8 of the Biggest Flops in Videogame History
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It sure must suck to be called John Romero even now. Especially now. Oh well. Not as much a loss to what part of your soul dies while you play Superman 64. I only played 10 seconds or so of it as a young kid round a friends once. It etched with embers upon my tender soul.
Advent Rising could've been great. Should've been great. It should've been Mass Effect before that game was even a twinkle in Bioware's eye.
But, as it turned out, Majesco gave the game to a rookie studio. For a developer that had never made a video game, I'd say that they did a pretty good job, but in the end, the game simply wasn't good enough.
So much wasted potential, and one of the saddest stories in game development.
But, as it turned out, Majesco gave the game to a rookie studio. For a developer that had never made a video game, I'd say that they did a pretty good job, but in the end, the game simply wasn't good enough.
So much wasted potential, and one of the saddest stories in game development.
Shame about Too Human. Sounded awesome and would have been a trilogy same as Mass Effect. Except that Too Human sucked. Hopefully another company will remake it as an rpg as it should have been in the first place.
Ah, Colonial Marines. Good times, good times.
There was one part in the game where I got a small glimpse of what it should have been. I was playing on the hardest difficulty with three other people. Complete strangers. It was toward the beginning of the game, and we were trying to escape on a ship, or blow something up, or...something. I don't know.
Anyway, we got swarmed by the aliens and it was great. We kept backing up, slowly running out of ammo, but they just kept coming. One person went down, then another. Myself and the last survivor made a break for the door, only stopping to spray a quick burst behind. I made it to the door and the other guy died on the stairs. I turned around just in time to see about three Xenomorphs jumping at me.
That was fun. The amount of panic and desperation during that one, brief moment, was what the whole game should have been like. But alas, it was not to be.
There was one part in the game where I got a small glimpse of what it should have been. I was playing on the hardest difficulty with three other people. Complete strangers. It was toward the beginning of the game, and we were trying to escape on a ship, or blow something up, or...something. I don't know.
Anyway, we got swarmed by the aliens and it was great. We kept backing up, slowly running out of ammo, but they just kept coming. One person went down, then another. Myself and the last survivor made a break for the door, only stopping to spray a quick burst behind. I made it to the door and the other guy died on the stairs. I turned around just in time to see about three Xenomorphs jumping at me.
That was fun. The amount of panic and desperation during that one, brief moment, was what the whole game should have been like. But alas, it was not to be.
So many flops...I would give an honorable mention to the Fable series though. They weren't commercial failures as far as I'm aware but not a single one of them did what Peter Molyneux said they would do. Hell, Fable 3 couldn't do what Fable 1 was supposed to do (where are my rival NPC's and real-time tree growth?) Then The Journey happened and it seemed like Molyneux was apologizing for that before it even launched. What really got me though was how buggy and glitched out the games could be. These are Xbox exclusives and yet they ran like hastily slapped-together ports.
And coming this December, a new entry on this list: Star Wars Battlefront.
Calling it now. Even though no matter how much of a shell of the former games' greatness it is, it'll still sell truckloads thanks to the release of Episode VII.....
Calling it now. Even though no matter how much of a shell of the former games' greatness it is, it'll still sell truckloads thanks to the release of Episode VII.....
Ion Storm closed in 2001?, didn't their last game was Thief: Deadly Shadows from 2004?
EDIT: Ohhhhh, there were 2 branches of the studio, the one in Dallas with John Romero that closed in 2001 and the other from Austin with Warren Spector that closed in 2005.
EDIT: Ohhhhh, there were 2 branches of the studio, the one in Dallas with John Romero that closed in 2001 and the other from Austin with Warren Spector that closed in 2005.
I knew Too Human was bound to be on this list. The idea of that game never being sold again and all physical copies destroyed (isn't that what happened) is pretty eerie. That a game can simply vanish from existence, living on only in video and screenshot form, like some ghost spectre, is haunting. Reminds me of those old horror movies James Rolfe talks about on Cinemassacre, where there's not a single working copy of the film, only old posters.
hey wait a minute! Where was Alone in the Dark 2008? Wasn't that a flaming disaster as well? Though perhaps when compared to Behemoths of Blunder like Duke Nukem Forever and E.T. it's not quite as glorious of a failure.
hey wait a minute! Where was Alone in the Dark 2008? Wasn't that a flaming disaster as well? Though perhaps when compared to Behemoths of Blunder like Duke Nukem Forever and E.T. it's not quite as glorious of a failure.
What about a list with good games, that flopped despite their quality? (this is what I was expecting from this list ;-) )
I don't know that there was anything wrong with Duke Nukem Forever's controls. Its mechanics were often a failure- constantly running to cover, limiting the player to two guns, health-recovery executions that the player could never count on getting to perform when they needed them, annoyingly leash-pulling linear levels, etc., etc... But the controls, while nothing special, were pretty much par generic WASD-FPS, so far as I can recall.