Games that fooled you

[IamLEAM1983]

Definitely Spore, personally. Bulletstorm also works. It had fun mechanics, but I was expecting some deliberately disposable story and being able to focus exclusively on the gameplay, as was the case for Painkiller. What I got was an arcadey shooter with a big case of "Yay, my balls just dropped!" syndrome.

This is a game that didn't need a story or a premise to speak of. They added gruff characters because, hey, it's part of the Epic Games staple, and a fuckton of swear words because that supposedly makes everything feel gritty. Uh, nope. It annoyed me to Hell.

I'd also add almost every MMO to date. They promise something epic, but the grind is pretty hard to miss. I'd rather play Diablo 3, where grinding is more or less part of the game mechanics.

 

[Xannidel]

Spore
Duke Nukem Forever
Assasin's Creed
Batman Arkham City
Eternal Sonatra

 

[the_dude_abides]

I dont think i've ever been fooled as I very rarely buy a game at release.

Having said that, one game I regretted buying was farcry 2. Not because the game was necessarily bad, but because it gave me motion sickness. Why I can't remember.

 

[neverarine]

Spartan: Total Warrior.

I remember when I was younger, and played the demo, which included the first level I think. I thought the whole game was going to consist of massive siege and field battles, with you controlling one soldier instead of the CA usual RTS stuff. Turns out only the first couple of levels and a very few select ones after are like that.

LOL i spent an hour playing that demo in Circut city once.... found the game in a store a few years ago and got it just for kicks... yeah wasnt all that i thougth it would be...

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Brink.

It hyped up its character customisation, it hyped up its movement mechanics.

What we ended up with was a terrible, terrible, TF2 clone.

I can't believe people fell for Brink. I saw through that shit instantly. There was never any doubt.
The same happened with Saints Row The Third. I've seen trailers and gameplay videos and I noticed the lack of customization videos. They knew what they've done. And so did I. And then they announced 40 weeks of DLC before the game was even out. Why did anyone buy it is beyond me.

I guess if I could name one game that fooled me it would have to be Metro 2033. Maybe my expectations were too high. Graphics were great, but everything else was mediocre at best! Also, FOV of 45 on PC is unforgivable. It felt like a poor man's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Why do people like it so much? It's not even scary. It's just frustrating.

 

[Iwata]

Oh yeah, Braid! I heard great things about this game. But not only was the gameplay boring, I've also never played a more pretencious game which thinks it's better than its audience.

 

[Aesir23]

I have to say Skyrim. Maybe it's just because of how I prefer my RPGs but it was quite dull. My major problem with it is that the quests have no real impact on the world around you aside from becoming the leader of group X. Heck even finishing the main quest doesn't seem to change things one whit. As a result it just feels like a single player MMORPG.

 

[Signa]

Skyward Sword is my most recent example. It doesn't happen too often these days where I regret buying a game.

 

[Signa]

I guess if I could name one game that fooled me it would have to be Metro 2033. Maybe my expectations were too high. Graphics were great, but everything else was mediocre at best! Also, FOV of 45 on PC is unforgivable. It felt like a poor man's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Why do people like it so much? It's not even scary. It's just frustrating.

I'm not saying the game wasn't as you described, but the FOV of 45 was a vertical FOV. I don't know how that translates to horizontal FOVs, but it's closer to 60-75. Still quite low since I prefer 90-100 with my TV, but it is in line with other console ported FPS games these days.

 

[OctoH]

Homefront. However, when I actually bought it, it was only 5.00 on Steam and I knew about its flaws. Still, in comparison to the hype, pretty big let down. It was worth 5.00 though.

 

[Vivi22]

That has never happened to me. No game company has ever HAD to fool me. If they're putting the effort into actually advertising it, they put effort into the game as well.

Hahahahahahahaha!

Now then, my reaction to that statement out of the way, I'd say Resident Evil 4 and GTA IV are big ones. On paper it sounded like Capcom was doing everything right: better aiming, more focus on action and redoing the gameplay from previous games to make a new RE experience that was several steps beyond the pretty dated original games design. What we got was the same tank like controls paired with a half-assed aiming system, repetitive enemies, straight forward AI, some of the worst quick-time events I've ever seen and a game that was at least twice as long as it had any business being. Dead Space did Resident Evil 4 better than RE4 did a few years later and took a barely playable game experience and made it something quite enjoyable.

GTAIV on the other hand was just plain boring. They decided to remove a lot of the improvements made over the course of the previous two games, duct tape a bit of manual aiming on their usually shitty auto aim which actually made the game too easy, include a pretty shitty story and characters, and cap off the experience with trying to get you to go play shitty mini-games with those characters so you could gain some benefits from maintaining a friendship with them. It felt like a half-assed attempt to graft a dating sim onto a GTA game.

 

[II Scarecrow II]

Motherfucking Crysis 2... My PC mates used to rave about how incredible Crysis was, so I thought what the hell, the trailers looks good, I'm sure it'll be fun.

How incredibly wrong I was...