game with most unused potential

[Jordi]

Oblivion. It was a good game I'll admit however it was to long, to big and overall not enough time was spent on it. Also about halfway through I started wondering if my character just dropped from the sky because nothing ever really fleshes out who you are. I enjoyed it but I could of seen myself enjoying it a lot more if there had been more attention to detail.

I agree that Oblivion had unused potential. I think one of the great saving graces is the modding though. A lot of that unused potential has been used now, thanks to the modding community. But I'm talking more about the mechanics and vibrancy of the world than about the story.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

It has arguably the best first-person slasher combat ever made, so much so that games such as Oblivion should be embarassed.

However, the plot is horrendously bad, the characters and voice acting are forgettable, and the level design is often downright retarded.
Add to that a slew of technical issues, such as framerates dropping below 15 on PCs that were decent when the game was launched, and ... well ...

I really liked that game. The gameplay was fantastic, but I agree that the story and characters were a little lacking. Oh, how I would have loved it if Oblivion used Dark Messiah's combat.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Far Cry 2 had a lot of potential as well as most of the recent CoD games if they had taken time and care to make them instead of ripping out key features on certain versions and mass producing them into blandness.

Halo 3 for me. I know it was a decent game but it could have been so much more than it was.

Portal again it was good but to me it just seemed like an overly long tutorial with little game left in it and the puzzles were too easy thank god they had the optional puzzles but even those can be a bit cuntish with only 1 way to solve them.

Bulletwitch and Legendary also had interesting ideas and concepts but they need so many tweaks to make them playable. The regen type health in Legendary was good but you needed to be able to take more damage. They gave you CoD style health with a limited pool of regen health which really showed as crap when you only fought against humans and had no energy to restore your health pool.

Final Fantasy XII(I have yet to play XIII so no comment there). Some of the characters were brilliant but they introduced one guy as the protagonist. This guy was a shit character and could have just been omitted from your party for the game more or less. I think they could have made him and a few others better and more likeable characters. I don't even want to touch the Licence Board piece of shit. Now I will admit I did not like the battles. The style was quite boring and you ended up just really watching the game play itself or just letting it play itself for grinding. In other FFs I enjoyed a small bit of grind as I liked battling just killing things every now and then. Although at least they were trying something different there so I have to give them that.

 

[Smooth Operator]

The Halo series, Could be something epic but they keep wallowing in the lake of bland.

Ah but you forget Halo was that successful because of it's blandness, it was the first shooter made so all the slow kids can play.
Just like the Wii didn't sell on it's complexity but rather the lack there of.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Slasher combat! ...With your feet! *kicks stuff around* I'M A BADASS! *kickkickkick*

...sorry. Yeah I can see how it had lot's of unused potential >_>

Really dude?

You can't possibly have played that game, or you'll realise the most OP thing in the game isn't your foott, but barrels.
I played an entire game going donkey kong on as many enemies I could, and it was ridiculously easy.

 

[Pearwood]

Starcraft 2. And I don't mean the story front, which could have been so, so much better. I mean the custom games part. Battle.net 0.2 is absolute shit.

It's got better and the new map editor is amazing. I agree with the story but it's the first in a trilogy so I'm hoping the bits that weren't quite explained or developed very well will come up later.

I'd say Neverwinter Nights 2. I love the game but that's largely due to the modding community it has rather than the original story.

 

[Wierdguy]

DA2 - Unlike a lot of people here I -really- liked that game (ignoring the lack of enviromental varity) but they could have done SO much more with the whole 10-year deal. As it was it didnt feel at all as if that much time had pased.
Relationships could have developed a LOT more (maybe even marriage? 10 years is quite some time after all), the people and city could of changed significantly much more, the 'jumps' in time via varrics cutscenes should of been used in a different way to make the player actually feel as if time is flowing.

If theres ever been any game where Ive seen lost potential its this right here.

 

[Palademon]

The Fable sequels, Darksiders, and Duke Nukem Forever.
I have hopes for Darksiders 2.

 

[Jakub324]

Fable or Mindjack.

 

[Rabish Bini]

Mafia II

I still loved the thing, but there was always an air of unfulfilled potential, especially in the 2 car collecting guys that were supposed to give out quests, but never did.

 

[Pearwood]

When it comes to custom games, there's not a single map that could be called decent without being an inferior version of what's already in Warcraft 3. I check them once in a while, I know that shit.

War3's story was a copy-paste of Starcraft 1's. I quite liked the story, it hinted at future plot twists, had a few of its own and did a reasonably good job of showing Raynor's fight against Mengsk. I was justifying it not having Mengsk deposed at the end of it and having loose ends like Narud/Duran.

 

[IzisviAziria]

I love how popular it is to bash Oblivion. It's like people forget how amazing it was when it was first released. Play it for 650 hours, find every single fault in it, blow them out of proportion, and suddenly it's Morrowind's bastard step-child instead of the worthy sequel it actually was. I'm not trying to say Oblivion was flawless, but its flaws have been seriously blown out of proportion.

mini rant aside...

Going to go with Darkfall. Had such a great concept but the no-name developers shanked the hell out of it. Glitchy, unfinished, and unsuccessful. Really disappointing, it was one of the only times after Star Wars Galaxies died that I actually felt interested in an upcoming MMO.

Honorable mention goes to Sins of a Solar Empire. I don't give it my top choice, because the gameplay is actually done really well. Some great space-based RTS gameplay. But the lack of a campaign was really offputting for me, especially since it was released as a full price game. Hoping that Sins 2 comes out with a sweet campaign to back the already solid gameplay.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Warhammer 40000: Fire Warrior.

A W40K FPS is possible and if done right could be epic!

Have you been following W40K: Space Marine? That looks like a fun actionromp done right.

Yes I have been following Space Marine for years now and although it does look like fun it's the damn Ultramarines, we need more variety. Fire Warrior had you play as a...Fire Warrior and experience a war with the Tau that also included a good variety of enemies and environments. I just hope that Space Marine will have some nice set pieces and large epic battles which is what the 40K universe is all about.

 

[Pearwood]

You can't honestly believe it did a reasonably good job of showing Raynor's fight against Mengsk. Mengsk was - literally - a joke through the entire game and not a threat of any kind.

Well you were never going to fight him directly in the first game, he's going to serve as Kerrigan's motivation in the next game. Ending the game with him thoroughly humiliated and missing half of his fleet, his most experienced general and his son was as much of a victory as you can get. Plus the fight against Mengsk is the underlying theme that keeps the plot moving through the whole of the game.

Anyway if you didn't like it you didn't like it, I personally disagree but I can't argue if you didn't. I'd say that the potential of the map editor is massive though, Blizzard's Left 2 Die and http://www.joystiq.com/2010/07/21/thatgamecompanys-flow-recreated-in-starcraft-2/ are two examples I can think of.

 

[Evil Top Hat]

I'm going to be a broken record and say Fable as my first choice. Duke Nukem Forever as my second.