Your most disappointing game experiences

[feeqmatic]

For the sake of passing the time while im grading a few papers i though this up. Hopefully its not a repeat of an active thread. Top 3-5 most disappointing gaming experiences and why.

Honorable mentions- Dragon Age 2, Grand Theft Auto 4, The Bouncer, Jade Empire, Matrix revolutions and many more.


5- "Next gen" Madden series. I know that on a "real gamer" site Madden is it that shall not be named, but for sports/football fans like myself, this console generation has been one dissapointment after another. The game still doesnt have all the features from madden 2005...SMH

4- Metal Gear Solid 4- I said to myself as soon as I saw the PS3 coming that I would buy it when MGS4 came out. Boy was that a regretfull purchase. 30 hours of game, 10 hours of gameplay. I dont know why this, Azuras Wrath, Allan Wake, and im sure plenty of others get full priced releases when a movie ticket costs 10 dollars.

3- Soul Calibur 5- Fighting games have always been my thing. Unlike many, i am a book reading, frame learning fanatic just short of entering pro tourneys (the highest level of comp takes the fun out) . As such the less complex/more noob friendly a fighter is the less interested i am in it. SC4 was near perfection, SC5 was made for the newbs and not the fans.

2-TIE!- The first Ninja Turtles/Xmen Games. Im probably showing my age here, but I begged for a Nintendo just to play the Ninja Turtles game, and I begged for a Genesis for the Xmen game a few years later. Both times I was forced to grow up a little.

1-Final Fantasy 13- I'm sure im beating a dead horse, and I know there is a lot of argument on this one. For me the biggest issue was that I was new to JRPGs and had played pretty much everyone of not in the 2-3 years prior to this and was incredibly anxious for FF13 only to get... what we got. For the record i got about 15 hours in before i traded it in.


Now lets share in the misery as many of us pray that Mass Effect 3 does not make me change my list.

 

[MrShowerHead]

I want to keep this as short as possible:

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising

Thank you

 

[Iwata]

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II- It felt like a demo, rather than a full-blown game. I enjoyed it, but I certainly regret paying full price for one of the shortest games I have ever played.

Homefront- See above. A lot was made of the plot, the campaign, and Milius' participation, and all for a short campaign that ends just as it's getting good.

Freelancer- I despise this game... I never imagined that Starlancer would get a sequel, and to me, it never did. This game has nothing of what made its precursor great.

Brink/Bulletstorm- The two shooters that promised to inovate and deliver a fresh shooter experience ended up being the two most generic, bland, boring shooters I played all of last year.

There are more. But I'll save those for later.

 

[C F]

The Force Unleashed. Like Yahtzee, I decided to get it for the Wii so I could swing around the Wii-mote like a saber and wreck a bunch of the in-game environment using the Force. I never got to do either of those things. Come on, Prime 3 showed us you could have an immersive (or at least somewhat-immersive; YMMV) Wii game.

Also: Supreme Commander 2. They sacrificed everything that made the game great to make it more accessible. Who makes an RTS accessible!? Take a look at Forged Alliance. It was the cream of the crop; proof that it was possible improve the series further. Then they took a step backwards and stumbled into the dirt. To top it off, they got Square Enix to do the story. I'm in it for control of massive automated fleets of tanks and mechs, so I'd say decent characterization isn't high on my priority list.

Rounding off the list is Assassin's Creed: Revelations. It's a good game, but it comes off as a bit of a lackluster rehash. Not much more to say.

 

[BENZOOKA]

The latest:

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

I had read about the amount of realism and effort put into it pre-release, and then a friend of mine praised it to no limit. I watched a few trailers, read about it, and finally was convinced to buy it after a few days of not being sure. The result: it's complete crap. Sure it's realistic in small ways, but it's very heavy and badly optimized considering the graphics and quality. The actual combat is pure shit to a FPS veteran and it was in no way worth it. The AI in single player is off the walls, breaking any immersion instantly. Multiplayer is broken and not fun at all to summarize it. Latency plays a massive role. And I was looking forward to a realistic FPS. The most outrageous thing is that the other team is clearly overpowered, and even the developers have stated that it is so because of the actual weapons at the time were better on axis side. Completely wasted money.

 

[BENZOOKA]

I want to keep this as short as possible:

Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising

Thank you

Second that. I got it late on a Steam sale for like 4 ?, but it still was a complete disappointment. The original Operation Flashpoint was fantastic in its time.

 

[Benjamin Rosa]

Dead Island - I am a huge fan of Borderlands and practically loved the FPS-RPG-Diablo style. Then i saw Dead Island and thought it could be a little interesting. But as you play you see how the enemy variety can be counted with a single hand, how the characters dont have mayor differences aside from their special attack. Boring, long, impossible.

Kingdom Hearts II - Well, i kinda liked it, but the reason i list it it's because of how it went from an ARPG in the first instalment to a normal hack n' slash with QTEs where the only magic you would need is Cure, Magnet and Thunder, then use all the fusions and smash constantly X. Oh, and Summoning is next to useless. Aside, the story was going too childishly and with characters dant don't do anything. Just compare the final bosses: While Ansem was pretty tough and required time and a good use of Magic and Summons (Tinkerbell was a must), Xemnas was only needed ti smash Attack, dodge and cure. yeah, Xemnas was flashy and had light, and you could send him an entire skyscraper, but that doesn't make a good game, it just make it simpler for new players.

Blue Dragon - It's like a bad Chrono Trigger wannabe. History was dumb and for kids, combat system was slow and don't give a lot of strategy. That's the base of a RPG game, but this game failed so much i couldnt stand to go more further than the very beginning of the second disc. At least Mistwalker did their homework and came back with Lost Oydssey, which is just like the real Final Fantasy VII.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Let see-
Alone in the Dark. The Wii version look horrible compared to the 360 version and I was mislead like the fire physis and combining weapons are not feature on the Wii version.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon. Ok sure it look good consider that it's a updated version of Marth first game but update in apperances only. Why the hell did they not add brief character bio, support and all the rest of the moden Fire Emblem series had used. This would added more depth and enrich the game futher.

Solatorobo: Red The Hunter. Sure the game was fun but overall it was easy to play and it lack of a real sense of replay value (sure you can play again to upgrade the robot futher but what's the point when the game is already easy).

 

[Soxafloppin]

Marvel Ultimate Alliance II, Never played the first one but the thought of playing as like 40 marvel characters! awesome.

I made it about half way through the tutorial level and so incredibly bored.

 

[Lilani]

Since another thread made me think about it, Spyro: A New Beginning. I started playing expecting a Spyro game, with good ol' Spyro and his attitude-filled 90s voice, Sparx and his subtitled buzzing, and a game full of 3D platforming and mowing down enemies with charges and flames. What I got was a watered down Spyro with no spunk, a repulsively irritating Sparx, and a game with next to no platforming and a battle system closer to Final Fantasy XII than any Spyro game.

 

[Axolotl]

Mass Effect. Before playing it I'd been told it was the greatest RPG ever by pretty much every review I'd read with great story and a deep setting and all the traditional buzz Bioware games get, having recently come off playing Bioshock which had gottn similar praise and had blown me away with how good it was I eagerly played it. Then I actually played it and found it bland, predictable and poorly written. In retrospect I probably judged it more harshly than I should have, that I played it immediately after finishing Fallout for the first time is probably a big reason it dissapointed me so much.

 

[Erttheking]

I gotta say the orange box, I've been hearing people say how great it was for months and I was excited as hell to finally play it, only to find out that it was just ok.

 

[Mousse Templar]

The Last Remnant for xbox.

Good Gravy, I could live with the lag,
the horribly broken ailment mechanichs,
the "no direct control over your command" inputs,
and even the severe difficulty spikes.
But the opague and redundant levelling system. No, bad game.

 

[KingofMadCows]

Command and Conquer 4 - Everything was disappointing and terrible. Stupid always online BS. So many pointless gameplay changes that makes it deviate so far from previous games. What idiot wrote the story? It's really obvious that the game's budget was a lot less than C&C 3. All the sets in the cutscenes looked cheap and Kane's costume looked like crap, it looked like a jacket they took off of a hobo. What a terrible send off for Kane.

Heroes of Might and Magic 6 - Stupid always online BS again. Much bigger emphasis on the story than previous Heroes games but the story is terrible and very poorly written. Previous Heroes games may not have great writing, except for Heroes 4 and parts of Heroes 3, but there wasn't as much of an emphasis on the plot and the writing was at least passable. Heroes 6's writing was painful to get through. Pointless gameplay changes that detract from the game rather than add to it. It just struck me as really lazy to consolidate all the rare resources into one. In previous games, they've always added new uses to the rare resources. In Heroes 2, they added trading posts that lets you trade rare resources. In Heroes 3, they let you trade rare resources for artifacts at the artifact merchant and creatures at the Freelancer's Guild. In Heroes 4, they added magic stores that let you buy spells with rare resources. In Heroes 5, they added faction abilities that used rare resources. There's so much more they can still do with them like all the features that were added in the Wake of the Gods mod.

 

[him over there]

For the love of everything it has to be every end game side quest in Arkham City. Oh shit Bane's got a bunch of titan oh we don't have a boss fight. Who's the mysterious figure, oh a crappy cliffhanger for the next game. Oh no we have to stop Dead Shot, damnit we have one crappy stealth section.

 

[Iwata]

Command and Conquer 4 - Everything was disappointing and terrible. Stupid always online BS. So many pointless gameplay changes that makes it deviate so far from previous games. What idiot wrote the story? It's really obvious that the game's budget was a lot less than C&C 3. All the sets in the cutscenes looked cheap and Kane's costume looked like crap, it looked like a jacket they took off of a hobo. What a terrible send off for Kane.

How could I forget that... that game felt like a massive FUCK YOU to every C&C fan out there.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

Fallout 3/NewVegas and Brink.

 

[Bradeck]

Dark Souls. Between the hype the people gave me about the game, and my utter lack of enjoyment with it, I haven't been that displeased with a purchase since FF13. I am so utterly pissed I bought that game. I understand the game is difficult. But there if there is no fucking reason for the difficulty other then "I did this" cred, then whats the fucking point? At least give me more xp, or better armor, or something. This game was the biggest piece of shit I've played in a long time.

 

[Lev The Red]

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

real quick off topic: what is your icon saying? she's talking too fast for me to read her lips.

back on topic: RO2 wasn't great, but i loved the first-person cover system. it wasn't perfect, but it was nice to see someone try it. oh, and i aslo got another full soviet campaign. Za Rodinu!


my biggest disappointment was probably probably either Oblivion of Pokemon Black/White.
black/white weren't bad (far from it actually), just harder than their predecessors. they seemed to change the way experience is earned so that you earn a lot less xp from wild pokemon you've seen before, making power-leveling more time consuming. again, not bad, it just made it more challenging. at one point, i got to a gym i couldn't beat but i couldn't level up because there were no trainers around.

oblivion was because of hype. i had really high hopes for it because all my friends loved it, but when i played it it played like fallout3 with only melee weapons. it just seemed clunky and awkward. skyrim was a lot better, though. not perfect, but damn near.