- Primary Subject: Flawed Masterpiece Games (highs vs lows editorial reflection)
- Key Update: A reflective analysis of several games (Tarkov, RE4, Destiny 2, Pathologic, Dragon’s Dogma, etc.) that are defined by extreme quality swings rather than consistency.
- Status: Opinion
- Last Verified: July 8, 2026
- Quick Answer: The argument is that some games stay memorable not because they are consistently good, but because their highest moments are strong enough to outweigh their worst ones.
Some of the best games I have ever played are also the ones I have complained about the most.
They can be brilliant for hours, terrible for the next one, and somehow leave me remembering the brilliant parts far longer than the frustration.
I have a particular weakness for games like that, where the best ideas are good enough to carry me through the tedium, technical problems, and baffling design decisions standing between me and the next great moment (although some take longer to forgive than others).
Their flaws are not always charming, and I do not think every bad decision becomes secretly brilliant because a game is ambitious.
In some cases, removing those problems would unquestionably make the game better.
But I remember these games far more vividly than plenty of ones I enjoyed more consistently, because the moments when they get everything right are often impossible to forget.
Escape From Tarkov
Very few games make me care about my equipment as much as Escape From Tarkov, largely because I know it could all be gone in the next few minutes.
A successful raid can be intoxicating. I enter with equipment I am genuinely risking, survive encounters that could end everything in seconds, find something valuable, and somehow make it to extraction.
The tension comes from knowing the game is willing to take away what I brought in and everything I found along the way.
A gunfight that would barely register in another shooter can become terrifying when I know hours of progress could disappear with it.
Then I die to someone I never saw, a technical problem I could do nothing about, or my own stupid mistake after half an hour of carefully surviving.
Tarkov can turn a night of gaming into an extended sequence of inventory management, anxiety, and abrupt death, and the emotional whiplash between triumph and misery is ridiculous.
But that volatility is exactly what gives its successes value to me. Extraction shooters have spent years trying to reproduce the feeling Tarkov creates when a raid goes perfectly, but the genre's central problem is that the high cannot easily be separated from the low.
The escape only feels this good because losing feels so bad, which is also why Tarkov can turn one stupid death into the end of my evening.
Tarkov pushes that bargain further than almost anyone. Its systems can be hostile, its learning curve brutal, and its problems difficult to excuse.
But when I finally escape with something I had no business surviving, the relief is stronger precisely because I know how bad the alternative feels.
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite games ever made, and I still think parts of it are annoying enough to make me wonder how the same game contains both.
At its best, it is almost frighteningly good at knowing what I need before I know it myself.
The village opening remains one of the greatest action sequences in gaming, not because it overwhelms me with spectacle, but because it understands pressure.
I am always short on space, never quite comfortable with the controls, and constantly being forced to decide whether I should stand my ground or run.
Even now, I am amazed by how often it introduces an enemy, mechanic, or ridiculous scenario, gets everything it can from it, and then throws it away for something else.
The problem is that not everything it throws at me is equally good. For every section I cannot wait to replay, there is another I remember enduring.
Ashley can turn an encounter into an escort mission at the worst possible moment.
The island drags the game toward a more conventional kind of action that I find much less interesting than the tension of the village.
Some encounters keep throwing enemies at me until the combat becomes more tiring than exciting (the game is very good at knowing when enough is enough, except for the occasions when it absolutely is not).
Its lows are not as disastrous as Tarkov's or as exhausting as Pathologic's, but its highs are so absurdly high that anything merely decent can feel like a collapse by comparison.
Destiny 2
At its best, Destiny 2 made me believe in the shared-world shooter more than almost anything else.
A first blind raid with friends could produce the sort of stories I would still be telling years later.
The shooting remained exceptional, its worlds could be beautiful, and major expansions occasionally made the game feel as though Bungie had finally discovered how to turn years of complicated systems and lore into something worthy of the universe it had built.
The problem was that being a Destiny player often meant waiting for the next disappointment between those moments.
There were weak campaigns, seasons that became chores, long stretches with little to do, stories that went nowhere, and enough changes in direction to make me wonder whether even Bungie knew what Destiny 2 was supposed to be.
I could spend months frustrated with Bungie, swear I was finished, then return because a new raid would inevitably pull me back in. A consistently decent game is easy for me to leave.
Destiny 2 could be magnificent, and that made every mediocre season or baffling decision more painful because I already knew what Bungie was capable of producing.
That gap between potential and reality defined much of my relationship with it.
Destiny 2 was capable of creating some of the best cooperative experiences I have ever had, then asking me to grind activities I barely enjoyed to reach them.
Its greatest moments were good enough to sustain years of frustration. Depending on how long you played, that is either the highest compliment I can give it or a fairly damning criticism.
Pathologic
Pathologic is one of those games that makes me wonder how far I am willing to go along with being miserable just because I understand why it wants me to feel that way.
I still do not have a clean answer. Pathologic is exhausting. Resources disappear faster than I can secure them, time constantly works against me, traveling across town can become an ordeal, and solving one problem often means accepting that several others will now become worse.
Even my successes feel compromised. I can save someone, solve a problem, or buy myself a little more time, but there is always something else I was too late to stop.
I understand why some players reject the idea that its suffering automatically makes it brilliant.
Difficulty and inconvenience do not become profound simply because they fit the story, and Pathologic asks for more patience than many people reasonably want to give it.
There are moments when I admire what it is doing while simultaneously wishing I did not have to keep doing it.
But its systems create an emotional pressure that I struggle to imagine a smoother game reproducing.
Pathologic's greatest achievement, for me, is that its mechanics force me to understand its world through decisions I would prefer not to make.
Its lowest lows are exceptionally low, and there are stretches that can feel more like enduring hostile software than playing for pleasure.
But very few games have produced the same desperation, guilt, and relief in me.
Pathologic does not just make me suffer; it makes me bargain with the suffering and hope I have not made the worst possible deal.
Dragon's Dogma
Dragon's Dogma is the sort of RPG that can make other open worlds feel disappointingly tame, usually shortly before making me wonder why traveling across its own world has to be such a nuisance.
What I love about it is the possibility of things going wonderfully wrong.
I never quite know whether a journey will be uneventful or end with me stranded after dark and clinging to an enormous creature while everything goes horribly wrong.
There is nothing quite like climbing onto a monster while my pawns shout increasingly panicked advice from below (even if I have heard that advice approximately four thousand times).
But the series has always carried a peculiar collection of inconveniences alongside its best ideas.
Repetition, limited fast travel, uneven quest design, awkward storytelling, and systems that are often poorly explained can make playing it exhausting.
Dragon's Dogma has always felt bigger in its ideas than it does as an actual finished game.
That is also why its best moments hit as hard as they do. Dragon’s Dogma makes me work for them in a way most open-world games no longer do.
The world can waste my time, punish poor preparation, and leave me dealing with consequences I did not anticipate. Some of it makes the game more interesting, some of it just makes the game worse, and the line between the two is not always obvious.
I can complain about Dragon’s Dogma for hours, but when it works, I would not trade it for a smoother version of almost any other RPG.
The Last Guardian
The most frustrating thing about The Last Guardian is also the reason I find its central relationship so convincing.
Trico does not always obey me. I can know exactly where I need the creature to go, issue what seems like a perfectly reasonable command, and then watch as absolutely nothing useful happens.
The camera struggles in confined spaces, the boy's movement has a loose physicality that occasionally makes simple actions harder than they should be, and solving a puzzle can involve waiting for an enormous animal to understand something I worked out several minutes ago.
I can easily imagine a more convenient version of The Last Guardian. Trico responds instantly, the controls are tighter, and every puzzle becomes a clean exchange between command and action.
But ironically, I also think that version would weaken the entire relationship. Trico never feels like an ability mapped to a button, and I love that.
I am trying to build trust with a wild creature that initially has little reason to understand me, so the uncertainty of that communication gives the relationship weight.
When Trico responds exactly when I need him to, it feels earned because I have spent hours learning that I cannot simply order him around.
Deadly Premonition
I sometimes feel as though playing Deadly Premonition means trying to rescue a brilliant game from the game containing it.
The combat is awkward, driving around Greenvale can become a chore, the map seems actively hostile to navigation, and the technical performance has become almost as famous as the murder mystery.
Even when I recommend it, I feel obliged to include a warning (usually several warnings, in fact).
All it takes is Francis York Morgan opening his mouth, and I am back on board.
What keeps me attached to Deadly Premonition is how much personality exists around its weakest systems.
Greenvale is populated by strange, memorable people with routines and personalities that make the town feel worth investigating beyond the demands of the case.
York remains one of gaming's great oddball protagonists, capable of turning conversations about films and everyday nonsense into some of the most memorable stretches of the entire experience.
It is funny, creepy, occasionally touching, and completely uninterested in toning itself down.
I do not think the technical problems are secretly part of the magic. Deadly Premonition would obviously be better with smoother combat, stable performance, and a map designed by someone who wanted me to use it.
But it also reminds me that I will put up with a lot for a game I cannot get anywhere else.
I have forgotten plenty of games that worked far better than Deadly Premonition simply because they gave me far less to remember.
I love what it is despite how often I hate actually playing it.
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