The biggest "Meh" of 2012

[Dr_Pie]

Remember that game Binary Domain that released early in the year? Saw a few articles about it on websites and magazines prior to its release, and I could tell from then that it would just sink as another generic cover based third-person shooter. Hell, even its name was bland sounding. I ended up renting it much later on and, surprise surprise, that's all it was, a generic cover based third-person shooter. It's not broken or infamous by any means, I just felt like I was playing a Gears Of War re-skin with robots.

Binary Domain has a French robot who wears a neckerchief, your argument is invalid.

OT: My big "meh" of the year was Street Fighter X Tekken. Just so... blah. Nothing shone out about the mechanics, but there was nothing really bad about them either. It just wasn't that good.

 

[Sassafrass]

Halo 4.
It does what it does well, but it's really just a big old pile of "meh" to me.
Well, the single player is meh. The MP is a big old pile of "Fuck you." to me.

 

[AndrewC]

Ass Creed 3 (do I get points for being original with the name?)

What a colossal pile of Templar poop.

Bad characters, bad story, bad setting, poor gameplay and an awful ending.

I can't believe I shelled out £40 on this and to me it's a lot of money, so it's not really a case of 'shrug off one bad purchase cause I haz pennies'

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Gonna have to add to the Assassin's Creed III pile but only because there really isn't anything else this year that gave me the biggest "Meh". The main problem I had was the lack of giving a shit about the setting. Colonial America just doesn't interest me as architecturally as the Crusades and the Renaissance. Plus the history itself is just kinda boring. In Assassin's Creed II you were ***** slapping the fucking Pope right below the Sistine Chapel! Here, the most interesting it gets storywise is a verbal argument between a guy and his (far more interesting) dad. I was also disappointed by the feature of Guns in the game, mainly because it takes around 10 seconds to reload if you're not in the middle of combat while Leonardo's gun from AssCreed's 2 took less than half that time and practically reloaded automatically.

 

[TJC]

Uhm.. biggest "Meh" and you don't come up with the clear winner of that?

Diablo 3 handsdown. You've got to stand in awe by the mediocrity of this game compared to the hype + expectations.
It should've been the cure to cancer, the holy grail and sliced bread in one game aaaaaand it ended up as just another Activision-moneygrab. Yay.

Seriously.

It's not even any hate I harbour but after all these years and a hype build-up that rivalled Duke Nukem we only a get a mediocre game. It's not even bad like Duke Nukem to actually have something to rage against but just incredibly boring 'meh'. It was pure mediocrity without a decent saving grace like AC3's naval missions that at least got an impressed "NOICE D:" out of me.

Honourable mention:
Resident Evil 6 aka yet another 3rd-person-shooter.

 

[IckleMissMayhem]

AC3. Only it's more of a massive let-down than "meh." No freerunning, boring ancestor and story. Only parts that redeemed it were Shaun's endless snark, Desmond's missions and Haytham.

 

[FFP2]

NFS Most Wanted 2 - Went from one of the best racers of all time to a piece of shit with ridiculous amounts of rubber banding. Uninstalled after 2 hours.

While I could have waived far too many games this year... I agree to this one most.
Not only NFS itself should finally go to hell, no; Criterion Games first teases us with a halfway properly executed Hot Pursuit, only to release a completely useless MW remake short time after. The turning abilities of -every single- car make you punch something, the drifting mechanic is almost as bad as in The Run, the "Frostbite" (god, what a fitting name... freeze, freeze, freeze) engine provides as many lags and crashes as you might expect and on top of everything the entire HUD/design does nothing than crush your eyesight.

I wish they would just do a HD remake of the original... 6 years on and MW1 is still the most downloaded demo on XBL.

 

[Rawne1980]

Mass Effect 3.

And not because of the ending (someone modded a happy ending so fuck you BioWare).

The game itself is a whole lot of "meh".

Oh yeah, graphically and gameplay wise it's smooth but that's where the good ends.

See, according to almost everyone I know myself included, Mass Effect is known for story and characters .... 2 things that go absolutely arse up here.

It sets itself up for a fall right near the start when we meet that famous character from the other 2 games .. James Vega .. wait, who the fuck is James Vega and why are we getting new characters in the final game?

Nevermind, I thought, i'll get Jack soon seeing as that's a character I really like and my Shep was in a relationship with .... nope, no Jack. You get about 3 minutes conversation with her throughout the entire game.

Okay, but obviously i'll get those other 2 characters I like, Miranda and Samara. Nope, you get to see them for a few minutes and then off they go again.

But you do get Ashley .... because everyone loves Ashley right? No, not really. And then we get EDI. All the way through the second game I was thinking to myself "if only they would give this personality black hole of an AI a body so she could follow me everywhere I went, EDI needs to be a companion ..... no, not once did I think that. Not fucking once.

So I lose 3 characters I really like to be dumped with Vega, EDI and Williams. Oh fucking joy.

As far as the story goes, apart from a couple of stand out moments, it was all a bit average.

And the biggest cringe of the game goes to sparkle child and his "well, in order to stop organics and synthetics going to war and synthetics wiping out the organics I made this army of synthetics to wipe everything out" .... That makes sense you fucking testicle.

But hey, remember Joker .... a guy with bones so brittle he'd break his own arm if he wanked to hard?

Well they are going to offer him a relationship with EDI in a metal fucking body ..... WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

Mass Effect can jog the fuck on. It's not completely terrible and does have it's moments but it's not great and remains my average game of the year.

 

[Lugbzurg]

How can you go without mentioning the long-awaited return of Spec Ops?

But, Metal of Honor: Warfighter? ("Ahahahahahahahahahaha!") I don't think that can ever be fixed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA

 

[Lionsfan]

My biggest "meh" for the year was Halo 4.

Everything just felt wrong about it, from the way too short campaign, to the shitty ending, to the even more shitty multiplayer, and finally to the shitty knockoff CoD spec ops. Spartan Ops blew major donkey balls, and I haven't regretted trading in Halo 4

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Mass Effect 3.

And not because of the ending (someone modded a happy ending so fuck you BioWare).

The game itself is a whole lot of "meh".

Oh yeah, graphically and gameplay wise it's smooth but that's where the good ends.

See, according to almost everyone I know myself included, Mass Effect is known for story and characters .... 2 things that go absolutely arse up here.

It sets itself up for a fall right near the start when we meet that famous character from the other 2 games .. James Vega .. wait, who the fuck is James Vega and why are we getting new characters in the final game?

Nevermind, I thought, i'll get Jack soon seeing as that's a character I really like and my Shep was in a relationship with .... nope, no Jack. You get about 3 minutes conversation with her throughout the entire game.

Okay, but obviously i'll get those other 2 characters I like, Miranda and Samara. Nope, you get to see them for a few minutes and then off they go again.

But you do get Ashley .... because everyone loves Ashley right? No, not really. And then we get EDI. All the way through the second game I was thinking to myself "if only they would give this personality black hole of an AI a body so she could follow me everywhere I went, EDI needs to be a companion ..... no, not once did I think that. Not fucking once.

So I lose 3 characters I really like to be dumped with Vega, EDI and Williams. Oh fucking joy.

As far as the story goes, apart from a couple of stand out moments, it was all a bit average.

And the biggest cringe of the game goes to sparkle child and his "well, in order to stop organics and synthetics going to war and synthetics wiping out the organics I made this army of synthetics to wipe everything out" .... That makes sense you fucking testicle.

But hey, remember Joker .... a guy with bones so brittle he'd break his own arm if he wanked to hard?

Well they are going to offer him a relationship with EDI in a metal fucking body ..... WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

Mass Effect can jog the fuck on. It's not completely terrible and does have it's moments but it's not great and remains my average game of the year.

agreed for all the things you listed, not to mention all the plot fucks it says throughout the game (rachni anyone?)

Also, I'll add D3 to this list, I played it for a couple weeks, got my account fucked, never looked back, i had to personally trudge myself to get through it, and knowing in the end all i would end up doing is buying into the shitty auction house the game had been built around, i said screw that noise.

thanks to steam/amazon, i've just picked up about 10 different games that i'm going to thoroughly enjoy all year for under 80 bucks, so all the meh's are about to me made up for.

 

[krazykidd]

A tie between Soul calibur 5 and Diablo 3 . Diablo 3 was good for the first playthrough . After that it became pointless and repetive . I still play diablo2 from time to time . Soul calibur 5 was/is a...WAIT NO SCRATCH THAT . Streetfighter x tekken . Fuck that broken mess of a game .

 

[deathbydeath]

Dishonored, kinda. I'd still give it a "thumbs up", but there's just so much missed potential evident in the game that could be fixed by some brainstorming and good writers.

My answer probably would've been Mass Effect 3 if I had actually bought it instead of predicting that Bioware would blow it after playing ME2, and what do ya know.....

 

[The_Echo]

Of the games I've played this year, I have to say Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

I give it a lot of shit, because it frustrated me in small ways through my entire playthrough, and that kind of snowballs when I remember it all at once. But really, it's not bad. But it's not good. And it really didn't feel like a Paper Mario game.

So, meh.

 

[Edl01]

Diablo 3.
Completely average with next to nothing special about it. One of the most pushed in and predictable stories I have ever seen in a video game. It also expected you to play it over 4 times to reach the actual *fun* difficulty, which I just cdouldn't birng myself to do.
Don't get me wrong I don't think the game was awful, it just wasn't what all the build up made it out to be and was a incredibly forgettable experience.

 

[EquestrianGeneral]

I hate to be cynical, but a majority of AAA games this year really disappointed me.

Mass Effect 3 had the whole ending controversy and felt a bit rushed.
Assassin's Creed 3 was Assassin's Creed 3 (many people have already shared their opinions on that).
Black Ops II/Medal of Honor were both generic military shooters.
Halo 4 was a surprising step backwards.

Ugh, at least Dishonored, XCom, The Walking Dead, and Spec Ops: The Line were good.

 

[SuperSamio64]

I. Want. To. Play. As. Desmond!

Did I just read that right? Desmond is sooooooooo boring though. Also, a modern day Assassin's Creed game would take away the best bit; exploring history.

 

[Joccaren]

Good question.
In a year that delivered ME3, SWTOR, Diablo 3, Dishonored and various other mediocre games, its kinda hard to pick just one that should win this prize.

In the end I'm going to have to give it to ME3. None of the other games left me with such a sense of apathy towards not only it, but its entire series. In one game I went from encouraging my friends to buy the series and try it, to warning them not to, to just not bothering.
Yes, part of my problem was with the ending. PART. The original ending was just shit, the updated endings were thoroughly meh; not a lot I had a problem with, just was so anticlimactic that Minecraft's end was more exciting.
The rest of the game was also thoroughly meh. Completely linear - to the letter even, you no longer even get to pick the order of your main missions - clunky mechanics that were sadly the best they've been in the series - but still not what I'd call good - complete mess of a story - too focused on set pieces and Hollywood moments to pay attention to logic or common sense, let alone the might-as-well-be-retcons - meh character interactions - more hit or miss that usual, but consistently missing when it comes to 3/4 of the old cast - and various other problems including the shitty quest journal, worst Citadel of the series and freaking scanning machine in the Normandy.

I always have to laugh when people say "The 99% of the game leading up to the ending was amazing", or "Everyone has to admit [Read previous "" section]", 'cause really its not. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there was nothing amazing about the game, with the exception of Tuchanka - barring what I'll put down to level design.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Paper Mario: Sticker Star. It's not horrible, but it has a ton of little design flaws that might look good on paper but ruin the Paper Mario experience and add up to something that's just meh.

The paper aesthetic worked better when it was merely an aesthetic choice, rather than a gameplay mechanic. The lack of party members and meaningful, not to mention endearing, NPCs make it feel like a lonely game. That feeling of exploration from the other Paper Mario games is gone. The world is less coherent due to the level-based structure. The item-based combat system, coupled with the fact that you only get coins from combat and you have no need for coins due to the surplus you have after the first world and how you don't even need to buy stickers once you know where to find them easily, make combat unrewarding and merely a waste of good stickers and valuable HP. In addition, since fights don't give experience, there's no sense of personal progression. None of your power comes from you. It's all your stickers. Mario just exists to stay alive and channel the stickers' powers.