The biggest disappointments in your personal gaming history

[Shackleton]

For me, despite the let downs of Bioshock and Deus Ex 2, only one game stands out as being something I still feel disappointment for, and not for the reasons of poor design decisions.

The Brad McQuad inspired (or ruined, depending on your perspective) MMO- Vanguard, Saga of Heroes.

This game came at a time when I had quite a lot of free time in my job and I was hankering for something deeper and meatier than WoW. I bought it at launch and must have been one of the few lucky ones, as although the performance was pretty awful, I had no game stopping bugs. It was rough around the edges, no doubt. It was full of glitches and half baked systems, with zones that were barely finished or cobbled together seemingly days before launch. But I loved it! It was like a proper, unexplored and virgin world which had actual challenge and dungeons were massive and interesting. The crafting and diplomacy systems, although not fleshed out, hinted at worldbuilding and scope on a scale that captivated me. I threw myself into it with gusto, impressed at the amount of classes and how varied and rewarding they all (mostly) felt. Settling on a Cleric, I grew my friends list and crafted decent armour, while getting to know the world and discovering more about the systems within it.

I'm probably looking back with rose tinted glasses, (after all, this is the Codex- everything you like is shit), but I was invested in Vanguard more than I'd been in AC2, DAoC, EQ2 or WoW. Perhaps it was the scarce population that made those of us that played it tighter knit and more of a community, but I was amazed more people couldn't see how good it could be. Unfortunately, they never did. Populations declined and server merges happened. The team PvP server I was on, (Edit- Frengrot, that was it!), merged with another EU server and lost it's ruleset. The community was destroyed and pretty quickly after that it was obvious the game was on life support and would never reach it's potential.

It was with a heavy heart I cancelled my sub, and although I gave it another go later on when it went F2P, it was never going to turn it around.

I still felt a pang of regret when I saw SOE shut it down, but it was my last MMO and I can't see anyone making anything like it again. (That includes Pantheon- if that's not vapour I'll be staggered.)

 

[Whisky]

Dragon Age II. It was so disappointing that me getting burned by it was what led me to come here for the first time. I used to lurk the BSN before the Codex and was a faithful Biodrone but DAII was such a slap to the face that I haven't bought anything Bioware again.

 

[Murk]

NWN 1 and then NWN 2; fooled me twice, shame on me... but never againnnn.

Also, EA's seizure of Westwood and the garbage that resulted in the rape of the C&C franchise and the death of one of my favorite devs.

Medal of Honor: Frontline and everything that came after it, including Spearhead and Breakthrough (I still get the urge to play AA original every now and again.)

 

[Modron]

Warcraft 3, Neverwinter Nights, and Morrowind. Harbingers of the decline.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Blood 2 (but it's still pretty good)
Diablo 2
Half-Life 2
Unreal 2
Postal 2
Doom 3
Warcrap 3
GTA3 (and all GTA geams since)
Mortal Kombat 4

 

[Carrion]

ARMA: Armed Assault: While not a terrible game per se, it offers absolutely nothing if you're in it for the single player campaign. I even bought a new computer to be able to play it, because Operation Flashpoint is one of my all-time favorite games, but even I could make a better campaign than this using the mission editor. It's like they weren't even trying.

Invisible War: Deus Ex is my favorite game. This turd is not. It killed all of my hopes of it being good in about fifteen minutes, and I haven't looked back since. This was probably also the point when I fully realized how steep The Decline truly was, and since then I haven't been able to gather much enthusiasm for modern sequels of great games.

Hitman: Codename 47: For me this game was very disappointing because it really should've been great. All of the best elements of the series were already present here in the first game, and it really was full of creativity and fresh ideas. It's too bad that only about one third of the game was actually good, and there were some spectacular failures and mind-boggling design choices throughout the game. The game promised so much more than it actually delivered, and it was only with the second game that they really managed to nail the formula.

Medieval 2: Total War: I guess that with this series you could draw the line in many different places. For me, Medieval 2 was the point where I got burnt out on the series, and after that I didn't play any Total War games until Shogun 2 (which, too, was pretty disappointing as it felt more like an expansion pack than a full game to me). I played a lot of Rome and eventually grew pretty tired of it, and Medieval 2 was more of the same except more repetitive, boring and broken. Mods did improve it later on, but the campaign still remains a boring slog where factions barely feel different from each other, the AI can't cope with even the most basic tactical maneuvers, heavy cavalry wins everything and every battle is a siege that takes an eternity.

Dragon Age: Origins: Wasn't expecting much, got even less. Banal, shit, boring.

Oblivion: It's fucking Oblivion.

 

[octavius]

For me the biggest disappointment was probably that The Eye of the Moon, sequel to Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge, never materialized, and we instead got the real time clusterfuck known as The Citadel.

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.

But didn't that Amiga version have directional sound, while the ST version didn't?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

But didn't that Amiga version have directional sound, while the ST version didn't?

Yes, and the directional sound is a nice bonus but nonetheless a relatively minor change relative to the game as a whole; and Bumvelcrow seemed focused on the ST's graphics, which were virtually unchanged in Dungeon Master's Amiga port.

 

[Mustawd]

But didn't that Amiga version have directional sound, while the ST version didn't?

Yes, and the directional sound is a nice bonus but nonetheless a relatively minor change relative to the game as a whole; and Bumvelcrow seemed focused on the ST's graphics, which were virtually unchanged in Dungeon Master's Amiga port.

^image for ants?

 

[Morality Games]

The biggest disappointments in your personal gaming history

Congratulations. You have discovered the only subject anyone on the Codex really wants to talk about and have become the Immortal Daoist.

I tend to be about everything until it is proven to be :vivelafrance: so, disappointment doesn't come naturally to me.

The 3DS Fire Emblems were all pretty disappointing, even Conquest. For every step forward from the GC/Wii era it was at least one step back in so many ways.

The first 3D gaming generation was a disappointment compared to 2D sidescrolling and top-down games.

 

[Mustawd]

The 3DS Fire Emblems were all pretty disappointing, even Conquest. For every step forward from the GC/Wii era it was at least one step back in so many ways.

Not to derail the thread, but what order do you advice someone to play the FE games in order to go from less complex to most complex (aka fun)?

 

[Gregz]

I know I'm going to get crushed for these, but:

The Bard's Tale II and III - These are feature bloated inferior imitations of the original. Yes BT2 is harder, and there's more content, but it's shoddy content, and when I was young I was a graphics whore. It boggled my mind that a sequel could have inferior graphics to a predecessor, but BT2 certainly did. I loved The Bard's Tale, and the sequels left such a bad taste in my mouth that I became a very very careful cRPG shopper after that experience...it's probably part of the reason I'm here.

Mass Effect 2 - Let's take a decent game, and make it into an incredibly shitty cover shooter, because who cares about gameplay?

Deus Ex: Human Retardation - Let's punish the player for not playing this as a stealth game, every time, all the time.

Bioshock - I loved System Shock 2, this was...so bad

Far Cry 2 - Far Cry was great, here's another example of breaking something that didn't need to be 'fixed'

Diablo 3 - can we monetize the auction house without destroying the game? Let's see

WoW post-WoTLK - money eventually turns anything, and everything, to shit

Half-Life 2 - I have to agree this was a huge step backwards, once again we see realism prioritized over gameplay, resulting in boring

Pierre Begue - Can't you just make another Knights of the Chalice? Why do you hate money? *sigh*

 

[Outlander]

Gothic 3. I preordered it so I played that on day 1.

Deus Ex: Invisible War.

 

[Tigranes]

I spent many years going back in time to play older games, don't pay too much attention to pre-release material, and have some amount of 'enjoy it for what it is' gene required of every Obsidian game purchaser, so not a lot. I also immediately uninstall a lot of games that I realise is going to be shit.

Can't be disappointed by Fallout 3 if you never hoped, and can't be disappointed by Fallout 4 if you never even think about playing it. (Why would you even?) Never really had high hopes for Mass Effects, DA2/3, Bioshock, etc, etc., never mind *heh* Sword Coast Legends.

That said:

Neverwinter Nights 1 - this was when I had started with chance discovery of BG2 then had gone back playing everything in the 90s Golden Age, from Torment to Fallout. This really was a time you could not conceivably imagine Bioware going full-derp-cinematic. And the idea that it will spawn a thousand modules is small comfort when the game first comes out and all you have are Aribeth and the MacGuffins.

Empire: Total War - you're just making the same game over and over again, how can you make it so bad? At least RTW1 was the first to try the post-Risk TW model, and MTW2 kept up appearances of a competent game before breaking apart. Just put Creative Assembly here as a whole, really.

Risen 2 - I really, really liked Risen, meaning PB had a record of 3 great games and 1 decent but overambitious and broken game, by my count. Even worse, Risen 2 shared enough of Risen 1's look and feel that you kept thinking it will come through, before you realise that it sometimes matches the worst of Risen 1, and the rest of it goes down from there.

Colony Ship Game - I have the highest of expectations, higher than I've ever had, so that this can only go wrong.

 

[Mustawd]

I know I'm going to get crushed for these, but:

Why? All those sucked.

Or do you mean you actually had high hopes?

 

[Humanity has risen!]

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.

This, this. What a dud.

 

[Morality Games]

The 3DS Fire Emblems were all pretty disappointing, even Conquest. For every step forward from the GC/Wii era it was at least one step back in so many ways.

Not to derail the thread, but what order do you advice someone to play the FE games in order to go from less complex to most complex (aka fun)?

FE5 and all of the GBA Fire Emblems are in a class of their own, with FE7 being the best. FE5 is SNES era and is the FF6 of the series, the GBA compare with the Final Fantasy PlayStation era in terms of game design and production quality (so, really good -- especially considering what happened later).

FE4 going backwards are pretty archaic and while all of them having fun and redeeming elements you will probably never finish any of them, except for the first one which is pretty straightforward.

Every Fire Emblem after the GBA era suffered in terms of game design or narrative in some way. The GC one (Path of Radiance) is competently designed, but easy, while the Wii one is over engineered and overstays its welcome. Awakening is "good for what it is" but ultimately shit.

The three versions of Fates are all pretty well differentiated from each other. Conquest is tactically on the same level as Fire Emblem 5/7, but the overall story is worse than FE8 (which was the worst told story of the GBA era).

So Conquest is the best game since last the GBA one and the only one worth playing or screwing around with after GBA being honest.

 

[Severian Silk]

One of them is Homeworld 2. So many features ditched from its predecessor. OTOH graphics were better I guess.

 

[Sjukob]

The witcher 3 - As soon as I heard that the game will have open world , wild hunt and Yennefer in it I knew it was going to be a dissapointment , still I had my hopes up . What a pieace of shit it turned out to be . CD Project decided to make it a big AAA project and it suffers from typical AAA problems : bad combat , boring cliche story ( this is huge since TW series are story based ) , annoying characters trying to pander to the audience .

I don't look forward to any games from CD Project anymore .

 

[Lurker King]

Well, it was Wasteland 2, obviously. PoE takes the second place.

 

[Lurker King]

You see how this kickstarter thing changes everything. First, people were disappointed with wasted opportunities and the decline of a series. Now, they are disappointed with the first games of a franchise that should be the spiritual successor of a classic, and games they help funding nonetheless.

 

[toroid]

Invisible War was my most significant letdown; it jaded me thoroughly and taught me not to have hope again.

Until Dark Souls 2 lured me into being excited for a game and having hope again... Fool me twice, shame on me.

 

[sser]

Empire: Total War. Loved the setting, loved the change to ranged-warfare. Game was beyond broken at release and never really improved. A lot like Whisky and BioWare, it destroyed all trust I had in the company and I haven't bought a title of theirs since.

Diablo 3. I was a big fan of the original Diablo (pretty much skipped Diablo 2, though). Gameplay trailers looked pretty dope, game looked solid... It has actually improved a bit over the years, but it's just not enough. I'm really confused as to why Blizzard is throwing the Necromancer back into this mostly dead game years after giving it so little support to begin with.

Civilization IV at release. Civ4's usually seen as the best iteration of the series -- thanks to Beyond the Sword. But when that game came out it was just awful. I shelved it a little before Warlords came out and didn't pick it back up until post-BtS.

Stellaris. Just boring as hell. Might have improved since I last played.

The Wolf Among Us. In actuality, I wasn't hyped up for this at all, but I did pick it up for a few bucks. The disappointment largely has to do with its near perfect rating on Steam, and that I can't help but see this "game" as anything else besides a steaming pile of shit. Quite the dichotomy.

Divinity: Original Sin, beyond the starting area. Also boring as hell. That first town was worth the 30 dorrah though.

Omerta: City of Gangsters. Gangsters: Organized Crime is one of my favorite games and this is a vastly underused setting for the strategy genre. Omerta, sadly, is just a very bad game.


I think Empire: Total War, Civ4, and Diablo 3 were the biggest letdowns.

 

[sullynathan]

This is unrelated to a specific game, but years ago I owned an Xbox 360 (yeah I know decline), I signed up for the Microsoft rewards thing and was pretty much getting free money to buy games. I bought like 10 fucking games and got red rings of death.

Let's take a decent game, and make it into an incredibly shitty cover shooter, because who cares about gameplay?

No one that cared about gameplay liked mass effect 1.

 

[Alienman]

1. Rome II - Was caught up in the hype and everything. Damn the game looked good and they released fun documentaries about Rome to keep it going. It was exciting. Rome was a great game, and now it would finally get a sequel! Then the release. Buggy, unfinished, broken AI, casualized to the maximum. It has put me off Creative Assembly probably forever.

2. Risen 2 - Risen is one of my fav RPGs. Fun story, reactive characters, fun writing. It was a tight little game. Then came Risen 2. You played as the same character but it was consolized, the story sucked and the pirate theme just felt tacked on. Such a disappointing sequel.

3. X-com Apocalypse - I love this game. It is great. But what disappointed me was reading about it later on. What it could have been I mean. The game had serious development problems, and there was so much more stuff planned for the game. I have a feeling even if the game is great that it unfortunately killed the (the old-school)X-com franchise and Gollops career.