So many low hanging fruit here...here's a quick list of games that actually made managed to get me angry by existing and wasting my time. Sometimes even money.
(o) I agree that Moo3 deserves a mention on any such list, I remember being hyped as fuck right there at the race selection screen.
Then I got into the game and I genuinely thought I was doing something wrong, perhaps missing an option that would make it all click into place so that it starts being good.
This was perhaps the first time I felt touched by the Decline(tm) in my own genre (I'm not big on RPGs, even though I played the majority of the classics), and it was indeed a special moment for me.
(o) UFO Aftermath. Like a lot of folks I was mislead into thinking it's somehow related to Enemy Unknown. It had a nice post apoc vibe at the start, but never really delivered on anything.
The two next games kinda redeemed the first installment, even had some good parts, but still managed to drag out the endgame into a snoozefest.
(o) Medieval 2 Total War. Yeah, it's a controversial one, people would swear this one's the shit because of all the mods. Myself, I still remember the launch of this game - it was unplayable out of the box, with non existing AI
that would just stand there and eat arrow fire or move out of the castle to let it be taken. Yeah, mods might have salvaged this game, but it took a few patches to even give it modability.
People say total wars turned to irredeemable shit with Empire, for me it was Med2.
(o) Jagged Alliance Flashback. I could probably gather all the attempts to cash in on the legend of JA2 in one place, as one entry, together with the jagged edge, ja3 and all the other shit that I can't be bothered to remember by name.
I think Flashback was special because the devs tried, really tried to convince everyone that they "got this" to the end, despite everything pointing to the contrary.
(o) Planetary Annihilation. I was never a fan of the classic Command and Conquer formula, yet somehow Total Annihilation was something that clicked with me. I struggle to write something substantial in this entry, because PA turned out so fucking bland.
The devs should probably win some kind of an award. The original TA was renowned for its fugly unit and building models, PA managed to make them even more ugly and forgettable.
(o) Heroes of Might and Magic 6. I vaguely remember this one. I think I played this and actually thought: Ok guys, what the fuck happened here?
Never played any recent HoMM game since.
(o) Civilization 5. I actually made an effort to get into Civ5. Tried vanilla, thought it was shit. Tried it with expansions. Still shit. Tried it in multiplayer. Ok, so this is supposed to be fun?
Unfortunately, it looks like it also set the course for later civs to follow. I am still hoping that some mod or expansion manages to salvage Civ 6, but we all know it's hopeless at this point,
RIP yet another franchise I grew up with.
(o) Disciples III. I was genuinely taken by surprise here. I really liked Disciples 1 and 2, despite their simplifications and quirk, they were entertaining and felt like they had something different going for them.
Now, here comes part III which shits on all this and tries to ape HoMM, fails spectacularly at that. I think I didn't even complete the tutorial, just thought to myself: what the fuck is this shit, uninstalled and deleted the iso.
I heard that at some point part three got fixed and was close to playable, but I couldn't convince myself to try this shit again. It was like a match made in heaven, me and that game, only in the opposite direction.
(o) Frontline Tactics. You probably never heard of this one. It's a shovelware, free game by an unknown studio. So how is it surprising that it sucked?
Not going to lie, I was actually curious and entertained at first, I was looking for something to numb the pain after yet another failed Jagged Alliance reboot, and I needed some time away from 1.13. So this game was turn based squad tactics, why not check it out at least?
The core mechanics weren't that bad, looked like something to play on a tablet in my spare time, or something. We quickly parted ways when I discovered it has blatant fucking level scaling, in a turn based fucking squad tactics game, no less.
Whenever you unlock a new weapon or item, all enemies magically start using it, turning any progress meaningless. The absurdity of this made me remember this turd until now (though I had to do a google search to recall the name).
The RPG fags probably had the same experience with Oblivion; well, this was my special Oblivion moment, but in a different genre.
Anyways, what is interesting with strategy games, one man's shit can be another man's goty (HoMM4 springs to mind, myself I heard a lot of bad shit about Panzer General 3D, but I actually enjoyed both installments).
Not to mention, the genre seems to have declined so much in the recent years one can go back to older titles that were considered poo back in the day and discover that they aren't actually so bad by today's standards. For example, I've seen Xcom Apocalypse being
bashed almost universally back in the day, myself, I still can't bring myself to give it a fair spin after all the bad taste it had left in my mouth back then. After a brief encounter with the new SEXCUM, I am seriously contemplating giving Xcom Apoc another shot.
