Disappointing games

[Shattered Dreamer]

Looking at my games collection the other day & I saw a few of them that never really lived up to my personal expectations. Fallout 3 is the one game I own that really stands out in this regard. Now don't get me wrong Fallout 3 was a very good game but it has a few major flaws that kind of spoil a truly epic title (you can't aim down the sights of your weapons & the fact that it's an open world RPG that actually ends stick out for starters)

So I was wondering, have there been any games that any of you felt didn't live up to your own personal expectations, regardless of whether the games were a commercial success or received critical acclaim.

[Wolf Kanno]

A lot of my PS3 collection is like this.

Valkyria Chronicles - I don't know what it is about this game. I really should love it. A bit of steampunk, innovative SRPG design, gorgeous artwork, and a fleshed out cast and world, but good god I can't play this game for more than an hour before having to shut it off in annoyance. The story is just bland recycled Gundam crap, the main characters are easily the least interesting characters, the story interface is atrocious, the customization is weak, and even the battles have been getting boring in the newer chapters for me, mostly do to the lack of new elements being introduced. I really want to like this game, you know, reach a point where everything clicks and I start to love it as much as everyone else, but I'm not sure if I can keep playing for that long.

White Knight Chronicles - Promising premise, but once again, the plot takes too many cues from the "Big Book of RPG Cliches", the game can't really decide if it wants to be an MMO or a single player JRPG, the combo system is great if a bit limited but everything else about the gameplay is tedious and boring. Even using the White Knight itself feels underwhelming and I smurfing love giant robots, so it's sad for me to say that. It definetly embraces too many of the more annoying aspects about MMO game design. I also never got past the whole "spend an hour building your avatar, so you can start the game and discover you made a mute side character, and the plot is about all these other people..." It's not a bad game by any means but I understand why it didn't set the gaming world on fire as well. It's jkust disappointing because Level 5 did such a great job breathing life into Dragon Quest that's it's sad I don't get the same experience from an original IP.

There are more but I'll post them later.

[Pike]

Civilization V - they just made a lot of changes that I didn't like overall; removed or simplified a lot of the good stuff from IV and BTS and good word I dislike One Unit Per Tile.

Hearts of Iron III - You know, this could have been good. This could have been the new Hearts of Iron 2, but with a better map and stuff. But then they had to go in and sterilize the tech tree and make it all impersonal and automate everything and make it so IT'S LIKE I'M PLAYING NOTHING AT ALL. NOTHING AT ALL. NOTHING AT ALL. in the words of one stupid sexy Flanders. But the worst part was this terrible sound effect that they play when someone rejects your trade, which you can't turn off. Screw that. I went back to HoI2/Darkest Hour/Kaiserreich.

[NeoCracker]

Most Recently Twisted Metal.

The Multiplayer was fine, which was kind of the point I guess, but I loved Twisted Metal for the different story modes you could run through. Now we have only three very brief campaigns, and while the cutscenes look great and the stories aren't to bad, it's extremely brief and lack luster.

[Hollycat]

Fallout New Vegas:
Pros: iron sights, multiple factions.
Cons: everything else.

[Alpha2099]

The only experience I've had with a game that had a ton of hype that I didn't like much was Final Fantasy 12. I was so excited to get it. I even bought the mammoth-sized strategy guide to read the charts and stats to understand the game better. Then I started playing it, and I really didn't like the License Board, nor did I really like the alterations to active battle, particularly with the gambits. I get that some people don't like micromanaging, but there's something to be said for too much automation, and that's how I felt about gambits. Then again, you can probably go through the whole game without using them at all, so maybe I just need to start over and do that, but overall, 12 disappointed me, to the point where I quit without finishing it.

[Skyblade]

Megaman Battle Network 4 - MMBN3 was a great RPG. Incredibly in depth customization and combat system, great world, fun characters, solid story, good music. Really a great, underrated game. Then MMBN4 comes along and destroys everything. Inferior translation, graphics, customization, music, plot, world, interaction. Every single aspect of the game is inferior to its predecessor, which is why it is on my list as "worst sequel of all time".

Master of Orion 3 - Fortunately I missed this one when it came out, and got to watch my dad play it first. Holy hell, did these people ever mess up a game. They seem to have forgotten everything that made the series wonderful. A true convoluted mess. Possibly a worse sequel than MMBN4, but I haven't played it myself, so I am not going to stick that title on it.

[VeloZer0]

Valkyria Chronicles

White Knight Chronicles

Lets see.

Last Remnant
I wouldn't say disappointing in the sense that I was expecting anything of it going in, but in this poor-to-mediocre game I see hints of something that could be absolutely amazing.

Blue Dragon
It is like they decided to check off all the boxes of things I think modern JPRGs have lost and just do a poor job of putting it all together. Do the world in a way that I love but give me a plot and characters I couldn't care less about. Use a job & turn based system but somehow make it the first RPG in history to make a job system become less interesting after halfway through the game.

Final Fantasy Tactics A/A2
Because you don't even come close to living up to your name.

Xenogears
Because you didn't give me a second disk!

[edczxcvbnm]

Mass Effect 2 - After a good but flawed first game they decided the story would revolve around gathering a team and scanning planets. This is the first 20 minutes of Oceans 11 and they only spent that amount of time in the movie because what follows is the interesting part. They also removed practically everything I enjoyed about the first game.

Xenosaga II - They pretty much just threw out all the work on Episode I and replaced it with a mountain of trout. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

Dead Space 2 - I loved the first game and was scared the whole way through. I still am actually but the second game took out most of the horror and tension in favor of more action, enemies and other stupid crap. Plus Issac has a voice and it kept pulling me out of the game every time I was about to get into it.

There are probably other but they just are not coming to mind right now. I would have to actually look through my collection to pick out more games.

The only experience I've had with a game that had a ton of hype that I didn't like much was Final Fantasy 12. I was so excited to get it. I even bought the mammoth-sized strategy guide to read the charts and stats to understand the game better. Then I started playing it, and I really didn't like the License Board, nor did I really like the alterations to active battle, particularly with the gambits. I get that some people don't like micromanaging, but there's something to be said for too much automation, and that's how I felt about gambits. Then again, you can probably go through the whole game without using them at all, so maybe I just need to start over and do that, but overall, 12 disappointed me, to the point where I quit without finishing it.

I used gambits for my side characters but never for the person I set out to control. I didn't want something automated taking over in the middle of battle. The battles are just too real time to sit around and manage 3 people stopping every second to pick a command so I found 2 auto and 1 free to be the sweet spot.

[krissy]

Dead Space 2 - I loved the first game and was scared the whole way through. I still am actually but the second game took out most of the horror and tension in favor of more action, enemies and other stupid crap. Plus Issac has a voice and it kept pulling me out of the game every time I was about to get into it.

!!! i am so sad now, i was really looking forward to 2. loved dead space. everyone says 2 is actually more scary except for you...i'll see what i think one day, but this is the first negative thing i've heard about it...

anyway,

i loved the commercials, premise, idea, style of assasins creed 1

then i actually played the game

but only for 2 hours

[GhandiOwnsYou]

Resident Evil 4. I never really dove into the RE games, and it popped up on a PSN sale a little while ago. I had heard all about the tank controls before, but after the praise heaped on RE4, and as modern as it was i figured that had been ironed out. eeeeeeeenope. It wasn't clunky, it was attempting to drive a brick using telekinesis while wearing horse blinders. Gave up after about an hour, resolved to never attempt an RE game again.

Soul Caliber 2 and Dead or Alive 2 came highly recommended, but I never really felt comfortable with the controls. Same with the later entries in the Tekken series. Skate 3 was the first entry in the series that didn't rule my life for a few weeks. Something about the vibe just didn't quite do it for me like the first two games did.

[krissy]

Resident Evil 4. I never really dove into the RE games, and it popped up on a PSN sale a little while ago. I had heard all about the tank controls before, but after the praise heaped on RE4, and as modern as it was i figured that had been ironed out. eeeeeeeenope. It wasn't clunky, it was attempting to drive a brick using telekinesis while wearing horse blinders. Gave up after about an hour, resolved to never attempt an RE game again.

you get used to the controls
i promise
and to be fair
it is a million times better than the previous ones haha

[Alpha2099]

I used gambits for my side characters but never for the person I set out to control. I didn't want something automated taking over in the middle of battle. The battles are just too real time to sit around and manage 3 people stopping every second to pick a command so I found 2 auto and 1 free to be the sweet spot.

Ah, that could be what I was doing wrong. If I ever get the desire to trot the game out and try again, I will give that a go. Thanks for the suggestion.

you get used to the controls
i promise
and to be fair
it is a million times better than the previous ones haha

She's right. Personally, I think RE4 was my favorite of the bunch because it finally employed an over-the-shoulder camera. I don't like fixed cameras all that much. I just finished up Dino Crisis not too long ago, and their mix of sometimes fixed and sometimes roving was really hard to deal with.

[GhandiOwnsYou]

I did shell out non-refundable money for it, So I'll probably pick it back up again at some point. Drunk, and probably full of self loathing and a need to punish myself. At this moment I'm chalking up "getting used to it" in the same vein as getting used to stabbing myself in the thigh repeatedly after I finally sever all the nerves.

[Slothy]

you get used to the controls
i promise
and to be fair
it is a million times better than the previous ones haha

Don't listen to her. She lies.

Honestly, I've spoken so many times of how much I hate RE4 and why I think it really is a bad game I just don't have it in me at the moment. Suffice it to say, they made a lot of gameplay and design decisions that completely conflict with each other. It's an action game, but the controls are slow and plodding and you have few options for avoiding enemies efficiently. You'll face a crap ton of enemies in any given level, many of them getting tougher/faster/requiring you to shoot a specific weak point, but the laser sight won't show up on anything except objects and enemies you can shoot (despite everything including the levels being rendered in real time) so you'll wave the thing around a lot trying to find where it is, usually having no success until the enemy is 20 feet in front of you, at which point you fire off a shot or two and then run away to do it all over again. Plus you can't move while aiming. And to top it off, you will die to an unexpected quick time event. You will reload your game, and then you will die to the same quick time event because they changed the button you need to press for no reason except to smurf with you.

Honestly, the original RE games played better because even though they had tank like controls, they had tank like controls for a reason, and they included auto-aim to compensate. Later games like RE3 even included dodge moves and quick 180 turns to help you avoid the sort of tit that could be unfair in the early ones.

Anytime I see anyone trying RE4 I tell them to play the original Dead Space instead. It fixes pretty much everything that was wrong with RE4, while adding some cool stuff all it's own. Plus you can move while aiming and don't spend half an hour trying to figure out what you're aiming at. That alone makes it worth it. Ironically, after DS came along and fixed every problem I had with RE4, RE5 was released and not only didn't fix the stuff I hated, but changed some parts and added others which made the game even worse than RE4.

Huh, I guess I lied. I did have it in me.