Games that could have been amazing!...buuut sucked?

[madFive]

Think this applies to ~95% of all the "Early Access" stuff being sold now. Seems like almost every one gets a lot of buy-in then fizzles out leaving everyone disappointed.

My most prime example would be Star Forge. Like a high-def minecraft in space, beautiful randomly generated landscapes, deformable terrain, plenty of fun crafting, vehicles, and a fairly nice combat system. But the devs ran out of money when the game was about 65% complete, and had to rush out a release way ahead of being ready. Currently the game is still better than minecraft IMO, but it's so buggy with items constantly un-spawning and areas corrupting, it becomes infuriating to play more than about an hour at a time... such a sad end to a promising project.

 

[jeremyshaw]

I have a love-hate relationship with Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason. The storyline, is awesome. The gameplay is standard. Gorgeous graphics, that weren't optimized. Great level design, but very slow paced. Ask me for a unique horror game, I'll recommend it, if I know you want to play it for the story alone.

I remember getting this from a nVidia bundle a while back. I also remember thinking it was okay-ish, but not great. More of a Physx and TWIMTBP framework than a real game.

 

[LeviathanZERO]

ill try:

Interstate 76 nitro pack. car combat ala twisted metal with a 70s funk groove.
fun right? nope, absolute crapload.
graphics were passable, if you're a fan of brown polygons (mechwarrior 2 had less going on on-screen and still managed to do it better). controls i recall as being ponderous, cutscenes (such as they were) were low quality 3d animations almost devoid of shading, wrapped up in what i can only assume was a sub-standard implementation of Smacker video given the incessant artifacting. user interface for menus and car customization was firmly in the "handwritten pen on sheet of paper" style.
apparently it had a plot, but it was clearly anything but memorable.

first, and to date, only game ive ever tried to return to the store for a refund

LOL, what kind of crack are you smoking?
If you said I 82, OK, but this is all levels of wrong. Nitro pack was not brown at all (You dont remember the snow levels? Grassy levels? hmm...) but 76, sure as hell was. Plus it came with GL support in the box and multiplayer was a blast for years. You are confused or remembering something else. Nitro pack was the pinnacle of the Interstate games.

 

[Charlie Hustle]

Uncharted 3. Shit story, shit controls.

Oh shit!! Shots fired!!!

 

[Charlie Hustle]

Titanfall

so much potential wasted...game didn't suck but it should have been so much better

Agreed.... This game could have been the next classic. I loved this game, all 2 hours of it. No depth, small ass maps, small ass number of players, and big ass mechs running around in small maps. That game was like that cute ass girl you meet, then you figured out that she is a hoodrat.

That was the only game i thought i felt hustled.

 

[Ur_Mom]

That was the only game i thought i felt hustled.

Yup. So much potential, and they really sold it via the hype. I bought an Xbox One just for that game (bought the bundle). I love my Xbox One and all the games, but that was the reason I finally picked it up (no regrets on the system!).

Good game. I still enjoy it. But, it doesn't have much lasting value. I still pick it up and play it every once in a while, but it's just a 30 minute session every couple months. It's a shallow game. Just didn't meet the hype. Not even close.

 

[epicjas0n]

MGS5
+ Some decent stealth play, still not the best stealth on the market (Dishonored).
- The story is absolute garbage
- One of the most repetitive games I have played this gen
- The Open world is awful and the game should have simply been an sandbox with open areas
- The economy system is terrible
- The real-time wait times on development of items/resources was idiotic and plain bush league
- The fulton system pretty much trivialized the stealth gameplay
- FOB were pointless
- Online was a shit show
- The dialogue was cringeworthy along with the writing, Kojima is overrated.
- The plot was straight out of a Japanese B-movie
- The gunplay was pretty bad


One of the most overrated games I have played, the second being Uncharted 2.

Completely agree with you on MGSV. Also, Kiefer Sutherland barely had any lines making it awkward watching cutscenes where Snake wouldn't say a single word.

 

[atom]

StarCraft 2
Counterstrike: Condition Zero
Jurassic Park (SNES)
Oblivion (Sorry guys!)
SimCity(2013)
Streets of SimCity
SimCopter
A game I have an NDA for
Watch Dogs (Sorry again!)
Alone in the Dark (2008)
Resident Evil 6
Age of Empires 3
Dante's Inferno
Perfect Dark Zero
Every Bond game after Nightfire

 

[M76]

I
Fallout 4 has been the smoothest gaming experience of a Bethesda title for me yet.

Same here, some minor bugs, but nothing serious. Compared to F3, Oblvivion, Skyrim. F4 is by far the best Bethesda game out of the box. I enjoy this the most of them, and Skyrim comes second, but I loved that one too. And I absolutely and utterly despise the Witcher series, there I said it.

 

[M76]

Trespasser - if the technology would've been ready for it.
Watch Dogs - If it was anything like they promised, and not just an AC in a scifi setting.
Mafia II - if most of the campaign wasn't missing from it, because of being unfinished or reserved for dlc.
Witcher - if the protagonist wasn't an unrelenting a-hole.
Max Payne 3 - If you weren't set out to fail and be humiliated over and over again trough the entire damn game.

 

[infin@]

Aliens CM...the horror.

 

[Bigbacon]

E.T ---what a mess. There is a reason they buried the damn thing in a landfill.

it really isn't that bad as everyone says. It is just trendy to hate on it. Family had no problem with it back in the 80s and most wouldn't today if it wasn't for AVGN and such.

 

[Bigbacon]

Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Knight, Shadows of the Empire were amazing games. I would also argue SWG was a great MMO, I loved farming my gasses and minerals, fuck the haters.



What happened with 2142? I played for the first couple of weeks but then nobody else wanted to transition over and the game slowly died

weird...I played 2142 religiously for a really long time and there was never a problem finding servers to play on that were full. I am talking years.

 

[Converge]

Aliens CM...the horror.

Yeah what a shame too. Thank god for isolation because I was waiting for a good aliens game for so long. I remember seeing screens or a preview of colonial marines from YEARS ago when it was first conceived before it was cancelled/put on hold for a long time. I was so pumped for it, too bad that when it finally got made that it was garbage.

I did love AvP2 for PC though....

 

[infin@]

I did love AvP2 for PC though....

As did I! Isolation was a great game as well, but I wonder how much CM affected its sales. I feel it would have done better and we would likely have a sequel confirmed if it had sold better.

 

[bman212121]

StarCraft 2
Counterstrike: Condition Zero
Jurassic Park (SNES)
Oblivion (Sorry guys!)
SimCity(2013)
Streets of SimCity
SimCopter
A game I have an NDA for
Watch Dogs (Sorry again!)
Alone in the Dark (2008)
Resident Evil 6
Age of Empires 3
Dante's Inferno
Perfect Dark Zero
Every Bond game after Nightfire

Someone is very picky. There are a couple like SC2 and AOE3 that I would guess are based upon a lot of love for the game prior to it. Both of those titles were not like the game before it, but there are still a mass of people who might prefer those titles over the previous ones. That is probably also true of Morrowind and Oblivion.

The sim games are the ones I will completely agree on. Streets and Copter both are fun games with amazing potential, but they were hindered by the poor coding that maxis put out.


The one title that I feel deserves this recognition so much is Test Drive Unlimited. That game has some of the best graphics for any racing game I've seen. It's one of the actual racing games that allows for open world freedom instead of being tied down to a track. The whole game was marred by microstuttering, corrupt game saves, forced online multiplayer to a single server, and some sync issues. If that game simply would have dedicated servers and LAN play, I think a lot of those sync issues would have went away and it could have become a great lan party title. Single player was still great fun, but the potential on the game was much bigger than that.

 

[DarkSaturn]

I'll echo the suggestion of Titanfall, in a lot of ways it reminds me of the first Assassins Creed - there is the basis of something really good there - but it's not executed. It's like a polished tech demo, but the game is incomplete.

A little further back, 2 that really killed me: Too Human and Hellgate: London. Both of which suffer from smaller studios trying to reach and create something epic, and ending with releasing with broken gameplay that good not save what was otherwise some really solid lore.

All time, for me it's Freelancer. Despite the fact that it did get released, and was actually a pretty solid title (and was expanded in some fun directions by an awesome modding community) - it still took down the studio, burned out the creator, and was pretty much was the death knell for the genre - worst of all was really only the husk of what it was intended to be. There was 3 years there where Digital Anvil would show up at E3 and amaze everybody with it. I try to think about this every time I get tempted to drop any more money into Star Citizen.

 

[zero2dash]

Evolve aka the game they fucked before launch by sticking it behind a DLC paywall.
You want to try to fleece people for skins? Fine. Sticking monsters (and maps I think?) behind a DLC paywall? Utter failure.

Depth has become what Evolve should've been, and is 1000x better and a LOT more original. 99% free content and frequently updated as well with features and balance. Sure, there are skins. All the new sharks, maps, weapons, powerups = all free.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

2142 was awesome. it was the most balanced BF game to date and then the whole franchise got ruined by console shit in BC/BC2

BC and BC2 had nothing to do with the downfall of battlefield 2142.. it had everything to do with the shitty fan base of BF2 threatening to boycott their terrible battlefield 2 game because they felt BF2142 didn't fit into the family of battlefield games because it was "too futuristic" and so dice/EA caved liked they always do and fired the majority of the development team and forced dice to release BF:BC 2 years later.

 

[roma]

DEFENSE GRID 2

 

[schmuckley]

Fallout 3.
So much potential,so many CTDs.

 

[B2BigAl]

The most recent for me is deathtrap. I really enjoyed the tower defense mixed with arpg in van helsing, and I was really looking forward to this game. I didn't expect miracles, but damn they screwed the pooch on this one. Awful skill trees, essentially no loot or arpg elements at all, traps that are useless, terrible difficulty spikes, bugs out the ass even after 6+ months after release. Just a complete mess. It's like they gave up halfway through beta. I was worried after van helsing 3 was such a turd, but I hoped neocore would redeem themselves with deathtrap...not so much. Glad I only paid $10 for it or I would have asked for a refund.

Mad Max is another dishonorable mention. Lots of good stuff going on there, it just felt like they had to rush it out the door before they had time to completely flesh things out. I could sense what they were trying to achieve, but it felt like an empty shell of what could have been.

 

[Killa_2327]

• Diablo 3
  I realize a lot of people love it now and it is better than release, but that was the most disappointed I've ever been over a game. Everything that was done well in the second game was seemingly left out of this one, even the art style.
• Doom 3
  To me, this isn't a Doom game. If it was released as anything else I might of enjoyed it a little bit more. Just a mostly boring corridor shooter with great graphics that you hardly get to see.
• Mass Effect 3
  The ending to this game still pisses me off to this day and it made playing through the first two games more difficult for me.
• Soldier of Fortune 3
  I didn't expect it to be that great when it was mentioned a budget studio was going to take it over but it was still disappointing considering how much I enjoyed the previous two.
• Star Control 3
  The second game in the series might just be the greatest game ever made and this game had no chance of living up to it.

If there's a third game in a series I'm going to wager that it generally sucks, although there are a few exceptions (Witcher 3?)

 

[M76]

DEFENSE GRID 2

Yes defense grid 2 sucks big time, I'm still returning to play Awakening often, but I completely forgot 2.

Mass Effect 3
The ending to this game still pisses me off to this day and it made playing through the first two games more difficult for me.

You still can't say that Mass Effect 3 generally sucks. The ending sucks but that's it. Everything else is great in that game, it has some of the best moments of the series. While ME2 beats it as the best of the 3 by a little, it's still a damn good game, and not something to be even remotely classified as a bad game.

 

[groebuck]

Star Wars Battlefront....

could have been a great game - rushed to get it out - and it is almost unplayable

 

[Killa_2327]

You still can't say that Mass Effect 3 generally sucks. The ending sucks but that's it. Everything else is great in that game, it has some of the best moments of the series. While ME2 beats it as the best of the 3 by a little, it's still a damn good game, and not something to be even remotely classified as a bad game.

The ending was so bad that it ruined the game for me. I loved the game up until that point but once that point was reached it completely changed my opinion of the title and any desire to play it again.

 

[Insomniator]

The ending for ME 3 was pretty bad, game was good otherwise IMO.

 

[Ur_Mom]

it really isn't that bad as everyone says. It is just trendy to hate on it. Family had no problem with it back in the 80s and most wouldn't today if it wasn't for AVGN and such.

It got a lot of hate WAY before AVGN and YouTube. Even in the 80's.

I loved the game as a kid. Many others did, too. One reason a lot ended in the landfill is that they made WAY too many copies of the game. If that wasn't an issue, it would have been accepted a bit more.

It's just been blown out of proportion over the years. It's just trendy to say ET was the worst game ever. I think if most modern gamers played most VCS games, they'd say they were shit. But, when that was the best we had, those were some amazing games. No, they don't compare with the best games of today (or even the 90's), but in 1982 they were fucking amazing works of art. It's one of those things that "you had to be there". So, a modern gamer playing ET probably isn't going to like it. A modern gamer playing Bezerk probably isn't going to care much for it, either.

 

[piscian18]

Yes defense grid 2 sucks big time, I'm still returning to play Awakening often, but I completely forgot 2.

I sure hope youre full of shit. It's in my backlog. I loved the first one havent started that one.

 

[roma]

I sure hope youre full of shit. It's in my backlog. I loved the first one havent started that one.

I was in top 100 for a few categories (aliens killed etc) and played a lot of DG. I was really looking forward to DG2 but lost interest soon after release. They say "a camel is a horse designed by committee" and thats how DG2 feels. DG wasn't broke but DG2 tried to fix something anyway - not sure what

 

[MartinX]

Seriously!! Interstate 76 was awesome.

This. I spent a lot of time playing the shit out of that.

I think we live in a culture now where if something isn't the best thing ever its the worst thing ever. I feel like there's very few games out there that are objectively bad, but plenty that don't live up to the hype/potential and are subjectively disappointing.

Deus ex 2 was a big one for me, I loved the first one hugely, and was looking forward to more modern technology expanding all the stuff that made it great, then it did the opposite. As a standalone game it wasn't terrible, but it was smaller in scope, scale and ambition than the first by a big margin, which made it very disappointing.

The same thing happened with the tribes series.

It's like sometimes Devs are just like: "Hey, everyone loved that the last one offered stuff that other games don't, lets take that stuff out and make it more like all the other games so there's nothing special about it!".

Also "Auteur" games, Daikatana was an example, people tend to forget, or simply don't know, that except for tiny indie games and very simple mobile apps, making games is a collaborative effort between a bunch of people. There's usually a couple of names people might know, because they are team leaders and take "frontman" roles, but its really rare that the success/quality of the games they are associated with is the result of their singular vision and talent.
It's a bunch of very talented people working together. So whenever you see "New game by guy who worked on X", it might be great, but if there's some feature in a game you really like, chances are it was 5 guys sitting around a table who came up with it, and then 15 more people to actually make it work, when one of those 5 guys goes and does his own thing there's no guarantee it'll turn out great. So attaching your hype to that one guy is risky in the disappointment stakes.

 

[M76]

This. I spent a lot of time playing the shit out of that.

I think we live in a culture now where if something isn't the best thing ever its the worst thing ever. I feel like there's very few games out there that are objectively bad, but plenty that don't live up to the hype/potential and are subjectively disappointing.

That's true. I see it so often that people smack the shit out of something for a tiny issue. For example they wanted to have green guns and the game only has yellow guns, and now they'll blitz the game on all possible outlets like it's the worst ever.

That's why I completely stopped listening to other people when it comes to games. The only reviews I take under advisement are the ones that clearly explain the pros and cons of a game. But even then I reserve judgement until I've seen the game for myself.

If I listened to the general opinion I'd have skipped a lot of games I absolutely loved. Deus Ex Invisible War was one of those games.

 

[MartinX]

If I listened to the general opinion I'd have skipped a lot of games I absolutely loved. Deus Ex Invisible War was one of those games.

That's a perfect example, DX:IW is a good game, I even enjoyed it, but I was still disappointed and didn't feel like it was it was the true DX successor I wanted.

 

[DarkSaturn]

Just thought of another one:

Masters of Orion 3.

They took everything that made MOO:2 a classic, and added like 3x as much. Upon realizing they had made it agonizingly slow they added 'agents' to do the micromanagement for you. They are optional, so you can choose between spreadsheet simulator or press next turn and let the AI play the game instead.

 

[grambo]

enemy territories: quake wars, had so much promise but EA being EA and the developers doing everything they possibly could wrong sealed the fate of yet another good FPS game that wasn't a counterstrike/CoD copy cat.

I had such high hopes for ET:QW after playing a ton of of the original ET mod for Quake 3. Quake Wars had its moments but a few things seemed to prevent the game from ever taking off community wise. Too bad because it should have had Battlefield levels of success.