MammothBlade said:
These past few years have left me disappointed and disillusioned with some of my favourite series, and I've sought out greener pastures as a result. Sadly, I had to play through and delude myself that I was enjoying them to realise just how boring they'd become.
Well for me my biggest disappointments within the time frame (since I'm a Sonic fan this'd have been a lot better to read if it had been the last decade rather than 4 years):
Final Fantasy 13: I expected a huge world with great characters and a great story, with a well paced narrative and interwoven exposition. With the kind of detail and love that FF12 was crafted with, I expected that same level, I expected the bestiary notes, I expected the optional stories, I expected the volume of quests, optional areas, optional bosses, items, summons, etc. Instead it was a corridor for 20-30 hours with no real challenge beyond staying awake, then a bit of an open world with not much in it besides monster hunts, and then the end and some trophchievements that I couldn't be bothered with. Final Fantasy XII was indeed the final fantasy for me, sadly this remains to be changed, though 13-2 was better.
Sonic Generations: It is far from bad, it's a top notch game, it's action packed, flows fantastically. It's bright, colourful and it's great fun. But it lacked variety, there were too many "green hill" levels and too many city levels for my liking. They took too much from more modern Sonic games in my opinion, especially Colours, where they made an inferior version of the stage. I'd have rather some extra Mega Drive levels than the modern stages, for example, Ice Cap, Lava Reef, Death Egg, Starlight, etc. The Heroes level could've been better too, Rail Canyon or Egg Fleet would have been more interesting and stood out a lot more. It was also very short lived with little replay for me with a very poor final boss. Disappointing after Colours but a great game anyway.
Resident Evil 6: It isn't out yet. But that demo was enough for me. I adore 4, it's one of my favourite games of all time, so much so that I own 3 copies of it and have finished it countless times, including challenge and melee runs. My problems with 6: I shot a corpse and it didn't react, I assumed thusly that it was just a corpse not an enemy, I was wrong, it attacked when I walked over, so I was pissed off. It's hard to be quite sure how much damage you're doing and the game doesn't give great feedback to your attacks, it also has a strange lagging effect that seems intentional when you change aiming direction or begin to look elsewhere. The lighting effects are bloomy and hyper focused, and dragged away any immersion because I have a vague understanding of how light functions. It used 2 buttons for interaction, co-op actions not withstanding. The AI is worse than 5, after 2 minutes of trying I managed to get it irreversibly stuck on an environmental object. I'd go on, but I just hated the demo so much that it gains this spot with ease.
Edit: I seriously can't grasp what Capcom are thinking these days, I really can't, they want COD's sales levels? Then do it without Resident Evil. Keep Resi as a reliable income source from dedicated fans and make a new IP that doesn't suck. I'll have to leave it here or this'll just become a Capcom rant.
Battlefield 3: The game just didn't live up to what I wanted from it, it's a good game, but it just wasn't fun enough most of the time. It also had some severe balancing issues for months after release. I enjoyed Bad Company 2 a hell of a lot more, and rather than fancy flashlight effects and vain attempts at photorealism, I'd have prefered to be able to knock buildings down with rocket launchers. Just diappointment in general, I adored BC2 too much for BF3 to topple it from it's throne.
Sonic The Hedgehog 4: Episode 1: Ask an old Sonic fan, the kind that still has their MegaDrive in working order and ready to go with a hue stack of games, or any retro gamer, what makes 2D Sonic so enjoyable, and they'll tell you it's the pace and flow of the game. With floaty physics and a weird acceleration curve Sonic 4 (Episode 2 is guilty too, but less so) is a huge disappointment for myself and many other fans. It also lacked much original content and had a relatively poor soundtrack, it wasn't ear rupturing levels of awful, but for a SOnic game it was poor, even Sonic 06 can boast a great OST. Alas Blue Blur, you're guilty of a lot of disappointment, may your next title be as good as Colours was.
Edit:Removed Arkham City, had 6, done derped there.