The biggest disappointments in your personal gaming history

[Snorkack]

The Half Life 2 thread made me think a bit. Throughout my career in gaming there were a few games that were highly anticipated and conceived with great praise but left a bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth.
Just wondering what your biggest let-downs have been. I'm not talking about those high profile failures where the trainwreck could be seen miles ahead (Nomanssky, Nu Duke Nukem,...).

Here's mine:
3. Might&Magic X Legacy
Despite Ubisoft being the publisher, everything the Limbic guys showed off got me hooked right from the first trailer. And while I appreciate that they indeed developed a cRPG tailored towards the older hardcore player, it didn't turn out to be the game I had expected, or had hoped for. The obvious lack of budget aside, it just wasn't what defined the M&M series for me at all. You can't hold down a button and mow through hundreds of trashmobs in seconds anymore. Now every encounter takes ages: First you have to endure the slow enemy movement until you are in close combat, then you have to chip away their bloated health bar.
Instead of a huge world to explore right off the bat you are confined to tiny maps that feel like they're the size of my front yard, plus, the first third of the game is strictly linear.

2. Diablo 2
I must be one of those two guys that didn't play Diablo for grinding farm in multiplayer but for the tension. D2 clearly wasn't made for me in mind. It felt like an overengineered project, that wasn't the result of a creative vision but of numerous market studies.
Anyways, I was annoyed by this game. Why are there people/critter following me? I want to explore dark caverns and tombs on my own! Speaking of which - why am I outside in the countryside 90% of the time and why are all indoor areas brightly lit? Environments were inviting rather than hostile. And what's with those stupid esoteric story bits everywhere? I just wanna explore hell and kick Diablo's ass!

1. The N64
I grew up with NES and Super NES. When the N64 was announced, I was super-hyped! I had a promo VHS where they showed bits of Mario 64, Wave Racer and some other launch titles. I watched that tape easily a hundred times and begged my mom to preorder one for me, which she eventually did.
I ended up owning three games for the N64: Mario 64, Zelda OoT and Mario Kart, none of which I remember too fondly. Especially Zelda OoT - SNES Zelda is probably one of my favourite games of all time and I found the transition to 3D godawful. Never made it past the 4th temple or so. Similar with a lot of other franchises I loved - they either were inferior to their (S)NES precursors (Starfox, Mario, MarioKart), or there wasn't an N64 entry at all (Metroid, Street Fighter, Mega Man), which was actually for the better, I guess. Also on the SNES I first came in touch with cRPGs like Eye of the Beholder and Might&Magic 2 (Albeit those ports already suffered from console decline, as I now know). What did the N64 offer? Quest 64.
Fuck this console, seriously! Why is it so loved? There are maybe 5 games I could recognize as classics, two of them aged horribly (Tried to play goldeneye the other day. Lol those controls and render distance :D )

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

oblivion.
i grew up with daggerfall, i loved morrowind, so i preordered the collector's edition of oblivion. it's the sequel to both, how can things go wrong?

fahrenheit.
meh, it's a nice little game, some experimenting, plot can be a bit stupid but i think i'll like it anywaWHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?! HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU CAN'T BE THIS RETARDED! STOP! PLEASE! PLEASE STOP! oh lord...

the republic
months and months of non-stop ball busting "demis hassabis is much intelligenter then u becuz he's the best and he's a genius and you're retarded and he's smart and he plays chess and he's a genius and you're not and he's a genius and he'll deliver the best gaem ever because he's a genius and plays chess". and then one of the most retarded games ever happened.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Frontier: First Encounters - if you try and buy a new ship do anything it crashes. Story peters out before getting anywhere.
Ultima 8 - Super Avatar Brothers
Ultima 9 - Tech demo for Gothic 1
Battlecruiser 3000AD - Usenet war with big-head was amusing, though.
Witcher 2 - Unplayable twitchy tedium.
Every straight Atari ST port to the Amiga. If I wanted a shitty 16 colour game with tiny sprites I'd have bought an ST.

That was from back when I still had hopes and dreams. These days I'm used to mediocrity so nothing can ever disappoint me.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Every straight Atari ST port to the Amiga. If I wanted a shitty 16 colour game with tiny sprites I'd have bought an ST.

The Amiga version of Dungeon Master is barely changed from the original Atari ST version.

 

[Sranchammer]

D:OS was the game that made me lose trust in the Gaming forums and drove me into the sweet embrace of GD - where the Old Gaming Gods are still worshiped.

 

[Jazz_]

Morrowind: I thought it was going to be like Gothic 1 but bigger, instead it was this barren, dead world with a few dull npcs here and there and loading screens everywhere I went, fuck that shit.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (or something like that): I was so stocked for this game after reading some previews that hyped it in sean murray-esque fashion, be part of a living, breathing, futuristic city, you can explore every building, yada yada yada. I bought the game as soon as it came out and well, it was kinda shit. Even the Bowie's soundtrack was underwhelming.

 

[mondblut]

Hearing that BG1 isn't going to be turn-based back in 1996.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm usually not "terribly disappointed" with something. Typically I just shrug and uninstall if a game sucks, even if it's one I had some hopes for. But there is one exception.

Bioshock.

I was excited like a little girl for that game, and all I got in the end was a stinking pile of crap that I couldn't even be bothered to finish. Although I guess I should be thankful to it in at least some way, because it was probably my first major gaming red pill when it comes to hype, journos and 10/10 reviews.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Pretty certain there's been a topic like this before.

Ultima 9 = BETRAYAL!

[/thread]

 

[markec]

Oblivion, big fan of previous TES games and got hyped by all the promises and official gameplay videos. Playing the game felt like someone is constantly punching me in the balls.

Deus Ex 2, fuck this game.

Blood 2, first is one of my all time favorite games, second one is just bad

Master of Orion 3, disappointment.

Lords of Realm 3, second one is great simple and fun game, why turn it into shit.

Simon the Sorcerer 3, just google the screenshots.

Pillars of Eternity, fuck Obsidian.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

In my personal gaming history?

1. Disappointed with Larian's decision to cut modding tools (and any meaningful support for several years) after overhyping the shit out of them during D:OS campaing;

2. Shadowrun Returns series. But I'm more disappointed in myself buying into them thanks to Codex.

3. Wasteland 2, I started writing a witty snipped but got too bored mid-sentence. Sums it up nicely, actually.

 

[Gentle Player]

System Shock 2. It's still a good game, and I did enjoy it, but it was terribly disappointing to me after coming from the original and then Thief.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Neverwinter Nights 1 vanilla campaign. This was probably when I lost the last shred of trust in game reviews because according to everyone it was 10/10 the next Baldur's Gate ONLY BETTER!!!1!1. I'm not even that much of a BG fan but comparing the two makes BG look like a flawless masterpiece.

Heroes of Might and Magic 4. Looking back at it, it improved upon a few things from 3 but I still haven't touched it since it came out because I also remember the bad parts and they're really fucking bad.

 

[skacky]

Diablo 3: first playthrough was pretty good but the lack of really unique build possibilities and overall lackluster content annoyed me quite a bit. Didn't even attempt to play through higher difficulties and to this day I have not touched the game again. Oh and technical issues galore at release.

Darkest Dungeon: RNG: the game. There is zero logic to it. No matter your skill or party composition the game will fuck you up sooner or later with no chance of preventing it. It is the only kickstarter game I truly regret wasting my money on.

Deus Ex: Invisible War: lol

Quake 2: Slow as hell and boring visuals. A really wasted opportunity.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Pretty certain there's been a topic like this before.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ame-you-played-from-the-past-10-years.111884/

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-worst-crpg-ever.106102/

There's probably been others with slightly different wording and I think I know the one you mean.

Dragon Age 2 - Origins was about the bottom of my bearability level and 2 just went that one step beyond (or five). I was in two minds about it for a long time, a very long time, but lets not forget, this was the peak of the decline and there was precious little of anything knocking about. I was in a PC shop that had a side in specialising in selling cRPGs. The owner of the shop was even playing DA2 before I went in (I could see from the window outside), he was playing it while I browsed. I asked him if it was any good and he said "yeah! It's great!". It was only 10 bucks by that point and I finally took the dive. I haven't bought a new or newish AAA RPG since and it put me off the whole idea of regularly updating my PC. A momentous game indeed.

Medieval: Total War 2 (and to an extent Rome TW) - gone were practically all the aspects of the game I had played in M:TW. All I was hoping for was the same shit but with general improvements, like a bit more depth in building options, more unit variety, better graphics and the solving of the naval shititude that really didn't work in any way, shape or form. Nah, just prettier but shittier. Prettier meaning sharper, but not prettier in design style. Both put me off ever buying a TW again.

Monopoly - before I ever owned any kind of gaming system I used to look fondly upon the shelves of computer games and wonder how much fun it would be to able to play all those classic board games solo, without all the arranging of people and times. When I, one day, got the ability to play computer games I rushed out to buy Monopoly. After the first game I couldn't believe it, the AI seemed incapable of providing any kind of challenge, no matter what I did. Whatever options I chose the game played like a 5 year old might play it. I never played it again and forever lost trust in anything related to AI, meaning I never bought RISK, Battlechess or any of the other games I had spent so long drooling over.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Fallout 3. I wish there was some possible way that religiontards could be right, that the whole afterlife thing was real, just so Bethesda could go to hell for ever for calling that abomination Fallout.

X4: Rebirth. The worst game of all time. Of. All. Time.

Ultima IX. Unfinished, buggy, short piece of shit that was supposed to be the EPICZ0RZ conclusion to the series but ended up being butchered.

Star Control 3. Utter, shameless cash in, pissing all over my favorite game of all time with stupid lore and continuity mistakes, and villains that came from the Moron Academy.

 

[tormund]

Blood 2

/Thread

 

[Jazz_]

Medieval: Total War 2 (and to an extent Rome TW) - gone were practically all the aspects of the game I had played in M:TW. All I was hoping for was the same shit but with general improvements, like a bit more depth in building options, more unit variety, better graphics and the solving of the naval shititude that really didn't work in any way, shape or form. Nah, just prettier but shittier. Prettier meaning sharper, but not prettier in design style. Both put me off ever buying a TW again.

What makes M:TW1 better than Rome and M:TW2? I played all of them but I don't remember M:TW1 being much better than later iterations in terms of features and AI.

I also forgot to add Deus Ex: Human Revolution to my list, they disregarded all the things that made the first Deus Ex great and the game was just a bland debasement of the ip.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Agree with Diablo2 after years since my last playthrough. How people can enjoy cleaning out maps from respawning mobs? That was nice thing in D1 where dead stay dead unless you start again but who wanted that?, and atmosphere obviously.

Fallout3 was my first expose to so called "decline", the only Bethesda game I ever finished because "you can't just plow through that game, with pumping small guns and meh armor aren't you? you've got to be kiddin' me..." and didn't know level scalling was a thing.

Wasteland 2 and another inxile/Obisidan titles. Boring skillchecks and meh combat. first and only supported Kickstarter project. Even DC version was same shit to me tbh.

Deus Ex IW and next ones. AugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsAugsfuckit oh and pisspoor control, even IW control is far more fluid.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Dark Souls 2 was terrible, cheap fan fiction (and Scholar of the First Sin did nothing to change that).

Dishonorable mentions for Far Cry 3 (I liked Far Cry 2, despite some terrible mechanics) and of course Invisible War, which would take first place but I got better at simply ignoring it.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

What makes M:TW1 better than Rome and M:TW2? I played all of them but I don't remember M:TW1 being much better than later iterations in terms of features and AI.

MTW played like a more interesting version of RISK. It was set on a board and units 'jumped' from blocks of land to other blocks of land. Territory happiness was dependent on buildings, character personalities and taxation level. When you got Chivalric Knights they were a beauty to behold, gleaming white knights that stormed the battlefield like giants, I literally got goosebumps charging them into battle Two Towers style. Everything about the art design of the game was a pleasure to behold. And this is just scraping the surface, I would require pages of text to list everything. I've posted about this many times and had the usual fruitless arguments with MTW2 & Rome fanboys many times, so I shant repeat myself and re-ignite all that again, but I'll add another comparison just so I can look again at the beauty:

vs

I even remember forum'ing at the time and it was a universal criticism of decline how ugly and bland the units had become, with greys and browns and barely even being able to differentiate different units when they're lined up at the bottom of the screen, something that's very important for battle management.

 

[Siobhan]

Alpha Protocol. I love spy stories, be it in movies, comics, or novels. I had just come back from an 8 year gaming hiatus, so these fancy graphics, cinematic camera movements and editing, and professional voice acting seemed very impressive (yes, AP's sub-par graphics looked impressive without a frame of reference). Plus the reviews that declared the "dynamic dialogue" a major innovation. And then the claims that it was a Deus Ex-like --- I had been waiting for a new DX for such a long time. So after 8 years I finally was going to make time in my schedule for a game and play the hell out of this gem. Needless to say, I was crushed, but it was overall a very healthy learning experience.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

A good idea for a thread.

5. Civilization III. MOTHERFUCKER. What even happened? One of my favorite game series was completely ruined in one shot and never had one remotely good installment after that.

4. Morrowind. How could I know how much decline was on the way. At the time I thought this was a one of failure, not realizing that it was a sign of the times and everything would soon get consolized.

3. Hillsfar. Jesus.

2. Wing Commander III+ and privateer. WHY? How can you take a simple concept like WW II in space and totally ruin it like that? Gameplay in 1+2 is great, and from III on it is just a farce. A FARCE I SAY.

1. Dragon Age. Bioware was already pretty shit by then but who could have known what monstrosities they would put out. Hopefully everyone involved with bioware will soon die of cancer like they deserve.

 

[Charles Eli Cheese]

Alpha Protocol. I love spy stories, be it in movies, comics, or novels. I had just come back from an 8 year gaming hiatus, so these fancy graphics, cinematic camera movements and editing, and professional voice acting seemed very impressive (yes, AP's sub-par graphics looked impressive without a frame of reference). Plus the reviews that declared the "dynamic dialogue" a major innovation. And then the claims that it was a Deus Ex-like --- I had been waiting for a new DX for such a long time. So after 8 years I finally was going to make time in my schedule for a game and play the hell out of this gem. Needless to say, I was crushed, but it was overall a very healthy learning experience.

Obshitian, the whole company, is also one of the biggest disappointments. Who could know that something which seemed so promising in concept would never produce anything but disgusting turds.

 

[Krivol]

Wasteland 2 - i really wanted it to be a new fallout or true, modern WL. And it turned out to be a boringfest.

Pillars of Eternity - I was expecting new BG, all I got is uninspared game with stupid, balanced system.

DA :O - no comment, just hype was too high