Great potential . . . shame about the rest

[Stone Golem]

So i finally got around to playing Halo Reach, good game, annoying AI from team mates (and real mates for co-op) but the part that i really liked was the space dog fights.

Guess what im getting at is have you ever played a game that had 1 great section then the rest was just bland?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

So many times. So many times.

Where do I start?

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow

It starts out rather strong, but as more and more mechanics are introduced, you find yourself watching too many meters at once (Health, Ammo, Light, Shadow, Focus. All in different fucking corners of the screen!) which makes keeping your focus to pull off the more intricate combos harder. On top of this, you have to watch for enemy tells, too. Like the block breaking attacks.

Dante's Inferno

The Lust Tower boss fight in the early game is really the peak. You're on an elevator, chasing a giant Egyptian queen as she climbing, fighting off hordes of enemies and it's just epic, really.

Half Life 2: Episode 1

And it's just Episode 1 that I had the problem with, really. I had a lot of fun during the early parts before you found a gun, when you just had the Flashlight and Alyx had the gun. After that, it bored me for the next 2 hours. Short game is short. On the plus side, "The One Free Bullet" was fantastically fun to get!

Red Dead Redemption

It starts out pretty strong, but once you get to Mexico. UGH. Mexico just sucks after you finish the Landon Ricketts missions. All the Mexican Army and Rebel shit just killed the pace, and the game, too. (I stopped playing there TWICE, only beating the game on my third attempt) And everything after Mexico never recaptures the same feeling as the first third of the game.

Mass Effect 2

Good intro, then I realized the gameplay lacked any more depth past it. I was hyped for the game, too. Even replayed Mass Effect 1 to 100% completion (including mineral hunting and all the stupid collectibles) the week before release for a shiny new save (Vanguard, Paragon, Male, Kaiden) to carry over. Great game, piss-poor RPG.

 

[putowtin]

The one that springs to my mind is Mafia 2, I liked the begining, the back ground story was great then.... well crap is putting it nicely

 

[XT inc]

Alone in the Dark for xbox 360. I mean really just play the game, it reeks.... of missed potential. Everything about it is just one or two points off, it feels clunky, things react weird, there is a lot of little things that made the game die by a thousand little cuts.

It's like the whole time you play it you see the game that got 9.5/10 but you are playing it at its 5-6/10 stage. All they have to do is fix the movement, make things react better, fix the weird controls, tighten up the driving and item system and its gold.

 

[higgs20]

far cry 2 had some really great bits and some cracking ideas, but it also had a lot of terrible bits mostly brought on by the terminator like enemies that appeared in every fucking checkpoint, even if you cleared it 5 minutes ago.

 

[AlternatePFG]

Alan Wake.

It thought it was a good game, but it just missing something to make it amazing. I don't even know what it is, but the game just kinda felt like it could've been better.

 

[pyrosaw]

Pychcokinetic wars could have been a great FPS. But the AI was the worst I've ever seen, and the maps were uninspiring.

Fallout: New Vegas. The game is buggy to the point were it isn't even a game anymore. Also, if you want to have an independent ending, you have to kill Legate Lenius(AKA Mr. Impossible) and the NCR. Theres a couple poorly made design dcisions. In Fallout 3, if you eat food, you get health right away. In New Vegas, you have to wait over time, meaning Stimpaks are the only reliable things to use, and those aren't cheap. Cazadors piss me off to no man's end.

 

[Nexus4]

Armored Core 4, great fast battles that are quite entertaining...except each mission lasts less than 5 minutes thus making it impossible to enjoy

 

[Berserker119]

So i finally got around to playing Halo Reach, good game, annoying AI from team mates (and real mates for co-op) but the part that i really liked was the space dog fights.

Guess what im getting at is have you ever played a game that had 1 great section then the rest was just bland?

For me it was the opposite. I liked the rest and hated the space part.

 

[spartan1077]

Oblivion.
I hated the main campaign, but the rest was great. Well, the fighter's guild missions were terrible and so was the mage guild, but the rest is amazing.

 

[The Wykydtron]

The whole of Mirrors Edge if they did a sequel i'm convinced they could fix all the broken parts of it and probably make one of the best games ever...

Doubt they'll get any funding though...

 

[MattyDienhoff]

Far Cry 2.

It had some good ideas. It had beautiful scenery, sounds and effects. The gunplay felt satisfying and varied. I personally enjoyed exploring just to enjoy the scenery.

But the plot was a mess (in my opinion), the missions were boring and samey to the point of tedium and the game felt way too long as a result (that's a pretty rare complaint, but there you have it...). It started to feel like a chore half-way through the game, and I'm usually far more tolerant of stale gameplay than most people. What makes the missions even more tedious is very few of your actions seemed to have any significant effect on the game world.

The game world, there's the next problem. Beyond the intro cutscene you never see civilians wandering around, only inside the occasional building. Unless you're in a cease fire zone, everyone you encounter is a mercenary who hates your guts and will chase you for miles for daring to drive past their checkpoint in the distance.

And another thing, which is partially game world and partially plot related: There are two big factions and you're usually working for one or the other, but this has absolutely no effect on your relations with their people in the field, nor is there any way whatsoever to know which faction any given mercenary belongs to. The game world is just jam packed with generic mercenaries whose only goals in life appear to be to loaf around until you show up and then make your life hell for no reason.

As if that wasn't bad enough, some instances of poor gameplay design exacerbate those issues further. Because the game world is so big, you do a lot of driving in this game. Which in and of itself isn't so bad because I personally enjoy cruising around looking at the scenery.

...except I can't drive for more than a couple minutes at at time without running into another checkpoint of people I've never once interacted with, who still somehow know exactly who I am (even if I just drove past them 300 meters away and they couldn't possibly see my face...) and want to murder me, at which point I have two options:

* Keep driving, and watch my vehicle get filled with holes and damaged as I'm chased to the ends of the earth until I either stop and kill my pursuers or my vehicle is destroyed.

* Stop, bail out and spend 5 minutes shooting it out with this group of people I have had absolutely no beef with.

The result is that it takes frigging ages to get anywhere and you often use supplies you'll need at your destination just getting there. Perhaps they made it this way because they thought players would be bored if they went too long without a shootout? Fine. Then make it so random mercs leave you alone unless you pick a fight with them. That way those people can sate their bloodlust everywhere they go and I can just get on with my missions.

And god help you if you have to backtrack after wiping out one of the aforementioned checkpoints, because a replacement squad of mercs will usually materialize out of nowhere to replace whoever you kill within five minutes, sometimes forcing you to repeat the whole tedious process all over again before you can get on with your day.

 

[Corpse XxX]

Borderlands had potential to be game of the year.. But extremely badly executed multiplayer and menu systems in-game totally broke it making it shittiest game of the year.

I SO REALLY wanted that game to be good.. But i just gave it up after 4 hours of play.. Could not take it anymore..

 

[blind_dead_mcjones]

Syphon Filter: the omega strain, combat was great but aside from that it was marred by poor pacing, and a terrible story

Armored Core 4, great fast battles that are quite entertaining...except each mission lasts less than 5 minutes thus making it impossible to enjoy

this, a thousand times this

plus the graphics filter making everything brown/too dark/too bright/greenish blue/brown again

and the last battle making zero sense due to poor editing decisons by those during the english version

 

[ChipSandwich]

That scene in Black Ops where you have to fight through the poison gas cloud. No health regeneration and it actually felt pretty tense. Shame about the rest of the game. GO HERE KILL DUDES PICK UP GUNS.

 

[cgmetallica1981]

Far Cry 2.
Such good gameplay, but it is so bland and repetitive that you won't bother playing after 2 hours of single player.