Hyped Up Games That Disappointed You

I imagine that many of you might give mention to The Force Unleashed 2, or perhaps KotOR 2.

The games that are presently disappointing me, however, are Zelda: Skyward Sword and Halo Reach. I just recently started both these games and both of them were surrounded by much hype and stellar (at least in the former's case) reviews.

Skyward Sword has to be the worst modern console Zelda game I've ever played (and yes, I've played Majora's Mask). Was it purely sentimental value about this being the last major game for the Wii that earned it so much ridiculously high praise? The only challenge found in this game is encountered while trying to navigate your way through the Wii remote's clumsy controls.

The Wii's inept motion sensor ability makes the combat annoying and incredibly shy of the "best sword fighting game ever" hype it received. Twilight Princess had sharper combat on the Gamecube.

Also, I am sick of Fi. All that Science Class textbook lingo she uses utterly removes me from the Fantasy milieu I want in a Zelda game. Plus, her constant beeping over the most trivial notices only adds to the game's many annoyances. I don't need to hear her beeping if I drop down to three remaining hearts--especially if I'm still locked in an annoying combat sequence.

In short, lousy controls piled atop lousy mechanics and game design make Skyward Sword a lousy Zelda game. I'm not even finished it yet. Probably not even half way. But I keep playing only so that I can finish this nonsense and put it behind me.


Next, Halo Reach. I just started playing this on coop with a friend. We both were initially put off by the bulky/clunky/last-gen look of the game. This game received high praise, but it's hard to get into when it looks like it was made for the original Xbox. Honestly, Halo 2 was on par with this thing visually. It hardly looks like a current-gen game. Or at least, it doesn't look like a modern current-gen game.

Aside from visual disappointments, where's my dual-wield? Can only the Master Chief and Arbiter wield a gun in each hand? Plus, why do my confiscated weapons keep vanishing every time a new segment/chapter loads? IIRC, in previous Halos, if I picked up a laser sword, I was able to carry it with me into the next chapter/segment (with the same amount of charges, grenades, etc). But now, all of a sudden, we lose our entire inventory after every segment loads?

C'mon, Bungie. Why did all those reviews claim this was the best Halo ever?



Earlier I had mentioned my disappointment with Arkham City as well. However, in light of the above disappointments, Arkham City has been forgiven for its (relatively trivial) flaws.

 

Lego Star Wars 3.
Most nonsensical game play and story.

the Force Unleashed: just hated the way it played--didn't fit in the universe at all. Why do storm troopers take three swings with a LIGHTSABER to kill? Lightsaber is supposed to cut through anything. One swing should leave 2 cauterized halves of the storm trooper on the ground.

 

Dragon Age II. It wasn't a bad game, in fact it's above average, but it moved far enough away from DA to be a disappointment to me.

 

When you said that, I presumed you were referring to how the Apprentice helped start the Rebellion...

In every SW game I've ever played, enemies usually require a couple strikes with a lightsaber to take down. So, using the above logic, none of the SW games fit into the SW universe?

 

WTH? Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game! Honestly, it's a brilliant game! I think it's the last time a console Zelda game made any big innovations in its gameplay. How can you use that game as your benchmark for a poor console Zelda game? IMO, TP is the most 'by the numbers' Zelda game of all of them, and is my least favorite. SS also underwhelmed me severely. I can't see how you can mention SS in the same sentence as MM.

 

Lego Indiana Jones (PS2). I had enjoyed the SW Lego games on the PS2 a lot. So when Lego Indy was announced I figured I'd get it since I'm an Indiana fan. I was frustrated by the game play and puzzle-solving in this one. I finally gave up. (I think it was the level where you had to use a motorcycle to escape the Nazis.) It was a toss-up between giving up or winging the controller across the room.

 

The Force Unleashed II. I thought the first one was great but its sequel was nothing but a big let down. It could have gone in a cool direction with the whole "Is he a clone? Isn't he?" angle but they didn't really talk about it at all. Then all of the game was "maybe Galen" tracking down a woman he may never have met to...what exactly? Also, the last boss battle was absolutely horrible.

Final Fantasy XIII. I absolutely LOVE the Final Fantasy series but this was the first one that really let me down. The combat system was great, it looked amazing, and the music is really nice. But it failed with the story, something I wasn't sure was possible with a FF game. It was confusing, all over the place, and I didn't really like any of the characters at all. Especially Hope. Stupid little brat. The worst part about THAT was that he was the best healer so you basically had to have him in your party all of the time.

 

In case you didn't know beforehand, dual-wielding was removed from Reach in order to make its gameplay more similar to the original Halo (but then, Halo:CE didn't have armor abilities...ok, skip that). Sorry if it's news to you but this game is nearly two years old. However, it is rather unfair that Elite NPCs (mainly the Ultras and Zealots) get to dual wield plasma rifle destruction your way.

I'm also sorry to tell you you desperately need new glasses if you think this game looks worse than Halo 2. I'm not crazy about its look but it's only slightly inferior to Halo 3 (which IMO is a better looking game even though it is the older game). But looking back at Halo 2, that game is really, really ugly to look at right now. But I concur with you that REACH isn't the best Halo by far. For some reason I still have it around even though I don't play it anymore. I think I'll squeeze a few bucks out of it for Mass Effect 3.

 

I agree that Reach was an immense disappointment.

Not sure about your graphical qualms, but maybe it's because in the game they went for the "bleak setting = dull color palette" route which is what kind of got to me, considering how vibrant each previous Halo game had been, especially Halo 3.

My major beef with the game is the actual story of it, which is to say it really doesn't have one. It's just a series of unfortunate events that happen to this squad of semi-Spartans. You don't even get to like any of the characters, with the exception of POSSIBLY Jorge, and before you get to know him he's dust. They would have been better off inventing something earlier in the war where they could have let players be Spartan-II's again, and even if they did in fact still do the battle of Reach, where was the writing that made something like ODST so good?

In short: Reach was a huge disappointment partly because of how they executed the setting, but primarily the characters, which aren't given a chance to develop by the poorly-conceived story.

 

First of all, to get it straight, Majora's Mask is one of the greatest games committed to cartridge media. Any suggestion otherwise is utterly heinous and reprehensible, and will probably result in a negative effect on your credit rating, as well as women finding you less attractive.

As far as the hype/disappointment scale goes, at the top of the graph, the daddy of overhyped, utterly disappointing games are the Call of Duty series (after CoD2) - which only get more hyped and more disappointing as times goes on. I usually wait til I can get them cheap, for the 5 hours of mindless entertainment I can stretch out of the single player campaign and then move on. I avoid the multiplayer like the plague.

I was a bit upset that Resident Evil 5 never lived up the potential of Resi 4, but it was still a barnstormer of a game.

 

You forgot to mention the ridiculously bad as to be utterly offensive multiplayer. Talk about breaking was didn't needed to be fixed.

I concur with most of what you said. To me, one of the major dissapointments with Reach was that it felt like a series of missed opportunities. I don't see why the game couldn't have based or otherwise revolved more closely around the novel. Maybe going so far as playing once again as Master Chief, except with a few Spartan-II buddies in tow like Kelly, Linda or Fred. I mean, the final fight on that space station as the Chief and his teammates were trying to destroy that nav database would've been pretty epic. Also there's all the canonbreaking in regards to the whole fall of Reach and the Spartan-IIIs. In the novel the Fall of Reach takes place within a day (maybe to short a timeframe for an "epic" Halo game), but it makes no sense to me that the Covenant would've taken the better part of two months to glass the planet like they did in the game when they were portrayed as mighty military force that could've destroyed any planet without much effort. And, yeah, Noble Team really wasn't that fascinating; Sgt. Buck and his ODST squad were more badass and compelling.

Funny thing is, to this day you'll see tons of die-hard Halo fans that'll defend REACH no matter what. And woe be to you if you try to toss these arguments in their faces: the written diarrhea of verbal abuse is so not worth it.

 

Word, I agree completely. Armor abilities ruined multiplayer for me for the most part. There was something exciting about picking up that trip mine or bubble shield in Halo 3 and waiting until the right moment to use it.

And as far as the canon-breaking goes, did the planet of Reach as portrayed in the game look at any point like a military fortress-world to you? Or to anyone for that matter? Did it ever seem to you like the UNSC even had experience with fighting the Covenant before that battle? When they show up in the first mission everyone's like "The Covenant are on Reach," as if its this vast impossibility. Wouldn't this enemy you've been fighting for twenty years have the sole objective of destroying your biggest military center?

There's just too much wrong with it, to be honest.

I'm holding out hope for Halo 4, but given what Greg Bear's novels are doing with the Flood, Forerunners, and humans, I have big doubts.

 

I guess I'm not the only one who saw the Reach portrayed in the game seemed like a mere colony world lost to the Covies, not the second to most important UNSC fortress world. I also absolutely hated that little to no space action was shown in REACH. Except on that one mission, and I find that suspense of disbelief was hineously stressed by stating that the Covies only had one Supercarrier and several smaller ships in the initial salvos on Reach and it was just at the precise moment that The Long Night of Solace was destroyed that the REST of the Fleet of Particular Justice warped in to seal the planet's fate (another missed opportunity: no glimpse of future Arbiter Thel Vadamee in a more villanous role this time around). And where was the network of MAC stations that were supposed to keep the Covie fleet at bay? Not a peep or single mention of those during the game.

I haven't read of the Greg Bear novel's because, what's the point? At the end of the day their canonicity will be in question depending on what they decide to do with the new game trilogy. But by the tone of your post, I take it that Mr. Bear isn't doing a very good job with the Halo universe?

I think, when all is said and done, I would've preferred if things had ended with Halo 3.

 

Well it's safe to say we're both probably equally disappointed by Halo: Reach and its hype.

Bear is a fantastic author, don't get me wrong on that. And the story he's writing in the Forerunner trilogy is a good one, to be certain. A few minutes on the Halopedian will expose a lot of that story to you, as he deals in really fundamental stuff from the Forerunner-Flood War and the Forerunner-Human War . And 343 Industries has stated the books will tie firmly into the Reclaimer Trilogy, so that might get a little hairy. But then again the majority of fans seem to really like the direction the Foreunner trilogy of books is going, I'm just not one of them, as they take away most of the mystery that made Halos 1-3 so compelling in the first place.

In the end, I wish they'd have stayed truer to the story we got from the Halo 3 Terminals.

 

All this talk of the great fail that was Halo Reach is great and all, but I don't know if its continuous discussion falls within this thread. Therefore, I'd like to add a Hyped up game that ultimately dissapointed me: L.A. Noire.

I played that sucker to death, got all of the cheevos and, yes indeed, it's technical achievements and recreation of 1947 Los Angeles were quite impressive. But the story, the gameplay, glitches, its predictable noire finale and simple lack of replay value sorta deflated it at the end. So much so it's not surprising the game got any mention at this years GOTY awards. The very public spat between Team Bondi and Rockstar didn't help matters either. Nor did the "finished" product you got your hands on. And by that I mean, you got a game that was quite incomplete, with missions/cases that by rights should've been included as part of the finished game blatantly sold post release as DLC.

So yeah, L.A. Noire should've been a great game that should've lived up to its hype, but somehow managed to fall flat on its nose in no time at all.

 

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. I could go on and on about how SMW is one of my favorite games ever and how it was the first game I ever played and all that. Surprisingly though, and I really don't know why, but I never played the sequel until about a couple years ago when I decided to blind buy it at my local shop. I played it for a while, and just could not get into it. I don't know what it was. The graphics maybe, I didn't like how they departed from the delightfully simple style of SMW to the uber mega cartoony vibe of the sequel. Or maybe it was Yoshi being the main character (even though I loved him in the first). Or maybe it was the egg shooting, or the collectibles throughout the levels, or the stupid roulette thing at the end of each level. I still haven't made it past the first world, and probably never will because every time I try to get back in to it, I end up just taking the cartridge out and putting in its predecessor. The fact that some people think Yoshi's Island is actually superior to Super Mario World is mind boggling. Maybe if I'd played it earlier I'd understand.

 

Skyrim. Pretty much garbage all around. Terrible radiant quest system that is basically a substituite for not actually having any depth. Even fewer faction choices, and smaller questlines for those factions. The world is so generic and boring, it's just "Medieval Scandinavia"...it is no where near as compelling as Morrowind's diverse, creative world.

The combat (never a strong suit in Elder Scrolls) and leveling/skills have been so dumbed down so that 14 year olds who normally play Call of Duty can play this on their X-box. As a result of this dumbing down, the game has become immensely popular. The popularity makes me hate it more, especially when everyone pretends it is better than Morrowind/Oblivion just because those games are "ugly."

Skyrim took the challenge (it never was "hard" but it used to involved a bit more thinking...custom spells anyone?) and depth out of the Elder Scrolls, and, for me atleast, marks a new era in gaming in which we regurgitate the same concepts every couple of years, dumb everything down to a pretty button mash, and spend as little time as possible creating a truly unique world for the players to play in.

 

I was tempted to outright disregard your comment right there, roll my eyes and not reply to it but I just can't help it, since IMHO Skyrim has been the best $60+ bucks I've spent on a videogame in quite some time. And trust me, if you had asked me a year ago whether I'd be totally engrossed by a fantasy RPG -- and I'm definitely not a fan of sword & sorcery fantasy -- which happens to be a sequel to a series I didn't know one whit about, I would've laughed in your face. Then the game came out and the gushing praise it got everywhere persuaded me in the sense that maybe I oughta check it out.

Truth be told, I rented it one night last year, it didn't grab me and didn't get to play more than an hour or so. But deep down I felt I didn't give the game a chance, just like I felt when trying out Fallout 3 two years ago. So early this year as New Year's present of sorts to myself, I bought it and decided to give it a chance. And now, two months, nearly 300 hrs. and two playthroughs later, it still hasn't let me go (maybe Mass Effect 3 will be the only one that'll be able to cut cord). Hardly the definition of garbage for me. And I certainly don't feel I'm playing a dumbed down game where I feel like the goddam Master Chief. Especially, if I'm not too careful, an Ancient Dragon or a damn Falmer can still chop me into itty bitty pieces if I don't play my cards right. Sure, the game isn't perfect and it's ridden with humourous and not so funny bugs (but then, has any Bethesda open world RPG game been perfect?) and yeah, the combat could definitely be better, but Skyrim's Nordic inspire world is hardly boring and definitely not ugly to the eye.

I'm not sure whether you wanted a rehash of older and possibly better games (I wouldn't know, since I haven't played Oblivion and dismissed Morrowind when I had it in my hands just the same way I dismissed Skyrim the first time around), but methinks that perhaps you didn't give Skyrim the chance it needed. So...try again. Maybe you won't be dissuaded. But who knows, maybe this time it'll grab you and won't let go.

 

Oh man Force Unleashed II, what a train wreck of a game. Which is particularly apt because IIRC you do crash a tram on Cato Neimoidia. Hilarious.

Pretty much every CoD since CoD4 is a big contender for me.

 

Without having played Morrowind or Oblivion, it is hard to understand why I think those games are better than Skyrim. And for the record I don't expect or want a game to just trot out the same engine/mechanics every 2-3 years and call that a franchise. I want and expect change, but dumbing everything down isn't the right kind of change. I'm also not saying Morrowind/Oblivion are perfect games. Morrowind had a mana system and different attacks (with corresponding values) depending on the direction you were moving when you struck. Navigating the world was also pretty hard without a guide, which can get frustrating, but it was also pretty satisfying to find a place after looking for it for 15 minutes. Oblivion had a horrible character design system and leveled quest rewards that penalized you for finishing quests early.

That being said, Skyrim doesn't have much going for it except for the good visuals (which I immediately discard because graphics don't make a game, except in the rare circumstance where a modern game is so cheaply/poorly designed that it actively takes away from the game experience.) The environment of Skyrim, like the Imperial lands in Oblivion, are simply too homogenous for my tastes. In Morrowind, there are wildly different design concepts- from the traditional "medieval" villages of ebonheart and pelagiad, to the isolated fishing villages of seyda neen and gnaar mok. That is to say nothing of the ancient dwemer ruins, ashlander villages, and Great House towns (which vary greatly in architecture and design.) Skyrim's "Nord and..?" design is pretty, but not awe inspiring. As for bugs, Skyrim has alot of them, but it's not fair for me to compare that to Morrowind, which has been out for almost ten years and has been basically completely patched for quite some time.

Just so you don't think I literally hate everything about Skyrim, I will tell you two things that I think it has improved on: Firstly, I appreciate the new dual wield system. Previous games haven't had this and it works fairly well. I also like the way you distribute points in skill branches after leveling. Some of it is redundant and/or useless, but it was a decent move. If these were the only changes made to the combat I would've been fairly pleased with this element of the game, but making it even easier than it already was by eliminating the class system and taking the challenge out of efficient leveling just makes it too easy.

And I do plan on giving it another chance, for the record

 

Wait, so Skyrim is garbage compared to Morrowind and Oblivion, but you haven't played Morrowind or Oblivion?

 

No, perhaps I worded it badly, but I was talking to Darth Invidious...he hasn't played Morrowind or Oblivion. I've played each for hundreds of hours.

 

Yeah, it seemed a little strange

 

I'm not sure if BF3 fits in here or not. It's a great game with a great campaign and a great multiplayer but there are issues that people have been mentioning since launch that haven't been fixed. Some of the sniper rifles feel like they're firing marshmallows, the bipods are unreliable at best, and there's no way to change server without quitting the game completely. So I guess I'm more disappointed with DICE than the game, because if they'd just fix the big problems it'd be an amazing game.

 

I know I should give Morrowind a chance (not sure about Oblivion though since opinions on that one seem mixed), but my problem is whether Ill be able to enjoy such an aged game, let alone whether it'll run properly on my 360.