Games that you've been burnt by

[BrotherRool]

Has there been a game that you absolutely believed was going to be amazing, was sure that you could buy it without hearing other opinions on it (or listened to those opinions and decided people must've been wrong/exaggerating/surely it can't be that bad??) and then it completely let you down?

For me personally, it's never actually happened. I played MGS2 before MGS1 and I was well aware that Raiden was the main character. He didn't bother me either. I actually liked Mass Effect 3 more than Mass Effect 2 (and I hadn't played ME1 so I wasn't convinced that I'd like ME2.) And I don't regret playing FFXIII, I've even played through it multiple times

The closest I've come is Uncharted 3 which I thought was guaranteed to be amazing come what may and only turned out to be pretty good but forgettable.


So what about you, have you been burnt by these games or others? And if so what were they

 

[Tayh]

For me, there's Magic The Gathering Battlegrounds.
I didn't bother researching it before buying it, because, hey, it's MTG: it can ONLY be awesome, right?
Wrong.
So, so bad. And nothing like the actual card game.

C&C 3: Tiberium Wars. Didn't expect much, was still disappointed.

Two Worlds. Played this game before ever having touched a Bethesda game, so my expectations were kinda high after reading the back of the box.

Sufficient to say, these days I wait for thorough reviews/impressions or demos before purchasing a game.

 

[Cpt. Lozan]

The biggest one is Final Fantasy 13. About 2 years before it came out I got really into JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy games, and anything that Atlus ever touched. So after binging on all that RPG goodness I was so freaking excited to play FF13, after all, this is the same company that gave us immaculate games like Final Fantasys 6,7,9,10, Dragon Quest 8, Kingdom Hearts and more! They had their fun with FF's 11 and 12, but after 2 crappy games, they HAD to have learned their lesson. Right?

Freaking. Nope.

Hallway Autobattle Simulator 13 was just the perfect storm of terrible. It introduced plot elements without explaining them adequately, the characters were just terrible, forming grudges at one another for no reason at all ("HOW DARE YOU MARRY MY SISTER AND MAKE HER HAPPY! I WILL HATE YOU FOREVER!" or "YOU RISKED YOUR LIFE TRYING TO SAVE MY MOTHER BUT SHE SLIPPED! YOU'RE A MURDERER AND I HATE YOU"). All of the dungeons have one path which never branches off or makes any attempt to have interesting level design beyond its aesthetics. THERE ARE NO TOWNS FOR THE FIRST 20 HOURS OF THE GAME, so all you get to do is traverse those TERRIBLY designed dungeons while walking straight and listen to unlikeable characters try and explain a plot in the most nonsensical and immersion breaking manner ever, they just walk and talk, walk and talk. The combat/experience system is....ok, it was decent, certainly better than FF's 12 jumbled mess(even though 12 is a better game) although the whole autobattle thing is kind of a slap to the face.

There was just no redeeming qualities for this game beyond how pretty it looked. It honestly reminded me of FF 7's intro scene (with the train and the reactor) except they missed the part when the action took a seat for a second and let you roam around in Midgar, let you get to know the city, its people. The old Final Fantasy's did an excellent job of letting the world sink into the player. You came to know Midgar, or Gaia, or Spira. You spent time with its people, talked with them, went to their shops or houses, played cards or blitzball with them, you came to recognize the architecture of their cities and the layout of their lives. All because the game let you just dick around and explore.

The old FF games gave you agency, it let you become part of the game and its world. In FF 13, you are an observer. You simply sit back and WATCH as everything happens and when you watch people you hate walk in a straight line for 20 hours while talking about stuff you don't understand happening to a planet you don't care about filled with "people" who for all intensive purposes do not exist. You never see them or interact with them, why should you care about them. I think this is the thing square forgot. That if you don't give the player freedom, your game is gonna suck. And I pray every night that square remembers this and gets their act together. Final Fantasy is too storied of a franchise to lose.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

The Last of Us (I just don't enjoy the gameplay, story is good though)

Bioshock Infinite (Worse than both previous games yet it was overly praised for it's forgettable story)

Battlefield 3 (We went from Bad Company 2 which is the greatest Multiplyer MMS of all time to this piece of shit)

Halo 4 (Ruined what made Halo so great)

Gears of War Judgement (Ruined what made Gears of War so great)

Uncharted 3 (Average game with awful shooting mechanics)

Infamous (It's a boring sandbox with utterly forgettable powers)

GTA V (Yes it's not that good in hindsight, and they fucked up the multiplayer badly)

Final Fantasy XIII (I enjoyed it, but it's still a terrible Final Fantasy game)

Saint's Row the Third (The city is very badly designed and the humour is far too goofy to be funny, it's just random, for the sake of being random)

 

[Sniper Team 4]

All the Killzone games. The trailers always make it seem like I'm going to be in these huge, epic, enemies are everywhere and it's utter chaos on the battlefield, but only the opening levels are like that. Then, you're off by yourself doing these covert things. I want to fight a WAR. Not do little black ops things behind enemy lines. And I know this can be done because Resistance: Fall of Man had some truly epic battles between your forces and the enemy's.

Battlefield 3 (We went from Bad Company 2 which is the greatest Multiplyer MMS of all time to this piece of shit)

Ugh. I had purged that game from my mind. Thank you for reminding me that I bought it once.
Battlefield 3 had the first single player campaign. That got me excited about the series, because while the multiplayer is amazing, I hate multiplayer. So hearing that this game was getting a single player got me excited. And the trailers looked fantastic. That tank level was just...wow.
And then I played it. And then I did something I rarely ever do: I sold it to Gamestop.

 

[Weaver]

For me it was Dragon Age 2.
I just... I just hated it. I know DA2 has been done to death here so I'll just leave it at that

 

[FrozenLaughs]

Halo 4, as many have said before. It feels too CoD influenced, awesome weapons gone, fun gamemodes butchered, weapons balanced to basically be even across the board, and stupid looking armor, none of which screamed "halo".

 

[Nouw]

Aliens:Colonial Marines. *bursts into tears.* I am now Mr. Skeptical and refuse to closely follow the development of any game. From now on it's just 'oh that game's in development' and 'hey it's out now!'

 

[Fijiman]

Timesplitters. I'd heard so many great things about the series, but I knocked the game out in about one or two hours and was bored most ofof the time. Gave me zero reason to spend money on the other installments at all.

 

[Epidemiix]

To try and name one that people have not said yet, Brink.
It looked so cool! It seemed like it would be such an interesting game to play!

...Then I got it, no real campaign, and the mechanics were nothing to write home about. It felt like a 30 dollar game, which sucks considering I paid the full 60 for it.


And because I love hating on it so much, Battlefield 3.
Errrrrrrggggggghhhh. Bad Company 1/2 were such great games! And then...this. This..thing. A campaign that failed on everything it tried to do, and a multiplayer that really had nothing interesting to it. (By that I mean that the maps really did not pull me like they did in BC2. They really toned down how destructible every was it seemed.)

 

[DanielBrown]

Uncharted 3 sounds like a good pick for myself as well, actually. I love the first two games and have played them 3-4 times by now. Had huge expectations for Uncharted 3, so it was one of the extremely few games I pre-ordered. Played it once since. Was going to do another run for treasures but I just couldn't bother.
Final Fantasy XIII is no stranger to letting me down either.

 

[squall9126]

Alpha Protocol- i followed this one pretty closely since it was announced and was pretty excited when i heard some of the cool things you could do and the whole Bauer, Bourne, Bond way to deal with stuff. Then it came out and it was a turd.

Lair- This came when the using the motion sensors in the control were a novel idea but worked horribly in practice. Lair looked interesting but it sucked until the patch for using the sticks to manuever came out but by then no one cared about the game anymore.

Final Fantasy XIII- This one broke my heart, I've played every FF game, VIII is my favorite, I was so excited about this when it was announced in 2004. I bought a PS3 earlier than i would have because for a while it seemed like it was coming fairly early in the cycle then it got pushed all the way to 2010. Add to the delay with an insane story and a ridiculous battle system, characters going off on their own or in pairs for extended periods of time and that bloody crystarium system. What was shown in the beginning was pretty cool but actually playing it was a nightmare. They tried to make it action oriented but it was held back by the ATB and it would have been better if it was more turn based liked previous games.

 

[The Enquirer]

Timesplitters. I'd heard so many great things about the series, but I knocked the game out in about one or two hours and was bored most ofof the time. Gave me zero reason to spend money on the other installments at all.

Depends on which game you played. It really shines in multiplayer.

For me, it was Killzone 3. I don't know if I was plagued by a sudden few hour long case of not being able to aim but it seemed to take ages to kill a single enemy. And the cover system didn't really work out all that well. And the physics engine was a bit broken. The game went into zero gravity but that turned out to be a waste of time because all it meant was you could jump really high and not shoot while in the air for an extended period of time having holes blown through you. The villains were more likable or at least interesting than the heroes. The story consisted of "hey guys don't do the thing" where upon which you go and do the thing. The last level was just a rail shooter where you committed large scale genocide at the end. No I'm not kidding, you blow up an entire planet, civilians and all. Oh, did I forget to mention the stealth level? Yea, they added a mandatory stealth level where you had to hide in tall grass. But the whole time it seemed like your head was sticking out of the top. It was horrendous and given all the good I heard about it I was just astonished.

 

[LightningFast]

I know it sounds odd, but Mario Party 8. I hate that game for whatever reason.

 

[piinyouri]

Mech Assault 2

I don't even know why I did, but I bought this on release day, and sold it two days later.


Dragonball Z Sagas

No one will believe me, but I actually had no idea how bad this game was until watching Pro Jareds review of it.
I bought this one on day one as well, but it was before I had steady internet access. Strangely enough, I never ever thought (though I still did dislike the game) it was broken and complete shit and a reason for the people who bought it to be angry (which it was, and they should have been). It was a weird time back when games were either fun or not fun, and this one I made up my mind fairly quickly, was not fun.

Only after seeing the review did I remember it and see how embarrassingly bad it is. It's an unfinished product. Starchild pissed me off too, but Mass Effect was not unfinished. Sagas was BARELY finished, everything about it reeks of rushed development time.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

This has happened to me several times but I'll just talk recently. X: Rebirth. I was looking forward to this game quite a bit and it could not have been more disappointing if it tried. Just look at all the backlash it has received so far.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood left a really bad taste in my mouth. Aside from Rome looking great, the missions were bland and forgettable. I even prefer the much maligned AC: Revelations to Brotherhood.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

Planetside 2 and Rome 2. I will never love again.