Games that were Almost Great

[Nooners]

Sonic Heroes.

Seriously.

I thought the team-centered gameplay was a great idea with a lot of fun potential. But the controls were sticky and awkward like a (insert Yahtzee joke here), and the level design was horrendous. Could've been great, an overhaul could've made it classic, instead it ruined my childhood hero for me. And that is why Sonic Heroes is the Most Disappointing Game of All Time for me.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Dragon Age 2. It had some really good role playing, just like the first (ie: you can be an asshole without your light-saber turning black) and I could have gotten used to the hack-n-slash beat-em-up style of gameplay but the characters all seemed like fluff and the plot just felt really small and inconsequential. It seems like the big thing from act three was pulled out of the 'we have no more ideas' bin since Act 2 was touted as the big thing in all of the pre-release promos. Also, I don't see why it didn't have a subtitle. I know, that may be a bit petty but before we had Dragon Age: Origins. Then we had Dragon Age: Awakening. Even the smaller DLC bits had proper subtitles (Lilliana's Song and Darkspawn Chronicles).

Skyward Sword if you could use a classic or, Gamecube controller to play it. The game had some massive calibration issues for me.

 

[VincentR]

I really wish my friends would put as much thought into why they like or dislike things as you did. It would make gaming discussions so much more interesting.

Hahaha, I wish I could put this much thought into things more often. I'm pretty outspoken, quick to open my mouth to boot, and generally out-right wrong when I talk to people in the "real world". On internet forums and such, I usually just don't say anything not worth saying - in my opinion; I mean my post count is like 120 or something; and I probably have another 120 posts that I typed out and then deleted for fear of being wrong, or seen as obnoxious, or simply being unnecessary.

I was actually about to delete this post - simply because I realized it's a mass of words that mean nothing, when I simply wanted to say thanks for the compliment.

And back OT: I'm going to add Battlefield 3. And now I'm going to try to limit myself to like, 5 lines of text so I can't procrastinate homework any longer. Starting.. now!

Battlefield 3 could have been AMAZING. And for what it does even now, it still is amazing to a degree. But it isn't really Battlefield 3 - it's like they tried to combine Battlefield with Bad Company, somehow failed to get the best of either game. I hear everyone loving Bad Company for its light-hearted campaign - and here BF3 comes along with another serious war story. And the Battlefield series was beloved for its large open maps, huge numbers of players, a great choice of vehicles, and - at least the last two games - its commander and squad system. I thought 2142 had perfected that system with the ability of the commander to give field upgrades to the squad he thought was doing best. I have more, but I'm past the 5 lines.

 

[Surpheal]

Lair

This game had a great premise going for it. So you are in the military of a land long ago and quite far away. Your people and your rivals are going to war. But how does this sound different than most games you may ask, because you're fighting on the backs of freaking dragons tearing through the air, that's how. It had great graphics, Interesting characters and creatures in its world, good combat, it had a great story(as far as I could get through, but that will be addressed soon), was a PS3 exclusive and was released quite early in the consoles lifespan. But then how was it almost great you may be asking yourself, two words. Sixaxis Controls. If it wasn't for the fact that the motion controls absolutely SUCKED the game might have been better. They did come out with a pack that allowed you to switch from ONLY being able to use motion controls to being able to use the analog sticks, but the movement was still broken and I never finished it because of that

In short: Lair was a great game, but if it didn't use motion controls that only decided to have your character turn after your thrown controller hits a wall, it could have been far better.

 

[Random Fella]

Skyrim
Such potential to be a great, if only they focused a bit more on the main quest line and quests in general.

 

[Frybird]

Alpha Protocol

Story-wise it's fantastic but as an entertaining game it just sort of falls apart in places thanks to the mediocre combat mechanics, utterly imbalanced skill trees, and stupid irritating boss fights. Shame because otherwise all the parts are there for a genuinely stunning rpg experience. Dialogue was sharply written, conversations believable, the characters interesting and the story intriguing. Even the basic 'idea' of the gameplay was good, it's just in the execution it all sort of fell apart.

Still a decent game and definitely worth playing if you're an rpg fan. But it could have been so very much more. Pity!

Exactly this.
I hope very many Things that made the game will be lifted by other developers, like the way Dialogue worked or how there wasn't a good/evil "meter", but rather individual stats for most NPCs.

I also agree on Brütal Legend, although i don't take issue in the RTS Gameplay itself (that was just more of a misunderstanding in terms of marketing), but rather that it could've been better, and that most Sidequest were rather bland and repetitive.

And i agree on Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines

Other than that:

- Vanquish:
It didn't quite work for me, but it's pretty fun, admittedly. I just was disappointed that despite all the over-the-top Action, it still all looked and felt just...bland.

- Alone in the Dark, the new one.
Okay, so that wasn't even ALMOST great...it was a pretty shit game.
But it was supposed to be great, i think. So much great ideas just wasted on a horrible story and awful controls and things that just didn't work out.

- Silent Hill 4
Fans may hate me, but Silent Hill 4 is...actually pretty good. I think it's greatest weakness was that it had the Silent Hill name even though it was supposed to be a wholly different game. It's not as good as, say, the second one, but in terms of Story and Levels and all that, it's an overall enjoyable game.

- Enslaved
Highly underrated in my opinion, but still not quite the hidden gem of awesomeness. Could've used overall just slightly better Gameplay as in more Combat Options and more fluid platforming.
Also, while i'm okay with the ending, it's very much a "Gainax Ending" and i understand why some people hate it.

 

[Astoria]

Assassin's Creed Revelations. IMO it had a good story, interesting characters, a beautiful city and some good action scenes. It's obvious though that they got lazy and the fact that pretty much all the extra stuff put in was copied and pasted from Brotherhood was a huge letdown and what's stopped me continuing my second playthrough. The amount of weapons you have now too is getting stupid and their idea of 'difficulty' is just annoying (the instant fail missions, enemies like the janisarries ect). It doesn't make the game any more difficult, it's frustrating when you have to spend twice as long on something.

Oddworld Abe's Oydessey is another one though this they fixed in Exodus. There needed to be an optiion to save at any point instead of just the checkpoints because there could be several things you needed to do to save mudockens and if you screw up once you'd have to do it all again and you might have only been in 2 or 3 areas. In the end I just gave up trying to save them all due to annoyance at having to do things again because of one small mistake. Exodus was so much better and pretty much all they changed was the inclusion of the quiksave.

 

[darkstarangel]

Im probably gonna piss a few people off due to its fanbase but im gonna have to list Mass Effect 2. I only have it on PS3 so iv never played the first one & this version of ME2 in glitchy as all hell.

The game is actually quite fun with an intriguing story but, to me that is, it seems to be lacking as both a shooter & a RPG. I never used to like first person shooters until now & I couldnt help but feel the battle events would have been easier with a first person option, like in the Metal Gear games after MGS2. Some times Shepards body gets in the way. Whats also annoying is how s/he reverts back to normal mode just to eject a thermal clip, especially with the sniper rifle (And most definately with the single shot sniper rifles!) I really enjoy sniping BTW.

Its also frustrating how your team members tend to dive in & take most of the kills for you. I know there are ways to fix this but I just couldnt be stuffed doing it every battle. Same with the biotics. I know they're the sci-fi version of RPG magic powers but I always forget to use them in the heat of battle. Basically I need to focus one aspect, the guns or the biotics. I cant seem to mash them together. Im sure theres a way to really make them work together but I feel that they didnt do it right in this game. Atleast to the standard im comfortable with anyway.

Oh, & most of the battles tend to be predictable too. I f your moving down a corridor & you see obstacles to hide behind or the corridore leading to a big room full of said obstacles, you know theres gonna be a gun fight up ahead. I personally liked the way the Metal Gear series handled this set up even though it catered solely to the idea sneaking around & not not getting caught.

 

[mysecondlife]

Did someone mention KOTOR 2?

...Good.

 

[loa]

Brutal legend.
I wish they went all the way in making it an rts. Screw that hack & slash stuff.
It could've been something awesome like sacrifice but instead now what we have is a half-assed beat 'em up mashed together with a half-assed rts and a half-assed racing game.

Maybe if they spread their focus a bit less, we could've had a good console rts for once.

Also the console version of dragon age.
No top-down view for no reason whatsoever.
"Spiritual sucessor of baldurs gate" my ass.

 

[mattyg118]

Bayonetta. It's a great way to fill an afternoon because everything is overplayed in terms of story/characters/dialogue etc to the point of hilarity and the mechanics are pretty sound.

The only thing that really lets the game down is the extra abilities, which are next to damn useless and not worth the grinding it takes to unlock them.

Also there's really nothing to do after completing the game once.

A great rental, terrible purchase.

I think I had more fun with Bayonetta on infinite climax mode than I did with normal or hard. Playing the game with witch time disabled and just the evil harvest rosary and the moon counterattack item was a good challenge and a lot of fun. The Alfheim's were a nice bonus too but some could be kind of annoying.

My contribution would have to be Rage for aforementioned reasons. This game has so much potential but the open-world aspect falls short and the story is incredibly weak.

Assassin's Creed comes to mind but everything that was wrong with it was pretty much fixed in Assassin's Creed 2.

 

[Xeno-the-Hedgehog]

America's Army 3

That game has the potential to be so much better than it is, but clunky controls and a piss poor aiming system prevent it from actually being fun to play. Also, for some reason when I installed it on my home computer, it wouldn't let me pick up stun or flash grenades, yet frag and smoke grenades worked fine.

 

[Infernai]

MGS2, then every single cutscene past the halfway point started being an hour long, Vamp shows up to invalidate about 2 hours of gameplay, nothing is said once when it can be said fifty billion times and the plot goes up the fucking wall. Also Rose.


2 words. Fuck. Nanomachines.

I'm still on the Metal Gear RAY boss fight, but i looked up enough shit to get the jist of the ending. Basically Kojima was being a prick. I'll watch an LP of it just to get some perspective but "prickish" can't be far off the mark.

EDIT: Oddly enough I was ok with Raiden, his constant objections to anything anyone said were hilarious.

And the cool/important cutscenes were far outweighed by the pointless recap/convoluted bullshit cutscenes.

Funny that the infinitely better MGS3 is the one where the word Metal Gear isn't even mentioned (presumably)

Funnily enough I got the HD Collection yesterday. Started with MGS2, got a bit bored, went on to MGS3. I first played MGS2 years ago, with no prior knowledge to the previous game. It felt like my mind went through a blender, I had no idea what the fuuck was going on xD

Honestly, the real clinching factor for me was the leaning a bit to heavily towards some of the mystical elements and the leaning away from the more technological 'realism' of the previous game. (Aka. Indigo Prophecy Syndrome)

Ok ok, yes i know...a game about giant walking battle mechs is hardly 'realistic' but, at-least the games had a slight base grounding in reality and had the decency to explain shit to you in ways that made it seem more probable, if only slightly. Metal Gear Solid 2 kinda pulled alot from it's ass with Vamps Immortality and Liquids Ghost possesion and all that stuff that just seemed really out of place and silly..even by metal gear standards. Honestly, for me, all that saved the second act was the gameplay..which was alot of fun.

I don't care if Metal Gear Solid 4 gave it a weak explanation, it was atleast an EXPLANATION.

 

[Freechoice]

New Vegas for being buggy and but more interesting than FO3.
Deus Ex: Human Resources for being pretty good but occasionally stupid.

Im probably gonna piss a few people off due to its fanbase but im gonna have to list Mass Effect 2. I only have it on PS3 so iv never played the first one & this version of ME2 in glitchy as all hell.

I agree on ME2 being pretty damn meh. But I wasn't a fan of its story or characters either. It was all middle of the road run through an averaging function.

 

[Ix Rebound]

I recently rented RAGE, and I got about 7 hours into the campaign; before this, I had only experienced the Wasteland Legends (or whatever it's called) multiplayer portion of the game on Nightmare difficulty with a friend - and that seemed pretty okay, although we died a lot.

Spoiler: What I thought was good about RAGE

But back to the core game; it was a lot of fun controls-wise and just general game-play wise. I loved the "feel" of the guns, if you know what I mean. Firing the pistol felt like I was actually shooting something; I realize you can't really hold the gun or feel its weight, but the sound of its shots was deep and satisfying, and maybe it had a bit of visible recoil that made me feel better about myself. In addition, it did some noticeable damage; it could make enemies flinch, knock them down if a head-shot didn't outright kill the enemy, and even on the hardest difficulty, normal enemies usually went down with a clip at most.

And that applied to all of the weapons, from what I could see. Shoot someone with the shotgun at close range, they go flying, or they get knocked on their ass.

In addition, the driving gameplay was fairly well-done too, in my opinion. Granted, I don't play many racing games or driving simulators, so I have no idea how it stands up to those; I'm sure it's probably nothing in comparison, because the game isn't completely designed around driving a vehicle. But for what it does in the game, it seemed to do it pretty well. The vehicles (I found three different ones - not sure if there were more) handled pretty damn well, the weapons on them were okay, and you weren't forced to use them for long stretches of time - maybe a couple of minutes at most. But if you DID enjoy them, then there was a whole racing game inside of Rage's campaign that you could play as much as you wanted.

Speaking of mini-games, there were also a couple of those in Rage. You had some holo-gambling (with the most GENEROUS odds I have EVER seen, heard-of, or even imagined) to win some easy money. You've got the racing action, where you can race against the A.I. in the campaign with several different settings (no weapons, machine guns, or missiles), and maybe some more choices - I didn't go past the beginner section with that. Finally, there was what is essentially a trading-card gambling mini-game as well. You could find cards with different stats/abilities through-out the campaign, and then use them to build decks of three different point values (similar, I'd wager, to many trading card game point systems) in an easy, medium, hard, type of deal, depending on how much cash you wanted to bet, and how many cards you wanted there to be available in each person's deck.

Spoiler: What I didn't really like about the game

However, with all that being said, the game really feels like it dropped the ball in certain big ways. Particularly in the story area. The game starts with a cool video showing the "end of the world" jazz. The game starts, and you are quickly attacked by two unknown enemies, and just as quickly you are saved by a mysterious good Samaritan named Dan Hagard. He talks to you a bit about what's going on, takes you back to his place, and then immediately asks you to go to a hide-out for some guys and WIPE THEM OUT.

This guy, who did just save my life, yes, is now asking me to essentially commit genocide on a portion of the (I assume) few remaining humans on the planet? And the thing is, his reasoning is that they're going to cause trouble for him and (supposedly) the playable character in RETALIATION for the two guys Dan just killed. And the thing is, these "bandits" clearly aren't just mindless killers - despite what Dan claims - because you and Dan drive past a group of them right after murdering two of their friends. As long as they didn't know we had killed their friends, they seemed to go by the live and let live (until otherwise convenient for them, I'm sure - but still) philosophy. But the first thing this guy tells us when we get back to his place is "these guys are terrible, and they're probably going to come for revenge - go to their base, and KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM that you find."

And the thing is, a lot of missions - perhaps even a large majority of them - are like this. By the end of my ~7 hours of campaign, I've killed so many people that have never even done anything to harm my character or even harmed anybody that I witnessed, that I'm likely a worse criminal than any of these "bandits" could have possibly been. Which leads to another gripe with the story I had - the major bad guys in the story.

I was introduced to the "Resistance" in very brief passing probably 5 or 6 hours into the game. I'm going to assume that was certainly the half-way point, because I can't see Rage being more than 10 - 12 hours long, and that was with me spending a fair bit of time screwing around in the wasteland, and doing side-missions. Mean-while, I've also heard whispers of some "Authority" group around the wastes as well. But I've never actually had any contact with either one. Until suddenly, 7 hours in, I'm tasked with helping the Resistance save a captured friend from the Authority - which, of course, involves me killing a whole lot of Authority people. But the thing is - why? I've never met either of these groups of people until I'm suddenly tasked with an unquestionable quest to go mess with the Authority.

And I think that was my major beef with the game over-all; I never really felt like I had a good reason for doing very many of the things I did. Sure, it started with Dan Hagard asking me to do something for him - sure man, I'll help you out, you did just save my life. "Wait, what? Wipe out every single person in this hide-out?" I actually made a joke about this to my friend several times during the game, "Haha, yeah man - my name's James. Oh, go murder everybody in this place? Because they stole some truck parts you want back? Sure."

Finally, I have to assume some sort of conflict is created, and then solved, absurdly quickly in the final couple hours of gameplay. Because at the 7 hour point, I had no problems or cares in the world; in fact, there's really no reason for my character to not just settle down with his ridiculous wealth and reputation, and just tell people to piss off. Sure, I was just drafted into the resistance apparently, but if they're the good guys, they wouldn't shoot me for saying no. So unless something suddenly happens "Oh my god! They're going to blow up the earth!", which would feel really shoe-horned in, and is then quickly solved - or god forbid, is left on a "to be continued" note, I don't even see the point in this game.

I'm losing my train of thought at this point, and I swear to god I didn't start out intending for this to be a short novel. My point in this: perhaps I'm over-thinking a simple game meant to be about killing things. Don't get me wrong - it was INCREDIBLY fun to play, and I might rent it again to finish it up. And I understand, from what I've read, that some more info is given later in the game about some of the bad guys - but I just don't understand why my character continues killing people up to the point WHERE he gets a reason to kill people; nobody has done anything to him, and there is no real global problem made apparent to me, that I'm needed to fix.

I liked the game as well and i completely agree with you that it was weird that complete strangers were asking you to enact mini-genocide on a bunch of people for somewhat trivial reason.......but

!!SPOILER WARNING!!

I HATED the ending
I was pretty much promised a boss fight dammit!
I even overheard a couple of people talking about something that was over nine feet tall!
I didn't even use the secondary ammo for that authority pulse cannon thing cause i was saving it for the boss fight!

 

[DanielBrown]

MGS2, then every single cutscene past the halfway point started being an hour long, Vamp shows up to invalidate about 2 hours of gameplay, nothing is said once when it can be said fifty billion times and the plot goes up the fucking wall. Also Rose.

I agree with this. Just playing through MGS2 again for the first time in 10 years, or something, and fuck do they talk a lot. Close to the end now and I've never wanted a game to be over with as fast as this.
Love the gameplay and running around the struts, but all the talking drives me nuts. Most of the time it's completely useless information.

 

[WaffleCopters]

Brink... It had so much potential.... but lacked content. it just seemed way too much like a "look at this awesome parkour thingy weve made! oh wait... were meant to put a game as well..? umm... here take this."

 

[KingofMadCows]

Heroes of Might and Magic IV - The main problem with the game is that the development was cut short so they had to cut a lot of features (artifact crafting, ransoming captured heroes, variable size battlefields, more RPG elements, etc.) and they weren't able to balance out the heroes. However, it had some very interesting ideas and the campaigns were really well written.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance - The writing and voice acting were fantastic as always. It finally tied up some plot threads but still left an open ending for a sequel that unfortunately, we may never get. But the horrendous camera really hurt this game, it made the game unplayable a lot of the times. Gameplay was OK, not good but not that bad either.