The biggest disappointments in your personal gaming history

[Skittles]

My fault for not following pre-release info, but I'm still shocked how Hitman went from the best entry to the worst in the series. I own Absolution and can't bring myself to finish even one playthrough.

Also, fuckers on the Codex kept recommending NWN2, so I actually played it a few years ago expecting "shitty but with some redeeming quality" à la Arcanum or IE games. Didn't realize that even that was way too much to expect. I look for Codex opinions to set my expectations lower; how could this place fail me so badly?

Lastly, I was disappointed when the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series whimpered out with a malnourished expandalone whose sparks of ambitious ideas only helped cast into relief how thin the game actually was.

 

[Snorkack]

Also, fuckers on the Codex kept recommending NWN2, so I actually played it a few years ago expecting "shitty but with some redeeming quality" à la Arcanum or IE games. Didn't realize that even that was way too much to expect. I look for Codex opinions to set my expectations lower; how could this place fail me so badly?

Oh no, you were supposed to play NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer! Did you just play the original campaign? Poor soul.

 

[Skittles]

Also, fuckers on the Codex kept recommending NWN2, so I actually played it a few years ago expecting "shitty but with some redeeming quality" à la Arcanum or IE games. Didn't realize that even that was way too much to expect. I look for Codex opinions to set my expectations lower; how could this place fail me so badly?

Oh no, you were supposed to play NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer! Did you just play the original campaign? Poor soul.

Indeed. OC was so shit I couldn't stand more than an hour of MotB. Maybe in another decade or two I'll have consumed enough whiskey to wash the taste of shit out of my mouth and I'll give MotB another shot.

 

[FritzedProcess]

TES: Oblivion and Fallout 4. All other regrettable purchases I ever made, I managed to return, so I can't even remember them.

At least I bought Oblivion at a steep discount (gave up halfway through the main quest, when you have to go through the Oblivion portals BS), but I bought Fallout 4 on release. What a kick in the balls, it's the most retarded Bethesda game I have ever played. Should have seen this one coming, as Skyrim had a dedicated expansion about building your little dollhouses and all that shit which may be acceptable as expansion material but should never be the core of a Fallout roleplaying game. So they copied and pasted Fallout 3's stupid main quest, limited answers to 3 "yes" options and 1 "yes, maybe later" and hey, you can have a post-apocalyptic gimped version of Minecraft!

 

[Direwolf]

Every Bohemia Interactive game after OFP - what a shitty studio they've become.
Every fucking KickStarter so far

You don't like Arma2 and 3? Divinity Original Sin was a kickstarter that I liked. Can't think of any others though.

Every game since OFP been a buggy mess with a real crappy single player campaign. They haven't fixed any of the major bugs and engine limitations that OFP had back in 2001. Driving physics are still terrible, AI is still terrible, mission scripts still break left right and center for no reason, CQC is still terrible. The game is still an unoptimized mess that relies on CPU way too much. Still no proper destruction of anything. Units and vehicles still have the same fucking health bars they had in 2001. Need I go on?

 

[RRRrrr]

I was very disappointed by Postal 3. I had some very high expectations from it based on the previous one and it turned out to be complete and utter shit. No humour, no satire, completely inane and boring.

 

[Average Manatee]

Guild Wars fucking 2. Make the lowest common denominator casual MMO sequel to one of the most complex and competitive MMOs of all time. Hype irrelevant non-features as some kind of earth shattering development. Remove every possible aspect of team play because an MMO that encourages people to interact is too demanding for our autistic age. Take a shit on all the lore built up over 4 games by setting the game 250 years in the future so that every PC, NPC, interesting faction, and event is both long dead and not even remembered. Make essentially a new world of bullshit that just kind of looks like its on the same landmass shape, and don't even allow us to go to a third of the interesting areas the GW1 had. Don't even have fucking guild vs. guild combat in a game called Guild Wars, because I guess no one cared.

Worst of all, they got away with it any almost no one expected how shit it would be until release. Same company. Immediate sequel to a successful series. Promised to add commonly requested features that weren't doable before. Utter shit. I'm not even close to a big MMO fan but I think GW2 is singlehandedly responsible for killing the genre. It's like if Interplay released Fallout 1 and then immediately went right to Fallout 4 in 1998.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I'm rarely disappointed, I'm usually pleasantly surprised. This is your choice of how you approach it.

But, in terms of liking a game yet later saying, "This was not all it could have been", the one that comes to mind is Chrono Cross. Why? I was/am such a huge fan of Chrono Trigger that I was really hoping Chrono Cross would be a true sequel. While CC was really good overall, I felt like it failed as a "real" sequel because there really are no connections between the 2 games other than a few characters appearing for about 5 in-game minutes total or so. But again, how disappointed can you be if you still think the game is pretty damn good? It did other things really well (like having a bunch of optional/secret recruitable characters, gorgeous music as to be expected from a Chrono game, etc.).

 

[oldmanpaco]

Ultima 8: Lets take one of the most successful party based RPGs and make it single player with platforming mechanics. Oh and forget about Britannia here is a random Fantasy World to save. Fuck you guys. The only good thing about U8 was Crusader: No Remorse.

Outpost: Not sure if any of you remember the fucking hype around this game. It was going to be a hard science base building simulator. The devs talked a great game. I mean they claimed to have gotten input from NASA and shit. Then they released a clusterfuck of a game with no manual ("The best way to learn is to just play!") and half of the game functions either broken or missing. What a shitshow and the last game I ever bought on release day until I got drunk and bought R:TW2 with about the same results.

Fallout 3: I honestly don't know what I was expecting.

 

[gaussgunner]

Wing Commander. Never got my hopes up for another game with good reviews after that. Gamergate came 25 years too late as far as I'm concerned.

PoE deserves a dishonorable mention for being even worse than my very low expectations.
D:OS was also pretty bad although the combat did not disappoint.
But I never expected anything but decline from Kickstarter.

Some promising indie rpgs I just couldn't get into, but will give these developers more chances...
Serpent in the Staglands: the RTwP combat sucks, and there's lots of it.
Age of Decadence: late Roman setting is neat, relatively realistic, good writing, turnbased combat, BUT you're basically acting out scenes in a CYOA and avoiding combat whenever possible. Not my idea of fun.

Also, a good friend who made a decent rpg, followed it with some casual shite, then spent 5 years making the sequel rpg only to tear it apart and make it a casual jrpg which remains unfinished.

 

[SerratedBiz]

Wing Commander.

 

[SCO]

The secret not to be disappointed is to wait until at least 5 months after release and then read codex threads about it. Never fails to discourage buying shit.

 

[SCO]

Also thanks for the thread for reminding me of Crime Abbey. Found this:

http://www.abadiadelcrimenextensum.com/

A free remake. Nice.

 

[commie]

Ironically my biggest disappointments were during the 'golden decade' since often you'd have little to go on but the box art so you'd have to fork out a lot for a game only to discover it was a stinker. These days you can get lot of info about a game, pirate it and even the borderline stuff you can end up trying for a buck or two so very little investment and misplaced expectation.

tl;dr lot more crap now but far less disappointment since you expect it.

Getting back to the list: Dark Reign....was hyped to the shithouse,but found it a drab C&C clone
Interstate 82....had a lot of expectation after the first one, was a horrible streamlined third person arcade shooter.
Midwinter 2 Flames of Freedom....looked awesome in theory but was even more ahead of its time than the first game, which made it nigh on unplayable both with awful framerate,ugly mess of 3D, arcane interface(made in the era of shitty icon driven UI).
Twilight 2000....Awesome intro and character creation set in Poland(yay!) seemed like a winner....In reality most of the character creation was useless, the 3d vehicle combat was drab and choppy(see Midwinter 2),the 2D RPG part also felt like shit.

Many others but I forget..these are the ones that spring immediately to mind though even after all the years.

 

[Severian Silk]

Homeworld 2 was disappointing following the original Homeworld. The missions sucked. The only improvements were graphics and GUI. Everything else was inferior.

 

[Max Heap]

Duke Nukem Forever

It truly was the best example for this image:

I mean we all knew it was going to be shit. That demo was already pretty bad, but the way it turned out in the end was even worse.
That game was not just a waste of money, but I honestly believe it actually wastes your time.

The weapon limitation, the level design, the gun play, the shoe-horned internet culture references (because you know... making references to 80s movies in the 90s and referencing 5 year old "so fahnny internet may mays" in 2011 is totally the same). It was all so god damn bad.
Above all, the levels were absolute trash. Not only wrt to layout (though that was already awful enough), but some of them were outright empty (there is one part in hoover dam that consists of shoving toolboxes into a bunch of giant fans or some shit - point is: Not a single enemy can be found in that level.... not a single one.... in a fucking First Person Shooter. In Duke Nukem of all! What on earth were they thinking??)

The best part was when gearbox actually removed the weapon limit via patch and fucking broke that piece of shit even more.
The game was clearly designed around carrying two weapons (don't ask me why you would ever design it that way) and now the balancing was all over the place.

I haven't even scratched the surface of this giant turd, but why bother? It's trash.

So yeah... I believe DNF is really one of the worst games ever. It's not just a disappointment. It's insulting.

 

[anvi]

Every Bohemia Interactive game after OFP - what a shitty studio they've become.
Every fucking KickStarter so far

You don't like Arma2 and 3? Divinity Original Sin was a kickstarter that I liked. Can't think of any others though.

Every game since OFP been a buggy mess with a real crappy single player campaign. They haven't fixed any of the major bugs and engine limitations that OFP had back in 2001. Driving physics are still terrible, AI is still terrible, mission scripts still break left right and center for no reason, CQC is still terrible. The game is still an unoptimized mess that relies on CPU way too much. Still no proper destruction of anything. Units and vehicles still have the same fucking health bars they had in 2001. Need I go on?

None of that is true. Maybe half of it is true of Arma2, but none of it is true about Arma3, especially now. The campaign in Arma3 is really slick. It is also way better than any other FPS, although it is a bit simpler than Arma2 in terms of scope, but they did that to make a slicker campaign. The campaign came out after the game was released and they did that to make sure it was slick, and it is. There is also an expansion with more missions which are even slicker again and are better. It is REALLY good. No other game is even in the same league as Arma3 for simulating real special ops missions like that.

The driving physics are much better now too. Each vehicle handles realistically. It is pretty ridiculous to even complain about such a thing when you have simple games like GTA that only have do 2 things, shooting and driving, and yet even they have bad car handling, and every car handles exactly the same. Arma3 is about 1000 times more complex than that game, and yet each vehicle has its own handling. Tanks feel like tanks, jeeps feel like jeeps, APCs, quads, etc. all handle right.

AI is much better now too, and missions don't break. Arma3 has a full campaign but it also has about 20 showcase missions which are really good as well. And then there are player made missions and campaigns. The proper destruction thing is just totally off. Everything has realistic destruction now and it is more advanced than any other game.

The only thing people struggle with are the system requirements, but they are typical of a simulation. Look at any flight simulation ever made, they are all exactly the same. The CPU is everything. Arma3 is no different, I upgraded from an ancient graphics card to a high end modern one, and not a whole lot changed because my old card was doing ok. The most demanding thing is the CPU, but that is not a fault of the game, it is just how a huge simulation has to be. The graphics card can't do anything to help with hundreds of enemy AI's all doing independent thinking and all the scripts running. That said, I have an old sandy bridge cpu that I overclock and it handles the game perfectly. I get 60fps most of the time, with a CPU that is about 7 years old, at a resolution of 2560x1080, and with every setting cranked, and the game looks stunning. That is really impressive.

Also it is a 64bit client now.

I find that often with impressive games like this, people try to convince others (and themselves) that it is bad, to make themselves feel better about not putting in the effort to get into the game. But you are only cheating yourself out of an amazing sim.

Here is just one mission from the game as it is today, a jets mission:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTeeF2Wz-O4

I think the new expansion missions are better but the jet mission is pretty unique.

 

[anvi]

Wing Commander.
Age of Decadence: late Roman setting is neat, relatively realistic, good writing, turnbased combat, BUT you're basically acting out scenes in a CYOA and avoiding combat whenever possible. Not my idea of fun.

I liked Wing Commander, it was a simple and bone headed but for the time it was good. It was new experience to have pew pew space combat like that, and they did it in a good way with a good story and characters that made the repetitive missions not feel as bad as they would have otherwise. It was pretty cool for back then. But I do have a big issue with all the sequels. None of them improved the gameplay at all, it was all still about flying from A to B to escort some slow ass thing back to A again and you get jumped by annoying ships along the way that you have to fly in circles shooting at. All they did in the sequels was throw more and more budget at the actors and cutscenes, hiring Mark Hamill and shit which did nothing to improve the gameplay.

And yeah, I tried Age of Decadence, I hated it for all those reasons.

 

[sullynathan]

Are the even any good games with 10+ years of development?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Are the even any good games with 10+ years of development?

Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

 

[anvi]

Are the even any good games with 10+ years of development?

Some. Although a lot of them end up getting bought out at some point and then it either kills the game or two companies end up trying to compete and usually both suck. Crysis and FarCry for example. Operation Flashpoint more or less had that happen, and OF got destroyed, but Arma came out of it and Arma3 is pretty awesome at this point. The few long standing MMO's like WoW and Everquest have been developed for 10+ years as well. They were good games but I don't think they were developed well. WoW was developed quite well I guess, but EQ certainly wasn't. That was run into the ground by one of the worst companies in gaming. There are others like Age of Wonders 3 which is probably the best in the series, learning from the good and bad of previous games spanning 18 years. But most of those years there was nothing happening because the devs couldn't get the money.

My gripe with stuff like Wing Commander is that it was never that great to begin with, so they can't expect to just mass produce cut and paste sequels year after year. The first game was ok but the combat was pretty crappy, you fly in circles shooting at the prediction crosshair, and you get 1 or 2 missiles. I think the X Wing games were much better because they had different lazer fire, like one that did damage and one that did no damage but would disable ships. And you had to move the ships shields around so if something raped your face, you could move the rear shields to the front or equalize them or whatever. It wasn't really deep but at least it was something. Wing Commander never had that.

 

[pakoito]

Are the even any good games with 10+ years of development?

Roguelikes?

 

[Mr. Pink]

empire total war
civilization 5
cities xl
tes oblivion
mgsv

 

[Freddie]

Homeworld 2 was disappointing following the original Homeworld. The missions sucked. The only improvements were graphics and GUI. Everything else was inferior.

Gotta say I was a moment between the two if I add it to my biggest disappointments or not. After Homeworld and HW: Catalclysm I was starving for more, and it was what a letdown for reasons you mentioned. Not among biggest disappointments but a letdown for sure.

 

[gaussgunner]

Wing Commander.

What the fuck was I thinking, indeed. I was young and naive. After that I (re)discovered rpgs and piracy.