A Dictionary Of Bad Video Game Names

@Xagest: Yea...Well preposition's are pretty common mate.

@Boom-Chicka-Ah: Top-notch comment, sir. I can see you're using your Star Power wisely.

Darkness is a noun, right?

melatonin17

@Skunky: look at the second example sentence for that word

Pyro Jack Frost

Wasn't there a game called darkness eternal?

@Syrax: Games with Sonic on the title? 20-30. Games with Mario in the title? Well over 100. Seriously. There are so many Mario branded games people have never heard of. Mario does Math? REALLY?

Jennacide

@VenomIreland: They aren't bashing games for having those titles. They also mention Shadow of the Colossus in the 'shadow' one, it's still a damn amazing game.

Jennacide

@Boxworth: Because those are all common words. Look, there may be 1,000,000 million words in the language, but most people's regular vocabularies only consist of a few thousand. A lot of those million words are different versions of a word using prefixes and suffixes (unfortunate, replaced), words that are obscure or antiquated (fecundity, augury) or words that are highly specialized, usually from the sciences (polypeptide, tetrachloride). If this article was meant to be silly, which I took it to be, fun joke. But if it's really in line with your view, then...well, good luck selling a game called "Phoenix Wright: Crackerjack Jurisprudence Proctor" ...Okay, having just written that I must admit I'd buy that game.

Aidan_

I think it's hilarious that none of those words appear in the title of Alien Shooter 2: Vengeance which I once thought to be the most generically named game ever.

Taramoor

No comments? This is hilarious, and a great little wake-up call for gaming. We don't make fun of the games because a lot of them are good... but the writer is correct... with the entire English language at our command, what's the explanation for the repetition? Even with similar themes, you'd think developers and producers would want to separate themselves from the competition.

@robinyang: Whoa, the article writer's here! Nice to see you.

Haha I love the association between Dead Rising and Left 4 Dead.

The girl that wrote the article is hot... that is pretty much all I got out of that. I like how there are many more than listed for each word. Super could apply to about half of the games on the SNES

JustJake

Sure there are 1,000,000 words in the english language, but I like to think these 20 most elegantly describe the core of the game.

IvanDashSmith

I think the most used word in video games is the word "of". God of War, Gears of War, Legend of Zelda, Dawn of War, WC3: Reign of Chaos, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Runes of Magic, Tales of , D2: Lord of Destruction, League of Legend: Clash of Fates (this one does it twice!), Tales of Monkey Island, Call of Juarez, King of Fighters, M&M Clash of Heroes, Heroes of Newerth...

Xagest

"eternal darkness" is a great game, fuck this

sirmarcelot

I definitely agree on the "Origins" thing. Man, just the sound of that in movies/games just makes me instantly think said product won't be good, I don't know why... Especially "part two's" that suddenly want to be a prequel, and the only good think they can come up with is the same name + origins. But I'm okay with Legend, though. And Mario? Well, you kind of have to have a mario in the title for it to sell. The guy's practically the King of Video Games.

Mesren_Makai

This article reminds me of the video game name generator:
http://norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html

Always good for a few laughs.
I'll be going back to my rousing game of M.C. Escher's Horse Racing - The Next Generation now.

I think the word 'The' is grossly overused in video games.

Rozzlit

Dawn of the Darkness Age of the Eternal Super War Blade Hero Mario Legend, Red Shadow-World Dead-StarSpace: Origin Unleashed: Party Command. (That's all of 'em!)

Oktober

@Syrax: Ye, I agree, most of those games are subsections of the mario franchise. Its not like they could put anything else in front of it.

AznSlackerType~Is AbsurdlyNarcissistic

Here is my own personal book of pick up lines, say as many as you can as fast as you can, and don't stop for no reason!

supakame

@Skunky: psst - it's under "Usage" of the word. :)

Good gravy, they mention "Command" without also mentioning "Missile Command?" No soup for them!

"Who wouldn't want to play World War Dawn of the Dead: Red Blade of Eternal Super Star Mario?" I know I would :D

Jaga420

Screw Game Daily, The Darkness is an awesome game.

@Lee: I know, it was in World.

Seriously... you put in "Mario" and left out "dragon" and "battle"? By the way, every marketing person that reads this will make a table and start rolling 20-sided dice.

Shocho

Don't necessarily have to have overused words in order to make a bad game name. In fact, making up words can be just as bad. Infinite Undiscovery anyone?

SedaKhold

"Madden" Give me a call when a game with that word in its title isn't just a shameless annual cash grab.

puddington

Who cares about overused words. Let's talk about the ones that don't even make sense, especially in RPGs. Like, I dunno, Infinite Undiscovery... Or more unwieldy titles, like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles The Crystal Bearers...

turkish101

@Syrax: They didn't put Guitar Hero in the 'Hero' bit.. odd.

Lee

@Violent Brown: Me too. Although as everyone seems to have been distracted by the (to my mind) inferior Too Human, we might be holding our breath for a while.

dd528

another most overused word in a games is "the"

One recently off putting name I found on a game was AC: for answer. The title left me pondering for a while and I just left the local gamestop without purchasing the game to look for an answer.

Saying "War" is overused is like saying "Basketball" or "Football" are overused, if that's what the game is about, the I don't think it qualifies as a "Bad Video Game Name"

DynamiteToast

I think over used words are not such a big deal, the problem is the amount of words you use in a title, I stay away from titles that have 6 or more words, if a game is good, you dont need that much description in the title.

I wish we had more games with "Eternal" and "Darkness" both in the title. Many, many more games.

Violent Brown

I admire the example from the "Dawn" entry: "Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon is a game from the series that is going to make the most appearances in this article."

cutmaclass

@TheWP listens to Yukkuris; Takes it easy:

Try inserting br tags ((< br >)). They might fix it later.

Wrayfield

@FatalChaos: were I through IV any good?

mikomi

I don't think it makes sense to put Mario just because in every Mario game there's a Mario in the title. We would have to have Sonic, Speed and Race if that was the case.

That's a lot of spyro games

BreTeK

The Super Legend of the Fantasy Dead: Tales of Mario Hero"

Origin of Unleashed World War Legend Space Hero Super Star Mario and the Blade of Dead Commands: Age of the Eternal Shadow Darkness Before Red Dawn Party! Or OoUWWLSHSSMatBoDC: AotESDBRDP! Puts Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix to shame. Edit: Why am I not getting new lines?

TheWP listens to Yukkuris; Takes it easy

If I were naming a game it would be 00 Aaron's Baseball Championship. Even if it had nothing to do with a guy named Aaron or baseball. I just want to make sure it would get top billing in alphabetical lists (or damn close to it) and prominent placement on the store shelves for increased visibility.

When I worked at a game store we shelved games alphabetically which meant all of the A's, B's, and C's got placed on the shelves with their cover arts facing outward. But due to limited shelf space we had to stock the rest (D-Z) like library books on the bottom shelves with only their spine facing the customer.

It always seemed odd to me that titles like Caleb's Big Game Hunter got more shelf space by virtue of its facing over titles like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas simply because one game started with a "c" and the other with a "g".

AncientUnknown1

Before reading the article I was assuming this was going to be "Infinite Undiscovery" listed 20 times in a row based on the title, as that is the worst name in history. After reading the article and the list I think that "Infinite" and "Undiscovery" should still have taken up the entire list, as even one usage of that name was a terrible over usage.

Mario? They need to shut up the face! It's a awesome name that needs to be use more often. Except in movie titles.

If we're just going by numbers, shouldn't 'Two' be up there or something, I mean Mario is and that's pretty much a brand name now.

This was such a ridiculous article (in a good way) that I really expected "Two" to be the last word on the list.

shiftomnimega

Gamesradar did an article like this a little while ago, it was pretty funny, but used more generic words like "Xtreme" and "Ultra" aha.

@Hezekiah Hicks: Sold!

Hah. That site has some good articles, like the Top 25 Ways to Kill Mario.

I personally wouldn't mind playing, The Final Dawn of the Dead World War: Super Metal Eternal Star Mario Gear V.

FatalChaos

@?: And DS and HD for good measure. Also thinking of the numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5 as well.

or need for biogear fall of the sackboys anyways whats with the new kotaku??

King_Faisal_94

I could go for some Imagine Final Xeno Effect Ratchet and Halo Gears of Tekken Ninja Petz.

Hezekiah Hicks

I love the game AgeBlade: Commander of Darkness: The Dawn of the Eternal Legend of the Dead Hero Mario: Red Shadow Party Origins in Space: World War Super Star Unleashed! Awesome game!

lol @ Super and Mario. They should throw Advance and Wii up there, too.

I think "Guitar" and "Hero" are even more overused.

How did they miss Final or Fantasy considering they got Mario covered. The thing with names is - people always want to name something as the end of an era or the end to all things. I think it sort of stems from the 80s as there were plenty of products that went like 'here's your X to end all other Xs' and the current gaming gen no matter how much pong or other MIT or such initial games would've influenced gaming was more influenced by the 80s period. Names were made to denote that these games were the last of this type of genre you'd need. They formed brands, stuck in pop-culture and the minds of players/devs/pubs and now we have a bunch of games that denote the end/finality/doom/control of something or the other. Of course there's the other end that pretty much feels like gaming from Pepperidge farms fish crackers.

im surprised " Metal" or "Gear" weren't on the list

vickissv3

what?

no Final?

that's been used at least 20 games including spin-offs....plus movies and anime...

and from the list, looks like "Super" and "Mario" takes up more than 75% the named games...

How about "64"?

Smorlock

i was definitely expecting to see "final" in that list. guess not!

Jonny2806

@Jennacide:

The Darkness was better when it was a rock band instead of a violent video game.

Sounds like they're bashing it to me. I also agree that The Darkness is an awesome game.

One note about Mario...

It says (as does dictionary.com) that Mario came out of Marius, a Roman family name, but it sure seems more like Mario is a masculine form of Maria, which in turn originally came out of the HEBREW Miryam. (Miriam, Mary) How is it possible that Mario and Maria had such different origins? Maria most definitely came out of Miryam.

They had Super, but they should have had 64 on there...

Personally, I don't care about titles.

Even though I'm writing books, not making games, I'm glad none of my titles (at least BOOK titles, can't guarantee chapter titles) are any of those words.

This list is fail for its absence of "ninja."