Games that disappointed you

[Chrono180]

Starcraft is probably the biggest one for me, not that there was anything wrong with the game itself, I'm just horrible at RTS.

Others include
Any of the later Mario party games
NWN 2, which, while I enjoy it now, was virtually unplayable at launch.
The Journeyman Project:Buried in Time, because it crashed every time I tried to play it.
Grim Fandango, for the same reason the Buried in Time.

 

[Hyudra [deprecated]]

Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance.

FFT is one of only two games I've played for over 4 months. I got a total of maybe 3 years out of it, because of the sheer versatility and the number of possible setups you can manage with your team(s). I went back to it again and again, challenging myself with various setups. I even completed the Calculator SCC, which I place as my most difficult video gaming achievement ever.

So when FFT:A rolled around, I was tickled pink. Only as it turned out, it had none of the versatility, art or strategy of the previous game. Painful, almost punishing 'judge' system and the race restrictions on class just killed it for me.

 

[CyberAkuma]

before i start, im not saying windwaker is a bad game, because to be honest, it was amazing. but it wasnt really what the fans were promised. On the gamecube demo in 2000, at E3, the crowd was shown Link fighting Ganon, with stunning graphics and were told 'this is what is coming to the gamecube'. They did however fail to mention, that it was coming to gamecube litterally on the purple box's death bed, in the same month as Nintendo's next gen console release, when the game would be released with better controlls and visuals on the newer more revolutionary console, the Wii.
So as the anticipation for Wind Waker grew, screen shots of a cell shaded game were released, and there was huge confusion. this was a different kind of let down, almost a broken promise. Since i first saw that E3 video i was scouring the internet for news on this photo-realistic Zelda game every week, and must say on news of what the windwaker would be, i was slightly dissapointed.

Wind Wanker was probably the most dissapointing Zelda game ever. (if that is saying much)
One of the many reasons was not only because of its childish graphics but also its childish gameplay and difficulty. I beat the game without getting killed ONCE. The game just didn't *LOOK* like a kids game, it also *FELT* like it. On the upside, Twilight Princess looked more like the E3 trailer youspoke of that was released so many years ago

 

[Laggard]

Metal Gear Solid 2: Just last week I finally got a chance to play through this game. I had the PC version for 5 years, but my system requirements were too low. I finally picked up the PS2 version in the used bargain bin. I had played the Tanker Level about 4 times (this level is still amazing) before I was able to actually play through the whole game. I had read just about every review there was and it was universally praised. Even though I knew about Raiden and some of the storyline I never thought it could be THAT bad.

To a lesser extent MGS: The Twin Snakes. -- I played the original Metal Gear Solid for playstation and absolutely loved it. How could you mess up a straight rehash of this game? Well, they reedited the game and added a couple extra hours of dialog and reshot alot of the scenes. This really took away alot of the intensity of the original. The better graphics didn't make up for it... Also Mei Ling no longer has her accent. Quoting Confucious doesn't have the same impact when it is coming from the voice of a soroity girl. I finished the first Ocelot battle, watched 40 minutes of Kojima railing against nuclear war and then put it away.

The Longest Journey: Comedy Adventure games (monkey island etc) are some of my favorite games. Take the comedy out of the adventure and you are left with TLJ. At least the title explains what the game will feel like

As a side note the "evil villian twist" is getting on my nerves. I cringe every time someone in my party betrays me or the real villian was the group I was working for the whole time. I spent 40 hours in Final Fantasy X constantly being told what had to happen to save the world only for the whole thing to change after I did. To me it just felt like a cheap way to extend gameplay and it really took away alot of what I thought was otherwise an excellent game. Just once I want the first main bad guy, to be the real main bad guy, to be the only main bad guy.

 

[nohorsetown]

SMT Digital Devil Saga: absolute crap compared to Nocturne. I should have known better from the "digital" title. Nocturne had me so stoked that I actually broke convention and pre-ordered this thing. The plot is basically just The Matrix. The colors are all wacky glowing pastels. The characters are annoying and barely one-dimensional. I expected a lot of recycled demons, but not with exactly the same graphics. Ugh. Persona 3's a small step back in the right direction, but still nothing next to to Nocturne/Persona 2.

Chrono Cross: that magic system is terrible. The million-and-one characters are pointless, and many of them are just statistically inferior/mixed-up. I seem to remember the burly blacksmith having one of the lowest HP totals in the game. The plot is more wacky than Chrono Trigger, but that doesn't make it good. Well, I guess I liked the way they capped your stat growth off with the "star levels", so you couldn't grind. Overall it was a big disappointment, tho.

Lunar: I heard so much about this, but it was mediocre and cliche. Everyone talks about its awesome plot or storytelling or characters or whatever, but there's nothing there. I think back in the day, it moved peoples' hearts just to see a big-eyed anime girl smiling lovingly at them. Save the "princess", but wait, she loves you, and check it out, this anime cutscene lets you visualize it. All of a sudden everyone's crying and writing letters to working designs thanking them for their life-saving surrogate girlfriend... bleahh...

Phantom Hourglass: my friend called me up when he got it, and raved about how innovative and awesome it was, and how it's one of the best Zelda games ever... and he's the Zelda guy, not me. He's this big ol' Zelda connoisseur, and I can't believe he thinks this one is great. The dungeons are tiny and linear. There's all these pointless items to collect, which do nothing. The game's prolly even easier than Wind Waker. And all the stuff Zero-Punctuation-Guy said in his review. It's the friggin' WORST one I've played. (Haven't played Wand Of Gamelon or whatever the other CDI ones are called, tho)

Guitar Hero 3: I actually liked Rocks The 80's. Well, kinda liked. It should have been half the price it was, but you got what you expected: cheesy songs with wank-tastic solos. Guitar Hero 2 was great... 1 was great also, but after 2 I have a hard time with it since the hammer-one/pull-offs are a lot harder... anyway, a lot of what I liked about the first 2 games was the presence of obscure, interesting bonus songs. And Guitar Hero 2 had the rockabilly guy, he was cool. 3 supposedly improves the character models? Uhh, no. They're ugly. The "career" songs? A bunch of repetitive crap and radio garbage.. some Social Distortion song which repeats the same progression the whole darn song.. "Bulls On Parade" (whether you like it or not, the whole song is wow-wow-wicca,wow-wow-wiccawiccawicca).. At the very end it finally gets hard and "metal", but it's too late. None of the bonus songs are good. Most of them are done by the kinds of bands who open for the kinds of bands who open for the nu-emo-waste which is, sadly, all too popular among the kids these days. So yeah, I'm sure Guitar Hero 3 goes over real well with its intended market, but for me it was a major bummer. Even "battle mode" sounded super-cool, but it's way too random to be functional. My friend and I tried to have a battle about five times before we realized whoever got the better powerups at the beginning was always going to win right away.

 

[blackadvent]

As a side note the "evil villian twist" is getting on my nerves. I cringe every time someone in my party betrays me or the real villian was the group I was working for the whole time. I spent 40 hours in Final Fantasy X constantly being told what had to happen to save the world only for the whole thing to change after I did. To me it just felt like a cheap way to extend gameplay and it really took away alot of what I thought was otherwise an excellent game. Just once I want the first main bad guy, to be the real main bad guy, to be the only main bad guy.

Dragon Quest VIII. You will not be disappointed.

 

[jordinator]

halo 3 had to be the biggest letdown this side of the century...

i'm pleased cod4 has more than made up for it though

 

[Duck Sandwich]

Marvel Ultimate Alliance - it had one of the most awesome concepts for a game ever: A beat-em-up type game with 4-player co-op throughout the whole game, several playable characters with various cool powers, and character customization. A recipe for nigh infinite replay value. A great concept, ruined by bad gameplay. When I buy a game, I buy it for the gameplay alone, pretty much, so I can easily overlook such things as "OMG TEH HULK ISN'T IN IT WTF". Things I hate about the game are:

Huge Imbalance - Some characters' moves are just weaker versions of others, Some are almost completely useless, and one move, when maxed out, makes you COMPLETELY INVINCINBLE TO EVERYTHING for 3 minutes (and you can pretty much use it as much as you'd like). Also, melee combat is pure crap in terms of damage compared to special moves.

Bad hit detection - In any game I've played where an enemy can use a ground shockwave (think Bowser's stomp from Super Mario 64) the only way to avoid getting hit was to jump over. Try doing that in Ultimate Alliance and the shockwave will hit you anyway. What a load of crap.

Enemies not flinching - For whatever stupid reason, if the enemy's in the middle of using a special move (ie, a beam or shockwave) you can't make them flinch. So you'll often find yourself hitting an enemy to stop their attack, only to find out that they can laser you even when your boot is embedded in their face

Random Chances - They're avoidable, but annoying nonetheless, especially when implemented into an otherwise fun power (ie. X move does weak damage, but has XX% chance to Instant Kill, or Y boost gives your attacks a low chance to do double damage )

Blocking - I don't mind the concept of blocking itself. I just hate how it makes you basically invincible against almost anything. You can literally throw yourself into a mob of 5 or so guys, weigh down the block button, go make yourself a sandwich, eat the aforementioned sandwich, come back to the game, and find your character unscathed.

Overall, you can try to get your way through the game with skill, and using whatever powers are the most fun to you, but it seems that mindless button mashing and "leveling your characters right" (putting points into Glitch Shield and Instant Win Attack) is much more effective. There are more flaws, but I think I've covered all of the major ones.

For some reason, I actually enjoyed it for a while. But I think somewhere around the 3rd playthrough, my standards for games rose, and I got sick of it after dying because a stupid clown has no problems throwing a poison grenade when he's in the middle of getting pummeled.

Blood Omen 2. Horribly glitchy and dull combat. The only redeeming features are the cool main character and the novelty of holding an enemy by the throat with one hand, and hitting them in the crotch with a spiked club in the other. That's the last time I buy a game without looking at reviews first.

Mega Man X6 - Bought this as part of the Megaman X Collection, so it wasn't a huge loss. X with a Z-Sabre was a cool idea. It was like combining X and Zero into one character. The level design was utter garbage. So bloody cheap. Horrible bosses. For those of you who haven't played the game one of the bosses is a DUNG BEETLE THAT ROLLS ITS SHIT ACROSS THE SCREEN AND THROWS IT AT YOU.

The most entertainment you'll get out of the game is from its hilarious Engrish quotes.
"THE BADDLE HAZ JUSD BEGUNN!"
"ZELLLLLO!"
"DIE XXX! JUSDIE X!"
"It's not just normal rain...IT'S ACID RAIN!"
"How dare! He talks about Zero that way..."
"Maybe I'll be able to feel the nightmare directly."

 

[swift tongued]

i also miss power stone... in any case as for disappiontments Halo 2, it's a fun game and co-op is still great, but i bought the X-box for that game and I'm like the only person in the world that thought it was meh and liked half-life waaay more... least i got ninja gaiden and DDR...

 

[Stella Q]

Indigo Prophecy - About 2/3 of the way through the game I had all but put it on my Favorite Games of All Time list. Then the plot took a sharp shit turn straight into shit town and plunged 10,000 feet down into a shit chasm. I really couldn't believe how quickly the game became so awful.

 

[raefon]

So many

Mass Effect
Bio Shock
Halo 3
C and C 3
Supreme Commander
Empire Earth 3
Fury - OMG it made my worst 5 games ever played list
Flight Sim X
PGR 4
The Darkness
Jericho
Orange Box
Madden 2008
Shadowrun
Assassins Creed
Timeshift

To name the bigger titles this year that have been on the waiting list and then after getting and playing them, just looked out the window with dismay.

 

[Ghandi 2]

halo 3 had to be the biggest letdown this side of the century...

People were saying the same thing about Halo 2.
I wonder how long it is until there's a new popular game everyone can proclaim hyperboles about?

I think that in most cases, you can only be disappointed if your expectations are too high.

 

[Sidercraft]

I loved Vampire the masquerade Redemption for its online story telling...
However Vampire the masquerade Bloodlines was a Major let down.. It had no online support (virtually no online), Lack of patches from game developers, buggy gameplay...
To be honest they should be sued for releasing an incomplete game...

 

[jaisimar_chelsea]

So many

Mass Effect
Bio Shock
Halo 3
C and C 3
Supreme Commander
Empire Earth 3
Fury - OMG it made my worst 5 games ever played list
Flight Sim X
PGR 4
The Darkness
Jericho
Orange Box
Madden 2008
Shadowrun
Assassins Creed
Timeshift

To name the bigger titles this year that have been on the waiting list and then after getting and playing them, just looked out the window with dismay.

how the hell can can u be dissapointed with orange box ?u r a console gamer i presume ?

 

[Evil Lawyer]

So many

Mass Effect
Bio Shock
Halo 3
C and C 3
Supreme Commander
Empire Earth 3
Fury - OMG it made my worst 5 games ever played list
Flight Sim X
PGR 4
The Darkness
Jericho
Orange Box
Madden 2008
Shadowrun
Assassins Creed
Timeshift

To name the bigger titles this year that have been on the waiting list and then after getting and playing them, just looked out the window with dismay.

Wow...so what does please you?

Anyway, as far as my let downs go...

Metal Gear Solid 2 was great for the first twenty minutes until you made it to the Big Shell and found out that you were no longer Solid Snake and in his place was the gay elf rejected from Lord of the Rings. I felt like I had gone to the club, danced with a girl, got her to come 'round to my place and then got majorly cockblocked.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun got a lot of praise when it came out,and I do remember a time when I saw what seemed like a billion commercials for it. But the game itself was a disappointment and took the elements that made the previous ones fun and buried them in the sand. No, EA, I'm sorry, but wondering around the jungle in the middle of the night with several endless paths and only one of them being the right one is not my idea of fun.

The Halo series. When the first one came out, it recieved great reviews and was hailed as the greatest game of all time. When the second one came out, it recieved great reviews was hailed as the greatest game of all time. When the third one came out, it recieved great reviews and was hailed as the greatest game of all time. (See a pattern, anyone?) After playing the first one, I said to myself, "I've played this game before...It was called Turok. Or was it Medal of Honor?" To me, the Halo series never lived up to its own hype and each game (as Yahtzee has pointed out) has been done before and better by someone else.

Here's an obscure one for you: Earthworm Jim 3D. I loved the first two games in this series, but this third one killed it for me. It was a rushed game that had development problems, and there are even screencaps and level designs that were released as press material that never ended up in the game. In fact, the levels shown on the back of the bloody box aren't even in the game! Horrible let down of a wonderful series.

 

[lewa nua]

Oh I know for me,
UT3 let me down but not by much but I still enjoyed the first one more.
CRYSIS to some extent, it ended up being another FPS. But it does have some great work to it.
Please dont ask me about xbox and PS3 games (except GOW but I have that for Pc suckers)

 

[J-Val]

Assassin's Creed - All I wanted was for them to stick to their name, and actually make an Assassin game. Instead, we get Dynasty Warriors with free-running.
BioShock - Not bad, but didn't hold my interest.
Team Fortress 2 - Outdated and very basic. The same design template as every other multiplayer game Valve made.

Aside from that, a good year all round!

 

[MechJaz]

Hmm...
Tony Hawk Underground 2 - tried time and time again to play, but I just got disgusted with the juvenile crap and haven't picked up another THPS since.

TF2 - just won't click with me.

HL2:ep 2 - still haven't beaten it, don't really care enough to (maybe with a new PC?)

Black - never had an Xbox, wanted it forever - finally managed to borrow it from a friend and I haven't played it more than 20 minutes.

Deus Ex 2 - it actually crashed too much for me to play. Promptly gave it the finger.

Super Mario Galaxy - one of the biggest disappointments ever, for me. Bought it the first night it was out, and was immediately disappointed. Apart from the sickening saccharine coated "Hearts and Stars and Rainbows" visual theme, the camera was infuriating (see "Purple coins on the Dreadnought" where you're still allowed to move in 3-D space but it's almost impossible guess which way you're going to go), and the terrible controls completely broke this game for me. From the silly "tilt it like a joystick" galaxies to the almost impossible-to-execute long jump, I was pissed either at some sickly-spiked difficulty or poor game design (or both) through practically the entire game.

Metroid Prime 2 - really just rode the coattails of greatness, and I'm having a hard time liking MP3 as well.

On a related note, is anyone just plain disappointed with the Wii? Even in the AAA titles, someone manages to work in some half-minded, poorly executed, nonsensical control mechanic that ranges from annoying to game-breaking. I bought a 360 back in July and already have more games, more controllers (in my family, the measure of a console's success), spent more hours playing, and just plain use the 360 more than the Wii. I'm not a graphics/technology whore (though I do like good graphics/new tech), but I wish Nintendo would go third-party so I could play their games on a modern console with a proper controller.