Video Game Disappointments

[talonmalon333]

As the title indicates, this is a thread just for video games that may have disappointed you. It doesn't even have to be about those games that you were super pumped about only to play and see that they were garbage... but talk about those games, too. However, you can also talk about games that you may have even liked, but just found to be weaker than you were expecting.

Resident Evil 5

So yeah, this is an obvious one from me. RE5 was probably my all time most anticipated video game. And that was to be expected because I loved 4, as you are all aware. The buildup to this game's release was handled well, too. Then I played it and ouch, all that hype for nothing. To me, RE5 feels like a game that desperately wanted to top 4 but didn't even believe that it really could. I mean, despite all those years Capcom put into it, the game just feels... passionless. It's not an incompetent game. It's just a mediocre one. The levels are uninspired, monsters are uninspired, story is generic action movie schlock, even the look of the game is completely generic despite the graphics being technically impressive. And of course, the partner AI essentially breaks the game on single player. The only way to have a tiny bit of fun with RE5 is through multiplayer. Overall, I feel like I'm just over this game by now, having nearly forgotten it even exists (unless I need to remember it for threads such as this). RE 1-4 will always be classics, and RE5 will always be game that broke the franchise and means nothing to me.

Final Fantasy VIII

It shouldn't take long to search the RPG thread and see that, only a week or so before making this thread, I stated that FFVIII should be more recognized as one of gaming's biggest letdowns. And it's truly sad because its predecessor, FFVII, was a landmark in our medium. It made RPGs not necessarily "cool", but it made them... well... far less of a "nnnnnnnnerrrrrrrrrrrd" thing outside of Japan. I admit it must have been hard and nervewracking for Square to then have to make a sequel for such a critical and commercial darling, as well as one of the most important RPGs yet. But they really didn't go about it correctly at all. I feel like, when making FFVIII, Square focused on expanding certain parts of VII while not understanding them. For example, in terms of style and story, FFVII struck a good balance between fun and seriousness. At one point, you have Cloud, Tifa and Barrett running up a series of stairs for five minutes just exchanging silly dialogue. It's hardly important, but it's memorable fun banter. Then... you have Aeris' death. Of course, that drama was such a big deal to gamers, that I think Square got the impression that people just wanted more drama. So when they made VIII, they ditched all of the fun factor and made it a moody, joyless game. It really hurt the story and characters, and since those things take such a main focus for 50+ hours, the game is killed regardless of whether or not the gameplay works.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Skyward Sword could have very well taken the title for my most anticipated game. But the sheer awkwardness of how Nintendo built up this game kept my expectations a little more in check than, say, Twilight Princess (by the way, some might also call TP a disappointment, and maybe it was... in the sense that it was one of the best games of all time, when Nintendo presented it as the best game of all time). They built up TP more than they did SS. But unlike that game, SS was just not on par with its 3D predecessors. At all. And I don't even dislike this game (I do kind of ask why so many of you guys hated SS when you played only a few hours of it. You haven't even gotten to the bad parts yet). It has plenty of good in it. But it's just too bogged down in padding. It feels like Nintendo has enough content to make a 15 hour great Zelda game, but then figured that a Zelda game should be longer and therefore spread out all that quality with an additional 10 hours of adequacy. And then there is Fi, who is quite possibly the single worst character in the entire series. The only good thing that came out of Fi was that I got a new appreciation for Navi. I do appreciate the changes they tried to make, but while some of them worked, others didn't. Thankfully, it seems like Nintendo realized that they messed up on this game, because A Link Between Worlds is the complete opposite in so many ways, and as a result was a vastly superior experience. Let's hope Nintendo looks to that game for inspiration rather than SS, and from the look of things, that seems to be what they're doing.

[gunswordfist]

VIII is still my favorite Final Fantasy.

SSX 3. From what I played, it was nowhere near as fun as Tricky.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I love how talonmalon333 conveniently leaves out the part where he initially called RE5 the best game in the series.

Not that I discredit your opinion, I just find it kind of funny how much you change your mind on things.

Anyways, from what I've heard, RE5 is a decent co-op game in its own right, but barely feels like an RE game, if at all. I did enjoy the bits that I played with my brother on a casual level, but absolutely hated the single-player demo.

As for me, it's a no-brainer:

Ninja Gaiden 3 is the most disappointing game that I've ever played. It single-handedly killed the reputation of a legendary series. Ninja Gaiden games, while well-known by the hardcore crowd, was never really that popular among mainstream gamers, but everyone at least knew of its reputation as a series of challenging and HIGH QUALITY games. However, since it doesn't have the millions of people with nostalgic love for it like more popular series have (such as RE, Halo, etc.), people's perception of the series can easily be altered by its most recent output on the market, and to me NG3 just butchered the good name of NG games, and Yaiba was just another nail in the coffin.

Halo 2, while certainly not a bad game by any means, was another huge disappointment in terms of how it influenced the campaign modes for most future Halo games. After that, Bungie never truly got a Halo game right again until their last effort, Reach, and while that game was great, now that 343i is at the helm of the franchise, we'll never really get anything quite like CE or Reach again.

Soul Calibur III is probably the most disappointing fighting game that I've ever played, as it seemed to miss the point of why people loved the series so much to begin with, completely removing some of the best features of previous games and replacing them with terrible ideas. While I wouldn't consider IV or V to be nearly as great as the first 2 SC games (and Soul Edge hasn't aged well, IMO), at least those were more fun since they got some features right. But III was just painfully dull, IMO.

[gunswordfist]

I would have liked Halo 2 fine if it wasn't so short/the ending didn't suck. So anti-climatic.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

In regard to the ending, that part actually wasn't Bungie's fault. They never originally planned to end the game on a cliff-hanger, and there were actually supposed to be a few more levels in the game that were completely scrapped due to the game being rushed out in time for a holiday release, which Microsoft wanted because the game would sell more copies that way. So that's why the single-player was the short, unbalanced mess that it was, and the fact that most reviewers still praised the game because of the multiplayer got Bungie to realize that the single-player didn't matter as much to most people, anymore, and thus they focused most of their efforts on multiplayer for Halo 3 as well (though, to be fair, that game had at least half of a good campaign mode in it).

[gunswordfist]

I didn't know or forgot that!

[talonmalon333]

I love how talonmalon333 conveniently leaves out the part where he initially called RE5 the best game in the series.

That lasted for like a month (I even forgot about it). Hype can do that to a person. Remember Foggle with RE6?

Not that I discredit your opinion, I just find it kind of funny how much you change your mind on things.

Opinions aren't permanent? What's this new concept you speak of?

Anyways, from what I've heard, RE5 is a decent co-op game in its own right, but barely feels like an RE game, if at all. I did enjoy the bits that I played with my brother on a casual level, but absolutely hated the single-player demo.

That's about right. It was okay on multiplayer and had a certain degree of fun.

[Foggle]

I actually stand by both of my RE6 reviews. It's a stunningly mediocre game with a few excellent parts and a few horrendous parts. Overrated by fans and overhated by the mainstream.

[talonmalon333]

I actually stand by both of my RE6 reviews. It's a stunningly mediocre game with a few excellent parts and a few horrendous parts. Overrated by fans and overhated by the mainstream.

Isn't that kind of cheating?

Also, I didn't realize fans even liked 6. I figured no one liked it much.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm referencing the fact that you change your mind on literally EVERYTHING!

Your initial opinions on Skyward Sword was also much more positive. And you've gone back and forth on whether the Sonic Adventure games hold up or not. You used to claim that The Dark Knight and The Avengers were among the best superhero movies ever, and then changed your mind and now say that they are fun but not great. And that's just a few examples, not even including stuff like anime.

Basically, you have a habit of changing your opinions a lot. I mean more often than normal for anyone else.

[talonmalon333]

I'm referencing the fact that you change your mind on literally EVERYTHING!

Your initial opinions on Skyward Sword was also much more positive.

Chalk that one up to the hype again. Similarly to RE5, my initial playthrough of that game was driven by it. In actuality, with both RE5 and SS, the act of playing them for the first time wasn't even as fun for me as my posts made them seem. I remember constantly getting frustrated by SS and playing RE5 on auto-pilot. I feel like I wanted to like those games more than I actually did, which is why my early posts on those games was driven by hype. Probably seems like an excuse, but I do mean it. It was kind of weird.

Also, I will say this about SS. The things I loved about it back then, I still love now. I still think it has some of the best dungeons in the series, and the best version of the Zelda character alongside Tetra from Wind Waker. It also has one of my favorite openings in the series, as well as one of my favorite endings. There is some great stuff in the game, and if you ever get a Wii, I do recommend playing it... just, after Twilight Princess.

And you've gone back and forth on whether the Sonic Adventure games hold up or not.

I have? I actually haven't played either game in probably ten years, so I can't properly judge how well they hold up. I do remember the first game having some technical flaws, but some of the posts I've read here made me consider that those flaws might've only been in the GameCube version (being that I didn't own a Dreamcast and couldn't play these games until they were released on GCN when I was young). I don't know, I feel like I've been relatively quiet about the Sonic Adventure games on here. I enjoyed them, but classic Sonic will always be my Sonic.

You used to claim that The Dark Knight and The Avengers were among the best superhero movies ever, and then changed your mind and now say that they are fun but not great.

I've talked about The Avengers on this board?

As for The Dark Knight, I'd still call it my favorite superhero movie. I just don't think it's a masterpiece. As for The Avengers, I do think it's a bit overrated, but ultimately I don't even care because it's so fun to watch. Another thing to keep in mind is that I'm a bit burned out by superhero movies by now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

For what it's worth, I (sort of) did the same thing for NG2, which I made out to be a masterpiece when I first played it because I was so hyped for it. In reality it had a ton of flaws, which only became more apparent to me when I re-played it on harder difficulty settings. That said, I still think that it's a great game. Just far from being as good as NGB.

[Rynnec]

Soul Calibur III is probably the most disappointing fighting game that I've ever played, as it seemed to miss the point of why people loved the series so much to begin with, completely removing some of the best features of previous games and replacing them with terrible ideas. While I wouldn't consider IV or V to be nearly as great as the first 2 SC games (and Soul Edge hasn't aged well, IMO), at least those were more fun since they got some features right. But III was just painfully dull, IMO.

Replace III with IV, and that would sum up my feelings quite well.

[gunswordfist]

Hey!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Eh, I disagree. I think that IV, while not great, at least had good mechanics going for it and had a good online mode.

SCIII was by far the worst, with some of my favorite characters being underpowered and downright unfun to use, the character creation option felt really limited in that game, and it has arguably the stupidest mode to ever be included in any fighting game.

Besides, V didn't really improve itself from IV, IMO, so it's not like you can really praise that game for adding more costumes and a throw-away story mode.