Your Single Biggest Disappointment Gaming Wise.

[Catfood220]

Dead Space 3: I loved DS and I loved DS2 more, so imagine my joy when Dead Space 3 was announced. Awesome! And that snowy planet looks like it could be a lot of fun. Then I played the demo...and...it was alright I suppose and I ordered the game. What I got was a joyless slog. Ok, that's not fair, the Necro outbreak and exploring the derelict spaceships were fun and even when I crashed to the planet, trying to survive with a broken RIG was good fun too. Then when the RIG got fixed it stopped being fun and started being a joyless slog that went on for far too long and finished with a disappointing ending. I'm kinda glad Visceral were bumped onto doing Battlefield: Cops and Robbers even if it means the end of them, I couldn't take another disappointing Dead Space.

The Last of Us: I have written an essay on this game so I will keep this short. Naughty Dog fan, stupidly excited about this game from the moment it is announced. Eat up every bit of information I can find, get even more stupidly excited for the game, got the game played it through. Not the game my stupidly high expectations expected, disappointed. Played it since and it is a good game but was disappointed at launch.

Daikatana: Wanted a Doom like FPS for my N64 (might have been SNES, can't remember), bought this and played through the first level and never touched it again. Started paying more attention to game reviews.

 

[Mister K]

*Sigh*
For many years this place belonged to Final Fantasy X-2. It was a direct sequel to my favorite game ever. I was hunting for it for 7 years. And when I finally got to play it, it was such a letdown.

But after many years, I became a bit more forgiving towards it. FFX-2 had, at the very least, great battle system and I actually liked dress spheres.

HOWEVER, a few years ago, something gave me even greater punch in my gaming enthusiasm. I was hyped for it. It looked beautiful. The gameplay looked amazing, neither fully turn-based nor real-time. And all of the characters were so... Attractive if I may. Aaaand then I played it. Story is bullshit, all but one character are morons and/or pricks, gameplay is tedious. I did not finish it.

Yeah, you guessed it right. I am talking about Final Fantasy XIII and the only character that I liked wa Sazh.

 

[Cowabungaa]

The worst? Spore, god Spore...

Five years of waiting, often one of my precious sources of sheer happiness and excitement during some very troubled teenage years. Only to have it turn out like...like that. God what a travesty, what a waste of emotional investment. Now that felt like betrayal.

And you'd think I learned after that. But no after that came Brink, a definite runner-up. It looked so good, so awesome, but absolutely ruined by shitty netcode and a lackluster 'campaign'. But at least it didn't have the emotional weight that was Spore's disappointment.

These days I do get excited again though, but always with a caveat of "It could still sucks."

>Thread name: Your Single Biggest Disappointment Gaming Wise
>OP posts four

>MFW

Kerbal Space Program
The build option was interesting however what you wanted to see as a spacecraft usually did not work in the game plus trying to add maneuver to orbit the closest moon usually ended with me either launching into deep space or slamming into the moon and destroying my lander.

Can you blame the game for that though? Because lawd some folks have done amazing stuff with it. And if XKCD is to be believed:

 

[Xerosch]

Mine was 'Silent Hill Homecoming'. As someone who really liked 'Silent Hill: The Room' and shrugged off 'Origins' as fan fiction made by another studio I had no further excuse for 'Homecoming'. After the first two hours I realized that I couldn't sugarcoat this one. Silent Hill was dead and even though 'Shattered Memories' and 'Downpour' were oaky-ish they could never hope to be as good as the first three games.

 

[moosemaimer]

Kerbal Space Program
The build option was interesting however what you wanted to see as a spacecraft usually did not work in the game plus trying to add maneuver to orbit the closest moon usually ended with me either launching into deep space or slamming into the moon and destroying my lander.

That's how I felt when I first started playing it... once I tried to rendezvous in orbit and burned all the maneuvering fuel out of several ships without coming close I deleted the game. Much later I saw a few videos on how to play and actually did some research on orbital mechanics, and got a much better understanding of what you're supposed to do.

The biggest thing, though, was adding Mechanical Jebediah (MechJeb). It's a full-featured autopilot that still uses the game's maneuver node system. By paying attention to how it was setting up maneuvers I got to the point where I can do nearly everything by hand, and in some cases even better. I still rely on it for things like interplanetary transfers and final landing approach where the vanilla game's controls and instrumentation leave something to be desired in terms of precision, but when it doesn't give me the results I want I can now manage without it.

 

[Zefar]

Dark Souls 2: Relying more on cheap ambushes and more enemies than what you can handle alone to kill you isn't what Dark Soul was about. It didn't go out to be hard. It was about providing a challenge that you can overcome with knowledge but in Dark Souls 2 knowledge won't help you much.

Specially when 3 or more powerful warriors come at you at once. Adding in Invasions of all types even if you're undead with half the health left and the boss already defeated. Some rest would be nice.
Not to mention the game felt too artificial. Things felt too planned when it comes to the road you take. But then we have map progression that doesn't make sense at all. A elevator from a top of a tower leading to a castle that is filled to the brim with Lava and the landscapes is full mountains? Such an immersion breaker.

Next game is Borderlands 2. I could understand Borderlands 1 not getting it completely right the first time around but with the second game they had no excuses. Less variation in weapons. Each weapon type feel the same. Unique weapons are heavily unbalanced where only like 3 of them are useful.(I haven't played all the DLC and not planning too).
Weapons generally won't have multi shot because now it's a purple feature instead. So it just lacked so much. Also you still only have one boring skill that I forget that I even have most of the time.

Enemies get too bullet spongey and their damage values gets ridiculous. Adding in more players just multiply the health of enemies which makes it pointless to have an ally with you. Other than on boss fights because then they will never ever refill their health except for super bosses.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Impire: This one was sort of on me, because I thought it was going to be essentially "Dungeon Keeper 3". Man was I wrong, this game was terrible. So repetitive and boring.

System Shock 2: Ok, I heard so much hype about how awesome this game was, and I'll admit I can see why people like it: it has a creepy and oppressive atmosphere, it's scary, and it genuinely feels like 'survival horror'. But the absolutely murderous difficulty, respawning enemies, and (perhaps most ridiculous of all) the guns that break after being fired 4 times, just killed my desire to play it any further. It was just too frustrating.

Syndicate: I LOVED the original Syndicate, and when I heard it was being remade I was hyped. "Yes, Syndicate with next-gen graphics! Oh, it's a FPS game now? Well, maybe it'll be a tactical FPS! Oh it's not? Ok, well maybe it'll still be good! I can't see, why is there all this bloom? Why can't I turn down the bloom!? Agh, I'm blind!!". What was sad is that I actually thought the shooting action was quite good, but the game had zero support from the devs after release and had way too many stupid qualities to really enjoy.

Dawn of War 2: I absolutely loved the 1st Dawn of War, and when I first read about how DOW 2 would be done I was excited. But instead they basically cut off a lot of DOW at the knees. They drastically reduced the size of squads and armies, added ridiculous "boss battles" to nearly every mission, and the missions felt incredibly repetitive. I will give it credit for having great graphics and sound effects (the sound of the Dreadnought auto-cannon gave me an ear orgasm) but I never could bring myself to finish the game.

 

[happyninja42]

The Thief reboot.

I had such high hopes for that game. I LOVE the original Thief series, it's one of my most cherished gaming memories. So hearing that they were revitalizing the franchise had me jumping for joy. I didn't mind that they had picked a new voice actor for Garrett, I thought the new guy sounded fine, and the original voice actor isn't obligated to do the job again. I didn't mind that they had introduced some supernatural elements with the Focus mechanic. I thought it was pretty cool actually, and didn't have an issue with it. I even didn't mind that they were taking a few pages from the Dishonored playbook. Since Dishonored was heavily inspired by the Thief games, this felt very circular and fitting to me.

What I DID mind was the unplayable piece of crap that I got. Lighting mechanics that you couldn't trust when in or out of light. Unable to jump whenever I damn well wanted to like the first games, unable to attach rope arrows anywhere I want to like the first games. Horrible audio files that had random people saying the same conversation over and over, even on before the previous loop of it was done playing. (seriously that echo shit with street guards was making my ears bleed). Being unable to accurately gauge what objects I could hit with arrows to make a distraction, and which ones I couldn't. A confusing, thread thin connection to the previous games, without any explanation at all about why. (Seriously why does it seem like this is several centuries after the first Thief games, and yet we've got another master thief named Garrett?! The fuck?!) Just, bleh.

The game was a stab to my heart, and pissed me off more than just about any other game has in the past few years. Right up there with the other game that was a big disappointment for me:

Tomb Raider Reboot

I've ranted about this one at length in several other threads, so I'll summarize here.

Terrible plot, terrible acting, disposable cast of characters with the sole purpose of sacrificing themselves so that Lara could grow into a strong woman. Totally illogical actions made by my character when forced into a cutscene, when I could've easily resolved the situation with a well placed bullet, (like I had multiple times before). Side quest gathering stuff that made NO sense to take part in, given the actual life or death situation going on, but hey you have to raid tombs, it's in the title... :/

I wanted to really like that game, as I really enjoy strong, competent female protagonists, but Lara didn't do it for me. Yeah the game was about her becoming a heroic badass, but the journey that they made me go through was so frustrating and unbelievable in the motivations of the characters, that I just couldn't buy it, or feel any kind of empathy for her journey and struggle.

 

[CaitSeith]

Metroid: Other M

The end boss battle and the ending were both huge let downs for me. Let me put the equivalent in Legend of Zelda terms. Imagine that Link is about to start the last battle, fully equipped and ready to kick Ganondorf's ass. But then... Tingle appears out of nowhere, says "kooloo limpah" and vanishes Ganondorf in a puff of colorful smoke. Then Link rides towards the horizon, while Zelda monologues about why Ganondorf was so evil. Roll credits. The End.

A pay off that never came (or came too late, if you count the bonus boss battle).

 

[VincentX3]

Don't care how many years it's been since then but it will always be Mass Effect 3.

Sure, over the past years I've played my fair share of shitty or otherwise disappointing games, but so far no single game has managed to take the shit crown from Mass Effect 3.

 

[VincentX3]

Mine was 'Silent Hill Homecoming'. As someone who really liked 'Silent Hill: The Room' and shrugged off 'Origins' as fan fiction made by another studio I had no further excuse for 'Homecoming'. After the first two hours I realized that I couldn't sugarcoat this one. Silent Hill was dead and even though 'Shattered Memories' and 'Downpour' were oaky-ish they could never hope to be as good as the first three games.

Agreed.

Who's smart idea was to take a horror & combat-lite franchise and say:

"Ya know what this franchise needs?"
"What?"
"GUNS N TACTICAL SHIT!"

Seriously, all they needed was Doritos and Mtn.dew as health drinks.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Twisted Metal (PS3) and Playstation All Stars Battle Royale.

Neither of these games suck, but I hyped myself up for them A LOT and neither of them turned out to be amazing.

I'm a Twisted Metal fan, and we haven't gotten a proper console game in that series for a long time so when it was announced I was excited. But it didn't feel like Twisted Metal to me. It seemed way too complex, every car had an alternate special and most of them were more complicated then "aim it properly and fire", other weapons had alternate fire modes, and it was just too much crap to pile on to the simple pleasure of driving around, smashing through everything and blowing up other cars. That fun was still there but the complexity made it feel like I was playing a different series. The online mode being very unreliable didn't help which sucked because I was really looking forward to some of the unique online modes they had. I'm not saying different is bad, it's still better than decent, but it's not great. The story cutscenes looked better than they ever had in the series, so that's a plus.

As for All Stars, I like the game, I still play it and I think it's fun. But it's not as fun as Smash, it doesn't have all the cool nostalgia nods Smash had like their trophies and other collectibles (I play Smash for the gameplay, I've been a Sony fanboy for most of my life so all of Smash's nostalgia bait goes over my head, I was looking forward to the nostalgia from a Sony smash game), and last but not least: Crash and Spyro never showed up. I have no idea who let that slide but their omission is a letdown and not just for me.

 

[Danny Dowling]

Destiny at the BAFTAs

 

[THM]

Most recent disappointment is Just Cause 2. I'd watched Yahtzee's Drown Out of it lots of times and thought, 'That looks fun.'

And then I bought the damn thing. Maybe I wasn't 'playing it right', because I found it massively frustrating on multiple levels. That and the voice acting was just garbage - total and complete garbage. (Glad I got it at a bargain-basement price.)

Then again, I ended up buying and selling Fallout 3 three times because I kept forgetting how frustrated I got over the gameplay, so I can't really point fingers.

Destiny got a BAFTA? What the hell were they smoking?

 

[Blue_screen]

Warhammer 40k: Fire Warrior for the PS2.

Man I was hyped. This 40k unniverse seemed like a blast, humans were the bad guys, eternal war....and it was a FPS. The ammount of awesome it promised my teenager mind was boundless.

And then I played the demo. Oh....this is totally bogus.

 

[ClockworkAngel]

Hmm. I don't know if this is my single, biggest disappointment in gaming, but I'm going to go with Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. I loved the first Lords of Shadow. It was a brilliant spin on the franchise, and the ending had me super-duper psyched for the sequel.
Lords of Shadow 2 did have some bright spots, but overall it was a big disappointment. The game's internal logic was just all kinds of backwards (see: stealth-section enemies), and the developers thoroughly wasted the story potential of playing as Dracula. And I think the game would have benefited greatly from sticking to the chapter-level design of the first game instead of trying to go open-world. I think it would have given the gameplay a tighter focus.
When Lords of Shadow 2 was such a flop, I looked up the developer's track record and .. suddenly, I wasn't so surprised. Today, I have to wonder how good the first Lords of Shadow would have been without the help of Kojima Productions.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Spore: It was supposed to be this evolution simulator with a healthy serving of Star Trek-style space travel (visiting new worlds, influencing their civilizations).

Followed development for years as that ambitious goal slowly dwindled into: Here's five popular game mechanics watered down for small children. BUT WITH GOOGLY-EYES!

This. Spore single-handedly raised my expectations for what a game could be, and I have yet to play a game that lives up to those expectations.

That pretty much sums it up. That's my single biggest disappointment as well. Had such high hopes for Spore..

 

[BoogieManFL]

Impire: This one was sort of on me, because I thought it was going to be essentially "Dungeon Keeper 3". Man was I wrong, this game was terrible. So repetitive and boring.

System Shock 2: Ok, I heard so much hype about how awesome this game was, and I'll admit I can see why people like it: it has a creepy and oppressive atmosphere, it's scary, and it genuinely feels like 'survival horror'. But the absolutely murderous difficulty, respawning enemies, and (perhaps most ridiculous of all) the guns that break after being fired 4 times, just killed my desire to play it any further. It was just too frustrating.

Syndicate: I LOVED the original Syndicate, and when I heard it was being remade I was hyped. "Yes, Syndicate with next-gen graphics! Oh, it's a FPS game now? Well, maybe it'll be a tactical FPS! Oh it's not? Ok, well maybe it'll still be good! I can't see, why is there all this bloom? Why can't I turn down the bloom!? Agh, I'm blind!!". What was sad is that I actually thought the shooting action was quite good, but the game had zero support from the devs after release and had way too many stupid qualities to really enjoy.

Dawn of War 2: I absolutely loved the 1st Dawn of War, and when I first read about how DOW 2 would be done I was excited. But instead they basically cut off a lot of DOW at the knees. They drastically reduced the size of squads and armies, added ridiculous "boss battles" to nearly every mission, and the missions felt incredibly repetitive. I will give it credit for having great graphics and sound effects (the sound of the Dreadnought auto-cannon gave me an ear orgasm) but I never could bring myself to finish the game.

Go check out Satellite Reign if you haven't, from what I understand it's being made by the people who made Syndicate Wars and is generally looking like a sequel or a reboot of the Syndicate series, in proper fashion and not some first person cash grab attempt.

 

[THM]

Warhammer 40k: Fire Warrior for the PS2.

Yeah; the gameplay was awful. Voice acting was solid, though.

 

[ForumSafari]

from overpowered base defenses, to landscape deformation allowing artillery to troll by making the entire map unbuilable, to instant capture/sell engineer strats...blah.

Most of those are mitigated with a good playstyle.

Frankly if you're routinely getting pwnt by engineer rush then you're building your base wrong. Concrete floor and walls are there for a reason and engineers are absurdly slow.

Base defenses are powerful but I'm not seeing how they're overpowered, in fact most of them seem underpowered. RPG launchers can be destroyed by a single infantryman since they have a blind spot up close and Obelisks can be mobbed very easily by any infantryman and 2 medics or beaten by aircraft.

Landscape deformation also shouldn't be an issue since each map includes base areas which aren't deformable along with areas around each Tiberium patch.

The meta point of all 3 is that everything in an RTS is a value proposition, you don't judge anything based on what it can do, you judge it on whether it makes back its' money or wins you the game. If someone's engineer rushing a $2000 warfactory or $3000 construction yard with like $3000 to $5000 of engineers each which can be stymied with $1000 of infantry (or like $750 of Devils Tongue) then that's not a great value proposition, particularly since your investment can be used to attack, defend and produce more forces whereas their investment is a one shot attack. The Obelisk might roflstomp tanks, as might the RPG launcher, but for their total costs ($1500 for the Obelisk or something like $1350 for the RPG Launcher and Component Tower all in iirc) they were individually vulnerable to multiple vectors of attack up to and including being duffed up by like $1200 of infantry for the Obelisk or $300 for the RPG Launcher. Bombarding the battlefield with artillery is cute but whilst you're doing that the opponent is either prepping to go straight at your base with their titan/wolverine spam or digging in and teching up for the APC/Commando/Cluster Missile special.