That Game You Feel Has Potential, But Completely Failed Delivering.

[Mafoobula]

Duke Nukem Forever. I swear, there's a good game somewhere in there. I'm certain there's a way to meld the best parts of Duke Nukem 3D with the cool stuff in Forever. I liked the driving - with a few tweaks, it could make a triumphant return. I liked the showdown scene in that one deserted village. I like the crazy power-ups. 'Roids and beer? Very Duke.

SSX Blur for the Wii. I had SSX Tricky on the Gamecube, and I played that a lot more than I should have. I say that, because no game has made me fly into such an apocalyptic rage like Tricky, but when I did well, it was still amazing. Blur, on the other hand, controlled like trying to alter a cruise ship's course by swimming against one side. It could have been so damn good, but it turned out to be god-awful.

Batman: Vengeance. A Batman video game with an art style identical to the animated Batman series, voiced by the same people as the cartoon. Yes, please. Wait, what's with these controls? What's with... THIS GAME?! FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU- this game is no good. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and the rest, they deserve a better game. Oh, sure, they got it with Arkham Asylum/City, but Vengeance looked like the animated series that I grew up with and love with all my being.
Put it this way: Think of any movie, TV series, game, anything you like. Now apply rule 34. Batman: Vengeance is rule 34 applied to the animated series. It's not good rule 34, either, it's that legendarily creepy rule 34 that's usually made to troll people.

 

[ElectrifiedSorcerer]

There are games I got to experience the disappointment of first hand and there are those I only heard of, so I'll make the distinction.

Heard of: Amy, Rage, Homefront, Asura's Wrath, Neverdead
Experienced (i can explain these a bit):
Duke Nukem Forever:
I don't think this one needs much explanation, actually
Dead Island:
I was sort of turned off to the idea the moment I saw it would be a sort of first-person RPG, I expected a sort of story-driven adventure title. I will say that when I saw it I was impressed by the level of detail in many aspects but I didn't find the experience to be as compelling as they had promised and I was irritated by a number of gameplay issues such as the first person attacks
Shadows of the Damned:
I feel that it could have been longer and far more challenging. Also in terms of story the humor wasn't always that impressive and the story wasn't as unique as those of other Suda titles. There was plenty to like but not a standout.
Bodycount:
I was looking for a sequel to Black but I forgot to check the developer credits before playing

I'll add this one in because seeing it here reminds me of my own experiences

Spore: Its first phase was great, and we needed to see more of it and see more development. Instead we got whisked off to a mildly cute, very simplistic RTS.

 

[ExileNZ]

Let's go for something less well-known here:
Maelstrom.

An RTS that made full use of dynamic terrain deformation, brought to you by the folks who made Perimeter. Add in 3 completely different races, a nice mix of special abilities and a story which, while largely predictable, didn't completely suck.

And yet... it just kinda fell flat. It aimed so high, but the execution was kinda lackluster and the AI difficulty was so broken that even I could finish the game (I am not gifted when it comes to RTSes).

But mostly I spent my time trying to take advantage of the terrain deformation and that was a little poorly implemented. In theory it was great - any worker unit could raise or lower a patch of terrain. But since the height of effect was limited, nothing could dig very far down before it needed to dig itself down as well. So I spent 4 hours stairway-digging a hole into the top of a dam (instead of 5 minutes) only to discover that the only water that fell through it was the tiny reservoir actually displayed on the level and not, say, the entire lake that was supposed to be behind it. So I wound up demolishing the entire dam just to drown the base underneath it with a trickle of water.

 

[Zelcor]

Spore

There is no contest. The game is the argument for casual gamers ruining the industry. Entire sections of the game were ripped out or dumbed down. I genuinely feel sorry for Will Wright just thinking about that abortion of a game. He spent his entire career building up to that game. Every Sims game from the 90's was just a demo of some aspect to the greater whole. And EA fucked him, then fired him.

Then, just to piss off any legitimate customer who would dare buy the game, they added SecuRom. It was like EA was selling "Fuck You" made material.

Oh, my God, Spore

^this and Dead Fucking Island

 

[immortalfrieza]

I just thought of another one.

X-Men Destiny. It's an X-Men game that FINALLY has a Good or Evil system (or in this case work for the X-Men or the Brotherhood) a real time combat system, and a character customization system, all being things that it should have been incredibly obvious that X-Men games should have for a long time. The problem? The linearity of the whole game despite the morality system, the shortness of the game, the limitation to 3 characters and only 3 different types of powers despite the customization that ultimately don't make a bit of difference storylinewise, and your character doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, the threat of the game would have been dealt with regardless of your character's existance, and last but not least, the blandness of the story and how boring the combat eventually becomes despite the real time combat.

X-Men Destiny could have been one of the best X-Men games ever made, possibly one of the best games ever made, and they majorly dropped the ball.

 

[Bertylicious]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and Saints Row: The Third

What was wrong with Clear Sky? It was okay.

*Thinks for a minute*

Actually. Actually no. Fair enough.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II.

The first had it's flaws but it was good and I enjoyed it.
The second... WTF? It was short as hell, had boring characters, barely any cool upgradeable stuff, and the ending made no sense in context.

 

[Joccaren]

Alright, this could end up as a massive list, but I'm short on time so I'll keep it short.

Mass Effect 3
Great premise, tons of potential, fell flat on its face almost everywhere.

Spore
Been bought up enough times, enough has been said.

Dragon Age 2
As if it weren't obvious it had a lot of potential after Origins, but rather than improving and maximizing that potential it simply dropped everything it could have improved instead focusing on rushing itself out as the most half assed game I've played in a long time.

Skyrim
It should be obvious why this game had so much potential, but other than as a hiking sim it isn't really all that good at fulfilling any of it. A lot more polish and thought into the mechanics and sidequests would have gone a long way to making this game enjoyable, as would fixing all the damn bugs [Which is slowly happening].

And that's all I've got time for today. Probably not going to bother looking through my games collection to find other disappointing games, but if I do I'll post here.

Captcha: How Interesting.
Indeed.

 

[karcentric]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and Saints Row: The Third

What was wrong with Clear Sky? It was okay.

*Thinks for a minute*

Actually. Actually no. Fair enough.

Clear Sky is like that bastard middle child that no one really likes, it had potential but it failed to keep it promises. That and it's a bit handicapped. I need 3 patches before I could finish the game. That meant 3 restarts, not fun when you're in Red Forest and the game glitches as you cross the bridge.

 

[veloper]

I wonder how you guys would go around fixing Spore.

The only thing that is in place is the cosmetics. Nothing you design matters.
Spore is just a bunch of shallow mini-games in a fixed order and you'd have to rebuild the game entirely starting from scratch, to make it decent.


The easiest games to fix would be games where you just remove bad features.

Removing the hacking and lockpick minigames from Alpha Protocol would make the experience alot less annoying. Wouldn't make the game exactly great, because for that the combat would have to be seriously overhauled, but it would still help alot.

Remove the original campaign from Neverwinter Nights and sell the game as a toolset for creating user modules, small persistant worlds and scheduled games with a DM client.

Stuff like that.

 

[aguspal]

Spore

There is no contest. The game is the argument for casual gamers ruining the industry. Entire sections of the game were ripped out or dumbed down. I genuinely feel sorry for Will Wright just thinking about that abortion of a game. He spent his entire career building up to that game. Every Sims game from the 90's was just a demo of some aspect to the greater whole. And EA fucked him, then fired him.

Then, just to piss off any legitimate customer who would dare buy the game, they added SecuRom. It was like EA was selling "Fuck You" made material.

Oh, my God, Spore

I thougt Spore was a fun game...


After seeing th fabled trailer, I can see where people are comming from, but I still enjoyned the game. Not for everyone thougt.


Oh yeah, as for myself, I will go with Kindoms of amalur: Reckoning or something like that. The game that tried its best to beat fable (Witch in itself people thougt it was lacking as well... I did not). Except it was retarded and bad in pretty much every single way. Fable is WAY better than this game, except in grapichs (and even then, I prefer Fable style).


I never understood why people think Fable lacked so much. Spore, I can understand, but Fable did everything fine! If you got overhyped then theres no one to blame but yourself...

 

[corvuscorrax]

Space Marine.

With a bit more dedication and better delivery that game could have created a very rich community and canvas for new games to be built upon.

Guess it just wasn't 40ks time... sooon.

 

[Kotep]

Winter Voices
Venetica
Drakensang

Winter Voices for being a mature RPG about a female character with an emphasis on nonviolent combat and an amazingly varied and interesting skill tree. But then the progression is slow, battles are slow, the text is pseudophilosophical rambling put through Google Translate from French, and if you pick a bad skill you won't know for hours until it's way, way too late.

Venetica for being a character-centric RPG similar to Mass Effect but with a female character, an interesting setting, and nice death mechanics. But then the engine is awful, the graphics are abysmal, and it's worse at choice and consequence than insert bioware jab here.

Drakensang for offering enough options and abilities to be the next Neverwinter Nights but more HARD COER, but then being linear and underutilizing almost every single ability.

 

[Full]

Heavy Rain. A mainstream game for people who just like a good story, not just gamers? Sounds awesome to me. But that terrible voice acting, and blatant plot holes kept me from enjoying it at all, and most if not all of what it was relying on fell flat.

 

[Darmy647]

Sonic generations. I loved everything they did with that game and i loved all the content dedicated to my favorite sega icon. Then i beat the game under 4 hours....with only a casino night dlc...with the perfect opportunity to attempt to sell more levels but didn't...god dammit...

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Rocksmith finally overcame the practical challenges in the way of delivering a true guitar video game. Finally, we have the technology to play Guitar Hero, while learning the guitar FOR REAL. Don't pretend you haven't dreamed of it.

And they fucked it up. Rocksmith is actually more frustrating than practicing on my own. There's no good reason for it. The system works. They just fucked up the game design. It is so frustrating.

 

[PPB]

Most licensed games have a lot of potential, but they often fail to deliver. Force Unleashed is one of them; one of the biggest IPs out there and set during the underused pre-ANH period. Yet the result was more of a tech demo than a game. The list goes on.

I never understood why people think Fable lacked so much. Spore, I can understand, but Fable did everything fine! If you got overhyped then theres no one to blame but yourself...

Assuming we're talking about the first Fable, I think the main problem with it was that it didn't quite keep up with the other RPGs that came out around the same time. By itself it's a perfectly fine game (and quite charming too), but playing it after going through the likes of Morrowind and KotOR, it kind of feels like you're playing a budget game.

With that said, I still love Fable (TLC) very much. The soundtrack alone makes it worthwhile.

 

[TephlonPrice]

I have to hand this one to Haze.

So much potential in all areas: drugged super soldiers vs an insurgent commando force in what amounts to a war for resources based on false pretenses (sounds familiar?) Two different styles of play with open combat... and none of it is great; it's just really really average.

I'm also gonna toss in Syndicate. Being able to hack people's minds and control them and do cool things with them in FPS action? Hell yeah! Too bad it didn't do anything other than be generic, generic, generic with bloom aplenty.