Gaming! So many games, not enough posts!
What game was the biggest disappointment for you and why?
As I'll probably finish, if not come close to it, the game I'm currently playing, I'm starting to think about what to play next. As I said before, I wasn't expecting much from the latest installment, given how much I hated Sticker Star, but I've been pleasantly surprised.
It got me thinking:
What are some of your all time worst games you've played?
It doesn't need to be something recent or maybe a piece of hardware not a game itself. Let's get ready for the weekend by complaining!




Bioshock Infinite for sure. I was super hyped for the game, and got it pretty much on launch. The first few minutes really wowed me with how gorgeous everything was.
First disappointment: no save file system, which mean me and my sister couldn't have two games going on at the same time. And I couldn't save & quit the game when I needed to, which meant I ended up having to replay one of the early sections of the game.
Second disappointment: pretty much everything that happened after the first universe hop. The plot starting falling a part, the world-building made no sense, Elizabeth as a character made no sense to me... and then came the "the only difference between Comstock and Fitzgerald is how you spell their name" line, and I'd gone from enjoying the game to pretty much hating it.
Battle system was a slog too, and I say this as somebody who played the game on easy. Why in the world were the enemies such bullet sponges? On easy mode.
Anyway. Biggest disappointment ever.
I was about to say this as well.
The twists in the game just made it not enjoyable. The twist that really got me disappointed was the multiple universes/time traveling and how every choice that was made wasn't really a choice. I wanted a game not an overthought philosophy class. I play a game because I have control and to be told by the game itself that no I actually don't was insulting.
This game ruined the other games in the series. I sold this game and the rest.
I kind of like the lack of true control in the Bioshock games. Also a Zero Escape fan.
Also, the much-vaunted grey moral decision making was... pretty obvious, really. Let's NOT stone the interracial couple, 'kay? How is that more complex then "don't kill the cute little girls"?
Destiny was such a disaster I never pre-ordered a game again. I was expecting dramtic and epic space opera like Halo, which I loved. unfortunately I got a terrible MMO, a plot that wasn't even half baked, and the feeling that I might be the facist badguy fighting the forces of diversity. I only bought indie games on my HP laptop for a while afterwards... because destiny was a betrayal on a scale beyond measure.
Metal Gear Solid V. No, the game wasn't bad, far from it. But the story was so unfinished, and the side content was so repetitive, that the only fun parts were early to mid game.
Definitely. I was a huge MGS fan ever since I played MGS1 as a kid. I gave up on MGS5 after arriving at Part 2 and realizing I'd basically have to replay Part 1 again on harder settings, just to hear more of the convoluted and confusing story. The checkpoint system was also infuriating, since I would spend an hour crawling across the map, get discovered, then have to restart the entire mission just to achieve the rank I wanted. The camouflage seemed less fun than in MGS4, sometimes soldiers would spot me from a mile away, sometimes they would walk within inches of me without noticing.
Kind of an underwhelming end to an otherwise amazing series.
Deus Ex 2: Invisible War
For reasons too numerous to mention.
I was having trouble thinking of one, but this is it for sure. It also ran terribly on my computer at the time. I've tried at least a couple of times to play it since, but I could never make it much past the first level, I would end up thinking I should just be playing the first one instead.
Wildstar. It's not bad per se, it's just... nothing like they promised, and they thought hardcore meant tedious.
Skyrim: REMASTERED.
Original skyrim was fine, don't get me wrong, but the remaster is useless next to it. (at least on PC)
Fallout 3. They took a stunning game line and turned it into yet another Skyrim-style walky-shootum.
Quantum Conundrum - it looked like a cutesy version of Portal, but the execution makes it unplayable for me. It only saves at set check points so failure to solve a puzzle means repeating parts you already succeeded at and too many of the puzzles involve twitch reflexes which means you can see how to solve it or watch a video of someone else solving it but actually utilising the solution can be an exercise in frustration. This is totally unlike Portal that has quick saves and puzzles that you can usually solve once you've worked it out. I abandoned QC less than a quarter of a way in due to the frustration.
For a runner-up: Myst. If I had the chance to go back in time and stop one game from being released, that would be it. I was growing up with highly interactive adventure games, and then it came along, and suddenly everyone just wanted to make movies with occasional clicking.
I got through it in two sessions, and went, "That's all???"
I used to diss it as being like something slapped together in HyperCard... until I learned it actually was first built in HyperCard.
It's not the absolute worst game I've ever played, but it is the one I've built up the most rage about.
Mine are two I haven't even played. First and foremost, Ultima IX: Ascension. It was the first and until recently easily the worst debable in my gaming history. Ultima, at least the middle trilogy and VII, was a fantastic series about the "Avatar" in both the sense of you-as-the-protagonist and in the sense of playing a truly virtuous person, not just someone who could murder and steal and still be hailed as a savior. VIII twisted that inside out by throwing out every single aspect that made the series what it was, and most fans were understably upset. For the final game in the final trilogy, the devs promised a return to their roots: the old beloved setting and characters including party members, gender choice and other customization for the Avatar (since the whole point of that character was to invite players to self-insert), the Virtues once again playing a meaninful role. It sounded promising. Hopes were high.
Then, midway through development, that promising game was axed. Plot, character customization, gameplay, the whole damn engine. All gone, replaced with a generic hack'n'slash solo action adventure featuring a generic straight white dude. The old beloved NPCs? Mostly die. The old beloved setting? Wrecked. The whole point of being a true hero? Perverted into making the protagonist's own goodness the source of the worst evil, sending a lovely message of "don't even try, you'll just make it all worse than you can imagine".
I was completely shattered, because the series had meant a lot to me. They were "real" RPGs in which plot, setting and characters actually meant something. It took me months to get over it, and the worst part of it all was the sense of betrayal after it seemed like the devs were listening to the fans. I still don't know how much EA had to do with it all, but this series really deserved a better ending.
More recently, Bioware -- who, despite my recurring issues with their games, used to be the only company that I'd have called myself a fan of, pulled a similarly crushing gut-punch with the final Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC. It was hyped as something resembling a fan-favourite ME3 DLC, so I wanted to be hopeful, but given my recurring issues and their prominence in Inquisition, I was worried, too. So I watched some videos instead of buying it sight unseen. Which turned out to be a bitterly good idea. "Tresspasser" was the final straw that showed all my bugbears are in fact deliberate features that aren't ever going to change. Since I never managed to muster any enthusiasm for Mass Effect, I'm pretty much done with Bioware now.
Civilization V, they released it in a broken state, had an AI that simply cannot provide any sort of threat to even a half decent player, and their idea of new mechanics were to simply add new 'currencies' such as faith and culture rather than tying them into existing systems or creating something unique.
Warhammer Online. Some guys I worked with talked me into buying the game (I was already playing WoW) and playing with them. I didn't even make it a month before I abandoned it. I really should have known better, I knew I didn't like PVP and this game just confirmed it.
Alteil. Think of Hearthstone, but with the grinding to get new packs being much more tedious and unrewarding.
There were also fewer players, so once you outgrew the newbie arena it was either spend hundreds of dollars to remain competitive, or spend your time being eaten alive by those who had.
I enjoyed Dark Souls 3 the least, because i couldn't git gud as the internet peeps say. Never finished that one
Me neither.
Right now The Last Guardian. Just not feeling it. 10 years in the making and it doesn't even feel finished.
I kind of want to pick that one up once I get the hardware upgrade that'd actually let me run it decently. But I'm worried it'd just be an exercise in frustration, yes. :/ That's a series that could really use demos for its games so people can get a first-hand impresson of the much-hyped brutal difficulty.
No Mans Sky. I was expecting something much better. It was cool that you could go to an infinite amount of planets, but It got boring very fast.
Well that was at least the biggest disappointment for me this year. Im not sure which one is All Time.
The first game I didn't like was Jet Force Gemini. I remember reading about it in Nintendo Power and being really excited about it. I also remember seeing the graphics and thinking they were really amazing.
When I got my hands on it, I was frustrated by really bad controls and not being able to finish the game.
I don't know if 34 year old me would feel the same as 18 year old me about the game.
I was disappointed by BioShock. They made it look nice, but updating it without fixing any of the bugs which have gained notoriety brings no one any joy. You don't need to change the mechanics, but simple things like the dynamic lighting and the water... oh the water is rage educing.
Dragon Age Inquisition-- I know people LOVED this game but I couldn't finish it. They gave us the option to play multiple species, but at the end of the day being anything other than an elf or a human meant nothing. The plot was bland, the horses were bland, they didn't give me a cute dog, and the hinterlands were a form of torture. The options for the Inquisitor's choices were six different versions of clueless and bland (my inquisitor can't even get the concept of raising morale and humanizing themselves for their troops??? Wtf)
Over all I can't think of any redeeming features for DAI but I AM aware I'm in the minority. It sealed the deal of my complete breakup with Bioware games tbh.
I did like some parts of it, or Tresspasser wouldn't have hit me so hard, but I had a lot of issues with it too even before that DLC came along. Overall, I've long had the impression that Bioware don't seem to care much for the supposed plot, and even less for the player character as the suppposed protagonist. They mainly seem to want to write a string of NPC showcases (with clearly designated favourites getting the lion's share of attention) -- and one method they use a lot to make certain NPCs look smart, powerful and competent is to make everyone else including the player character come down with sudden bouts of spineless stupidity and impotent ignorance. The Iron Bull was one of my most hated Bioware characters ever for that reason (among others), since many of his scenes are that way.
Homefront was so hugely disappointing. I pre-ordered it, and I was so hyped to play as a resistance fighter somewhere they told me would feel familiar. It even started out great, feeling powerless in the intro and hiding and running.
Then it turned into Call of Duty. We went from being guerrilla fighters to being a special strike team taking on better equipped professional soldiers head on while being outnumbered 20:1. Then we got fancy new gadgets that made us unstoppable. Then the deus ex machina swooped in and saved us and abruptly won the war. All in 3 hours worth of campaign. It felt so empty.
The only good thing about pre-ordering was getting Metro 2033 for free. I put at least 30 hours into that.
I'd probably say Dragon Ball Z Raging Blast. I had wanted that game for a while cause I think the DBZ games are actually really fun. Childhood nostalgia and good dynamics typically. But Raging Blast was just no good in my opinion.
For me, it would have to be Tales of Zestiria. I love the Tales series and I look forward to when we actually get localised versions of the games here in the US (which isn't as often as I wish we did), but this one...was just really meh for me. The story and characters didn't grab me that much. There wasn't anything super new and exciting, or so it seemed. The previous installments were just better overall.
The Last of Us for me. When I saw the trailers, I got really excited for it and looking back, I'm not sure why. Maybe I was impressed by the contextual advice Ellie gave, but it was so obviously scripted thinking about it that I feel dumb getting hyped for it. Seeing it played was more than I could bear. What parts aren't just a slower and less fair version of Uncharted are the worst stealth game I've ever played where sound and visibility indicators are faux-pas. And don't get me started on the story, completely predictable and trite. When you meet that other travelling family, I was thinking "Which one is going to turn into a zombie and be killed by the other... uhp, it's the kid, who'd have thought?"
The ending was even worse. I just wanted to stand down and get shot instead of actually finishing. For a villain protagonist to work, they have to be at least likable, like Travis Touchdown and the game paints Joel as a hero for what he did. It's disgusting and insulting. The game is such oscar-bait too with the most obvious theme in a zombie drama, the "humans are the real monsters after all," plot has been done to death second only to zombie dramas being overdone.
I really didn't get anything out of Gone Home, which bummed me out. Just seemed like really simplistic point-and-click adventure gameplay (find the key to open the door! Find the button to open the secret passage!) surrounding a kind of bland romance with two not-super-interesting main characters? Honestly I would've way preferred if any of the other storylines hinted at (especially the Dad's abusive past and how it ties into his career) got more focus.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.
I was hyped for this one. The original Amnesia was the single game that got me into the horror genre. I found the game play intense, the story ridiculously compelling, and the whole experience is almost single-handedly responsible for teaching me that being afraid can actually be fun.
So, when I heard there was a follow-up in the works, I was beyond thrilled. I followed the stories over development as closely as I could and pre-ordered the thing, eager for a visceral horror experience in Victorian England. To this day, A Machine for Pigs remains the only game I pre-loaded on Steam and began playing the night it launched, because I was just so pumped to be scared out of my wits again.
And, of course, all I got was a game play experience that was tepid at best and came with a story so convoluted that by the end I had zero investment anymore. I was expecting action-stealth gameplay, intricate puzzle solving, and a plot I could look back on when thinking of how to chill a player in an interactive medium. But the result was a glorified theme park experience, with all the interactivity of looking around as you walk in a straight line.
So curiously enough, it was an indie game that taught me not to preorder.
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Yeah, the only thing that sounded appealing about Sims 4 was the (eventual) removal of gender-locked clothing. (As someone who wants androgyny, I was basically stuck with with maybe three or four shirts, two pants and two pairs of shoes in Sims 3 because all the good stuff was for male characters only.) Apart from that it seems like a great big exercise in "WTF were they thinking?".
Recently played through I Am Alive because it was free on Xbox Live. Having seen the original trailer, I'd dropped off the hype train by the time it came out four years later, and having played it now it's... not good. Like, maybe it's decent, but I remember being so excited for the game that it's just really disappointing to look back at everything I thought it would be.
Aside from that, there's the 2008 Turok and Dragon Age 2.
I have a love/hate relationship with Bioware these days. After Dragon Age 2's disaster of third-act lectures about the problems of multiculturalism, the security state, and terrorism shoehorned into a story where mass homicide is the primary game mechanic, I picked up The Old Republic F2P where I got lectures about extrajudicial rendition and land mines, again shoehorned into a game with mass homicide as a primary game mechanic, with the bonus of an MMO grind.
Two Worlds was a game I picked up on a GOG sale and never made it out of the starter zone, I just couldn't get past the bad interface mechanics, ugly character-design models (even for the time), and terrible voice acting. Similarly, I got Dungeon Siege III on a package deal and eventually gave up on it.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion might count as a disappointment due to world leveling dynamics that made encounters either ridiculously easy or impossibly hard depending on how much you tried to min/max your character.
I never gave Dragon Age 2 a chance. I was so mad that the character that I had put hours into with the first game meant nothing for the second. Unlike Mass Effect.
My Warden didn't survive Origins because I had wanted a last stand ending for her ever since seeing the Calling trailer. So hell yeah, ultimate sacrifice! :p But DA2 was a big "ugh no" for me too. I played the demo, disliked every moment of it for various reasons, read the character blurbs, thought "Am I supposed to actually LIKE these yokels?" and gave it a wide berth without regrets. The only character who sounded remotely appealing was Aveline, and a single NPC isn't worth buying a game for.
Side note: it's a shame that, although Origins was a nod back at BG2's complex combat system, Bioware decided to jump headfirst on the arcade bandwagon afterwards. I always roll my eyes when every combat animation has to be accompanied by four midair corkscrews while farting glitter out of every orifice. That's the opposite of making combat interesting in my mind. At the same time, Bioware's UI design has become increasingly worse as well.
The world leveling might have worked if it was only for bosses but having it for everyone led to being robbed by enemies in glass armor and never made it feel like you had made any progression
Never sleeping though leads to being crazy overpowered though as that's when they level up with you