Video Games That Have Disappointed You

I can second Castle Story… the uo was not at all intuitive or solid. Too many modes and menu radials to make sense of anything.

This, yes. I thought the Peter Molyneux not delivering on promises thing was exaggerated, but it seems that I was wrong. Such a shame, I backed that for a good amount of money, too. More than I backed Stonehearth, and that one definitely is already more deserving.

I’m just gonna pitch in here and add Dead Island Riptide.

Now, I’m one of those oddballs who genuinely enjoyed the first Dead Island, going so far as to complete 8 1/2 times in one night with some fellow oddballs. Say what you will about the bug, glitches and exploits and how they ruined the game, but If you can find a creative enough group, those very same problems make the game infinitely more fun (and hilarious).

All that being said, Riptide, while being mostly (read: entirely) the same game, was just a flat-out disappointment. When I had heard that Deep Silver was doing a DI sequel, the quantity of hype in me could only be measured in scientific notation. I suppose some of the blame does fall to me setting my expectations a bit high, but the game felt like a lazy, stretched-out-yet-perplexingly-shorter copypaste of the original. Sure, it’s a new island, there are (some) new characters, and they threw in a new weapon or two, but so much felt hollow and uninspired. Not to mention a really pitiful sequel-bait ending.

I think that the worst part is that it really didn’t leave me mad or upset about it, just sort of bitterly apathetic.

Going to add Yogventures to the list. It can out and… well there still hasn’t been a lot of progress. I also have never been able to find the forums, but it started out as like a better graphics minecraft looking game, but then they made it sound more like a build a map and have a friend play.

I agree, I spent a whole day doing chores, bought, almost a year later, no new updates!

Dead Island (I cant remember which one) was the biggest tease ever. It advertised local co-op on the box but as it turns out they had just lied and never actually added it. :anger:

Well, a lot of people said the ones I was going to say: Rome II, Cube World, SimCity, Castle Story, Diablo 3, Godus, Dragon Age 2 (I did ragequit in less than 5 minutes too lol, I mean, DA: Origins was so AMAZING, how could they screw up and change everything that was good about the first one without realizing how stupid that was?)

Anyway, I’d like to add some others to the list:

The Lord of the Rings Online: Helm’s Deep - yes, it’s an MMO expansion, I know. But the OP didn’t estabilish any rules, so… Well, I’ve played LOTRO for quite some time (since vanilla beta, actually, back in 2006-7 I think?) and I’ve loved this game. It started to crumble, tho… especially when it was left in the hands of big-time producers (Warner Bros.). After going F2P it almost started breathing again, and worked out it’s last days of glory with the Riders of Rohan expansion. It was beautiful. And then it was gone… Helm’s Deep completely ruined the game, and the battle itself is so bland and… well, I’ll stop here.

Dawn of Fantasy: Kingdom Wars - I made the mistake of buying this… thing… after watching a single trailer. A SINGLE TRAILER. After a few tutorials and starting my town, when I finally got to action, I realized that I simply couldn’t stand the terrible combat mechanics and especially the sound design. I SWEAR TO ALL THE GODS, the old and the new, that the battles in this game sound like a giant killer washing machine from hell. LOOPING.

Omerta - City of Gangsters - Well, I did play it to the end and wasn’t really that bad. The game is fun and all… I’m just including it here because I live a daily frustration of dreaming about the day I’ll find a game as great as the old-school “Gangsters” was. Seriously - not sure if anyone here played Gangsters (the first one), but that game was AWESOME.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Do I really have to explain that one?

Fun thread, I have to think more before I answer fully, but I want to fill in on a few already discussed titles.

I don’t think developers should hide behind “still in alpha/beta” for too long. I was really hyped about CW, however I didn’t join the community and today I’m glad that I didn’t. One year ago I bought the CW Alpha (2013-07-04). I paid €15 for it and I loved it. However, I didn’t want to spend too much time in early alpha since a lot of things were about to change anyway. Characters should be wiped and stuff… I didn’t want to be tired of/finished with the game at release :wink:. So the hype went on, and instead of things going faster - from late summer-13 until now, it feels like things are just slowing down. Yes, there was a May update. But there has been quite a a few updates from Wollay since “alpha release”, but nothing we could try out.

And I think this was the big thing, that people (myself included) expected an update to try out - but we never got an update after the initial critical fixes. And every few month there is an update, screenshots, more things added, but not for us. I don’t remember if we were promised regular updates or so, but at least people were expecting more than what came. We were never promised a date, and today it is very clear what that meant. So shame on us for hyping it too much.

So even if it is still in alpha… it has not lived up to the hype! And you can’t use the “still in alpha” as an excuse for one year after people paid a good amount of money for it! I really hope that CW will come to life again, and I will happily play it, because I have saved most of my game hours for beta + final :wink:

The thing is also that if it takes too long, other games will “steal” the idea. Trove has a bigger team working on it, and even if I haven’t tried it, it looks like it is very… inspired by CW (and Minecraft of course). But perhaps they can finish it before the community gets tired of waiting? In that case, all respect to them for doing so.

And where do Stonehearth fit into this discussion? Well, a successful Kickstarter is a hype for sure. And then there is those promises. In December, we wanted a beta. But we got an alpha with very limited mechanics. The big difference is that Team Radiant during all this time has been very clear on what they are doing, how things are going, and in advance told us that there would be a delay. But since we have gotten weekly updates, and a few game updates, it is ok! Communication is king!

What if we had gotten the current alpha, and no news for several months… and in september we got the message that it will be released some time during 2015. This would have killed the hype completely and perhaps killed the game. To be honest though, Stonehearth did not live up to the hype since we didn’t get a beta in december :smile: Well, we all have different definitions of what a beta should be, but in my book it is a game with most elements/mechanics put in place, playable with mostly bugs left to fix. This is not what we got, but as I said, the regular updates and a community-friendly team, it has perhaps saved the game from an anti-hype… :wink:

I planned to write like 10 sentences. Sorry for rambling on and on about things you already know :blush:

5 Likes

So, are you saying Stonehearth is a bad game or what?

Haha, I tried to be clear on not meaning that :smile:

To be clear: I hope and think that Stonehearth will be a great and fun game! But since we were discussion games that did not live up to the hype, I put SH into the discussion - since the plan was to release a beta in december-13. And the release in december-13 was per definition a “bad game”. But thanks to regular updates and blog posts, that “bad game” is taking shape and I think the alpha progression is really working well.

So to answer your question: I don’t think Stonehearth is a good game today (because it’s far from finished), but I think it will be a good game later this year :blush:

I could agree on that. Stonehearth does need some time to grow.

If only the rest of the Games we talked about had as much mercy.

But at the moment right now, we’re talking about Games that when we played them, whether it was Early-Access or a Final Release, didn’t really hit the mark, and in general, it is a bad game.

Not at all.

Are we really comparing a game that has been out in the wild for 6 months with constant communication from the team and good reasoning behind the progress that has been made, with games like Sim City and Spore, and other massive games with massive teams that promise so much which fails to materialise come final release?

If, and only if, Stonehearth were to ever enter the dreaded development hell and take a similar path to other early access titles like Castle Story where users are still waiting for substantive progress 2 years on, then we could say it has failed to live up to the hype.

3 Likes

Two words:
Goat simulator.

I didnt realize the game could get completed in 10 minutes.

Are there any [Insert name of random animal] Simulators? I think it’s just a fad, isn’t it?

There was a bear simulator as well, wasn’t there? Or perhaps you mean actually serious simulators? I don’t know if the bear one is that, but obviously the goat one is not.

Actually I didn’t know Goat Simulator was considered a game :smile:

(But I don’t want to get into the definition of what a game is in this thread.)

anything can be considered a game if you make it to be, like I could make a game from a ping pong ball and 2 hair dryers

air ping pong.
but the term for a game is a weird one

I know its just a fad, still expected more out of it.

Yea, the term game can be pretty vague. I guess it’s a bit subjective at that too.

I consider most alpha and beta as games.
I don’t think the hangar module from Starcitizen alone is a game even though a lot of people do.
I consider the Goat simulator to be a scam.
And I’m pretty sure the Koreans regard StarCraft more as a job opportunity than anything else.

1 Like

How so? They did not market it as the greatest game ever or anything. they just made it public and it went all over the place. it was never intended to get that huge, it was more of a test and suddenly everyone played it and talked about it.

2 Likes