Biggest disappointments this decade

[Coldie]

Mass Effect 2 comes to mind. I hated just about everything about that games. The gameplay felt like shit, mining was retarded, the inventory/weapons/armor system sucked shit through a straw, the story was okay.

It killed most of the promise Mass Effect 1 had.

Have to second that. All the RPG elements removed in favor of a mediocre tunnel shooter with cover. Mako replaced with tedious mining. Something like 80% of the story is ultimately meaningless recruitment and loyalty missions - they could easily release the meaningful parts as one DLC, or skip the second game entirely and lose absolutely nothing (except money, so... yeah). At least the characters and dialogue are still fantastic.

But still ME2 isn't my biggest disappointment - that would have to be Spore. And everything American McGee released after Alice. And Spore. And Command & Conquer 4.

Basically, don't trust anything EA or McGee or Peter Molineux (Lionhead) or David Cage (Quantic Dream) have to say and you might avoid disappointment.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

The whole Duke Nukem thing. Look, the game will suck, and it should just have stayed canceled.

And what are you basing this belief on?

The fact that anything overhyped will inevitably be a disappointment? Or perhaps because the screenshots/videos we've seen so far appear to be nothing more than a bland and uninspired product?

 

[LunaSocks]

Mah biggest disappointment this year: Sonic 06. This was the one game, the ONE game I was hoping would FINALLY be a revival for the 3-D sonic games, but now they don't even deserve to be 6 feet under. No, the 3-D sonic games deserve to be stoned (stones thrown at them) flogged 50 times, kicked and beaten, then, hung from a razor wire noose, while being stabbed with rusty spoons. Yes, I do spend a lot of my time thinking about ways to torture my trespassers, why must you ask?

 

[Drakmeire]

My biggest disappointment is that there hasn't been a single great video game movie. And it seems like not as many people are taking the medium seriously.

 

[Daymo]

Command and conquer 4 for single handedly destroying the command and conquer series for me. Seriously, a game series that had unlimited pop cap, awesome super weapons and unique base building ditches it to become the world's worst RTT game.

God of War 3 is also up there, I absolutely loved God of war 1 2 and even quite enjoyed chains of Olympus, but God of war 3 just didn't seem as grand or as fun as the other games in the series. Making Kratos kill Gods by the truckload also took away the special feeling. Poseidon fine, an interesting challenging introduction. By the end you kill Hermes by running him down and curb stomping him, kind of loses the special feeling.

 

[jobobob]

Why stop at fable 2, fable 3 had a worse story, slightly better casting system, same difficulty, and a terrible ending.

 

[revenge6000]

The folks here saying Spore are dead on the money. That game was supposed to change the way we thought about games as a medium. Instead it was a collection of minigames about on part with something you'd pick up for the wii.

That's not to say that there wasn't potential. Creature creater was awesome, after all. I guess all the big ideas just failed to come together. Sadface'd.

 

[Tdc2182]

Screw decade, I'll do the past few years.

Mass Effect series. Some of it was way to drawn out and the combat nearly destroyed the pretty damn good Story.

I considered the first one better. One of the first RPGs I actually enjoyed. I loved the finding new weapons, even if they were just clones of other guns with new paint on them. I also loved the armor system in the first game (though I will admit, they almost had something going with the custom paint camos in two. Just way to little choices[ and fuck the fact that choosing different materials and tints was barely noticeable in actual gameplay.])

Battlefield 2. Had such great potential but was rushed out before they could fix the clunkiest controls on any FPS ever. The most painful thing to see destroyed by laziness.

Plus, it had one of the biggest steps backwards in Single Player since Deus Ex.

What happened Dice? You had a good thing going in the first Bad Company. Funny character interactions, enjoyable story, great development, and really interesting maps. The first game managed to take a bland setting and actually make it into a playable and fun missions (minus the fucking xray vision and amazing sniper abilites from the AI)

Alone in the Dark 5. What can I say, it looked good in development stage.

 

[Chris Overhage]

Spore. The game is still good but not at all what i though it would be.

 

[LunaSocks]

Since I haven't played it

Mah biggest disappointment this year: Sonic 06. This was the one game, the ONE game I was hoping would FINALLY be a revival for the 3-D sonic games, but now they don't even deserve to be 6 feet under. No, the 3-D sonic games deserve to be stoned (stones thrown at them) flogged 50 times, kicked and beaten, then, hung from a razor wire noose, while being stabbed with rusty spoons. Yes, I do spend a lot of my time thinking about ways to torture my trespassers, why must you ask?

Um what about Colors?

Since I haven't played it (any of the versions)I do not of yet count it. I am certain that, if I were to play it, It would be the one green check mark on the 3-D Sonic games, and all they would have to go through is getting stoned and flogged. They would still be let to to live.

 

[MisterShine]

I'll give the honorary mention to spore, but the real one goes to Fable 1.

I still remember reading about "Project Ego" (fables codename that Molyneux talked about) in an old Xbox magazine I picked up on a whim one day, it was just such an amazing world he talked about. I got an Xbox just to play that and Panzer Dragoon Orta. When it came out and it was just another frackin' rpg... God, I was disgusted. The series still isn't 5% of what he talked up the original to be.

edit: Xbox Nation! that was the name of the magazine.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Games and/or Movies

-Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3 (1 is technically 1999), but I don't think most people are going to argue that the entire prequel-trilogy sucked in ways nobody thought possible.

-Most of M. Night. Shyamalan's career

-Disney in general (not Pixar)

-The general direction the gaming industry is taking

-MMORPGs. Why. Oh why.

-(personal disappointment): Fallout 3

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

mmm this is a bit tough, i have decently low expectations on some things, as i know what i like and dont like

however, for discussions sake:

-Socom confrontation, i played the first 3 like it was no ones business, i dont think as a kid i put more time into any game/series as much as those, and when i finally got a ps3 this past year i had heard of the game on the ps3 and i was so bloody damn excited to play it again i swear i popped a boner putting in the game into the ps3 for the first time.

-poppped it in, only to find out there is no single player.
*fine.whatever, i played multiplayer mostly anyways*
-joins match, realizes how shitty the game movement and controls had become
*fuck.well maybe it gets better, i just got to get used to it*
-plays game for literally 16 hours straight.
*fuck this game. this is fucking garbage, the originals are fucking amazing! wtf!*

yeah i immediately took the game back and sold it, i was so pissed off on how poorly implemented it was. socom 4 is coming out this next year,and this one is by zipper, it looks not too shabby...but literally, if they just redid the graphics and put the old games on the ps3, i'd spend easily 150-200 dollars in a heartbeat to have those games. i miss them so freaking much.

besides that i haven't been disappointed too much..there was mw2 but gonna avoid that rage and complete bullshit of a sequel.

 

[DanDeFool]

Obama. Sorry guys, he's not Black Jesus, he's just another politician.

Oh, you meant games? Sorry, my bad.

I'd mark biggest disappointment as the Nintendo Wii. Its motion controller didn't work nearly as well as we thought it would (until Wii Motion Plus, anyway, which only came out this year) and the system's lousy third party support has pretty much doomed it to the domain of fanboys for the rest of its foreseeable life.

 

[Jacking]

All Points Bulletin, after a good few years of hype and what appears to be a revolutionary customisation system it turns out to be a buggy nightmare with a confused payment system. It's a shame since a professionally done GTA-like MMO would have been grand.

That's pretty much the only one I can think of.

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

Why stop at fable 2, fable 3 had a worse story, slightly better casting system, same difficulty, and a terrible ending.

Because after 2 I said F^&* this and vowed never to buy another Fable game