What Game Had the Most Wasted Potential

[hermes]

1...2....3....

Final Fantasy 13.

Yeah... On a personal level, I have to agree with you.
After all, one of the reasons I chose to go for a PS3 instead of a 360 on this generation were the next iteration of the traditionally exclusive games. Specifically, Final Fantasy and God of War... Neither of them ended up being more than mediocre.

 

[gargantual]

Daikatana. A lot of ideas in a horribly pasty misfire with confused supporting characters.

Even though we have an unreal 3 version of Shadow Warrior, I think this old IP should be redone for a new generation. It would be nice if a developer that was good with FPS design and strong character development just went and talked to John Romero, and said, lets repair this old jalopy. Maybe the kids'll forget about the first one.

 

[Emaruse]

Yay! I get to say one game that no one else has mentioned!

Anarchy Reigns. That's my pick, and why?

It's not a bad game, multiplayer-wise. But the Single-Player is just so BLAND, and this came from SEGA/Platinum Games for goodness sake! Nothing but a pure beat em' up, no variety other than a few instances, the storyline was passable, but forgettable, and going thru place to place was kinda drab, although fun because of the soundtrack.

Multiplayer wise.... I'm guessing Platinum Games & SEGA used their C-Team on this one, it seems that way. Because despite everyone having a somewhat specific throw & special move, almost everyone in their weight class plays the same (Hell, the Rin Sisters nearly play the same!) And speaking of the Rin Sisters, along with Bayonetta, the DLC Character, they are the main lag-&-glitch to win characters that can really anger people, and back in the day (Heck, even now) some of the players there were really lag-&-glitch abusers, as well as using cheap moves to win, and personality wise, made the fan-base look like jerks, when there were actual good people in that game, which was sad.

I said it once, and I say it again: Anarchy Reigns may not have been the best game, but it should have, at the very least, had won an award for it's soundtrack, but no one will ever throw them that bone because certain people say (And I put this in quotations) "All Hip-Hop is repetitive gutter trash, so this soundtrack is too", and to those people, I ask them what their kind of music is, and when I normally get that answer, I tell them to leave the room.

If each character played differently, if the camera was done better (Considering the Video Game Industry has had 20+ Years to get it right...), if the missions in story mode had more variety, if the story was more epic, if there were no lag-and-glitch to win instances, this could've been the definitive Multiplayer 3D Fighting Game... But nope, now it's on the bargin bin next to Remember Me. And that saddens me.

Final Words: The Final Boss Fight Theme of Anarchy Reigns - "Find You" is better than Sephiroth's One-Winged Angel. That's all I have to say. And now if you excuse me, I have a bunker to find for just saying that. You want an explanation for my words though, come at me then.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Kane and Lynch. I found the characters to be so interesting and cool. The story COULD have been amazing and the gameplay should have been at least decent. Even the second one had so much potential. Nothing is more upsetting to me than wasted potential in a game. I really hope the series makes a strong come back but its probably not going to happen.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Too Human could have been a great launch of an awesome series. Who doesn't love an ultra techno future Viking robot murder game?

What we received was... man was that a let down. That game had no reason to suck that badly.

This. A great concept wasted on shitty gameplay, ugly graphics and terrible writing. Too Human is bar none the worst game I have ever played, but I'd say it had the potential to be one of the best. It makes me sad to see how much wasted potential it really had.

 

[the December King]

Spore

I followed development since its announcement in Wired magazine in 2005.

What we were promised was a scientific evolution game spanning from cell to galactic empire.

What we got was six disjointed minigames that catered to underage creationists.

For months people kept saying "Spore has such potential!" But that potential was never realized.

Oh, I totally second this, Spore. I wanted so much for this to be the game we had been shown in the demos...

As a small plug, I started work on a flash game that combines elements of 'Spore' and 'The Binding of Issac'. It can be seen on Steam Greenlight, with the temp title 'Monster':


The demo is still incomplete (it's just me at this point, and I need to eat, so I had to take paying jobs for now).

 

[Blitsie]

Timesplitters 2 & 3. The perfect arcade shooter with multiplayer, Map making and sharing in an age where only a small portion of console owners were playing online

Now would be the absolutely best time ever for the series to make a proper return, with online play actually being a very popular thing and whatnot. Such a pity the whole of Crytek's head is too far up its own ass to see the potential they're sitting on.....then again its not that bad, they'd make it a free 2 play disaster anyway with their current mindset on gaming.

I wonder how its going with that fan made sequel that's supposedly being developed since last year was it? Hrmm...

Anyway, Advent Rising for me. It was a rough game, there were lots of bugs, animations looked beyond zany and gameplay was a mess at times with the dual wielding system and powers and whatnot. But man, the plot was fantastic (humans worshiped as gods by all aliens? Hell yeah!) and once you got a hang of how things worked you really could have one hell of a fun time jumping about the place blowing stuff up in ways so stylish even Neo would blush. Overall, what you had here was a game that had all the right things to make it truly stand out, basically the perfect foundation for what could have been a masterpiece of a sequel but alas, the trilogy got cancelled and all that immense potential will never be realized.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Spore

Finally, an EA game that is probably the epitome of wasted potential has been put on this board!

I'll throw in the sister game or wasted ambition from EA, which was also in development around the same time as Spore:
Hellgate London.

This was the last game I bought published from EA, and it is one of the very strangest games I own.
And more than anything, Hellgate London proved to me that EA's could never hope to kick its worst habits.

What was released, needed at least another year in development, less focus on the half-assed MMO model and more focus on the gameplay because WOW is it wonky.

There are SO, SO MANY good ideas in this game that just went completely to waste.
(many of them would later be used and redeemed by Borderlands 1 & 2)

 

[Hochmeister]

Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet: Sword of the Stars II

It had the potential to be a combination of Paradox strategy and Total War gameplay IN SPACE! Plus it had a very good prequel to build off and an excellent fanbase. Instead, it was released so buggy and incomplete the publisher made a formal apology for it. Even now, the questionable design choices and poor AI prevent it from being fun to play. Seriously, who the hell thought it was a good idea to replace 1's freeform strategy map movement with an outrageously restrictive fleet management mission system that forces you to base fleets from a planet and sortie from them and back?! Almost every step they took with 2 was one in the wrong direction.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

oh yeh and obviously SWTOR is $200m of wasted potential.

 

[laggyteabag]

Dawn of War II

Dawn of War was great, it allowed me to play out some large scale Warhammer battles without me having to shell out £100's on models, and as an RTS it was plainly well thought out. It also had a modding scene which made the game even better (Check out the Annihilation mod for Dark Crusade, made the game universally better). But Dawn of War 2 was a gigantic disappointment for me, ruining everything that I loved about the first game, and entirely changing how the game played. First to go was the massive battles comprised of legions of infantry and armour, replaced for small scale battles with only a couple of units as well as the occasional tank. Next went the base building (which I consider to be a staple for RTS games) in favour of a single building with linear tech upgrades. Hell, the only real upside was that the campaign for Dawn of War 2 and its first expansion Chaos Rising were kinda' cool story wise, although I hated the way that the game played. And the majority of the modding scene had disappeared, and I hate it when that happens....

 

[Trunkage]

ME2 - one fantastic mission a great game does not make
You have to wade through 40 hrs of blandness (except for the mission on Horizon) to get to a fantastic mission. One mission, no development on reaper threat, no real progress on genophage (as its irrelevant if you go after Maelon), no progress with the rachnii, pointless develop of the Geth (or really anything). Utter pointlessness. May as well just gone straight from ME1 to ME3.

Crysis 2. Cyrsis 1 was great, felt like I could play exactly how I wanted. Sometimes sneak, run fast to flank them or hunker down behind cover. It had a pretty good storyline, including the building of impending doom from your allies being wiped out. It had hard to kill aliens because they were difficult to track. They could easily outflank, pushing you to use you suit in creative ways. Crysis 2 totally changed the way the aliens moved, to something totally boring. They moved so slow, the action changed dramatically. Also, ALIENS are attacking, yet a stupid paramilitary force keeps focusing on you. For a vendetta. Its aliens, the vendetta can be put aside for a while.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Dawn of War II

Dawn of War was great, it allowed me to play out some large scale Warhammer battles without me having to shell out £100's on models, and as an RTS it was plainly well thought out. It also had a modding scene which made the game even better (Check out the Annihilation mod for Dark Crusade, made the game universally better). But Dawn of War 2 was a gigantic disappointment for me, ruining everything that I loved about the first game, and entirely changing how the game played. First to go was the massive battles comprised of legions of infantry and armour, replaced for small scale battles with only a couple of units as well as the occasional tank. Next went the base building (which I consider to be a staple for RTS games) in favour of a single building with linear tech upgrades. Hell, the only real upside was that the campaign for Dawn of War 2 and its first expansion Chaos Rising were kinda' cool story wise, although I hated the way that the game played. And the majority of the modding scene had disappeared, and I hate it when that happens....

Beat me to it, loved the original Dawn of War, loved the fact that it had large scale battles, and allowed base-building, but also had the sense of lots of tactics and needing to be aggressive to capture tactical points. Also enjoyed how it had "hero" units who, while powerful, were far from invincible.

DOW2 threw so much of this out the window. Ridiculous "boss battles", tiny 'squads' of 3-4 guys, incredibly small unit cap, only having 1 building. It's so disappointing because the graphics and sound effects were absolutely awesome, and the game did a better job with cover and hiding out in buildings than the original did, it just didn't seem to know what to do with it.

Also agree on Crysis 2. Whoever thought it would be a great idea to move a fairly open-ended game set on a jungle island to NYC and make it much more linear should be fired.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Final Fantasy XII

It had the most interesting and three-dimensional villains...

some fantastic dialogue-writing...

Wait, what?

On a less baffling note, I nominate Shadow Hearts: From The New World.

The original Shadow Hearts was a flawed game. The graphics sucked and the combat was nothing special. However, the story, the characters, the setting, the atmosphere, the horror, the humor, the soundtrack - the game might not have had the biggest budget, but it definitely had the biggest heart.

Then Shadow Hearts: Covenant came along, fixing all the problems of the original while simultaneously improving on everything that made the original so appealing. The only complaint I have, is that they downplayed the horror aspect that was so prominent in Shadow Hearts (and Koudelka) a bit too much.

And then Shadow Hearts: From The New World happened. What could have been one of the best trilogies ever, ended with a sad little whisper instead of a glorious bang. The characters had no charm, the fusions were reduced from 23 to 5, the gameplay hadn't evolved and the Stellar Chart system was a step back from the Key of Solomon. The soundtrack still had its moments, but it wasn't as memorable as the previous titles. Also, they finally get to America and they completely forget to give a cameo to Koudelka? A proof the series had completely forgotten its roots at this point.

Such a waste...

 

[Ieyke]

This is hard.
So many options....

The Castlevania:Lords Of Shadow series

Every MegaMan X game after X4

Diablo 3

Spore

Hellgate:London

The Borderlands games.

The Battlefield series after 2142 made it cool and interesting.

The "sequels" to Final Fantasy Tactics

The new SimCity

RAGE

Okamiden (simply because it was a handheld game, and having sequels on a totally different system format is idiotic)

Skyrim - pretty world, good story, boring as hell gameplay and terrible animation quality

Sonic Lost World - I can't say from personal experience, but it looked soooo promising and then people hated it

Assassin's Creed Revelations - Could've elegantly finished off Ezio's trilogy, but they HAD to go screw up the gameplay. At least everything else was good.

Dead Island

Assassin's Creed 3. Great setting, premise, player character idea and the previous games' setup was fine - how did it end up so...boring?

Becaus ethe setting and main character are both boring and bland. Connor had the potential to be cool, but the setting didn't. And it's a terrible place for an Assassin's Creed game to boot.

 

[A.K.B.]

Nier first and the last remnant as a strait second . SquareEnix have properly proven over the past four or five years their capability of squandering huge potential . those two games are prime examples ...

Nier had one of THE BEST CONCEPTS I COULD EVER THINK OF. A touching story that doesn't lack a punch in term of complexity and an art direction that would have worked if enough time was spent to polish it. It could have possibly been the next Shadow Of Colossus _ and I say COULD _ if they hadn't decide to appoint to it a budget as tight as my left nostril during flu season and enough time to make blowing a napkin seem a refreshingly long and fruitful journey while in fact my nose is already completely clogged and NOTHING IS COMING OUT OF IT! and instead decided to waste all their smelly and precious green bells on a stupendously detailed sky box for the Final Fantasy XIII that chances are NO ONE HAS NOTICED...
and its really a shame because underneath all the shortcuts and confiscations they rigged Nier with you can see the shadow of monstrous potential clocking the wall, complemented by blinding bright light flowing from behind the corner fade into the image of a stray-lice infested kitty sleeping against a light-projector that is just about to burst in flames granted all the cheap, old decrepit wiring and electricity work they've linked it with and all the cracks and sparks Its exposed light-circuit is spewing, as you peek from corner to play the second, third forth or fifth hour of the game ...

on the other Hand. I can easily depict how producers and lead-designers of SQUARE were discussing how to fuse the best elements from an RTS into a JRPG right after they consented to call their _hopefully_ newly born offspring THE LAST REMNANT ....
I can also depict how they, two days prior to the release, recalled after they had sat down to test the game that they forgot something...
" OH, THE BEST OF RTS ELEMENTS! " their voices resounded ...
" NOT TO TRY AND MAKE A BAD AND AWFULLY BROKEN, SHATTERED AND POINTLESS COMBINATION OF THE WORST AN RTS AND A JRPJ COULD OFFER! RESULTING IN A RPG THAT NEITHER LOOKS GOOD, PLAYS WELL NOR EVEN RESEMBLE ANY OF THE TWO AFOREMENTIONED GENRES! "
I mean I like both chocolate cakes and chicken-wings , and they say alcohol can make S#@^ taste good _even though I hadn't tried this myself_
but I don't think squeezing the three of them into a blender could make a tasty smoothy ....
In fact I think it's stupid.
THE LAST REMNANT was stupid. even though the idea itself feels amazingly promising...

.............................

sorry if this had a couple of mistakes, my English isn't as good as it appears ...

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

1...2....3....

Final Fantasy 13.

Ambitious abstract storyline, poorly presented.
Ambitious take on the battle system (your mileage may vary)
Ambitious three game structure, later split apart in favor of direct sequels.
Ambitious environments, fully exploreable, scrapped

Art director Isamu Kamikokuryo revealed that many additional scenarios such as Lightning's home, which were functioning in an unreleased build during development, were left out of the final version due to concerns about the game's length and volume.

Toriyama said in an interview that the team was unable to make them as graphically appealing as the rest of the game and chose to eliminate them.

Admittedly, they managed to band-aid it back together in the sequels, but just imagine what it would have been if everything had gone according to plan.

Similarly, Final Fantasy XII could have been the best game in the main series. It had the most interesting and three-dimensional villains, an ambitious and sprawling world that comes so close to feeling really alive, some fantastic dialogue-writing, and a highly-political plot with a lot of potential. The problem was its utter lack of focus. It's torn between the more typically "Final Fantasy" elements and the more explicitly Matsuno elements. For instance, while I actually think using Vaan as an audience surrogate to explain the stranger parts of the world was a good idea, the problem was that he really, really did not gel with the rest of the cast.

highly agree with this, there were SO many cool things about XII, but holy hell the focus...just threw off any momentum you had and there were a few key points where you had to grind to holy hell and back (I think roughly level 28-30ish? to get by that stupid dragon in the forest that would insta-poison/status effect you hardcore, that area was a choreeee to grind in).

OT: Will have to add in star wars: the force unleashed.

when I first saw development videos and what they wanted to do with the games...i was drooling while trying to control massive excitement seizures, it sounded like such an amazing game.

Granted, I didn't HATE the game...but it definitely was a let down from what I thought it might be.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Broken Age has disappointed me the most of all games, it plays like reading a children's book, not that that's bad, but for as much as they got I feel it could have been better.

 

[Roxas1359]

highly agree with this, there were SO many cool things about XII, but holy hell the focus...just threw off any momentum you had and there were a few key points where you had to grind to holy hell and back (I think roughly level 28-30ish? to get by that stupid dragon in the forest that would insta-poison/status effect you hardcore, that area was a choreeee to grind in).

Ah yes the Elder Wrym, literally the hardest and most bullshit boss I think I've ever faced in a Final Fantasy game. They fixed it a lot more in the International version because in that version you can also control guest gambits by turning them off or on, or setting them up for new things. They also leveled up with you too. Really wish that other people around the world could have played that version instead of the vanilla one sometimes. (note that XII is still my favorite FF game)

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Final Fantasy XII

It had the most interesting and three-dimensional villains...

some fantastic dialogue-writing...

Wait, what?

I had the same reaction to your assessment of Shadow Hearts.