Crushing Disappointment

Have you ever been so unbelievably hyped for a game, only for it to totally crush your hype by being mediocre? Have you been looking forward to a game for months and years only for it to be a steaming pile of disappointment? This is the thread to vent about those experiences.

Inspired by a friend bringing this game to my attention again:



I was (for some reason...) really excited for this, to point where I asked for it for my birthday and nothing else. And it arrived... and it was so painfully average. Silicon Knights were good developers, so how did they balls this up? They'd mapped combat to the right analogue stick, resulting in poor camera control. They'd ruined an interesting premise (Norse mythology mixed with robots) by turning all the characters into boring sods. They had no semblance of a reasonable difficulty curve, and made death painfully frustrating. Yahtzee Croshaw goes into it in his review found here.

So forumites, regale us with tales of disappointment!

Long-time forumites probably know that I adore the original Crazy Taxi. It's my favourite game of all time. I've loved it for years, and played the PS2 and GameCube versions loads. Around 2005 or so I decided that I loved Crazy Taxi so much that I'd get it's sequel, which was only available on the Dreamcast. This was before I had a job, so I saved up for weeks to get a Dreamcast and a brand-new, sealed copy of Crazy Taxi 2 (which cost £35, which to my mind at the time was well expensive for an 'old' game). I travelled up to Glasgow and back just to get it in G-Force, and couldn't wait to play it religiously.

But it's a bit arse. They took a seriously wrong turn or ten when they were developing this. Gone were the vibrant, evocative slopes and sunny coasts of San Francisco, and in came a mass of dreary, dull tall buildings tore straight out from Cumbernauld. The map designs were all unnavigable messes. Bad Religion were off of the soundtrack. The 'Crazy Hop' was amazingly out of place (even in a game as mental as Crazy Taxi). There was no chance of any mastery - it's F-Zero GX levels of unfair. The time limits are a scadge. The multiple pickups are stupid. The announcer has rubbish chat. More will come to mind.

Aye. It's rubbish. Well disappointed.

Also: Banjo-Tooie. Same thing; loved the original, saved up for the sequel many years later, bit arse, no Bad Religion on the soundtrack.

I remember buying Crazy Taxi 2 on release in the summer of 2001 and it was my favourite Dreamcast game (excluding Shenmue, natch). The jumping mechanic allowed you to create crazy shortcuts by jumping ON to bridges and really helped avoid the New York traffic. It was a different type of skill, as being based on the Big Apple meant it was just as much about timing jumps and anticipating traffic as it was memorising routes. Considering the first game is a genuine classic, it didn't need to do much and the multiple customers thing was a neat touch at the time. I have great memories of this game.

Mine would be

I bought an Xbox 360 for this game, purely because I adored the first game on the original Xbox. It was so disappointing. The controls felt loose compared to the tight system of the original, and the blood was excessive and off-putting. They also threw in an easier difficulty which was what made the original so rewarding. I just couldn't get along with the game at all.

I remember having a fair bit of fun with Ninja Gaiden II, but I hadn't played the original so I'd no real expectations going into it.

Rare are finally stepping out of the Microsoft prison, and... they're making another Banjo-Kazooie game?!

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Time to go multi-platform! I might buy an XBox 360 just for the next installment in the Banjo-Kazooie franchise! It'll be gre... why's it called Nuts N Bolts?

Vehicle-based puzzle solving?

I only got as far as the demo. For the demo the devs deliberately chose the "predecessor reference theme park". I did a couple of crappy car-based things, got bored, and started wandering around. I couldn't work out why it took me so long to get to the next platforming section. Then I remembered: The crappy car-based things.
During a loading screen, a "hint" popped up, actually suggesting, if the game wasn't for me, to play the original on XBLA.

You got that right.

OBLIGATORY

After Andyman brought it up, I have to mention this:



Went into this expecting alternating Layton/Wright.  Got one of the worse Layton games with Wright and Maya bolted on.  Best part of the game was the initial trial before everything went a bit Layton, rest was all a tad mince.

No image because I'm on a work computer right now but...

Spore

This is a game I first heard of a few years before release, and immediately fell in love with the concept: A game about evolution. Taking a tiny microbe through the animal kingdom, and eventually up into a space faring civilisation. Previews, and Maxis demos promised a robust creature creator with, a realistic ecosystem per each planet, and a scientific take on everything.

The end result, A few fun creature/vehicle designers and 3 crap mini-games, 1 decent mini-game, and 1 tedious space stage. Evolution turned into creationism as the game changed radically at some point in the development phase, so you 'evolved' your creature by moving about your planet, finding fossils and suddenly having access to new jaws/legs/eyes etc. Herbivores levelled up by dancing with other species for some reason, preditors at least ate other animals (although it was more like an mmo combat system than hunting) while omnivores did both.

The tribal and civ phases were terrible rts games, the microbe bit a knock off of that big fish eats smaller fish style of game, and the while exploring space was fun, constant priate raids that only your ship could defend against ruined the whole thing. It also had a horrendous DRM policy, 5 activations per disk yo (I think they changed this at some point to be fair, but not at launch)

At least the editors were fun, and watching your mess of limbs somehow move logically was impressive.

Regardless, it was so unlike what my expectations had become for it, and so unlike what they had promised, that I've never pre-ordered a game since.

The creature editor was the best part of that game. When it came to actually playing Spore, it was pretty dull, all things told.

I really liked this

after playing Morrowind & Oblivion when I heard about this

I thought I can't wait to play it but everything about it is so boring and I bought the lunchbox edition & collectors guide along with the week off and everything abut it was disappointing.

I wouldn't say Fallout was a disappointment to me, but I think I struggled after playing Oblivion and Skyrim so long - learning a parallel set of lore, and so on. Still excited to try Fallout 4 though.

I was the opposite - I played FO3 before any of the Elder Scrolls games, so I had a hard time playing that style of game without an arsenal of guns to blow up folks.

Super Monkey Ball was an instant classic, with no problems that I could think of. Totally solid and utterly brilliant. It was never really the sort of game that demanded a sequel, but more courses, party games and mini games sounded immense in the old issues of NGC. I couldn't wait for it to come out. I was thinking that it was going to be the GameCube's killer app, such was my anticipation and expectation.

And it was sort of alright, but quite flawed. The courses relied much too much on luck rather than skill. Labyrinth still gets on my tits. Bouncer is even worse - bollocks to Bouncer. The new party games that debuted weren't up to all that much - my pals and I didn't get much fun out of any of them IIRC. Monkey Tennis wasn't the Virtua Tennis GC like we'd been promised. Monkey Soccer was a bit arse as well. The mingames that returned from the first one just weren't as good as they were either. Monkey Target was molested. I can remember how gutted my mates and I were about that. It's like all of your disappointments that you've typed about in this thread, times a hundred billion.

It's not a bad game, but, for me, a crushing disappointment.

EDIT: They added a story mode, for some mental reason. Aye. Just mental.

Wow. That's quite the reaction to what I thought was a pretty good game!  Mind you, I was too clumsy to rise to the upper echelons of SMB1 (for that reason, Story Mode was a godsend (maybe that's why it was added), and I still never finished it), and I never got the hang of Monkey Target; so there's that to consider.  Had a great time with Monkey Footie, though.

EDIT: In fact, I'd say that the Story Mode justified its existence through its "dialogue" alone.

Woah Woah Woah Mas, F3 a crushing disappointment?

Whereas Fallout 3 presented a grubby but utterly charming world with an awesome soundtrack, Skyrim seems comparatively stale.  

Both of those games very much feel like the world is there to be your playground, rather than you being a part of their worlds. You're less Flick from Bugs Life, more kid with magnifying glass burning a bunch of insects. Its for that reason that both games seem a bit silly, but, to me at least, the Fallout universe is one worth manipulating because of its style. I recall from that fonts thread, Jimbob posted a comparison of Oblivion Menus to Skyrim's, and I think that really exemplifies how bereft of character the whole Skyrim setup is. Sure, there are fun dungeons to explore and all, but the overall atmosphere has about as much personality as a zombie.  

Now Oblivion, I haven't played, but Morrowind is was good (I just can't deal with the controls anymore). It was pretty groundbreaking for its time and unlike Skyrim or Fallout 3 it managed to create a world that, although players basically become demi-gods in the end anyway, felt organic. From the ways characters reacted to you based on your race, what you were wearing, if your sword was drawn, to the crazy idea of not letting you (or at least making it hard to) control every single guild in one playthrough (and when you do control them all in Skyrim, you cannot to do anything interesting with them ), to random encounters, the quests on offer, and the overall presentation, Morrowind felt like a role playing game all the time as opposed to one where you may choose to role play.

That said, I guess you came to Fallout via Oblivion/Morrowind rather than Fallout 3/New Vegas to Skyrim as I did.

Muss wrote:

Woah Woah Woah Mas, F3 a crushing disappointment?

Whereas Fallout 3 presented a grubby but utterly charming world with an awesome soundtrack, Skyrim seems comparatively stale.  

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I've struggled with Skyrim and not really been able to explain why, despite loving Fallout 3. I think you're right, it's the world and the lifeless people that inhabit it. I cared about the backstory in Fallout too, but couldn't care less about Skyrim's.

Exactly Muss, I came to Fallout 3 as it had Bethesda on the box who made some of my fav RPGS and then there making a RPG with guns and in a post-apocalyptic, which I was hyped for.

That like I said I preordered everything and the best versions, had time off then I played it and everything about it was like the games colour palate grey & boring that after the first 2 days of my holiday I traded it in.

I did play about 10hrs of it as Fallout 3 has been brought before on the forum and I've been asked how much time I gave it and to me that was plenty to just it on.

mas wrote:

That like I said I preordered everything and the best versions, had time off then I played it and everything about it was like the games colour palate grey & boring.........

Erm..considering it's set after a nuclear explosion what colour palette do you expect it to have? I've never played the game myself so I can't say anything on the gameplay side of things.

Well 4 has colours in it and games like gears of war is grey but the world is still interesting.

masofdas wrote:

games like gears of war is grey but the world is still interesting.

How the hell is Gears's world more interesting than Fallout's?

I found the world more interesting in Gears along with the lore where Fallout nope

Man alive, I mean, it's your opinion and all, but I cannot fathom how a post-nuclear society built on the 40s/50s vision of the future is less interesting than roidy dudes fighting burrowing roidy aliens.

4 does look good, but the world is I did find boring and lacked atmosphere.

But likely I said I was really excited for Fallout 3 and I found it a crushing disappointment that everything I might seem boring to me about the game.

Where's gears of war , I went in thinking this is a new IP on a new system, that I had no thoughts on it before hand where Fallout 3, I was hoping it be like Morrowind or Oblivion but with guns.

Isn't Morrowind complete pants though?

Maybe now but when it came out it was excellent and pushed the western RPG genre & put The Elder Scrolls on the map, it's meta is 89.

The_Jaster wrote:

Isn't Morrowind complete pants though?

Nah, Morrowind's excellent. It looks like tripe now graphically, but it's the best Elder Scrolls gameplay wise.