Games that Lived up to the Hype

[AbiSage]

Journey. Heard a ton of praise about it before playing it, and looking at a little bit of gameplay thought it looked pretty but that was about it. Went in half thinking it would just be a neat little game that kinda got blown out of proportion...

But playing it was amazing. For something that was mechanically so simple it was incredibly enjoyable. The music, visual, subtle bits of story were all great, even got chills at some point and teared up at the end. For a game to do that with only around two hours put into it was really pretty amazing.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Minecraft (I'm surprised no one else has mentioned it yet). As soon as someone described it to me as 'Like Lego, but...' I wanted it, and it was even better than I expected, mainly due to the multiplayer experience (and partly due to me not expecting it to actually run on my laptop).

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Dark Souls. Not that I bought it straight away, I only got it a month or so ago, but I've heard good things about it since it was released and it has instantly shot into my top three games/franchises of all time, which used to be a top two with Monster Hunter and Armored Core.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

Red Dead Redemption - I spend so many hours in the game world and it was a blast. After watching all those developer diary vids and previews this game still delivered and was great fun.
Uncharted 2 - The first was fun and good looking but the second was just awesome.
Batman Arkham Asylum - Finally a super hero game done right. There`s not much to say besides "I am BATMAN".

There are many great games but i try to avoid any form of hype or getting hyped these days. Those three games are the ones that got me in the past. The next upcomming title i simple couldn`t avoid to get hyped about is GTA5. Sometimes it still gets me.

 

[Mikejames]

Probably The Walking Dead.
I heard people going "it's so emotional!" and "Best characters ever!" And I just thought "psssh, it's a point and click, it can't be that good."

Well fuck me sideways after I played it.

Episode 1: I guess it seems interesting enough.
Episode 2: Wow, this is getting tense..
Episode 3: W-What are these? Tears?
Episode 4-5: I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry...

 

[Tom_green_day]

Obviously Skyrim.

There's nothing obvious about that.

I meant it was obvious to someone who had read all the other comments.
Or if you're being sarcastic, DAMMIT why do I always fall for these -.-
Oh and would CoD games count? Because everyone expects them to be samey... and they more or less are?

 

[FoolKiller]

GTA III for the win.

I could not stop playing that game, whether for story or just shits and giggles. It was like drugs in video game format.

Mass Effect.

I heard it was good and then I got sucked in and beat it in 58 hours in just 11 days.

Biggest Letdown:
Portal 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction

 

[BrotherRool]

Planescape Torment -I'd heard people call it one of the best games of all time and eventually I decided to check it out and-Holy crud I'm dead? And my past self has written a note on my own flesh? And there's items which do radically different things depending on a dice roll? ... I had so much fun with the game.

Saints Row 3 - I don't really like sandbox games, I heard this was fun but I never really believed it. Then I got it in the bundle and wow. I think it's all about the character customisation. I was having so much fun with it, I actually bugged up all the beginning quests by taking over every shop in the city before they even did the tutorial on stealing shops. (So that tutorial ended up me walking into a shop I owned and being told to go steal the deeds and then the game just randomly instantly cutting to a new objective point)

EDIT: Oh and Arkhum Asylum. Although I do agree that it's right on the line of Batman is awesome and a slightly worrying wish fulfilling territory.

Katawa Shoujo and To The Moon would have been on this list, but I didn't realise they had such a good reputation before I'd played them and found out for myself

 

[Morsomk_v1legacy]

For me it would probably have to be Bastion and Darksiders 1 and 2 in recent years.

I remember when Bastion first came out for the pc and everyone was praising it like it was the second coming of christ or something along those lines. I didn't like when I first saw Bastion, I thought it was kinda charming and kinda dull when I first saw the trailer, boy was I wrong when I played the game.

The original Darksiders was somewhere in the same boat as Bastion was, thought it was a hyped up game and I also didn't care much for it. Then few months later a friend of mine decided to buy a X-box 360 and about a dozen of games for it, one of them was Darksiders. I think I spent the next 5 day's hogging the 360 from him just so that I could play Darksiders. I also had sort of expectations from Darksiders 2 and it didn't fail them, it was brilliant.

 

[scorptatious]

Lets see here:

Halo 3
MGS4
Batman: Arkham City
Journey
I would probably say New Vegas as well, but it didn't take until my second playthrough to make me realize how freaking awesome the game was.

 

[mad825]

Starcraft 2.

I already had a feeling it would be good. But I think it deserves credit for being the sequel to the best RTS of all time, and still managing to please most people. When the expectations are that high, the most tiny things can piss off half a fanbase.

Not many people play it for the single player...It had no LAN, the story was contrived...Yeah, the story was bad compared to SC and SC:BW.

 

[CleverCover]

A game that I was super excited to play, played it and found it worth all the money spent on it?

Um......uh....DA:O was a huge one since my floormate first told me about it.
Right before the ending, I sent my friend a text saying how magnificent ME3 had been and I was looking forward to the ending....probably cursed myself for that...
The Walking Dead? Sort of?
Oh! Assassin's Creed 2. Shit was beautiful. Yeahhhhh, got one.

Hype always ends in failure for me....D:

 

[thesilentman]

Dark Souls pretty much asked Ornstein to blow past my expectations, shown by the fact that I've sunk more than 100 hours into the game already, including all of the saves I deleted. It's a rarity for me to spend that much time on a game, especially when I was told that Dark Souls was really hard and offered no help.

 

[BLAHwhatever]

Definitely Fallout 3

 

[BrotherRool]

For me it would probably have to be Bastion and Darksiders 1 and 2 in recent years.

I have to admit, I missed on all the Darksiders 1 hype. Possibly I hang out with people who are too cynical. And watch Zero Punctuation.

I've actually got the game (in the THQ bundle), I might check it out now

 

[TheCommanders]

Given all the doom and gloom in the general community, a surprising amount of games I've been hyped for have turned out to be great. Skyrim, Far Cry 3, Dishonored, just to name a few in the last year or so. Personally I've always thought the whole "don't get hyped about things and you won't be disappointed" thing was complete and utter bullshit because:

If the game is good, playing it will always be fun. If the game is bad, playing it will always be bad. If I get exited beforehand, I have the enjoyment leading up to the game, and occasionally the hype can carry over a bit into me actually enjoying the game. If I'm cynical (which is crap, because if you want something to be good, pretending you don't means nothing) than I risk a game causing me no happiness at all. So I prefer to always enjoy the period of hype. That way if it turns out to be crap, at least I had my previous excitement.