It’s hard to make your game stand out. Thousands of games come out each year, hundreds each week onSteamalone, while storefronts like the eShop seem to be getting more and more shovelware that you have to wade through tofind quality indie games in the rough. Over the 50 years of this industry, every marketing trick and ploy has been pulled to attempt to get people to even take a second glance at a game on store shelves.
Related:Best Pre-Order Bonuses Of All Time
Forget pre-order bonuses, focus-testedbox art, or dark patterns in online stores; by far and away the most upsetting way any game has ever tried to get my attention is by replacing a letter or word with a number. Yes, this has usually made me pick up the box, but usually, it’s so I can scoff at it and mutter something under my breath. These are the games that use this tactic ranked by how much they bother me.
16Left 4 Dead
There are a handful of these games that I do think get this numerical replacement right.Left 4 Deadmight be the best example. The name is catchy, the number replacement makes sense, and best of all it ties in with the game’sfour-player co-op.
What really adds to this is the box art; a bloodied, four-fingered, zombie hand reaching up and sprawled. It’s a creepy bit of imagery I remember freaking me out when I was eight, but really drives home the wordplay by giving you get another form of “4”, “four”, and “for” to think about. The way this name bounces around in my mind is a masterstroke of subtle marketing, and it helps the game is great too.
Left 4 Dead 2really was just more L4D in every way - more maps, more characters, more weapons, more modes, and more iconic box art. The name is pretty much unchanged, bar the big old second number reminding you this is a sequel, but the game’s art continues to play clever tricks.
Related:Games To Play If You Love Left 4 Dead 2
The hand missing a thumb returns, but this time two of the digits are slightly curled up - as if it is trying to find a grip on the sickly yellow wall. This is a nice bit of imagery which also freaked me out as a kid, because it really drove home that this apocalypse was a long-lasting struggle, one where even the zombies were being worn down, and it also manages to highlight that this is a sequel while keeping the visual consistency across the two games.
14Back 4 Blood
Back 4 Bloodis a pretty great name for a lot of reasons. Some of them are the same as Left 4 Dead, highlighting the four-player co-op and trying the game into a violent and creepy turn of phrase, but the main one is how it plays on the developer’s history.
Turtle Rock worked closely with Valve in developing the two L4D games, and after the disastrous launch of Evolve, this was said to be the studio’s big comeback. Whether the game was a roaring success or not, the name was more than a fun bit of wordplay,it was a statement of intent.
13Resident Evil 7: Biohazard And Resident Evil: Village
These two hardly count because instead of using actual digits,Capcomsnuck the game’s numbers in through Roman numerals. Whenever you see it written down, Capcom refers to the first game startingEthan Winter’s story asResident Evil 7or Biohazard 7 in Japan. However, the box art for the game just calls it Resident Evil: Biohazard and highlights the “vil” as “VII” in the western art and part of the “Z” as “7” in the Japanese art.
Related:Best Final Bosses In Resident Evil History
Resident Evil: Villagesimplified things across regions just highlighting “Vill” as VIII. However, that does beg the question, what will the team do for the ninth game? Resident Evil: Crucifix? Or maybe Resident Evil: Sixth? Ok, this is just getting confusing.
12Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land
Replacing the three letters with one number that doesn’t actually sound the same when said out loud is a bit of a push. But we can forgive this DS spinoff of American Wasteland, because of the bold implication that it is the real eighthTony Hawk Pro Skatergame and not 2006’s Project 8.
11OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast
As we’ll come to see, replacing “to” with “2” is pretty common practice, and while I would much rather we just use the actual word, I can somewhat forgive it in this case.
Related:Best Arcade Racing Games of All Time, Ranked
That’s because thisPSPand console game is a remake of the arcade version of OutRun 2. Not only is it an excellent way to highlight that this is the second OutRun game in spirit, but it also is a nice reference to the game’s point-to-point cross-country racing.
10Ready 2 Rumble Boxing And Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2
Say that five times fast. Again, every time I see “to” being purposefully replaced by “2”, my heart shrinks by two sizes, but I can just about let it slide because of how fun it’s to talk about these games in the same sentence. Even if it might cause me to knot my tongue around itself.
9Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One
I know theRatchet & Clankgames love wordplay, and this makes sense since it’s a four-player co-op game, but this isn’t evenInsomniac’s best pun.
Related:Every Ratchet And Clank Game, Ranked According To Metacritic
Maybe the most disappointing thing about this name is that it moved away from the previous game’s juvenile double entendre. Sure, it’s a fun bit of wordplay, but it didn’t make me chuckle like a six-year-old like Quest for Booty or Up Your Arsenal did.
8Silent Hill: 0rigins
Nope, none of this is okay. Zeros cannot replace “O”, and that should have been our first warning about this unfortunateSilent Hillprequel.
7Driv3r
When I think of games that replace letters with numbers I think of Driver 3, or as I pronounce it in my head “Drive 3 Er”. This one is just upsetting as a writer - I could forgive it somewhat if the game’s name was all capitalized. At least then “3” would look like an inverted “E”, but it’s not, it’s lowercase.
Related:Best Games The Reward Safe Driving
If Reflections Interactive want me to admit the number “3” and the letter “e” look similar, it has another thing coming.
