Your 5 most disappointing games, 2008-2012

[D-Soul]

5. Battlefield 3 (90% MP 10% SP)

4. White Knight Chronicles (1. Why does this game have a nagging feeling it need to be played online. 2. Why does it feel I'm not a super powerful badass at the end of the game? 3. Explain to me why my custom character is playing the silent second fiddle to some guy who really isn't fleshed out?)

3. Orcs must Die! 2 (Then again maybe its me and my computer)

2. Soul Calibur V (they changed the battle system...again..Story mode is very meh(maybe due it being rushed) and Legendary Souls mode will make want to destroy something on how frustratingly hard it is.)

I have too many to put here so lets add a little flavor to the number one spot

1 Street Fighter X Tekken (pretty self explanatory why)
1(2) Borderlands seeing what the sequel did improve on it's kind of sad to see it what was
1(3) Bayonetta(PS3) (Obviously the big problem everybody had with that game, Bayonnetta being way over the top and oversexualized to point of turn-off and the judging and ranking system is a little on the brutal side.)

 

[White-Death]

-Mass Effect 3,felt cut throughout the experience,next to no side missions and the main story missions were short and boring as hell,though there were a few redeeming cut scenes.Game play stank of Generic TPS all the way.

-Mass Effect 2,exact same reason as above.

-Battlefield 3,first hour of the campaign and a 2 days worth of multilayer had me cheerfully Uninstalling Origin and the game,happily returning it back to the store,and firing up Arma II.

-Final Fantasy XVXIIIIVIVIVIVIXIXI, or whatever ones were released since '09,absolutely horrendous,boring slog through a poorly rendered narrow green corridor with only a few levels involving open world,combat was slow and boring and the story was far too confusing to even comprehend.I apologized to my friend so much for wasting his time using his PS3...

Call of duty seven hundred and sixty four modern warfare 8 elite plus Magpul edition(MW2)
Same game as last time,but with slightly different gun and a few new maps.

 

[Tallim]

Not sure actually, although judging from the reviews of Resident Evil 6 it's definitely going to be on the top spot :/ Wow the critics are hitting it hard.

Hmm

(Probably Resident Evil 6)
Final Fantasy XIII
Mass Effect 2
Crysis 2
Oblivion

 

[lord.jeff]

Saints Row the third: Huge step down in every way.

Final Fantasy 13: Worst of the series and if the best defense people can make for the game is it gets better after 10 hours then it's a crap game.

Assassins Creed: A lot of people liked this game and I enjoy stealth games but the game play felt more like obeying a speed limit then stealth.

Skyward Sword: I'm a Zelda fan so of course I looked forward to this game, but the constant reuse of areas and Skyloft feeling more like a level hub then a proper world made playing this game feel like a grind, again least favorite of the series.

Metal Gear Solid 4: The first two levels of the game were great but the third was absolute crap and it never managed to raise back up the excitement, didn't help that the ending was terribly dragged out and tedious.

 

[Ascarus]

Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Dragon Age 2
Duke Nukem: Forever
The Witcher 1

it kind of saddens me that two of those have Star Wars in the title

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

IMHO, and in no particular order...

1. Dead Island - Yeah, I was part of the like 75% of the game's playerbase that bought this game primarily because of that really goddamn awesome trailer. It completely failed to live up to expectations on every front. Sluggish controls, poorly balanced character classes, guns were practically worthless, the kick/stomp combo was generally more useful than melee weapons, you spent half the game fighting looters instead of zombies, the voice acting was abysmal, the story was abysmal, glitches galore, ugh... The worst part is that the game had potential. Originally it was supposed to be way more complex, focusing on some fairly serious real-world issues, and the characters were supposed to be much more defined... but most of it got cut out to make a fairly generic game. Lame.

2. Brink - This game sold itself on being a revolutionary shooter. Unique art style, colors other than brown and gray, "tons" of character customization, team objective-based combat where every class was important, etc. The only thing we got that it had promised was an uncanny valley art style and colors, everything else turned out to be a joke... like ridiculously limited character customization that was mostly locked from the get-go and gameplay so completely underwhelming that I couldn't see any reason to play Brink instead of Team Fortress 2.

3. Diablo 3 - Don't get me wrong, I found this to be a fairly well-made game... but that said, it was also an incredible let-down to me. Constant rebalancing, development emphasis being placed on promoting the Real Money Auction House while the gold economy burns to the ground, fairly bland character builds (is there any reason at all to have two of the same class?), and a ludicrously bad story that used pretty much the same environments from Diablo 2. This, like Dead Island, is made even more disappointing when you look back at all of the things that were promised and shown to us over the years while the game was in development that were eventually cut from the final product. Diablo 2 was a game that I played for years and it always managed to hold my attention. I was bored of Diablo 3 within the first month if its lifespan. If there's ever a Diablo 4 (and there will be, because it's a profitable name) I'm likely to be very hesitant to bother with it, assuming I don't just bypass it entirely.

4. Champions Online - I had high hopes that this game would be the new-and-improved City of Heroes. When it finally came out... ugh. The character models were pretty terrible looking, the character customization was far more limited than City of Heroes (granted, it was still a whole hell of a lot better than the vast majority of games), if you changed the shape of your character's body it would stretch and tear many of the costume options (many of them were designed to -only- look right on the basic untouched models), many of the abilities were either completely worthless or incredibly overpowered with little middle ground, there was constant nerfing and "rebalancing" to appease the extremely vocal minority of people playing the game's PvP (meanwhile, many legitimate problems with the game like glitches went completely under the patching radar), the underwater zone had tons of lag issues that went unfixed for close to a month, there were huge XP gaps if you weren't very careful with your questing on launch (with kill XP being so ridiculously low that hitting max level became a massive grind if you ran out of quests), there wasn't very much content (even a casual player could complete it in a week), etc. I could go on, but this is already a wall of text.

5. Duke Nukem Forever - With how long this game spent in development hell, it pretty much needed to cure cancer and end world hunger to not be a disappointment.

 

[Epona]

Wait, are you saying you bought every game you were mildly interested in? If you only trust first hand experience...

No I clarified this in a later post.

Deciding whether or not to buy a game based on reviews is fine.I'm sure we've all done this at some point.

However declaring a game to be one of the most disappointing games released in the last 5 years(which the OP did)without any first hand experience is,to put it bluntly,stupid.

See the difference?

Yeah, makes sense.

On topic and to avoid a low content post.

Skyrim was disappointing, I wasn't even expecting it to be that good. Everyone calling it the GOTY before it came out made me sick enough to my stomach but people going on and on about dragons was the worst part. I tried pointing out that many many many games have had dragons and that their inclusion in Skyrim was really nothing special. I mean, in the Breath of Fire games you got to play as a dragon and that was in 1993. Anyway, despite not expecting much, Skyrim still disappointed. Leveling up was like Paper Mario and adding skills was like the Crystarium in FF13. Skyrim was disappointing compared to Oblivion. I put so many hours into Oblivion and so few into Skyrim.

Skyward Sword was the first Zelda game where the controls kept me from playing. Say what you want but I didn't like the controls in the game and though I have gone back time and time again to retry them, I just can't make them work for me.

That's all I can think of right now.

 

[bandman232]

In order from least to most:

5. StarCraft 2: Loved the original. 2 Just seemed like a rehash of the first game with slightly better mechanics and better graphics.

4. Diablo 3: Was so stoked for this game, only to play a dumbed down hack and slash game that felt like it was trying to be WoW.

3. Saint's Row 3: Was expecting everything that made the second great, but it tried being too silly, and it completely ruined the game.

2. Metroid: Other M: Words cannot describe how angry it made me. Samus's characterization and story was atrocious, story was completely incomprehensible, and game play didn't make any sense at times. Why the hell did Saumus need permission to use her abilities?!

1. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Absolutely AWFUL! Horrible controls, uninspired dungeons, unlikable characters, and recurring dungeon themes. Also, getting those tears was an enormous pain in the ass.

Suprises:

5: Skyrim: Absolutely superb, and a surprise to me because I HATE the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion in particular.

4: Super Mario Galaxy 2: Was expecting it to be exactly the same as the first, but loved the game play and fresh level design.

3: Boarderlands 2: Absolutely hated the first, found it bland with an awful story. 2 basically fixed everything that was wrong with the first game, and I'm having an enormous amount of fun with it.

2: Kingdom Hearts: Re Chain of Memories: Found the game mechanics cool and the story fun. Didn't play the GBA version because it didn't look very appealing to me.

1: Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Really liked this game. I was wary of it at first because I played Invisible War first and though it was crap.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Dead Rising - I don't understand what the hell people like about this game. I couldn't even finish it, it was so fucking terrible.

Duke Nukem Forever - Need anything be said?

LA Noire - More my fault than the game's. I just can't really get the hang of reading facial expressions. The overabundance of shooter combat was annoying, though. But I will say that the driving sections were fucking hilarious XD.

Fable 3 - DAMN YOU BASTARDS, YOU RUINED ONE OF MY FAVORITE FRANCHISES!!!!!!!

L4D2 - After the great ensemble in the first game, I was hoping for another one. Which I did not recieve. Rochelle leaves no impact, and Coach and Nick leave little. Ellis was a bit hit-and-miss. Besides that, a good game, but a dissapointment as far as the characters.

 

[luke10123]

Why is everyone laying all this hate on Dragon Age: Origins?

Let me repeat what I said on page 1:
Dragon Age Origins: Dull, repetitive slog through an uninspired landscape. When a rip off LOTR story and unoriginal and unlikeable characters are the high point, it's amazing anyone likes this giant turd. Bioware does have some loyal slav- er, fans who enjoy anything these talentless hacks put out.

That didn't even mention:
- Unoriginal MMO styled, ability, cool down, repeat + bait and lure. Or heavy reliance on broken magic based AoE styled attacks.

- The FFXII Gambit styled "Tactics" didn't work. They were buggy as shit and usually didn't do what you wanted them to resulting in clusterfuck combat.

- Relationships amounting to moot. Sorry, but if I can feed gifts to people to break the relationship system, it's not good. Beyond that, the rewards were some stat bonuses - whoopee! Star Ocean 2 on the PS1 had a better relationship system than this piece of shit.

The best RPG of this gen was Dark Souls. The second was Demon's Souls. The third was Valkyria Chronicles.

In my opinion DA:O is the single most overrated game of this gen, followed by Skyrim. I actually somewhat enjoyed Skyrim though. I had high hopes for DA:O based on the trailers, and word of mouth. It disappointed in all respects.

Hmm, I'd have leveled most of that critisism against DA2, where the world and combat were much worse than the original. I admit that the combat was a little old school but I don't believe that makes it bad, just tried and tested (unless you were playing on a console - that'd be your first mistake, it not that kind of game). Regardless, I don't know anyone that bought the game for the combat but I don't think it's much of a negative. Next, I think the relationships were really good and thought out, admittedly none of them were Biowares best (HK-47) but their games are always better than most, and the story and the way you can affect it is always the highlight. Loved it. But we all know art is subjective and people have very different tastes, so there you go.

 

[aguspal]

3) Just Cause 2- Overly Complex controls killed this game hard. Too bad, this game actually seemed somewhat decent actually. oh well.

Maybe it's because I'm playing it on PC, but I didn't find the controls overly complex at all. Easily the best sandbox game I've played in years.

I play on PC with an Xbox controller, and the controls are really, really simple. Not the most elegant, but simple and certainly functional.

I did play with how it is suppused to be played, with mouse and keyboard, of course! (It IS a pc port after all...) But... nope.


The fact that it was really hard with annoying deaths didnt help, althougt that may have to do with the fact that I put it on the hardest difficulty. But I dont think that would really have changed much, the controls would still suck :=)

 

[blindthrall]

And the one and only correct answer to this question would be...Mass Effect 3!

Also, Kellog's tastes like shit, captcha.

 

[Belaam]

WoW - Played from vanilla, cancelled a little after Cataclysm, no intention of picking up Pandaria.

GTA IV - Didn't these games used to be fun? Taking my cousin bowling is something I don't even like doing in real life.

Saints Row 3 - Traded GTA IV for SR2... and still occasionally play SR2. Lent SR3 to a co-worker and really don't care if they never give it back.

Spore - SimLife + Civilization + Sins of a Solar Empire?! Awesome!!! Pity that's not what was in the box. Spore conversely, would make a fine Zynga game. The only thing I can say for Spore was that my daughter was born shortly after it came out, and it's the kind of game you can play one handed, while giving a baby a bottle and rocking them to sleep for an hour. This is not really an endorsement, though.

Force Unleashed - Terrible Star Destroyer fight - I've never shut off a game mid-boss fight due to boredom before. And then to make it worse, the story is canon. Possibly a worse addition to the Star Wars universe than Jar Jar.

 

[Nerexor]

L.A. Noire - While I liked the theme and thought it did some innovative things with graphics and quality voice acting... sooooo boring. It sucks all the romance out of the Noire detective. That and the railroaded story with pretty much zero replay value... Definitely not worth the pre-order price I paid for it.

Diablo III - Utter failure. The charm of the Diablo series was ripped right out of it, no randomly generated dungeons removed anything resembling replay value, plot points were never adequately explained or set up properly, the utterly ridiculous disparity in value from white loot to enchanted loot, and the super obvious "plot twists." The gameplay itself wasn't bad, what with the ability swapping giving you different ways to play each class, but overall playing through it more than once or twice just made the whole thing feel like a chore.

The Force Unleashed 2 - Picked it up in the steam sale and oh my goodness... Dumbest storytelling ever, even for the star wars universe. The game at least plays more functionally than Force Unleashed 1, in that force powers actually do what you want about 50% of the time instead of only 10%, but Starkiller is so dumb and annoying that he makes the prequels Anakin seem like a deep and complex character by comparison! And the cliche ending for no reason... Argh... detailed below:

Spoiler

So Starkiller's girlfriend gets pretty obviously killed in the final battle and he's all weepy and goes up to her after the fight is over... and then he kisses her and she MAGICALLY WAKES UP even though it is BEYOND CLEAR that she was DEAD! No reason given! Just cliche for the sake of cliche. And you can see it coming too, the whole time he was walking up to her obviously dead body I was thinking "They better not bring her back for no reason just to make this a happy ending" and of course, they did. Lamest. Ending. Ever.

EDIT:

Force Unleashed - Terrible Star Destroyer fight - I've never shut off a game mid-boss fight due to boredom before. And then to make it worse, the story is canon. Possibly a worse addition to the Star Wars universe than Jar Jar.

WHAT?! THAT SHIT IS CANON?! You have got be kidding me...

 

[FootloosePhoenix]

Suprises:

5: Skyrim: Absolutely superb, and a surprise to me because I HATE the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion in particular.

I've noticed that, generally speaking, people who were fans of The Elder Scrolls series disliked Skyrim and yet people who had never played a TES game/didn't like them adore Skyrim. Of course I shouldn't be surprised; in hindsight the game was obviously marketing itself towards a larger audience and Bethesda adjusted aspects of the gameplay to appeal as such.

Again, I found Skyrim fun for awhile, but it just bombed in terms of what I wanted from an Elder Scrolls game.

 

[DSK-]

In no order:

# Dragon Age 2
# Brink
# Bulletstorm
# Shogun 2: Total War
# Supreme Commander 2. What the fuck.

 

[Snowblindblitz]

Xbox 360's Backwards Compatibility
It didn't hit me going into the 360's lifespan, I traded in all my old xbox stuff when I got the 360 so I could afford it, so early backwards compatibility hiccups didn't bother me, but later on, during the death of the video rental store, I picked up some old Xbox games that i heard were good, Legacy of Kain and Chronicles of Riddick. Just, disappointed that neither of them worked.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
I was really hoping for something more like Knights of the Old Republic, but it became an inferior God of War clone. It's difficulty curve bothered me, I like games that make you feel like a badass by the end of it, and all the enemies defenses outstripping your offensive upgrades, and you just felt weaker and weaker throughout.

Fable 2
This was a game that the gaming press of the day were all rolling around in Fable's happy places and were calling it the second coming. And I bought it all hook line and sinker, and while I do understand they probably didn't intentionally trick me, I still did NOT agree with their praise. I hated it, from beginning to end. I hated everything about it.

Borderlands
I think I get it, Diablo 2, a great game, and fallout 3 another great game, combined. But I found the gunplay boring, the enemies uninspired, the difficulty incredibly wonky. I loved the introduction video, that intro music really made me want to like the game, but it just never happened. I guess I needed to play it multiplayer, but with only splitscreen available, it just wasn't good. I'm sure it's better then I think.

Resident Evil 5
I missed out on Resident Evil 4. I only played it one time and died a whole bunch. Didn't care for it. When Dead Space came out, everyone who talked about it said "It's like Resident Evil 4, IN SPACE!" but I thought it looked good, so I got it, and I loved it. Then when Resident Evil 5 came out, everyone said "boring, it's kind of like Resident Evil 4, IN AFRICA!" and I as like "sweet, that'll be like Deadspace. Wasn't at all like Deadspace. I am Disappoint.

They did do a re-release of Chronicles of Riddick, with an additional campaign and other goodies.


I highly recommend it, still one of my favorite games.

On topic, Diablo 3 is the only game I can really say. At first, I was like, fun! While playing with my wife and friends. Then one day, I logged in alone, and was like, huh. This is fuck all.

 

[Snowblindblitz]

Why is everyone laying all this hate on Dragon Age: Origins?

Let me repeat what I said on page 1:
Dragon Age Origins: Dull, repetitive slog through an uninspired landscape. When a rip off LOTR story and unoriginal and unlikeable characters are the high point, it's amazing anyone likes this giant turd. Bioware does have some loyal slav- er, fans who enjoy anything these talentless hacks put out.

That didn't even mention:
- Unoriginal MMO styled, ability, cool down, repeat + bait and lure. Or heavy reliance on broken magic based AoE styled attacks.

- The FFXII Gambit styled "Tactics" didn't work. They were buggy as shit and usually didn't do what you wanted them to resulting in clusterfuck combat.

- Relationships amounting to moot. Sorry, but if I can feed gifts to people to break the relationship system, it's not good. Beyond that, the rewards were some stat bonuses - whoopee! Star Ocean 2 on the PS1 had a better relationship system than this piece of shit.

The best RPG of this gen was Dark Souls. The second was Demon's Souls. The third was Valkyria Chronicles.

In my opinion DA:O is the single most overrated game of this gen, followed by Skyrim. I actually somewhat enjoyed Skyrim though. I had high hopes for DA:O based on the trailers, and word of mouth. It disappointed in all respects.

Hmm, I'd have leveled most of that critisism against DA2, where the world and combat were much worse than the original. I admit that the combat was a little old school but I don't believe that makes it bad, just tried and tested (unless you were playing on a console - that'd be your first mistake, it not that kind of game). Regardless, I don't know anyone that bought the game for the combat but I don't think it's much of a negative. Next, I think the relationships were really good and thought out, admittedly none of them were Biowares best (HK-47) but their games are always better than most, and the story and the way you can affect it is always the highlight. Loved it. But we all know art is subjective and people have very different tastes, so there you go.

It happens. Out of my group of friends, who we usually all agree on a lot of things about games, I was the only one who like DA:O. Made me feel small and alone.

I will say though, Dark Souls was fantastic too. Probably my biggest high light, I tried Demon Soul's as a rental, and just felt frustrated. I bought Dark Souls on a whim, and really poured myself into it, and it won me. Completely.

Sorry, I kinda replied to both of you.

 

[Bat Vader]

2012- year of an entire games worth of disappointment.
Yet to find even one game to live up to expectations

I heard Guild Wars 2 met some expectations. I had a lot of expectations for it and they met most of them.

On Topic:

1. Mercenaries 2: I loved the first Mercenaries and when I heard there was going to be a sequel I was really hoping for it to be good. While I didn't hate the game I also didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

2. Rage: From the previews of Rage it seemed like it was going to be an open world game and I was hoping my choices would help determine what happened in the world. Instead it was a corridor FPS with lackluster story. Plus, it had a worse ending than ME3.

3. Dead Island: While I didn't hate Dead Island I also didn't love it either. I consider it average. I hate how no matter how many zombies I kill or how many missions I do it didn't help make the island any safer. If I kill 10,000 zombies or help survivors arm themselves I want to feel like I am actually making a difference in the game. I want to see safer areas with little to no zombies. I want people to feel safer.

4. Homefront: Homefront was bad. It wasn't just bad, it was terrible. It was being built up as a COD like game but with a great story and how it was written by the same guy that wrote Red Dawn. Not only was the story terrible but the game was pretty boring too. I am just glad I rented it.

5. Minecraft: I found Minecraft fun for the first month. Now I can't ever play it again. I got so burned out with it in the first month the thought of playing it again just bores me.

 

[shogunblade]

I have little to be disappointed by, but of the ones I can recall off the top of my head, and be ready to be shocked, because I haven't seen it come up yet (I am still just on Page 1, though)

Kind bad #5: Duke Nukem Forever. Let's just get it out of the way. We all know why it is bad, but the sad thing was was that except for Duke Nukem N64 and Land of the Babes on PSX, I had no hopes for this game ever being good (I was 8 & 10 when I played them, respectively). The flaws it has are recognized by me, but overall, I was more disappointed that it wasn't more fun to play (and the Hive. Goddamn the Hive to hell)

#4: Batman: Arkham City. I loved Arkham Asylum, beyond words do I love Arkham Asylum. When I beat it the first time, I instantly declared it One of my favorite PS3 games I've ever played (I know it's on 360, but I don't have a 360). I was hyped for Arkham City (as everybody probably was), and the end result was more or less a Sandbox full of baddies but it felt seemingly empty, with boss battles that save for one (Mr. Freeze on Hard mode) is some of my least favorite fights I've ever been a part of. Batman doesn't fight; His job is to defuse the situation and stop the elaborate plan, not engage in fight scenes. It, to me, damaged everything good about Batman that Arkham Asylum did well (The Boss Fights were hella better, and I'll defend it every step of the way why I think that).

#3: Dante's Inferno. There are few games I'm willing to express utter hatred for, and this one was one of them. When I saw the trailer, I was excited, but as I got into the game, I couldn't believe how boring the actual game would have ended up being. Nearly every locale has fire, seemingly sluggish fighting controls and above all else, no real reason to continue further. I never finished the game, but I had no reason to really want to.

#2: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Flame Shields on, I didn't like Uncharted. Everybody talks about how they didn't like how smug Nathan Drake was, wisecracking every few minutes, but I guess I glossed over any wisecracks. Too bad, considering that to hear a joke or two might have made it more fun. As it stood, I was nothing more than some guy shooting for a few shots, then I got shot at and voila! I started over. And Over. And Over. The game amounted to nothing, really, just a continuous duck shoot gallery that had no character, a far cry from what Naughty Dog had been known for (...I liked Crash Bandicoot, sue me).

And I don't have a #1, sadly. I haven't played enough games. I suppose I could say Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, but that came out in 2007, so hopefully, four will do.