Games that you've been burnt by

[Chaos Isaac]

Bioshock Infinite - Story isn't that good. And the gameplay isn't fun or awesome enough to justify the length.
Battlefield 3 - Just kinda... eh. I enjoyed the Bad Companies online a lot, and three was just kinda meh.
Halo 4 - Hahahahahaha. This game destroyed the single player narrative, which while wasn't always a great story, was almost always enjoyable and there was so little of this in game. Not to mention it sweeps away many of the plot issues under a rug and never bothers to explain it. Why can the Didact fly his prison ship? Why are there so many Covenant guys around? Yeah, I get they're a remnant but damn, there is a lot of them and they have a lot of hardware, and there's no friendly Elites which baffles me. Why does the Didact think his extinct species should take up the mantle? Or good he's doing now that the Flood is gone which is due in large part to Elites and Humans?

Oh, yeah, the hell is the Didact and why should I care? Oh, Halo, you don't care? Well, that sucks. How can Cortana make a lightbridge make little faeries that can grab aliens with space magic? Why does the Didact have Space Magic? How does Master Chief get out of a nuclear explosion at point blank range? Oh, again you don't care, Halo? That's a shame.
Gears of War Judgement: Yeah, let's make our game like Call of Duty, with two weapons and a 'nade button, 'cause our perfectly fine system before just worked too well. Also, super stupid narrative.
Uncharted 2: This game hurt me. It wasn't good, it wasn't funny, and it wasn't that pretty. Nathan is a character I can't stand, as is his blonde girlfriend, and the interesting people tend to be around for very short moments and it returns to stupid climbing segments that are so painfully forced and scripted I can't stand it. After having to climb a bunch of signs to jump a fence was about when I quit when I first stared.
GTA V: The game starts well, introducing your characters and setting up circumstances, and then it introduces Trevor and the game just goes downhill so fast and so far it's mind boggling. Then the game never uses Trevor again for insane fun, and breaks his character so hard when he doesn't kill half the people he meets who treat him like crap. And as is shown, he will do that pretty quickly.

The multiplayer is kinda atrocious too. While the freeroam can be fun, with no mode to be cooperative, it's merely death match with much larger limits and gets boring and a chore to get around. Not to mention jobs don't pay you enough, and having the co-op 'jobs' being mixed in with objective types of deathmatch makes trying to do that just tedious and annoying. And with no Heists or real incentive to play for a fun aspect, it gets dull. You can't even fight cops for fun, or steal cars for fun since if you wreck your car, you have to pay for it, and you can barely doof around in stolen cars as the game puts cops on you when you steal one. You level up so slowly that if you're in a lobby anyone with a higher level has a clear advantage due to better guns, vehicle mods (armor, bulletproof tires), vehicles (tanks), and even armor.

Saint's Row the Third: Saint's Row 2 was silly and serious and did it magnificently. Saints Row 3 just killed the interest in taking down enemy gangs and taking control, and the stupid humor that they tried to replace that with wasn't good enough to offset the change. But I guess that was the point, since Saint's Row 1 was a bit too serious.

Dead Island: More like, Bore Island with terrible combat. I wasn't expecting much, but I did expect more to the weapons and combat, and a rock stupid story.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

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.

That freakin' game...

It doesn't quite fit OP's mold but, I was burned by Mirror's Edge after playing that demo. Same with Dragon Age II.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

MGS can burn in gamer hell for all I care. Metal Gear Soap Opera. Beyond Good and Evil is giving me the buzz I that I need for tactical espionage right now. Screw MGS and all of it's sequels. Can't stand the story.

Skyrim - a broken game IMO.


I have a delayed burned reaction to ME2 and DA2 - I beat both games but then realized that I didn't need to replay them in order to see the story arcs that I wanted to. Then I realized that those games are all about the story, not so much the gameplay. So I went to YouTube and saw what I wanted. Then I sold ME2 and DA2 back. I'm not interested in ME3, and unless the combat changes for Dragon Age, I won't be playing DA3.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

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.

The second game is really the draw. I've never done the 3rd. I started with the second game, and then went back to the first.
Play TS2 with a friend who's good at FPS and you'll see. Split screen co-op rules.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Mass Effect 3, period. Biggest burn of all time for me. Six years of investment in a story just to have a writer give you the finger at the end of it. Nothings ever going to compare to that one.

I felt the same way about Shadow of the Colossus. I didn't bother with ME3. I'll have to watch the ending on YouTube.

 

[Mersadeon]

Driver: San Francisco. Super fun game. Burned me for Ubisoft. I know, I know, they aren't the paragon of customer support anyway, but this one just showed their incompetence so much. Game crashed on startup (even though it was previously fine) and the Ubisoft support page in german was broken, but they wanted to handle it through the german support, so I got forwarded to them and when they wanted their goddamn reports from my computer so that they could help me, their page sccrewed up so hard that that became impossible. Good god. Just give me back my money, I don't even want the damn game anymore, it was on sale anyway.

 

[TheRiddler]

When I played the original Bioshock, I loved it. It was a clever deconstruction of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, an exploration of a new, interesting setting, a meta-commentary on the role of the player in games, a pants-shittingly frightening experience at times, and an overall awesome game.

And when I saw coverage of Bioshock Infinite, it looked like it would be just as good. They weren't staying in Rapture, they were bringing us a new city, with its own backstory. It would be inspired by classic Americana, and the age of American Exceptionalism. It would have its own problems, its own world and its own story.

But it turned out to be a disappointment. It "explored" the themes of racism, classism, xenophobia, violent revolution, etc. But it gave none the attention that the original Bioshock gave its subject matter. And then it proceeded to throw in the alternate-universe stuff, the stuff about Booker's past, and all of the plot twists. The result was a game that seemed confused at best and downright schizophrenic at worst. The gameplay was frustrating, the shooting was standard (they even changed to the two-gun system, which annoyed me), and the vigors (read: plasmids) were shoehorned in, and utterly interchangeable with each other. The skyhook system was fun... each of the four times I could use it. The game was just a disappointment to me on every level.

 

[Grottnikk]

Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor. Man that game was 'teh suk'

Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. Bland colours, crappy sound, few maps... Add to all that the fact that now I feel old for knowing about it

 

[FPLOON]

Alice: Madness Returns

Actually, I wasn't expecting much from this game going in and I only end up buying it because I REALLY wanted to play the original beforehand... I was disappointing in the "I was expecting that" kind of way... Couldn't beat the original due to some of the cheapest deaths that threw me off of actually trying to finish it... and Madness Returns was just underwhelming, anyway...

It's hard to regret something you kinda knew would not impress you either way...

 

[spartandude]

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!'

/thread

God damn that game, i mean the work in progress demo was amazing and then the game... I was so dissapointed, actually no i was pissed off!

 

[The Funslinger]

The voice acting and missions in Just Cause 2 were so bad I can't bring myself to do anything but fuck around in that game.

Which is a shame, because that means using the black market feature is next to impossible.

 

[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.

The second game is really the draw. I've never done the 3rd. I started with the second game, and then went back to the first.
Play TS2 with a friend who's good at FPS and you'll see. Split screen co-op rules.

That would be nice if I had a friend to co-op with or if my brother could play shooters worth a damn.

 

[Headsprouter]

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

Marketed as a sequel. Saw trailers that looked like the original, and all I have left is a Let's Play I can't be bothered to finish uploading. Disappointing game.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

for me it was FF13? if i wanted an action game i would play God of War or something, as i don't play FF for action games, i play them for TB and ATB. oh well? Bravely Default has been localized and is releasing on Feb. 7.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

I don't know if it counts, but

Red Dead Redemption: There's this one character in the game that I wanted added so intensely since they started adding in game characters to multiplayer.

Spoiler

<youtube.com=g_8YbYctzMc>

the lack of her addition to the multiplayer roster is still something I can't forgive. :/ Nevermind thet fact that she's a throw away character.
Still a great game.

Mass Effect 3 MP: The lack of a DLC female Quarian coupled with getting 3 male quarians, and the lack of a Female Krogan, I'm still not over.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Expected a semi-decent sequel for the Ghost Recon series, but Future Soldier couldn't even do that for me. Christ, what a wreck of a game.

Mmmhmm. Future Soldier was a textbook example of how to badly fuck up an already pretty solid franchise by trying to appeal to the dude-bros.

Also worst net-code there ever was and ever will be.

 

[camazotz]

Why it happened today. A friend of mine strongly reccommended Euro Truck Simulator 2 (he's a driver himself, see) and so I bought it for about $6 on Steam sale. Loaded, and about two minutes of playing and deleted. Nothing wrong with it if you're into that sort of game...but it took me $6 to find out I definitely don't care for hardcore sim driver games.

A lot of games mentioned here are good, just maybe not for the person in question (i.e. I love Sleeping Dogs, great game, and the combat was great).

 

[veloper]

Sleeping Dogs.
Bought it on release because it looked really great, but the melee combat turned out to be such an complete and utter trainwreck that I just gave up and uninstalled it on the same day.

Shame, everything else about it was at least average or above.

The combat wasn't great but it wasn't bad, especially after you get better moves. The shooting in Sleeping Dogs, now that was awful.

I suspect you're just no good at fighting games or just gave up after a fight or two.

Now the story and characters, while having its moments, was mostly generic and therefore the biggest issue.

That or he expected combat more on the lines of a dedicated 3D fighting game, to which SD cannot really compare.

To understand the appeal of the game, you start with GTA4, which SD was obviously inspired by and then you imagine what if GTA was better (and smaller). The combat in SD is great, but only in comparison to other openworld games like GTA and saints row, which are really clunky.

 

[lapan]

Clock Tower 3. "It followed the tradition of the series," the fans say.

I got a 14 year in old a suggestive cowgirl outfit, among other things (Horrible voice acting, a plot you could replace with all spoken lines of "Runny Tastic" and it'd make more sense, and the fact there are weapon 3 attack/hide points through the WHOLE level) that simply ruined the game for me.

I wouldn't have minded the main character or the story that much...

But the combat was so bad that the final boss will forever be in my memory as the worst bossfight i ever had the displeasure to beat (after roughly 60 tries)

 

[Amaror]

Dragon Age 2.
What a steaming pile of shit. It was even worse for me, because i was one of those rose tinted idiot bioware fanboys that just didn't want to see how shitty Dragon Age 2 was going to be before it launched. I argued a LOT for it.
Then it was released i played it for a long time and at first, through all the hype, i was having quite a bit of fun. Then less fun, then less fun, then less fun and then: Fuck, why is this game so boooooring.
Why are the fights so generic and boring, why is the story so rediculously stupid, why are the graphics actually WORSE then the first one, which wasn't that pretty to begin with. And most of all: Why did i pay so much money for such a shite game.