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Alright, Audio makes or breaks good games from merely average ones. Voice acting has become an integral part of modern stuff. Best voice acting is a bit hard to say, but what's everyone's WORST memory of voice acting recently? Not counting anything from like Japan or wherever.

I'd have to say personally, it's Nexus: The Jupiter incident. I loved the game, surprisingly, but the characters were SO BADLY acted. The admiral guy sounded like a moron and had bad dialogue, the high commander's russian accent was as stereotypical as it gets, your goth cloaking officer sounded like a reject from Fiddler on the Roof, your captain is alright and well done, but all the aliens were TERRIBLE.

The raptors sounded like brain damaged bird Jar-Jars, the Gorgs were bloody space orcs with even less brainpower, and the Vardrassi for an almighty technological civilization sounded like Pee-Wee Herman on a bad day.

Any worse examples?

Indeed.

The only WORSE voice acting I can think of is that in Blood Rayne, where the kick-arse vampire chick sounds like a bored Southern housewife reading a script phonetically.

Silent Storm. Great game... awful voice work.

On a related note, I love (in a good way) the variety of absolutely terrible American accents in a lot of European games (a good deal of WWII games come to mind).

"Arma hee-ya!"
"Saddle up!"

Oh goddess. I need to mention UFO: Aftermath on this too. Take all the stereotypical voices from Jagged Alliance 1 and 2, strip any talent, and then slap the same six voices on about twenty people. *shudder*.

Haven't experienced really bad voice acting for a while. Maybe because LucasArts oftentimes employs real actors.

Though there's always the famous:

"I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT!!!"

Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. The worst part was that they employed other voice actors to attempt to recreate dialogue from the movie. It sounded terrible. The game was terrible. Children wept when it was released. Terrible, terrible game.

I don't know why they changed the Prince's voice actor between Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Warrior Within. The first one was perfect and distinct; the second one was generic.

Codename: Outbreak. This game sounded like the Russian developers brought in a bunch of people off the street in Moscow to play American military officers. Hillarity ensues.

Starlancer. The voices with american accents weren't too bad. It was when they tried to do french, german, and russian that it got cringe worthy.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:I don't know why they changed the Prince's voice actor between Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Warrior Within. The first one was perfect and distinct; the second one was generic.

Wait...they changed the VA?
I just thought the change was from the change in tone between the two games...I really couldn't tell it was a different guy reading the lines O_o

DPDarkPrimus wrote:I don't know why they changed the Prince's voice actor between Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Warrior Within. The first one was perfect and distinct; the second one was generic.

That was a horrific decision.

PoP:SoT
- Pretty cool setting
- Nice character design
- Great voice acting (loved the way the Prince was aloof, yet very confused)
- GREAT music
- Good gameplay

PoP:TWW
- Crap, generic, unimaginative design - X, Y or Z OF TIME!!shift+1!!1!!!111!!
- Characters were shitty and horrifically generic.
- Voice acting went from mystical to shitty American accented street bum mumbling expletives into the microphone for another hit of meth.
- Shitty generic metal.
- Rubbish gameplay (too much combat with a not wonderful combat engine).

And the next PoP game looks even worse. Just watch the E3 trailer and have a barf bag ready.

Why has no one mentioned the obvious choice; Resident Evil? Because it's obvious?

God, that voice acting was horrendous, only matched by the even worse live action footage filmed in someone's back yard with a doberman sock puppet and fog generator.

Erik von Nein wrote:Why has no one mentioned the obvious choice; Resident Evil? Because it's obvious?

Because it violates one of the conditions Nepthys set. I quote:

Nephtys wrote:Best voice acting is a bit hard to say, but what's everyone's WORST memory of voice acting recently? Not counting anything from like Japan or wherever.

Otherwise, I'd have plenty of nominations.

The game might have come from Japan, but the voice actors clearly understood English. They didn't speak with accents. They were just shitty voice actors.

Datana wrote:

Erik von Nein wrote:Why has no one mentioned the obvious choice; Resident Evil? Because it's obvious?

Because it violates one of the conditions Nepthys set. I quote:

Nephtys wrote:Best voice acting is a bit hard to say, but what's everyone's WORST memory of voice acting recently? Not counting anything from like Japan or wherever.

Otherwise, I'd have plenty of nominations.

But they were clearly Americans. They had the voice actors in their little live action stuff in the begining.

I don't really understand the restriction, though. So what if the game came from Japan if the english voice actors suck bad? Isn't that the point of the thread?

Aren't many of the RE actors not Japanese at all? The credits had anglo-sounding names.

"No... don't open... that door!"

"Some kind of MONSTER!"

"Don't worry, I've got THIS!"

Ahhh....

I don't know about worst, but the Battle of Endor in X-Wing Alliance is pretty painful.

Erik von Nein wrote:But they were clearly Americans. They had the voice actors in their little live action stuff in the begining.

I don't really understand the restriction, though. So what if the game came from Japan if the english voice actors suck bad? Isn't that the point of the thread?

I read the stipulation to mean Japanese games, not Japanese actors -- it's uncommon for companies to use Japanese actors to dub English lines outside of fighting games (like in Fatal Fury or Street Fighter), making the condition pointless to mention if just restricting actors. Even some games released in Japan initially come with English voice acting by Americans -- your own example of Resident Evil is one of these. At least, I think that's what Nephtys is getting at; please correct me if I'm wrong.

If I am wrong, then I'd like to chip in Xenogears and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The first couldn't be arsed to even keep voice and action synced, and made some really strange editorial choices -- for instance, in one scene, a character's lips continued moving for over ten seconds after she was finished speaking, and in another, the voice semi-randomly cuts in-between Japanese shouts and English dialogue for a single character (the two voice actors sound nothing alike, making the breaks even more jarring). The second had acting even hammier than in Resident Evil. Of course, these run ground with the other condition that it be fairly recent, but bear mentioning as examples of how not to do a dubover.

Breed.

Overall, a very dissapointing game that was supposed to be a "Halo-killer". And the voice-acting was corny and generic, but included such gems as someone pronouncing "stealth" as "steelth"!

Crappy game - pissed at myself for even remembering it, I'v tried to bury any memories for so long...

RTS games

the reason I actually liked starcraft, warcraft so much. they had humour, and the repitition didn't get to me.

just how often can you hear: walk softly and carry a big gun, the craftworld calls to us,

The Worst Voice acting of all time:

A Cross between the Sonic Heroes dub and the aliens in Knights of the Old Republic


The Best:

Anything else in Knights of the Old Republic.

hmmm, for pure cheese voice acting, you cant better than the C&C games, all of them had top quality VA's who, for some reason all sounded exsessivly cheesy.

The best piece of voice acting ever.

The Wilhelm Scream!

Dakarne wrote:The best piece of voice acting ever.

The Wilhelm Scream!

are you refering to the frenzy in Vampire: Redemption?

Stark wrote:Aren't many of the RE actors not Japanese at all? The credits had anglo-sounding names.

"No... don't open... that door!"

"Some kind of MONSTER!"

"Don't worry, I've got THIS!"

Ahhh....

"What IS it?!"

"This is a lockpick, it might be useful if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you."