Gaming Disappointments/Pleasant Surprises

[-Drifter-]

List a game that disappointed you as well as one that surpassed your expectations, and explain what made it a let down/surprise.

Disappointment: LA Noire. Was quite excited for this one, but that excitement quickly gave way to boredom once I got my hands on it. I had hoped that questioning people would be more involved than deciding if a suspect is lying based on how much the they look like they're trying to hold in a fart, and searching for clues pretty much boils down to traipsing back and forth picking things up until the music stops playing.

Overall though, my biggest problem with The Adventures of Cole Phelps: World's Blandest Man is that it all felt very same-y. The homicide desk in particular really killed my enjoyment of the game (no pun intended,) as it's pretty much just one case repeated five or six times.

Surprise: The Darkness. Got it as a gift and honestly wasn't expecting much more than a simple shooter. Instead I got what I still consider to be one of the best narratives in gaming, and it pulls it off without constantly having to resort to cutscenes or grand set-pieces (I'm looking at you Max Payne 3.)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

List a game that disappointed you as well as one that surpassed your expectations, and explain what made it a let down/surprise.

Disappointment: LA Noire. Was quite excited for this one, but that excitement quickly gave way to boredom once I got my hands on it. I had hoped that questioning people would be more involved than deciding if a suspect is lying based on how much the they look like they're trying to hold in a fart, and searching for clues pretty much boils down to traipsing back and forth picking things up until the music stops playing.

Overall though, my biggest problem with The Adventures of Cole Phelps: World's Blandest Man is that it all felt very same-y. The homicide desk in particular really killed my enjoyment of the game (no pun intended,) as it's pretty much just one case repeated five or six times.

Surprise: The Darkness. Got it as a gift and honestly wasn't expecting much more than a simple shooter. Instead I got what I still consider to be one of the best narratives in gaming, and it pulls it off without constantly having to resort to cutscenes or grand set-pieces (I'm looking at you Max Payne 3.)

Surprise: To the Moon. I bought it on a whim because of this article on RPS: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/03/wot-i-think-to-the-moon/, and it wasn't only my favorite game of that year, it's one of my favorite games of all time. Deeply touching. I cried like a baby.

Disappointment: Ultima Online. Not because it was a bad game...it was a great game. But because my expectations for the MMO genre were pie in the sky and completely unrealistic. The comedown of realizing everyone wouldn't be roleplaying and that the nice person to asshole ratio was going to be heavily skewed in favor of the latter was crushing.

 

[targren]

Disappointment: Guild Wars 2. It's not a bad game for what it is, if what is is was anything other than supposedly a sequel to "Guild Wars." Everything good about the original game has been abandoned, everything bad has been carried over, and the middle has been filled in with an overhyped "innovation" that really doesn't change anything from the status quo other than making quests appear based on location rather than dudes with a bang over their head.

Surprise: Minecraft. It was just far more fun than I imagined (except for the Nether).

 

[The Wykydtron]

Recently i've been surprised by Dust: An Elysian Tail on XBLA. I rarely go into XBLA titles with any knowledge of the game in question because that's how I roll for some reason

It's really quite good. The aesthetic is really well done and the little sidekick they give you is endearing and useful. Seriously i'm enjoying spamming points into Fidget so she can become a destroyer of worlds on her own. The combat is DMCish y'know combo everything and don't get hit for maximum ownage and it's fun as hell.

Speaking of DMC that's probably my example of a disappointment. I keep trying DMC3 and I got through about 3 hours of the original DMC and it always feels so lacking. It has to be the fact that you have one attack button and one attack button only. Yes you space the button presses for combos but really one extra attack button would have been so much better.


Also I Am Alive. It's ok but the music is oh so bad, the checkpoint/save system is bullshit and I hope you enjoy being on low health with zero health items because your screen is going to be perma-red and bloody complete with shaky controller! Forever!

Persona 4 Arena looks surprisingly good (read: awesome) considering when I first heard they were bringing out a fighting game for Persona and making everything canon I was a bit skeptical to say the least.

Now roll on the 31st. I have an entire cast to test in the training mode. Except Akihiko, he can sit in the corner and cry instead. I'll have to start with Shadow Labrys because... Well, just watch.



Of course the last trailer released would upstage my darling Naoto :/

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

My most recent disappointment, and possibly one of my overall biggest gaming disappointments of all time, is Diablo 3. I'll admit, I did have fun with the game when it came out. But within a month I'd seen everything there was to see. The campaign/story is incredibly short and poorly executed, and because of the way character builds work in D3 I feel like there's no real incentive to bother playing it again. They just released the big and highly-anticipated 1.04 patch this past Tuesday... but honestly, it didn't save the game for me. There's a lot of little quality-of-life improvements, but it did nothing to change any of the things that I found to be core fundamental problems of the game. Meanwhile, features that they promised we'd have at launch (or soon after) still aren't in the game, and are apparently so far away from being ready that we haven't even gotten the trademark Blizzard "Soon" response yet. Sorry, Blizzard... but to me, Diablo 3 was a substandard game, it was a huge disappointment, and I'm unlikely to buy anything from that particular franchise again.

Now, for something a bit more up-beat... most recent pleasant surprise goes to E.Y.E. I picked it up for $3 during the Steam summer sale, not really knowing much about it prior other than a few compliments from Jim Sterling. It turned out to be, to me, a really fun throwback to the old sometimes overly-complicated FPS/RPG hybrids that we don't really see too much anymore.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Surprise: The Darkness. Got it as a gift and honestly wasn't expecting much more than a simple shooter. Instead I got what I still consider to be one of the best narratives in gaming, and it pulls it off without constantly having to resort to cutscenes or grand set-pieces (I'm looking at you Max Payne 3.)

Have you tried the second yet? It`s a bit more streamlined in terms of storytelling but i thought it was great.

Disappointment:
I haven´t bought this many games this year so this is my usual repeat of my dislike and disappointment of saints Row3.
Personal reasons: dislike the new direction and the change of the overall tone. SR2 let me play a ruthless lunatic, SR3 has a goofy whatever guy, who let his own crew make fun of him (yeah, great change THQ now he`s really likeable). The old crew is totally changed and the new ones are just anoying, i dislike both and the whole story/writing.

Facts: Less varied city with less varied citizens, small campaign even with filler activity-missions, an open world city/gangster themed game without races, less customization, no mission replay or cutscene viewer, less to do.

Liked the first, loved the second , the third killed it for me.

Surprise:
GTA-Hongkong...uhrm, Sleeping Dogs - way better than expected. This game has a slow start, but the more character upgrades you collect the more fun it gets. The fighting get´s really exciting this way. At first it didn`t felt as fluid and good as in the Batman games but now i prefer SDs with the button timing combosystem.

Unlike some reviews i found the shooting pretty solid and you can mix it up with fighting anytime. They use some kind of window reticle and there`s still the possibility to miss, which i like since it adds a bit realism. This way you´re not able to clean the far end of a hall with crazy acurate pistol headshots.

The driving is very enjoyable too. Once you get used to the handeling and the leftsided traffic it get`s awesome. I loved the motorcicle races and this is the first open world game where you can actually shoot and drive 360 degrees thanks to a slo-mo effect when you aim at enemies. Besides it looks awesome sending rival triad bikers or cars flying with shot tires. Unlike some early vids they don`t explode after two shots, which i prefer (it´s still doable just not as fast as seen before).

Besides the romantic encounters, the writing/dialogue is enjoyable and the whole setting feels like a big budget asia flic.What i really liked was the mission design, the way it was presented it just felt fresh and they mix up various gameplay elements like shootouts, car- and footchases and brawls.

This game features some cool outfits with nods to various movies which is also great since it`s a nice "thanks for buying" instead of putting out as DLC (they do DLC but still...).

To me it`s better than GTA4.

 

[MBurdock]

Disappointment: God of War series - Friends were raving about them, so I got the compilation with 1 and 2 on it. They're good, but they get stale pretty quickly. Also, the difficulty of the final boss in the first one was miles beyond anything else in the game to that point - it felt cheap. So good games that didn't turn out to be as epic as I had been led to believe.

Surprise: flower. I bought it for my girlfriend, but I love it. It's simple and relaxing.

 

[Ryotknife]

disappointment: Diablo 3. Besides the usual convient targets, I stopped playing D3 after 2-3 weeks (due to boredom) whereas i sank more hours into D2 than I am proud to admit.

surprise: Kingdom hearts 1. When i first heard about it, I thought it was a shameless cash grab. A Square Disney game? eeehhhh. That features beloved FF characters? (steeples his hands in front of his mouth) do tell. When I first played I thought "oh, another Disney story about the power of love yadda yadda."

.....okay so the story is still kinda that way, but it is serious enough for the adult to enjoy, touching on subjects like betrayal and ends justifying the means.

 

[Scrustle]

Disappointment: Fable 2. I should really have a swear jar for every time I say the name of that fucking game on these forums.

Surprise: Amped 3. I got it when the 360 first came out and I didn't really know what to expect. I loved the SSX series on PS2 and this seemed to be the closest thing to it on 360 at the time.

It actually retained that "title" until recently when an SSX did come out, but it's had most of this generation to itself. The only other snowboarding game has been Shaun White Snowboarding, which was a travesty. I guess there was SSX Blur too, but that was on the Wii and it was just levels from SSX 3 and 4 with terrible controls. Such a shame, it had a cool art style to it.

But anyway, I was just expecting an at least "okay" snowboarding game to fill the void until an SSX game did come to the 360 (didn't know I would be waiting so long), but what I found was a really funny, charming and unique game with heaps of style and personality. If anyone who is in to snowboarding games missed this one I highly recommend it. The controls feel a little stiff and wonky (especially compared to SSX), but it was a launch title, so it can be forgiven mostly. Launch games are always a bit awkward; half relying on what used to work and half trying to figure out what the future will be. But they don't damage the enjoyment of the game at all and are easy to get used to. It's forgiveable with all the features that game has. You don't just have to ride on a board. You can go on a snowmobile or on one of a huge selection of sledges, some of which are highly comical (a toilet, a wardrobe, etc.).

The game itself is massive too. There's loads of mountains to visit and each are completely open. There's nothing walling you off at all. You have every single inch of every side of the mountain to go down. It's awesome. Oh, and every mountain also happens to be based on a real ski life ski resort. Probably more realistic than SSX too, I wager. Not that realistic = better (certainly not in this genre), I just think it's amazing they even attempted it. And you have the ability to place your own jumps and stuff wherever you want on the mountain at any time. There also happens to be a huge and pretty awesome soundtrack as well. It's just a shame that it lacks online multiplayer. That would have been the icing on the cake.

It's such a shame MS closed down the studio shortly after they made this game. It was a 1st party exclusive IP which had gotten good reviews and sales, yet they pissed it all away. Well done, MS.

Another one has to be Prey. Even though this was also a 360 launch title I only recently discovered this one. I was always kind of aware of it, and that it was a sci-fi shooter, but I had no idea what it was like. I borrowed it from my friend and found out it was awesome. Really well presented story and characters with smart mechanics and an amazing atmosphere. It really nails that. It's so dark. It feels dangerous and oppressive, even frightening at times. The aesthetic is awesome too. It's kind of like if someone injected a bit of H.R Giger in to Doom 3.

 

[Blarkuntvhite]

Mild disappointment: Crysis 2. No beautiful forests? Not much free reign over the direction you take? It's set in New York (COME ON!). Graphics aren't that much better?

Ok . I still thought it was a pretty good game, though.

Pleasant surprise: Skyrim. I thought Oblivion was so ugly and boring (Probably due to me not having a computer that could run it until a few years after it came out.) that I was not looking forward to the next Elder Scrolls.
I got it anyway cause it was the thing to get and was quickly sucked into the beautiful world within.

 

[DoPo]

Disappointment: Mass Effect
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the games bad (at least mostly they aren't) but for something with such a big fanbase and so much good things said about it, I expected to not be so...BioWare, I suppose. And so predictable. Now, again, I must say, the story is good, as is the setting, but praising it for originality is going a bit overboard.

Pleasant surprise: Costume Quest
I bought it a while ago on Steam and only recently I decided to play it. It's really sweet! I loved the game - it's follows JRPG fashion and the main hero must go and save their sibling, who was kidnapped by monsters on Halloween. Yeah, and they save them by trick or treating and battling monsters, whose evil plan is to steal candy (they mistake the child for a candy, by the way). Great suff! You get new costumes and each costume has different powers and stats.

 

[Wayneguard]

When I first got Tenchu: Return From Darkness waaaay back on the original xbox, I had heard from a friend that it was total shit. Fortunately, he was dead wrong. Tenchu: RFD remains one of my favorite games to this day. Also, Mirror's Edge pleasantly surprised me. I had read its poor reviews and heard some bad stuff via word of mouth but I ended up enjoying it immensely. In fact, I think that game is one of my favorites as well.

 

[-Drifter-]

Costume Quest[/I]

I think you messed up yer' code, there.

 

[Vault101]

whats the bet the dissapointments will far outwiegh the pleasant surprises?

for me the pleasant surprsie most recently has been Sleeping Dogs..usually I keep full tabs on all games I may be interested in...this one few right under my radar untill its release

and I'm loving the shit out of it! interesting story, solid gameplay and vechles that actually go where I want them

 

[Mouse One]

Disappointment: Deus Ex HR. After this huge build up about how it's this super sneaky game with an amazing plot, I found it to be a shooter with some stealth elements and two dimensional characters. Yet another "tough guy with gun" game, and if it had anything new to say about the concept of the Singularity, I sure missed it.

Surprise: Mass Effect 3. I'd been somewhat disappointed with Dragon Age 2-- not fanrage levels, but enough that I wasn't planning on getting the next Bioware/EA game at full price. And then I heard how awful the ending was, etc, etc, etc. But when I finally got around to playing it, I found the writing to be generally top notch with some amazingly moving moments. The ending really didn't bug me that much, perhaps because there's no way it could have been as bad as people claimed it was. And the multiplayer was pretty fun, too, if not exactly deep.

 

[TheMann]

Disappointment: Duke Nukem Forever
Well, of course I knew that this game was going to be bad, but for $5, I figured it'd be bad in an entertaining way that I could play for the lulz, and laugh at just how ridiculously bad it was. I bought Deus Ex: Invisible War ($2.50) for the same reason and found it to be hilarious. However, DNF did not provide this value for me at all. Most of the game I... I just couldn't even come up with words to properly ridicule it.

Pleasant surprise: Borderlands
While I highly approve of "87 Bazillion Guns", the game just appeared bland and uninteresting to me. However, I have a friend that just wouldn't shut up about it. So I nabbed it off Steam for $10 and was instantly hooked. Then I proceeded to buy up all the DLC and loved the hell out of it. I'm about to pre-order the sequel, and that's saying something as, prior to this, I've never pre-ordered a game in my entire life. September 18th still can't come fast enough.

 

[Burrito With Legs]

Disappointment: Duke Nukem Forever
Well, of course I knew that this game was going to be bad, but for $5, I figured it'd be bad in an entertaining way that I could play for the lulz, and laugh at just how ridiculously bad it was. I bought Deus Ex: Invisible War ($2.50) for the same reason and found it to be hilarious. However, DNF did not provide this value for me at all. Most of the game I... I just couldn't even come up with words to properly ridicule it.

Pleasant surprise: Borderlands
While I highly approve of "87 Bazillion Guns", the game just appeared bland and uninteresting to me. However, I have a friend that just wouldn't shut up about it. So I nabbed it off Steam for $10 and was instantly hooked. Then I proceeded to buy up all the DLC and loved the hell out of it. I'm about to pre-order the sequel, and that's saying something as, prior to this, I've never pre-ordered a game in my entire life. September 18th still can't come fast enough.

Borderlands about met my expectations. I spent around 25 hours on it and would give it an 8.0/10 right now, and I'm quite excited to play the sequel, maybe just because I'm curious about the amount of guns.

As for pre-ordering it, I probably won't. The only games I've pre-ordered this year is Diablo III. I would have pre-ordered Guild Wars 2, but I'm in Italy until September, so I might as well just wait.

 

[Ldude893]

GTA-Hongkong...uhrm, Sleeping Dogs - way better than expected.

for me the pleasant surprsie most recently has been Sleeping Dogs..usually I keep full tabs on all games I may be interested in...this one few right under my radar untill its release

I've had faith with the game ever since it was announced as True Crime: Hong Kong two years ago, and even after it was canceled and brought back. What can I say? When you've got a sandbox game set in your own hometown done by a developer who's shown that they're not just f#$%ing around, you trust that the game would be in good quality.

As for me? Spec Ops: The Line. Sure I bought it because Yahtzee gave a good review for it, but I was still just expecting another decent shooter that could help pass time before Sleeping Dogs; something's that fun.
I never knew video games could give someone Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder before. Now I know.

Never played Bioshock before, so Spec Ops: The Line currently sits atop of my list for "best video game stories ever".

 

[Vault101]

[
I've had faith with the game ever since it was announced as True Crime: Hong Kong two years ago, and even after it was canceled and brought back. What can I say? When you've got a sandbox game set in your own hometown done by a developer who's shown that they're not just f#$%ing around, you trust that the game would be in good quality.

AND everybody drives on the left side of the road! (like in Aus) not that it ever makes any difference in thease games though...but still