Games that disappointed you

[runtheplacered]

"Portal (repetitive)"

That may be the craziest f'ing thing I've ever heard. Even if it is repetitive (which I fully disagree with), the game is only like 4 hours long. I also don't really remember hearing it get hyped very much in comparison to TF2 and HL2. They pretty much overshadowed it, so it was a warm welcome to my game collection.

On that note, TF2 was in fact an enormous let down.

 

[Myrddin]

Supreme Commander was the game that I was most looking forward to, until I played it. Other than it, I've tried to be careful not to get my hopes up... there were other games that disappointed, but it wasn't so bad because I kept my hopes down.

I invested a lot of time and energy on the forums, before SupCom came out. I probably recommended a dozen things that were too difficult to implement, but there were another dozen that I think could have been done, and were not. In the end, SupCom was little more than a graphical upgrade to Total Annihilation, and that was a let down after nearly 10 years.

 

[Tammo [deprecated]]

My biggest disappointment with a game would be Warhammer 40,000 Firewarrior, if disapointed me both as a PC gamer and as an avid table top war game player.

My optimism after seeing the intro movie for the game was cruelly shattered in the first level, every ally conveniently died in the first minute of the landing and I soon ran out of Pulse Rifle ammo and was forced to use an enemy lasgun; which seemed to be more powerful than the pulse rifle, which is completely wrong.

The deaths of all the IG's were too long and dramatic, they should have been blown right off their feet and crash into the ground, not fall on their knees, wave their arms, check the time and then lie down as if they were about to sleep on a fine bed that that they spent two months wages on.

Melee combat, an important part of the table top game, which was almost totally forgotten about by the developers; no swinging of rifle butts or stabbing of bayonets, very limited use of a sword that Fire Warriors are not equipped with as they are not trained for hand-to-hand combat in any way, they really should have made it more exciting to beat the enemy up close and personal.

I think Firewarrior should of been a squad based tactical shooter, or more like Star Wars Battlefront: large battles and vehicles and space combat. At least the game was cheap and had a decent story line, but the last straw for me was when crawling through the tunnels and listening to the excellent voice acting was not being able to climb down a ladder, all you could do was cautiously approach the edge, then end up falling 6 feet and dying horribly in front of a bunch of guardsmen wearing the all different coloured camo.

 

[eggdog14]

Hl2- just feels to me that valve is still stuck in 2004, and really does not want to do anything new. Linear storyline, with poor fps gameplay is getting old.

I'm sorry, i think you're pretty much alone in that opinion. The almost universal consensus is that HalfLife 2 was, and still remains, one of the best (FPS) games ever made.


---
i was thinking about saying "Halo 3" was a letdown, but then again i didn't really expect much of it to begin with.

Command and Conquer: Generals is up there, EA has a talent for shitting on perfectly good franchises.

 

[Zoidbergio]

Gears of War. Made no sense at all and gameplay was boring.

Lost Planet. Crappy controls and your character is stuck in slow motion.

Command and Conquer 3. Got it at Goodwill for $5. It was either too hard or I didn't feel like hitting build buttons hundreds of times each level.

Chrono Cross. Not bad, but i got bored and didn't finish it. Was nothing compared to Chrono Trigger.

Original Medal of Honor for PS1- Was supposed to be great but looked like butt and was boring.

However, all 3 Halos delivered the best console multiplayer experiences available at their times. Though, I think I might like Call of Duty 4's multiplayer better than Halo 3 now.

 

[blackadvent]

Alright, joined the site just to put my two cents in. Here I go!

Morrowind: Yes, that's right. Although, I'll be fair here- I played Oblivion first. And the game can't seem to go an hour without falling victim to have some fatal error (...but I am playing it on Vista, so that may count for something).

World of Warcraft: My first MMO. From what my step-brothers told me, this was the shit. I just couldn't get THAT into it. I kind of thought it WAS shit. A little.

Luigi's Mansion: Let's get this straight, Nintendo. Mario games have to star MARIO. Or at least have him as a playable character. I could go on about this game for days, and next to Crazy Taxi and SSBM, this was all I had when I got my Gamecube. The game turned me off for so long that I only beat it after three years of ignoring its existence.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: From the way my cousin described this, the game was the second coming of Jesus. It wasn't.

Psychonauts on the PS2: Before you aim that sniper rifle, wait. I like the game, but the load times on this version were killing me. Made it damn near unplayable. I can only stare at those birds on the loading screen for so long.

KOTOR 2: Two words: the ending. I loved the game until the ending, and felt like someone had mugged me, stolen my clothes, and thrown me bucknaked into the women's locker room.

Pokemon Stadium: First and only game I ever preordered (I was in elementary school, okay?). I expected a 3D version of the one of the Game Boy games, complete with an actual adventure. Still waiting, Nintendo...

Pokemon Trading Card Game: The only saving grace this game had going for it was that it was a present. So I spent no money. Was still excited, it was still Pokemon. But no, I couldn't take it.

And, the worst offender of all... for me at least...

Shadow the Hedgehog: FUCKING. KILL. GAME. DESIGNERS.

This game makes me sick. Really. I nearly threw up by looking at it in motion, and got a headache from playing it. Let's get some things straight, okay, Sega? I know someone over there's trying to kill Sonic (haven't played the 360 version and don't plan to), but please. If you want to make anymore Sonic games and have them make MONEY, follow these steps.

1) You don't replace the entire voiceover cast unless they've died without warning, or are unavailable due to sickness or are too busy. Almost the entire 4Kids cast that showed up for the game (excluding Eggman, since he actually did OK and his original actor is now dead) was shit. Bring back the old cast, or failing that, at least bring back the guys who did the voices for Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2.

2) SONIC. GAMES. DO. NOT. USE. GUNS. OR. USE. VEHICLES. (Excluding the shooting stages on the Sonic Adventure games- those were awesome.)

3) Why don't I feel like I'm going fast? What happened to the sense that I was fast? The Sonic Adventure games had this down pat! WTF, Sega. WTF.

4) Regular enemies in Sega games are supposed to die in one hit. ONE HIT! How do you screw something up that's been standard since THE ORIGINAL SONIC GAME?!?

5) I've heard that the camera in all 3D Sonic games was crap. I never had a problem with it in either of the Gamecube ports of the Sonic Adventure games. This game? I've died more times than I can count because the camera moved while I was jumping, causing me to fall into a dark abyss.

God damn it. Shadow should've stayed dead after the ending of Sonic Adventure 2. Call me a bleeding heart, but I actually cried at the ending. I liked the sense of closure.

For the sake of being different, I'll add games that exceeded my expectations when I didn't expect much.

Portal: Again, I was being told that this was the shit, and I was reluctant to buy into the hype. The world was right this time. The cake, though? It was a lie.

Disgaea 1 & 2: It's not everyday that a game claims to have humor and is right. It's also not every day that I don't have any form of regret for buying a game at full price, let alone two.

Sam & Max: Season One: See Portal and Disgaea.

Psychonauts on the PC: Played this after the abysmal PS2 version and fell in love with it. All the promise, none of the problems. The Meat Circus level is still a *****, though.

Jade Empire: I am amongst the few that actually like this game. The combat isn't a turn-off, and the characters are well-drawn out (I'll attach the bombs to golden bananas. Stops thieves, monkeys, and monkey thieves in one go.)

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story: Got it for $20. Best $20 I ever spent. EVER.

In short, I love games with an actual sense of humor. All the other games I've played in my life have relatively stayed true to my expectations.

 

[linked]

God damn it. Shadow should've stayed dead after the ending of Sonic Adventure 2. Call me a bleeding heart, but I actually cried at the ending. I liked the sense of closure.

I agree with you there, i loved the sonic games on the dreamcast and shadows death was truly a moving ending for such a shallow game franchise so when i bought sonic on the ps2 i was pissed. For the love of all things pink and fluffy, game designers, dont become like spiderman comics bringing almost all interesting characters back to life.

 

[shakeslol]

Morrowind: Yes, that's right. Although, I'll be fair here- I played Oblivion first. And the game can't seem to go an hour without falling victim to some fatal error (...but I am playing it on Vista, so that may count for something).

shame! morrowind was a true masterpiece in my opinion, Oblivion was merely a watered down and shallow version of this game.

 

[blackadvent]

Morrowind: Yes, that's right. Although, I'll be fair here- I played Oblivion first. And the game can't seem to go an hour without falling victim to some fatal error (...but I am playing it on Vista, so that may count for something).

shame! morrowind was a true masterpiece in my opinion, Oblivion was merely a watered down and shallow version of this game.

Actually, I enjoyed the game until it started crashing. My computer's a bit schizo in this respect- it can run Oblivion at max settings without batting an eye, but it can't run Morrowind without running into game-freezing bugs when I try to go to the Ashlander camps.

Again, I'm trying to play these games on Vista. That probably counts for something.

 

[Chilango2]

Count me in as another person who loved Morrowwind but was vastly disappointed by Oblivion. Back when the game was being hyped to the heavens, I wondered if I was going insane. It's hard to explain why, exactly, but it's something like a combination of the fact that the story is less satisfying, the world, while graphically more impressive (assuming your computer is powerful enough, of course..) is also flatter, less majestic, the fact that the leveling mechanics are just oddly unsatisfactory in several ways, and to cap it off, the game requires alot of tweaking to run in a stable manner with good graphics, even if your computer is near the upper end of the "recommended specifications."

 

[J-Val]

On that note, TF2 was in fact an enormous let down.

*sprays his virtual coffee through cyberspace*
What?! Team Fortress 2?! A let down?!
Seriously, though. How could you find one of the most genuinely fun online FPSes a let down? The smooth graphics, the seamless gameplay, the variety of fun to be had, not to mention possibly the greatest trailers ever created. I'll admit that the Critical Shot system was a big mistake, and the Kill Assist system was inconsistent, but it's still one of the funnest pick-up-and-play online games i've ever played. At the least, you could elaborate further, rather than just going "TF2 was a let down. Yeah."

 

[Anton P. Nym]

I'm sorry, i think you're pretty much alone in that opinion. The almost universal consensus is that HalfLife 2 was, and still remains, one of the best (FPS) games ever made.

---
i was thinking about saying "Halo 3" was a letdown, but then again i didn't really expect much of it to begin with.

Wow. My opinion is completely the reverse; though HL2 has some moments of genuine joy for me (and not just Gravity Gun + saw blades, either) they're thinly sprinkled among the jumping puzzles where you can't see where your feet are, counterintuitively-designed levels, repetitive physics puzzles, sloppy-stearing vehicles, and brown environments. It's far from a bad game, but I don't understand the religious awe folks hold it in.

(Playing it on the 360, through Orange Box, I guess I should note. And on that note, the "loading screen while in midair" thing is beyond annoying.)

Whereas I'm a die-hard Halo fan.

Go figure.

-- Steve

 

[Kronopticon]

Morrowind: best game ever, and you can make your own storylines on it, seriously, with the editor, you CAN create your own storyline.

anyway, back to the topic at hand, i was dissapointed by Super Mario Sunshine, mainly because it seemed just a tad TOO childish, unlike the other mario games.

 

[propertyofcobra]

Halo: Not just the game, the series. Everybody who owns an Xbox (and later, a 360) acts like it gives you (warning, ZP quote incoming) free blowjobs and pudding, but it's an extremely shallow game series that is truly the very epitomy of "Steal stuff from better games, call it good". (more ZP quotes) Everything Halo does, someone else has already done, and better. But since it's the only reason anyone has to own a 360, all Xbox owners still act like it's the best thing to happen to braindead leader-following "me too!" morons since the concept of religion!
The ONLY thing Halo ever had going for it, in my eyes, was music. That's it. The music is about as good as you get for Xbox games. And it's decent even by PC standards if you wanna look at the ports.

Oblivion: Good...god, what a letdown. Morrowind is one of the best games ever, with total freedom, you can do anything you want. ANYTHING. You can kill every single thing in the entire game if that's what you feel like.
Oblivion?....well, take Morrowind and remove all the freedom people loved, and remove any reason to increase your levels, and you have Oblivion.
You can't kill plot NPCs (WHAT?!!! Just do what Morrowind did and say "You fucked up. You can't complete the game, wanna play on anyway?", don't just have them get up and act like you didn't spend two hours beating them with a club!!!)
Enemies level with you (So, in fact, your best bet is to stay level one for as long as possible, because when you're stronger, enemies increase their stats faster than you do)
Very limited item and magic creation (The best part of Morrowind, turned into "make your own fireball spell, but it'll suck. And items? Hah! Want decent items, go out and kill a bandit, he's likely to have stronger items than you could create if you use cheat codes)
Balance is a joke (Hello. My name is Finger of the Mountains. I kill everything and their grandmother. Once you find me and get to use me, the game is a joke)
And of course, best part? You don't even get to, you know, do anything important yourself. The end boss is basically "Sit back and watch the NPC, who is more awesome than you, do his thing".
I could go on, oh yes I could. everybody in my school got Oblivion on the release day, drooling over it...and it sucked. Nobody played it after a week, nobody TALKED about it after five days. It was the elephant in the room....*sigh*

Aside that, lessee...
Bioshock: Didn't work on my PC. Expensive frisbee. Woopdedoo. From what I hear though, it's like a shiny-graphics "Halo meets System Shock 2", so I didn't miss much because frankly, Halo sucks, SS2 didn't. Inventory systems and depth are great, a game speaking of total moral freedom but limiting itself to two super-extreme "Jesus Christ" and "Adolf Hitler" endings is...not what I want.
Such a pity though, I still growl just thinking about wasting fifty bucks on something that didn't even freaking work.

 

[Captain_Horatio_Q_Muppetfactory]

I'm sorry, i think you're pretty much alone in that opinion. The almost universal consensus is that HalfLife 2 was, and still remains, one of the best (FPS) games ever made.

Aedn's not alone.
HL2 is certainly a great advance in graphics. The facial expressions built into the engine? FanTASTIC. Just incredible. The realism in the simplest expressions of depression in the beaten-down citizens is wonderful. The realistic echoes off tiles and in city alleys are almost creepy.

But the enemies are pretty uninteresting. There's 3 vehicle bosses, the Starship-Trooper-like antlions, a larger antlion, headcrabs and slightly different headcrabs, their related zombies...

And a few platoons of generic SWAT armor-clad perhaps-post-humans. The Combine are certainly well-drawn, but fighting them over and over and over gets dull.

In Half-Life 1, you had a number of different alien and human adversaries, a few vehicle bosses, a the puzzle-y bosses, AND human adversaries.

HL2 is a nice game, but it lacks variety, and it pales next to its predecessor for sheer immersive quality. In the beginning, when you can putter around the city briefly, that's nice - but then, you have to haul ass out of the apartments, and can't take the time to appreciate the world around you.

From there, you spend the rest of the game meeting only a few people, driving the coast, getting out, shooting up a house, driving on, driving on, getting out, crossing a bridge, etc., until you finally get to the prison and back into the city. But there's so little resolution past there, it's almost anti-climactic to get into the Citadel and see stuff on rails.

Plus, the ending was really, REALLY weak. A final boss should not be a bureaucrat hiding behind a shield reminiscent of the CPU in TRON.

 

[Prodigs]

New Super Mario Bros. Despite the never ending complaints coming in about shortened life span every one praised this game as being the greatest Mario Game since [insert best selling Mario title here] yet when I played it I found it repetitive and hardly challenging. It may be because they've stuck with the classic formula which by some strange coincedence felt classic but apart from Nostaligia I'd already dealt with this remade formula in the last 3 Mario advance games...I was just hoping for something more I guess. Not to mention the saving system was ass...

Twighlight Princess also landed on a similar level. In retrospect most people have shown their disapointment in the game but that gives me all the right to share my disapointment in it's length and it's repetitive gameplay. The visuals were stunning and the novelty of horsefighting with Link still hasn't worn out for me but overall the game was just Ocarina of time but just newer.

 

[Kikosemmek]

Hl2- just feels to me that valve is still stuck in 2004, and really does not want to do anything new. Linear storyline, with poor fps gameplay is getting old.

I'm sorry, i think you're pretty much alone in that opinion. The almost universal consensus is that HalfLife 2 was, and still remains, one of the best (FPS) games ever made.


---
i was thinking about saying "Halo 3" was a letdown, but then again i didn't really expect much of it to begin with.

Command and Conquer: Generals is up there, EA has a talent for shitting on perfectly good franchises.

Nah, I do think HL2 was disappointing. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game. I enjoyed it more than most games recently, but it was nowhere near the sequel I was expecting. I was expecting to have my balls handed to me on a silver platter as I desparately tried to not-die while a grim storyline unfolded infront of my eyes in the first person, all with good graphics. The graphics part certainly was not disappointing, but com'mon, now, In HL1 the gameplay was crueler, the bosses were cooler and harder, and the plot unwinded _at_ you. In HL2 the gameplay is more forgiving, the bosses are certainly more generic and easier to beat than they were in HL1, and the story was unfolded _by_ you, or really by the rebels. You were _told_ to do things and go places whereas in HL1 you just went places that you genuinely felt less threatening to your character's life. In HL1, Valve made it clear for you that you had no choice in the matter of the plot, that you are merely sucked into it and the only way out is to fight your way through it, and that whatever you discover along the way, whether intriguing or not (and it was intriguing), is secondary to your survival. In HL2 you were part of the group and seemingly volunteered (through no need or choice of the player, save for the G-Man's vague involvement) to help the resistance and become the Rambo-like leader everyone followed. I didn't like that. I always thought of Freeman as the anti-hero- a helpless chap who had terrible shit happen to him, merely trying to not-die.

The atmosphere in HL1 was much more desparate than it was in HL2. In fact, the only thing in HL2 that felt desparate to me was Ravenholm, which I think is the single most scary segment I've ever experienced in a video game, and it always, _always_ kept me on my toes, again trying to not-die, as I did in HL1.

 

[Yanarix]

Moo 3 was a rather big disappointment.

 

[jaiden26]

In response to the OP, one of the many let downs of my most recent gaming past, was the steaming pile of shit called N3 (Ninety Nine Nights). Honestly if you're going to make a Dynasty Warriors game, do it right. In the imortal words of Yatzee, they cocked the whole thing up by making it all about graphics and pissed all over the gameplay aspect. Also, in the same unimaginative swing, they managed to insult the entire gaming community by releasing a game that I wouldn't wipe my own ass with even if it was the only thing within my grasp after a "bathroom emergency."

The only bigger piece of trash I've played recently that let me down worse than N3 was Spiderman: Friend or Foe. I feel I should be punished in some horrible way for thinking that a game designer would ever release a Spiderman game that wasn't worth ignoring.

EDIT: I'd like to add a few more games that just blew ass from start to finish:

FFXII - New combat system...more like get the right setup and you can make your characters fight the entire battle while you're in the bathroom taking a shit. I'm not kidding, you can walk up to a boss...A BOSS...and put the controller down. After about 30-60 seconds the boss is dead and your entire party is back to full health and mana with all the buffs you can imagine. So the only thing you end up doing by the end of the game is walk around and let your game play itself from encounter to encounter. I think Square, Squaresoft, Square-Enix...or whatever the hell they call themselves these days needs to go to hell. God I'd kill for a newer version of FFVII...nothing else changed but the graphics.

Halo 2 - This was the biggest let down of my life, aside from learning that women don't give you sex upon request unless you empty your bank accounts into their ever growing volcano they call a vagina. They changed all that was good in the original to anything bad they could come up with. Dual Wielding one handed guns and Rocket Launcher Lock-on, wasn't nearly the upgrade that I was hoping for to replace my Assult Rifle, nerfed Magnum, nerfed Needler. Nothing can replace Halo: Combat Evolved. They should have never made a sequel. The campain sucked so much that Bungie themselves came out and appologized to the gaming public about it, and said that Halo 3 would be much better...speaking of the devil.

Halo 3 - Yatzee's review of Halo 3 was right on. Glad they gave me SOME of the Magnum's power back and gave me an Assault Rifle that was better than the one in the original. They nerfed the Needler again, now you can't dual wield it. None of the 1 handers can zoom in anymore. Most of the new weapons you end up doing more damage to yourself and your teammates than to the enemy (i.e. gravity hammer). But honestly the only reason this game wasn't as big of a let down as the second one, is that the Halo 2 got me prepared for this game. I hated Halo 2 and I hate Halo 3, but I knew I was going to hate it even before they started making the damn thing. If I wanted a game that was so dark that I couldn't even see the damn ground I was walking on I'd play the original Half-life.

You want to know where Bungie went wrong? How about making you turn up your brightness setting on your TV so high that the game looks like shit, before you can see the ground you are walking on. Made you empty 3 full magazines of Assault Rifle into the Brute/Flood creatures before it even looked like you were hurting them. The second player of Co-op Story mode always starts with the weapons that are useless against the Flood and the Brutes (i.e. Convenant Weapons), which are all you fight in this game. The Covenant weapons are for fighting the Elites, but the Elites are on your goddamn team in this game, so why even have the fucking things in the game at all then? I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Bungie should have called it quits after Halo: Combat Evolved instead of embarassing themselves with Halo 2 and 3. If they make a Halo 4, I'm not going to buy it or play it...that's right if they make another Halo game, Bungie can go fuck themselves.

 

[Zera]

Just to remind you guys, this is about games that you were really looking forward to or was hyped enough by the gaming community to get you interested, just to play it and have your dreams dashed. Just thought I say that.