I would have found it half as memorable without the occasional unintentional laugh-out-loud bits of dialogue.
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Re: Games ruined by bad voice acting

Post by Ed Oscuro »

Any and every game from DYA Games, which is sad because their games are otherwise mostly fun arcade-style releases. But I really cannot fathom why they had to put unmutable voice clips over the top of everything.

That same issue ruined Gunhound EX for me, too.

I'm no fan of games frontloading boss battles with really over-the-top annoying VOs or lengthy unskippable cutscenes - unpopular opinion, I know.
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