That Game You Feel Has Potential, But Completely Failed Delivering.

[Renzarn]

One I would add is the 3-D Bionic Commando game. I admit it had a few things it did right, namely the swing mechanic and probably one of the better musical scores I've heard. However, the execution fell completely flat. With he numerous artificial boundaries, I felt limited in my options, a major break from the whole "Commando" bit, not to mention the lengthy load times and no indication of leaving an area when there's still some doodads to collect. But the biggest grip was the incredibly bad book to it, with each character acting like they had Tourrets, numerous missed opportunities for boss fights and of course a plot that felt ripped off from MGS, not to mention the legendary wall banger of a plot twist at the end.

And the cherry on top, a sequel hook that will never be realized due to poor sales and the collapse of Grin Studios after this debacle.

 

[RagTagBand]

Halo, Spore, The Medal of Honour reboot, Halo, Modern Warfare 3, Everything Obsidian has ever made, Crysis 2, Halo.

Probably more, but off the top of my head...those.

 

[KAPTAINmORGANnWo4life]

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.

I was holding out hope that Rare could finally get out of their rut and bring back their premier franchise. Years later, the company's been gutted and all they do is odd jobs Microsoft wants.

 

[Mordekaien]

Hellgate: London for me. I mean, I tried to like it. I even enjoyed it somehow, but the game still feels like it's lacking something. Somehow the random level design doesn't fit very well in action FPS/RPG

Mirror's Edge.
By all rights it was a good game, bu It was lacking in the 'freerunning' part, sure there were some cool bits on rooftops but it basically turns into a corridor shooter without the shooting.

I'll second this. I was really enjoying the beginning chapters where they emphasized the free-running.

Then forced combat sections happened.

This, thousand times this- you're like..... WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! *jump, roll, slide, wallrun* and then someone starts yelling at you and you have to go do everything thats bad in modern fps games, without weapons to boot.
Yet, holy mother of god, those parcour sections were totally great.

 

[Erttheking]

Brink had a lot of cool ideas but ended up being a mediocre shooter.

 

[LilithSlave]

Final Fantasy XIV comes to mind.

You hardly ever hear anyone speak of this because they're too busy being bitter about the shortcomings.

But Eorzea is a literally incredibly fascinating and worthwhile world they created. The biggest actual problems with the game were that it was lacking in quests, NPC variety and meaning, and UI lag. Had they succeeded in fulfilling all the potential the game had, it would easily have been the greatest MMORPG every created. Certainly it has the most fascinating world to read about in any MMORPG. Even more fascinating to read about than Vana'diel.

It was a real shame what came of the game.

 

[MyNameIsNowNotMyName]

Spore

There is no contest. The game is the argument for casual gamers ruining the industry. Entire sections of the game were ripped out or dumbed down. I genuinely feel sorry for Will Wright just thinking about that abortion of a game. He spent his entire career building up to that game. Every Sims game from the 90's was just a demo of some aspect to the greater whole. And EA fucked him, then fired him.

Then, just to piss off any legitimate customer who would dare buy the game, they added SecuRom. It was like EA was selling "Fuck You" made material.

Oh, my God, Spore

Well, at least in the final product it was somewhat enjoyable...

 

[El Dwarfio]

Numen - It's a neat little RPG set in Ancient Greece with a really interesting premise. The Gods are holding a competition to see who can find the strongest champion, you have to win a God's favour and then win favour for that God so you can become the greatest Champion of Greece. Depending on what God you pick dictates your style of play - so Ares is like a beserker, Athena a DPS, Hesphastus a Tank, Apollo an archer, hades a necromancer etc etc.

Better yet, the other Champions are dynamic and wander the lads independantly, if you meet them you can try and work together to both become stronger, stab him in the back or just have a duel and try and kill him.

So the problem? It's just a grind fest, "Collect X Y asses" and ofc Y only drops their arse 10% of the time, so it gets really dry quite quickly.

Such shitty gamplay ruined such a brilliant game.

 

[immortalfrieza]

The Force Unleashed 2. I love myself a good starwars game once in a while and I did enjoy the first one. And then came TFU2 -.-.

TFU1's only problem was how short it was, it was badass otherwise. Then TFU2 comes out and they completely miss the point and make it shorter. The other problem that TFU2 had is they turned Starkiller into a Mary Sue, him being ridiculously powerful wasn't the problem (he was much the same in 1) but that his enemies, including the bosses were incredibly weak, even at the hardest levels the game was a complete cakewalk.

In the first game you routinely face off against legions of enemies that, with the exception of the comically pathetic standard storm troopers, can and probably do kill you if you're not paying attention. Then you fight bosses that are painfully easy to defeat and only one of them (I think only 1 anyway) is a Force user and also the only one that's any difficulty at all to fight.

Newsflash game developers, you don't make a game badass by pitting it's main character up against enemies that have no chance against them, you make it badass by pitting them against enemies that are strong and are a challenge, then the player beats them anyway.

Oh. Of course we can't forget the Yoda cameo, easily the most disappointing cameo in any game ever.

 

[rob_simple]

The Tenchu series, just because it seems to have dried up and I always felt like it could have really went somewhere.

I would love to see a new Tenchu game running on the Assassin's Creed engine. Ideally they'd fix the shitty combat, mind you, but having a sprawling Feudal Japan to explore would be a lot of fun I think.

And if Samurai Warriors is anything to go by, the Japanese love them some assassinations.

Edit: And I remember as soon as I posted this -because I had an ongoing rivalry with my friend- Shinobi on the PS2 was probably the most disappointed I've ever been by a game. It looked so, so cool but it handled like a bucket of dog sick.

 

[FallenTraveler]

BRINK! OH MY GOD BRINK!!!!!!

Brink really upset me... I had fun at first, but then I realized all I had been promised was gone... :/

Also, Alpha protocol and Mass Effect 1

 

[Rheinmetall]

Metal Gear Solid 4: Great visuals, advanced game-play, dramatic sequences, a genius behind it, H. Kojima, but it failed to deliver, because it was very unbalanced, between the game-play and the story part. The latter was a heavily cliched one and quite boring to watch too.

 

[WanderingFool]

Brink, if Splash Damage actually carried through with their promises and claims instead of blatantly lying to everyone.

I agree with this. I loved the game, but it did have alot of promise that I felt were dropped.

To this I would add, Alpha Protocol: Really wish Obsidian would have given it a chance and atleast released a patch for the bugs. It was one of the better RPGs released that year.

Saints Row: The Third. Loved the shit out of it, but it was still kinda crap compared to the masterpiece that was Saints Row 2. Heres to hoping that they revert to the old formula for SR4.

And I would also add DE:HR. It was awesome, no doubt. But I watched a playthrough of the original Deus Ex, and I felt there was some things that could have been done completely differently, making HR one of the best games, if not the best, last year. Really, I wish someone could make the original Deus Ex game using DE:HR. That would be awesome.

 

[Alex Baas]

I'd say Red Steel 1 on the Wii. I picked it up for $10 an feel I got at least that much content. It has interesting level design, fun 'nade physics, and some god aweful diolouge that it is my favourite part. It gives Resident Evil on ps1 a run for its money. It just lacks polish, if polish is added it could be a fun little $30 game.

 

[silent-treatment]

Jak 3
Still good, but didn't have the heart of the first two. When I'm playing a platformer, I don't want to think "Can I platform yet?" *waits another few hours* "Ok, I know you're proud of your wonky vehicle physics, but can I platform NOW?". Until you're sent to the temple (about 25% in), your platforming after the tutorial is ZERO. When you return to Haven you get to do some solid platforming. But it's just so unbalanced on when you encounter those platforming sections. Oh, and the plot was a clusterfuck. Who's idea was it to make Jak and Ashelin (who he has no chemistry with) together with no lead-up or reason? AND toss Keira in the bin?

I saw Jak 3 and I was ready to go get my rage cap on, but then I stopped and finished reading your post and found that I agree. I am a huge fan of the Jak trilogy (hmm Jak X and TLF, never heard of them). I love the games, but you are right on all of the points that you made. I found that they just expanded the "gun upgrades" to pad the game so they wouldn't have to add anything else to game play, like an easier system for using light eco.

OT: Ummm Final Fantasy 10-2. First of all it has a really stupid name. They should have called it something like "FFX: Aftermath" of "FFX: The Eternal Calm" but no, they called it FFX-2. Secondly it has the framework for a really good story. A society has had every bit of what defined it for about a thousand years ripped out from under it; will it become stronger than it has ever been, or will is collapse under the waves of tension? There could have been really cool metaphors to the transition Japan had to go through after WW2, there could have been more political intrigue as there is a struggle for power. There could have been so much more to this story, but no all of the conflicting ideas in Spira are put to rest by a pop song. A good Pop song in my opinion, but a pop song all the same.

Also why is it that they put no effort into redesigning the set pieces that they imported from the first game? Like yes Besaid would look exactly the same, but Seymour's house, not Leblanc's hideout, was not changed at all. So they redesigned the basement, but left the pictures of the old Guado leaders in the living room? Also, why would all of the food from two years earlier still be in the dinning room?

Yes I know that the game was a shameless cash-in on the first games popularity, but It could have been a really GOOD shameless cash-in. *sigh*

 

[Kae]

I dissagree, because spore, even though it was a shadow of what it could have been, Was still a GREAT game

The creators alone were worth the 60$ I paid for it.

I think a better example would be From Dust, which, actually has a lot in common with spore:

- Both were announced a long time before it actually came out, even for games

- Both involved players interacting and creating the enooverment

- Both came from well respected devs of simulation games

- Both games were acquired by a puplisher who stuck on DRM

- Both games had massive fan backlash and subsqent canceling of pre-orders because of it

- Both games weren't what everybody expected

- Both games, despite of all of that, were still good.

- Both games deserved a whole lot more money than people bought it, BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO OFF PUT BY THE PUBLISHERS TO GIVE THE GAME A CHANCE

The difference, is that From Dust wasn't a full title.

But god damn...

Dem physics.... Running water actually picks up sand, and depoists it as deltas, and it's not scripted: it's a part of the physics engine.

What I HATE about gamers is that we won't buy something just to support it so it can get better.

It took us, what, 30 years with horrible pop out 3d movies before we got avatar?

You should buy a peice of crap that has potentiol, just so next time, it's not a peice of crap.

It was an OK game, and I did buy it without knowing of the DRM which was really annoying because I didn't have Internet at the time, and yes the creators well damned awesome and the game is decent but it could have been so much more, and as good as it was the whole time I was playing it all I could think of is what was promised, also it didn't help that I wanted to start as an underwater species but I didn't know they had removed it from the game, again it was good but it could have been the single most awesome thing to ever grace my PC if it had delivered what was promised, but I don't hold it against Maxis and Wright because they are awesome, EA can go eat a dick though, I haven't bought a game made by them since Spore and I never will.

 

[Arakasi]

Skyrim.
It had the potential for so much better roleplaying/storytelling/battles.
But no.

 

[Blobpie]

Dark void, Aliens vs Predator....

They both just had so much potential to be great games, but fell flat....

 

[isometry]

Civilization 5. They had some cool ideas, with one unit per tile (1UPT) and hexes instead of squares, but by Firaxis own admission they did not anticipate how challenging it would be to program the AI for 1UPT.

So what happens is that even on the highest level of difficult, 4-5 human units can easily beat an army of 10-15 AIs, just by making full use of the terrain while the AI leaves itself exposed, etc. After seeing the AI make enough dumb mistakes, and seeing that it can't use units effectively to beat the human, the game kind of becomes pointless.

The other big problem, that would have helped make up for the bad AI, is that multiplayer is borked. Civ 4 multiplayer was more prone to crashing and disconnects than I would like, but it's all worse in Civ 5.

Anyway, it's like they released a promising base game but it needed at least another year of development to replace Civ 4. I'm hoping that the recently announced expansion gives them a chance to finish the game.

 

[Friendly Lich]

Biggest letdowns for me E.Y.E cybermancy, swtor, stronghold kingdoms, and especially resident evil 5. If only a little more effort was out into these games they would have been amazing instead of mediocre.