Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Midweek Video: Bad Voice Acting *shudder*

OK, picking on video game voice over work is like shooting fish in a barrel, because there is a lot of terrible work in that field.

And then you see/hear something that gives you a lot of perspective about how bad it can be.

I saw some of the English voice work for a PS2 game called Chaos Wars.

The voice work (and let's be frank, the translated script) are so bad, it boggles the mind how anyone involved could have heard what was being produced and thought "You know, this sounds great!"

For those of you who don't play games, this is even worth your attention, because it is so bad it deserves a Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.



I mean, the above voice acting makes Troll 2 look like Citizen Kane.

See, the problem is, the people who did the voice over work, were friends and family of the CEO of the company doing the localization. I don't know how they could have put the game together, listened to that and thought it was acceptable.

I mean, were their no colleges around their offices... because I am sure they could have put up some flyers in a couple of drama departments to get some people who would have loved to have a credit for their resume to open some doors after graduation.

You know things are bad when even I am listening to the caliber of work that was produced and saying that I could do a better job.

I couldn't even get through it in one go... so I can't imagine trying to tackle the game itself with the English Voice Acting if I owned it. Though, I heard that it comes with the Japanese VA with English subs, so that would probably work out a lot better. At the very least, if you didn't understand Japanese, you probably couldn't tell if the acting was good or not. From what I understand, on that side of the Pacific, they actually gave a shit about the voice work.

6 comments:

Semaj said...

In the name of all that is uwe boll, what were they thinking? Some of these people can't even get through the line reading as if it is the first take.

And, I thought some of the voice acing in Sonic Adventure was bad.

Semaj said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMi0z75mTu8

MC said...

You should look up clips from a game called Castle Shikigama 2.

Semaj said...

MC: I will look up some of those too. there is a funny MK4 clip connected to that guy I left in the video link that's rather amusing too.

Marie: I tried my best to understand what the hell was going on, and lost it with the rotten food and the strange line delivery

Was some of this record on cell phones?

MC said...

Marie: My question is... is Nicole a dude or a lady?

Semaj: In that other game I mention, there is actually a video somewhere on youtube where one of the actors reads a stage direction as dialogue and they put it into the subtitled text.

Jeff said...

Holy cow. That's just painful. It actually gave me a pain. I almost turned it off. But I wanted to find out if Nicole was male or female. And I still don't know. All that pain for nothing...

Everyone involved in making that should have to line up to be slapped by everyone who has heard it.