Biggest Disappointment games of all time...

[RampantAndroid]

Halo 3. Worst iteration of Halo yet. Halo the original was excellent and they nailed it on the head with Halo 2. Then ruined it with Halo 3, then half a come back with Halo Reach. They should skip re-releasing Halo 1 and go to what everyone was playing - Halo 2.

Yes, this is why Halo 3 held sales records for the first week of sales. A single platform game did that. It took MW2 to unseat Halo 3 as the best selling game. A multiplatform game. And for selling on 3 platforms, it barely doubled the sales of Halo 3. Halo Reach BEAT Halo 3's sales numbers.

Don't get me wrong, I love Halo CE, but the remake will be awesome.

 

[Pia]

I can't stand HL2. It seems like it lacked story. There's no explanation for what's going on. 1/3 of the game is driving and 1/3 is avoiding the ground. It seems like the whole game is a bunch of random crap. I played through it once and never played it again.

Valve tried too hard to make a Hollywood movie with the X-Files crap, talking animals, characters with "personality" and cutesy robots/headcrabs. The fantasy of Half-Life worked much better in the vacuum of Black Mesa/Xen. HL2 has even wussier weapons and damage model than in HL1 -> meh.

One thing I have noticed is that Hard difficulty in HL games is merely tedious instead of the fun kind of hard; fights that should be exciting become drawn-out cover-camping, sniping and AI abusing affairs. If I were to replay any HL game, I would do it on Normal even though my first time around was on Hard.

I still liked HL2 quite a bit - it has a lot of beautiful level design and sense of space.

Quake 3 was a let down too. There's no single player. wtf? Quake 1 is still a freaky game to play and Quake 2 is cartoonish fun, but Q3 has no redeeming qualities.

Well, they concentrated on the multi, which AFAIK turned out so well that it still remains the go-to option for the rocketjumping, 1v1 faction of FPS players. I can see how it would be a disappointment if you were expecting single player, of course.

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

I can't stand HL2. It seems like it lacked story. There's no explanation for what's going on. 1/3 of the game is driving and 1/3 is avoiding the ground. It seems like the whole game is a bunch of random crap. I played through it once and never played it again.


Quake 3 was a let down too. There's no single player. wtf? Quake 1 is still a freaky game to play and Quake 2 is cartoonish fun, but Q3 has no redeeming qualities.

Quake 3 is the best multiplayer fps ever made. There...I got that off my chest and I feel better now

 

[ebow86]

Metal Gear Solid 4 by leaps and bounds. I am one of the biggest fans of MGS1 and MGS2, and have played all the titles released up until MGS4.

I bought the MGS4 PS3 bundle pack, and it wasn't 1 hr into the game that I realized the title wasn't actually a game. Instead, it was an 8hr long movie with little bits of gameplay inbetween.

Controls were clunky, and I still to this day never understood what all the fuss was about the graphics, IMHO they were completely unimpressive compared to what was out at the time. Being such a big fan of the series, this game was a monumental letdown IMO.


Driver 3. Where do I even begin with this game? Driver 1 and 2 was awesome technical achievements on the Playstation. I remember friends as well as myself were so psyched for this game. 5 minutes of playing it hit us that this game was not what we were expecting.

 

[ShawnD1]

(MGS4) Controls were clunky, and I still to this day never understood what all the fuss was about the graphics, IMHO they were completely unimpressive compared to what was out at the time. Being such a big fan of the series, this game was a monumental letdown IMO.

Yep. Devs haven't yet figured out that real life looks very bland and boring. Have you seen what Iraq looks like? It's boring. Games look a lot better when they are as colorful as a gay man's living room. I thought GTA Vice City looked really damn nice. Then GTA 4 comes out and it looks like crap.

The most frustrating thing about the MGS story is that it has an enormous plot hole at the end. You need to walk through a hallway of microwaves and you're not allowed to use your metal barrel to shield you. wtf? He would have got through the entire hall with only minor damage to his feet.
You can try this at home. Find a metal cup and fill it with water. Now microwave it for 30 seconds. I've done this before. The water will still be ice cold; the metal shields the water so it doesn't get hit by microwaves.

 

[RPD]

After thinking more about this, White Knight was a HUGE let down for me. It went from must buy to uh I'll pass.

But now it comes free with the 2nd game, which reviews say are a lot better.

 

[Sulaco]

I'm going to throw out FFIX and Metal Gear Solid.

I've always loved stealth games. I REALLY wanted to love Metal Gear, but just couldn't. It's just too silly. Most of the gameplay is decent (although even that has some "w...t...f" moments), but I just could not care about the horrendously anime-ish plot and goofy-as-hell characters, and try and take the game seriously. And don't get me started on the villains. This crap was fine in the NES days when we were all 7 years old and bad guys like "Revolver Ocelot" seemed "totally radical!", but I just couldn't care anymore, and went back to playing Thief. If you're trying to tell a story that you think is terribly important and you want the player to feel the same, don't make me "face palm" every other cutscene.
Once the Splinter Cell series was out, I never looked back.

FFIX for many of the same reasons. I didn't play it when it was new. Picked it up in 2003 or 2004, after hearing dozens of personal recommendations for it.
It's not as bad as VIII, I'll give it that. But it has easily some of the WORST characters, worst villains, and least interesting plot line of the series. That, in an RPG, is death. If I don't care about the characters, their struggle, or where the plot is going, I could give two shits about the battle dynamics, summon spells, or card games.

 

[jdyeah]

Fable fucking 3. Not only is it crap, but the savegame file system is utters shit. I had nearly 100% completion and all I needed was 1 silver key and it got corrupted.

FF13-Utter POS. I literally played through the whole game plressing one button and used no strategy in combat at all.

MGS4-The game so sucked and the video clips sooooo long I didnt even know what it was about.

Transformers (first movie one on xbox360) WTF?!? Wow, so bad I cant even describe it.

ET (Atari 400/800 computer version) History has already said it all. 1,000,000 carts buried in new mexico. But, it did talk at the end of the game, which literally lasted 5 mins, if you sucked that is.

7th Guest - PC. Yeah, cd multimedia hype in the 90s. I had to buy 3 different video cards to even find 1 that worked. After many 100s of dollars I found one (STB) that worked only to be bored to tears at how bad it was.

Myst, yes myst, I dont care how many 1000000000s of copies they sold, it is one boring POS.

Man, I can list for days.

Gears of war 1-One button to do it all. Really? I guess my other 10 dont mean shit. I still havent finished it because the save system sucks!

And speaking of save systems, that brings me to....

Resident Evil (3do and a few other later releases) WTF is up with the stupid typwriter save system? Other than the fact that typewriters were obsolete even in the time of the first game, dudes, pause, save game, continue, die, load last quick save.

The only one I have played out of that list other than REvil, was Myst and that game was pretty sweet.

But its all about personal preference I suppose..

 

[jdyeah]

Q3 was a big disappointment for me.

Once they brought in the jump-pad and made the railgun a 2 shots-to-kill-weapon, I was irritated with the series. No single player...the graphics somehow looked worse to me. Not sure why..

Loved me some grappling..didn't they take that away in Q3/4? I could be wrong on that..I'm pretty tired.


we still played it a lot on LANS and pub servers but the community really died down after that game released. The Q2 community was huge. I do realize that CS took a big chunk of that community as well.

 

[thespyder]

So my list is as follows:

Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
What utter crap that was. And buggy as all get out. Absolutely hands down the worst installation of the D&D license to date (with the possible exception of hillsfar). BTW - PC Game. But included for overall Crapiness.

Dragon Age 2
Ok, so I get that the DEV team intentionally went a different direction from the original and that it was never intended to be the same game, but come on. No warning what so ever to the core audience that they were deeply and thoroughly killing the franchise. And that they were dumping/shaving it down nothing more than expansion size while gutting the whole mechanics too boot.

Resident Evil
After playing 4-5, I went back to play the original and boy was I disapointed. Horrible controls. limited and sucky save features. Poor graphics (which was fully expected). Just all around disapointment of what I was hoping would be a fantastic experience. Granted my expectations may have caused a lot of my disapointments.

Metroid: Fusion
After Metroid: Zero Mission, I again had HUGELY High expectations. And so although it was a medeocre game, it paled in my eyes because it couldn't compare with the previous game.

Heavenly Sword
After reading how great this game was, and playing God of War, I was very much excited about this title. Upon purchasing, i played for maybe 4 hours trying in vein to like the game. Poor camera angles, gimmicky changes in game mechanics for specific missions and overall lack of intuitive gameplay (over GoW) killed it for me.

I am sure there are others, but those are my top.

 

[Via]

So my list is as follows:

Pools of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
What utter crap that was. And buggy as all get out. Absolutely hands down the worst installation of the D&D license to date (with the possible exception of hillsfar). BTW - PC Game. But included for overall Crapiness.

Dragon Age 2
Ok, so I get that the DEV team intentionally went a different direction from the original and that it was never intended to be the same game, but come on. No warning what so ever to the core audience that they were deeply and thoroughly killing the franchise. And that they were dumping/shaving it down nothing more than expansion size while gutting the whole mechanics too boot.

Resident Evil
After playing 4-5, I went back to play the original and boy was I disapointed. Horrible controls. limited and sucky save features. Poor graphics (which was fully expected). Just all around disapointment of what I was hoping would be a fantastic experience. Granted my expectations may have caused a lot of my disapointments.

Metroid: Fusion
After Metroid: Zero Mission, I again had HUGELY High expectations. And so although it was a medeocre game, it paled in my eyes because it couldn't compare with the previous game.

Heavenly Sword
After reading how great this game was, and playing God of War, I was very much excited about this title. Upon purchasing, i played for maybe 4 hours trying in vein to like the game. Poor camera angles, gimmicky changes in game mechanics for specific missions and overall lack of intuitive gameplay (over GoW) killed it for me.

I am sure there are others, but those are my top.

RE 1-3 needed to played when they first came out. They were fantastic games back then.

PoR:MD was actually patched into a playable state. I mostly enjoyed it, but only because the Dungeon crawler/tactical battles combination was right up my alley when I played it. Plus - I wasn't expecting anything, and I paid almost nothing for it.

Expectations definitely have a lot to do with game enjoyment.

 

[purbeast0]

yea hating on RE1-3 now because of controls really isn't fair. those games were so amazing when they first came out. i remember the first time the dogs busted the windows at the beginning of RE1 i nearly shit my pants.

but it's fair to say he was disappointed since he expected something totally different after playing RE4 and RE5, which are actually NOTHING like RE1-3, and was a huge reason i did not like RE4 and RE5. they were shooters, not survival horror games IMO.

 

[foghorn67]

Descent Freespace.
I wanted a space combat sim so bad. This is when 3d accelerated gaming was the real deal. And everyone was looking for the next TIE fighter.
The magazine ads would give the awesome sense of scale with the massive capital ships. But the game never felt that awesome. It was good, but not great.

 

[thespyder]

RE 1-3 needed to played when they first came out. They were fantastic games back then.

PoR:MD was actually patched into a playable state. I mostly enjoyed it, but only because the Dungeon crawler/tactical battles combination was right up my alley when I played it. Plus - I wasn't expecting anything, and I paid almost nothing for it.

Expectations definitely have a lot to do with game enjoyment.

I'll take your word on PoR: MD. Even when the game worked, I did not like the whole thing where Rogues couldn't go beyond a certain distance from the party. No scouting ahead. And no Wizards, only sorcerers? Just a few of the poor design choices (IMHO) that I remember from my tries. ToEE was SO MUCH BETTER (though also buggy).

 

[michal1980]

Pull out the hat8raid. Cause here it comes.

Mass Effect 2.
Talk, more talk, walk around, talk, walk around talk. Talk shot, talk, talk shot, talk, load.

GTA4
Wow, a classic how to stop trying story.

Red dead redemption.
A skinned over GTA game. Maybe I'm getting to old for sand box. Or maybe sand box has been done wrong. Actually the story almost had me, and I might try it again if I'm in a different mood. But then again, I have to go back and forth on this horse how many miles. Yes deserts can be boring, but games shouldn't be.

Perfect Dark Zero.
Zero's in the name. Thats what the game was worth.

Oblivion.
Oh look another tower to climb up. I did what 25 thousands of these already? This is what hell is like.

MGS4-
Only because of the loading times. I mean come on, 45 hour long load screens? Almost made me want to start smoking.

AC2-
Because everyone hated on how repetitive the first one was. Well guess what, same thing here. I wish I played it before they added the 'missing' chapters.

Rockband 3.
You take a good thing, almost make it better, but in the process manage to screw things up. I mean if you have 5 people playing, its obvious one doesn't care about score. obvious right?


Far Cry 2.
Yes I was crying, of boredom.

StALKER
See Far Cry 2.

Resistance 2
Why oh why did you have to make it 'better'

Portal 2 - I cannot believe I feel for the hype train again.

Theres more I have to check my shelf.

 

[Sulaco]

Resident Evil
After playing 4-5, I went back to play the original and boy was I disapointed. Horrible controls. limited and sucky save features. Poor graphics (which was fully expected). Just all around disapointment of what I was hoping would be a fantastic experience. Granted my expectations may have caused a lot of my disapointments.

That actually reminded me I'm the exact opposite, so I have to throw out Resident Evil 5 as one of my biggest personal disappointments of all time.

I'm a HUGE RE fan. Bought a PSX solely for RE at first, and every single game has been a day 1 purchase for me. What those old games lacked in control and graphics, they made up for in SURVIVAL HORROR (the genre they helped define), something the new games totally lack.

Outside of the graphics, RE 5 was atrocious to me, and a total affront to the series and genre.

-The story was bad, which is of course purely subjective, but with each passing game, they become less "horror" and more "anime action with blood". Not engaging in the least.

-That brings me to my second point, it's just not scary. 95% of the game's enemies are "zombies", the "hordes" are predictable, and most all of the tensions comes from the awkward controls, not from good direction. Once the zombies started carrying assault rifles and I was n firefights with them, it became a total joke.
There are just simply NO GOOD SCARY parts, and very little tension. Nothing like the "dogs through the window" in RE1, the Licker scene in RE 2, the Chained Woman in RE remake, etc.

It's not a bad action game, but it fails miserably as survival horror, and I've lost hope in the RE series. Which is sad, as it defined a lot of my 32-bit gaming.

 

[exdeath]

Yes, this is why Halo 3 held sales records for the first week of sales. A single platform game did that. It took MW2 to unseat Halo 3 as the best selling game. A multiplatform game. And for selling on 3 platforms, it barely doubled the sales of Halo 3. Halo Reach BEAT Halo 3's sales numbers.

Don't get me wrong, I love Halo CE, but the remake will be awesome.

And Honda Civics outsell Ferraris, doesn't mean it's better.

Halo is a pretty crappy standard FPS for the masses that don't really know any better. Pretty much console gamers first experience of what PC gamers had been used to for 10 years prior.

 

[exdeath]

That actually reminded me I'm the exact opposite, so I have to throw out Resident Evil 5 as one of my biggest personal disappointments of all time.

I'm a HUGE RE fan. Bought a PSX solely for RE at first, and every single game has been a day 1 purchase for me. What those old games lacked in control and graphics, they made up for in SURVIVAL HORROR (the genre they helped define), something the new games totally lack.

Outside of the graphics, RE 5 was atrocious to me, and a total affront to the series and genre.

-The story was bad, which is of course purely subjective, but with each passing game, they become less "horror" and more "anime action with blood". Not engaging in the least.

-That brings me to my second point, it's just not scary. 95% of the game's enemies are "zombies", the "hordes" are predictable, and most all of the tensions comes from the awkward controls, not from good direction. Once the zombies started carrying assault rifles and I was n firefights with them, it became a total joke.
There are just simply NO GOOD SCARY parts, and very little tension. Nothing like the "dogs through the window" in RE1, the Licker scene in RE 2, the Chained Woman in RE remake, etc.

It's not a bad action game, but it fails miserably as survival horror, and I've lost hope in the RE series. Which is sad, as it defined a lot of my 32-bit gaming.

I did miss that aspect as well. It was always running, don't stop or look behind you, always shooting, following a linear path, and spraying bullets non stop. Never calm, never exploring, never suspense, it was all just a run and gun linear arcade action game really. You hardly get to just enjoy the ambiance and explore or solve riddles, and there were no real puzzles beyond mashing buttons at the right time in prescripted action sequences or "get the key and open the door to the next section" gameplay.

I still liked it sorta and played it to death unlocking all the weapons and infinite ammo, but still it wasn't the Resident Evil I like. Nothing comes close to the original or Code Veronica. When you had to knife shit and count your bullets on 1 hand... then RE2 game along and turned it into an arcade game with infinite ammo and infinite zombies with infinite health requiring 100 bullets to kill them. Boooo.

It's kinda like Final Fantasy 7+, they might be decent games on their own, but Final Fantasy they are not. Final Fantasy was long done with 6 after which Yoshitaka Amano and other key players of the design team from 1-6, when Square was Square and not Square-Enix, stepped down and moved to other projects. Now days it's just a name and marketing label. People buy it because of the name, not having a clue what it used to stand for and how it earned that reputation that it no longer supports.

Today's ADHD "moar HD splosions, guns, and b00biez!!1!" gamers can't sit still long enough or put the controller down for a heart warming 1 hour ending sequence of a REAL Final Fantasy game.

 

[jmarti445]

Guilty gear 2: Overture for Xbox 360

 

[purbeast0]

And Honda Civics outsell Ferraris, doesn't mean it's better.

Halo is a pretty crappy standard FPS for the masses that don't really know any better. Pretty much console gamers first experience of what PC gamers had been used to for 10 years prior.

such a tired and played out statement.

listen, it's okay if people's opinions differe from yours. just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean it's a crappy game. who cares if pc gamers experienced FPS before console gamers? why does that really matter?

halo was the first FPS that worked with a controller and online way better than anything did prior to it. it also had great graphics (at it's time) for a console game. and best of all - it was tons of fun! to say otherwise is just wrong (and i won't deny goldeneye it's place in history as well, that has a place too). and it stood it's ground for years until, as someone else stated, the COD franchise took it off it's pedestool.

i know it gets old school pc gamers all butt hurt, but it's just a fact that PC gaming has nothing on console gaming anymore, other than specific genres like RTS or MMORPG. it gets tiring hearing people on CONSOLE forums always bring up the "get off my lawn" PC statements.

 

[American Gunner]

such a tired and played out statement.

listen, it's okay if people's opinions differe from yours. just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean it's a crappy game. who cares if pc gamers experienced FPS before console gamers? why does that really matter?

halo was the first FPS that worked with a controller and online way better than anything did prior to it. it also had great graphics (at it's time) for a console game. and best of all - it was tons of fun! to say otherwise is just wrong (and i won't deny goldeneye it's place in history as well, that has a place too). and it stood it's ground for years until, as someone else stated, the COD franchise took it off it's pedestool.

i know it gets old school pc gamers all butt hurt, but it's just a fact that PC gaming has nothing on console gaming anymore, other than specific genres like RTS or MMORPG. it gets tiring hearing people on CONSOLE forums always bring up the "get off my lawn" PC statements.

I agree. If PC gamers hate console gaming so much, maybe they should stay in their own forum.

 

[exdeath]

I agree. If PC gamers hate console gaming so much, maybe they should stay in their own forum.

Maybe trying to be PCs is what has started making consoles boring? No more Chrono Trigger or Super Metroid on consoles anymore, all we get now are 15 varieties of Call of Duty every month.

Guess now we can genuinely say consoles have the same experience as a PC: dime a dozen mediocre FPS rehashes and copycats and no more original games yay!

DRM killed PC gaming.
3D killed console gaming.

 

[ShawnD1]

Maybe trying to be PCs is what has started making consoles boring? No more Chrono Trigger or Super Metroid on consoles anymore, all we get now are 15 varieties of Call of Duty every month.

Makes sense. Back in the 2D days, PC gaming kinda sucked. Keyboard and mouse is great for 3D shooter games but games like Super Mario should never be played like that. Now it's totally switched. PC now has the better controls and consoles are trying to copy that, which is stupid.

DRM killed PC gaming.
3D killed console gaming.

true
It's generally understood that the worst Castlevania game was when they tried to switch to 3D. It just looked horrible. Always a battle with the camera.

 

[purbeast0]

Maybe trying to be PCs is what has started making consoles boring? No more Chrono Trigger or Super Metroid on consoles anymore, all we get now are 15 varieties of Call of Duty every month.

Guess now we can genuinely say consoles have the same experience as a PC: dime a dozen mediocre FPS rehashes and copycats and no more original games yay!

DRM killed PC gaming.
3D killed console gaming.

maybe you just need to open your eyes. there are TONS of AAA titles that aren't FPS that are on consoles. here are a few franchises that i can think off the top of my head.

Uncharted
God of War
Gears of War
Street Fighter IV
GTA
Crackdown
Ratchet and Clank
NBA 2K
Hot Shots Golf
Forza
Burnout
Mario
Zelda

 

[American Gunner]

^^Don't forget Assassins Creed, Batman, Oblivion, Infamous, and Mass Effect. Sure, anyone can say that all games are the same, but real gamers can look around and find the awesome games out there.